Comparative Studies in Bilingualism and Bilingual Education

Book excerpt: This volume reports on bilingual practices in contemporary societies in a number of European and non-European countries. The topics discussed here include language use and language learning in a bilingual context, issues in bilingual education, the use of language in the linguistic landscape, language and the media, language perceptions, language use and attitudes, and the use of language as a vantage point for the study of social change. This book captures the various different approaches and viewpoints on bilingualism by researchers who have focused on contexts such as Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and the USA. Of the 17 chapters here, five deal with aspects of bilingualism in Malta, which, in view of its minuscule size but complex language use, offers itself as an excellent laboratory for the scientific study of bilingualism.