The Representation of Unity, Social Sustainability, and National Identity in the Linguistic Landscape of Doha, Qatar

This study aims to investigate the ways in which the linguistic landscape of a territory might be influenced by socio-political changes and movements to ensure social and cultural sustainability. To this end, this article reports on a study that examined the linguistic landscape of Doha after certain social and political changes since 2017. Further, this study aimed to examine how messages about power, unity sustainability, and national identity were communicated through the use of monolingual and bilingual signs in Doha. The article concludes that sudden socio-political changes can exert an influence on the linguistic landscape, and the linguistic landscape can be used as a tool for communicating messages about unity, sustainability, power and national identity. Moreover, the findings of this study suggest that the linguistic landscape can be used to maintain and improve social and cultural sustainability

Autonomy support predicts language mindsets: Implications for developing communicative competence and willingness to communicate in EFL classrooms

Growth language mindsets, the beliefs that language-learning ability can be cultivated through effort, are argued as a motivational resource that guides learners to focus on improvement and learning processes. However, little is known about how classroom learning contexts predict predict language-mindsets, and whether language-mindsets are linked to learners' competence development and language use in a language classroom. In this study, we recruited 392 university-level English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students in Iran and examined (a) how learners' perceptions of their teacher's autonomy support predict their language-mindsets, and (b) whether language-mindsets in turn predict learners' perceptions of communicative competence and willingness to communicate (WTC). Path analyses demonstrated that growth language-mindsets mediated the link of autonomy support on communicative competence and WTC. Students who perceived their teachers to be more autonomy-supportive were more likely to endorse growth (vs. fixed) language-mindsets, and thereby feeling more competent and being more willing to use English in the classroom. This study highlights the importance of growth mindsets in EFL classrooms and provides practical implications for fostering growth mindsets with autonomy-supporting strategies