Indonesia is one of the most multilingual nations in the world, with approximately 700 spoken local languages. This multilingualism is at risk from the imposition of the national language and the dominance of English as an international language. Adopting a social semiotic approach to linguistic landscape study, this paper explores how languages…

Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed…

Despite recognising multilingualism as a reality and multilingual workforce as an advantage, language policies continue to favour certain languages over others. Using a case study of Canada's language-in-immigration policy related to three federally administered immigration programs, this study is an attempt to understand how the macro-level…

Pakistan, one of the eight countries comprising South Asia, has more than 212.2 million people, making it the world's fifth most populous country after China, India, USA, and Indonesia. It has also the world's second-largest Muslim population. Eberhard et al. (Ethnologue: languages of the world, SIL International, 2020) report 77 languages used by…

Linguistic landscaping is an emerging field of sociolinguistics exploring language in its textual form in the public sphere. Studies on Linguistic Landscape (LL) can be used as a tool to interpret language vitality in a given territory. The present study investigates visibility and vitality of languages in public space of Bihta, an upcoming…

The current paper describes a study that sought to determine the beliefs, practices, and needs of parents living in Montreal, Quebec, who were raising their children bi/multilingually. The parents (N = 27) participated in a total of nine focus group and individual interviews in which they discussed their family language policies (language…

Do assimilationist restrictions on a minority language lead to greater national unity or a more rebellious minority population? Under what conditions might short-term backlash to language assimilation evolve into greater national unity in the long term? While much of the literature on ethnic politics implicitly treats language simply as an…

This paper analyses divergence between national language policy on the one hand, and perceptions of it on the other. In ethnocratic Malaysia, language policy codifies the supremacy of Bahasa Malaysia as part of a broader ethnonationalist policy agenda that pedestalises the ethnic Malays and curtails the rights of Chinese and Indian-Malaysians. A…

South Africa is facing the challenge of creating a viable nation from a situation of interplay between diverse racial, ethnic and linguistic forces. This article discusses the implications for education of the evolving picture of language policy as South Africa addresses the task of nation-building. Language policy is important because of its key…

This article analyses how language laws favouring French improved the vitality of the Francophone majority relative to the declining Anglophone minority of Quebec. Part one provides a review of Canadian Government efforts to provide federal bilingual services to Francophones and Anglophones across Canada. Using the ethnolinguistic vitality…

The state in Singapore has long insisted that Singaporeans be bilingual in English and an officially assigned ethnic mother tongue. English is to serve as the inter-ethnic lingua franca and facilitate economic competitiveness. The official mother tongue (Mandarin for the Chinese, Malay for the Malays, and Tamil for the Indians) is to serve as a…

In the post-apartheid era, South Africa has adopted a language policy that gives official status to 11 languages (English, Afrikaans, and nine Bantu languages). However, English has remained the dominant language of business, public office, and education, and some research suggests that English is increasingly being spoken in domestic settings.…

The issue of Malaysian graduates' unemployment, attributed largely to their flawed English language competence, has been a major concern in the country for many years. The study reported in this paper sought to better comprehend future graduates' perspectives and practices in dealing with the English language literacies prior to graduation. This…

This article looks at France's Loi Toubon, which mandates the use of French in private companies, to illustrate how macro-level language planning reaches a dead end if it fails to consider local contexts and involve micro-level agents. The motivations, limitations and contradictions of France's language policy in relation to companies are…

In 2012, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) implemented a requirement that all aspiring Canadians who wish to take the citizenship test must have an adequate level of English- or French-language skills, defined as Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 4. The CLB 4 language policy directly and, we argue, problematically links language abilities…