This longitudinal study of 17 American learners of French lies at the intersection of 2 complementary fields of inquiry in second language acquisition (SLA): language variation and change (LVC) and language acquisition during study abroad. Studies in LVC examine the nature and use of linguistic features that have more than 1 possible realization…

Developing sociolinguistic competence in Arabic can be a complex process given how Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Arabic (CA) are used within a changing sociolinguistic environment in Arabic-speaking communities. Findings from empirical research suggest that second language (L2) Arabic learners who receive multidialectal training in…

Irish is a rapidly changing minority language spoken as the main community language in some areas of the officially Irish-speaking "Gaeltacht" regions in Ireland. We analyse narratives from 17 parent-child dyads, living in one such area. All children, aged 3-6;4, had high exposure to the local variety of Irish. The input quality was…

The emergence of Indigenous language revitalization seeks to address historical domination over Indigenous peoples and to recover the loss of ancestral languages as embedded in Indigenous knowledge systems. This paper draws from long-term linguistic ethnographic research on one of the Indigenous Ryukyuan languages: Yaeyaman. I highlight one…

With the expanding use of English around the world, it is important to understand various stakeholders' attitudes towards it from a Global Englishes (GE) perspective. The GE perspective has challenged native speakerism and recognized the multilingual nature of the English language. In particular, a GE perspective leads to the sustainable…

This study aims to advance the understanding of sociolinguistic competence among near-native speakers and to further knowledge about the acquisition of variable structures. We conduct a quantitative analysis of variable future-time expression in informal conversations between near-native and native speakers of French. In addition to examining…

The aim of this study is to find out more about how the immigrant community is being integrated socio-linguistically into the city of Madrid. It takes as its premise that integration is a bi-directional process conditioned directly by the beliefs, values and attitudes of both the immigrant and the host communities (Moreno Fernández, Francisco.…

This article examines how Russian speakers in Ireland delimit and describe (their/the) Russian language in relation to representations of standard Russian. It is based on analysis of discussions conducted between speakers of Russian living in Ireland, facilitated by the Our Languages (2008-2011) research project, investigating multilingualism and…

This dissertation examines the linguistic behavior of code-switching in three groups of highly proficient Cantonese-English bilinguals. Code-switching refers to alternating between two or more languages within the same sentence or between two sentences. While traditional research on bilingualism often compares bilingual speakers against…

This dissertation draws on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate the linguistic practices of teachers and children who are learning Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) in two dual immersion preschools in California. CHL children have been interpreted as novice members in local speech communities who actively explore…

This paper compares the sociolinguistic trajectory of a 'latent' speaker mother to that of a 'new' speaker mother. Drawing on Shandler (TDR 48(1):19-43, 2004), it introduces the term 'post-vernacular FLP' as a means to conceptualise the latent speaker mother's emblematic use of Gaelic with her child as a 'seed' from which language revitalisation…

Linguistic racism is magnified when a speaker is multilingual and shuttles between different languages and language varieties. This reality is underscored in this commentary that reviews four empirical studies that comprise this special issue on linguistic racism. We see linguistic racism enacted in different forms and contexts: through racial…

This study focuses on L2 French spoken in two different Laurentian settings in Canada: L2 French spoken by anglophones who have developed bilingual community practices in Montreal, where French is the majority language; and L2 French spoken by anglophones who have learned French in a formal context in Ontario, where French is a minority language.…

This study discusses the impact of spatial, temporal and virtual mobility on how mobile individuals talk about language in their world, and how they use language offline and online to communicate over time and across space. We introduce the notion of "chronotopic translanguaging" to highlight the significance of merging time and place in…

As critical approaches to Heritage Language (HL) instruction are increasingly more widespread, it is now more pertinent than ever to conduct research on Spanish linguistic variation that reveals systematicity and refutes hegemonic notions of 'incorrectness'. This variationist study examines the use and distribution of the Preterite and Imperfect…