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…

This article concerns Northern Catalonia, the part of the Catalan-speaking area that today is in France. A Catalan-speaking region until the first half of the twentieth century, the effects of Frenchification -- the acceptance of the French political and economic project in the contemporary era -- and the multiple demographic changes of the…

The paper provides an example of how immigration is constructed by receiving societies as a comprehension or language problem that requires special solutions. It focuses on the application of Easy-to-Read, a simplified register currently in expansion which addresses different groups of people with intellectual disabilities, to immigrants in Spain.…

The present contribution focuses on the Galician-descendant community in the city of Buenos Aires. Its aim is to draw attention on the academic interest of research on the processes of assimilation to the language and identity of reception (in that case, Spanish) and maintenance or recovery of the language and identity of origin in the case of a…

This paper analyses some key historical developments (from early twentieth century to present) in Bangladesh from a socio-historical and language ideological perspective to explore the social injustice faced by the non-dominant and linguistically diverse population. These developments sparked language debates involving questions of identity,…

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…

This article discusses the Belarusian case of post-communist development and the role and status of Belarusian ethnicity in Belarus' nation-formation process. "Nationalizing nationalism" (Brubaker), as realised by the Belarusian state through various social and cultural practices, is aimed at the creation of a Belarusian national entity…

A vast amount of literature addresses issues surrounding English and French in colonial and post-colonial communities. However, relative to the spread of English and French language ideology, a limited amount of literature exists on Lusitanization (i.e. the spread of Portuguese colonial ideology by Portugal during colonialism and the role of…

A contemporary phenomenon--multiplicity of authentic sources of law in different languages--complicates the process of statutory interpretation. In multilingual jurisdictions, problems arise when a literal interpretation of authentic versions of the law leads to inconsistent outcomes. Jurisdictions resolve such inconsistency in different ways.…

This article presents a case study of the former Yugoslavia, focusing on the role of language in constructing collective identities and establishing ethnic boundaries in relation to political borders. After looking at the variable and frequently multiple language-identity links in the South Slavic world, it examines the part that Serbo-Croatian,…

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…

The Han sphere, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China, adopted Han characters and classical Han writing as the official written language before the 20th century. However, great changes came with the advent of the 20th century. After World War II, Han characters in Vietnam and Korea were officially replaced by the romanised "Chu…

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…

Rather than originating in the post-1945 period, the Americanisation of the German language represents the post-war transformation of a gradual anglicisation of German which began in the 18th century with the expansion of English industry and trade. The influence of American English on German began after World War I, and intensified under the…

The apartheid state deliberately encouraged linguistic diversity and actively built cultural infrastructures which impeded Anglicisation. With the end of apartheid has come "de facto" Anglicisation. So although South Africa has, since 1994, had 11 official languages, in reality, English is swamping the other 10 languages. Afrikaans has,…