In Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World the discourse of politicians and policy-makers in Britain links languages other than English, and therefore speakers of these languages, with civil disorder and threats to democracy, citizenship and nationhood. These powerful arguments travel along… read more
The British citizenship ceremony marks the legal endpoint of the naturalisation process. While the citizenship ceremony may be a celebration, it can also be a final examination. Using an ethnographically-informed case study, this article follows one candidate, ‘W’, through the naturalisation… read more
The British citizenship ceremony marks the legal endpoint of the naturalisation process. While the citizenship ceremony may be a celebration, it can also be a final examination. Using an ethnographically-informed case study, this article follows one candidate, ‘W’, through the naturalisation… read more
In this chapter we propose that Bakhtin’s understanding of voicing as heteroglossia offers rich potential in our analysis of contemporary linguistic practice. In and around Mandarin and Cantonese community language classrooms in an English city we show how participants’ voices are infused with the… read more
Language testing in various forms has been used for some time as a gate-keeping
mechanism to determine whether applications for citizenship are successful. In recent
times the rationale set out by politicians for such a policy has been that some people’s
failure to learn and use English… read more
