“Join our community of translators”: Language ideologies and/in Facebook

In this chapter, I am concerned with the language ideologies present in — and expressed through — the metalinguistic discourse of Facebook’s “translations” application and the metalinguistic commentary of the Facebook “translators” as a community of what can be termed “language mavens” (Cameron, 1996), “language brokers” (Blommaert, 1999), or just “language workers” (Thurlow, 2007). Metalanguage is often understood simply as language about language, but, as Jaworski et al. (2004, p. 4) suggest, this is too literal a characterization for what they prefer to describe more broadly as any “language in the context of linguistic representations and evaluations.” Certainly, the individual “translators” of Facebook are engaged in policing language in the sense that Blommaert et al. (2009, p. 203) talk about the “production of ‘order’ — normatively organised and policed conduct.” Metalanguage thus inevitably works at an ideological level, influencing people’s actions and priorities in a number of often quite concrete ways. The case study I am presenting here offers an insight into the ways language ideologies are uniquely produced by the “community of translators” who are themselves also facilitated (and encouraged) by Facebook Inc

Exploring the introduction of the Framework for Junior Cycle: A longitudinal study. Interim report No. 2

This report is the second of a series of reports from a 4-year longitudinal study exploring the implementation, enactment and impact of the Framework for Junior Cycle in post-primary schools in Ireland. The study employs a mixed-methods, multi-dimensional research design that aims to capture the views of teachers, principals, students, parents and wider educational stakeholders. This second interim report draws primarily on the research data collected from the twelve case study schools in the Spring of 2022.  This data is complemented by the data set from the first phase of the teacher surveys. </p