Failure to adequately address language differences between home and school is one of the many ways in which education systems frequently disadvantage Aboriginal students. Children from predominantly Aboriginal English-speaking homes face specific challenges, as the language differences between their home variety and the Standard Australian English…

Lo Bianco (Curr Issues Lang Plan 9(2):155-178, 2008) proposed an "ensemble of [three] activities" that comprise language policy: the "textual," "discursive," and "public performance" (p. 157). When expressed in language, the current study proposes that each of Lo Bianco's three activities (text, discourse,…

This paper compares the sociolinguistic trajectory of a 'latent' speaker mother to that of a 'new' speaker mother. Drawing on Shandler (TDR 48(1):19-43, 2004), it introduces the term 'post-vernacular FLP' as a means to conceptualise the latent speaker mother's emblematic use of Gaelic with her child as a 'seed' from which language revitalisation…

Linguistic racism is magnified when a speaker is multilingual and shuttles between different languages and language varieties. This reality is underscored in this commentary that reviews four empirical studies that comprise this special issue on linguistic racism. We see linguistic racism enacted in different forms and contexts: through racial…

This study focuses on L2 French spoken in two different Laurentian settings in Canada: L2 French spoken by anglophones who have developed bilingual community practices in Montreal, where French is the majority language; and L2 French spoken by anglophones who have learned French in a formal context in Ontario, where French is a minority language.…

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…

As critical approaches to Heritage Language (HL) instruction are increasingly more widespread, it is now more pertinent than ever to conduct research on Spanish linguistic variation that reveals systematicity and refutes hegemonic notions of 'incorrectness'. This variationist study examines the use and distribution of the Preterite and Imperfect…

Non-binary individuals comprise one third of the transgender population and may be especially vulnerable to marginalization. The study of languages such as French, grammatically based in a binary gender system, offers unique challenges to non-binary learners for representing themselves in accordance with their identity. Grounded in a…

The presence of Africans in China has been phenomenal since the late 1990s. In recent years, there has been a dramatic uptick in people from Africa coming to the major cities of China such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Yiwu, Shanghai, and Beijing. They are in the process of building linguistic, cultural, and economic bridges between their source…

Post-structuralist theories of language and gender have become increasingly attractive to language learning researchers. However, masculinity, as part of a socially and culturally constructed system, in relation to English language learning has rarely been investigated. The current study examines how male English language learners negotiate their…

Research in language development has only recently begun to focus on the inherent variability of language. Previous studies have explored at what age children begin to produce variable linguistic forms and how these forms progress through development. While children produce adult-like variation early on, some variable forms take longer to acquire…

This paper reports on teacher research which explored the practicality and potential of World Englishes (WE)-informed pedagogy in the Japanese secondary education context. Based on qualitative data from written reflections and post-unit individual interviews with seven high school students in Japan, this paper presents students' perceptions of the…

With millions of non-native English language users, English has gained the position of 'global language' in the last century. English literature also has a significant number of non-native writers from around the world. While grasping their own cultures in English, these non-native writers have been transforming English language to a remarkable…

Social network analysis (SNA) examines the relationships that an individual speaker creates and maintains with others in order to explain and predict language behavior. Over the past 20 years, SNA has been used by a growing number of researchers to better understand the language learner and the language learning process, especially in the context…

One of the features of the growing prominence of English across the globe is the proliferation of English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes at all levels of education, driven by a neoliberal agenda which places a disproportionate value on English over other languages. While this spread has primarily affected more developed, urban contexts, EMI…