The aim of this study is to identify factors associated with Vietnamese-Australian parents' language use and attitudes towards home language maintenance. Vietnamese-Australian parents (n = 151) with children aged under 18 completed a survey regarding demographic factors and factors conceptualised by Spolsky's language policy theory: language…

Assessing vocabulary knowledge is an important part of establishing language proficiency in bilingual children. The crosslinguistic lexical tasks (CLTs) provide a framework for testing vocabulary development in three-to-six year-olds using a standard procedure and comparable items for multiple languages. This study describes the development 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 public's concern with the fate of the standard language has been well documented in the history of the complaint tradition. The print media have for centuries featured letters to the editor on questions of language use. This study examines a corpus of 258 language-related letters to the editor published in the English-speaking print media. By…

This paper addresses the complex multilingual linguistic landscapes (LLs) of three strategically-chosen areas in global city Brussels by examining how language displays on public signage in these areas are used for different purposes, functions or intentions. The focus will be on meaning-construction in the post-Fordist globalised era as shaped by…

Drawing inferences from both quantitative and qualitative data, this study examines the extent to which American companies tailor their Web advertising for global audiences with a particular focus on French-speaking consumers in North America, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and French Polynesia. Explored from a sociolinguistic and social semiotic…

Black English (BE) and standard English are treated as two different closely related linguistic systems that coexist in African-American linguistics. Focus is on a middle-class female informant who appears to be a balanced bilingual and who offers counter evidence to the claim that BE is spoken mainly by poor and uneducated persons. (13…

This paper reviews the research output on English language education in China published in 24 international journals from 2001 to 2006 and delineates the nature of this corpus of research. The review covers research in the following areas: the linguistic situations and culture of learning in China in relation to English language education,…

Clement M. Doke's 1929-1930 research on Zimbabwean languages has played a key role in shaping the tribalised and politicised linguistic terrain that characterises modern Zimbabwe. Doke, professor of linguistics at the University of Witwaters-rand, was commissioned in 1929 by the government of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) to research…

Despite its multilingual heritage, the USA has a history of linguistic intolerance. Arizona, in the country's desert Southwest, is decidedly anti-bilingual although it has significant non-English-speaking groups, especially Spanish-speaking Mexicans/Mexican-Americans and indigenous groups such as the Navajo, Hopi and Yaqui tribes, among many…

The "working emotion vocabulary" typically shows a preponderance of words for negative emotions (50%) over positive (30%) and neutral (20%) emotions. The theory of affect-as-information suggests that negative emotions signal problems or threat in the environment and are accompanied by detailed and systematic cognitive processing, while…

This paper develops a scalar or quantitative measure of the "distance" between English and a myriad of other (non-native American) languages. This measure is based on the difficulty Americans have learning other languages. The linguistic distance measure is then used in an analysis of the determinants of English language proficiency…

Looking at structural issues that have influenced the development of Welsh and English in modern Wales, this article examines lessons gleaned from the construction of a comprehensive bilingual social order. Evidence is included from a variety of sources concerned with language and cultural reproduction. (16 references) (Author/CK)

Addresses the social psychological paradox of learning a language, which in one interethnic situation represents the "ingroup" language, while in another interethnic context, it represents the "outgroup" language, a situation characterizing the language-learning experience of most Puerto Rican return migrants (PRRMs). (25…

Discusses strategies of social mobility involving education, occupational or residential change, and migration as well as the implications for language behavior of these strategies. The article assesses current theories of language maintenance and shift, drawing on network concepts and referring to change in an Irish-speaking community in…