Research on the role of language in multilingual workplaces, where English is often adopted as a lingua franca (ELF), shows that language practices influence socialization and interpersonal communication, frequently creating issues such as asymmetrical sharing of information, language clusters, or thin communication. Similarly to other…

The transgressive use of language by out-group speakers, or crossing is used in a variety of ways to achieve both affiliative and disaffiliative ends among youths. However, crossing can also be used as an affiliative resource in asymmetrical power relations between teachers and students. Reporting on the findings of a 1.5 year ethnography of an…

This study analyzes the narrative-based interview data of three Indian women to examine the manner in which they utilize stylization to construct identity-rich, ideological stances related to discriminatory discourses of Hindi and English medium education in the linguistically rich, albeit complex, present-day context of India. Stylization is…

This article draws on a study of language choice and language ideologies in an international company in Denmark. It focuses on the linguistic and social challenges that are related to the diversity of language competences among employees in the modern workplace. Research on multilingualism at work has shown that employees may be excluded from…

In multinational corporate companies, multilingualism is often a daily reality for employees and the negotiation of language practices for work and social purposes, a routine. Despite the role of English as a lingua franca, the linguistic ecology of modern workplaces is dynamic, rich and diverse. While English is often used for communication…

The present case study demonstrates how the multilingual practices of a linguistically diverse workforce contribute to the functioning of a modern workplace. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and recordings in a residential home for elderly people with dementia in Sweden, the article explores how multilingual immigrant care workers creatively use…

This paper draws on the KINSA project (The Communicative Situation of Immigrants at Swedish Workplaces), which aimed to identify communicative factors that have a positive impact on the integration of second language speakers in the workplace and in their immediate work team. The focus here is on humour and swearing as strategies for doing…

In this article, I present and discuss a commemorative book project to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Greek School of Lausanne. I examine the continuities and discontinuities of the notions of language, identity and community as these were represented through the voices of former Greek state officials, teachers and pupils. I take a long…

In this article the notion of "community" is examined through a lens which focuses on the way people interact and communicate in and around a Panjabi complementary school. Analysis of linguistic ethnographic data contributes to understandings of how identities are produced and reproduced, and how belonging becomes naturalised. The…

The situation once described by Hoffmann (1985), in which children grow up exposed to three languages from an early age, is a reality for an increasing number of families. In Europe--as elsewhere--greater mobility is leading to greater numbers of mixed-language couples (Piller 2002), and, by extension, multilingual families. For such families,…

The present study focuses on the language attitudes underlying patterns of stylistic variation in the speech of a female former President of the Spanish local Government of Murcia. We build on previous quantitative work demonstrating that this speaker shows unexpectedly high usage levels for nonstandard Murcian Spanish features in public speech,…

The aim of this study was to explore pragmalinguistic strategies employed by a group of Iranian English language learners when making refusals to invitations, requests, offers and suggestions in their first (Persian) and second (English) languages. Data were collected from 86 participants through a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The social…

This article contributes to the study of language maintenance as an everyday activity in binational-bilingual families. By embedding the question of language maintenance into a language socialization framework and adopting a conversation-analytic approach to language alternation, three excerpts of mealtime interactions in Russian-French speaking…

This study looks at the discursive construction and negotiation of hybrid identities within binational couples. I analyze conversations produced by Anglophones married to German-speaking Swiss residing in central Switzerland. I employ Bucholtz & Hall's sociocultural linguistic model (2004, 2005, 2010), which views identity as emergent in…

The present study analyses bilingual conversations taking place in binational families living in the UK. The focus is on two Polish/English stepfamilies, where the Polish mothers' concern with preserving and developing their children's linguistic and cultural identity collides with the English partner's limited knowledge of Polish.…