In the past decade, language memoirs, linguistic autobiographies, and learners' journals and diaries have become a popular means of data collection in applied linguistics. It is not always clear however how one should go about analyzing these data. The aim of this paper is to offer a critical review of analytical frameworks applied to second…

Shop and cafe signs in multiple languages are familiar features of polyglot immigrant neighborhoods. This paper examines such signs, presenting photographic, observational, and interview data from a multisited ethnographic study of language contact in Ghent, an urban Belgian city. Drawing upon diverse ethnographic sources, especially the…

The 5th International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture has been hosted by Mehmet Akif Ersoy University (Burdur, Turkey), in cooperation with Çankaya University (Ankara, Turkey) and Süleyman Demirel University (Isparta, Turkey). Our main aim has been to provide a forum for discussion, to facilitate integration in these fields, and to…

This case study used photo elicitation interviewing (PEI) to analyze perceptions of Latino students and their teachers in a multilanguage high school academy. It examined student involvement in school, dropout rate, and pursuit of a college education. Ten academy teachers and 10 Latino senior students were interviewed. Observations obtained…

Drawing on a study of current language use in a rural community in Japan, we question to what extent English actually does serve today as a lingua franca in multilingual, internationally diverse communities. Specifically, we report on a critical ethnography of a small Japanese community with a growing number of non-English-speaking immigrants,…

The author spent four years embedded in a multilingual kindergarten classroom in which children spoke six different languages and several more years observing multilingual Head Start classrooms. She shares numerous examples of young dual language learners actively figuring out the way written language works in their first and second languages.…

In a globalised world, literacy in local languages is affected by at least three significant trends: globalisation, regionalisation and nationalism. Literacy in local languages plays a major role in language maintenance and the management of identity. Local literacies in local languages can also be a source of resistance to the rapid sociocultural…

The uniquely human capacity of using arbitrary signs to transfer concept and experience over great distances in time and place is what we call language. We use language with a purpose, and we use whatever features are at our disposal to achieve our ends, regardless of the fact that some speakers think that certain features should be held together…

In 1976, the Seychelles government made Creole its third official language, alongside French and English. Although Creole is the native language for most Seychellois, this language policy change has remained contentious. While some have hailed it as essential to democracy, others have condemned it for widening the nation's socioeconomic divide.…

The paper explores how we think of English and "English Studies" in present-day Europe. It questions the apparent neutrality of the term lingua franca by suggesting a more differentiated set of terms. It relates the current consolidation and expansion of English to processes of global Americanisation and Europeanisation. The European…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the framework for implementing multilingual language education (MLE) countrywide in Nepal. I outline key tenets of MLE, explain the rationale for implementing it in the Nepali context, and describe the MLE framework that formed the basis of trainer workshops. The framework is divided into 7 topics: 4 of…

Immersion programmes in primary schools have gained more and more recognition over the last decades. Every new immersion school faces the problem of providing a concept which will be put into practise with the help of personnel who have normally not been trained specifically for this task. The purpose of this guide is to answer frequently asked…

The present study is an examination of the contribution of bilingualism to trilingualism, namely the influence of learning two different orthographies on learning a third. The participants were two groups of sixth graders from Israeli schools who were studying English as a foreign (second or third) language: Russian Israeli children for whom…

This research is an interpretive study of individual and institutional language practices based on an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from a large higher education institute of teacher training in Britain. The study explores teacher professionalism in relation to language, examining the "invisible" linguistic and cultural…

The evolution of Rwanda's language policies since 1996 has played and continues to play a critical role in social reconstruction following war and genocide. Rwanda's new English language policy aims to drop French and install English as the only language of instruction. The policy-makers frame the change as a major factor in the success of social…