This chapter reviews the last twenty-five years of L2 prosody research in three sections, word stress, sentence intonation, and rhythm, and presents findings in relation to two underlying themes, form-meaning mapping and additive versus subtractive bilingual contexts. Concerning L2 stress, pioneering research framed perception difficulties either as an L1-to-L2 cue-transfer problem or as a processing deficit linked to learners’ inability to represent contrastive stress in their lexicons. Recent research established the extent and limits of those initial frames. L2 sentence intonation has multiple factors modeling its variation. One of them, social meaning, and in particular accommodation literature revealed the effect of affective factors which in multilingual communities became stronger than that of linguistic and social factors. As regards L2 rhythm, most research uses duration-based measures. Indeed, recent L1 studies started examining pitch-based rhythm measures which are still to be explored in L2. Ending with suggestions for future research that address those biases, this chapter aims at promoting a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of L2 prosody.

In 1960-80, (American) linguistic anthropology (e.g., Gumperz and Hymes , ) developed an empirical, ethnographic approach to (the details of) language (use), its social context, and variation across speakers and situations, affinities and differences. It overlapped with (Labovian) sociolinguistics — and was distinct from Chomsky’s formal, ‘universal’ approach. It defined, refined or created ‘units’ of analysis, e.g. speech community/community of practice; speech event (ethnography of communication, the SPEAKING mnemonic); everyday speech and interaction; verbal and non-verbal contextualization cues (interactional sociolinguistics); communicative habits of speakers (e.g., diglossia); indexes/indices connected to the context which help social identity formation. Thus, it defined language as a cultural practice and social resource and linked the details of performance with broader conditions of use.

In 1980-2000 interdisciplinary conversations led to new domains of inquiry: (1) language socialization: language acquisition and full participation in social groups by children and newcomers related to cultural norms, practices, attitudes; (2) language ideologies: ideas about social and linguistic relationships, linked to issues of power, politics, and economics; (3) verbal performance: creative and aesthetic uses of language and other forms of artistic expression.

Language is not a neutral medium of communication; it is embedded in social contexts and is a force that is socio-historically-politically determined.

This chapter examines the effects of various instructor individual differences (IDs) on their beliefs regarding the “ideal” L2 Spanish and their assessment of speech samples of different advanced oral proficiency sub-levels as determined by the ACTFL-OPI. It also answers the question of whether different language components are rated differently, and if such ratings match the evaluators’ ideologies. Quantitative data were collected from a survey distributed among N=77 members of academic institutions who occupied various professional roles around the world consisting of administrators, researchers, and practitioners. The survey examined constructs such as linguistic structure, sophisticated language use, and sociocultural appropriateness. Results show that instructor IDs affect beliefs regarding advanced language use, that they create bias in assessing it, and that consequently foreign-language departments need to educate its constituents about evolving definitions of advancedness, about the reality of individual biases in assessment, and that they need to provide the leadership to implement them in curricular design.

To explain Latinization of the Roman West, scholars have long searched for evidence of a language policy mandating the use of Latin. They have found none under the Principate. The Roman centre was not interested in policies involving all its subjects, and elite Romans were uninterested in languages other than Latin and Greek and had no concerns about their use, as long as the Empire’s functioning remained intact. Indeed, it is not clear that any such policy would have made much sense for provincials in illiterate and translingual environments. However, though there may not have been an Empire-wide policy of Latinization, there were certainly language ideologies and multiple narrowly focused facets of language management concerning the use of Latin and Greek in the running of the Empire.

This chapter addresses the shift from multilingualism to monolingualism associated with the demise of the Ottoman Empire. It begins with a general overview of the linguistic conditions in the Ottoman lands, briefly surveying the historical dimensions of linguistic interactions reflecting the ebb and flow of Ottoman expansion and contraction, including the Westward movement of Turkic speakers into the central Islamicate lands and Anatolia from the eleventh century, the expansion of Ottoman rule into the Balkans from the fourteenth century, and the influx of Muslim refugees into the shrinking borders of the Empire as a result of military defeats and ethnic cleansing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter then focuses on three main factors affecting linguistic interactions in the Ottoman lands: (a) the inherently multilingual nature of Ottoman Turkish as an amalgam of three languages, namely, Turkish, Arabic, and Persian; (b) the lived linguistic experience in the Empire, including the lack of a clear correlation between ethnicity, religion, and mother tongue, e.g., large numbers of Armenians, Turks, and Greeks, whose first language was not, respectively, Armenian, Turkish, or Greek, and; (c) the ways in which the advent of nationalism and Western influence affected the linguistic scene in such a diverse and demographically mixed Empire. The chapter ends by considering post-Ottoman language policies and the monolingual orientation of the modern nation-state. The tensions between the two are often revealed when signs of the multilingual past emerge to disturb the monolingual assumptions of the modern, read “national,” era.

This introduction has three aims: (a) to discuss the causes of historic amnesia in the field of multilingualism; (b) to offer a brief survey of historic language management, defined here as explicit efforts to regulate the choice of languages and scripts and to facilitate communication in the public domain; and (c) to reconsider the relationship between past and present multilingualism and identify productive directions for future inquiry. I begin by listing the misconceptions that raised my interest in the history of multilingual societies. Then, I will discuss the paradoxes and contradictions of historic language management in six institutional domains: administration, courts of law, religion, army, education, and public signage. In the last section, I consider the big picture emerging from recent historic work. The opposite of what we have come to believe, this picture undermines the sense of contemporary exceptionalism and opens up space for new narratives and exciting avenues of pursuit.

In an increasing number of families and communities, children grow up in multilingual and multicultural environments. Children thus negotiate their identities while navigating across linguistic practices and ideologies at home, in school, and in community spaces. This paper has two main aims. First, it develops a clearer understanding of developments in the research domain of plurilingualism, identity, childhood and education. Second, it provides insight into the nexus between children’s’ identity construction and larger societal discourses and practices. In the first part, the focus lies on the concept of identity itself and the way it relates to language(s), discourse(s) and societal language ideologies. In the second part, the focus is on some contexts that are especially relevant for the development of children’s linguistic identities and agency, such as family language policies, early childhood education in nurseries, language regimes and pedagogical traditions of language teaching in schools. The important role of educational institutions with regard to the lingua-cultural identity development of children and adolescents in a globalized world becomes more than evident.

The linguistic input parents provide to their children is crucial to the development of multilingualism. This chapter focuses on multilingualism in families where children either receive input in two or more home languages that are different from the environment language(s) or grow up in a bilingual community and have at least one additional home language. The chapter discusses quantity and quality of parental input as well as challenges in measurement. It reviews aspects of parental input, drawing upon Spolsky’s (2009) interrelated components of family language policy (FLP) – language ideologies, language management, and language practices. Parental attitudes, beliefs, and language ideologies impact on motivation and goal-setting in relation to the input they provide to their children. Language management is addressed through an examination of models of multilingual upbringing and parental input strategies. The implementation of FLP is reflected in actual language practices within the family. These are considered not only from the parental perspective but also from the children’s reactions to their parents’ input, as child agency plays a substantial role in the eventual success of parents’ strategies and practices.

This chapter discusses the changing local and global contexts in which Chinese (i.e., one or more Chinese languages or dialects) is being learned by multilingual youth and adults. Case studies of heritage- and non-heritage transnational learners of Mandarin in Canada, the United States, Australia and China illustrate the multi-scalar influences and enactments of larger geopolitical initiatives, ideologies, investments, and power relations in Chinese education and the many forms of Chinese-involved multilingualism(s) that can result. The chapter then explores how these and other factors shape learners’ identities, forms of agency, and linguistic histories as well as their trajectories and (sometimes fraught) subjectivities as multilingual Sinophones. The chapter concludes with a call for additional research representing a wider range of multilingualisms, raciolinguistic identities (especially among non-Anglophone learners), and migration histories and trajectories in Chinese language learning.

This chapter deals with the study of how deaf and hearing signers, and others, understand sign languages by themselves and in relationship to other languages and modalities. By doing linguistic ethnography, it is possible to investigate these language attitudes and ideologies as they unfold in everyday practice, towards ideas such as the status of sign languages and particular varieties; discourses surrounding linguistic authority, authenticity and ownership; and the emergence (or development) of new sign languages and new subject-specific vocabulary. The methods discussed in this chapter are ethnographic research methods and visual methods: participant observation, ethnographic filmmaking, and language portraits. The main points of the chapter are illustrated by means of three case studies: (1) participant observation in multilingual tourist spaces in Bali, in which Indonesian Sign Language, International Sign, and American Sign Language are used; (2) ethnographic filmmaking within an international multi-sited research project focusing on International Sign; and (3) the use of language portraits with new signers and heritage signers in Flanders, who mostly use Flemish Sign Language and Dutch.

This chapter outlines how historical data can be used for research on language attitudes, concentrating on the field of historical sociolinguistics. It first discusses methodological challenges when working with historical data. Since historical (socio-)linguists cannot elicit data, they rely on the written and typically fragmented data available, which provide limited access to the attitudes of individuals. Furthermore, the boundaries between language attitudes and language ideologies are less sharply drawn in historical sociolinguistic research than in research on present-day data. Attitudes and ideologies are usually not addressed separately and often set in other linguistic contexts, such as language standardisation, linguistic purism, and prescriptivism. The second section of the chapter provides an overview of promising text sources that can be utilised to study language attitudes in the past, including normative texts, ego-documents, and statistical accounts, discussing both their potentials and drawbacks. The third section explains how these sources can be analysed, focussing on discourse-analytical and corpus-linguistic methods. To illustrate the main points made in this chapter, two case studies (one on German and one on Dutch) are presented. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of emerging trends in historical sociolinguistics, particularly the move towards studying language attitudes in multilingual settings.

This chapter examines the significance of attitudinal research in understanding the dynamics of language contact situations in multilingual societies from a cross-disciplinary perspective. This chapter provides practical guidance for the study of language attitudes and ideologies in multilingual communities by discussing issues relating to research planning and design (e.g. identifying which languages are to be explored, whose language attitudes are to be examined in the community), as well as data analysis and interpretation (e.g. quantitative data collected through questionnaires or matched-guise techniques, or qualitative data through interviews or ethnographies). Other important considerations for attitudinal research in multilingual communities are also covered (e.g. the mismatch between positive attitudes towards a language or languages and language use, or links between language policies and language attitudes in language revitalisation projects). The main points made in the chapter are illustrated by means of two case studies. The first relates to language attitudes in multilingual classrooms and the second focuses on language attitudes and ideologies amongst new speakers of minority languages with a focus on Galician in the Autonomous Community of Galicia in north-western Spain.

As a settler nation, the United States is a contact zone unto itself, with a dynamic ecology of migrating, multilingual speakers of minority and minoritized languages, and emergent language varieties. This chapter examines the linguistic, social, and political policies associated with many of these communities, drawing on research that examines the real and imagined pasts and presents of language users. Acknowledging the inherently political and ideological practice of separating and naming languages, the chapter focuses on the mobilization of diverse linguistic resources, highlighting the fluidity of multilingualism in US contexts. The chapter provides a broad and, by necessity, selective overview of Indigenous and immigrant language contact, change, loss, and survival in the US. Starting with a brief history and overview of current work with respect to immigrant languages, the chapter then describes examples of current research on Indigenous languages in the US. Discussion in each section is organized around contemporary research and theory on language status, language corpus, and language acquisition. The chapter concludes with consideration of the possibilities created by multilingual speakers’ adaptive strategies to help their languages survive and thrive in the US’s aggressively monoglossic context.

Standardization in multilingual situations entails more challenging social scenarios due to the complexity inherent in the identification of particular varieties in the community’s linguistic repertoire as different languages. Based on four case studies from Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala, this chapter shows how speakers of Mayan languages have implemented sometimes opposed standardization strategies according to their local history, ethnic landscape, sociopolitical context and sociolinguistic economy. The studies show that success is predicated upon adaptation, first, to the social roles of linguistic variation in particular regional, multilingual spaces, and second, to the local, existing writing practices. It also requires dialogue and flexibility by the communities and institutions involved. From the unification of mutually unintelligible varieties under one pan-regional standard to the establishment of different standardized varieties for otherwise mutually intelligible regional vernaculars, standardization processes of Mayan languages in Guatemala are as diverse as the sociopolitical and sociolinguistic contexts in which each language is spoken. Failed or contested standardization is, on the other hand, a result of attempts to impose a single model of standardization on communities with heterogeneous histories and unique articulations of ethnic identity and linguistic variation.

This chapter describes some prevalent ideologies and attitudes found in minority language communities. It emphasizes the importance of listening to attitudes expressed in a community, and identifying the underlying ideologies, before developing programs to improve negative attitudes. Particularly in cases of linguistic discrimination and language trauma (e.g. Breton, Kashubian Polish), changing language ideologies is a long-term process and must be handled sensitively. The best approach is to make people aware of ideologies and how they function, through education, media and other means. Case studies address ideologies leading to the loss of Zadar Arbanasi in Croatia, and a positive shift in attitudes to Guernesiais, although these are not necessarily followed by action. In the Isle of Man, in order to change perceptions of Manx it is necessary to avoid arguments about the authenticity of the modern form of the language. In Jeju (Korea) Jejudommal is seen as a language in which emotions can be expressed more richly than in Standard Korean. Negative attitudes and ideologies associated with speaking Nahuatl are described.

Developing community writing systems in marginalized communities may have many benefits. These range from improved self-esteem and visibility of the language, for written communication and the production of materials. Writing is essential for education: both mother tongue-based multilingual education and immersion teaching for revitalization. This chapter reviews practical and ideological considerations in writing oral languages, exploring motivations behind spelling and script choices. It is essential that communities be in control of all activities that aim at establishing community orthographies for their languages – above all, community members must wish to have their languages written. Key factors in designing effective orthographies are considered, including examples of scripts adopted by minority languages and factors that have influenced their choices. One individual recounts his personal journey to writing and creating literature in his language, Wymysiöeryś. Examples are also given of how curriculum development and research are shaped by a focus on Nahuatl ways of thinking and organizing knowledge.

The Introduction describes citizen sociolinguistics as an offshoot of the broader category of citizen science and exemplifies types of expertise that everyday people bring to the study of language in context. Instead of looking to experts in the field of linguistics for definitive diagnoses of language issues, I lay out the perspective that these institutionally centered voices are just one of many different interesting and personally invested views on language. In this way, I illustrate citizen sociolinguistics as a means to explore social norms, not a statement of top-down language standards to be adhered to in all cases, or a studied expertise that provides a definitive description of language works. The Introduction concludes with an overview of the chapters to come.