Volume 36, Issue 3 -

This ethnographic case study examines the factors that contribute to multilingual choices and the construction of identities in a linguistically diverse family within a linguistically diverse city, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Based on interviews with a female Emirati in her early thirties, the article examines this young woman’s dispositions (habitus), beliefs and practices with regard to the language and literacy resources at her disposal. It describes how she views English and several varieties of Arabic, focusing largely on her language practices, and the role that they play in the construction and management of her identities, within personal and professional relationships and in relation to the various tasks that she performs in daily life. The study finds that in this superdiverse society, existing language ideologies, indexicalities, stereotypes, and gender issues, may render the performance of multilingualism and the construction of identities potentially rewarding but also potentially disturbing, particularly for those individuals who, through birth and/or marriage, are members of several national or ethnic communities, and who may be, in some senses, icons of superdiversity.

Institutions of higher education (HEIs) in English-speaking countries have been engaged in internationalization for decades. Among the many factors driving their internationalization are commitments to increasing and celebrating diversity as well as a desire to foster cross-cultural cooperation. Nonetheless, the linguistic diversity of their multi-national student body and faculty poses challenges for HEIs, including the decades-old controversy surrounding international teaching assistants (ITAs) in the United States. Despite their commitments to respecting diversity, HEIs have generally adopted a deficit approach to ITAs’ language, framing it as ‘flawed’ and attributing communication problems to those ‘flaws’. I argue that, despite its more nuanced understanding of the issue, applied linguistics has adopted an implicit politics complicit with this dominant framing which leads researchers to ignore the student’s role in ITA-student communication. In response, I propose an alternative approach grounded in critical sociolinguistics. Working from this perspective, I examine students’ discourse about their international instructors, arguing that their statements suggest contrasting orientations to communication across linguistic difference. Some students seek to cooperate with their international instructors, while others prefer to avoid them. I examine their justifications for these orientations in detail and discuss implications for higher education policy.

The goal of this paper was to address the question, Have the austerity measures enacted due to the global economic crisis impacted student enrollments at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez ? as Rodríguez (2011. Social protest and the future of Higher Education in Puerto Rico. Academe 97(4). http://www.aaup.org/article/social-protest-and-future-higher-education-puerto-rico#.U81ofj6gmpo (accessed 7 Dec 2011)) suggests. The costs, matriculation rates, and English language requirements of the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez and two nearby private universities were compared. The findings demonstrate that during the economic crisis matriculation rates of the poorest students at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez decreased significantly, as Rodríguez suggested they would. However, the facts lead the current author to adduce that money does not appear to be the only factor causing decreasing enrollments. The data reviewed leads the author to suggest that English is functioning as a barrier to public higher education in Puerto Rico and that this may be a contributing factor in the falling matriculation rate over the period of the economic crisis.

Troubles-telling and complaints are common in contexts of care for older people and need to be managed by care staff in a respectful manner. This paper examines the handling of an older person’s complaints in multilingual care encounters that involve participants who do not share a common language. The data consist of video-recordings and ethnographic fieldwork in a residential home for older people in Sweden that is characterised by a variety of languages and backgrounds. The findings are based on analyses of multi-party interactions involving an Arabic-speaking resident and caregivers with different levels of knowledge in different languages. We focus on complaint sequences when the resident expresses a negative stance (displeasure, anger, etc.) towards some difficult circumstance. Using the methodology of conversation analysis, we analyse the affect-regulating work through which the caregivers attempt to turn a pressing situation into a moment of cheerfulness and intimacy. The analyses bring to light the multilingual practices that the caregivers draw upon in pursuing this work, such as translating and giving voice to the resident’s complaining.