Child speech is highly variable. The speech apparatus--the vocal tract, tongue, teeth, and vocal folds--develop at different rates for different children, which helps explain some of the variability in children's speech. For example, the ratio of the oral to pharyngeal cavities changes as children age, making it difficult to establish reliable…

Immigrant integration in nation states increasingly focuses on the importance of learning the national state language. This is evidenced by increased emphasis on rigorous language testing and tighter citizenship regulations. This paper analyses immigrant integration in two sub-state contexts, Galicia and Wales, where presence of a national…

This study examines Puerto Rican bilinguals' attitudes towards five speech varieties (Spanish, English, Spanish with English lexical insertions, inter-sentential code-switching, and intra-sentential code-switching). While previous research on language attitudes in Puerto Rico has exclusively employed direct methods (i.e. interviews, surveys,…

This study investigated conceptual representations changes in bilinguals. Participants were Indonesian-English bilinguals (dominant in Indonesian, with different levels of English proficiency) and a control group composed of English-dominant bilinguals. All completed a gender decision task, in which participants decided whether English words…

This article offers a critical interpretation of the current trends in instructional models for English language learners in California. We review key instructional models and analyze them from traditional (teacher-centered), progressive (student-centered), and critical orientations (society- and power-centered). These instructional models share…

Although traditional, unitary models of language standardisation have been prominent in minority languages, it is contended that this approach reproduces dominant language hierarchies and hegemonies, diminishes linguistic diversity and marginalises speakers who do not conform to prestige models. The polynomic model has been described as an…

The aim of this article is to describe some theoretical and methodological bases underpinning the design of the course Health Communication in Basque (HCB) at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Based on some relevant theoretical tenets of the socioterminologic and communicative approaches to Terminology, the authors assume that…

The authors explore the theoretical and pedagogical premises of their critical systemic functional linguistics approach, which they developed to challenge the deficit positioning of bilingual students in the Southeast of the United States. As multilingual educators from postcolonial Ireland and India, the theoretical framework has helped the…

One of the most complex aspects of verbal interaction to master in a second language is the use of pronouns of address. In French for nursing students, pedagogical prescriptions favour the use of "vous" for interactions with patients; however, corpus linguistic studies have shown that "tu" is increasingly used in the French…

In this article the way bilinguals handle differing semantic categories in their two languages will be investigated. Drawing on bilingual data from multilingual speakers of Romansh as well as from speakers of (Swiss) German, the tensions that emerge from "conflicting habits" in the two languages are analyzed in the semantic domain of…

This paper seeks to examine the emerging sociolinguistic trends in Nigeria with the view to ascertaining the use of English as a first language among its speakers particular in Calabar, Nigeria. The study adopts Vygotsky's (1978) Social Interactionist Theory. The theory is relevant because it accounts for the intentional and changing linguistic…

Pieter Muysken's article on modeling and interpreting language contact phenomena constitutes an important contribution.The approach chosen is a top-down one, building on the author's extensive knowledge of all matters relating to language contact. The paper aims at integrating a wide range of factors and levels of social, cognitive, and…

Articles in this issue examine (1) the primary sources of variability in reading and language achievement among Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) in the United States, (2) the extent to which poor performance at the end of grade 2 is identifiable in developmental trajectories beginning in kindergarten, (3) the relations among core reading…

In this article, we take up and expand upon a number of issues of linguistic theory raised in Ursula Ritzau's recent article "Learner language and polylanguaging: how language students' ideologies relate to their written language use" published in the "Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism". The present critique is…

Much attention is now given to academic language, particularly in content areas such as science, amid persistent achievement disparities between students classified as English Language Learners, and more recently, Long Term English Learners, and their English-proficient peers. This attention has fueled debate about the precise features of such…