Over the past two decades, the Chinese language has emerged as a global language. Gulf Cooperation Council countries, such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, have integrated Chinese language into their educational systems and established Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese language and culture. In Qatar, interest in…

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 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,…

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…

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.…

In major texts on bilingualism and bilingual education, one often finds such notions as biculturalism, multiculturalism, pluralism or interculturalism that are used interchangeably as concepts--as opposed to monoculturalism or cultural assimilation--to address political and sociocultural dimensions in language learning and teaching. Recently, some…

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…

Highlights the danger of using already constructed typologies implying permanent relationships between elements and monolithic categories to analyze real examples of language conflict. A specific case of an established bilingual secondary school in Wales illustrates this danger. (Author/CB)