Most analyses of the sociolinguistic aspects of immigration focus on contexts where a single language is official and widely used. In bilingual Catalonia, newly arriving immigrants find themselves in a situation where the administration seeks to treat Catalan as a fully functional public language while large sectors of the local population still…

This study overviews current threats to the sustainability of the outsourced call center industry in the Philippines and discusses implications for macro and micro language policies given the use of English in this cross-cultural interactional context. This study also summarizes the present state of outsourced call centers in the Philippines, and…

In 1996, the Ministry of Education in Malawi directed that in future Standards 1 to 4 would be taught through mother tongues. It took eight years before the pilot phase of the language policy could begin. The paper critically analyses this situation using Bamgbose's framework which says that, in Africa, language policies tend to follow one or more…

The paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of language policy in Kazakhstan in the context of the current sociolinguistic situation and historic, demographic, sociopolitical, and economic factors. Highlighting some of the challenges facing the official policy of kazakhization, this review allows for better understanding of the functioning of…

In any discussion of multilingual Asia, caution is in order, for two reasons. One is that Asia is a vast land mass connecting variegated peoples cartographically but not sociologically. Second, describing and accounting for the sociolinguistic complexities of Asia (or anywhere else, for that matter) is history in the making in that, just like…

The central goal of this research is to explore the language policy aspects in Jordan by focusing on the Circassian language maintenance issues and to provide measures for language revitalisation in the current demographic, linguistic and political situation. Research is based on multiple sources of information, but primarily on the empirical data…

When Algeria opened its markets to foreign investment starting from the early 2000s, a technological boom occurred, including the expansion of mobile phone use. New technologies have had a considerable impact on the Algerian diglossic situation, in recent decades, and have contributed in the democratisation of the local dialects, which are being…

This article offers a grounded view of language shift as experienced by Native American youth across a range of early- to late-shift settings. Drawing on data from a long-term ethnographic study, we demonstrate that the linguistic ecologies in which youth language choices play out are more complex than a unidirectional notion of shift might…

President Bush's National Security Language Initiative focuses narrowly on gearing language education to security and military needs. English educators should work with their counterparts in foreign language departments to promote a broader view, one that encourages study of the multiple language groups that currently exist within the United…

Drawing from the surge of anti-bilingual education sentiments at the turn of the millennium, Ron Unz and the program he initiated, English for the Children, promoted Proposition 203 to dismantle bilingual and English as a second language (ESL) programs in Arizona's public schools. According to Unz's initiative, language-minority students were to…

This article examines current efforts to revitalise, stabilise, and maintain Indigenous languages in the USA. Most Native American languages are no longer acquired as a first language by children. They are nonetheless languages of identity and heritage, and in this sense can and should be considered mother tongues. The article begins with a…

The paper provides an overview of the language and education policies currently functioning in the Republic of Tajikistan, the demographic and sociolinguistic situation in the country, and language use in education and the media. Particular attention is paid to the decrease in Russian-language competence and the measures undertaken to address this…

Frisian, a unique minority language in the Netherlands, is in the middle ranks of threatened European minority languages in Europe. In recent decades a framework for language policy has been developed in which the educational domain is one of the spearheads. This article provides an overview of language policy and language rights for Frisian…

This article reports on year-long critical ethnographic study conducted in a Singapore school and examines how the standard English language educational policy is interpreted by a Secondary 3 (Grade 9) female student from China. She is a member of an exclusive group of academically able students who has been carefully recruited by the local…

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the sociolinguistic situation in Estonia. The paper opens with a historic overview, followed by an overview of the current demographic situation and of post-Soviet language and education policies and practices. It is argued that Estonia represents a success story in terms of language policy,…