This paper seeks to explain the migration decisions of minority language speakers by investigating motivating factors. Viewed through a language planning lens, the study pushes the parameters of some of the discipline's more recent agency concepts within the context of migration. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 60 Welsh speakers…

English-medium instruction (EMI) is on the rise around the world due to globalization, internationalization and neoliberal ideologies which equate English with social capital, prestige, and success in the labour market. While many EMI policies aim to equip students with English as a 'lingua academia', produce 'neoliberal subjects' and compete in…

Through Q methodology, this study explores teachers' understanding of the importance of their students' mother tongue(s) in ensuring meaningful, effective learning in Qatar's international English-medium primary schools. It considers the extent to which teachers believe that their students' linguistic backgrounds are affirmed and promoted. The…

The study compares the uses of the native-speaker concept as a legitimizing resource in language-standard ideologies and normative discourse in five languages of European origin. Much research and international discussion has focused on the native speaker of English, a symbolically international language. We aim to show how the native-speaker…

Some 40 years ago, language transmission in Hawai'i was interrupted among Hawaiians across all islands with the sole exception of language maintenance among a small community on the tiny, isolated Ni'ihau Island. Today, Hawaiian has returned as spoken and written medium with some 5000-7000 new speakers. The present paper provides an up-to-date…

Appropriate models for understanding the dynamics of language use in society are essential to effective language policy and planning. Particularly in African contexts, such models must speak to the unique features of multilingual environments, and they must account for the differences in prestige and value which occur between languages in these…

After Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji is the second largest island nation in the South-west Pacific and the hub of the region. Nearly all Fiji Islanders have either Fijian or Fiji Hindi as their first language, in roughly equal numbers, while the former colonial language, English, with very few native speakers, has retained an important role,…