General Editors’ Introduction

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.