Responding to a recent call for interdisciplinary research into 'night studies', the present study attempts to put the nighttime at the centre of the sociolinguistic enquiry, seeking to explore how the nocturnal linguistic landscape (LL) differs from the diurnal LL by drawing on Singapore's Chinatown as the research site. A total of 1091 LL items…

In contemplating multilingualism and mobility in the 21st century, several dimensions warrant attention in the emerging field of migration linguistics. First is the move beyond migration to thinking about mobilities, in particular, the new mobilities paradigm in the social sciences which views human mobility as entailing a complex assemblage of…

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 marks a significant shift in India's educational framework, particularly with its emphasis on multilingual education (MLE) and mother tongue-based instruction (MTI). Recognizing India's vast linguistic diversity, the policy advocates for teaching in the mother tongue or local language until at least Grade…

Transnationals constitute one-third of the population of the economically prosperous Singapore. Applying a family language policy (FLP) framework and collaborative autoethnography from data (interviews, videos, and diaries) spanning 13 years, this study delves into the linguistic journey of an Italian-Chinese family with two children born in…

Given the emergence of English as a global lingual franca, English proficiency has become necessary for workers in many sectors and therefore should be given special attention in vocational education and training. While there is no shortage of research on vocational education and training in general, this body of work lacks a focus on English…

In this study, infant vocabulary development was tracked in a multilingual society (Singapore) within a socioeconomically diverse sample. The sample comprised 1316 infants from 17.4 to 27.7 months (669 females, 647 males; 88% Chinese race, 4% Malay, 4% Indian, and 0.004% mixed-race [4% declined to provide race information]). Children varied in…

This qualitative study, situated within an interpretivist paradigm, hypothesized that teachers who engage in their own classroom research are more likely to undergo changes to their habits of mind regarding their pedagogical practices, thus experiencing transformative learning. Twelve English language teachers from Singapore primary and secondary…

This study explored the family language policy, bilingual parenting profiles, and the predictors among Chinese parents in Singapore. Altogether 175 parents of Chinese-English bilingual preschoolers (aged 2;6-5;6) were sampled and surveyed. The research results indicated that: (1) a majority of the parents (93.7%) believed in early bilingualism but…

Studies on language shift in Singapore have focused on the language use within ethnic communities. However, despite increasing numbers of interethnic marriages, very few studies have explored the effect of such marriages on LS. This article explores the language practices within Malay-Chinese mixed marriages and examines how language policies in…

This study elicited and analyzed all the Chinese and English interrogatives from the Singapore Early Child Mandarin Corpus (132 children aged 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, and 5;6) to examine the effects and predictors of early bilingual development in Singapore preschoolers. The results indicated that: (1) there was significant age (but not gender) effect in…

The role of international students' English language proficiency has been extensively researched to understand its impact on academic achievement in English-medium universities, mainly because of students' non-English-speaking backgrounds. However, the relationship between language proficiency and academic achievement among…

This study investigates what characteristics are considered important for a hypothetical multilingual person to be perceived as a "native" speaker of English. The data was collected from 521 participants from the United Kingdom, Singapore and South Korea, responding to a survey comprised of 30 questions with opportunities for qualitative…

A tailor shop located in Singapore's Chinatown is explored as a case of creative linguistic marketing practice, examining how such practice can be understood in relation to the interaction of local and global forces on the linguistic landscape. The shop uses a range of Scandinavian semiotic resources (language and artefacts) which for us, coming…

Singapore is an ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse nation-state that has always practiced deliberate language policy and planning. The bilingual education policy, introduced shortly after the young nation's independence has led to the emergence of English-knowing bilinguals who are proficient in both English and their ethnically…

This study utilises comparative case studies of three Japanese third-culture kids (TCKs) living in Singapore aged 16, each from a different school type (international school, Japanese school, and local Singapore school). It explores if the home language, language used in school, language used in social circles, and language of media consumed of…