The present study contributes to recent renewed interest in the social construction of folk linguistic knowledge and directs its focus to a multilingual workplace. The article reports on an in-depth sociolinguistic investigation in a European institution in Luxembourg. Data were collected in 2020-2021 with trainees and permanent staff in a…

Facilitated by the increased availability of affordable broadband Internet, individuals around the world are taking language lessons online from private tutors. A large proportion of online language tutoring takes place through online teaching platforms (OTPs), which are two-sided online markets that connect individual learners and tutors for…

Due to the 'global English bias' in the field of L2 motivation, many motivational constructs have been primarily investigated in relation to learners of English. One of these, international posture, has been recently found to hold some relevance to LOTE students. Despite this, no research has examined comparatively similarities and differences in…

This paper explores linguistic landscapes and the enactment of public visibility and presence of non-majority linguistic groups in EU member states. Non-majority linguistic groups gain power, visibility and presence through the introduction of bilingual or multilingual signposts on roads, streets, squares, and public buildings in towns and cities…

Devising a writing system, or graphisation, is a fundamental aspect of corpus planning that no language can take too lightly. This paper begins with a general introduction to graphisation and to Italian regional languages, followed by an analysis of the different orthographies in use so far or proposed for the main regional languages in Italy,…

Due to globalisation and migration, multilingualism has become both a reality and an aim of education systems across Europe, affecting how language education is shaped. To improve the ways in which schools cater for language education in diverse settings, research is required on the potentials of multilingualism in order to design curricula that…

This article presents the findings of an online survey conducted amongst bi- (English, Italian) and trilingual (English, Italian and dialect) Italo-Australian youth, exploring self-assessed language competence, self-reported language choice in various communicative situations, and attitudes towards heritage languages. These young people appear…

This article reports on a small-scale qualitative study designed to explore lecturers' and students' experiences of teaching and learning on a recently-implemented MSc programme in Biomedical Sciences taught in the medium of English at an Italian university. A focus group format was employed to interview twelve students on the programme, and…

This paper will present the findings of a wide-scale research aimed at studying the phenomenon of Child Language Brokering (henceforth CLB) in Italy. After providing a description of recent immigration patterns and the provision of language services in Italy, and an overview of current research in this field, this study will discuss narrative data…

Dominant notions of what constitutes a "language" and what a "dialect" within a continuum are entirely based on sociopolitical factors (i.e. the "languages by 'Ausbau'" of Kloss), totally disregarding structural and communicative aspects. This paper argues that such stance is no longer tenable in view of the modern…

The present paper investigates the relationship between objective ethnolinguistic vitality, individual networks of linguistic contacts (INLCs) and perceived vitality among German-speaking (N = 415) and Italian-speaking (N = 379) adolescents in South Tyrol, Italy. Supporting our hypothesis, we found that INLC has a greater effect on perceived…

This paper, after shortly introducing "Folk Linguistics" by defining its domain of competence [cf. Preston, Dennis R., ed. 1999. "Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology." Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Niedzielski, Nancy A., and Dennis R. Preston. 2003. "Folk Linguistics." Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter], attempts to draw an…

This thematic collection of four papers explores a number of perspectives on companies in which multiple languages are used. The "organisational" perspective concerns the question of how the presence of or demand for multiple languages in the company is managed--how companies are guided by national and other policies in regard to the use…

This paper investigates native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) interaction in the workplace in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Based on empirical data from a 10-month email exchange between a medium-sized British company and a small-sized Italian company, the general aim of this study is to explore the nature of the intercultural…

After an introduction to the Italian linguistic situation, highlighting the remarkable number of language varieties present in Italy today, the paper goes on to review briefly the history of micronationalism in Italy, and to propose a classification of language planning based on the distinction between macro- and micronationalism. There follows a…