Nuosu script, a unique character-based script with a long history, permeates the public spaces of Xichang, the capital of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China. Using interviews, photos, observations, and documents, this qualitative study discovers the uses and meanings of Nuosu script in the linguistic landscape (LL). The…

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…

Xinjiang has witnessed constant state attempts to reinforce the status of Mandarin Chinese as 'the Common Language' and to make local Turkic languages -- mainly Uyghur and Kazak -- more 'suitable' to the modern world. Official efforts to transform the linguistic landscape of Xinjiang have engaged in a complex interplay with Turkic speakers' own…

In order to distinguish between language-related ideologies, Ruiz (1984) proposed three language orientations, namely 'language-as-problem', 'language-as-right' and 'language-as-resource'. Although this typology has been applied to various countries and regions around the globe, relevant research in China, a multi-ethnolinguistic country, remains…

I explore the ways in which language ideologies are transformed when they are transplanted to diasporic settings as a result of migration. I examine the labelling of Cypriot Greek features as "slang" by young British-born speakers of Greek Cypriot heritage. Drawing on the analysis of data collected in a Greek complementary school in…

Although traditional, unitary models of language standardisation have been prominent in minority languages, it is contended that this approach reproduces dominant language hierarchies and hegemonies, diminishes linguistic diversity and marginalises speakers who do not conform to prestige models. The polynomic model has been described as an…

We investigate the perceptions of international and American Chinese bilingual pre- and in-service graduate students and language teachers regarding Chinese varieties. The 25 participants were currently enrolled college students or recent graduates majoring in language education or other associated programmes at an urban university in the…

Having been the scene of language planning for more than a century in relation to the two competing written standards of Norwegian, Norwegian language planners are now facing a new challenge: how to deal with what has been termed "domain loss" where Norwegian is perceived as losing out to English in important sectors of society,…

University students in Taiwan evaluated seven prepared Taibun reading samples on six characteristic scales. Results reveal that Han character-only orthography received the highest rating, Han-Roman mixed received the second highest, and Roman-only received the lowest.(Author/VWL)