In recent decades, language revitalisation policies, programmes and initiatives have had to develop in an environment of major social, political, economic, or technological changes that have had an extraordinary impact on the governance of minority language revitalisation. In this context, we have studied the changes that have taken place in the…

Due to modernisation and Englishisation in Bahrain, noticeably different types of bilingual and bicultural experiences exist, especially among the youth. Recently, the rise of Chinese education policies in the region raises the question of how it might alter the local linguistic market and the forms of capital within it. Applying a…

The aim of this contribution is to analyze the linguistic practices of a migrant collective, speakers of a minoritized language, from a glottopolitical perspective. This will be illustrated by the description of the communicative practices of the migrant workers from Galicia (Spain) in Hanover (Federal Republic of Germany) in the 1960s and beyond.…

Many contributors to the normative literature on language policy argue that inclusive multilingual regimes are beneficial on several grounds. However, despite the professed advantages of multilingualism, most nation-states have been reluctant to equally recognise minority languages alongside the majority language. This reality raises three…

This article investigates to what extent the European Union (EU) has the means to protect minority and regional languages in the EU, looking at the ways three different bodies of the EU, the European Parliament (EP), the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) differ in handling language…

The sociolinguistic repertoires of individuals in Sudan are products of institutionalised orders of normalisation. The visibility of language in popular and official discourses in Sudan is always linked with wider cultural and political projects. This paper intends to engage with and explicate this observation by, first, examining how the dominant…

This paper will seek to determine what types of legislative or policy measures should be considered as morally acceptable ones for the state to implement as part of a language maintenance effort. It will approach the issue from a liberal-egalitarian perspective. As a first step, a series of normative constraints that liberal-egalitarians would…

Issues of race constitute an emerging area of inquiry in language education. Yet, race, racialisation and racism are still stigmatised topics of discussion in everyday and professional contexts in multiracial and multiethnic countries. Canada is especially an interesting context in this regard due to its official policy of multiculturalism that…

Pahari speakers form one of the largest ethnic non-European diasporas in Britain. Despite their size and over 60 years of settlement on British shores, the diaspora is shrouded by confusion regarding official and unofficial categorisations, remaining largely misunderstood as a collective with a shared ethnolinguistic memory. This has had…

This study seeks to answer two research questions. First, can listeners distinguish the ethnicity of the speakers on the basis of voice quality alone? Second, do demographic differences among the listeners affect discriminability? A simple but carefully designed and controlled ethnic identification test was carried out on 325 Singaporean…

This article reports on an inquiry into Chinese netizens' online discussions related to the "Protecting Cantonese Movement" in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, on the Chinese mainland. It interprets the ideological discourses used by Chinese netizens in online discussions to protect the status of Cantonese, a regional variety of the…

Linguistics is implicated in the colonial project of the invention of "self-contained" "racial" and "tribal units" in the Sudan. This paper has two objectives. First, to historicise the notions of "language" in the postcolonial discourse of language planning in the Sudan by reviewing one of the significant…

Support for the use of local languages for learning and communication is currently in fashion among national policy-makers in Africa. This position has been promoted by UNESCO and other local-language advocates for years; more recently it is being seen favourably by a range of influential international institutions. However, even positive language…

Language education for ethnic majority and minority students alike has recently received much policy attention in the People's Republic of China. An outcome of this policy attention is the Chinese-English bilingual education initiative which turns on the use of English as a medium of instruction for Han majority students at the primary and…

This paper presents a reconceptualisation of language rights, drawing on historical sources and contemporary practice. It shows that early advocates of rights saw these as limits on the state's ability to deprive citizens of basic liberties. Only later did the concept come to include the requirement that the state be proactive in providing…