The aim of the study was to check whether minorities such as LEP/ZEP (limited/zero English proficiency) speakers can expect the same access to justice as competent English speakers in a majority language (US English) justice system. The main hypothesis is that, due to linguistic and cultural factors, the instances of miscommunication in the…

In recent years there has been a focus in language policy research on understanding how national policies are interpreted and negotiated by social actors on the ground. This paper looks at the interplay between government and grassroots initiatives to create Galician-speaking spaces in predominantly Spanish-speaking urban settings. While official…

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the causal connectivity of the statements ("their total number of causal connections") and the modality of presentation of discourse ("oral-written") in the generation of emotion inferences by Spanish-speaking students. With this aim, we asked a group of Argentine college…

The robust relation between maternal education and child language that is observed in monolingual populations has not been reliably replicated among bilingual children from immigrant families in the United States. We hypothesized that a variable that operates in immigrant populations--the language in which mothers achieved their highest level of…

Increasing concern regarding student disengagement and education's role in helping students to navigate the ever-changing realities of a globalized society has focused attention on the importance of 21st century skills. This mixed-methods study investigated whether and how intensely students experienced optimal engagement during a Spanish project…

Professional interpreters are obliged by their codes of ethics to interpret the speakers' speech faithfully, including offensive, profane or vulgar language. In order to achieve this goal, interpreters need to be pragmatically competent, so as to understand the intention and effect of the offensive remark in the source language and be able to…

This article demonstrates the use of structural equation modeling to develop norms for a translated version of a standardized scale, the Supports Intensity Scale-Children's Version (SIS-C). The latent variable norming method proposed is useful when the standardization sample for a translated version is relatively small to derive norms…

This article extends two conversations in the heritage language (HL) scholarship: 1) the need to strengthen the linguistic self-confidence among receptive bilinguals (who are typically associated with beginning-level HL students); 2) the need for more critical explorations of receptive bilinguals' self-reported, albeit minimal, spoken Spanish in…

This article presents the results of an analysis of reported interlocutors in Spanish in a group of heritage speakers (HS), in three communities of the US Midwest. Participants were college-aged bilinguals developing their own personal and professional networks outside the direct influence of their parents. Responses are compared with those from…

Latino children in the US are systematically underdiagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); therefore, it is important that recent changes to the diagnostic process do not exacerbate this pattern of under-identification. Previous research has found that the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) algorithm, based on the Diagnostic and…

Immigrant populations are growing and permanently changing the demographic profile of the United States. Diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds are imposing demands and challenges upon agencies serving young children and families. Culturally sensitive assessments are not always available for these populations, and psychometric properties of…

Several studies on multilingualism in the workplace have emphasized the role of English as a lingua franca. Other studies have paid attention to the interaction between English and local languages in workplaces where global orientations and local languages co-occur. The present study focuses on internationally oriented workplaces in the bilingual…

Proficiency is a key variable in late second language (L2) learning, but one that is undermeasured in current research. This study investigates whether L2 oral proficiency can be quickly and reliably assessed via the Spanish "elicited imitation task" (EIT; Ortega, Iwashita, Rabie, & Norris, 1999). Thirty-seven L2 learners of Spanish…

In this field note we discuss findings from pilot research on a variety of heritage German spoken in the Northeastern Province of Misiones of Argentina. Based on sociolinguistic field interviews with 25 consultants possessing varying degrees of proficiency in the language, we show that this variant of heritage German does in fact occasionally…

This article examines Facebook conversations between members of a transnational social network of US- and Mexico-born English/Spanish bilinguals. Extending Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power, the article uses the framework of language ideologies to explore how members establish identity and membership differently depending on whether…