In the way of commentary, I offer a brief, summative reflection on the complex, multifarious nature of people's semiotic engagements in and with space. Against the backdrop of three snapshot case studies, I suggest there are actually few neat boundaries to be drawn between the linguistic and non-linguistic, between the semiotic and the spatial,…

This article employs the term "communicative repertoire" in order to highlight that when one learns any new "language", one introduces new communicative resources into a unified communicative repertoire. As repertoires represent such singular "grammars" in individuals' minds, learned communicative resources can…

While the idea of plurilingual competence is widely established theoretically and promoted in European language policies, it is not implemented in educational practice, where separate plurilingualism is still dominant. The idea of languages as autonomous entities is e.g. reflected in the "Common European Framework of Reference for…

Many multilinguals in Europe habitually use the linguistic strategies often attributed to users of English as a lingua franca (ELF). ELF, in which native speaker norms are not invoked, may be the perfect arena for multilinguals to exploit what Vivian Cook calls "multicompetence", a dynamic multilingual system in which more than one…