This paper addresses the necessary complementarity between a translanguaging and named language-perspective by critically examining risks of 'overshooting' when a translanguaging view is theoretically posited as the ultimately superior (sociolinguistic) theory of language use and learning in today's multilingual world.

Multilingualism is increasingly seen as a resource among researchers, educators and in society. Whereas positive beliefs about the benefits of multilingualism may foster increased motivation for language learning, little is known about students' beliefs about potential multilingual benefits. This study examined the beliefs of Norwegian secondary…

By using a quantitative approach, we examined the family language policy of Turkish parents in the Netherlands. Based on our earlier ethnographic work with 20 Turkish families and interviews with 35 parents, we designed and conducted a large-scale survey among 116 first-generation and 184 second-generation parents. The findings reveal that both…

The aim of this study is to identify factors associated with Vietnamese-Australian parents' language use and attitudes towards home language maintenance. Vietnamese-Australian parents (n = 151) with children aged under 18 completed a survey regarding demographic factors and factors conceptualised by Spolsky's language policy theory: language…

Since the late 1980s, Taiwan has moved away from Mandarin-only language policy in favour of greater recognition of local Taiwanese languages as part of a greater localisation movement. While continuing to implement language policies aimed at promoting local Taiwanese languages, in December 2018, Taiwan announced intent to implement a bilingual…

Due to modernisation and Englishisation in Bahrain, noticeably different types of bilingual and bicultural experiences exist, especially among the youth. Recently, the rise of Chinese education policies in the region raises the question of how it might alter the local linguistic market and the forms of capital within it. Applying a…

This research applies interactional sociolinguistics within a family language policy framework to investigate how social structures and institutional discourses outside the home trickle into daily mundane activities within a Malay-English bilingual family in Singapore. Drawing upon ethnographic interviews and naturally-occurring interactions at…

This paper investigates the linguistic and semiotic resources that NGO coaches draw on to create safe spaces in their English language lessons for psycho-social support in refugee settings. We do so by applying the rapidly developing concept of translanguaging, using data from a multi-site linguistic ethnography study in an NGO in the Kurdistan…

Diasporic Indian languages in Malaysia are unique and distinguishable from their native variants. Past studies have indicated that dominant languages tend to overpower minority languages in multilingual communities, hence causing languages to shift. The aims of this study are to identify the language choices of Malaysian Tamils and to what extent…

This study tested whether Punjabi-English bilinguals feel a stronger rapport with another bilingual stranger when communicating in L1 Punjabi or their dominant L2 English. Some previous studies have shown greater emotional reactions to a dominant language. We predicted that participants would feel more comfortable speaking their dominant language.…

Studies have found that bilinguals respond differently to personality measures in their two languages, indicating that bilinguals change their personality as they switch between their two languages and/or cultures. Across two experiments, we attempted to investigate the effect of language and culture separately on how bilingual speakers rate…

The monolingual English norm in current education and academic discourse has continuously marginalised the linguistic and theoretical resources in languages other than English. Drawing upon evidence from Chinese bilingual postgraduate researchers and their supervisors, this paper reconsiders their potentials for bilingual theorising with their…

Language-specific (i.e. the ideal L2 self) and plurilingual selves are now at the forefront of scholarly inquiry in L2 motivation research. Yet, there is a lack of empirical studies examining how language learners reframe their sense of self as speakers of an L2. This study draws on a questionnaire (N = 162) and on semi-structured interviews (N =…

Language acquisition and Language Maintenance (LM) both depend on ample opportunity and motivation. Currently, many national language societies are undergoing Language Shift (LS) to English, impacting their acquisition as first (L1) and possibly even more as second (L2) language. This study interviewed 44 adolescents, including 24 L1 and 20 L2…

Psychological variables remain a much under-investigated sub-category of individual differences (IDs) compared with cognitive ones. The present paper aims to gain a better understanding of the psychological effects of bilingualism by investigating national identity (NI), a socio-psychological construct, based on big data, that has rarely been…