Christina Higgins

The volume explores how new millennium globalization mediates language learning and identity construction. It seeks to theorize how global flows are creating new identity options for language learners, and to consider the implications for language learning, teaching and use. To frame the chapters theoretically, the volume asserts that new identities are developing because of the increasingly interconnected set of global scapes which impact language learners' lives. Part 1 focuses on language learners in (trans)national contexts, exploring their identity formation when they shuttle between cultures and when they create new communities of fellow transnationals. Part 2 examines how learners come to develop intercultural selves as a consequence of experiencing global contact zones when they sojourn to new contexts for study and work. Part 3 investigates how learners construct new identities in the mediascapes of popular culture and cyberspace, where they not only consume, but also produce new, globalized identities. Through case studies, narrative analysis, and ethnography, the volume examines identity construction among learners of English, French, Japanese, and Swahili in Canada, England, France, Hong Kong, Tanzania, and the United States.

Language Learning in the New Millennium

Identity Formation in Globalizing Contexts

Bonny Norton

This volume focuses on the role of language in the construction of knowledge about HIV/AIDS. The authors draw on discourse analysis, ethnography, and social semiotics to interpret meaning-making practices in formal and informal HIV/AIDS education in Australia, Cambodia, Burkina Faso, Hong Kong, India, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, and Uganda.

Language and HIV/Aids

When analyzed in multilingual contexts, English is often treated as an entity that is separable from its linguistic environment. It is often the case, however, that multilinguals use English in hybrid and transcultural ways. This book explores how multilingual East Africans make use of English as a local resource in their everyday practices by examining a range of domains, including workplace conversation, beauty pageants, hip hop and advertising. Drawing on the Bakhtinian concept of multivocality, the author uses discourse analysis and ethnographic approaches to demonstrate the range of linguistic and cultural hybridity found across these domains, and to consider the constraints on hybridity in each context. By focusing on the cultural and linguistic bricolage in which English is often found, the book illustrates how multilinguals respond to the tension between local identification and dominant conceptualizations of English as a language for global communication.

Post-colonial Identities and Multilingual Practices

English as a Local Language

Lyn Wright

An increasingly important field of research within multilingualism and sociolinguistics, Family Language Policy (FLP) investigates the explicit and overt planning of language use within the home and among family members. However the diverse range of different family units and contexts around the globe necessitates a similarly diverse range of research perspectives which are not yet represented within the field. Tackling this problem head on, this volume expands the scope of families in FLP research. Bringing together contributors and case studies from every continent, this essential reference broadens lines of inquiry by investigating language practices and ideologies in previously under-researched families. Seeking to better reflect contemporary influences on FLP processes, chapters use innovative methodologies, including digital ethnographies and autoethnography, to explore diverse family configurations (adoptive, LGBTQ+, and single parent), modalities (digital communication and signed languages), and speakers and contexts (adult learners, Indigenous contexts, and new speakers). Bringing to light the dynamic, fluid nature of family and kinship as well as the important role that multilingualism plays in family members' negotiation of power, agency, and identity construction, Diversifying Family Language Policy is a state-of-the-art reference to contemporary theoretical, methodological and ethical advances in the field of family language policy.

Christina Higgins

Books

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