The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is a major international benchmarking resource used for curriculum development and assessment. The elaboration of the concept of multilingual mediation in the 2018 Companion Volume of the CEFR is a timely addition to the original publication in 2001. Amongst other things, it…

English as an international language (EIL) is considered by applied linguists to be a new paradigm for research, practice and English language teaching (ELT). However, it appears that English language teachers have little voice in these discussions, and the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom has remained largely unaffected by EIL,…

The language de jure in Jamaica is Jamaican English (JE); however, the language de facto of most nationals is Jamaican Creole (JC). As such, there are many students who enter the tertiary level without fully acquiring JE. As a CARICOM nation, it is mandatory that foreign languages are taught beginning at the primary level of education. Although…

Based on Kecskes's (2014) intercultural pragmatics model, this study focuses on L2 teacher and learner perceptions of how conventionalized impoliteness formulae and implicational impoliteness (Culpeper, 2011) are shaped, negotiated, and produced interculturally on a social networking site (SNS), Instagram. In addition, the research sought to…

This Regional Dossier focuses on the Austrian federal province of Carinthia, where the vast majority of the Slovene-speaking minority in Austria lives. The Slovene language belongs to the South Slavic language group. It was the official language of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia in former Yugoslavia and has been the state language of…

Swami Vivekananda was an influential Indian saint, poet, philosopher and political revolutionary. His work can be seen as a conduit for South African Hindus who are part of the Indian diaspora, allowing them to connect with their historical, cultural and spiritual roots in the religious and conceptual world of India. The first step to decolonising…

Although Singapore, a linguistically and ethnically diverse city-state, uses four official languages, namely Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English, which are supposed to enjoy equal status, there appears to be a pecking order to these languages. English seems to be the dominant language when taking into consideration the bilingual education policy,…

Cameroon, host to around 280 local languages, two European official languages (English and French) and Pidgin English, has been struggling since the 1960s to achieve official bilingualism for national unity and integration. This policy implies that each citizen should learn and use both official languages. The greatest means to implement this…

The complex and varied sociolinguistic reality of World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has important implications for English Language Teaching (ELT). Besides questioning the validity of the 'native speaker model', the complexity of Global Englishes raises several issues, both at a theoretical and at an applied level, particularly…

India is currently home to one of the world's largest English-speaking communities, in a context where the language is increasingly seen as a gateway to the world. Given the plurality of the country's social and linguistic landscape, however, a significant amount of the population does not speak or have access to the language. The impact of…

Prof. Baldauf was one of the first who saw the planning agency as a central issue in examining the effectiveness of language planning (LP) endeavors (e.g. Baldauf, R. B. Jr. (1982). "The language situation in American Samoa: Planners, plans and planning." "Language Planning Newsletter," 1(8), 1-6). This paper chooses the…

The study explores language maintenance and shift patterns from a family language policy perspective in Azerbaijani-Farsi bilingual families in the City of Zanjan, Iran. The city is the capital of Zanjan province which is surrounded by Azerbaijani, Kurdish, and Farsi speaking provinces giving it a specific demographic make-up to explore language…

Phillipson, R. (2012, "Linguistic Imperialism Alive and Kicking." "The Guardian," March 13. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/mar/13/linguistic-imperialism-english-language-teaching) warned that 'linguistic imperialism is alive and kicking'. Although the validity of the linguistic imperialism construct may be…

The present study aims to analyse the phatic exchanges performed by a class of nine intercultural Master's students during a collaborative assignment which demanded online discussion using English as a lingua franca (ELF). Prior studies on the use of phatic communication in computer-mediated communication have concentrated on social networking…

This article presents a systematic review of research on language and multilingualism in mathematics education published in the South African journal Pythagoras from 1994 to 2021. This time frame was chosen as the year 1994 marked the acknowledgement of 11 official languages in the new democratic South Africa (including 9 indigenous languages),…