This paper discusses contemporary societal roles of German in the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania). Speaker and learner statistics and a summary of sociolinguistic research (Linguistic Landscapes, language learning motivation, language policies, international roles of languages) suggest that German has by far fewer speakers and functions…

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the linguistic landscapes (LL) of two distinct ethnic areas in Shin-Okubo, Japan: Koreatown and Islamic Street. By paying particular attention to the difference in the formation of the two immigrant communities, this study aims to better understand various functions of language on signage and their…

This study analyses the evolving means of China's formal language policy on Putonghua and minority languages from 1986 to 2021. This paper identifies four stages based on the shifting focus between Putonghua and minority languages: status planning of the central government (1986-1990), balance via bilingual policy (1991-2000), strong Putonghua…

The use of English in advertising across non-English-speaking countries is pervasive, often seen as a strategy to evoke prestige, modernity, and global appeal. However, its effectiveness may depend on factors such as text length, linguistic complexity, and local language use, which remain underexplored. This study investigates how Spanish and…

This study approaches multilingualism on Phuket Island by means of a linguistic landscape (LL) analysis. The data in this study consists of 185 photographs of shop signs taken from popular streets on the island. They were analyzed via a mixed-methods approach. It was found that different languages were purposely chosen to indicate or showcase the…

This study adopts an apparent-time diachronic linguistic landscape (LL) approach to investigate the vitality of an ethnic minority language in China, namely the Nuosu Yi ([foreign characters omitted]). Diachronic LL research is concerned with changes in language use on signage over time. It provides insights into phenomena such as language shift,…

Linguistic landscaping (LL) is an emerging field of Sociolinguistics exploring the language in its textual form in public sphere. This paper investigates the visibility and prominence of languages in the public space of Patna, the capital city of Bihar, India. A total of 10 city neighborhoods are chosen for the study. The corpus of the study is…

This paper explores the interaction between linguistic landscapes and language policies of the Old Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam to investigate how legislated and de facto language policies come together to create lived monolingualism, multilingualism and hybridity in language displays in public spaces. Our research focuses on language policies as…

This study analyses the multilingual linguistic landscapes made up of languages, visual materials, and built environments in Seongsu-dong, where old industrial sites and new commercial places are indiscriminately juxtaposed. This study focuses particularly on (1) how languages are associated with different built environments of new commercial…

This article focuses on the visibility and position of different languages in semiotic space, namely the linguistic landscape provided by textbooks. The aim is to determine to what extent the linguistic landscape of textbooks supports the multilingual emphasis of the Finnish national core curriculum and the multilingualism of Finnish classrooms.…

In this article, we focus on a series of lessons, called "Think Like a Linguist," that we designed and implemented with multilingual adolescents. These lessons were developed as an introduction to a semester-long study on academic vocabulary and word analysis using Latin roots. Our intention in "Think Like a Linguist" lessons…

Mother-tongue education has increasingly become a keyword in formulations of development goals, especially the Sustainable Development Goals (2015). Achievement of these goals acquires a grave sense of urgency in light of the ever-increasing threat to the very fabric of our linguistic diversity. The basic premise of this article is that Gandhian…

This paper forwards the notion that languages are an important resource for sustainable development for modern societies. Informed by theories from both sociolinguistics and language economics on the value of language skills, it is suggested that language(s) have different kinds of value in multilingual societies. Sociolinguists often emphasize…

Linguistic diversity emerging from international student mobility, in non-anglophone universities, is typically eclipsed by the existing tensions between the national language(s) and English as 'Lingua franca'. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with university lecturers, this study highlights the tensions surrounding national…

This paper presents a thematic analysis of public sector discourse on the values assigned to regional minority and community languages within the UK and Finland. This paper draws from semi-structured interviews conducted in Manchester, Cardiff, Helsinki, and Rovaniemi. Two key themes emerged from the interview data: "Language as a Resource…