ABSTRACT While multilingualism has become increasingly visible in educational contexts, narratives portraying multilingual students as a homogeneous group continue to have a dominant presence. These widespread narratives, grounded in colonial logic, perpetuate the problematic idea of multilingualism as a singular, unchanging and predictable phenomenon, despite recent scholarship pointing out the complexity and diversity of multilingualisms in different environments. To avoid the risk of erasing non-dominant stories about language, this article investigates the co-construction of multilingualisms through narratives in a Swedish school environment. Drawing on linguistic ethnography to reach the participants’ voices and understandings of language, this study focuses on data from semi-structured interviews with three female students at an upper-secondary school by taking a ‘small story’ perspective that highlights the entangled and dialogic nature of narratives. By doing this, this study explores how different orders of visibility are embedded in these stories about language, revealing the students’ realities of multilingualism as heterogeneous and in constant tension and showing how certain experiences of multilingualism become centred while others are relegated to the margins. Thus this study points to the destabilising potential of dialogic narratives when conditions are met for diverse and complex stories about language to be worth listening to.

ABSTRACT Drawing on linguistic ethnography and sociolinguistics of globalization, this study examines how eight-year-old children embody hegemonic subject positions through translingual practices, i.e. fluid use of linguistic and other semiotic means, in moments that could be read as mischief or off-task action. Applying the lens of intrasectional, feminist critical discourse analysis, this article demonstrates how adopting an ideological standpoint of posthuman child, i.e. acknowledging children’s practices and bodies as legitimate and equally valued to adults,’ unfolds new ways to interpret the data. This study contributes to the knowledge of children’s practices from an emancipatory perspective. The data was generated over a period of six months in one school in the capital region of Finland, where the author had a double role as a teacher and a researcher of a racially and linguistically diverse class. This article focuses on one classroom recording, in which the children present research projects conducted by themselves. The analysis shows that children skillfully mobilize languages, registers, multimodal means and knowledges to embody hegemonic subject positions. Despite interrupting formal learning, the children’s practices are not random but meaningful, providing windows to alternative ways of knowing.

This linguistic ethnography compares discourses circulating among civil servants in Norway’s public health and welfare system with the lived experiences of migrant women living with disabilities. The article investigates how discourses and experiences of vulnerability influence organizational and subjective health literacies. Vulnerability emerges as a dual phenomenon: i) a structural phenomenon, discursively racializing, gendering, and disabling subjects and ii) a collective, relational, and deeply embodied experience illuminating the universal nature of vulnerability as a human phenomenon. The first form of vulnerability sheds light on discursively structured inequalities in health and welfare spaces, and the ways that multiple social factors increase subjects’ exposure to health-related risk through lack of access to health information. Moreover, normalizing discourses of vulnerability produce and order knowledge hierarchies, adding more value to scientific, state-directed information than diverse and experiential health literacies. When internalized by subjects rendered vulnerable (in this case migrant women living with disabilities), such discourses may further victimize, pacify, isolate, and exclude, thus obstructing rather than enabling subjects to enact more relevant health literacies for themselves. The second form of vulnerability identified in the study, sheds light on vulnerable experiences not as marginalizing, but universal. Such experiences of vulnerability enable novel forms of microlevel agency – wiggle room – to recast existing knowledge hierarchies and pursue more relevant literacies. A deeper exploration into discourses of vulnerability will contribute to the undressing of epistemic injustices that regulate subjective and organizational health literacies at the intersection of migration and disability in Norwegian welfare and beyond.

One of the endangered traditions in Indonesia is the Ngusaba Bukakak ritual in Giri Emas Village, North Bali, which is a biennial agricultural ceremony dedicated to Dewi Sri, the goddess of fertility. Therefore, this study focuses on the identification, description, and interpretation of the lexicon used in the ritual to reveal its cultural meaning and contribution to Balinese identity. Data were collected through participant observation, in-depth interviews with ritual experts, and document analysis using a qualitative design framed by linguistic ethnography. Informants were selected using snowball sampling, which included the Traditional Village Head, Village Stakeholders, and Banten Serati, who had in-depth knowledge of ritual language. With triangulation ensuring data validity, the analysis followed Miles and Huberman's interactive model. The results of this study revealed that there are seventy lexicons spread across twelve stages of the ritual, including offerings, sacred objects, ritual actions, dances, and spiritual processions. These lexicons embody philosophical principles such as Tri Hita Karana which expresses harmony with God, society, and nature. This study concludes that the ritual lexicon functions as a linguistic element and as a cultural carrier that maintains Balinese identity, where its preservation is important for cultural sustainability, intergenerational transmission, and the protection of intangible heritage.

Abstract This study examines how an applied linguistics graduate course instructor socializes students into academic concepts and norms in a graduate TESOL class in the U.S. through (trans)bordering, a semiotic process in which individuals create, negotiate, and contest boundaries that define acceptable academic practices, identities, and modes of communication. While translanguaging as a political act seeks to deconstruct linguistic borders, this article argues that bordering remains necessary for individuals to make sense of the world. This multimodal conversation analysis (CA) study draws data from a larger linguistic ethnography examining international students’ communicative practices in a U.S. university. Findings reveal that spatiality, the dynamic use of physical and imagined space to shape communication and meaning-making, is crucial in (trans)bordering. By examining how a graduate course instructor leverages existing and imagined space with other semiotic resources, we learn that (trans)bordering functions as a holistic process that socializes students into academic concepts and norms and provides a flexible framework that instructors use to mediate understanding of academic discourse.

Abstract While code‐switching tends to focus on individual languages, separating each named language of the multilingual speaker, and suggests that these speakers switch between these languages, translanguaging supports the notion that, regardless of whichever language(s) they know, individuals have one unitary repertoire, including semiotic resources, from which they draw freely to make meaning. Adopting linguistic ethnography, this study investigated the translanguaging practices of three Chinese international students studying at a UK university through participant observation and fieldnotes, classroom audio recordings, and interviews. While each participant had their own practices and explained them from their own perspectives, a common theme was that participants were frequently not conscious of their language choices, providing further evidence for a unitary linguistic repertoire and supporting the notion of translanguaging being “highly spontaneous” (Goodman & Tastanbek, 2021, TESOL Quarterly, 55, p. 44). From the insights generated by this research, a set of new translanguaging models, which include linguistic and semiotic resources, is proposed to reflect this reality. The models, unlike many previous ones, are pedagogically focused and can be used by multilingual students and their teachers – who may not be applied linguists – to explore and understand their meaning‐making practices. Recommendations for how to do so are presented.

Drawing from linguistic ethnographic data in what is referred to as accommodated language education for adults, including migrant learners with PTSD, migration stress, deafness, hearing impairment and/or intellectual disability, we here focus on the latter category of learners, and their teacher, in one Swedish language learning group. We analyze and discuss their work with storytelling, which we relate to a crip linguistics approach, forming a site for disruption of an ableist discourse and logocentrism. Our close-up analyses show how aspects of suspense and surprise are shaped via an assemblage of modalities and materialities in collective storytelling that build upon created fictive figures and unexpected events. The paper contributes empirical and theoretical knowledge about this approach, embedded in crip theory, which is shown to provide opportunities for incorporating embodied, emotional and creative aspects in work with narrative text of importance for epistemic justice in education. We foreground linguistic ethnography as a promising avenue for examining storytelling literacies in language education among learners with ID, from a critical lens.

ABSTRACT While scholarship in the Global South has underscored the notion of linguistic citizenship as involved with the struggle for marginalized epistemologies of language, little research has focused on similar situations in the context of the Global North, such as Sweden. Drawing on linguistic ethnography to highlight emic perspectives, the study builds on a classroom interaction in which four female students at an upper secondary school in a suburb of Gothenburg engage in dialogue with their teacher concerning the (in)authenticity of the Swedish rapper Dogge Doggelito as a legitimate speaker of Suburban Swedish. By doing so, the students engage in an act of linguistic citizenship to resist dominant conceptualizations of Suburban Swedish and reinvent ideological boundaries of language following their own experiences of multilingualism in the suburbs. Thus, the study aims to explore the potential of linguistic citizenship as a tool for creating spaces for marginalized epistemologies of language in Swedish education.

ABSTRACT Using a linguistic ethnography in German-language ECEC in South Tyrol, Italy, this paper investigates teacher and parents’ perspectives of ‘good parenting’ and of responsibility in relation to language education. Interviews with teachers revealed that the ideological orientation towards language-as-right, as regulated by South Tyrol, is dressed up and legitimised through neoliberal discourses and leads to a linguistic responsibilisation of language-minoritised parents. By contrast, parents assume different forms of linguistic responsibility to enhance their children’s inclusion in society: By assuming the institutional language as family language, making considerable economic investments, and by challenging dominant perspectives of minoritised parents. The article concludes with implications for more democratic relationships with language-minoritised parents.

This study examines how Vietnamese-English bilinguals construct, perform, and negotiate their personal identity through language in both digital and everyday interactions. Adopting a qualitative methodology that integrates Critical Discourse Analysis with poststructuralist theory, linguistic ethnography, and the concept of symbolic competence, the research investigates bilingual practices such as code-switching, metalinguistic awareness, and cross-linguistic emotional expression. Findings indicate that bilingual speakers navigate multilayered forms of subjectivity, deploying language not only as a communicative resource but also as a tool for emotional modulation, performative identity work, and reflexive self-positioning. English, in particular, frequently serves as a psychological refuge, providing emotional distance, enabling nuanced affective articulation, and preserving discursive agency in contexts of vulnerability or ambivalence. These practices reveal the fluid and dynamic nature of bilingual identity, continually shaped by linguistic choice, cultural ideology, and shifting emotional registers. The study advances a view of bilingualism as an embodied, multidimensional process situated at the intersection of language, affect, and cultural meaning-making. Practical implications underscore the need for language education to adopt identity-responsive pedagogies—approaches that empower learners to engage with language not only as a technical skill but as a symbolic resource for self-expression, negotiation, and emotional resilience.

ABSTRACT This study investigates two distinct ways of organising heritage language education within one national context. More specifically, we investigate the teaching of Greek in Sweden through: (a) mother tongue instruction provided by the national education system and (b) a complementary school run by a parental organisation. Drawing on Archer’s morphogenetic approach (1995), where structure, culture and agency are seen as separate but interrelated analytical layers, we investigate key actors’ agentive responses to structural and cultural enablements and constraints. The study includes a historical overview and a linguistic ethnography conducted in both contexts. The data encompass policy documents, classroom observations and interviews with teachers, board members, parents and students. The findings show that the educational contexts have different legal statuses and are governed at different policy levels (national vs. transnational), while sharing many structural constraints at the level of praxis, such as being based on voluntary participation, limited instruction time and inconvenient scheduling. However, the key actors navigate the constraints of each setting in different ways, thus pointing to distinctive differences between them. Ultimately, the study shows how both educational systems complement each other and serve important roles in supporting the maintenance and development of heritage language and culture in Sweden.

Translanguaging has emerged as an effective pedagogical method in various educational settings where the language of instruction differs from the students’ native languages. In this article, I explore the use of English and isiXhosa in teaching and learning for meaning-making at a higher education institution. Through a task-oriented approach, the study analysed the feedback provided by third-year students enrolled in a communication module about an assignment topic Language and gender. The assignment questions focused on Lakoff’s thoughts on language and gender, and where students were expected to discuss the theory and relate it to their everyday sociocultural situations. The study employed linguistic ethnography techniques to collect data from 12 isiXhosa mother tongue third-year students at a university in the Western Cape, South Africa. From the 12 students only six assignments were selected for the purpose based on their responses which implemented the use of translanguaging in the discussions of the theory of language and gender. The findings reveal that students were inclined to employ both isiXhosa and English in their discussions to enhance comprehension and conceptualisation effectively. Students further demonstrated the ability to apply their cultural knowledge to interpret theory, validating and legitimising their cultural repertoire in academic learning. To enhance multilingualism in South Africa’s higher educational institutions, it is imperative to incorporate indigenous languages into the teaching and learning process to foster equal linguistic opportunities. The study suggests that a translanguaging pedagogical approach can be utilised effectively by educators to evaluate the efficacy of knowledge acquisition and meaning-making. Furthermore, the article illustrates that translanguaging pedagogy establishes an inclusive and enriching learning environment that serves the best interests of all students while also addressing matters of social justice.

ABSTRACT Professional media function as evaluative public voices, and how they portray ethnic diversity has implications for social cohesion. German broadcasters have a remit to foster social cohesion but are frequently criticised for their negative coverage of ethnic diversity. While previous studies focus on evaluating media content, the factors shaping journalists' translingual/transmodal practices behind the scenes and what a meaningful engagement with difference means for journalists are not given sufficient attention. Through linguistic ethnography at a German youth radio station and interviews with journalists, this paper investigates these factors and the challenges journalists face when engaging with ethnic diversity in their image-building.

This article opens up the ‘black box’ of classroom interaction to investigate why opportunities to participate in academically productive (or ‘dialogic’) classroom discussion may be more readily available to some groups of students than others, creating educational inequities. Prior research has attributed disparities in classroom participation to perceived deficits in underprivileged students’ communicative abilities. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic research in two socioeconomically differentiated primary schools, the article challenges this idea and shifts the focus to relational and contextual factors, situating classroom dynamics within the broader sociopolitical landscape. Quantitative analysis reveals significant disparities in student talk time between the two participating schools, with students in the Higher Socioeconomic Status school contributing substantially more to whole-class discussions. Qualitative analysis identifies three mechanisms driving these disparities: differing assumptions about the purpose of classroom talk; competing approaches to managing classroom roles, routines and relationships; and the influence of neoliberal accountability logics. These mechanisms have relevance beyond the focal schools since they are underpinned by widespread beliefs about underprivileged students and systemic pressures that affect schools internationally. The article underscores the importance of linguistic ethnographic research in challenging deficit thinking and providing an evidence base to better inform educational policy and decision making.

Language is more than a communication tool; it embodies cultural identity, social hierarchy, and shared values. In the Batu Bara Malay community, address systems function as structured linguistic expressions of age, rank, kinship, and familiarity, with respect and politeness being integral to interpersonal interactions—especially in addressing elders or individuals of higher status. However, the advent of globalization and social media has introduced new modes of communication among the younger generation, creating tension between traditional norms and emerging language practices. This study investigates the address systems and politeness strategies in the Batu Bara Malay community, focusing on how these are used and transformed in social interaction. Employing a qualitative descriptive approach and linguistic ethnography, data were gathered through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentation involving native speakers across varying ages and social strata. The findings highlight the complex variety of address terms and politeness strategies that reflect deep-rooted cultural values and social order. Despite generational shifts, the community continues to uphold linguistic traditions as a means of preserving cultural identity and maintaining social cohesion.

While speakers of German have adopted many loanwords from other languages throughout history, recent diversification of language use in Germany is mainly driven by the global mobility of English. Previous research has therefore focused on various domains in which English linguistic resources are used, particularly in traditional media and social media communication. Furthermore, many studies on social media communication have also examined English language internet memes more broadly. Despite this plethora of research, little attention has been paid to how English is used in internet memes and reels produced by professional journalists in Germany. Playing a significant role in communication amongst young people, internet memes and reels are used by many German youth media organisations. In particular for youth radio stations in Germany, which have become multimedia outlets, online communication via Instagram is vital for their audience interaction. This paper examines the use of English linguistic resources in a professionally produced Instagram corpus of internet meme and reel captions produced by journalists working for one of the largest youth radio stations in Germany. Data for the analysis of Instagram content were collected as part of the larger ethnographic research project CIDoRA (funded by the European Union). For this project, a mixed methods approach was applied. Methods of data collection and analysis include linguistic ethnography both at the youth radio station and on the station’s Instagram profile page, informal interviews and 20 semi-structured interviews with journalists, and a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 980 meme and reel captions produced for the station’s Instagram profile. Since the youth radio station’s Instagram profile functions as a means of the station’s online self-advertisement, the analysis of this article also draws on a previous study by the researcher. This study analysed possible facilitating factors for the use of catachrestic and non-catachrestic anglicisms in radio station imaging (radio self-advertisement) of six German adult contemporary radio stations. The article therefore includes an analysis of the possible facilitating factors lexical field, brevity of expression, diachronic development of the pragmatic value of lexical items and semantic reasons for the use of English in Instagram content. It thereby explores the differences in anglicism use between these two media formats (radio broadcasting and social media communication) and whether possible facilitating factors for the use of English in adult contemporary radio station imaging are also facilitating factors for the use of English in meme and reel captions produced by the youth radio station.

Formal education is seen as a means to promote social inclusion, upward mobility, and reduce intergenerational disadvantage. However, research shows that migrant students often face disadvantages compared to their native peers, raising concerns about how to best support such learners. Over the past three decades, Europe has experienced significant inward migration, leading to ethnolinguistically diverse populations. In Ireland, this has posed challenges for supporting multilingual learners in schools that were once linguistically homogeneous. Current research advocates for inclusive teaching approaches that go beyond monolingual, assimilationist methods, employing students’ full linguistic repertoires for learning. However, there is limited understanding of multilingual migrant learners in Ireland, with evidence of a lack of linguistic inclusion. This paper uses linguistic ethnography as a theoretical framework to explore how multilingual, migrant learners exercise agency and leverage their linguistic resources to navigate homework completion. Findings highlight a disconnect between school policies, classroom practices, and students’ lived experiences. Tensions in the homework environment, particularly between learners, caregivers, and tasks, were noted. The paper argues for rethinking how homework is approached in multilingual contexts and demonstrates how language influences inclusion, social inequalities, and migrants’ sense of belonging in education.

This paper deals with the sociolinguistically under-theorized concept of solidarity in the context of Twitter-based communication during the blockade that was imposed on Qatar from June 2017 until January 2021. The data collected for this project include a sociolinguistic corpus from Twitter, which has been analyzed in the context of linguistic ethnography. Instead of providing an broad or overarching definition of solidarity, we argue for a close and context-rich approach to the concept based on textual analysis. In particular, we show that solidarity is realized as an online sociolinguistic act of religious, psychological, cultural, social, and grass roots political stance in the context of a heterogeneous community through new ways of textually configuring political relations. The latter translate into the collapsing of traditional binaries found in this absolute monarchical context, such as hatharis (“urban”) and bedouin (“nomads”), or Qataris and non-Qataris, and hierarchies, such as the ruling family and the rest of the people, who live and work in Qatar. In terms of its more practical implications, this paper can be seen as a guide for the Qatari government to develop strategies in strengthening internal solidarity and resilience against any potential future crises.

Dialogic pedagogy has been explored by researchers at length in the 21st century. Focusing on the interactions between teachers and children and the underlying epistemological values that these interactions signal, a growing body of research has identified features of dialogic classrooms and conducted fine-tuned analysis of dialogic functions in classroom talk. Much of this research features classes of older primary learners. However, the foundations of dialogic pedagogy lie in early learning contexts. This article considers how teachers enact dialogic values with young learners (five- to six-year-olds) in discussions where they are invited to share their ideas in response to visual texts that provoke philosophical thinking about social responsibility and living together. The research uses linguistic ethnography to analyse the language of these interactions at macro-, meso- and micro-levels, and detailed extracts from the lessons are included to demonstrate different dialogic strategies that teachers employ. Dialogic chains of four or more turns are analysed in detail, as representative of extended interactions that move beyond simple and traditional classroom interaction structures. The findings highlight core dialogic principles of meaning-making and relating as fundamental to the success of the interactions with young children.

ABSTRACT Drawing from a linguistic ethnographic project in accommodated language education for adult learners with intellectual disability, PTSD or migration stress, this paper engages with the sensing pedagogic body. We explore three language teachers’ recurring physical exercise and relaxation activities in their language courses, including music and images. We expand on previous findings of similar activities in a detailed account of these embodied activities as aesthetic and ethical, breaking with normative temporality and logocentrism, in line with crip theory. Building on both a Levinasian and Deleuzian perspective, we foreground the listening-resonating subject in multisensorial interactions entangled with materialities, and learning as ongoing. The findings contribute new knowledge on the role of aesthetics and relational ethics in this type of embodied space, of relevance to both educational research and practice, in accommodated language education and beyond. The findings also contribute to scholarly debate about representing subjects and subjectivity in linguistic ethnography.