This article reports the findings of a study undertaken to document and explain the use of English in signage in Costa Rica, a Spanish-speaking country. The linguistic landscape has emerged as an important, viable field of research. In order to investigate how, when, and why the use of English manifests itself, a corpus of 169 photographs of signs…

The study of language maintenance and shift (LMS) has attracted a large body of empirical work in language policy and planning (LPP) contexts, including allochthonous (immigrant) and autochthonous (indigenous) languages. However, some critical ontological questions that relate to the scope and terminology of language maintenance studies remain…

Language is on display all around us, all the time, and the study of this linguistic landscape is one of the fastest-growing areas of research in applied linguistics. This book provides an overview of how the field of Linguistic Landscape Studies has emerged and developed over the past 20 years, combined with an in-depth exploration of the…

This book adopts as conceptual focus the technical mode of experience, exploring this characteristic mode of design as the angle from which the discipline of applied linguistics takes its cue. What makes applied linguistic concept formation possible? A number of elementary concepts and ideas are so basic to the discipline that they can neither be…

In this article, we reflect on the extent to which 'new speaker' research feeds into recent theoretical discussions in language policy scholarship, especially in connection to the discursive and ethnographically oriented perspectives which of late have become increasingly prominent. We begin with a brief overview of the 'new speaker' concept, its…

Linguistic and anthropological research has demonstrated that language ideologies play a complex role in contexts of language endangerment, as well as in revitalization initiatives. In this paper, we articulate some central ways in which these beliefs and interests can translate into significant barriers to successful language revitalization.…

This introduction builds on De Costa et al.'s (2016], [2019) notion of linguistic entrepreneurship, which is defined as "the act of aligning with the moral imperative to strategically exploit language-related resources for enhancing one's worth in the world" (2016: 696). The four empirical studies and two critical commentaries that…

A decade ago, Hornberger & Johnson proposed that the ethnography of language planning and policy (ELPP) offers a useful way to understand how people create, interpret, and at times resist language policy and planning (LPP). They envisioned ethnographic investigation of layered LPP ideological and implementational spaces, taking up Hornberger's…

This study demonstrates how stakeholders' treatment of English language as the sole marketable/saleable commodity in educational setting can have implications for multilingualism and existing linguistic diversity in Pakistan. Language commodification refers to the valuation of languages as marketable/saleable commodities and their relative…

This paper contributes to recent discussions of levels of agency in Language Policy and Planning (LPP) research. It specifically aims to understand the role and importance of meso-level actors as arbiters of policy implementation. It argues that, whilst understanding of both macro- and micro-agency has grown over the past decade, little is…

This article presents our narration of the emergence and development of a research area about the teaching and learning of the English language in Colombia and the creation of a research group named Critical Studies of Colombian Education Policies. The narration includes a description of the bilingual education policy in Colombia and a literature…

Linguistic landscape (LL) research seeks to account for the visible displays of multilingualism on public signage. While surveys of signage in the LL produce quantitative descriptions of language contact in a given area, such analyses shed little light on people's interpretations of multilingual signs. Moreover, even within more qualitative…

This study explores the relationship between language selection and identity construction in contemporary Indonesia through an examination of the function of English, a language that still receives stigma from many Indonesians and the government, particularly in Indonesian popular texts published after 1998. Utilizing hybrid critical approaches…

After a very broad description of what language policy and planning is about this paper presents an overview of some of the current preoccupations of researchers focusing on language policy and planning as one of the blooming fields of applied linguistics. The current issues in language policy and planning research that are dealt with include…

Following on from my state-of-the-art article on "Language Awareness and language learning" (Svalberg 2007), in this paper I will discuss specific research tasks which are centrally concerned with different aspects of language awareness (LA): "explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning,…