This book is the beginning of a conversation across Social Semiotics, Translanguaging, Complexity Theory and Radical Sociolinguistics. In its explorations of meaning, multimodality, communication and emerging language practices, the book includes theoretical and empirical chapters that move toward an understanding of communication in its dynamic complexity, and its social semiotic and situated character. It relocates current debates in linguistics and in multimodality, as well as conceptions of centers/margins, by re-conceptualizing communicative practice through investigation of indigenous/oral communities, street art performances, migration contexts, recycling artefacts and signage repurposing. The book takes an innovative approach to both the form and content of its scholarly writing, and will be of interest to all those involved in interdisciplinary thinking, researching and writing.

This book contributes to understanding research approaches for studying multilingualism in the context of contemporary superdiversity, in environments that are being dramatically transformed by transnational migration and movement of peoples. It explores language in urban contexts: the city as a site for experimentation and creativity in language practices. This involves considering theoretical frameworks in which to examine these practices, but above all, it focuses on how we do, or could do, research into these language practices and their users. What methodologies are we using to understand urban linguistic contexts? What do we want to learn? The chapters explore complex and challenging situations, capturing the evolution of new forms of language practice and changing attitudes to language in the city.

Voices and Practices in Applied Linguistics comprises a selection of original applied linguistics-based research on the theme of the diversity of Applied Linguistics and in Applied Linguistics. It is a unique collection of reflections and cutting-edge research relating to academic, policy and professional fields of Applied Linguistics, featuring chapters written by founders of the field, established researchers, and rising stars. This accessible, eclectic and forward-looking volume is significant both for research and practice. It highlights current globalised perspectives on diversity in language use and communication, across a variety of contexts, and with a rich mix of frameworks, methodologies and participants. Compiled and edited by a team of academic experts in the field, this edited collection will be of interest to established and emerging researchers in Applied Linguistics globally. It will also be relevant to language professionals, practitioners, and policy makers. The volume draws together papers from the 2017 British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) conference, marking the 50th anniversary of its inaugural meeting. Founded in the mid-1960s, this UK-based professional association provides a forum for Applied Linguistics and its annual meeting brings together researchers and language professionals from across this field.

This book presents one possible pathway towards the advancement of translanguaging pedagogies: teacher–researcher partnerships. Although the existing literature alludes to the value of such partnerships, there is a lack of research that explicitly describes the complex processes of designing and implementing translanguaging pedagogies in primary and secondary school settings (K-12) across various international contexts. Through an expanded focus on teacher–researcher collaboration and the negotiation process, the book unpacks the opportunities and challenges of engaging in contextualized translanguaging designs with reference to broader ideological discourses and systemic structures. By promoting and highlighting teacher–researcher partnerships as one avenue for improvement and transparency, the chapters in this book demonstrate the potential of translanguaging pedagogies in classrooms and further resist the linguistic hierarchies that exist in educational institutions today.

Language policy is heterogeneous and varies according to its object, levels of intervention, purpose, participants and institutions involved, underlying language ideologies, local contexts, power relations, and historical contexts. This volume offers unique cross-cultural perspectives on language planning and policy in diverse African and Middle Eastern contexts, including South Africa, Bahrain, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Zambia, and Algeria. The African diaspora is also considered, as is the case of Brazil. By bringing together diverse contexts in Africa and the Middle East, this volume encourages a dialogue in the burgeoning scholarship on language policies in different regions of Africa and the Middle East in order to inspect the intersection between language policy discourses and their social, political, and educational functions.

Multilingual classrooms and online communication are becoming increasingly linguistically diverse due to globalization and new discourse patterns are emerging. Many of these patterns include the use of linguistic resources from multiple languages in the same utterance. Translanguaging, a recent theoretical framework, is gaining prominence among scholars interested in studying these multilingual discursive practices and the concept of a unitary language system for lexical processing. The aim of this book is to gain a better understanding of the bilingual brain and how words and sentences that use features from socially distinct languages are processed. Using examples provided by multilingual study participants, a categorization of the various forms of translanguaging is developed to build a translanguaging model. Psycholinguistic methods such as eye tracking are combined with conventional sociolinguistic survey methodology to provide rich qualitative and quantitative data that address the cognitive effects of translanguaging and the underlying structure of translingual word-formations. This monograph shows how language biography, exposure, and attitude towards multilingual discursive practices all affect cognitive processing. It also demonstrates how multilingual speakers are setting the patterns for novel word-formations to be produced, thus having a social, cultural, and cognitive impact on how we communicate.

This edited volume provides research-based knowledge on the use, production and assessment of multimodal texts in the teaching and learning of English as an Additional Language (EAL). The book reflects growing interest in research on EAL, with increasing numbers of learners of English worldwide and the growing relevance of EAL to numerous education systems. The volume examines different aspects of English from a multimodal perspective, showcasing empirical research from across five continents and all three levels of education. Applying frameworks based on Multimodal Social Semiotics and Systemic Functional Linguistics, chapters focus on the use and affordances of multimodal texts in pedagogy, literature, culture, text production, assessment and curriculum development connected to EAL. Directing attention to the significance of modes beyond speech and writing in EAL, the volume provides a wide range of perspectives and experiences that can be applied more widely and inspire other practices in the global and diverse field of EAL teaching, learning and assessment. This collection will be of interest to scholars in multimodality, language education, and teacher education.

This collection showcases perspectives from established and emerging scholars on the contemporary landscape of multilingualism in Southern Africa. The book explores the broader impact of colonialism and neocolonialism on language policies and practices, drawing on case studies from such countries as Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The volume is organised thematically around four different sections, looking at issues around linguistic diversity across different sectors including contemporary debates on African languages, language education, youth languages and language documentation. Taken together, the collection seeks to offer readers with a more nuanced understanding of fundamental issues in the development of multilingualism across different countries in Southern Africa today and encourage future research on multilingualism in Africa more broadly. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars in multilingualism, sociolinguistics, language policies, language education and African studies.

This book examines translanguaging as a resource which can disrupt the privileging of particular voices, and a social practice which enables collaboration within and across groups of people. Addressing the themes of collaboration and transformation, the chapters critically examine how people work together to catalyse change in diverse global contexts, experiences and traditions. The authors suggest an epistemological and methodological turn to the study of translanguaging, which is particularly reflected in the collaborative, arts-based and action research/activist approaches followed in the chapters. The book will be of particular interest to scholars using ethnographic, critical and collaborative action and activist research approaches to the study of multilingualism in educational and creative arts contexts.

This collection brings together a range of perspectives on multimodal communication in intercultural interaction, bridging cognitive, social, and functional approaches towards promoting cross-disciplinary dialogues and taking research at the intersections of these fields into new directions. The volume assembles conversationalist, socially oriented, cognitive, and sensory approaches in considering culture as a dynamic construct, co-constituted and (re)negotiated among participants in interaction and filtering it through a multimodal lens, drawing on a range of examples, such as educational settings or online video platforms. Each chapter offers a unique perspective on "culture" and "intercultural," while also situating their own definitions of these labels against those of the other chapters. Taken together, the chapters form a fluid conversation on the nature of intercultural encounters in today’s globalizsd world, as digital environments intertwine with the physical mobility of people, encouraging researchers across these fields to adopt a more holistic multimodal perspective to approach intercultural interaction. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in intercultural communication, multimodality, sociolinguistics, cognitive and interactional linguistics, and semiotics.