While interest in affective processes has led to an affective turn in cultural studies, in sociolinguistics this perspective has been given less attention. This study takes up the ‘lens of affect’ and directs it on two cases exemplifying the circulation of minoritised languages in new media spaces: music video covers from two minority-language contexts, Irish and Sámi, uploaded on YouTube. Combining recent theorising on affect with insights from sociolinguistic research, the study investigates how the YouTube users’ affective investments contribute to a (re)evaluation of the two minoritised languages, their speakers, and the related ethnic/national belongings, and how these investments are expressions of more or less banal nationalism, connected to the colonial histories of Ireland and Finland. The study illustrates how the social media operate as a catalyst of affective investments involved in an ethnolinguistic (re)ordering of languages and their speakers, at the intersection of ‘banal globalisation’ and ‘everyday nationalism’. (Minority languages, affect, discourse, social media, nationalism)*

Multilingualism is often framed as human capital that increases individuals’ labor market value. Such assertions overlook the role of ideology in assigning value to languages and their speakers based on factors other than communicative utility. This article explores the value assigned to Spanish-English bilingualism on the United States labor market through a mixed methods analysis of online job advertisements. Findings suggest that Spanish-English bilingualism is frequently preferred or required for employment in the US, but that such employment opportunities are less lucrative. The results suggest a penalty associated with Spanish-English bilingualism in which positions listing such language requirements advertise lower wages than observationally similar positions. Quantitative disparities and qualitative differences in the specification of language requirements across income levels suggest that bilingual labor is assigned value through a racial lens that leads to linguistic work undertaken by and for US Latinxs being assigned less value. (Multilingualism, labor market, Spanish in the United States, economics of language, raciolinguistics, human capital)*

Children acquiring sociolinguistic knowledge in transnational migration settings must learn to evaluate multiple languages and dialects in a fluid, multifaceted social landscape. This study examines the sociolinguistic development of local and expatriate children in Singapore and investigates the extent to which they share sociolinguistic knowledge and norms. One hundred fourteen children ages five to nineteen completed a region identification task and an occupation judgment task, focusing on their perception of four regional English varieties: Australian English, Northern-China-accented English, Filipino English, and Singapore English. While all groups performed well on the region identification task, expatriate children outperformed locals within the youngest age group. Singaporean and expatriate children attending local schools showed greater familiarity with local norms than international school students in their occupation ratings. Participants mapped speakers to occupations by general prestige level, suggesting that children rely on indirect knowledge of social status rather than direct experience with speakers in their development of sociolinguistic evaluation. (Children's sociolinguistic development, transnational migration, language attitudes)*

This article looks at Spanish-Estonian speaking families and their language ideologies in relation to language use in the family setting—how parents decide to use languages among themselves and with their children. Family members choose different languages for different purposes when they talk to one another. In our study, parents draw on their knowledge of the ‘one parent–one language’ strategy but also translanguage for different reasons, constructing new patterns of bilingual modes. In the article, we examine parents’ attitudes towards language maintenance, transmission, and use with their children. We incorporate the lens of ‘new speaker’ research to analyse the empirical data collected in Tallinn households among Spanish-Estonian speaking families so as to contribute to a better understanding of family language policy, planning, and management, highlighting how macro-level sociolinguistic expectations and norms might be elaborated on the micro level in everyday social interactions. (Family language policy, language ideology, new speakers, Estonian, Spanish)*

This article brings the critical turn in linguistics—with its current scepticism towards essentialised languages and bias for languaging—under critical evaluation. It does so by bringing it face-to-face with the local-knowledge turn in sociolinguistics that investigates local knowledge and local epistemologies, held by language users themselves, to understand sociolinguistic phenomena. This article analyses whether and how the epistemologies inherent to language, mother tongue, and languaging hold relevance in local metalinguistic talk in Malaysia. Focus group discussions with ethnic Malay, Chinese, and Indian youth reveal that languaging through Bahasa Rojak is already firmly embedded in local epistemologies for communicating across ethnolinguistic divides and fostering interethnic inclusiveness. An essentialised view of language, however, remains vital to any holistic sociolinguistic research in Malaysia in culturally specific ways that do not conflict with languaging. The article therefore supports arguments that we ought not to disregard mother tongues in the interests of critical linguistics. (Critical linguistics, mother tongue, languaging, linguistic culture, Malaysia, folk linguistics)*