The widespread use of English has--for better or worse--shaped the social and communicative norms and practices of many people the world over, and the likelihood of this continuing for the foreseeable future raises questions concerning English ownership, linguistic imperialism, language attrition, and mutual intelligibility, to name a few. These…

This paper identifies several key issues that have emerged through the debate over English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and suggests a practice-based perspective--which treats language not as a fixed system but as an emergent product of speakers' practices--as a guide for reconsidering some fundamental assumptions of the ELF research project. In…

This paper focuses on designing a comprehensibility test and a questionnaire for spoken world Englishes in Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, and utilizing the test to investigate the comprehension of Burmese, Cambodians, Indonesians, Laotians, Thais and Vietnamese. We reviewed the demarcation of users of English based on Kachru's…

Senegal adopted French as the country's sole official language at the time of independence in 1960, since when the language has been used in administration and other formal domains. Similarly, French is employed throughout the formal education system as the language of instruction. Since the 1990s, however, government has mounted an ambitious…

The national language of Tanzania is Kiswahili. However, Tanzania has two official languages: English, introduced in colonial times, and Kiswahili, the actual "lingua franca" spoken by 99 per cent of the population. Kiswahili websites and internet content are gradually increasing, and equipment is becoming more affordable. The research…

The article addresses the actual and perceived roles of national organisations and bodies, such as language "academies" or "councils", in recent history. In particular, the article seeks to shed light on the question what may prompt national governments in modernity and late modernity to establish and fund such bodies to…

This paper reports on a study that examines the attitudes of university students and immigrants to the introduction of Swahili at a tertiary institution in South Africa. Data were obtained from a questionnaire survey and interviews with questions that covered the domains in which Swahili could be most useful, who should learn it and the reasons…

Although there seems to be no doubt that English as a lingua franca paradigm has affected the focus of English language teaching toward the issue of mutual intelligibility, studies involving only non-native English speakers (NNS-NNS interaction) are still in their infancy. Using a sequential analysis, this study examines how Japanese learners of…

This paper discusses structural and ideological challenges to mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) which has in recent years been gaining ground in many educational contexts around the world. The paper argues, however, that MTB-MLE is set against these challenges - referred to here as inequalities of multilingualism - which prevent…

In the Basque Country, Northern Spain, Basque (Euskera) and Spanish are official languages. In recent decades, Basque language revitalization and the efforts to make this an unmarked language (normalization) have co-existed with the rapid increase in immigration from outside the Basque region, and most recently from outside Spain. Given the…

The performance of boys in literacy has become an issue of increasing concern around the globe. This paper discusses the results of a study that sought to determine the literacy performance of Malaysian primary schoolers. Using one of the states in the country as a case study, data on approximately 85,000 students from grades 1, 2, and 3 were…

An invitation to integrate macro and micro level analyses has been extended to researchers as this integration is felt to be the way forward for language policy research (Ricento, Ideology, politics and language policies: Focus on english, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2000). In turn, the notion of 'micro' in language policy has been specified as…

Language, whether indigenous or foreign, is a marker of identity. The language that a man speaks, the names he bears, the songs he sings, the tribal marks on his cheeks, his country's national anthem, coat of arms and national flags are symbols of personal and national identity. Language education policy, which shapes a man's global and local view…

Maltese, the national language of Malta, is, without doubt, the dominant language of most Maltese in most domains of language use in Malta. It however shares official status with English, which is also in regular use. Most Maltese can, in fact, be said to be bilingual to differing degrees. This article begins by providing some background…

In this contribution I present an overview of Italian in Malta, the third language of Malta, focusing on the role of this language within educational institutions and other domains of society. Italian was one of Malta's official languages till 1936 and, historically, it was used mainly within administrative and cultural spheres of society. Contact…