On June 12, 2018, Dr. Hansun Zhang Waring's Language Socialization class at Teachers College, Columbia University had the great pleasure and honor of being joined by Dr. Bambi Schieffelin, Collegiate Professor at New York University. A co-founder (with Elinor Ochs) of the field of language socialization, Dr. Schieffelin has done extensive research…

This paper will introduce the subject of language policies and practices in early childhood education across European migration societies and formulate theoretical and methodological questions. It links perspectives from applied linguistics, most explicitly sociolinguistics, and educational research on language (education) policies and practices,…

In the introduction to the special issue "Languaging the worker: globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces", we take up the notion of governmentality as a means to interrogate the complex relationship between language, labor, power, and subjectivity in peripheral multilingual spaces. Our aim here is to argue for…

In the introduction to the special issue 'Elite Multilingualism: Discourses, practices, and debates', we focus on 'elite multilingualism' as a means to provide a window into the complex layers and nuances of today's multilingual, mobile and global society. Our aims here are to provide an empirical and conceptual discussion of a growing…

The article illustrates a sociolinguistics of language vitality that accounts for "minority" and unofficial languages across multiple localities in dispersed communities of multilingual speakers of Zambia where only seven out of seventy-three indigenous languages have been designated official and "zoned" for use in specified…

Focusing on developments in research on language education policy, this introduction to the thematic special issue begins with a sketch of the new problem space emerging at the intersection of intensified transnational mobility, expanding economic neo-liberalisation and institutionalised of multilingualism. It then identifies situated practice,…

One of the core concerns of the research undertaken by GREIP has been to develop an interdisciplinary approach to plurilingualism that could be useful in education. This approach was established by taking into consideration, the competences that make it possible to acquire the knowledge, orientations and practices that allow effective…

This paper contributes to the building of a sociolinguistics of the south by considering the nature and significance of contemporary language-in-education policy processes in Timor-Leste, and by tracing the ways in which these processes have been shaped by its specific colonial and post-colonial history. In presenting this account, I draw on…

Dell Hathaway Hymes, linguistic anthropologist and educational visionary extraordinaire, passed away in November 2009, leaving behind a voluminous scholarship and inspirational legacy in the study of language and inequality, ethnography, sociolinguistics, Native American ethnopoetics, and education. This essay provides a brief account of Hymes's…

This essay suggests a companion term to "literacy sponsors" that better mirrors the practice and protection of traditional literacies evident in the cases of two Dakelh elders. "Literacy steward" introduces a theoretical means to describe community members whose rhetorical decisions depend on traditions that are alternative to…

Reflecting on the contributions in this volume, this paper engages with the development of widespread concepts of literacy, and gradually moves towards a view in which different literacy systems are seen, and have to be seen, as relatively autonomous. The papers in this volume engage with such a relatively autonomous system, that of grassroots…

This thematic collection of four papers explores a number of perspectives on companies in which multiple languages are used. The "organisational" perspective concerns the question of how the presence of or demand for multiple languages in the company is managed--how companies are guided by national and other policies in regard to the use…

On the basis of a ten-month ethnography of a Raramuri school and community, this article contributes to the understanding of the role of sociolinguistic and socioeconomic contexts in creating Indigenous-language maintenance programs. Employing concepts of micro- and macrolevel variables in language endangerment and language vitality scales, it…

Migration-based language pluralism and globalized identity conflicts pose challenges for educational research and linguistic anthropology, in particular, how we think about education and social inequality. This article proposes new conceptual tools, drawn from linguistic anthropology as well as world systems theory, for analyzing the role of…

In Canadian public primary schools, newcomer West African refugees like other ethnic immigrant students are a visible minority group, often referred as Linguistic and Culturally Different (LCD) students. In the province of British Columbia, newcomer immigrant students are subjected to a battery of tests, as soon as they enroll in the primary…