Hong Kong is both a Chinese metropolis and an international Asian city. Its sociolinguistic dynamics have been shaped by its unique history as a British colony in the years from 1842 until 1997. According to the official language policy (of biliteracy and trilingualism), the Hong Kong government recognizes three spoken languages, Cantonese, Putonghua, and English, and two written languages, that …
This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on heritage language maintenance and family language policies among multilingual families in Cyprus, a context characterized by diverse migrant communities and complex sociolinguistic dynamics. Grounded in Family Language Policy (FLP) and language socialization theories, it addresses the gap in understanding how external crises influence…
Existing studies on minority language shift in China have mainly examined macro-level language policies, adult language practices, or general patterns of proficiency loss, leaving insufficient attention to how children in ultra-endangered language communities experience and negotiate highly asymmetrical bilingual resources. This study investigates the bilingual development, language socialization…
As times change so too do people’s life stages. Traditionally
these were thought of as child > adolescent > adult, but this idea is now
called into question with the addition of an ‘emerging adult’ stage before adulthood. As age is such an important sociolinguistic
variable, this is a significant development for anyone interested in studying language
variation and change, as Douglas S. Bigham e…
