Mapping the research landscape of multilingual repertoires and linguistic justice in education: a systematic bibliometric analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31812/ed.836Keywords:
bibliometric analysis, multilingual repertoires, linguistic justice, language policy, education, topic modelling, network analysis, translanguagingAbstract
This study presents a systematic bibliometric analysis of research on multilingual repertoires and linguistic justice in education. Drawing on 1,552 publications from the Web of Science Core Collection (1992-2026), we employ computational methods including co-authorship network analysis, keyword co-occurrence mapping, topic modelling, and temporal trend analysis to map the intellectual structure of this interdisciplinary field. Our analysis reveals seven distinct thematic clusters, with translanguaging-focused research dominating at a 34% prevalence, followed by policy-oriented scholarship at 22%. We identify key collaborative networks centred in Europe, North America, and South Africa, and trace the evolution of central concepts over the past three decades. Findings indicate exponential field growth (28.9% annually), a persistent gap between policy-oriented and practice-oriented research streams, and emerging attention to social justice frameworks (a 3,100% keyword growth). We identify raciolinguistic perspectives and epistemic justice as rapidly emerging theoretical orientations, while noting the continued centrality of foundational scholars, including García, Hornberger, and Cummins, in the field's intellectual foundations. This study contributes to the field by providing the most comprehensive mapping to date of research connecting multilingual repertoires, linguistic justice, and education, while demonstrating the utility of digital humanities methods for understanding complex interdisciplinary literatures.
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Data Availability Statement
Analysis code is available at https://github.com/ssemerikov/hbs_justice. The repository includes:
• Data cleaning and parsing scripts (Python)
• Network analysis implementation (NetworkX)
• Topic modelling pipeline (Gensim)
• Visualisation generation scripts
• Configuration files and documentation
Due to Web of Science licensing restrictions, raw bibliographic data cannot be publicly shared. However, the documented search strategy enables replication. Processed, anonymised network data (without identifying metadata) is available upon request.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Vita A. Hamaniuk, Olha S. Bilozir, Serhiy O. Semerikov
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Accepted 2026-01-08
Published 2026-01-08
