The number of multilingual speakers now outnumbers that of monolinguals (Tucker, 1998). In a figure provided by the Linguistic Society of America, nations that are monolingual or mono-ethnic are the minority; on the contrary, scholars estimate over five-thousand languages are spoken in 160 nations around the world (Valdés, 2012). For those people,…

"Proceedings of International Conference on Social and Education Sciences" includes full papers presented at the International Conference on Social and Education Sciences (IConSES), which took place on October 17-20, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois. The aim of the conference is to offer opportunities to share ideas, discuss theoretical and…

Language law in Belgium is based on two concepts. The territoriality principle entails that official language use varies from one linguistic region to another. The constitutional freedom of language is an essential complement to territoriality and grants residents the right to use the language of their choice. In the monolingual regions of the…

This special issue has as its focus the agency of young children in relation to language policy and practice in bi- and multilingual preschools in Finland and Sweden. Studies of language policy in practice in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in these two countries can be particularly relevant even to those in other contexts, because they…

The study examines four adolescent multilinguals' engagement with religion, as well as outcomes of that engagement, in an out-of-school book club. The qualitative analysis of participants' talk in book club meetings, writing responses, and individual interviews revealed that multilinguals tap into their religious knowledge and identities in making…

This study investigates bi- and multilingual clients' self-reported language practices in counselling and psychotherapy. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through an international web survey inviting adults who had experienced one-to-one therapy to describe their experiences. Analysis of responses by 109 multilingual clients…

The notion of language as a homogenous, stable and bounded system of communication has waned partly because of increased understanding of the language behaviour of bi/multi-linguals whose language use in different domains is now more appropriately described as translanguaging. The thrust of most definitions is that translanguaging involves the…

On college campuses throughout the United States, classes for decades have been offered to help Spanish speakers learn Portuguese, augmented recently by similar courses in Italian, French, and Catalan. Though there exist numerous commonalities between these innovative course offerings, the pivotal role of Spanish stands out. This essay therefore…

The ubiquitous hashtag has disruptively transformed how news stories are reported and shared across social media networks. Often, such text streams are massively multilingual with 50 different languages on an average and contain a combination of subjective user opinion, objective evolving information about the story and unrelated spam. This is in…

This article highlights a series of areas deemed worthy of attention by L2 researchers. In some cases the research effort would entail following up on studies initiated some years ago and in other cases the effort would involve relatively new research thrusts. The article includes ideas about research regarding: (1) "pathways to success in…

Globalisation and increased transnational migration underscore the need for educational responses to multilingualism and multilingual discourses. One way to heighten awareness of multilingual pedagogies (while simultaneously providing data for multilingual research) is the use of reflective language study and journaling by language…

The present research explored bilingual/multilingual students' willingness to communicate in Chinese (WTCC) and foreign language anxiety (FLA) when speaking Chinese and their associations with self-rated proficiency in Chinese in a university in Beijing. The study recruited 167 bilingual and multilingual learners of Chinese to fill in a battery of…

This mixed-methods study explores English and Japanese learning motivations in a group of Japanese summer course participants at a university in Hong Kong. Sixty-one Cantonese-speaking students completed two questionnaire surveys on co-existing motivations for learning L2 English and L3 Japanese. Depending on the questionnaire results, eight…

Research on multilingual acquisition has investigated various combinations of languages to identify the factors determining how learners express motion. Our research examines the semantics of motion expression in learners whose first language (L1) exhibits more variation than their foreign language (L2/L3). The present study compares upward motion…

Musical talent development and the factors that influence it--such as family or peers--have been widely researched, especially in a Western setting. Despite the growing body of research in non-Western cultures and regions, there is still a lack of research comparing the factors and perceptions of musical talent development between Western and…