Volume 39, Issue 2 -

This article takes a linguistic anthropological approach to analyzing multilingualism in the linguistic landscape of the Amazonian city of Tena, Ecuador, a key locus of indigenous Kichwa language revitalization, identity formation, and politics. Following recent scholarly reconsiderations of multilingual linguistic landscapes as sites of ideological contestation and performative display, I seek to expand on the foundational concept of ethnolinguistic vitality. Building on an analysis of shifting materiality and semiotics of bilingual Kichwa-Spanish hospital signs, I argue for the use of longitudinal and deep ethnographic study of public sign-making in progress to identify oppositional struggles over ethnolinguistic authority, or control of authorship in displays of ethnolinguistic presence. In Tena, Kichwa-language signage represents a new venue for the decolonization of politics, the performance of indigeneity, and the centralization of state power, which are expressed through competing visions by agents with distinct ideological orientations toward language. I submit ethnolinguistic authority as a critical concern for the ethnographic study of public inscriptions of minority languages, which reflect contrasting ideologies of language, notions of group identity, and claims to representational sovereignty.

This paper investigates how bilingual Upper Sorbian-German teachers who belong to the Sorbian speech community (Lusatia, Germany) introduce the minority language during German language lessons in an Upper Sorbian school. In Lusatia, as well as in Sorbian schools, bilingualism is not of equal character; minority language speakers are all bilingual while the German language speakers are not encouraged to speak Sorbian. The language policy of Upper Lusatia gives Sorbs the right to use their language in public life in principle but due to the strained Sorbian-German relations, language ideologies, and hostile attitudes towards the use of minority language in the presence of Germans Sorbs do not benefit from it in practice. The school language policy divides Sorbian-speakers from pupils of German-speaking families and keeps the teaching of Sorbian separate for both groups. Only during the last two years of school are all language groups mixed. Based on participant observation of and in-depth interviews with bilingual teachers during lessons with students of the 11th grade in one Upper Sorbian school this article discusses how teachers negotiate top-down language policy in their classrooms and, introduce bilingualism; and how their language choices affect students’ language practices.

Transnational migrant students have been found to experience marginalization in educational contexts around the world. This critical sociolinguistic ethnography explores the incorporation and learning outcomes of an as yet under-researched group: transnational migrant students from Myanmar in a border high school in China. This context is unique in that migrant students are celebrated as part of China’s soft power project to extend its international reach. Despite these welcoming discourses of diversity, transnational migrant students experience significant exclusion as a result of practices such as military-style school regulations, a Gaokao-centered curriculum, and streamed segregation. Overall, the paper highlights the necessity to pay attention to the ways in which schools reproduce social stratification of migrant students through implicit and explicit institutional practices despite celebratory diversity discourses.

Mixed-ethnic children in Japan do not usually acquire the language of their non-Japanese parent. This study looks at their lost opportunity to acquire their minority parent’s language through a retrospective investigation of their language experiences from childhood to young adulthood. Transcripts of interviews with ten mixed-ethnic children (ages 18 to 23) were analyzed based on the constructive grounded theory approach (Charmaz 2014 Constructing grounded theory , 2nd edn. London: Sage). Analysis of codes which emerged from the interviews revealed that family relations, parents’ reluctance to speak the minority language and the prioritization of English were some of the factors perceived by the mixed-ethnic children to have contributed to the non-transmission of the minority language. Many of the children described their lost opportunity to acquire the minority language as regretful. Questions posed by Japanese people about their identity and language reminded some participants of their mixed-ethnicity and inability to speak the minority language. These findings suggest that the non-transmission of the minority language has long-term implications on the social and emotional well-being of mixed-ethnic children in Japan.

This article examines the acquisition of pragmatic competence in L2, applying this stimulating area of research to premodern texts in a way that has yet to be done (to the author’s knowledge). Specifically, this article discusses the teaching of “challenging” incongruent speech behaviours (such as sarcasm, banter, and irony) in a group of Anglo-Norman dialogues of the late Middle Ages. The present work focuses on the representation of incongruent speech acts in the dialogues, how this representation speaks to a pedagogical method that incorporated humour, and also the possible functions of humour in the pedagogical environment. The topic of incongruent performance and its pedagogical implications will also be considered. By discussing the depiction and role of incongruent speech behaviours in the dialogues, I argue that these texts were sophisticated teaching aides that may have used humour as a pedagogical tool to teach more difficult elements of language use.