Chinatowns in Canada and the United States are marked by cultural hybridity, where the translation of various types, verbal and non-verbal, takes place to produce distinct urban meanings. On the basis of an ethnographic observation, this article reveals the role of translation in the signification and imagination of Chinatowns. Cultural diaspora…

In the field of educational sociolinguistics there is a body of literature with a focus on children in complementary schooling. While timely, such work often does not often pay much attention to the parents who frequent the school setting, preferring to focus on the interactions between children. This paper addresses this absence by reporting on a…

Since the end of the twentieth century, there have been a large number of Africans in Guangzhou occupying multiple emplacements and engaging in diverse activities so that a whole zone of the urban area is designated 'Little Africa.' The article investigates the linguistic landscape in the African living areas of Guangzhou from a multimodality…

Tiny though it is, The Hague's Chinatown is clearly presented as such, with Chinese lanterns, municipal street signage in Chinese characters, and sayings in Classical Chinese lining the streets. Doing fieldwork in the area, however, has shown that it proves to be less Chinese than its visual representation suggests. Few Chinese still inhabit the…

The aim of this paper is to advance an understanding of power in linguistic landscape research. After setting out and discussing the concepts of 'power over', 'power to' and 'power through', we present a case study of Chinese semiotic assemblages in the Australian regional city of Bendigo. Our research includes ethnographic details of the…

This paper examines diasporic language ecology based on a sociolinguistic study of a Chinese complementary school (CCS) in Birmingham, England. The study applies a historical perspective to investigate local multilingual practices in relation to language ideology and identity. The discussion in this paper draws on "heteroglossia" to…

Chinatowns around the world have been much studied in the linguistic landscape literature. The bulk of this research has focused on Western enclaves resulting from the Chinese diaspora of the Nineteenth Century, which share certain semiotic characteristics and histories. Less research has been conducted on Chinatowns in the East or on newly…

Despite evidence of the acculturation benefits of social media engagement with mainstream culture, there is limited understanding of what motivates or demotivates ethnic minorities' social media engagement with mainstream culture. Adopting the theoretical construct of investment, this study interviewed 31 ethnic minority secondary school students…

The presence of Africans in China has been phenomenal since the late 1990s. In recent years, there has been a dramatic uptick in people from Africa coming to the major cities of China such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Yiwu, Shanghai, and Beijing. They are in the process of building linguistic, cultural, and economic bridges between their source…

This paper focuses on the linguistic evolution of the Tianjin speech community in Sabah, Malaysia. From the perspective of restructuring of speech community, the paper integrates both micro and macro levels of language change into the analysis. Several methods were adopted in this study. Interviews were conducted with community leaders and various…

How migrants, refugees and minority groups acquire a sense of belonging in their adopted society is a concern for nations worldwide as they aim to balance the diversity and inclusion of growing numbers of migrants with ensuring harmony and cohesion across society. In postcolonial Hong Kong, the population diversity is accompanied with a swift…

As the content knowledge of English language learners and immigrant students is assessed in their less proficient language, the validity and fairness of assessments related to those students have been widely discussed. However, such assessment issues have not received much attention in rapidly expanding bilingual education programmes, where…

This study examines features of communication in American households where Chinese is used as a heritage language against the backdrop of global migration and technological advancement. It aims to elucidate how meaning emerges and evolves through repeated and varied performance by multiple participants over time, through mundane and iterative…

Social factors involved in language maintenance and language shift (LMLS) have been the focus of LMLS studies. Previous studies provide fundamental support for the theoretical development of this research branch. However, there is no discussion regarding the hierarchical order of these social factors, i.e. the degree of importance of various…

This article reports on an inquiry into Chinese netizens' online discussions related to the "Protecting Cantonese Movement" in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, on the Chinese mainland. It interprets the ideological discourses used by Chinese netizens in online discussions to protect the status of Cantonese, a regional variety of the…