Upon arrival in Sweden, adult migrants are required to learn Swedish at the earliest opportunity. This requirement also extends to deaf migrants, regardless of their linguistic and educational backgrounds. This paper presents findings and experiences derived from a project focused on the multilingual situation of deaf migrants in Sweden. Some deaf…

Maritime Sign Language (MSL) is a Canadian, minority sign language that originally stems from British Sign Language (BSL). Currently used by elderly Deaf people in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland (and Labrador), it is a moribund language, having undergone language shift to American Sign Language (ASL). MSL is…

Zambia is home to a complex set of language practices, which involve languages being used in different ways across social contexts. Historically written communication has typically been associated with English with African languages mainly associated with used spoken contexts. Recently, however, there has been a shift in this pattern with African…

Not only does language practice in shop signs generate a sense of place with particular meanings to visitors, it also indicates the kind of economic activity performed in that place. By investigating and comparing the shop name signs in the two largest foreign migrant neighbourhoods in Guangzhou, specifically, Baohan Straight Street (African…

This paper proposes a concept of "campus vitality" of languages: the ability of a language to maintain its prestige, visibility and continuity on university campuses. A seven-factor framework is developed for on-the-ground investigation of the relevant languages in a given campus context. These indexical factors are the number,…

Second language acquisition (SLA) research offers valuable insight on how languages are learned and how they coexist and influence each other. Sign language learners offer unique perspectives on SLA, allowing researchers to test theories that are otherwise constrained by access to only one modality. Current literature on sign language learning…

Sociolinguistic awareness is crucial for L2 learners because language is not just a set of grammatical rules and vocabulary; it is deeply intertwined with social and cultural context. The linguistic landscape serves as a conduit for discerning facets of language use in a given community. This study focuses on raising sociolinguistic awareness…

Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed…

Koh Lipe, Satun is a famous tourist destination along the Andaman Sea, Southern Thailand where linguistic landscape is structured mainly in English. Monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual signage in this island displays distinctiveness of linguistic elements and linguistic diversity manifested in a variety of English lexicons. Thus, this study…

The main argument of this paper is that the Virtual Linguistic Landscape (VLL) of advertising allows the utilisation of persuasion strategies that transcend the traditional separation of named languages to produce the maximum effect on potential customers. The paper challenges the segregational view of language, which assumes that communication…

Picturebooks are powerful educational tools, both for their content and their contributions to the literacy development of children. In New Zealand bilingual picturebooks featuring Te Reo Maori and New Zealand English have increased in number since the 1980s when Te Reo Maori gained official status and revitalisation efforts burgeoned. More…

While it is common for deaf children to be bilingual in a spoken and signed language, studies often attribute any delays in language acquisition to language deprivation, rather than as a result of cross-linguistic interaction. This study compares the production of simple sentences in three languages (Palestinian Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and…

This article details the transcription process we developed to handle bimodal and multilingual interview data collected during our research into the teacher language awareness (TLA) of two high-quality teachers in a Swedish bilingual school for the deaf. Both teachers used a combination of spoken Swedish, spoken English, and Teckenspråk (Sweden's…

Sign language learners are a heterogenous group who have different motivations for embarking on formal studies. It is apparent at the outset that many learners are uninformed about sign languages and the deaf community. It has been previously noted that societies often lack the understanding that signed languages are valid languages, and have…

Most FLP research focuses on intrafamily communication (1FLP) and how this is impacted by larger contexts. But what happens when different multilingual families interact intensively on a daily basis? This article analyses language use during a holiday in India in and between four deaf-hearing befriended families, and how this evolved over the…