This paper engages with the negotiation of insider and outsider researcher identities in the context of Welsh-English bilingualism in Wales. It aims to develop a reflexive approach to researching bilingualism, foregrounding the actions and experiences of doing bilingual research in a minority language context. Taking data from education and…

This article explores research and practice on the holistic benefits of education for language revitalisation and reclamation -- ELR[superscript 2] -- efforts that link home, school, and community in mutually supportive language work informed by a critical understanding of coloniality as the root cause of language endangerment. The article…

This paper uses the themes of language rights, language choice, and language risk to consider linguistic insecurity in the Northwest Amazon (Upper Negro river) region of Brazil. Because the region is home to a large number of languages (c. two dozen), the idea of preserving this diversity is a popular theme in discourses about language in the…

Using census data from 2001 to 2016, we provide evidence that the French language is gaining ground in Quebec. We show that the apparent decline of French in Quebec is linked to a rise in multilingualism, especially when French is one of the multiple languages spoken. We argue that the census statistics are distorted by inter-linguistic marriages…

Bilinguals who consider moral problems in their foreign language tend to endorse causing harm to others if that leads to good outcomes more than they do in their native language. Cavar and Tytus [2018. "Moral Judgement and Foreign Language Effect: When the Foreign Language Becomes the Second Language. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural…

The 2011 Census in England broke new ground, as a question about language had never previously been asked. After stakeholder consultations and a series of trials, the census authority decided on two questions based on earlier censuses in the USA: one about the respondent's "main language" and another about proficiency in English. This…

Uganda has been developing and revising its curricula since the time of British colonial rule. The latest revision of the primary education curriculum led to the introduction of the Thematic Curriculum in 2007. This curriculum requires the use of pupils' mother tongues as languages of instruction from Primary One to Three and then English from…

Taking the former Yugoslavia and some of its successor states as a case study, this article examines the concepts of ethnicity and mother tongue (with a side glance at religion) as employed in recent population censuses. A special focus is on the sometimes considerable discrepancies between the ethnic and linguistic affiliations of the…

Standard language cultures are characterised by beliefs in idealised standard forms of the language in question. In this paper, these beliefs are connected to the concepts of referee design and speech community, through analysis of how Swedish adolescents reflect upon and self-assess their language proficiencies. The data consist of interviews…

This paper focuses on a particular understanding of linguistic justice, one described as the "fair background conditions position." This position has clear liberal-egalitarian roots, and its main feature is the contention that the basic requirement of justice with regard to language is the establishment of certain fair background…

The selection of standards and norms constitutes the first and most important step for language standardisation. In this paper, we examine the standard establishment for Huayu (or Singapore Mandarin), a new Chinese variety that has emerged in Singapore as a result of centralised planning and inter-linguistic contact. Huayu is the officially…

Recent years have seen a growing interest in language among political philosophers. While being, on the whole, a positive development, the considerable focus of this literature on the issue of linguistic justice paradoxically limits the breadth and depth of that emerging inquiry, by reducing the conceptual vocabulary intrinsic to the much broader…

This article focuses on mother tongue teaching in Arabic, Dari, Pashto and Somali as it is practised in a linguistically diverse primary school in Denmark. The article draws on a linguistic ethnography of language teaching across the curriculum, and the analysis focuses on three mother tongue teachers. Drawing on classroom observations and…

This article offers a critical appraisal of "educación intercultural bilingüe," an educational model with at least five decades of implementation. When this term was coined, Indigenous populations were mostly monolingual and their settlements mostly rural and distant from the seats of cultural hegemony and power. The situation is now…

This paper analyses the controversial discourses around the significance of the Arabic language in Eritrea. It challenges the arguments of the government and some scholars, who claim that the Arabic language is alien to Eritrean society. They argue that it was introduced as an official language under British rule and is only spoken by the Rashaida…