Linguistic landscape studies increasingly focus on the variables that intertwine to generate the meaning of texts on display. International tourist resorts, largely multilingual, reveal how languages in signage combine and respond to the sociolinguistic profile of their readership. However, these settings have received scant attention in the…

Australia is a country of high linguistic diversity, with more than 300 languages spoken. Today, 19% of the population aged over 5 years speak a language other than English at home. Against this background, we examine government policies and prominent initiatives developed at national level in the past 30 years to address the challenge of offering…

This paper explores the role that languages and literacy practices play in Ethiopian immigrant families transposed to Israel as part of Israel's family language policy, by examining parental perspectives on their respective L1 and L2 usages, in both parents' and children's lives, as well as by examining the home literacy provisions…

This paper presents children's writing in their vernacular family language, Moroccan Arabic. It first provides some background to the family and school literacies of nine-year-old children of Moroccan Arabic (MA) background growing up in France with French literacy practices at school and Written Arabic literacy practices in the home. The…

This study considers the upper limit of ultimate attainment in the L2 French and L3 English of trilingual learners. The learners are native speakers of Moroccan Arabic who started learning L2 French at eight and L3 English at 16. They are advanced in both languages. Four constructions representing the verb movement and null subject parameter were…

This paper analyses the use of periphrastic "do" in negative declaratives and non-negative questions with inversion by 200 Swiss and 30 German middle-school students of the same age but with different onsets of learning English and consequently a different amount of foreign language instructions. "Do"-support shows evidence of…

In this paper, in contrast to previous neuroimaging literature reviews on first language (L1) and second language (L2), the focus was only on neuroimaging studies that were directly conducted on multilingual participants. In total, 14 neuroimaging studies were included in our study such as 10 functional magnetic resonance imaging, 1 positron…

In situations of extreme linguistic diversity, language promotion can be a very challenging undertaking. Decades of educational colonisation and foreign language dominance have produced inferiority complexes so that local or indigenous languages (Cameroonian mother tongues), because of their unofficial status, are perceived as liabilities rather…

Although the importance of using students' home languages in education has been recognised for many years, home languages that are not official languages often struggle to find space in school curricula. This paper examines the ways that language-in-education policies influence the space available for non-official languages in the curriculum.…

In this paper a particular context where receptive multilingualism at work can be observed is discussed. The Swiss armed forces underwent a series of quite dramatic downsizing measures, which lead to a situation with increased amount of mixed groups and linguistically mixed situations regarding the first/native language of officers and the…

The language problems faced by migrants may be more complex when they come from a minority language group in their homeland. The new arrivals may find that there are few, or even no, speakers of their language in the community to which they have moved. Then decisions have to be made as to whether to attempt to maintain the native language and also…

This paper tries to give answers for successful receptive multilingualism (RM) but also for its failure. It is mainly based on the results of two projects, one on inter-dialectal communication in the Baltic area during the era of the Hanseatic League and the other analyses inter-Scandinavian communication today. The main purpose of this survey is…

As a result of globalisation and mass migration, suburbs and schools around the world are becoming increasingly multiethnic, multilingual places. Yet there is still relatively little linguistic research on how language is used in everyday interaction in these multilingual communities. In this paper, I explore the strengths and limitations of…

Melbourne's linguistic and cultural diversity has continually changed in response to global economic forces and shifting patterns of war and conflict. Immigrant and refugee communities have arrived with different skills, educational and professional profiles, and cultural and religious values. The ecological niches of three contrasting…

This paper presents profiles of eight multilinguals and examines the circumstances that determine their continued use, in addition to English, of at least two of their "home" languages. I attempt to identify in which domains this occurs, whether there are established patterns of domain-specific language use and whether these patterns are…