In 1976, the Seychelles government made Creole its third official language, alongside French and English. Although Creole is the native language for most Seychellois, this language policy change has remained contentious. While some have hailed it as essential to democracy, others have condemned it for widening the nation's socioeconomic divide.…

The paper explores how we think of English and "English Studies" in present-day Europe. It questions the apparent neutrality of the term lingua franca by suggesting a more differentiated set of terms. It relates the current consolidation and expansion of English to processes of global Americanisation and Europeanisation. The European…

The evolution of Rwanda's language policies since 1996 has played and continues to play a critical role in social reconstruction following war and genocide. Rwanda's new English language policy aims to drop French and install English as the only language of instruction. The policy-makers frame the change as a major factor in the success of social…

Describes status of and need for bilingual education in the United States. Different educational options must be made available to enable students to participate in English instructional programs and American society. (BK)

In the postcolonial era, a cultural nationalist movement has sought to elevate the status of St. Lucia's creole vernacular, Kweyol, and with some success--it is now the most visible symbol of St. Lucian national identity. This relatively new development has altered somewhat the historic linguistic status quo between the official, high status…

This paper reports on an analysis of meetings data which forms part of a broader study investigating the use of English as a lingua franca in international business meetings. This discourse analytic stage of research builds on an initial survey which explored the use of English for International Business (EIB) in a particular European…

The study provides an overview of the sociolinguistic situation in Kyrgyzstan and the current role of Russian and Kyrgyz in the republic. We present initial results of a mass survey of language use that show that the efforts to introduce the Kyrgyz language on all levels of societal use had some effect. At the same time, Kyrgyzstan is a…

This paper focuses on the situation of Basque in education in the Basque Autonomous Community. First, it provides statistical information about four crucial aspects of bilingual education: (1) Parental choice regarding the linguistic model, that is, the use of Basque, Spanish or both Basque and Spanish as languages of instruction over the last 20…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential use of Second Life (Linden Labs, 2004) and Skype (Skype Limited, 2009) as simulated virtual professional development tools for pre-service teachers seeking endorsement in teaching English as a Second Official Language (ESOL). Second Life is an avatar-based Internet program that allows…

This study examined linguistic patterns in the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, a group that has rarely been studied from a sociolinguistic perspective. Participants were 92 girls, 10-12 years old, who attend a school where Yiddish is the language of instruction and Hebrew, Israel's official language, is studied only in religious…

Despite the growing interest in Spanish heritage language (HL) instruction, little empirical work has focused on world language education in "new Latino diaspora" areas with no previous history of educating HL students. This study used a longitudinal case study perspective to document the experiences of two Latino students in high school Spanish…

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the sociolinguistic situation in Estonia. The paper opens with a historic overview, followed by an overview of the current demographic situation and of post-Soviet language and education policies and practices. It is argued that Estonia represents a success story in terms of language policy,…

This paper presents the beginning of an approach to the study of language use and religion, a sub-area of language and religion that has been little explored. Essential features of the approach include segmenting a religious service into its constituent parts and checking what language is used in what part and for what purpose. The proposed…

This report was created in conjunction with the Association of Canadian Community College's (ACCC) review of the federal government's support for post-secondary institutions and their efforts in promoting bilingualism in Canada. Canada's colleges were created or expanded through a partnership of the federal and provincial governments in the 1960s.…

Mother tongue education in separate schools has been in the norm for several of China's large minorities since 1949. In recent years, however, the shift in minority parental demand, media focus on low educational outcomes of mother tongue education combined with government concerns about separatism have led to the development of mixed schools for…