This article presents an ethnographic study of how bilingual teachers and children use their home language, TexMex, to mediate academic content and standard languages. From the premise that TESOL educators can benefit from a fuller understanding of students' linguistic repertoires, the study describes language practices in a second-grade classroom…

In our current era of increased globalization, constraints on language variation in postcolonial English varieties are multifaceted. Local and global language ideologies collide and multiple sources of influence converge in present-day patterns of linguistic variation in emerging English varieties. While research into the structure and…

The sociolinguistic phenomenon of bidialectism can significantly influence foreign-language learning. This study provides empirical evidence (drawn from the Greek Cypriot bidialectal community) for this influence and it supports the recommendation that foreign-language educators be trained in language-variation issues. The study's methodological…

Three experiments provide evidence that the conceptualization of moving objects and events is influenced by one's native language, consistent with linguistic relativity theory. Monolingual English speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in an English-speaking context performed better than monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual…

This overview focuses on Europe, a linguistically diverse region and moreover home to a number of minority languages. Over the past five decades, the focus of research on bi- or multilingual education has shifted from an initial emphasis on speakers' identities and their membership of homogenous imagined communities to an interest in learners'…

This article examines the inclusion of a culturally relevant curricular practice of social identity papers within teacher education in the USA that incorporates the transnational lifeworlds of teachers. Using tenets of feminist interdisciplinary frameworks, we highlight how this curricular practice allows teachers and teacher candidates in urban…

This article examines the role of written and spoken English vis-a-vis written Chinese, Cantonese and Putonghua in the four key service industries that have driven Hong Kong's economy in the past decade. The study forms part of a long-standing and continuing investigation into the impact of Hong Kong's transition from British colony to Chinese…

This article explores how class might be brought to the fore as an identity inscription in studies of second language learning, alongside other identity inscriptions such as gender, ethnicity and national identity, which have been the focus of rather more research. It begins by clarifying what is meant by class through a brief discussion of the…

This study explores dispute sequences in talk between bilingual couples communicating in Japanese. Specifically I examine naturally occurring face-to-face talk between Japanese wives and their American husbands who communicate primarily in Japanese at home. Conversation analysis (CA) is employed to document occasions where the talk between these…

This article uses multiple theoretical perspectives to understand the synergy that occurs between linguistically diverse parents and children during reading interactions. Through the detailed analysis of code-switching during book-sharing activities in a middle-class, bilingual home, we can observe how linguistically diverse parents support the…

Although generally acknowledged as complex and multidimensional, bilingual education, when successful, plays an important role in maintaining and developing bilingualism, resulting in numerous benefits to those who undertake it. This essay will discuss the necessary components and principles of what is required to make a successful bilingual…

This study presents a broad overview of diasporic biliteracy developments in immigrant women after examining observation data in one Taiwanese community. Methodologies include a mixture of narrative inquiry with some ethnographic methods. Fifteen Asian women in diaspora, two Burmese, one Cambodian, one Filipino, four Indonesians, three Thai and…

The topic of bilingualism has aroused considerable interest in research on language acquisition in recent decades. Researchers in various fields, such as developmental psychology and psycholinguistics, have investigated bilingual populations from different perspectives in order to understand better how bilingualism affects cognitive abilities like…

This book calls for critical adaptations when theories of bilingual education, based on practices in the North, are applied to the countries of the global South. For example, it challenges the assumption that transitional models necessarily lead to language shift and cultural assimilation. Taking an ethnographically-based narrative on the purpose…

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,…