The volume explores the social, cultural, and historical forms of “language” that have come to be associated with “Asia” as a global phenomenon and their implications for better understanding the contemporary linguistic and political landscape in Asias. The book examines the flows of migration, people, cultures, and language resources within, across, through, to, and from Asias in tandem with social, political, and ideological factors, drawing on case studies of global iterations of a wide range of Asian national and cultural imaginaries. In so doing, the volume builds on the growing body of scholarship on the sociolinguistics of globalization in its critical inquiries into the linguistic and cultural practices that have come to be constitutive of national or supranational localities toward unpacking the forces of globalization more broadly. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars interested in sociolinguistics, multilingualism, linguistic anthropology, Asian Studies, and Asian American studies.

This collection charts the evolution of grammatical variation in Englishes from Late Middle English to the present, using corpus linguistic tools to address divergence and convergence in local and global perspectives. The book considers both diachronic and synchronic perspectives in grammatical variation across varieties of English across the UK, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The volume reflects on the questions of whether patterns of variation diverge or converge and to what extent catalysts for change are shared in time and space. Chapters look at different factors in grammatical variation at both the macro and micro level, investigating specific linguistic and grammatical features but also at wider phenomena in contact linguistics, social patterns, social networks, and media-based corpora. Chapters progress from the local to the global, all with an eye towards using the latest methodological approaches from corpus linguistics to shed light on the affordances of data-informed methods to study grammatical change and the possibilities for future research. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and World Englishes.

This Handbook centers on language(s) in the Global South/s and the many ways in which both "language" and the "Global South" are conceptualized, theorized, practiced, and reshaped. Drawing on 31 chapters situated in diverse geographical contexts, and four additional interviews with leading scholars, this text showcases: Issues of decolonization Promotion of Southern epistemologies and theories of the Global South/s A focus on social/applied linguistics An added focus on the academy A nuanced understanding of global language scholarship. It is written for emerging and established scholars across the globe as it positions Southern epistemologies, language scholarship, and decolonial theories into scholarship surrounding multiple themes and global perspectives.

Anchored within current issues and debates in the field of Linguistic Landscape (LL) scholarship, this edited volume is concerned with politics of language and the semiotic construction of space in multilingual and multi-ethnic Asian countries. Spanning Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, the chapters explore how different individuals and collectivities use semiotic resources in different spaces – schools, airports, streets and shops as well as online platforms – to reinforce or contest existing social structures, bearing strong implications for language maintenance and cultural revitalization, construction of ethnolinguistic and national identities, and socioeconomic mobility. Part I looks into how globalization and its accompanying forces and influences – such as the importance of English in socioeconomic mobility – come into contact with local Asian cultures and languages. Part II examines minority languages, demographically and socio-politically established in the countries, shedding light on the role of LL that plays in both their minorization and revitalization processes. Part III investigates how LL is utilized as a site for constructing identities to pursue socioeconomic, political and cultural goals. It is within this perspective that the presence and salience of English in the LL of the countries along with the use of the Asian languages is analyzed and understood, shedding light on how Asian heritage languages and cultures are preserved and/or certain identities in the times of political unrest or economic development are expressed. This fascinating insight into linguistic landscapes in Asia will be of interest to researchers, students and policy makers in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics anywhere in the world.

This volume explores the global spread of English or global Englishes, and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), focusing specifically on Asian Englishes. It is unique in the range of diverse perspectives across the languages and cultures by its contributors.

Global Asian City provides a unique theoretical framework for studying the growth of cities and migration focused on the notion of desire as a major driver of international migration to Asian cities. Draws on more than 120 interviews of emigrants to Seoul—including migrant workers from Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, English teachers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, UK and USA, and international students at two elite Korean universities Features a comparative account of different migrant populations and the ways in which national migration systems and urban processes create differences between these groups Focuses on the causes of international migrant to Seoul, South Korea, and reveals how migration has transformed the city and nation, especially in the last two decades

Over 2.7m students study in a country other than their own. Most of those students come from the Asia-Pacific region and undertake study in universities in the developed world. This trend is predicted to grow exponentially but features many dilemmas. In the post-9/11 global environment, international students experience hostility and harassment as well as ambivalence about their value to the academy. Some live an uncertain life of poverty and alienation. Many also struggle to come to terms with living and studying in a foreign land where there are concerns about international students eroding academic standards, having poor English language proficiency and being unable to “integrate” and contribute to their new communities. But some also seek to make new homes in their host countries. The contributions in this book explore the complex and diverse aspects of transnational education and propose some pragmatic approaches to these dilemmas. These contributions explore new ways of looking at the phenomena of international students, their social and cultural needs, as well as the challenges for teaching and learning, research supervision and English language in the academy. The book presents case studies and documents initiatives that are positive responses to the dilemmas of global student mobility.

In their book, the authors describe the usage of and attitudes towards English in Asia since the 19th century, as well as the creative and dynamic ways in which Asians of the 21st century continually reinvent the lexicon of English, and the lexicons of their native tongues. The current biggest source of loanwords for many of the world’s languages is English, the once obscure Germanic language that has risen to the role of a global lingua franca. However, the overwhelming influence of English is far from being entirely one-sided, at least from a lexical perspective. Many have decried the way that English has "invaded" the vocabularies of their languages, without realizing that the English word stock is to some extent also being invaded by these languages. This book explores the phenomenon of word exchange by examining its occurrence between English and some of the major languages spoken in Asia-highly multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual region where English is the predominant medium of international and intraregional communication. Students and researchers from various linguistic areas such as World Englishes, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, lexicology, and contact linguistics will find this book appealing.

This timely volume constitutes the first book-length account of implicit as well as explicit language attitudes. It details the findings of a large-scale study, incorporating cutting-edge implicit and self-report instruments adapted from social psychology, investigating the evaluations of over 300 English nationals of the status and social attractiveness of Northern English and Southern English speech in England. The book is unique in its examination of implicit-explicit attitude divergence, across a range of social factors, to identify the direction of language attitude change in progress and the particular social groups leading attitude change. The volume provides a comprehensive understanding of language-based prejudice in England and the study paves the way for researchers to employ newly developed implicit and explicit measures to investigate language attitudes and language attitude change in a range of contexts. This book is invaluable for researchers in sociolinguistics and applied linguists interested in theoretical and methodological aspects of linguistic prejudice and language variation and change. It is also essential reading for social psychologists with an interest in attitudes, attitude change and prejudice.

Hatoss explores multilingualism in diverse suburbs of Sydney through the oral and written narratives of student ethnographers. Her research is based on visual ethnography, interviews with local residents, and classroom discussions of the fieldwork. The findings of this book contribute to the scholarship of sociolinguistics of globalisation and seek to enhance our understanding of the complex interrelationship between the linguistic landscape and its participants: how language choices are negotiated, how identity and ideologies shape interactions in everyday contexts of the urban landscape. The narrative approach provides a multi-layered analysis to better understand the micro and macro connections shaping everyday interactions, conviviality, and social relations. Hatoss offers methodological and pedagogical insights into the development of global citizenship and intercultural competence through the experiential learning provided by the linguistic landscape project. This volume is a useful source for researchers working in diverse fields of multilingualism, diaspora studies, narratives, and digital ethnographies in sociolinguistics. It offers methodological insights into the study of urban multilingualism and pedagogical insights into using linguistic landscapes for developing intercultural competence.