Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed…

We examined semiotic exchangeability in pop-up glossary translations and illustrations used as supports for second language learners (SLLs) in computer-administered mathematics tests. In a sample of 516 mathematics items, Grades 3-8 and 11, from a large-scale assessment program in the US, test developers identified terms that could be translated…

This article examines translanguaging that occurs in and as a community. Expanding the notion of translanguaging, we conceptualize "community translanguaging" as collaborative meaning-making among children, their family and community members, and their collective semiotic resources. Using a family literacy project as the research site,…

The present study investigates the adoption of Japanese by users from a popular Chinese video-sharing website, bilibili.com. Over a two-month period, 5,808 instances of language use that involve Japanese language features were sampled from 28,579 video comments. It was found that features of Japanese were often utilized -- either entirely in…

This paper is concerned with fair and valid testing. It reports on a long-term project aimed at creating visual accessibility resources in mathematics computer-administered test items in a large-scale assessment system. We discuss our experience designing and developing pop-up illustration glossaries (IGs) for second language learners (SLLs) --…

This study explores how transnational students who go or return to Mexico understand the complexities of language, identity and schooling in their new context after having been raised and educated in the United States. The study used narrative networks and Blommaert's discourse analysis framework to analyze the narratives of twenty transnational…

Adopting an online ethnographic approach, we examine the linguistic/semiotic practices and ideologies of "purism" among Tatar and Iranian Azerbaijani Facebook users. We argue that purification practices can be understood as identity work, the outcome of which is often not an etymologically "purer" language but a (perceived)…

This article discusses the findings of an empirical study that investigated the writing practices in a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya. The study was undergirded by Bakhtin's heteroglossia. Analysis of texts indicated that these emergent multilinguals used multiple semiotic resources to maximize the chances of meeting the…

In South Africa, democratic consolidation involves not only building a new state, but also new interfaces between state and society. To strengthen the agency of citizens at these interfaces, recent approaches to development stress the notion of "participatory citizenship." The purpose of this article is to explore the links, rarely…