Whole-body sense-making offers insights for the analysis of identity work in learning in multilingual classroom contexts. The concept has the potential to draw together two strands of classroom discourse scholarship, namely multilingual and multimodal discourse studies. The data presented in this paper constitutes a moment of whole-body…

This dissertation represents the first attempt to integrate typological, semantic, and psycholinguistic perspectives to elucidate a semantically "bizarre" and "illogical" phenomenon called "expletive negation" (henceforth, EN) which is well known in Romance languages but has so far attracted little attention outside…

Korea is widely recognized to be among the world's most advanced digital countries with nearly every university student owning the latest smartphone. Yet language education is largely still taught in traditional classroom methods. This study was designed to see how students in two major universities used smartphone apps to informally supplement…

Mother-tongue or first language (L1)-based multilingual education programs are necessarily complex and may require a more nonlinear approach to program design. These programs operate within and act upon a range of psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and sociopolitical issues that include language structure and literacy assessment, language policy…

Background: Reading development in agglutinating African languages is a relatively underresearched area. While numerous studies highlight the low comprehension levels among learners reading in African languages in South Africa, little has been done to probe beneath this 'comprehension iceberg' in terms of decoding skills. Aim: As a tentative step…

According to the Commitment to Action on Foundational Learning, a global initiative launched at the 2022 Transforming Education Summit, foundational learning refers to "basic literacy, numeracy, and transferable skills such as socio-emotional skills" (World Bank 2023). This holistic vision of learning outcomes aligns with the Global…

Depending on different factors, aspects of human language such as orthography, lexicon, and pronunciation can change through bottom-up or top-down planning approaches. This article investigates Kinyarwanda language users' attitudes towards Kinyarwanda orthography change, which was implemented on 13 October 2014 in Rwanda. It also discusses the…

Framed by decolonial theory, this paper explores how language and literacy ideologies, including Anglonormativity, or the expectation that children should be proficient in a standardised version of English and are deficient if not, shape language and literacy practices in South African classrooms. While not legitimised, the use of fluid language…

The core objective of this article is to evaluate the progress made in linguistic development over the past three decades, with a specific focus on the role of language and its philosophical underpinnings in reshaping and decolonising South African higher education landscape. Linguistic imperialism as a conceptual framework alongside the Framework…

This study sheds light on the socio-economic factors determining the (re)location of sociolinguistic prestige in postcolonial environments. It uses the case of Namibia, an ethnolinguistically diverse African country that replaced Afrikaans -- an established lingua franca -- with English as its official language to weaken the hold of the formerly…

This research focused on the structure for teaching as a component of the education systems of South Africa and India. India and South Africa form part of the BRICS grouping, and BRICS have set out certain development goals about quality education. This qualitative interpretive study utilised relevant documents from India and South Africa that…

Background: The role of phonological awareness (PA) in successful reading attainment in Northern Sotho has received some attention. However, the importance of developing an awareness to the different phonological grain sizes that underlie decoding (i.e. to different dimensions of PA) has not been established in this language. Aim: This study…

Attempts to prevent language endangerment seem to have overlooked how families proceed in surrendering the language whose intergenerational transmission is their main responsibility. The present paper envisages language maintenance or loss from the vantage point that beliefs about language are the main referents of language use in the family in…

This article explores first-year Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) students' multilingual practices in a university course where students have access to professionally translated technical terminology of the subject field. The study examines whether multilingual technical terminology--embedded in a dialogic teaching model--can contribute to…

The complexity of the linguistic environment in Cameroon raises the question of context and its role in the acquisition of another language. This paper draws a dichotomy between learners in such contexts considered rural and those regarded as urban or cosmopolitan. Using the irregular verb as a yardstick, an evaluation of the acquisition of…