Many age-related second language (L2) studies have confirmed that young children have a better chance to become nativelike in L2 acquisition than adults. The current study investigated whether age effects exist in the L2 acquisition of Japanese and whether nativelike proficiency is guaranteed for early child L2 starters after constant target…

This article provides a selective overview of recent event-related brain potential (ERP) studies in L2 morpho-syntax, demonstrating that the ERP evidence supporting the critical period hypothesis (CPH) may be less compelling than previously thought. The article starts with a general introduction to ERP methodology and language-related ERP profiles…

The present article examines the relationship between age and dominance in bilingual populations. Age in bilingualism is understood as the point in development at which second language (L2) acquisition begins and as the chronological age of users of two languages. Age of acquisition (AoA) is a factor in determining which of a bilingual's two…

Monolithic views of languages predominate in linguistics, applied linguistics, and everyday discourse. The World Englishes, English as a Lingua Franca, and Critical Applied Linguistics frameworks have gone some way to counter the myth, highlighting the iniquities it gives rise to for global users and learners of English. Here, I propose that…

This article explores the feelings of imposture that are sometimes experienced by multilingual subjects--learners of a language other than their own or users of multiple languages--and their difficulty of finding authentic or legitimate subject positions in a global world with fluid boundaries and uncertain categories of identity. It examines what…

This article argues for the relevance of poststructuralist approaches to the notion of a linguistic repertoire and introduces the notion of language portraits as a basis for empirical study of the way in which speakers conceive and represent their heteroglossic repertoires. The first part of the article revisits Gumperz's notion of a linguistic…

Depending on the demands of a particular communicative situation, bilingual or multilingual speakers ("bilingualism-multilingualism") will switch between language varieties. Code-switching is the practice of moving between variations of languages in different contexts. In an educational context, code-switching is defined as the practice…

Complexity, accuracy, and fluency have proved useful measures of second language performance. The present article will re-examine these measures themselves, arguing that fluency needs to be rethought if it is to be measured effectively, and that the three general measures need to be supplemented by measures of lexical use. Building upon this…

The main purpose of this article is to review studies that have investigated the effects of three types of planning (rehearsal, pre-task planning, and within-task planning) on the fluency, complexity, and accuracy of L2 performance. All three types of planning have been shown to have a beneficial effect on fluency but the results for complexity…

The Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson 2005) claims that pedagogic tasks should be sequenced for learners in an order of increasing cognitive complexity, and that along resource-directing dimensions of task demands increasing effort at conceptualization promotes more complex and grammaticized second language (L2) speech production. This article…

The general aim of this article is to discuss the application of Usage-Based Linguistics (UBL) to an investigation of developmental issues in second language acquisition (SLA). Particularly, the aim is to discuss the relevance for SLA of the UBL suggestion that language learning is item-based, going from formulas via low-scope patterns to fully…

In this article, I discuss the concept of semantically redundant language through a case study of the Te Rauparaha Maori haka. I suggest that current linguistic theories cannot give a full account of ritualized speech events, of which the haka is an example, as these theories are based on a traditional dyadic model of interaction involving a…

The pragmatic study of silence has not got much concern in the Arab world in general and in Jordanian Arabic in particular. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the perception and practice of silence in casual conversation in Jordanian society from a pragmatic point of view. This study adapts Volosinov's notion of…

The effects of age on second language acquisition constitute one of the most frequently researched and debated topics in the field of Second Language Acquisition. Two different orientations may be distinguished in age-related research: one which aims to elucidate the existence and characteristics of maturational constraints on the human capacity…

Although the originators of the language socialization (LS) paradigm were careful to cast socialization as a contingent, contested, "bidirectional" process, the focus in much first language LS research on "successful" socialization among children and caregivers may have obscured these themes. Despite this, I suggest the call for a more "dynamic…