EDITORIAL | REDAKTORIAUS ŽODIS

Abstract

Dear readers and members of the Sustainable Multilingualism community,

Welcome to the 20^th regular issue of Sustainable Multilingualism, which marks a period of 10-year thorough work aimed at contributing to sustaining multilingualism by providing a platform for researchers to publish their studies on language policy, multilingualism- and multiculturalism-related issues in Europe and the world, and by implementing multilingualism directly, i.e. inviting authors to demonstrate the richness of their home languages by writing articles and/or providing summaries in them and to share the linguistic and cultural heritage in multiple languages.

During this decade the journal has undergone several changes: The number of Editorial Board members has grown from 11 in 2012 to 28 today; the number of reviewers has increased from 27 in 2012 to 92 in 2022; the number of registered users has risen up to over 1.5 thousand; since 2017, the journal has been published by Sciendo (De Gruyter Open); since 2020, the journal has been included in the SCOPUS database. Scopus metrics for 2021: CiteScore - 0.2. SJR - 0.132. SNIP - 0.555.

Diversity of Journal Authors and Contributors. Editorial Board members are from 17 countries: 7 (25%) from Lithuania; 21 (75%) from other countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark (2), Germany (2), France (2), Italy (2), Latvia, UK, US, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain (2), Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates; 310 authors are from 35 countries on 6 continents; 200 articles were written in 10 languages: English (70.5%), Lithuanian (13.5%), French (5%), German (3%) (other: Spanish, Italian, Latvian, Basque, Russian, Polish).

Since its first issue, the journal Sustainable Multilingualism has focused on research into the phenomena of multilingualism from perspectives of various fields. All the articles published during this period can be assigned to four main themes: Language Education, Socio-Political Issues, Translation, and Linguistics and Sociolinguistics.

Main Themes and Sections of the Journal Articles. 110 (55%) articles publised in the theme of Education in Multilingual and Multicultural Settings; 61 (31%) - Society. Identity. Language.; 18 (9%) - Issues (of Culture Specificity) in Translation; 11 (5%) - Multilingual Issues in Linguistics and Sociolinguistics; The most popular sections were: Plurilingual Competence Development (in HE); Issues in Language Issues in Language Didactics; Technologies in Language Education; Languages for Specific Purposes; Language Teacher Education; Challenges for Language Teachers; Language Policy; Linguistic Diversity Language Preservation Language Rights and Ecology.

The current issue appears at a time when Europe and the world are writing a very important page in their history, with the war in Ukraine blasting civil life for almost four months already, revealing heartbreaking scenes of inexplicable brutality, genocide, and war crimes by the invaders. These have also been the months that revealed continuous acts of bravery, resistance, heroism, and patriotism of the Ukrainian people, committed to defending their country and freedom. Their freedom and that of ours. These have also been the months of unseen acts of solidarity, shared humanity, and kindness on the part of the citizens and governments of the nearby and far away countries who have been extending their moral, political, social, financial, and other possible kinds of support to Ukraine. Unity is strength.

Therefore, we are grateful to the absolute majority of the Editorial Board members who, during the first days of the war, agreed to issue a statement of solidarity with Ukraine on the journal website, expressing their civic and moral duty thereby. We also condemned the statement issued by the Russian rectors’ conference on 4 March 2022 and, on the website of our publisher Sciendo, declared our refusal to accept manuscripts of researchers who sign their articles with the name of a university that publicly defends this war. We respect and promote the fundamental European values of linguistic and human rights, justice, dignity, and freedom.

In the present issue, we are proud to present the work of two researchers from Ukraine – Igor Korolyov and Svitlana Grytsenko, who submitted their article “Ecolinguistic mode of the language policy in Ukraine” just a few days before the start of this war. The authors analyze the dynamics of the language situation in modern Ukraine, implementation of the state language policy, and introduce the Council on the Ukrainian language – a nationwide structure for scientific studies of language construction and implementation of research ideas. Mi Ying Park deals with the issues of identity and language in experiencing everyday otherness by southeast Asian marriage migrants in South Korea, providing implications for language programs on the development of sustainable multiculturalism and multilingualism. Munassir Alhamami and Abdallah Al-Kahtany discuss the linguistic hegemony of English in higher education and invite teachers, researchers, language policymakers, and university administrators to challenge English hegemony and “promote educational justice and equal opportunities to learn” in EMI undergraduate programs in non-Anglophone countries.

With the world becoming increasingly multilingual and multicultural, education institutions face challenges unforeseen hitherto. Are teachers prepared to deal with the challenges created by the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in their classes? Do they have the necessary knowledge and skills to find solutions to the arising problems? Three studies present their results on the teachers’ views, perceptions, and attitudes toward current practices in language education. Robinson-Jones, Duarte, and Günther-Van Der Meij analyze pre-service primary teachers’ self-perceived views, experiences, knowledge, and skills to implement multilingualism in education in the Netherlands; Tjaša Dražnik presents Slovenian pre-service teachers’ perceptions of plurilingual pedagogies; mediation, an indispensable component of today’s plurilingual speaker’s competence, is analyzed by Sylwia Kossakowska-Pisarek, Roy Siddall, and Malgorzata Świerk.

Linguistics in Language Teaching section presents “a new lexicographic resource for advanced learners of Lithuanian, the Lexical Database of Lithuanian Language Usage, which is the first attempt in Lithuanian lexicography to prepare a description of vocabulary, based on the word usage analysis in the particular corpus”, discussed (in Lithuanian) by Jolanta Kovalevskaitė and Erika Rimkutė and a study on lexical collocations and acquisition in French as a foreign language, discussed (in French) by Vitalija Kazlauskienė.

Readers interested in the Issues of Culture in Translation will find a noteworthy article on the encyclopaedic meaning of erythros in Koine Greek toponyms, presented by Moreno Bonda, who proposes a hypothesis that the Turkic colour cardinal points system and the linguistic means to convey it were introduced to Greece during the period of contact with the Scythe people. The study by Eglė Alosevičienė (in German) acquaints the readers with challenges in subtitling of the Lithuanian memory film Emilia, posing a central question: “to what extent linguistic and cultural-specific items can be reflected in the subtitling movies about traumatic historical experiences”.

Welcoming the 20th issue of the journal, I take the opportunity to express my gratitude to all contributors to the journal’s success – ardent supporters of the cause of multilingualism: authors who chose our journal for sharing their valuable research, diligent reviewers, insightful Editorial Board members, and the whole editorial team: executive editors, our industrious and skillful editorial assistant Jurgita Šerniūtė and the technical support group (proofreaders and translators) whose conscientious efforts, hours devoted, and belief in our mission have allowed us all to pursue our goal of sustaining multilingualism.

Nemira Mačianskienė,

Editor-in-Chief