A region's identity is closely related to its semiotic landscape as well as history, economy and culture. This article explores the linguistic landscape of Jianghan Road, a historical business centre in Wuhan, P. R. China, by photographing and analysing 1308 official and unofficial signs in order to provide a snapshot of language choice and…

The ideological role of English, beyond its instrumental value, is reported to be immense. British colonial rule deployed English as an ideological tool which facilitated colonial subjugation and religious conversion. Connections between English and evangelism have widened in the postcolonial and globalising world, leading to labelling English as…

One of the features of the growing prominence of English across the globe is the proliferation of English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes at all levels of education, driven by a neoliberal agenda which places a disproportionate value on English over other languages. While this spread has primarily affected more developed, urban contexts, EMI…

This contribution examines the linguistic perceptions and ideologies of an individual of Latin American origin, Jorge, based in the German-speaking region of Switzerland, through narratives to analyse how pre-existing normative linguistic discourses influence (linguistic) identities. Connecting the micro-level of Jorge's narrative to the macro…

Britain has funded English language teaching (ELT) initiatives in developing countries for decades, despite changes in government and a series of substantial overhauls in the administration of development aid. This article reveals the relevance of ideational factors in explaining how ELT remained a key part of Britain's aid policy during a period…

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has long been considered a global policy in language education. It has been borrowed and adopted by different polities across the world. However, it is still not clear why the CEFR, intended for European usage, has become a ubiquitous tool for overhauling the quality of teaching and…

We draw on Rampton's "Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents" (2014. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge) notion of "crossing" to explore contestations in ethnolinguistic, cultural and racial affiliations at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), a university built for "Coloureds" in apartheid South Africa, but…

Language-in-education policies are developed and implemented within contexts of great complexity. Where policies appear less than perfect on paper, this presents a valuable opportunity to examine the contextual factors that have led to their development, helping policymakers to understand the conditions under which policy change must take place.…

What are the similarities and differences between the concepts "language attitudes" (LAs) and "language ideologies" (LIs)? The need to answer this question arose from a study done by Abongdia in Cameroon with Francophone high school students of English to determine their attitudes towards English as well as their motivation for…

There have been few Australian studies of language maintenance amongst immigrant languages from the Indian subcontinent. The present study focuses on Tamil speakers in Melbourne from Sri Lanka or India, who are Hindus or Christians. Tamil is a pluricentric language that has been under the domination of English in these countries, at least amongst…

A response to a critique of bilingual education by J. R. Edwards (1981) argues that our understanding of the nature of modern bilingualism must be broadened through a reading of the pertinent research in recent social science. This could lead to a grasping of the economic and social class dimensions of bilingualism in current urbanization and…

Increased use of English in Singapore, a multiracial, multilingual country, especially its use for cultural purposes, has met with some controversy. This article traces the historical development of Singaporean literature in English and the sociocultural and political problems such literature faces in a country where the official languages and…