This paper proposes law drafting techniques, especially in Chinese, that aim to enhance the fluency and readability of Hong Kong bilingual legislation. The study is based on the plain language guide published by the Department of Justice of Hong Kong in 2012, with the goal of helping the current legislation to comply with the guidelines. Using…

The translation of bilingual literary texts may challenge a translator when s/he needs to transfer some embedded, foreign codes from a language other than the dominant language of the source text (ST) into the target text (TT). This study analyses the way in which code-switching (CS) is transferred into a TT, looking at the translation strategies…

Born and educated in the UK, with Arab parents and Muslims, second-generation British-Arab immigrants in Cardiff find themselves at the core of a complex web of power relations which potentiates their production of multilingual practices. However, while Cardiff is officially bilingual, English being the dominant language and Welsh becoming…

In this paper, I examine how language policy acts as a means of both empowering the Welsh language and the minority language worker and as a means of exerting power over them. For this purpose, the study focuses on a particular site: private sector businesses in Wales. Therein, I trace two major discursive processes: first, the Welsh Government's…

This article analyses how language laws favouring French improved the vitality of the Francophone majority relative to the declining Anglophone minority of Quebec. Part one provides a review of Canadian Government efforts to provide federal bilingual services to Francophones and Anglophones across Canada. Using the ethnolinguistic vitality…

This article serves as an introduction to a collection of four articles on multilingual practices in speech and writing, exploring both contemporary and historical sources. It not only introduces the articles but also discusses the scope and definitions of code-switching, attitudes towards multilingual interaction and, most pertinently, the…

A handful of recent incidents hints at an ideological struggle over the use of the English word "fag(got)" and the Spanish word "maricon" in public discourse. This article examines the discursive and ideological struggle over the terms through the comparison of two cases in which Spanish/English bilingual Latinos in the U. S. use what might be…

Children of binational couples are often raised in the community of one of the parents and, thus, have limited exposure to the language of the other parent. This study focuses on a British/Moroccan family in the UK, where English is the dominant home language and Moroccan Arabic is the "other" language. Analysis of "live"…

The present study analyses bilingual conversations taking place in binational families living in the UK. The focus is on two Polish/English stepfamilies, where the Polish mothers' concern with preserving and developing their children's linguistic and cultural identity collides with the English partner's limited knowledge of Polish. While the paper…

The widespread use of cell phones has led to the proliferation of messages sent using the Short Messaging Service (SMS). The 160-character limit on text messages encourages the use of shortenings and other shortcuts in language use. When bilingual speakers use SMS, their access to multiple sources of vocabulary, sentence structure, and other…

This paper attempts to show ways in which two Thai brothers (aged 9 and 13) living temporarily in the United States, employ bilingual code-switching to organize their conversation. Using the sequential analysis developed by Auer (1984, 1995), this paper describes how the two boys employ code-switching to negotiate the language for the interaction…

This paper explores interpreting in three-generational Italian-English bilingual families as a complex language brokering activity. Recent studies approach non-professional interpreting as language brokering in which bilinguals (often children) interpret for non-bilinguals (adults) in institutional settings (Hall 2004; Valdes 2003). These studies…