L2 Journal

We are exceptionally pleased to introduce the first special issue of 2026, Multidialectism in the Multilingual Turn, guest edited by Dan Walter, Associate Professor of German and Linguistics at Oxford College of Emory University, and Julia Ruck, Assistant Teaching Professor at Emory University. Dan and Julia bring a robust mix of experience and expertise to the table, making them ideal editors for this particular special issue: their training in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and world language education is coupled with extensive experience in the world language classroom; this combination has yielded important research and practitioner guidance on numerous important contemporary issues in world language teaching, including multidialectism in the classroom. Our sincere thanks go out to the guest editors, who have shaped and shepherded the volume with care. 

While the Multilingual Turn has critically shifted the field of Second Language Acquisition away from monolingual ideologies, it has often ignored the irreconcilability of the prescriptivist standard ideologies that devalue the diversity within named languages. This oversight perpetuates linguistic hierarchies, marginalizes non-standard variety speakers, and misrepresents the complex nature of real-world language use. The contributions to this special issue dismantle monocentric, native-speakerist, and prescriptivist standard language ideologies in second language education in order to explore the potentials of a multidialectal and multilingual approach. In so doing, they raise questions about social justice implications of dialect representation and erasure and showcase successful pedagogical applications of second language dialect instruction. By integrating multidialectal perspectives, this issue seeks to foster a more robust and inclusive Multilingual Turn that accurately reflects linguistic diversity both across and within languages, empowering learners to become adaptive users who can critically engage with and subvert power structures embedded in language variation. Collectively, these articles offer theoretical insights and practical implications for recognizing the vital role of within-language diversity in SLA.

Language attitudes have been recognized as an important area of study in sociolinguistic research (Evans & Preston, 2023; Preston, 2013), and the consequences of prescriptive ideologies and negative attitudes toward non-privileged varieties extend to language instruction. These ideologies regard certain uses of the language as unacceptable if they diverge from what is considered the “standard” variety, established through linguistic imperialism and a colonial heritage (Benaglia & Smith, 2022) and perpetuated by linguistic authorities. Adherence to a prescriptive perspective without questioning its ideological and discriminatory function leads to the reproduction of a “deficit perspective”, in which those who use alternative varieties of a language are considered academically deficient (Quan et al., 2025). These attitudes can influence students’ feelings about themselves, their abilities, and their academic performance, especially for speakers of heritage languages (Loza, 2024). With this in mind, we propose a critical multidialectal approach to language teaching that leverages critical language awareness (CLA, see Beaudrie & Loza, 2022; Leeman, 2014, 2018) and calls on language teachers to engage students in critical reflection on the diverse reactions to and attitudes toward linguistic variation in society (Potowski & Shin, 2018; Shin & Hudgens Henderson, 2017; Train, 2020). Additionally, we make pedagogical recommendations for language teachers of four target languages (Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese) that focus on: 1) including input that represents linguistic diversity, 2) approaching language teaching from a descriptive perspective, 3) addressing the relationship between language and power, 4) integrating structured critical reflection, and 5) incorporating students’ diverse identities, histories, and multidialectal realities.

As a diglossic language, Arabic has high and low varieties of the same language that are used in different contexts.  Arabic classrooms traditionally focus on the acquisition of the high variety, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), with the expectation that learners can pick up local dialects abroad.  This creates challenges for learners who find themselves ill-equipped to deal with everyday situations outside of the classroom. In recent years, advocates of integrated approaches have emphasized the need to teach both MSA and a dialect, whether in the same or separate classes (Al-Batal, 2018; Younes, 2014).  Yet this leads to questions about which dialect to choose, as learners and teachers may come from different dialect backgrounds or have different dialect interests.  Trentman & Shiri (2020) advocate for a multidialectal approach, where learners are encouraged to develop their ability to understand multiple varieties of Arabic and the meta-linguistic awareness to make intentional choices in their production.

 
This paper focuses on teacher talk in Novice-level classrooms following a multidialectal approach.  It analyzes the teacher-led discussions of sociolinguistic variation in Arabic that occurred in these classrooms. The results identify several patterns teachers used in engaging in these discussions, such as initiating discussions based on variation in the class materials, making multidialectal and multilingual comparisons, and presenting sociolinguistic variation in a positive manner. The paper builds on this analysis to discuss pedagogical implications and opportunities for future development.  

Research on learning second language (L2) pragmatics has undergone substantial methodological development in recent years (Taguchi & Roever, 2017; Taguchi, 2019), but it remains limited by a lack of attention to a key feature of pragmatic competence: multilingual and multidialectal practices. In a field dedicated to helping L2 students learn “how-to-say-what-to-whom-when” (Bardovi-Harlig, 2013, p. 68), methodological approaches that do not account for multidialectal practices miss key aspects of pragmatic development that are directly related to learners’ agency and identity. Current research methodologies are still highly influenced by monolingual ideologies often missing crucial layers of the learning process and environment, resulting in an incomplete view of pragmatic development. This article synthesizes existing methods and proposes ways to address these limitations by adopting a multidialectal perspective. Taking research on L2 Arabic pragmatics learning as a case study, a systematic review of the data analytic methods and findings from the past two and a half decades (e.g., Al-Gahtani, 2022; Al‐Gahtani & Roever, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Al Masaeed, 2017; Al Masaeed, Waugh, & Burns, 2018; Al-Rawafi, Sudana, Lukmana, & Syihabuddin, 2021; Roever & Al-Gahtani, 2015) reveals how multidialectal practices have been often overlooked in study methodologies, including data collection and analysis. Based on this synthesis, the article attempts to underscore the crucial role that multidialectal practices play in pragmatic development and the need for adopting a multidialectal perspective to challenge the influence of monolingual ideologies on L2 Arabic pragmatics research. 

This study examines how second language (L2) learners engaged with both multilingualism and multidialectism during a short-term study abroad (SA) program in Vienna, Austria and Freiburg, Germany which featured a course on German sociolinguistics. While the multilingual turn in L2 education has challenged monolingual ideologies (May, 2013; Diao & Trentman, 2021), it often overlooks linguistic diversity within languages. Focusing on German, a pluricentric language with rich dialectal variation, this research analyzes nine students’ reflections through questionnaires and diaries. Qualitative text analyses reveal that students developed critical awareness of language variation, connecting dialects to broader multilingual ecologies and deconstructing ideologies of standardization and linguistic purity. Students observed translanguaging practices, reflected on heritage languages, and contextualized language use within sociopolitical frameworks. These insights underscore the pedagogical value of integrating multidialectal and multilingual approaches in L2 education to foster critical language awareness and support diverse learner identities. The study contributes to ongoing efforts to reimagine L2 pedagogy by highlighting the need for sociolinguistic frameworks that reflect real-world linguistic complexity and challenge reductive language ideologies.

This ethnographic study examines language ideologies and practices in Chinese American families in the U.S. in the post-pandemic era. Our specific focus here is the families’ use of a dialect of Southwest Mandarin, Wuhanhua (literally, “Wuhan Vernacular”), with their children at a time when Wuhan was marked by stigma due to its association with the initial COVID-19 outbreak. In our ten-month longitudinal study with the three focal families who came from Wuhan, each with U.S.-born children, data were generated from home visits, semi-structured interviews, and audio-recorded family interactions. While the three families shared a prevalent adherence to Standard Mandarin, our results show how the parents’ stated ideologies become contested in their everyday language practices. These ambiguities and inconsistencies in the planning and regulation of Wuhanhua use at home illuminate the translocal nature of heritage language learning, which is shaped not only by movement between countries but also by connections to specific localities.