For too long, the debate about Ebonics has been about the validity of the language and not about how the perception of the language impacts those that speak it. Ebonics has been considered inappropriate and inadequate as a language in institutions of higher education since the moment Black people in the United States were allowed access. However,…

Indonesia's linguistic landscape is among the most diverse in the world, yet its many indigenous and minority languages face increasing marginalization amid the widespread use of Bahasa Indonesia and English. This study examined university students' perspectives on language diversity and the preservation of heritage languages within the context of…

Although they constitute twenty percent of Israel's citizens, Arabs have no significant opportunity to study their own language in Israel's academic institutions. Academic courses are conducted in Hebrew, the official language of the country. This has implications for the Arab students' academic achievement as well as for their sense of belonging…

This study focuses on students' orientations towards multilingualism in a Swedish-speaking educational degree program in Finland. Swedish is one of the two national languages in Finland and basic education is provided separately in Finnish and Swedish, even if the current national policies strongly support multilingualism in education. We analyzed…

As plurilingual/multilingual research advances, factors that contribute to or hinder individual's flexible language use are still underexplored. Questions such as "Why do some people identify as plurilingual and pluricultural while others do not?" and "What factors contribute to high levels of plurilingual and pluricultural…

This qualitative study investigates how migrant students from mainland China attending Hong Kong universities, as scale makers, negotiate and construct new scales and identities by utilizing their sociolinguistic resources, and how their scale making is related to such social categories as history and politics. The findings suggest that…

While the importance of academic language and literacies in students' meaningful participation in higher education has been well-explored, studies have focused on writing rather than reading. There has been a significant silence in the literature around what constitutes reading in higher education, the sociocultural complexities of reader…

Drawing on the notion of biliteracy as the "the conjunction of literacy and bilingualism," this article reports on multiple ongoing case studies of multilingual university students developing academic literacies simultaneously in French and English. Interview data and textual and video records of students' writing practices were used to…

Sámi University of Applied Sciences (SUAS) in Norway is one of few institutions of higher education worldwide that mainly operates in an Indigenous language. According to the institution's vision, Indigenous peoples' values stand at the centre, and the Sámi language is heard and read daily. However, as an academic institution operating nationally…

This paper seeks to expand the translingual tradition through a stronger focus on 'the political implications' -- a way to understand the ordinariness of everyday resistance. When people engage in linguistic resistance in everyday life, it might have mixed motivations; it might not be theoretically informed; it might draw from their cultures of…

In recent years there has been a focus in language policy research on understanding how national policies are interpreted and negotiated by social actors on the ground. This paper looks at the interplay between government and grassroots initiatives to create Galician-speaking spaces in predominantly Spanish-speaking urban settings. While official…

In a nation where monolingualism predominates, heritage language (HL) has been downplayed as less important in educational contexts in the U.S. Disproportionately little attention has been given to the role of HL in language minority (LM) students' attendance to postsecondary education (PSE) (cf. Brutt-Griffler, Janina, and Manka Varghese, eds.…

During the Soviet era, the Kazakh language underwent harsh times and was on the brink of extinction from urban areas in Kazakhstan. Today, the country is paving its way towards reviving the language. This article details an effort to support Kazakh language learning in motivating secondary school students through the use of technology. Through the…

This paper looks at current grassroots efforts to revitalise Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of Mexico, in social media and more specifically on Facebook. In contrast to the limitations of institutional language promotion, the inclusion of Maya on Facebook shows the possibilities that social networks offer not only for actual use of…

Global research has shown the persistence of inequality with regard to accessing curriculum with a view to obtaining suitable work and making useful contributions to society. The intersection of race, gender, language and low socio-economic levels creates situations which often marginalize ethnic minorities in school settings (Freire, 1968; Nieto…