Sociolinguistic research on attitudes towards language has revealed that native speakers of English are drawn towards those who share their native accent and respond cautiously, perhaps negatively, towards those speaking in "accented" English (Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner & Fillenbaum, 1960; Rubin, 1992). These perceptions greatly…

The monolingualism of New Zealand has often been remarked on, but statutory and demographic changes in recent years suggest a shift away from the dominance of the English language. New Zealand now has two official languages, the indigenous Maori language and New Zealand Sign Language, and census data report a decreasing proportion of monolingual…

This article looks at language use and attitudes in Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia through a survey conducted among 88 university students for each country. The focus of the article, however, is on the expanding use of English, particularly as far as media consumption is concerned, relating this with issues of globalisation and linguistic and…

This article will examine the sociopolitical language contexts that exist in institutions of Canadian post-secondary education, through investigating how government policies affect the consumption and teaching of language in writing classrooms. A survey of Canadian multiculturalist policy, multilingualism, and post-secondary education in terms of…

Language use changes over time. In Indigenous contexts, language alters to suit the shifting nature of cultural expression as this might fit with Indigenous peoples' preference or as a consequence of changes to outdated and colonial modes of expression. For students studying in the discipline of Indigenous Studies, learning to use appropriate…

Sociolinguists have recently employed the notion of spatiotemporal scales to explain the changing social status of linguistic codes across social and geopolitical domains. Scales enable us to address the portability of semiotic resources in migration with great insight. In addition, unlike romanticized orientations to globalization and…

This paper aims to reveal mechanisms of language maintenance and shift in the rural post-colonial multilingual island community of Palau in the Western Pacific, using social networks as an explanatory framework. I explore the usefulness of social networks from three perspectives, investigating whether and how social networks can explain changes in…

This paper deals with the initial findings from an international research project called "Children Crossing Borders." This study focused on discovering how early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems in five countries (the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and the USA) serve the children of recent immigrants and what parents with diverse…

Language is a phenomenon which can hardly be viewed separate from its very inherent component, culture. This component does by all means play a significant role in enabling the language to gain a global status. No doubt, some prominent issues do contribute to this process: political, economic, and military supremacy, to name but a few. This study…

Past research has tended to ignore the emergence or existence of "middle zone" varieties such as topolects or regiolects. In addition, attitudinal dynamics have received little attention, including their contribution towards the re-evaluation of the status of language varieties. Regarding the status of Cantonese, linguistic, political…

This monograph describes the historiography of language ideologies that led to the politicisation of Arabic and the Arabicisation of politics in the Sudan, starting from British colonial rule until the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was a precursor to the separation of the South as an independent state. The monograph shows that the…

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…

In order to achieve full native-like competence in a second language, speakers must also acquire sociolinguistic awareness in that language. This paper reports the results of a study investigating the acquisition of sociolinguistic awareness among immigrant Polish adolescents learning English in the UK. This paper asks whether Polish-born…

Language can provide an entree into an academic discipline, but can also serve as a barrier to exclude newcomers. How does this apply to academic developers trying to promote teaching and learning on their campuses? Using an online survey, academics at two institutions in the UK and USA were asked to describe their typical and ideal reading in…

Publishing in the Sami languages has always been difficult. The Sami are currently spread across four countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. There are nine different Sami languages, some of them with only a few speakers. The Sami publishing industry is entirely dependent on government funding as it does not have its own funds nor is there…