The delicate question of teaching ethics in compulsory school regained urgency in Sweden in 2013 when national tests were introduced in religious education, of which ethics is a part. In this article, a variety of ethical competences that teachers want their students to develop are presented, based on group interviews with 46 teachers. Grounded…

Background: The shifting demographics of the United States population remains a central challenge for the education sector. A pressing concern rests with the continued cultural gap that exists between a largely homogenous teacher labor force and an increasingly heterogeneous student population. Provided the longstanding existence of a cultural…

In line with the post-Fishmanian turn that contributes to new understandings of social-semiotic practices in different contexts this study is concerned with the language management of 'backstage performers' of a three-star hotel kitchen crew in an Austrian alpine village that economically thrives on tourism, where employers and employees do not…

As interpretations of results from small-scale research sites are incomplete without consideration of the social structures that frame them (Block, in: Gardner, Martin-Jones (eds) "Multilingualism, discourse and ethnography," Routledge, New York, 2012), the current study uses the theoretical lens of agency to examine the language…

Increased attention to urban diversity as a site of study has fostered the recent development of linguistic landscape studies. To date, however, much of the research in this area has concerned the use and spread of English to the exclusion of other global languages. In a case study situated in Box Hill, a large suburb of Melbourne, we adopted a…

Formulaic language, such as lexical phrases as hot as hell or pass the buck, in English is common in daily usage. Although formulaic language is common, the lexical phrases are often excluded from word lists. Second language learners of English need to use formulaic language to enhance their proficiency level. Beyond incorporating lexical phrases…

Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, we discuss teachers' narratives about the language and identity of Roma pupils and compare them with those of the pupils themselves. We explore the sources of information that shape teachers' dispositions, category conflation (of Roma with 'Gypsies/Travellers') and lack of…

Evidence suggests that parental mind-mindedness is important for children's social-emotional development; however, almost all research exploring mind-mindedness has been conducted with families from Western backgrounds. The current study explored cross-cultural differences in mind-mindedness based on observed real-time interactions between urban…

This article discusses the features, reasons, and values of the mushrooming Chinese English neologisms (CENs). Generally speaking, CENs are a variety of English words, namely Chinese English words, some of which have entered Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Based on data from Web Corp Live, the author finds that: (1) CENs take on the grammatical…

Election campaigns are constantly regarded as a persuasive campaign to convince the nation to vote for the leader of a country. Being said such, this study investigates the discourse of twitter of two political premiers in Asia: Former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Tun Razak (henceforth, Najib) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (henceforth,…

Fundamental to complex dynamic systems theory is the assumption that the recursive behavior of complex systems results in the generation of physical forms and dynamic processes that are self-similar and scale-invariant. Such fractal-like structures and the organismic benefit that they engender has been widely noted in physiology, biology, and…

In this interview, I speak with Gail Shuck about her continued commitment to seize upon what she describes as "kairotic moments" to build a network of support for refugee students, an underserved language-minoritized student population, at Boise State University. Gail describes how she has inhabited her administrative position to work…

Research in computer mediated communication and sociolinguistics, have increasingly highlighted the concept of establishing an "online identity" through specific language use. However, while emojis or common netspeak abbreviations are often the focus of research concerned with cyber language, no studies have considered the function…

Language in chemistry is highly specialized, and for students, transitions in language complexity from high school to university can be extremely challenging. With an increasingly diverse cohort of students enrolled in UK chemistry degree programs, better understanding the linguistic challenges students face is becoming a greater pedagogical…

This article investigates what is commonly called multilingual writing. Based on case studies from Mali, and drawing on a number of West African settings, it argues that in fact, not all 'multilingual' writing is in effect multilingual. The article proposes a two-tiered classification of types of writing, based on linguistic properties of texts…