This paper problematizes the English-dominant ideology that underlies the American educational system and discusses how to disrupt this English-dominant norm both in the classroom and within ourselves. The paper problematizes the dominate use of English in the curriculum, and it provides a call to action of how to disrupt this English-dominant…

This article investigates what is commonly called multilingual writing. Based on case studies from Mali, and drawing on a number of West African settings, it argues that in fact, not all 'multilingual' writing is in effect multilingual. The article proposes a two-tiered classification of types of writing, based on linguistic properties of texts…

This paper analyses "Kongish Daily," a Facebook page that trans-scripts local news in Hong Kong into a creative and dynamic mix of Cantonese in traditional Chinese characters, Romanisation and made-up characters, simplified Chinese, pinyin, English, Hong Kong English, other phonetic symbols, emoji and other signs and images. We trace the…

The present study sought to assess and characterise the amount of first language use that two English as a foreign language teachers used to accomplish a number of functions in two classroom modes. An adapted version of the Functional Language Alternation Analysis of Teacher Talk scheme was used to analyse teacher talk in six English as a foreign…

This article explores language learning as a process of translanguaging and of cultural translation. We draw examples from a sociolinguistic ethnography of translanguaging practices in a karate club in east London, UK. Formulaic Japanese is taught as part of karate techniques, practised as the language of performance and rituals and valued as the…

The definitions of "academic language" available to teachers and teacher educators often invoke generalized assumptions about the supposed gap between complex, discipline-specific forms of language and the everyday language of Latina/o/x students. In this article, we advance an alternative hypothesis -- that Latina/o/x students boast…

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is a major international benchmarking resource used for curriculum development and assessment. The elaboration of the concept of multilingual mediation in the 2018 Companion Volume of the CEFR is a timely addition to the original publication in 2001. Amongst other things, it…

Translanguaging is a new term in bilingual education; it supports a heteroglossic language ideology, which views bilingualism as valuable in its own right. Some translanguaging scholars have questioned the existence of discrete languages, further concluding that multilingualism does not exist. I argue that the political use of language names can…

SNS (Social Networking Sites) are a ubiquitous social space for many, often involving the use of English as a lingua franca in highly multilingual and multicultural settings. This article presents an ethnographic investigation of communication among a group of international students on a popular SNS. The data illustrates the fluid and complex…

Amidst the current climate surrounding bilingual education in the U.S., this study looked critically at the ways language education policies informed bilingual education as language was constructed and performed in a dual language bilingual, Spanish-English, third-grade classroom. This four-year ethnographic study explored the hegemonic realities…

This study investigates diglossic patterns of language use by speakers of Zoroastrian Dari in the city of Yazd, where most of Zoroastrian population of Iran lives. Efforts have been made to find out how, when and why the spoken language of Dari is favoured by Zoroastrian community members. For this reason, the evaluation by the informants of their…

In this paper, the author argues that the theoretical groundings of code-switching are flawed, in that they rely on a flawed understanding of language. For code-switching to function as described by sociologists and educators, language would have to be a skill--and particular languages and dialects to be discrete subsets of this skill--to be…

The study presented here, theoretically framed at the crossroads of sociocultural and decolonial perspectives, draws attention to the sudden proliferation of two specific neologisms in the area of language, education and identity across time and space. It particularly highlights concerns regarding the ways in which these are deployed within…

This descriptive observational study examined the implementation of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB MLE) language policy to the classroom practices of a grade three multilingual classroom in the Philippines. The constructive alignment of the said language policy implementation was evaluated in terms of: (1) Mother Tongue (MT) as a…

This case study explored how the translanguaging stance of two instructors from different disciplines was reflected in their course design, instructional decision-making, and interactions with students at a large Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the state of Texas in the United States. The results of the study revealed that the instructors…