Tiny though it is, The Hague's Chinatown is clearly presented as such, with Chinese lanterns, municipal street signage in Chinese characters, and sayings in Classical Chinese lining the streets. Doing fieldwork in the area, however, has shown that it proves to be less Chinese than its visual representation suggests. Few Chinese still inhabit the…

Chinatowns in Canada and the United States are marked by cultural hybridity, where the translation of various types, verbal and non-verbal, takes place to produce distinct urban meanings. On the basis of an ethnographic observation, this article reveals the role of translation in the signification and imagination of Chinatowns. Cultural diaspora…

The aim of this paper is to advance an understanding of power in linguistic landscape research. After setting out and discussing the concepts of 'power over', 'power to' and 'power through', we present a case study of Chinese semiotic assemblages in the Australian regional city of Bendigo. Our research includes ethnographic details of the…

With English hegemony sustained in 'multicultural' Anglophone universities, non-English speaking research students often develop diverse strategies to improve their English. While such strategies demonstrate a form of resilience, the symbolic power of English remains intact. To grapple with this paradox, we draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to…

Previous research that explores the effect of ethnicity in the perception of speaker accentedness and personality traits often finds that Asian appearance contributes to a more accented and less competent impression. Importantly, most of the work done to date employed only Caucasian first language-speaking listeners; moreover, ethnicity and gender…

Despite the proven benefits of combining target language education with corresponding cultural studies, little is known about the impact of infusing and integrating native culture and ideology into English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education. Few studies focus on how Chinese English language learners (ELLs) negotiate multifaceted identities in…

Social networks have been investigated as an important factor to understand social and language innovations for decades. Most researchers focus on one-language-dominated societies when studying social networks' influence on language practice while studies on bilingual societies remain scarce. In this study, we examine how Chinese graduate students…

The goal of this article is to examine intercultural experiences and the cultural identity reconstruction of Chinese international students in Germany by focusing on their cultural learning, and use of multiple languages including English as a lingua franca (ELF), German and Chinese. Three rounds of individual interviews over 1 year were conducted…

This paper reports on a study that analysed the ideological framing of "Chinese dialects" or "regional Chinese varieties" in the mainland China's state print media reports of "dialect crisis" and the associated efforts to sustain the use of these "dialects" from 2002 to 2012. The analysis revealed that…

The relationship between Heritage Language (HL) and ethnic identity has gained significant research ground in social psychological and poststructural scholarship, with empirical evidence largely emerging from the North American settings. There is little pertinent sociological work conducted outside North America. To fill this gap, this…

Transnational and multilingual families have become commonplace in the twenty-first century. Yet relatively few attempts have been made from applied and socio-linguistic perspectives to understand what is going on "within" such families; how their transnational and multilingual experiences impact on the family dynamics and their everyday…

Social factors involved in language maintenance and language shift (LMLS) have been the focus of LMLS studies. Previous studies provide fundamental support for the theoretical development of this research branch. However, there is no discussion regarding the hierarchical order of these social factors, i.e. the degree of importance of various…

The connections between immigration and language policy and planning in Quebec and Canada are long established. With the continuing upward trajectory in levels of immigration to Canada and Quebec the linguistic integration of these new arrivals remains an important topic. In recent years, Asia has overtaken Europe as the leading source of…

Discusses the role of the Chinese language and people in Japan, focusing on the historical impact of the Chinese language and culture on Japan, Chinese schools in Japan, and local Chinese immigrant communities. (20 references) (MDM)