Researching in heterogeneous communities can present challenges for the most experienced of researchers, especially in the context of ethnographic work, where the dynamism and unpredictability of a research setting can make it difficult to anticipate the languages spoken. Drawing on data from multilingual health consultations, I reflect on…

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…

This study adopted a social network perspective to explore the academic discourse socialization experiences of eight degree-seeking multilingual international students at a university in eastern China. Based on a triangulation of ethnographic interviews, social network questionnaires, and supplementary sources (e.g., voluntarily submitted…

Variationist researchers are increasingly adopting intersectionality approaches to analyse identity-linked practice. However, the field of sociolinguistic variation is yet to embrace the full ramifications of intersectionality as an analytical framework. The current paper offers a new method for integrating intersectional approaches into…

The decolonization of knowledge is increasingly high on the agenda of applied and sociolinguistics. This article contributes to this agenda by examining how peripheral multilingual scholars confront their linguistic and epistemic exclusion from global knowledge production. Based on the product of such a challenge -- a Chinese-centric special issue…

This article derives from a three-year ethnographic project carried out in Norway focusing on language practices of Brazilian families raising their children multilingually. Analyses of interview data with two Brazilian parents demonstrate the relevance of examining intersectionally the participants' orientation to categorisations such as social…

This paper investigates the conditions under which stakeholders in the higher education system in multilingual Switzerland link expectations of students' future economic to the development of human capital. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in a project focusing on mobile students crossing linguistic borders within Switzerland, I examine how…

This paper examines how entrepreneurial visions of the future contribute to neoliberalism's appropriation of language learning as a strategy for capital accumulation. Taking as an example South Korea's heavy investment in children's English language learning -- commonly known as early English education ("yeongeo jogi gyoyuk") -- it…

Drawing on offline and online casual interactions in the context of youth in Mongolia, on the Asian periphery, this article looks at youth mixed language practices from the perspective of "linguascapes" in order to capture the current flows of transnational linguistic resources in relation to other social landscapes. The study seeks to…

This paper aims to demonstrate the implications of health mobility on language practices in the medical tourism industry in India and on the ways, language workers become entrepreneurs. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork that traces the trajectories of three former students of Russian, we highlight their future aspirations as language learners…

The process of globalization, along with the advent of Internet technology, has resulted in the increasing presence of written mixed-language discourses produced and used by multilinguals in online spaces (e. g. online chat, instant messaging, and online discussion boards). Despite the fact that multilingual texts have become more visible and…

This ethnographic case study examines the factors that contribute to multilingual choices and the construction of identities in a linguistically diverse family within a linguistically diverse city, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Based on interviews with a female Emirati in her early thirties, the article examines this young woman's…

South African higher education is at a critical juncture in the implementation of South Africa's multilingual language policy promoting institutional status for nine African languages, English, and Afrikaans. South African scholars, not content merely to comment from the sidelines on the policy, its promise, and challenges, have also engaged in…