We introduce the Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe (CSYE), an Open Access digital language archive based on several hundred testimony interviews with Holocaust survivors from the USC Shoah Foundation. The testimonies are a uniquely rich source of information on all aspects of European Yiddish: its regional dialects, grammatical structures,…

This study investigates the language ideologies manifested in the linguistic hierarchies produced by relevant EU governmental/political institutions through their language requirements for visa application documents. Based on the theoretical framework of Language Management Theory (LMT), this study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining…

Recent empirical research in sociolinguistics and social psychology has established the existence of the socio-psychological phenomena known as linguistic stereotyping (LS) and reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS), which have an implicit or unconscious effect on listeners' perception of speech and speakers. Despite such findings, little research…

Language is inherently variable, and learner language is particularly variable. The variationist paradigm considers learner language a heterogeneously variable yet inherently rule-governed system. Specifically, learners' alternation between native-like and nonnative-like variants of a variable or invariable target native speaker (NS) form…

Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor and Director of the Migration Studies Project, Departments of Applied Linguistics and English, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Having a BA with a major in English from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, Professor…

This paper addresses the complexity of the linguistic situation in China by examining the language policy and language categorisation in the People's Republic of China (PRC), which has implications for how multilingual speakers conceptualise and practice 'language'. In addition, this paper examines the conceptual framework of translanguaging and…

Language revival often retains founding overt beliefs rooted in an ideological commitment to a specific language because of its role as the authentic, legitimate cultural vehicle of a distinct people. Revival is thus the reinstatement of cultural distinctiveness based on traditional language. Revivalists have afforded traditional language…

In this article, we examine various strategies used to express cardinal numbers in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages (YMSLs) from three historically unrelated communities in Yucatán, Mexico: Chicán, Nohkop, and Cepeda Peraza. Our findings describe some numeral strategies, which remained unattested in previous accounts, and demonstrate that YMSL numerals…

In institutional settings of globalization, labelled languages are generally preferred over multilingual repertoires and mobile language resources. Drawing on linguistic-ethnographic analysis of the way English is treated as an invariable "ad hoc" idiom in the Belgian asylum interview, this article demonstrates how institutional measures…

The study of short-"a" (e.g., the vowel in words such as "bat," "bad," "bang," "ban") in New York City English (NYCE) has a long history, and with many different descriptions of this complex system (e.g., Babbitt 1896; Trager 1930; Labov 1966/2006; Cohen 1970; Labov 2007). It is complex due to the…

The present paper is a case study of how the commodification of the Russian language has transformed a market in New Delhi, India, inaugurated in 1969 and known as Yashwant Place. Over the years, the market slowly assumed a new identity, referred to as Yashka not only by Russian visitors but also tourists from countries of the former Soviet Union,…

This article reports the findings of sociolinguistic research investigating the use of second-person singular pronouns in Costa Rica. The study was carried out onsite and involved 132 interviewees from all seven provinces of the country. These subjects reacted to scenarios in which they had to choose their preferred pronoun of use…

The study aimed to explore the indigenous language of Gujjar and Bakerwal tribal communities of district Ganderbal of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The design of the study is qualitative in nature. The researcher employs purposive sampling in selecting the sample. The researcher surveyed 81 Gujjar and Bakerwal households and interviewed 22 (19 Male…

This chapter explains part of a broader study. To be specific, it is based on the research the author has been conducting in the city of Barcelona from 2005 through to the present day on what it means to "be Latino" in a youth- and school-based context. The work was essentially inspired by the ethnography of communication and the…

ELF cross-cultural interactions and mediation processes in specialized migration settings are often characterized by 'gatekeeping' asymmetries between the participants involved challenging a successful meaning negotiation (Guido, 2008). The exploration of migration encounters (Sperti, 2017) is particularly useful in the analysis of naturally…