How we talk about bilingualism has an effect on how others think about bilingual individuals, and in turn, how "active bilingual learners/users of English" (ABLE) students are assessed and taught in schools. I use a transdisciplinary approach of bridging social semiotics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive linguistics…

The practices of sorting things out and bringing things together, which I summarise under the term relanguaging, sit between fluid, situated languaging practices and the administrative standard grid in education that relies on bounded, named languages. Relanguaging, I argue, was invisible to socio- and applied linguists' analytical vision because…

Much like an effective speaker, a flexible musician is competent across multiple settings. The sociolinguistic theory of code-switching can be a useful tool to better understand how musicians acquire a set of skills and knowledge to support music-making in a range of activities in and outside of school and throughout society. In this article,…

While accepting that the concept of restricted code has a troubled history that resulted in Bernstein being associated with deficit models of working-class life, it is argued that the concept should be re-imagined rather than abandoned. Bernstein's early work refers to restricted code as a form of condensed, shorthand established through…

This Perspectives article proposes a renewed vision of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) through a translanguaging (TL) stance, grounded in critical sociolinguistic inquiry and embodied practice. A TL theory of language asserts an activist agenda to dismantle mono/lingualism, inviting a more dynamic and expansive view of…

The seventh edition of this bestselling textbook has been extensively revised and updated to provide a comprehensive and accessible introduction to bilingualism and bilingual education in an ever-changing world. Written in a compact and clear style, the book covers all the crucial issues in bilingualism and multilingualism at individual, group and…

Mexicanos/Chicanos in the United States have historically suffered derision and mistreatment by the mainstream culture because of their use of nonstandard Spanish and English, as well as codeswitching (alternating between two or more languages or language varieties). In the field of education, codeswitching and the use of nonstandard English and…

Every discipline has its own specialized language, its membership rites, its secret handshake. In its most benign and neutral definition, jargon signifies "the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group." More often, however, the jingly word that Chaucer used to describe "the inarticulate utterance of birds" takes…

Following from Lewis, Jones, and Baker (this issue), this article analyses the relationship between the new concept of "translanguaging" particularly in the classroom context and more historic terms such as code-switching and translation, indicating differences in (socio)linguistic and ideological understandings as well as in classroom…

The definition of English language learners needs to be broadened to include the marginalized dialects of English. Not all native speakers speak Standard English, and even those who do need to learn Academic English to succeed in school. By using strategies developed for ELLs, teachers can help all students become fluent in the language of school.

This article uses multiple theoretical perspectives to understand the synergy that occurs between linguistically diverse parents and children during reading interactions. Through the detailed analysis of code-switching during book-sharing activities in a middle-class, bilingual home, we can observe how linguistically diverse parents support the…

Embracing the dynamic nature of English language can help students learn more about all forms of English. To fully engage students, teachers should not adhere to an anachronistic and static view of English. Instead, they must acknowledge, accept, and even use different language forms within the classroom to make that classroom dynamic, inclusive,…

Children come to school with the language of their families and communities. For many children, this means that they speak a nonstandard dialect, an English dialect not used as the primary means of instruction in schools. Examples of dialects include African American English (AAE; i.e., Ebonics), Hawaiian Creole, Hispanic English, and Southern…

This article poses the question of how educators can put into practice the valorization of the vernacular and its use as a pedagogical resource. It provides a critical sociolinguistic orientation toward the use of Spanglish in schools. It gives a short descriptive overview of the linguistic features of Spanglish and responds to some of the…

Linguistics is a subject that has remained largely confined to the academy, rather than being integrated into school curricula. This is unfortunate but not surprising, as although some teacher education programs include courses on linguistics, it is not comprehensively integrated into teacher education, so it is largely absent from the curriculum.…