This article reports on an inquiry into Chinese netizens' online discussions related to the "Protecting Cantonese Movement" in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, on the Chinese mainland. It interprets the ideological discourses used by Chinese netizens in online discussions to protect the status of Cantonese, a regional variety of the Chinese…

In different countries, the use of pictorial information symbols to convey warnings and instructions is becoming more common. An important reason for this is that people from a variety of cultures can understand graphical symbols. However, symbols developed in one culture may not have the same meaning for people from other cultures. This study…

In recent years, universities across Europe have increasingly adopted the use of English as an academic lingua franca. Our article discusses current trends in Swedish higher education by presenting the results of a large-scale survey on the use of English conducted at Stockholm University. The survey involved 668 staff and 4524 students and…

This article explores, through interview data with 125 respondents in Canada, whether the study of foreign languages can be considered as important as the study of the "core" STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) subjects in school and university curricula. Five categories of interviewees, including those involved and not…

Foreign-accented speakers are generally regarded as less educated, less reliable and less interesting than native speakers and tend to be associated with cultural stereotypes of their country of origin. This discrimination against foreign accents has, however, been discussed mainly using accented English in English-speaking countries. This study…

For all families with deaf children, choosing communication methods is a complex and evolving business. This process is particularly complex for migrant background families, who must not only negotiate the role that speaking or signing will play in their communication practices, but also which spoken language(s) will be used--that of the host…

China's diversity of minority groups, marked by many languages and cultures, has led to much push and pull experience between homogenising forces and indigenous cultures. This is apparent in its bilingual education programme for ethnic minorities, among which Korean diaspora communities are to be counted. Korean-Chinese people in China have been…

In conversations between immigrants and officials, problems of understanding are often noticeable. About 280 recordings realised at the Argentine Aliens' Department and at several public authorities in Germany show that knowledge divergences regarding linguistic, cultural and institutional knowledge result in (sometimes grave) difficulties of…

This article examines the distributional pattern of signs in the linguistic landscape of a neighbourhood in the commercial district of Phonm Penh, Cambodia. Informed by the frameworks of ethnolinguistic vitality and ethnocultural stereotypes, it discusses the developing multilingualism from socio-economic and historical perspectives. An analysis…

Scholars who work with Latino/as in the USA have long been calling for a more nuanced understanding of the heterogeneity of the US-based Latino population. Two-way Immersion (TWI) bilingual education programmes are an interesting context in which to examine the Latino parent communities in the USA. Overall, the language enrichment nature of TWI…

A contemporary phenomenon--multiplicity of authentic sources of law in different languages--complicates the process of statutory interpretation. In multilingual jurisdictions, problems arise when a literal interpretation of authentic versions of the law leads to inconsistent outcomes. Jurisdictions resolve such inconsistency in different ways.…

Multilingualism is a sensitive and complex subject in a global organisation such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the WTO legal texts, there is a need for full concordance, not simply translation. This article begins with an overview of the issues raised by multilingual processes at the WTO in the negotiation, drafting, translation,…

This paper discusses the question of whether House's theory on a cultural filter can be applied to the study of the appreciation of multilingual audio tours. According to House theory, cultural and linguistic adjustments of a target text to a specific target culture will have a positive effect on the appreciation and understanding of the…

This article compares the perspectives of young migrants in the Netherlands with the dominant discourse on "migrants" at present. The integration of young "migrants" have been studied in the European research projects TRESEGY and PROFACITY with the help of a number of ethnographic studies and a questionnaire in the Netherlands. At present, the…

Concerted efforts to characterise Botswana English (BE), though still referred to as "a variety in development", have validated its existence. However, the teaching and assessment of English in the high schools do not seem to have responded to the development of this variety. This paper discusses the viability of using Standard British English as…