Purpose: Insights from linguistic variation research illustrate a linguistically diverse population, in which even speakers who can be classified as speaking a "mainstream" variety have grammatical knowledge of vernacular or "nonmainstream" features. However, there is a gap in our knowledge regarding how vernacular features are…

This study examines the use of English film subtitles to cultivate critical language awareness (CLA) and enhance language skills via a corpus-based approach. Creating and analyzing a specialized corpus of film subtitles reveals the cultural, social, and ideological dimensions of language usage. The findings show that film subtitles provide an…

This paper probes alternative meanings and processes for decolonizing English that arise from the particular geopolitical histories and identities of Hong Kong and engagement with political and translingual activism. I illustrate the positioning and tension between English, 'Kongish' (a mix of English and localized linguistic resources in Hong…

In this classroom-based qualitative study, we examine how a small group of content area teacher candidates developed emerging critical language awareness (CLA) during one graduate-level translanguaging-infused teacher education course on multilingual theories and practices. The findings point out the potential of translanguaging in prompting…

This paper builds on a collaborative pilot project on "Critical Multilingual Language Awareness" (CMLA) in a linguistically diverse Preparatory Class with migrant adolescents in Sweden. Importantly, the approach involved Multilingual Study Mentors (MSMs), whose role normally is to provide scaffolding in the strongest language of recently…

Unmooring language is a proposal for a language-based social justice concept that aims to go beyond national and local epistemologies of language in place. This article contributes to current discussions in critical sociolinguistics about how to conceptualize language bearing in mind the primacy of mobility and fluidity. Drawing on folk…

This quantitative study aims to reveal the most frequently used phrasal verbs (PVs) by L1 speakers of English and Turkish EFL learners in written and spoken registers. With the purpose of spotting any overuse and/or underuse by Turkish EFL learners, it compares their usage to L1 English speakers' through four corpora -- two learner corpora and two…

The aim of conducting this study came from a need to explore contrastive study in using metadiscourse features between English and Hausa in research article genre. This study investigated what metadiscourse features are frequently used across two languages in research article genre. A sub-corpus of ten research articles was compiled from each…

This paper analyses "Kongish Daily," a Facebook page that trans-scripts local news in Hong Kong into a creative and dynamic mix of Cantonese in traditional Chinese characters, Romanisation and made-up characters, simplified Chinese, pinyin, English, Hong Kong English, other phonetic symbols, emoji and other signs and images. We trace the…

Most bilingual programs are built around a clear separation between the two languages used throughout the school day. However, in bilingual research centers (BRCs), a key component of the Gomez and Gomez Dual Language Enrichment model, students can choose which language to use. This is what sparked my interest, because I wanted to understand more…

In this qualitative linguistic ethnography, we combine a multilingual perspective on translanguaging with humanizing pedagogies to examine how and for what purposes a second-grade teacher and her students used Spanish and English in support of language development during a literacy-based English Language Development block within a paired literacy…

This study examined the sources of reading comprehension difficulties in English language learners (ELLs). The characteristics of ELL poor comprehenders were compared to their English as a first language (EL1) peers. Participants included 124 ELLs who spoke Chinese as an L1 and 79 EL1 students. Using a regression technique based on age, non-verbal…

Scholars have advocated for critical approaches to language education (e.g., Del Valle, 2014; Leeman & Serafini, 2016), including those that promote the development of "Critical Language Awareness, CLA" (e.g., Alim, 2010; Leeman, 2018). The goal is to develop students' critical knowledge of the cultural, political, and social…

This study examined the use of non-standard English features in 16-year-old students' writing in the UK. Adopting a diachronic approach to the investigation of students' written production, the study sought to identify changes in students' use of non-standard English over the course of a decade, specifically from 2004 to 2014. It involved an…

This paper aims to explore the reasons behind the limited dissemination of Adamczewski's Metaoperational approach to language beyond the French academic sphere. The theory, which developed in and by contrastivity between 1976 and 2005, is built on the basic assumption that utterances exhibit on their surface observable traces of the utterer's…