In this article I examine the perceptions of third grade minoritized emergent bilinguals (Spanish/English) in a US classroom as they articulate how family members serve as a source of jocularity. By taking a sociocultural perspective on humor as a resource, I seek to render visible the relational and linguistic connections between these students…

The current study investigates how foreign language enjoyment (FLE), foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and attitude/motivation (AM) of 360 learners of English, German, French and Spanish in a Kuwaiti university was shaped over the course of one semester by three teacher behaviours: frequency of using the foreign language (FL) in class,…

The present study examined the effect of a pedagogical intervention about humorous verbal irony in Spanish with a mixed group of 40 second language (L2) and heritage speakers of Spanish. Unlike previous studies that have considered only irony comprehension, this project incorporated both comprehension and production of irony into instruction and…

In this paper, I address the question of how interactions with deaf youth and their hearing interlocutors are able to unfold in economical and fluid ways despite the existence of sensory and communicative asymmetries. Bringing together ethnographic insights from two years of fieldwork in Iquitos, Peru with the microanalysis of moments of situated…

English-medium instruction classes in higher education are increasing in countries where English is not the first language. Though these courses offer advantages, they also offer concerns and challenges. One of these challenges is creating a rapport between a teacher and students who are working in a language that is not their own. Rapport is…

This paper studies how transnational children and their distantly located but emotionally close family members recreate their relationship using applications for online video calling. The focus is on the interaction of bodies and language, and if/how proximity of any kind is enabled. A critical posthumanist applied linguistics is embraced and…

Research in computer mediated communication and sociolinguistics, have increasingly highlighted the concept of establishing an "online identity" through specific language use. However, while emojis or common netspeak abbreviations are often the focus of research concerned with cyber language, no studies have considered the function…

While humour and laughter create conditions that are conducive for learning, different forms of children's humour have been given little attention in research on digital media, literacy learning, and multimodal design. Applying a Bakhtinian lens, we analyse carnivalesque videos created by elementary students as part of the formal curriculum. We…

In this qualitative linguistic ethnography, we combine a multilingual perspective on translanguaging with humanizing pedagogies to examine how and for what purposes a second-grade teacher and her students used Spanish and English in support of language development during a literacy-based English Language Development block within a paired literacy…

"I Love Lucy" is considered to have been one of the most humorous television programs in the United States as early as the 1950s. This paper explores the use of language by the protagonists, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, in order to understand the source of the program's humor. Linguistic analysis of the Ricardos' speech is applied,…

This article explores the role of profanity and graphic humor in the bilingual wordplay of Latin@ middle school students. We highlight the creativity, skill, and communicative competence embedded in this transgressive wordplay, revealing how these youth employed profanity and graphic humor to index ethnic solidarity and construct bilingual…

The present contribution focuses on Benigni's auteur film "La vita è bella" (Italy, 1997) as a tool for the development of language competence in L2 English, Spanish and German, as well as of translation skills from Italian into these languages. The project, developed at the CLASS Language Centre at the University for Foreigners of…

Research suggests that second/foreign language teachers' sense of humor is directly related to many outcomes for teachers and their students. This research investigates the relationship between the perceived sense of humor of in-service Spanish teachers' (n?=?102) and their students' (n?=?5,419) score on the National Spanish Exams…

The papers in this volume offer a sampling of contemporary efforts to update the portrayal of study abroad in the applied linguistics literature through attention to its social and cultural aspects. The volume illustrates diversification of theory and method, refinement of approaches to social interactive language use, and expansion in the range…

The study focuses on storytelling among Mexican families, documenting the frequency of storytelling in the homes of working- and middle-class Mexican families, the range of topics of the stories, characteristics and genres of stories, and intergenerational continuity of storytelling practices. Also examined are potential associations between…