The subject of multilingualism in institutions has long been a central interest in sociolinguistics, and it is worth asking why. The answer lies in the role of institutions in the modern nation state, a point made over and over again by Michel Foucault. Institutions control access to all the resources a state can distribute; it distributes them…

Language conceptualised as multilinguality is constitutive of being human and may be a potential site for negotiating conflict and exploring paths of harmony in education. In various domains of activity, most people would rather see "a language" as a homogeneous, pure and standard pairing of a lexicon and syntax. There is substantial…

In this paper, I explore the impact of linguistic super-diversity on the teaching of languages at tertiary level. Through a small-scale study of university-based language teachers in Australia and the United Kingdom, I examine to what extent these teachers have become aware of the changed language profiles that their students are bringing to the…

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…

This paper examines the marginalisation of multicultural and multilingual discourses that occurred in Australia in the mid-1990s and that continues to the present day. The contemporary struggle between national and multicultural identities is considered against the background of the re-emergence of nationalist discourses across many Western…

In situating the challenges in languages education policy in Australia in current times, I give an account of policy and curriculum development for the learning of languages in school education. In so doing, I highlight (1) the integral relationship between languages education, literacy and multiculturalism policies; (2) the meaning and…

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.…

An international interest in multilingualism and multilingual education has burgeoned since the turn of the twenty-first century, accompanying apparently significant changes in the physical and virtual mobilities of people, international frameworks, and commitments and goals for socially just education. It has also accompanied major political…

This study takes an experimental approach to "lingua receptiva" (LaRa), a communication mode in which interlocutors each use their own--different--native language. In contrast to previous work on LaRa, this study investigates the phenomenon in genetically unrelated languages. Native speakers of Estonian and Russian were engaged in a…

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…

This paper investigates how the presence of a minority language closely related to the majority language is received and treated on the World Wide Web. Specifically, it deals with the acceptability and treatment of texts written in Slovak in the .cz domain, which belongs to the Czech Republic, more than a decade after the split of Czechoslovakia.…

The growing mobility of populations in important parts of the world has led, and is continuing to lead, to a lasting change from monolingual to multilingual teams of people working together, and the need for techniques for communication between people of different languages. A frequent stereotype envisages the most convenient solution as the…

This article reports on an inter-generational inter-cultural pilot project carried out in suburban Melbourne which supports the second-language acquisition of younger people and enhances the social inclusion of older people of migrant background. The article begins with an outline of the multilingual context in which the project is based. 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…