Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communities which are often undergoing rapid language shift. In these communities, children are exposed to a range of language input, including the traditional language of the area, a local creole and Standard Australian English. The extent to which the…

Miss Jessie was hired because she was bilingual, but she was placed in a class where most of the children did not speak English or her home language of Spanish. The children spoke Arabic, Korean, or Polish most of the time. Where does she start? Early childhood educators across the United States are asking similar questions. Teachers often report…

Researchers in second language socialization (SLS) often examine those interactions relating to a learner's integration within a target community. Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) noted the importance of "symbolic competence" in this integration. Symbolic competence, defined as the ability to access contextually relevant social and political…

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,…

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…

In 2010, the British Columbia Ministry of Education introduced an updated version of its international languages curricula titled Additional Languages (AL) draft curriculum which set out a clear articulation of the province's language education as conceived and developed over the past 15 years. The strength of the draft curriculum lies in its…

This paper presents findings of gender-related tendencies found in a study of factors influential in third language acquisition of English in Denmark and Greenland. A survey consisting of a questionnaire and an English test was carried out amongst pupils in their last year of compulsory schooling in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Nuuk, Greenland. In…

One of the major dilemmas when practising critical sociolinguistic ethnography within the field of education is the ethnographer's degree of implication within the studied site (Goldstein, 2003; Martin Rojo, 2003; Unamuno, 2004). How far should the researcher intervene within the daily practices he/she is observing? This exercise of methodological…

The social space this paper is concerned with is a particular school: it is local in that it ostensibly serves a local community in West London; however, it is global in that the student body is formed from families with connections all over the world. During an intensive period of 3 weeks, I observed a group of 12-year-olds in three classes:…

This exploration of the languages of contact in the North American British-US borderlands in the period between 1783 and 1860 provides insights into the types of extended contact that occurred in the areas north of 42[degrees] and south of 50[degrees]. Although multilingualism was the norm in the Old Northwest and the old Oregon Territory during…

For over 15 years now, various commentators have highlighted the 'monolingual bias' inherent in SLA and TESOL research, which invariably constructs bi/multilingualism in deficit terms. In contrast, these critics have advocated an additive bilingual approach to SLA and TESOL, albeit, not as yet to any great effect. In this paper, I explore why so…

The proliferation of media and their associated platforms is creating radical changes in the way we interact with the world. Social media in particular have increased the manner of communication between people, with on-demand access to content any time, anywhere. With virtual communities being established online through a growing range of…

This paper views Nigeria as a multilingual country with diverse languages and cultures to the extent that the total number of languages spoken right now in Nigeria is about 500 (See Adegbite 2010). This linguistic diversity in the country has occasioned the development and the spread of the concepts of bilingualism, multilingualism, diglossia and…

The Charter of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was officially adopted in February 2009. Article 34 of the Charter states that, "The working language of ASEAN shall be English". In this article, I first briefly trace the development of English in ASEAN and demonstrate that, even in those countries of the ASEAN group…

Multilingualism is a sensitive and complex subject in a global organisation such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the WTO legal texts, there is a need for full concordance, not simply translation. This article begins with an overview of the issues raised by multilingual processes at the WTO in the negotiation, drafting, translation,…