Language policy is a mechanism determining the uses of language generally; here it examines the role of the English language in the emerging USA. Inspired by Spanish riches deriving from the "New World" during the sixteenth century, the first English people to settle permanently in North America hoped for similar riches. In North…

Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, is experiencing growing intra- and interlingual diversity. On the intralingual level, Tussentaal ("in-between-language") has emerged as a cluster of intermediate varieties between the Flemish dialects and Standard Dutch, gradually becoming "the" colloquial language. At the…

Since Italy's unification in 1861, the establishment and diffusion of the standard Italian language at the expense of all other linguistic varieties has dominated language and education policy discourses. Today, as Italy has transformed from a country of mass "emigration" to a country of mass "immigration," the language…

In the early 1990s, the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) enacted educational reform. It officially abandoned its English-only policy at elementary school level, in favour of community languages. In response, the Kairak community of East New Britain Province developed a vernacular literacy programme. This paper, based on original fieldwork…

Linguistic antisexism is different from the institutional feminization of language. It involves practices of double gender marking which work to avoid the gender dichotomy. Working on a French written corpus, this paper will examine the forms of double gender marking, looking at typographic, morphosyntactical and rhetorical levels; then, it will…

This paper deals with current questions in revitalizing the regional language Latgalian, one of the varieties native to Latgale, a region located in the eastern part of Latvia. It first provides an overview of domains where Latgalian is used and highlights recent changes in these. Based on linguistic landscape data as well as interviews with…

The aim of this monograph is to provide a detailed account of language policy and language planning in Cyprus. Using both historical and synchronic data and adopting a mixed-methods approach (archival research, ethnographic tools and insights from sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis), this study attempts to trace the origins and the…

In this paper I outline the challenges for feminist language planning in the context of a global lingua franca--English. Drawing upon the views of speakers of "World Englishes" I discuss their reactions as well as reported practices in relation to gender-inclusive language use. This reveals the complexities of managing the tension between the…

Over the last 25 years, there has been significant modernisation and elaboration of the Maori language mathematics lexicon and register to support the teaching of (Western) mathematics as a component of Maori-medium schooling. These developments are situated within the wider Maori language revitalisation movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand, of which…

There are over 100 languages in China, including Chinese Sign Language. Given the large population and geographical dispersion of the country's deaf community, sign variation is to be expected. Language barriers due to lexical variation may exist for deaf college students in China, who often live outside their home regions. In presenting an…

Einar Haugen brought Norwegian language planning to prominence in the 1960s, describing a series of language reforms ultimately intended to bring the two written standards, Bokmal and Nynorsk, together. Since Haugen's time language policy in Norway has changed direction, and developments over the past 40 years have led to increased autonomy for…

This monograph provides an overview of the language situation in Hong Kong from a historical perspective. Hong Kong has evolved in the past 167 years from a small fishing port to an international financial centre which forms part of a financial network hailed by "Time Magazine" as Ny.Lon.Kong (i.e. New York-London-Hong Kong). Hong Kong…

When Algeria opened its markets to foreign investment starting from the early 2000s, a technological boom occurred, including the expansion of mobile phone use. New technologies have had a considerable impact on the Algerian diglossic situation, in recent decades, and have contributed in the democratisation of the local dialects, which are being…

Implicit in the notion of language planning is the issue of preserving linguistic rights, one dimension to be taken into account in considering the relationship between the role of language in social life and security. This paper, however, intends to introduce another dimension, not typically included in the literature on language planning, i.e.…

Formal language use in online communication and phone messages is increasingly being replaced by a new age language, i.e. the net lingos commonly used in Internet acronyms and text messages. This is, perhaps, a logical consequence of computers, mobile phones and gadgets becoming familiar household items in an era where there is a constant demand…