The author analyses tendencies presented in recently launched EU reports claiming that newly published data reveal a need to rethink approaches to individual and social multilingualism. In the first part of the article approaches to individual as well as to societal multilingualism are discussed from a historical perspective. In the second part…

Since the 1980s the field of language teaching and learning has emphasised the interplay between language, culture and identity and promotes both communicative and intercultural competencies. This mirrors a general trend in the social sciences after the so-called "cultural turn" which brought about a concentration on culture, identity…

The framework of linguistic register and case study research on Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) learning statistics informed the construction of a quantitative instrument, the Communication, Language, And Statistics Survey (CLASS). CLASS aims to assess whether ELLs and non-ELLs approach the learning of statistics differently with…

The situation once described by Hoffmann (1985), in which children grow up exposed to three languages from an early age, is a reality for an increasing number of families. In Europe--as elsewhere--greater mobility is leading to greater numbers of mixed-language couples (Piller 2002), and, by extension, multilingual families. For such families,…

This study explores how a group of learners of English as a second language (ESL) criticize in everyday situations compared to the native speaker (NS) with a view to expanding the range of speech acts under inquiry in the interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) literature. Data were collected from five NSs of New Zealand English and five intermediate…

It is a long-standing and commonly held belief in the United Kingdom and elsewhere that the use of elite forms of language reflects superior intellect and education. Expert opinion from sociolinguistics, however, contends that such a view is the result of middle-class bias and cannot be scientifically justified. In the 1960s and 1970s, such…

Although much research has gone into the sociolinguistics of the linguistic landscape (space for and language of public signs) in the "peripheral," non-native contexts of English Language use and users, none has been specifically devoted to a Nigerian context. This dissertation is intended to fill this wide gap. Focusing on the Ibadan…

The two decades from 1950 to 1970 were a crucial period of educational reorganization in Malaysia that stemmed from the decolonization after the Second World War. This educational reorganization sought to address the perennial issue of nation building via educational language policy. The development of Chinese education was under severe threat as…

This article focuses on approaches to teaching dramatic comedy in an upper-level undergraduate course. In particular, it outlines how the genre of comedy permits a special focus on Austria, where the rich tradition of comedy holds a prominent place in German-speaking Europe. I argue that dramatic comedy grants language learners a unique…

This dissertation explores the incorporation of Facebook into everyday live activities and practices of a group of young Turkish-American women affiliated with a faith-based movement, known as the "Hizmet" (volunteer's service) movement. In particular, I examine the emergent communicative practices and performances of these young…

The research project reported in this chapter consists of three studies in which syntactic complexity, lexical variation and fluency appear as dependent variables. The independent variables are task complexity and proficiency level, as the three studies investigate the effect of task complexity on the written and oral performance of L2 learners of…

This article makes a case for studying the perceptions that young people have of the ways of speaking of both themselves and others on the supposition that constructions of ambient sociolinguistic variation have an impact on the language development and use of individual language users. Such a study is particularly relevant in multilingual…

This investigation connects issues in second language (L2) acquisition to topics in quantitative sociolinguistics by exploring the relationship between native-speaker (NS) and L2 variation. It is the first large-scale analysis of L2 mood use (the subjunctive-indicative contrast) in Spanish. It applies variationist findings on the range of…

This study reports on the development of a professional spoken register among learners of German as they participate in four synchronous Web conferences with German-speaking professionals. The researchers investigated the effect of interaction with expert German speakers combined with an instructional intervention focusing on pragmatic competence…

Grammatical agreement makes different demands on speakers of different languages. Being widespread in the languages of the world, the features of agreement systems offer valuable tests of how language affects deep-seated domains of human cognition and categorization. Number agreement is one such domain, with intriguing evidence that typological…