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The study deals with the sociolinguistic phenomenon of codeswitching as manifested in community-based ethnic-language classes. More specifically, it focuses on teachers' codeswitching from students' second language (Mandarin Chinese) to students' first language (English). The empirical study was conducted at one Chinese community school in the United Kingdom to investigate the instances in which teachers switch to students' first language and to explore teachers' introspection regarding their codeswitching behavior. Twelve types of codeswitching were identified and categorized in accordance with functions recorded in other studies. Discrepancies between teachers' beliefs on the choice of language medium and their actual practices were found. Teachers were not always aware of their codeswitching and they generally held positive attitudes towards their conscious codeswitching and negative attitudes towards subconscious codeswitching. Conscious switches were used mainly for pedagogical, interpersonal, and interactive purposes. A sense of guilt was found to be associated with their unconscious codeswitching. This study suggests that raising teachers' awareness of the potential usefulness of codeswitching within ethnic-language education is paramount. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the application of Social Network Analysis to the study of language maintenance and language shift in the Chinese community in Britain. An approach that focuses more on individual variations, including variable behaviours by the same speaker in different contexts, is proposed. The approach is illustrated with new data from Chinese-speaking families in London. The role of the social media in language maintenance and language shift, and in promoting multilingual practices is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Somali community in Britain has been portrayed as largely homogenous and rather problematic, unwilling to integrate into mainstream British society, a perception that is reinforced by the media and government policies. The government policies tend to ignore the internal diversity and change that the community is experiencing. Drawing on data from a family language policy project, this paper aims to explore intergenerational changes in language preference and use and associated issues of identity within the Somali community in Britain. We look at how the changes in language preference and practice manifest themselves through reported language use and language policies at home, how the changes are affecting the British Somali youths in particular, and how ideas of Somaliness and Britishness are negotiated on an individual level, as well as on a community-wide level through Somali-led organisations. And we highlight the work that the community is doing to tackle issues of intergenerational language shift and Somali identity building. The study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the struggles of the Somali community in Britain in dealing with diversity and change, an understanding that is crucial to the development of appropriate policies regarding the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines diasporic language ecology based on a sociolinguistic study of a Chinese complementary school (CCS) in Birmingham, England. The study applies a historical perspective to investigate local multilingual practices in relation to language ideology and identity. The discussion in this paper draws on heteroglossia to investigate language stratification in the CCS. It documents the impact of global mobility and socio-economic changes on shifting power relations among two Chinese language varieties (Putonghua and Cantonese) and English. Data for the discussion includes audio-recordings of interaction and interview as well as fieldnote vignettes. Findings show that (1) a stratified ideological ecology including 'separate bilingualism', 'translanguaging', 'a preferred school-wide monolingualism', and 'a standard language ideology' is dynamically constructed and negotiated in the school as a local heteroglossia; (2) At the intra-Chinese level, the Chinese language shift from Cantonese to Putonghua at global level is seeing its power in the local discourses of Putonghua becoming 'the new diasporic standard'. This standardisation towards Putonghua, on one hand, is claimed and celebrated in the school by some Putonghua-speaking members as 'practical' and 'useful' for better communication; on the other side, it is also contested – sometimes silently – in tension-filled local interactions by groups of Chinese people who lack the resource of Putonghua in their repertoires. This complex and tension-filled standardisation of diasporic Chinese language provides new local discourses of global mobility and the ongoing conversion from linguistic standardisation to social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the trouble of the language shift of World War I for the British people. Topics include examples of legends that accompany the War, the significance of the language shift in helping educators comprehend the war's impact on the British people, and the source of the British antebellum mentality about the shift. Also mentioned is the author's suggestion that the shift is the ironic use only of abstractions by certain infantry officers.

This paper examines how children exercise their agency vis-à-vis their mother’s beliefs and practices of bilingualism, especially code-switching, at home and elsewhere. The data were mainly collected through audio-recordings of family conversations both with and without the presence of the researcher and semi-structured interviews conducted during 19 visits to two families with Japanese-speaking mothers and 12-year-old English–Japanese bilingual children. An analysis of the data reveals that, despite there being a difference in language practices and backgrounds, both children discursively negotiate and construct their bilingual positions at home through their flexible use of the two languages. Furthermore, their language practices are not a passive response to their mothers’ beliefs, but an exercise of their agency through contestation, negotiation and redefinition of the mothers’ beliefs. In particular, this study has identified two types of agency: (1) construction of the positive self-image and negotiation of the parent–child relationship through the active use of English; and (2) resistance to the mother’s monolingual policy through a flexible use of the two languages. The data also provide insight into the situated and multidimensional nature of agency by showing changes in the children’s practices depending on the context, such as in conversations with the researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The past two decades have seen an explosion of interest in interactionally orientated perspectives on identity. The Community of Practice framework was employed by sociolinguists working within this paradigm because it firmly grounds identity in social practice seeing it as a process that speakers engage in during actual interactions. Interest in variation within communities of practice is growing, as the well-boundedness of linguistic and social concepts (including identity and language) is increasingly questioned. The current article develops this perspective by exploring code-switching practices of British-born Greek-Cypriots in two distinct contexts: community meetings and a dinner. Findings indicate that this community of practice does not constitute a uniform entity: complex interactions transpire between local and global variables including gender, community-specific setups, contexts, and discourse types. The study also problematizes the concepts core and periphery, used to describe variation within communities of practice, offering a revised understanding of practice, which focuses on silent participation. (Code-switching, community of practice, Greek-Cypriot, gender, identity, individual variation) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We report on a small-scale exploratory study of Japanese students' reactions to the use of a bilingual language assistant on an EFL study-abroad course in the UK and we give an insight into the possible effect of using bilingual assistants on speaking production. First-year university students were divided into three groups all taught by a monolingual (native) speaker of English. Two teachers had monolingual assistants to help them; the third group had a bilingual (Japanese–English) assistant. In the third group, students were encouraged to ask the assistant for help with English meanings and to provide English equivalents for Japanese phrases, especially during student-centred activities. Moreover, the students in the third group were encouraged to code-switch rather than speak hesitantly or clam up in English. In the first two groups, the students were actively discouraged from using Japanese among themselves in the classroom. The data from an open-ended questionnaire suggest that attitudes to having a bilingual assistant were generally positive. Moreover the ‘bilingual’ group made the biggest gains over the three week period in fluency and in overall speaking scores although these gains were not statistically significant. Suggestions for further research are explored particularly in relation to whether a bilingual assistant may provide support with the cross-cultural challenges faced by EFL learners. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the multilingual and multimodal practices of British Chinese children in complementary school classes from a multicompetence perspective. Using classroom interaction data from a number of Chinese complementary schools in 3 different cities in England, the article argues that the multicompetence perspective enables a holistic look at codeswitching and modeswitching by multilingual children of minority ethnic background and helps to highlight creativity and criticality-2 important and closely related concepts that have hitherto been underexplored in multilingualism research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at patterns of language use in Hong Kong around the time of the end of colonial rule by Britain in 1997 to identify some of the issues arising in that context from language contact and language shift. Two different models used in the study of multilingualism or bilingualism will be discussed -- language use reflecting function or status (diglossia) and overlapping language forms reflecting linguistic constraints (code-switching). The changes in language use and form in Hong Kong are seen to be more dynamic than traditional models of diglossia or code-switching suggest, which may partly indicate the special history of language contact in Hong Kong, but also may indicate the need for more flexible models of multilingualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the changing patterns of language choice, code switching, and borrowing in naturally occurring conversations of Turkish Cypriot adults in a London workplace. The small representative sample contains workers of second and third generation Cypriot women. It is shown that language use can be variable with intergenerational patterns. In Cyprus while Cypriot Turkish (henceforth CT) is influenced by Standard Turkish (henceforth ST), the shift is more towards English in London. However, CT continues to have an important social function in both communities and is used to convey culturally specific experiences in routine daily conversations. The purpose of this case study is to highlight language shift in a London sample, to show that language use in the Cypriot Community — as in other linguistic communities in the UK — is changing increasingly to adapt to new sociolinguistic paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's insights on the sociolinguistic aspects of language shifts in British signed languages. The author states that sociolinguistic factors have been recognized as characteristic of multilingual and deaf communities due to shift or attrition situations. Moreover, the author notes the vital role of the linguist to become engage in promoting self-determination despite bilingualism and biculturalism issues in a sign language community in Great Britain.

The purpose of this paper is to foreground the extent to which the English language has eroded the originality and purity of the Yoruba language. The main focus will be on code-switching practices, which I believe to be detrimental to Yoruba in the long run. Although linguists have long proposed a ‘leave-your-language-alone’ attitude (see Hall, 1950), there is little doubt that the effects of first British colonization and then globalization have changed the linguistic ecology of Africa. Few sociolinguists would deny that a people's language is a symbol of their identity and culture. In an important textbook in the field, Holmes (1992: 70) confirms that ‘Language is an important component of identity and culture for many groups, maintaining their distinct identity and culture is usually important to … self esteem.’ What are we then to make of the extensive code-switching that I will be documenting in this article? Linguists' tolerance has certainly extended to code-switching studies in Africa, from which much important data has been drawn. The main scholar in this area is Carol Myers-Scotton, whose two books on code-switching (1993a,b) were based primarily on her research in Africa and remain central to the field internationally. Scholars like Coupland and Jaworski (1997) propose that the use of mixed speech in a conversation is not necessarily a language defect but a sign of flexibility and creativity. Understanding the social, psycholinguistic and syntactic motivations for switching is one thing, but the applied linguist and educationist also has to ask serious questions about what this means for the future of local languages heavily implicated in code-switching. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]