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Over several generations villagers of Dominica have been shifting from Patwa, an Afro-French creole, to English, the official language. Despite government efforts at Patwa revitalization and cultural heritage tourism, rural caregivers and teachers prohibit children from speaking Patwa in their presence. Drawing on detailed ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of video-recorded social interaction in naturalistic home, school, village and urban settings, the study explores this paradox and examines the role of children and their social worlds. It offers much-needed insights into the study of language socialization, language shift and Caribbean children's agency and social lives, contributing to the burgeoning interdisciplinary study of children's cultures. Further, it demonstrates the critical role played by children in the transmission and transformation of linguistic practices, which ultimately may determine the fate of a language.

The aim of this paper is to show where and what can be read in Mansi about the current situation and use of the Mansi language. We investigate articles in the Mansi newspaper Лӯимā сэ̄рипос [Lūimā Sēripos] which discuss the usage of the mother tongue, the situation of minority peoples and languages, the education in Mansi and in other minority languages, and the application of modern technologies in the preservation of the Mansi language. We analyse thematically related topics that characterize the articles of this newspaper. Finally, we also discuss whether some kind of sociolinguistic terminology related to the issue of language endangerment can be observed in these Mansi texts.

Bilinguals routinely shift between their languages, changing languages between communicative settings. To test the consequences of such changes in language use, 48 Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals named pictures in Arabic (L1) before and after a brief exposure manipulation, including either reading a list of Hebrew (L2) words aloud or performing a nonlinguistic task. Half of the items post-exposure were new and half were translation equivalents of the words presented during the L2 exposure task. Further, half of the items were very low-frequency L1 words, typically replaced by borrowed L2 words. Results show that across word types bilinguals were less accurate and produced more L2 cross-language errors in their dominant L1 following brief L2 exposure. Error rates were comparable for translation equivalents and new items, but more cross-language errors were observed post-exposure on translation equivalents. These findings demonstrate the engagement of both global whole-language control mechanisms and item-based competitive processes, and highlight the importance of language context and the dynamic nature of bilingual performance.

Linguistic insecurity about polite registers constitutes a serious barrier for any new speakers specifically in settings between parents and children or between married couples. Politeness might very well be the register that prevents new speakers from either learning or using their heritage language. This paper examines the current use of honorifics in Okinawan between parents and children, and between married couples. It examines the use and awareness of honorifics in the family domain, paying due attention to situations when honorifics are used without causing communicative and sociolinguistic problems. Two families serve as a case study, including myself and my parents. The results of the analysis of the two families illustrate that the traditional honorific system (use of strict honorifics) has changed to fit modern life and that its accompanying values are characteristic of contemporary Okinawan society. We found that honorifics are rarely used in Okinawan conversations between married couples both by rusty speakers and semi-speaker. The use of honorifics between parents and children (semi-speaker) has been also moderated. If such flexible use of honorifics is adopted at home, there may be a possibility of intergenerational transmission of Okinawan within the family. Lastly, I introduce the opinion of new speakers, all in their 20s, about the use of honorifics. The y do not wish fluent speakers to criticize their mistakes one by one, but they still want fluent speakers to correct crucial errors to master honorifics step by step.

There has been a recent shift from person-first to identity-first language to describe autism. In this study, Australian adults who reported having a diagnosis of autism (N = 198) rated and ranked autism-terms for preference and offensiveness, and explained their choice in free-text. ‘Autistic’, ‘Person on the Autism Spectrum’, and ‘Autistic Person’ were rated most preferred and least offensive overall. Ranked-means showed ‘person on the autism spectrum’ was the most preferred term overall. Six qualitative themes reflected (1) autism as core to, or (2) part of one’s identity, (3) ‘spectrum’ reflecting diversity, (4) the rejection of stigmatising and (5) medicalised language, and (6) pragmatics. These findings highlight the importance of inclusive dialogue regarding individual language preference.

The study aimed to determine students’ perspectives on a shift from a dual-medium (English and Afrikaans) language policy to a monolingual (English-only) language policy at a University of Technology in South Africa and to establish whether the shift had any impact on student learning at the institution. The study used a quantitative method of inquiry, with a questionnaire used for data collection. The findings revealed that language-related challenges vary amongst students, and these can be categorised as low, medium and high language learning problems. The article concludes that the language policy shift does not reflect the multilingual nature of the c ountry, student demographics or their language needs at the institution. Instead of addressing the real challenge facing the majority of students who speak Sesotho, it merely dropped a second medium of instruction (MOI), Afrikaans, instead of developing a dominant indigenous language (Sesotho) for educational use alongside English and Afrikaans.Transdisciplinarity ContributionThe article lays bare the access paradox in higher education owing to the misalignment between the country’s progressive language policies and learning institutions’ language policies. The students’ perspectives bring a much-needed dimension to the ongoing debate on the use of the learners’ home languages as languages of learning and teaching.

This volume offers a close look at four cases of indigenous language revitalization: Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Saami in Scandinavia, Hñähñö in Mexico and Quechua and other indigenous languages in Latin America. Essays by experts from each case are in turn discussed in international perspective by four counterpart experts.

The role of language in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), more specifically, its function in social communication and strong predictive power on future outcomes, warrants language assessments that have good psychometric properties that capture the heterogeneity of language ability found among diagnosed individuals. Given the rapid growth in intervention and treatment research, there is an urgent need for the development and implementation of outcome measures that are easily obtained and sensitive to change. In this commentary, we argue for the use of natural language samples as measures of expressive language and communication for this purpose and review the literature on their implementation in ASD research. Conceptual and measurement issues are discussed and future developments are outlined.

The rise of English as a global language has led scholars to call for a paradigm shift in the field of English language teaching (ELT) to match the new sociolinguistic landscape of the twenty-first century. In recent years a considerable amount of classroom-based research and language teacher education (LTE) research has emerged to investigate these proposals in practice. This paper outlines key proposals for change in language teaching from the related fields of World Englishes (WE), English as a lingua franca (ELF), English as an international language (EIL), and Global Englishes, and critically reviews the growing body of pedagogical research conducted within these domains. Adopting the methodology of a systematic review, 58 empirical articles published between 2010 and 2020 were shortlisted, of which 38 were given an in-depth critical review and contextualized within a wider body of literature. Synthesis of classroom research suggests a current lack of longitudinal designs, an underuse of direct measures to explore the effects of classroom interventions, and under-representation of contexts outside of university language classrooms. Synthesis of teacher education research suggests future studies need to adopt more robust methodological designs which measure the effects of Global Englishes content on teacher beliefs and pedagogical practices both before and throughout the programme, and after teachers return to the classroom.

Previous studies have discussed the impact of social context on language maintenance and shift of Chinese fangyan in metropolises, but not enough in rural areas. To explore the language maintenance and shift of the Hakka fangyan among Mid-mountain Hakka (MMH), a sub-branch of the Hakka people who live in Hakka-Chaoshan adjoining areas, this study examined the language proficiency, use, attitudes, and group identity of 200 residents in Jiexi County using quantitative and qualitative data. Through an analysis of survey- and interview-based self-reported data, our results revealed that although MMH seemed able to maintain the Hakka fangyan at a good level overall, there was still a sharp intergenerational decline in fangyan proficiency, use, attitudes, and awareness of Hakka identity and culture. Furthermore, there may have been a shift from the predominance of Hakka-Chaoshan bilinguals to the predominance of Hakka-Putonghua bilinguals across generations. We also constructed a model of the factors influencing language maintenance and shift of MMH. This study helps enhance our understanding of the role of group identity in language maintenance and shift, and has important implications for the practice of fangyan protection in rural areas of China.