Measuring lexical diversity in texts that have different lengths is problematic because length has a significant effect on the number of types a text contains, thus hampering any comparison. Treffers-Daller et al. (2018) recommended a simple solution, namely counting the number of types in a section of a given length that was extracted from the…

In this article, I argue for a "chronotopic-scalar system of images and resolutions" in the analysis of language use in general and multilingual practices in particular. Drawing on data from Iranian Azerbaijanis, I argue that availability and accessibility of linguistic/semiotic resources, and their categorizations as languages or…

Post-structuralist theories of language and gender have become increasingly attractive to language learning researchers. However, masculinity, as part of a socially and culturally constructed system, in relation to English language learning has rarely been investigated. The current study examines how male English language learners negotiate their…

"Standard" varieties are often perceived as morally superior compared with "nonstandard" varieties (Hill 2008). Consequently, these differences lead to ideologies that racialize "nonstandard" varieties (Rosa 2016), and increase the negative stereotypes towards "nonstandard" varieties (Giles and Watson 2013).…

In institutional settings of globalization, labelled languages are generally preferred over multilingual repertoires and mobile language resources. Drawing on linguistic-ethnographic analysis of the way English is treated as an invariable "ad hoc" idiom in the Belgian asylum interview, this article demonstrates how institutional measures…

This small-scale study investigates variation in the use of general extenders (e.g. "and everything," "or something," "and all that") in the speech of a group of British children aged 7 to 11 years. The overarching aims of the study are to investigate whether preadolescents' use of general extenders is socially…

The study reported in this article investigated the proficiency in French of a group of anglophone adult L2 learners of the language, all of whom reported passing regularly for native speakers of French. Tests were administered to these learners to gauge their proficiency in different aspects of French, including a lexico-grammatical measure. A…

While Kachru's Three Circles model of World Englishes (Kachru 1985, 1986; Kachru and Nelson 1996) has been highly influential in highlighting the changing distribution and functions of English, it has also been criticized for its inability to account for the heterogeneity and dynamics of English-using communities, and for perpetuating the very…

The widespread use of a local variety of English, Singapore Colloquial English, or Singlish, has become somewhat of a controversial issue in Singapore especially in the eyes of the Singapore government. For example, in 2002 the Singapore government launched The "Speak Good English Movement" (SGEM) with the objective of promoting the use…

It is unfortunate that Wee's commendable effort (2005) to explore the theoretical underpinning of Linguistic Human Rights (LHRs) so as to explore different variants of English in Singapore empirically is marred by a substantial number of misrepresentations of what is stated in our work. We will exemplify this briefly, and otherwise refer the…

Skutnabb-Kangas, Kontra, and Phillipson's response to Wee (2005) only serves to highlight a whole new set of problems with the LHRs paradigm while failing to make any inroads towards resolving the earlier ones. For example, they adopt a "legal perspective" in relation to Singlish that is at odds with the way they would presumably wish to…

Although studies involving linguistic human rights (LHRs) have focused at length on cases of inter-language discrimination, much less attention has been given to intra-language discrimination (Blommaert 2001a; Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 2001). This paper highlights a number of theoretical issues that the LHRs framework needs to deal with once…

This paper reviews sociolinguistic work which has addressed the provision of justice for Aboriginal English (AE) speakers in Australia. It questions the assumptions about cultural and linguistic diversity and inequality which underlie this work, and proposes a critical sociolinguistic approach, which draws on social theory in the analysis of how…