There is an exponential growth in the number of schools that offer American Sign Language (ASL) for foreign language credit and the different ASL curricula that were published. This study analyzes different curricula in its assumptions regarding language, learning, and teaching of second languages. It is found that curricula vary in their…

This article explores the potential for critical discourse analysis to provide insight into the language principals use to describe the adult relationships within schools. Unpacking the discourses of leadership may shed some light on how language strategically shapes the thoughts and actions of principals. In particular, the invoking of "family"…

New positive attitudes towards language interaction in the realm of bilingualism open new horizons for sign bilingual education. Plaza-Pust and Morales-Lopez have innovatively reconceptualised a new cross-disciplinary approach to sign bilingualism, based on both sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. According to this framework, cross-modal…

In this article, the author takes a close look at the discursive ways that Black and Latina preservice teachers reconcile tensions between their racial and linguistic identities and the construction of teacher identities in the current context of preservice teacher education in the United States. Through the study of language as representative of…

In the last two decades, scholars in discourse studies and sociolinguistics have shown considerable interest in how identity is encoded in discourses across various facets of life such as academia, home, politics and workplace. By adopting an ethnographic-style approach, this study shows how students in a Ghanaian university construct their…

The influence of English on German has been an ongoing subject of intense popular and academic interest in the German sphere. In order to better understand this language contact situation, this research project investigates anglicisms--instances of English language material in a German language context--in the German hip hop community, where the…

English today is one of the most hybrid and rapidly changing languages in the world. New users of the language are not just passively absorbing, but actively shaping it, breeding a variety of regional Englishes, as well as pidgins and English-lexified creoles. Also, as in an increasing number of countries English is becoming an element of core…

In 1996, the Ministry of Education in Malawi directed that in future Standards 1 to 4 would be taught through mother tongues. It took eight years before the pilot phase of the language policy could begin. The paper critically analyses this situation using Bamgbose's framework which says that, in Africa, language policies tend to follow one or more…

The paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of language policy in Kazakhstan in the context of the current sociolinguistic situation and historic, demographic, sociopolitical, and economic factors. Highlighting some of the challenges facing the official policy of kazakhization, this review allows for better understanding of the functioning of…

The role of language contact in linguistic change remains a polemic issue in the field of contact linguistics. Many researchers (Weinreich, 1953; Lefebvre, 1985; Prince, 1988; Silva-Corvalan, 1994; King, 2000; Sankoff, 2002; Labov, 2007) believe that there are limits on the types of linguistic patterns that can be transmitted across languages,…

Although technology has become embedded in our everyday life, researchers and practitioners constantly strive to find ways of incorporating technology in education, with language learning being one of those fields (Garrett, 2009). Numerous publications on this subject are available, mostly on condition that one is affiliated with a university, and…

This article shows how students confront offensive language head-on by researching its history and reconsidering its use in contemporary conversation. It describes an assignment in which students study the histories and social reception of words (in some cases considered obscenities) used to insult people of various social categories. Students…

Immigrants' multiple identities are sources of contention as they strive in the English-speaking workplace, where they need to meet job demands and demands from employers who expect them to conform to the culture of the management (Harper, Peirce, & Burnaby, 1996; Jacobson, 2003; Katz, 2000). With California having a significant immigrant…

Reasons for code-switching in young children range from the linguistic (single-word borrowings that appear to be translation equivalents or to fill gaps in lexical knowledge) to more complex sociolinguistic and sociocognitive factors, such as desiring affiliative interactions. We looked at patterns of code-switching in narratives derived from…

This paper draws on the recently theorised notions of space and scale in sociolinguistics to investigate the complexity and micro-variation of the Chinese language in the context of mass internal migration, and the way in which sociolinguistic processes shed light on the construction of migrant identities. In spite of the enormously rich diversity…