The processes, settings and outcomes of human education have distinctive impacts on the human and non-human world. This paper sets out to discuss what may have motivated the initiation of human education, how it has been maintained why the outcome has wide-ranging, and often negative, planetary impacts. The analysis offers a multi-disciplinary…

Globally, there has been increasing adaptation of curricula frameworks in early childhood education, providing overarching principles of practice rather than subject specific templates for teaching and learning. While such a movement is to be commended as supporting a socio-cultural approach in meeting each child's unique social and cultural…

The concepts of identity and translanguaging have been a focus of considerable theorizing and research in recent years, and have clarified important dimensions of how people interact in both monolingual and multilingual settings (Barkhuizen, 2016; Creese and Blackledge, 2015; Darvin and Norton, 2018; Otheguy et al., 2018). In this article we would…

The Swedish educational policy for upper secondary English, which took effect in 2011 and adopts a globalised perspective on language, is explored with respect to how skills and awareness related to local, national, and international roles of English are represented in policy documents. A discourse analytic approach to language policy is used to…

This paper explores the identity and the social/political behaviour of Russians in post-Soviet Central Asia through a comparison with the Baltic countries via a "hot and cold ethnicity" paradigm. Central Asian Russians are more likely, ceteris paribus, to be found at the "cold" end of the spectrum of "ethnic…

Until recently, the assumption of the language-teaching literature has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the students' own language(s). In recent years, however, this monolingual assumption has been increasingly questioned, and a re-evaluation of teaching that relates the language being taught to…

This article focuses on the intersections among language, literacy, and culture, and what these intersections have meant for the author personally, and what they can mean for students who have been marginalized, neglected, or made invisible by traditional understandings of the role of education. Although not linked conceptually in the past, the…

Singapore is placed in the Outer Circle of the Kachru's Three Circles Model, and has over the years developed an English which is uniquely Singaporean. This paper argues that in order to understand the ways in which Singapore English is developing its own standards and ways of speaking, a new model needs to be developed that takes culture, capital…

A sociocultural framework for examining the use of English as a Second Language (ESL) in Hong Kong is outlined and discussed. It incorporates or draws on concepts of the socio-historical nature of language, critical analysis of communication, and systemic-functional analysis of language use. Using this framework to analyze the current situation of…

At certain points in their historical development, languages are not adequately equipped to serve their societies and do not offer certain communicative functions. Political and cultural domination can influence the language community to adopt a foreign language for higher communication, leaving the vernacular underdeveloped for those…

It is argued that because of rapid demographic change at the end of the current century, characterized by growing population diversity, closed systems that cannot accommodate these changes will be hurt. Europe in general, and Switzerland in particular, must adjust perspectives and integrate cultural diversity into the social system as a new value.…

A study examined traditional Hindi songs typically sung by women during north Indian weddings, using pragmatic and semantic analysis. Some historical and cultural background for the practice of women's singing at weddings is offered. It is suggested that gender roles are defined and regulated through the language of this speech event, and that…

A selection of 27 papers from 1972 to publication includes works on a variety of topics whose unifying theme is the relationship of language and ethnicity. The papers are presented in six groups, on these topics: (1) what ethnicity is and how it is linked to language: phenomenological and socio-historical considerations; (2) language maintenance…

The choice of languages in daily communication among members of East Javanese society is discussed, as illustrated in language choice in performances of "ludruk," the East Javanese folk play. Data are drawn from audiocassette ludruk recordings, which are seen as depicting contemporary East Javanese society. First, the ethnic makeup of…

Indian languages seem to have emerged from a phase of total dependence on English for new input. Several Indian languages have now evolved vocabularies and structural nuances to handle several new registers and styles necessary for modern society. Some of the change has occurred through conscious language policy encouraging multilingualism and the…