The present paper investigates the relationship between objective ethnolinguistic vitality, individual networks of linguistic contacts (INLCs) and perceived vitality among German-speaking (N = 415) and Italian-speaking (N = 379) adolescents in South Tyrol, Italy. Supporting our hypothesis, we found that INLC has a greater effect on perceived…

The relationship between family language policy (FLP) and language choice, language use, proficiency in Russian and Hebrew, codeswitching (CS) and linguistic performance was studied in Russian-speaking immigrant parents and their Russian-Hebrew bilingual preschool children. By means of Glaser's Grounded Theory, the content of sociolinguistic…

This paper explores the identity and the social/political behaviour of Russians in post-Soviet Central Asia through a comparison with the Baltic countries via a "hot and cold ethnicity" paradigm. Central Asian Russians are more likely, ceteris paribus, to be found at the "cold" end of the spectrum of "ethnic…

For many centuries, "being a Jew" was equivalent to "performing the ceremonial laws of Judaism." Thus, ethnic and confessional principles coincided and reinforced the cultural identity of Jewry as an entity. Strong self-identification and in-group solidarity supported the high "ethnic temperature" of this group. The…

This article discusses the Belarusian case of post-communist development and the role and status of Belarusian ethnicity in Belarus' nation-formation process. "Nationalizing nationalism" (Brubaker), as realised by the Belarusian state through various social and cultural practices, is aimed at the creation of a Belarusian national…

The end of the cold war prompted most of the former Soviet republics to face ethnic issues that had remained latent or intangible for decades. Whilst some ethnic groups were actively campaigning for their rights, some others seemed uninterested in being represented politically. The recent theory of hot and cold ethnicity has been conceived to…

The article discusses the temperatures of the main ethnic groups in the Baltic states: Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and their three Russian-speaking communities, and the Latgalian and Polish minority groups in Latvia and Lithuania, respectively. The study uses a triangulated methodology that includes a survey questionnaire for quantitative…

This paper provides a broad comparative summary of all the cases addressed in the Special Issue "Hot and cold ethnicities in post-Soviet space." The aim of the summary is to pinpoint the major features that have an impact on the ethnic temperatures in the social settings studied. This paper argues that ethnic, national, civic and…

This study examines the use of English loanwords in L1 isiXhosa-L2 English bilinguals living in Cape Town, South Africa. The specific aim of the study is to investigate which individual background factors may increase or reduce the presence of English loanwords in a L1 isiXhosa speaker's repertoire. Data on English loanword use and individual…

The present study investigates inter-individual variation (linked to personality traits, multilingualism and sociobiographical variables) in attitudes towards code-switching (CS) among 2070 multilinguals. Data were collected through an online questionnaire. We found that high levels of Tolerance of Ambiguity (TA) and Cognitive Empathy (CE), and…

The academic and public debates about language maintenance and language shift in the post-1994 South Africa distract attention from the more productive and important endeavour of explaining the nature of the multilingualism observed among users of African languages in urban contexts. An explanation for this phenomenon is offered here, based on…

Dominant notions of what constitutes a "language" and what a "dialect" within a continuum are entirely based on sociopolitical factors (i.e. the "languages by 'Ausbau'" of Kloss), totally disregarding structural and communicative aspects. This paper argues that such stance is no longer tenable in view of the…

The objective of this paper is to trace the actual demand on enrolments over time, as much as the history of wavering public and academic sentiment towards teaching and speaking Spanish in this country during the last century. Secondarily, we examine the question of the value of mother tongue fluency or the acquisition, mastery and usage of the…

The mixed-method study presented in this paper investigates the changes in direct and indirect intercultural contact and language-learning attitudes and effort of international students in the United Kingdom. Seventy international learners of English were asked to fill in a questionnaire three times during one academic year in an international…

This article examines the creation of dictionaries for endangered languages (ELs). Though each dictionary is uniquely prepared for its users, all dictionaries should be based on sound principles of vocabulary learning, including the importance of lexical chunks, as emphasised by Michael Lewis in his "Lexical Approach." Many of the…