The award will enable language and education researchers from Hamburg and Macquarie Universities to deepen their collaboration

Ingrid Piller is one of eight recipients of a 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award from the German Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation. The award will enable her to pursue research into language education in linguistically diverse societies in collaboration with colleagues at Hamburg University.

About the Anneliese Maier Research Award

The Anneliese Maier Research Award is presented by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation to world-class researchers in the humanities and social sciences from outside Germany. Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the award seeks to help promote the internationalisation of the humanities and social sciences in Germany.

The award is named after the philosopher and science historian Anneliese Maier (1905-1971). A short biography is available here.

About the 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has selected eight researchers – three women and five men – to receive the 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award. Each award is valued at €250,000 and is granted to outstanding humanities scholars and social scientists who are nominated by collaborative partners at German universities and research institutions. The award is designed to finance research collaboration over a period of up to five years with specialist colleagues in Germany.

The eight award winners were selected from a total of 111 nominees from 30 countries. A list of the new award winners, their research topics and specialist fields, current countries of residence and host institutes in Germany is available here.

Language education in linguistically diverse societies

Ingrid Piller was nominated by education scholars Ingrid Gogolin and Drorit Lengyel from the “Diversity in Education Research” section at Hamburg University, who – as Language-on-the-Move readers will remember – visited Macquarie University in March 2017 for the Bridging Language Barriers Symposium. The Anneliese Maier Research Award will enable them to contribute to their shared long-term research agenda related to language education in linguistically diverse migrant-receiving and globalizing societies. The award allows them to pursue a truly comparative and global perspective through the combination of Australian and German research in multilingual education.

Language on the Move

We will be back in the New Year for another round of diverse, stimulating and engaging essays, events and interactions in the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, language learning and intercultural communication in the contexts of globalization and migration.

In particular, watch out for our new research project investigating everyday intercultural communication in multilingual and multicultural Australia to kick off. This sociolinguistic project, which is funded by an ARC (Australian Research Council) Discovery grant, aims to investigate how fluent English speakers interact with people who have limited proficiency. In contemporary Australia such mundane interactions may determine employment, education or health outcomes. While research into language barriers has mostly focused on the experiences of migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds, this innovative project changes perspective and asks how English speakers deal with increasing linguistic diversity. Expected outcomes include an understanding of the role of majority members in facilitating the integration of newcomers. This should provide significant socioeconomic benefits for institutions and individuals as they navigate everyday intercultural communication.

Make sure to keep in touch by subscribing to Language on the Move in the ‘Subscribe to Blog’ form in the footer of our site; or join our ever-growing Twitter audience Follow @Lg_on_the_Move  or find us on Facebook @languageonthemove.

In the meantime, enjoy the review below of Language on the Move 2017.

The moment of truth for our PhD students

December

Language on the Move is all about inspiring and supporting the next generation of sociolinguists and the highlights of our year are PhD submissions and graduations. In December Gegentuul Hongye Bai submitted her PhD thesis entitled “Performing linguistic and cultural authenticity: Contemporary Mongolian wedding ceremonies in Inner Mongolia” for examination. Situated at the crossroads of minority linguistic and cultural revival, multicultural state policies and cultural commodification, contemporary Mongolian wedding ceremonies constitute a privileged window on linguistic and cultural change in the context of socio-economic transformation. The critical sociolinguistic ethnographic study addresses three specific questions. First, what linguistic and cultural choices can be observed in Mongolian wedding ceremonies? Second, what ideologies are embedded in these semiotic practices? And, third, how do wedding practices and ideologies serve to produce and reproduce Mongolian “authenticity” and social hierarchies? Watch out for the finalized thesis to become available post-examination in our PhD Hall of Fame.

The end-of-year hustle and bustle left little time for research blogging but Livia Gerber managed to reminisce about her conference attendance at the 11^th International Bilingualism Symposium in Limerick, Ireland.

November

Our November highlight was the election of Ingrid Piller as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

The team celebrates Gegentuul’s submission

Additionally, we hosted a research seminar about minority languages by Professor Josu Amezaga from the University of the Basque Country. One of our newest members, Pia Tenedero, wrote a report about the seminar and explains why we should be talking about minoritized languages instead of minority languages.

October

• Laura Smith-Khan, Are we all different in the same way?
• Ingrid Piller, More on banal cosmopolitanism
• Ingrid Piller, Banal cosmopolitanism
• Lauren Wagner, Becoming diasporically Moroccan
• Ingrid Piller, Anatomy of language shaming
• Ingrid Piller, Happy Hangul Day!
• Shiva Motaghi-Tabari, Feeling weird using your home language?

September

• Ingrid Piller, Explorations in language shaming
• Educating Burmese migrant students in China
• Philip Seargeant, Linguistic diversity and “cosmopolitan bias”
• Laura Smith-Khan, Forgotten and invisible? The legal protection of refugees with disabilities
• Ingrid Piller, 2017 BAAL Book Prize
• Jinhyun Cho, Dreams vs. realities in English

August

• Victoria Benz, Bilingual parenting in the early years
• Ingrid Piller, Literacy and the differential value of knowledge
• Ingrid Piller, Literacy – the power code

July

• Ingrid Piller, Are we killing the joy of reading?
• 2017 Australian PhD Prize for Innovations in Linguistics and Michael Clyne Prize
• Miriam Faine, Multiculturalism, linguistic diversity and citizenship testing
• Britt Jacobsen, Aboriginal languages matter – but to who?

June

• Ingrid Piller, Money makes the world go around
• Emily Greenbank, Refugees in the media: villains and victims
• Laura Smith-Khan, Telling stories? Credibility in asylum interviews
• Alexandra Grey, How do language rights affect minority languages in China?
• Hanan Ben Nafa, Do bilinguals really have two souls?
• Ayah Wehbe, Silent invisible women
• Spotlight on Language on the Move [external link]: find out who we are, what we do and why we do what we do, who we work with, what we are proud of and what we are looking forward to.

Li Jia’s graduation

May

• Agnes Bodis, International students and language: opportunity or threat?
• Jieun Kiaer, Does a language have to be European to be ‘modern’?
• Top 10 Language Learning Tips for Language Lovers
• Ingrid Piller, The banal nationalism of intercultural communication advice

April

• Bidirectional language learning in migrant families
• Dave Sayers, Will technology make language rights obsolete?
• Gegentuul Baioud, Fighting for ‘pure’ Mongolian

March

March was dominated by the “Bridging Language Barriers” Symposium we hosted here at Macquarie University. Look back at the lessons we learned at the symposium, the abstracts of the presentations and the program. Our research blog posts that month all lead up to the symposium and examined what the meaning of “language barrier” is:

• Ingrid Piller, ‘I’m not listening to you!’ Interacting in a linguistically diverse society
• How do language barriers come about?
• Kerry Taylor-Leech, Building bridges through multilingual schooling: a mother-tongue pilot in East Timor is showing the way

February

When we came back from our summer break, we started the year with the good news that Ingrid Piller’s 2016 book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice had won the 2017 Prose Award in the Language and Linguistics category. We also fare-welled our team member Li Jia, who returned to Yunnan University after three years in Australia. To mark the milestone, she delivered a research seminar about Burmese students following the Chinese Dream.

Map of European languages (Source: SB Language Maps)

Invitation to public seminar about “Minority Languages” at Macquarie University

What: Minority languages: what are we talking about? And why are we talking about it now?
When: Wednesday, November 22, 12:00-2:00pm
Where: Macquarie University Y3A 211 Tute Rm (10HA)
Who: Professor Josu Amezaga, University of the Basque Country

Abstract: Minority (or minoritized) languages can be defined as languages historically excluded from the nation-state. Following the French Revolution, which imposed the need of a common and unique language on the French state, many countries applied the “one-language-one-nation” pattern and, in the process, minoritized numerous languages. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, many countries almost seemed to have reached this monolingual ideal. However, in recent decades major changes in mediated communications together with growing migration flows have called this state of affairs into question as minority languages – both “old” and “new” – reassert themselves. At the same time, the reemergence of linguistic diversity has provoked state reactions in the form of new re-nationalization policies focused around language.

In my presentation I will first explain what minoritization of languages means. Then I will show how changes in communication and migration flows have affected the linguistic landscape of Western societies. The focus will be on commonalities and points of difference between regional and immigrant minority languages. Finally, I will discuss why minority languages should be addressed not only as a matter of cultural heritage but also a need for the future. This will lead me to close with some questions about the monolingual paradigm.

Bio blurb: Josu Amezaga is Professor in the Department of Audio-Visual Communication and Advertising at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. After completing his Ph.D. in Sociology about Basque culture, he started researching Basque language and media, from where he moved to a more comprehensive view of minority languages in media and as identity tools. This interest has led him to immigrant languages, as yet another type of minority languages. Currently, he is a visiting professor at Charles Sturt University.

Dr Li Jia (4th from right) with her supervisor, Professor Ingrid Piller, and members of the Language-on-the-Move team

The Language on the Move team is proud to celebrate another PhD in our group. Dr LI Jia was awarded her PhD degree by Macquarie University for her thesis about “Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China.”

Congratulations, Dr Li Jia!

The thesis takes the reader to the Chinese-Burmese border area of Yunnan province in South-West China, and begins as follows:

Excerpt from Li Jia (2017), “Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China”

Borderlands are often flashpoints for political or ethnic tensions. At the same time, they may also be sites of heightened intercultural engagement and contact. The China-Myanmar border area is an example of the latter, where in recent decades people’s desire to interact with each other and to understand each other’s languages and cultures has increased substantially. As a native of the China-Myanmar border area, I was born and brought up in a Chinese border town close to Myanmar, and many of my relatives and friends to this day work and live on the Burmese side of the border. Like many Han people, my family has kept our ancestral book, which traces my family’s presence in the region back to the military migrations during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The book records the male names of each generation and highlights the images of those who bore official ranks. Despite the fact that my family can clearly trace our Han ancestry over six centuries, our lifestyle is quite different from that of Han people in more central areas of China. As border people, we find it much easier to go “abroad” to Myanmar than to travel “nationally” outside of Yunnan province. Border people are conveniently allowed to travel to designated Burmese border towns without applying for a visa. Crossing this international border for us often means little more than crossing a bridge, a road or a river. Living in the border area, we are more familiar with the tropical foods imported from Myanmar and Thailand than many of the foods advertised on Chinese national television.

Trilingual signage at the Muse checkpoint on the China-Myanmar border

Despite this familiarity, interactions between Chinese and Burmese are not necessarily deep. Over the past three decades, Burmese people can also be seen across all walks of life on the Chinese side of the border particularly in domestic work, on construction sites, in restaurants, shops, hospitals and schools. However, despite their increased visibility, I grew up knowing very little about this group of “familiar strangers” who cover their faces in thanaka, a yellowish-white cosmetic paste made from ground bark, and who wear longyi, a sarong-like skirt, and flip-flops in the streets. At a very basic level, my research was motivated by the desire to learn more about interactions between the “familiar strangers” calling the Chinese-Burmese borderlands home.

The interactions I am interested in are embedded in significant socio-economic and developmental differences between China and Myanmar. With China and Chinese people the “senior partners” in most border relationships, Chinese language learning is of immense economic value to Burmese people. For instance, Burmese workers are often paid differentially according to their Chinese language proficiency. The owner of a seafood restaurant in Tengchong explained to me that she paid the lowest wages to Burmese workers who could not speak any Chinese and who were washing dishes in the kitchen. Servers with some Chinese proficiency were paid more and could hope for further pay increase if they improved their Chinese. The top job in the restaurant was being a cashier and was reserved for the most fluent Chinese speaker. When I asked the cashier how he had learned Chinese, he explained that he had learned all his Chinese on the job. Having migrated to Tengchong from Myanmar two years earlier, he spoke the local dialect fluently. His dream for the future was to improve his standard Chinese, to move to Shanghai, to marry a Shanghainese girl and to start his own seafood restaurant. His story is not unusual. As I discovered over the course of my fieldwork, Chinese language learning plays an important role in the trajectories, experiences and aspirations of border people from the Burmese side of the border.

“Learn Chinese, Double Your World”: Promotion of Chinese as a global language

Burmese border people are not alone in learning a new language to be able to communicate more efficiently in the border regions. While Burmese may not be as essential to the socio-economic prospects of Chinese citizens as Chinese is to those of Burmese citizens, there is no doubt that Burmese language learning is beneficial and widely desired. For instance, a Tengchong policewoman, Ms Lei, told me that she had been recruited into the police force because of her Burmese proficiency. After failing the national university entrance exam, Ms Lei had to look for a job in her home town. Unsure of her prospects, she considered the importance of Burmese and decided to attend an evening school. Compared to English, Ms Lei felt it was so much easier to learn Burmese. It took her only two months to pass an interview for a border trade company selling agricultural machinery and equipment to Myanmar. This job experience helped her improve her Burmese greatly because she had to communicate with her Burmese customers every day. With her enhanced Burmese skills, she got a chance to work for the police emergency hotline. From there, she got promoted to a police officer role that focussed on the registration of Burmese migrants. Normally, such a position can only be attained by someone with a university degree but for Ms Lei Burmese proficiency proved more valuable than a university degree. Again, Ms Lei is not unusual, and many border people orient to local transnational opportunities rather than more centralized opportunity structures. Apart from being successful in finding work with a government institution, Burmese language skills are particularly useful in the burgeoning border trade with Myanmar.

Stories such as these are part of the everyday experiences in the border region, where people have come to realize the increasing importance of interacting with each other and knowing each other’s languages in doing business, making money, looking for a good job, gaining promotion or even creating a desirable marriage. For Burmese migrants, the hope that learning Chinese will improve their future is not only observable in worksites such as the restaurant described above, but also from the fact that an increasing number of Burmese students are sent to high schools on the Chinese side of the border for their formal education. As an educator, I decided to focus my research on this group of young people caught up in the socio-political transformation of the borderlands and the corresponding intense transnational interactions they experience. What are their educational trajectories and experiences?

Migration for educational purposes has become common practice as students and their families seek a better future. In the twenty-first century, educational migration is no longer confined to English-speaking countries and “the West”. Many Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland China are emerging as popular destinations for international students (Chiang, 2015; Gu & Patkin, 2013; Kang, 2012). Therefore, there is a necessity to extend existing research in migrant education to include a greater diversity of sociolinguistic contexts (Piller, 2016a, pp. 1-15). Considering the increasing prominence of Chinese language promotion worldwide and very little research on international students’ learning experiences in mainland China, this thesis aims to contribute to the knowledge of migration, Chinese language education and social justice, in general, and of Chinese border high school education and Burmese students’ language learning experiences, in particular.

Want to read more? The full thesis is available for open access through our PhD Hall of Fame.

The Language-on-the-Move team is conducting award-winning research

The Language on the Move team is delighted to share news of our multiple-award-winning research!

2017 Australian PhD Prize for Innovations in Linguistics

The winners of the 2017 Australian PhD Prize for Innovations in Linguistics have just been announced and we are delighted that our very own Alexandra Grey is one of two joint winners of the 2017 Australian PhD Prize for Innovations in Linguistics. Alexandra receives the award for her thesis about the ways in which language rights affect minority languages in China. The full thesis can be downloaded here and a short overview is available here.

The second joint winner of the prize is Isabel O’Keeffe (Melbourne University), who receives the award for her thesis about “Multilingual manyardi/kun-borrk: Manifestations of multilingualism in the classical song traditions of western Arnhem Land”.

Both theses were commended for being “outstanding pieces of innovative, creative, and personal linguistic scholarship”.

The Australian PhD Prize for Innovations in Linguistics is a $500 prize begun in 2013 and awarded annually to the best PhD which demonstrates methodological and theoretical innovations in Australian linguistics (e.g. studies in toponymy, language and ethnography, language and musicology, linguistic ecology, language identity and self, kinship relationships, island languages, spatial descriptions in language, Australian creoles, and language contact).

The notice for submissions for the 2018 Australian PhD Prize for Innovations in Linguistics will appear in early 2018 in the newsletter of the Australian Linguistics Society.

2017 Michael Clyne Prize

For the Language on the Move team, this recognition of Alexandra’s success follows hot on the heels of the announcement that another team member, Shiva Motaghi-Tabari, is the winner of the 2017 Michael Clyne Prize. The Michael Clyne Prize is awarded annually by the Australian Linguistics Society for the best postgraduate research thesis in immigrant bilingualism and language contact. Shiva receives the prize for her thesis about “Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families”. An abstract and a link to the full thesis is available here.

This is, in fact, the second time the Michael Clyne Prize award goes to a member of the Language on the Move research group. Donna Butorac won the 2012 Michael Clyne Prize for her thesis about “Imagined identity, remembered self: Settlement language learning and the negotiation of gendered subjectivity”. Furthermore, Vera Williams Tetteh’s thesis about “Language, Education and Settlement: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography on, with, and for Africans in Australia” was the runner-up for the 2016 award.

These and all our PhD theses are available from our PhD Hall of Fame.

You can show your appreciation of our year-round efforts to share exciting sociolinguistics research in multilingualism, language learning and intercultural communication by voting for us at http://en.bab.la/news/top-100-language-blogs-2017-voting. Voting is easy: you just have to click on the ‘Vote’ button next to Language on the Move (or another blog of your choice, of course; there are one-hundred fantastic language lovers’ blogs to choose from).

The competition is accompanied by a social media campaign to share language learning tips. So, we thought we’d give you an additional incentive to vote for us: the Top Ten official Language on the Move Language Learning Tips!

1. Read, read, read! The soul of your target language is in its literature.
2. In language learning, your imaginary friend is your best friend: Practice conversations in your head!
3. Nothing like muscle memory in language learning: Get pen and paper and start copying!
4. Do you keep a diary? Try writing as much as you can in your target language! No need to be afraid of mixing languages there.
5. Good old-fashioned memorization: Learn the lyrics of a song or poem by heart! Sing or recite them often!
6. Not secret but really works: Easy readers with bilingual source and target language text.
7. Stay away from native speakers for a while! May sound counter-intuitive but learning works best if scaffolded.
8. There is no silver bullet. The more different ways you can find to practice and the more regularly you practice, the better.
9. Language learning is like running a marathon: you have to be in it for the long term.
10. Be prepared to be transformed. Language learning is not just learning a new set of vocabularies and grammatical structures. It will change you and you’ll end up finding a different you.

Enjoy and happy language learning! Feel free to add your own tips in the comments section below or on Twitter Follow @Lg_on_the_Move. And don’t forget to vote at the bab.la site before June 06!

Our newest PhD, Dr Shiva Motaghi Tabari (3rd from left)

The Language on the Move team is proud to announce another freshly-minted PhD in our midst! Dr Shiva Motaghi Tabari graduated from Macquarie University yesterday and was awarded her PhD for a thesis about “Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families“. The thesis is available for open access via our PhD Hall of Fame. Congratulations, Shiva!

Abstract

The process of migration to and settlement in a new country entails linguistic, cultural and identity changes and adjustments. These changes and adjustments at an individual level are related to changes and adjustments in the family. This thesis offers a qualitative exploration of such changes and adjustments in migrant families in Australia by focusing on their language learning and use processes.

Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the study draws on concepts from family studies, particularly the notion of ‘bidirectionality’, as well as sociocultural theories related to second language acquisition within the poststructuralist paradigm. The emphasis is on the ways in which language learning and use in the family relates to wider social and political contexts and language ideologies.

Data for the study come from semi-structured in-depth interviews with nineteen migrant families of Persian background in Australia, including thirty-three parents and twenty-one children.

Overall, the findings of the study show that language socialisation processes within the family in migration contexts are complex and intricately interwoven with parental and child language beliefs and attitudes, which in turn are influenced by language ideologies and attitudes prevalent in the wider society.

Specifically, the research addresses four research questions. First, parents’ experiences of language learning and use before migration are examined. Findings demonstrate how participants’ multiple desires for English learning were socially shaped, and how they invested into English language learning at different points in time, particularly with the prospect of an imagined future in Australia and upward socioeconomic mobility. Second, parents’ experiences of language learning and use after migration are explored. Findings suggest that under the influence of ideological forces in the wider society, particularly those related to the ‘native/non-native speaker’ dichotomy, learners may perpetually be perceived, by themselves and by others, as deficient language speakers and peripheral members in the new society.

After analysing parental language learning and use experiences, children’s experiences of language learning and use are examined. Children’s English language learning trajectories are diverse and relate to the degrees of English competence and the age of participants at the time of arrival. Children exercise their agency in different ways to learn the new language and to become a legitimate member in their new communities of practice. Finally, the thesis explores how parents’ and children’s language learning and use intersect. Language ideologies and the imbalanced values attributed to languages along with inequitable power relations determine the conditions under which parents struggle to achieve bilingual outcomes both for themselves and for their children.

Overall, the study argues for a holistic approach to investigations of language socialisation processes in migrant families and problematises the ways in which language beliefs, attitudes, and practices of parents and their children are shaped by the wider social and ideological context. The study has multiple implications for both adult and child language learning, parent-child interactions in migration contexts, and Australian migration studies.

Advances in sociolinguistic knowledge

Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families advances sociolinguistic knowledge in at least three distinct ways:

Conceptually, the focus on bidirectionality in language learning is highly innovative given that language learning continues to be widely seen as something the individual undertakes. Usually, where language learning directions are considered, they are seen to flow from teacher to student or from parent to child. By examining how families engage in language learning as a group and by also considering child influences on parental language learning the thesis breaks new ground conceptually.

Methodologically, the holistic approach to data collection from children and parents, both individually and in groups, extends qualitative interview-based research to include an interactional dimension that is often missing from this kind of approach.

Sociologically, the research advances our knowledge of Persian-speaking skilled migrants to Australia, an emerging but rapidly growing community. By examining pre- and post-migration language learning experiences the thesis illuminates the ideological and practical bases for the language learning trajectories of this group once they have settled in Australia.

“How does human language interact with increasing social complexity in a unified global network?”

This is not only a question that is fundamental to understanding language barriers but it is also the big question addressed by Ingrid Piller in a video segment that is part of Macquarie University’s new Coursera Specialisation Solving Complex Problems.

Solving Complex Problems synthesizes knowledge across the sciences and the humanities, and thereby provides a powerful foundation to think and research in new ways. The specialization consists of four individual courses and the segment on “Linguistic Complexity” is part of the introductory course devoted to “Analysing Complexity”.

Focusing on linguistic complexity in contemporary Australia, Ingrid explains key tensions in linguistic diversity against the social background of migration and globalization.

Migration and globalization contribute to making our societies more linguistically complex and that often means raising language barriers. Next week we will explore how such language barriers can be bridged in the “Bridging Language Barriers” Symposium. Registration for the symposium has now closed but if you cannot attend in person, you can still join the conversation with our team of live-tweeters on the day. Our Twitter hashtag will be #LOTM2017. Follow @Lg_on_the_Move

A transcript of the video is available here. For further videos, transcripts and a host of related resources, visit the Solving Complex Problems site over at Coursera.

Our visitors from Hamburg University are getting ready to travel 16,295 km to Sydney for the ‘Bridging Language Barriers’ Symposium

The count-down for the Bridging Language Barriers Symposium at Macquarie University on March 16 has started! The abstracts of our exciting presentations are now available and you can find details of research into the educational consequences of European and Australian linguistic diversity below.

If you have not registered yet, make sure to do so asap because places are filling up fast. Attendance at this highly interactive event will be free but numbers are limited so register your attendance now by sending an e-mail to languageonthemove@mq.edu.au.

When: Thursday, March 16, 2017, 9am-6pm

Where: Macquarie University, Australian Hearing Hub S2.6 (AHH) 1.200 Lecture Theatre

Program: Available at http://languageonthemove.com/bridging-language-barriers-symposium-program-update/.

Abstracts

Keynote lecture 1, Prof Ingrid Gogolin, Hamburg University, Language diversity as an asset for teaching and learning: theoretical considerations and empirical indication

Europe is a multilingual space. Paradoxically, individual and societal multilingualism are officially accepted and celebrated at the European level, where the policy aim is for every European citizen to become at least trilingual. However, closer analyses of the European discourse on multilingualism show the ‘Janus face’ of perceptions of linguistic diversity.

While the languages of European nation-states and officially acknowledged linguistic minorities (such as Frisian in the Netherlands, Welsh or Gaelic in the United Kingdom, Sorbian in Germany) are celebrated, all the other languages of people who live in Europe are ignored or even rejected as so-called ‘migrant languages’. Europe is home to migrants from all parts of the world. Germany, for example, accommodates migrants who originate from 190 countries. Officially, however, Germany is considered a monolingual country.

Embedded in this paradox, my presentation will first provide an overview of the historical development of migration and linguistic diversity in Europe with a focus on Germany. In the second part, I will present current research on linguistic super-diversity and its perception from sociolinguistic and education research perspectives. Lastly, I will present findings from an ongoing longitudinal study on the multilingual development of 1,800 students in German schools. In this study, the development of German and English among all students has been tested, as well as the Russian or Turkish development among migrant students, and the French or Russian development among those students who study these languages as schooled foreign languages. I will present interim results from this study, as well as reflect on methodological challenges that arise for research on linguistic diversity.

Keynote lecture 2, Prof Drorit Lengyel, Hamburg University, Home languages and home language instruction in the German education system

Approximately 50 years ago, heritage or home language instruction was introduced in German schools in reaction to the migrant ‘guest worker’ period in which workers’ children and other family members were granted permanent residency. The German federal states developed varying services for home language instruction due to divergent commitment towards home language provision in general, and due to individual negotiation processes between the institutions and parties involved. However, not all children who speak home languages other than German have the opportunity to attend home language programs and to become bi-literate through professional instruction. This presentation provides an overview of both the history as well as the present-day situation of home language instruction in the German education system. Moreover, it discusses recent research findings on the need and importance of home language instruction in schools from the perspective of parents and children, as well as on the potential benefits for language learning in general.

Panel 1: Educating diverse student populations

Susan Poetsch, Sydney University and Australian National University, Languaging their learning: how children work their languages for classroom learning

This study presents a linguistic analysis of an early years Maths lesson with children who speak an Australian Aboriginal language (Arrernte) as their first language. It describes how they use Arrernte, English, and an admixture of those codes for classroom learning. Despite their language background, schooling is delivered primarily through English, which places significant responsibility on these students for their own learning. Although the data provides evidence of successful learning in this lesson, it also demonstrates how the children’s first language is a necessary tool to achieve that, and the potential for more targeted English language instruction when teaching mainstream curriculum content.

Hanne Brandt, Hamburg University, Language learning in the mainstream classroom: Social Studies teachers’ approaches and attitude

In Germany, an increase in the number of migrant students across the education system, coupled with low levels of educational attainment among these students, has sparked a discussion around the possibility of integrating language education provisions across all content areas. Current teaching standards call for all teachers to provide their students with language support in the classroom, regardless of the grades and subjects they teach. The present study focuses on Social Studies teachers at secondary schools, and investigates how the rising demand for language support is translated into their pedagogical practice.

Findings show that the majority of participating teachers seem to be aware that their students are in need of language support and many of them believe that it is their duty to provide them with it. However, most of these teachers do not feel qualified to deal with the language diversity in their classrooms, and therefore are unable to include language support into their pedagogical practice.

Miriam Faine, Monash University, Student experiences in the superdiverse university

Higher education can no longer be understood as existing only within a national space but operates across fluid globalised spaces. It therefore needs to respond to diversity (including linguistic diversity), rather than attempting to manage diversity in ways that perpetuate problematic power relationships. This paper focuses on postgraduate international students’ experiences and practices in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. I report data from a small scale qualitative study which focuses on the micro scale of lived spaces to show ways these students created and participated in multiple, fluid networks across linguistic, national, cultural, religious and regional boundaries.

While the literature has often homogenized ‘international students’ into a singular marginalised entity and focussed on English language deficits in the context of dichotomous relations – or lack of them – between the host community and international students, this data validates the international students as active agents and cosmopolitan subjects. In spite of the institutional barriers created by language, new language practices emerged from local contexts of interaction as these international students engaged with each other to create networks, personal as well as academic, within the transnational and transcultural social and academic spaces afforded by internationalisation.

Stephen Doherty, University of New South Wales and Jan-Louis Kruger, Macquarie University, Bridging language barriers in educational settings using subtitles for first and second language students

This paper showcases recent research into the cognitive processing of educational subtitling for first and second language students in higher education. We describe the cross-disciplinary approach that we have taken to develop a multidimensional methodology that employs both online (eye tracking, electroencephalography, and task performance) and offline measures (psychometrics questionnaires) to investigate the cognitive processing and usage of subtitles amongst English L1 and L2 viewers of educational content.

Results demonstrate the strengths and limitations of this methodology, and we present findings that have provided us with unprecedented access into the efficacy and efficiency of subtitling in educational and entertainment settings amongst diverse multilingual samples. We examine initial evidence of the beneficial nature of subtitles for both L1 and L2 viewers in these settings, and show how subtitles can be optimized using research findings from Cognitive Load Theory and Cognitive Translation Studies.

Finally, we highlight links to wider cross-disciplinary research projects and real-world applications that bridge language barriers for linguistically diverse groups in multimodal settings.

Panel 2: Multilingualism in institutions

Ruth Arber and Michiko Weinmann, Deakin University, Orientating languages: Navigating multilingual spaces

The manifestation and impact of conversations about language, identity and difference and their impact on student and teacher interaction in western education contexts has been frequently remarked upon. Few publications explore the ways in which these norms and their consequent structures and behaviours play out in the practices of languages teaching.

This chapter draws from larger research to explore the ways that EAL and Languages teachers working in schools in Victoria, Australia experience and enact their professional Languages teacher identities and speak about those of others. Engaging the move towards a social turn and a more comprehensive understanding of languages, multilingualism and transnationalism, we explore the ways in which languages teachers’ practices are described and enacted in day-to-day school contexts. Through the narrative device of the vignette, teacher conversations about their daily experience and practice are explored and interrogated. These conversations pointed to a phenomenon in which some languages, and the teachers who spoke or taught them, were understood differently to others. These differences were produced and reproduced in complex interaction between systemic indicators including race, class, whiteness and western hegemony which marked languages, Language teachers and learners as being of more prestige and higher or lower value.

We argue that, in the transnational contexts of Australian schools, these discussions are framed within unequally empowered discourses of alterity and ‘hegemony’ that are raced, gendered, neo-colonial, and neoliberal. They appear to many as wrought within a world with dissolving national, linguistic and cultural boundaries, which are experienced as unsettling and disempowering. Moreover, the particular example of Language teachers’ identity is shaped by the normative terms and conditions of an understanding of languages and Languages education that remains, all too often, rooted in parochial, monolingual and pecuniary perspectives.

If we are to re-orientate approaches to Languages education, and develop a more sustainable and socially just approach to teacher supply, these conversations and the norms and behaviours that frame them need to be better understood.

Tobias Schroedler, Hamburg University, Multilingual Practices in a German Institution: A Case Study of Multilingualism amongst Staff at Hamburg University

In recent years, research on multilingualism in institutional governance has become a key area to better understand the mechanisms and politics of linguistic diversity in Europe. This project aims to shed light on the role of multilingualism in the governance and administration of Hamburg University. With over 42,000 students and over 12,000 employees, Hamburg University is one of Germany’s largest higher education institutions. This project explores the role and value of multilingualism in the university’s governance communication.

Data from an extensive quantitative survey among all members of staff in administrative and technical functions reveals that over 60 different languages are spoken, and that over 75% of employees use languages other than German regularly at work. The presentation will illustrate reported application scenarios, and the usefulness of the extensive multilingual repertoires in relation to specific communication scenarios. The data further indicate that English plays a ubiquitous role in the daily work of most employees. I will conclude by asking whether fluent competencies in German and English represent the (essential) norm; and what role languages other than German and English play in the governance of the university.

Amanda Miller Amberber, Australian Catholic University, Language therapy in the first versus second language for multilinguals with aphasia: effectiveness and barriers to treatment

The diversity of languages and cultures present in most cities and countries results in there being many multilingual individuals with language impairment after stroke (aphasia). Multilingual individuals with aphasia face a double communication difficulty, resulting not only from aphasia but also from access to effective assessment and treatment in both/all languages. Research is presented demonstrating the effectiveness of treatment provided in the first or second language for the treated language only, with little evidence of generalisation to the non-treated language. Consequently language therapy in all relevant languages is essential. The barriers to treatment in both/all languages spoken by multilingual individuals include lack of access to bilingual speech pathologists or interpreters for treatment, lack of standardised aphasia language tests in diverse languages, and an institutional monolingual mindset that does not adequately recognise multilingualism as the norm. The social and functional consequences for multilingual individuals with aphasia are discussed together with recommendations for overcoming the language barriers that currently exist.

Haidee Kruger, Macquarie University, The double-edged sword of translation: Language-in-education policy, publishing languages, and translated children’s books in South Africa

Since the late 1990s, South African educational policies have promoted multilingualism (in principle if not always in practice), and have emphasised the importance of mother-tongue teaching and learning together with the acquisition of additional languages. Given the highly multilingual South African context, this has posed significant challenges for the production of educational and leisure books for children. To meet these challenges, many publishing houses make use of translation to fulfil the need for children’s books in all 11 South African official languages. However, continued linguistic, economic and educational inequalities mean that translation is a complex and contested practice.

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of publishing and survey data collected in the period 2006 to 2014, in order to investigate how language-in-education policy and economic incentives intersect in shaping publishing practices and motivations for using translation to produce books for children in the 11 languages of South Africa. Read against the background of the cultural, ideological, educational, linguistic and material realities of South Africa, the analysis suggests that vastly different forces drive publishing, generally, and the uses of translation, specifically, in the different languages in South Africa. In particular, the African-languages children’s book market remains small, and appears to be almost exclusively driven by educational incentives. Translations far outstrip original writing in this sector. As far as the development of a children’s book market in the African languages is concerned, it appears that translation is, at the moment, a double-edged sword, extending the uses of the African languages, their visibility and their status, while simultaneously constraining (by making unnecessary) original writing in these languages.

A pdf version of the “Bridging Language Barriers” program is available here.

***Update, Feb 23: Abstracts now available here***

A one-day symposium at Macquarie University asks how language barriers can best be bridged.

Bridging Language Barriers Symposium

When: Thursday, March 16, 2017, 9am-6pm

Where: Macquarie University, Australian Hearing Hub S2.6 (AHH) 1.200 Lecture Theatre

Overview: a symposium abstract is available here.

Preliminary program: 

9:00-9:15        Welcome
9:15-10:15      Keynote lecture 1, Prof Ingrid Gogolin, Hamburg University, Language diversity as an asset for teaching and learning: theoretical considerations and empirical indications
10:15-10:45    Tea break
10:45-12:45    Panel 1: Educating diverse student populations

• Susan Poetsch, Sydney University, Languaging their learning: how children work their languages for classroom learning
• Hanne Brandt, Hamburg University, Language Learning in the Mainstream Classroom: Social Science Teachers’ Approaches and Attitude
• Miriam Faine, Monash University, Student experiences in the superdiverse university
• Stephen Doherty, University of New South Wales and Jan-Louis Kruger, Macquarie University, Bridging language barriers in educational settings using subtitles for first and second language students

12:45-13:45    Lunch
13:45-14:00    Transition
14:00-15:00    Keynote lecture 2, Prof Drorit Lengyel, Hamburg University, Home languages and home language instruction in the German education system
15:00-15:30    Tea break
15:30-17:30    Panel 2: Multilingualism in institutions

• Ruth Arber and Michiko Weinmann, Deakin University, Orientating languages: Navigating multilingual spaces
• Tobias Schroedler, Hamburg University, Multilingual Practices in a German Institution: A case study of multilingualism amongst staff in Hamburg University 
• Amanda Miller Amberber, Australian Catholic University, Language therapy in the first versus second language for multilinguals with aphasia: effectiveness and barriers to treatment
• Haidee Kruger, Macquarie University, The double-edged sword of translation: Language-in-education policy, publishing languages, and translated children’s books in South Africa

17:30-18:00    Closing panel

Would you like to be part of the Bridging Language Barriers symposium? 

Attendance at this highly interactive event will be free but numbers are limited. To avoid disappointment, register your attendance now by sending an e-mail to languageonthemove@mq.edu.au.

For those who are interested in participating but unable to attend on the day, we will host a range of related online discussions and forums here on Language on the Move. Throughout the day, we’ll be live-tweeting the event. Our Twitter hashtag will be #LOTM2017. Follow @lg_on_the_move

“Learn Chinese, Double Your World”: Promotion of Chinese as a global language

Research seminar about the language learning experiences of Burmese high school students in China

Topic: Following the China Dream (中国梦): Burmese students in a Yunnan border high school

Where: Macquarie University, S2.6 (AHH) 1.620 Faculty Tute Rm (16UA),

When: Wednesday, 22 February, 13:00-14:00

Presenter: Li Jia

Host: Professor Ingrid Piller

Abstract: In the current era of globalization desired migration destinations are no longer confined to Anglophone and Western countries. Given the increasing prominence of China’s economy and soft power projection in the world, China has emerged as an increasingly attractive destination for international students. One of the first studies to systematically examine their educational experiences, this seminar shares findings from an ethnographic research project on Burmese students’ language learning experiences at a border high school in Yunnan in China’s south-west. The focus will be on the educational barriers experienced by Burmese migrant students, the educational policies and teaching practices affecting them, the agentive practices of migrant students and their interactions with the educational context in which they find themselves. The presentation will be of interest not only to those with a background in Educational Linguistics and Chinese Studies but to anyone wishing to understand how migrant education produces and reproduces the social order, particularly against the novel promotion of Chinese as a global language.

Li Jia (3rd from left) during field work

About the presenter: LI Jia is Associate Professor of Foreign Languages at Yunnan University. For the past three years, she has been a PhD student in the Linguistics Department at Macquarie University. Under the supervision of Ingrid Piller and as a member of the Language on the Move research group, she has conducted a critical sociolinguistic ethnography of the education experiences of Burmese migrant students in China. Her thesis is currently under examination. Her research interests are in the sociolinguistics of language learning and ASEAN students’ education in her native Yunnan, China.

Ingrid Piller’s “Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” wins Prose Award

Language on the Move is finally back from our summer break. The New Year has started well for us with exciting news that Ingrid Piller’s Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 2016) has won the 2017 Prose Award in the “Language and Linguistics” category. The Prose Awards are presented by the American Association of Publishers and have been recognizing “the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content” since 1976.

If you would like to refresh your memory of the book, there is also a cool podcast interview with the author on the New Books Network.

Last year we ran a draw and raffled off five copies of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. Entrants and winners came from around the world and just in time for Christmas we dispatched prizes to lucky winners in Croatia, Finland, Philippines, Switzerland, and UK. In return we received some lovely thank-you notes, which we are sharing here with the winners’ permission.

“A source of inspiration”

An early Christmas present! What a blessing to be one of the lucky winners of this precious work by Dr. Ingrid Piller! Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice will be a sure source of inspiration and insight for my current research on the language experiences of Filipino migrant nurses in the Middle East. I’ll be sure to share my findings with Language on the Move. I’m happy to be part of this community of scholars that values the equality of languages and the people who speak them.

“Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” in its new home in Manila

Thank you Dr. Ingrid! More power to you and the amazing work that you do!

I am an assistant professor and associate researcher in the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines. I have presented and published papers in oral communication, forensic linguistics, and English for Specific Purposes. It is my hope that my research can help design language courses that enable people to perform better in different professions.

From 2013 to 2015, I studied how new accountants use English in audit firms in Manila. These industry-informed findings were then used to design an English for Accountants course that targets specific language competencies that accounting students need in order to meet their future employers’ skills requirements. Articles based on this project have been published in Business and Professional Communication Quarterly and English for Specific Purposes.

The scope of my research recently expanded to investigate the language use, struggles, and coping strategies of Filipino migrant workers in different destination countries. The first phase of the study probes the experience of Filipino nurses in the Middle East, and in the future I hope to bring this study to Sydney, Australia. (Pia Patricia Tenedero, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines)

“Highlights the importance of linguistic diversity as a driving force for social justice”

Warm greetings from Finland!!!

“Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” in its new home in Jyväskylä

I am a doctoral student at the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. I study discourses on language, employment and integration in the non-governmental organisation (NGO) and within the wider Finnish context. In particular, I explore the role of language in the integration of migrants into the Finnish working life. I also zoom in on multilingual resources that migrant NGO practitioners make use of and practice in the workplace. The key participants in my study are multilingual migrant NGO practitioners, that is, employees, apprentices, trainees, interns, and volunteers with diverse backgrounds. My own role as a researcher and a volunteer in the NGO with a multilingual and a migrant background contributes both to my interpretation of the findings from all those different perspectives and shapes the ways that the participants are engaged in my research. At the same time, my participants, their practices and narratives, too, shape my understanding of the studied phenomena.

Language on the Move portal has been a valuable source on the most recent developments in the field of Sociolinguistics. Furthermore, it has been an important platform for me as a junior researcher to be informed and involved in fruitful scientific and societal conversations through research blog posts from around the globe. It was through Language on the Move that I got acquainted with the recently published book by Professor Ingrid Piller, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. In this new book, one of the main findings indicates that migrants’ proficiency of the host country language creates barriers for their access to employment, which is also one of the conclusions I draw in my own study on migrants in Finland. What I find most important in the book is that it illustrates the role of language in social stratification and highlights the importance of linguistic diversity as a driving force for social justice. (Sonya Sahradyan, University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

“Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” in its new home in Berne

“Great teaching resource”

I am a sociolinguist at the University of Bern’s Institute for Spanish Language and Literatures. As a scholar interested in attitudes to language, Ingrid’s book represents a go-to reference for grasping the subtle (and less subtle) ways in which language may serve to ingrain inequalities among users as well as to give cause for instances of discrimination in a so-called globalized world. It will be of great use in the classes I teach in discussing these dynamics with my students, as they are prevalent in Switzerland, a country in which authorities measure migrants’ level of integration in terms of demonstrated abilities in one of the national languages. In addition to that, as an introduction to applied sociolinguistics, Ingrid’s book provides my students and I with tools to act upon these inequalities and instances of discrimination in an effective manner. (Víctor Fernández-Mallat, University of Berne, Switzerland)

“Ingrid’s book makes me feel much braver”

“Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” in its new home in London

I’m not an academic and I don’t work formally in the sociolinguistics field. However I am a freelance teacher and a teacher adviser in English schools, with a career-long specialism in English, Literacy and EAL; and sociolinguistics has informed my understanding and practice for a very long time (since 1984 when I read Peter Trudgill during my teacher training year). A snapshot of my own views about language and EAL learners in an English context can be found on my Flexilingual blog, which is a curatorial learning hub about literacy, language, EAL and multilingualism.

I am always educated and stimulated by the Language on the Move blog with its international dimension so I was thrilled to win Ingrid Piller’s book!

I advocate for linguistic diversity and social justice in my online interactions and professional practice. My work is usually quite practical and hands on but it’s very important for that to be informed by research and illuminated by relevant theory. Ingrid’s work is very accessible and full of narratives and case studies which offer powerful leverage on my work and help me engage and educate others.

I’m currently using the book to help me plan a workshop at the “Decolonizing Teacher Education” conference in Exeter in March this year. It’s a great honour to participate in the conference and also quite daunting. Ingrid’s book makes me feel much braver. I will definitely be recommending it to delegates. (Di Leedham, Flexilingual, UK)

Language on the Move

Before we go, we’d like to wish all our readers peaceful holidays and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2017!

We will be back in the New Year for another round of diverse, stimulating and engaging essays, events and interactions in the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, language learning and intercultural communication in the contexts of globalization and migration.

In particular, watch out for the symposium devoted to Bridging Language Barriers, which we will be hosting in March. Make sure to keep in touch by subscribing to our newsletter in the footer line or Follow @Lg_on_the_Move.

In the meantime, enjoy the review of Language on the Move 2016.

December

While this review looks back to 2016, two of our posts in December already looked ahead to 2017, when we will host a symposium devoted to Bridging Language Barriers at Macquarie University in March; and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland will host the 16^th International Conference on Minority Languages devoted to Revaluing Minority Languages.

Love on the Move: How Tinder is changing the way we date Livia Gerber explains why dating apps create more desires than they can possibly fulfill.

November

In November members of the Language on the Move team travelled to New Zealand to attend the annual conference of the New Zealand Linguistics Society in Wellington. The conference was devoted to Doing and Applying Linguistics in a Globalised World and took place a week after an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 hit the South Island and nearby Wellington. So, the Macquarie delegation had to learn the “Drop. Cover. Hold” drill right at the beginning of the conference. Luckily, it wasn’t needed.

In addition to Ingrid Piller, who was a keynote speaker, the following team members presented their research:

• Rahel Cramer, Mediating corporate and state practices: a case study of the BP oil spill and VW emissions scandal
• Jia Li, Agentive practices in learning Chinese: A critical sociolinguistic ethnography of Burmese students’ educational experiences in China
• Agnes Bodis, Migration, language testing and perceptions of linguistic authenticity in Australia
• Gegentuul Baioud, A semiotic analysis of wedding invitations in Inner Mongolia
• Alexandra Grey, Regulating linguistic signage in China: Linguistic landscape subjectivity

Another November highlight was the addition of Jinhyun Cho’s thesis Interpreting English language ideologies in Korea: dreams vs. realities to our PhD Hall of Fame.

We were also fortunate to win another award: our lively social media presence – we now have over 14,400 Twitter followers –earned us a spot in the Top 100 Language Learning Blog for Polyglots, Linguists and Learners awarded by meta-blog Feedspot, where Language on the Move was identified as amongst the 100 most frequently searched and accessed language learning blogs on the web. We are happy that these metrics back up our standing in the international sociolinguistics community, where Language on the Move was earlier in the year identified as one of three global networks “that have been remarkably productive for the dissemination of new, critical sociolinguistic ideas and analysis, and for building capacity in European and global sociolinguistics” (Coupland, N. 2016, Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates, p. 20).

Building bridges in a divided world Reviewing findings from the “Australians Today” 2016 Report by the Scanlon Foundation, Ingrid Piller examines experiences of discrimination faced by different groups of Australian residents and argues for the importance of interpersonal relationships in building a more inclusive society.

Stereotyped ethnic names as a barrier to workplace entry Drawing on recent German and Swedish research, Ingrid Piller provides an overview of the roles of negative stereotyping in the job search.

October

In October we celebrated the 7^th anniversary of Language on the Move with a book draw. The winners have now all received their copies and we’ll share who they are and how they like their prize, a copy of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice, in January.

What makes foreigners weird? A quick guide to orientalism Colonial ways of seeing the non-Western Other persist in a contemporary supermarket promotion campaign, as Ingrid Piller shows.

Do bilinguals express different emotions in different languages? On the basis of code-switching data collected from a group of Arabic-English late bilinguals in the UK, Hanan Ben Nafa explains that bilinguals do different things with their different languages and may express quite different emotions in one language or the other.

How States Promote Global English: Shifting Priorities in Education Peter Ives introduces a research project that aims to create a global database of national English language teaching policies.

Piller, I. (Ed.) (2016) Language and Migration. London: Routledge.

September

A September highlight was Ingrid Piller’s visit to Cambridge to attend the annual conference of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL). A conference report is available at Why a multilingual social imagination matters.

The four-volume edited collection Language and Migration edited by Ingrid Piller was published in the Routledge Critical Concepts in Linguistics series. The four volumes are structured as follows:

• Languages in contact
• Identities and ideologies
• Linguistic diversity and social justice
• Education in linguistically diverse societies

If you’d like to read up on a state-of-the-art review of research related to language and migration but find four volumes a bit too daunting, just read the open-access editorial introduction, which can be accessed here.

Urban sociolinguistics in Dubai Dubai makes an ideal case study for an examination of the key challenges of contemporary urban sociolinguistics, as Ingrid Piller argues.

Can ESL teachers play a role in helping maintain the home language? ESL teachers have an important role to play as grassroots activists when it comes to contesting the monolingual mindset, Agnes Bodis tells her TESOL students.

August

Mi-Cha Flubacher and Shirley Yeung introduced the special issue about Discourses of Integration: Language, Skills, and the Politics of Difference they guest-edited for Multilingua; and Britta Schneider shared news of a Berlin conference devoted to How to Study Language and Social Relations in Times of Global Mobility

How language can entrench disadvantage provides a link to an author interview with Ingrid Piller about Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. If you have missed this podcast on the New Books Network, why not download it for the holidays?

July

Serendipity, Cyberspace, and the Tactility of Documents Carol Sicherman takes us on a journey into the lost multilingual and multicultural world of early 20th century Galicia signposted by postcards written by members of an extended Jewish family.

Would you mind if your child wanted to become an interpreter? Jinhyun Cho examines the differential status of translators and interpreters in Korean and Australian society.

Multilingua Here you can learn more about the partnership between Language on the Move and the international sociolinguistics journal Multilingua published by deGruyter Mouton.

June

In June Language on the Move was voted #7 in a global language-related blogging competition organized by language learning and terminology provider bab.la. In addition to coming in #7 overall, we were the only academic blog to make it into the Top 20. Competing was a lot of fun and we submitted our multilingual pitch in 17 languages and seven different scripts. If you would like to find out how to say/write “Vote for us” in Swiss German, Hudum Mongolian, Ga, Twi and a range of other languages, you can still view our pitch here. Many thanks to all our readers who voted for us! We appreciate your support!

Translation challenges of Kriol signage in the Top End Greg Dickson explores bilingual signage in the Northern Territory.

Have we just seen the beginning of the end of English? Ingrid Piller examines the linguistic consequences of Brexit and argues that, while English will continue to thrive, Brexit constitutes another nail in the coffin for native speaker supremacy.

How to solve Australia’s language learning crisis Australia’s dismal record when it comes to language learning constitutes a perennial problem, and Ingrid Piller makes the case for compulsory language education in schools.

Why does English spread in global academia? Jinhyun Cho draws attention to the fact that few academics who are critical of the global spread of English walk the walk when it comes to their own publication practices. As a counterexample she showcases a co-authored article about English as medium of instruction published in Korean.

May

May was busy with preparations for the 2016 LEF E-Seminar: between June 01 and June 21, Language on the Move teamed up with the Linguistic Ethnography Forum to deliver the 2016 LEF E-Seminar.

The Linguistic Ethnography Forum (LEF) is a Special Interest Group of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) and brings together researchers conducting linguistic ethnographic research in the UK and elsewhere. It seeks to explore a range of past and current work, to identify key issues, and to engage in methodologically and theoretically well-tuned debate. LEF hosts a free annual e-seminar open to all list members.

This year’s e-seminar was devoted to Ingrid Piller’s new book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics. A/Prof Huamei Han from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, served as discussant and our very own Livia Gerber as moderator. The e-seminar was attended by ca. 1,100 participants from around the globe and provided a vibrant forum for the discussion of the ways in which multilingualism is linked to inequality in education, the workplace and community participation in a wide range of global contexts.

Do monolingual teachers produce a Golem effect in multilingual students? Ingrid Piller examines how the monolingual mindset underlying teacher expectations may disadvantage multilingual students in

April

Portrait of a linguistic shirker Ingrid Piller introduces the Bavarian author Oskar Maria Graf, who lived in exile in New York for 30 years and explicitly refused to learn English.

Cleaning work: a stepping-stone or a dead-end job for migrants? Majiu Strömmer busts the myth that the workplace is a good place for migrants to engage in language learning.

The language that cannot speak its name Ingrid Piller examines the consequences of monolingual language ideologies for the educational success of migrant children.

Ingrid Piller, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice, Oxford University Press, March 2016

March

Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice, Ingrid Piller’s long-awaited new book, was published in March by Oxford University Press. The promo code for the Language on the Move discount continues to be available here. A related blog post, The real problem with linguistic shirkers, provides a quick overview of the basics of adult language learning and exposes the failure of destination states to adequately provide for the language learning needs of adult migrant learners.

Crucial communication: language management in Australian asylum interviews Laura Smith-Khan reports on her research with Afghans who have been successful in obtaining a protection visa in Australia.

Niru Perera introduced her research related to Temples helping heritage language maintenance in Australia and Ingrid Piller debunked the myth of the ‘Herderian triad’ in Herder: an explainer for linguists.

February

Our resources section includes our PhD Hall of Fame, where we offer open access to research theses produced by team members. In February we uploaded two new theses, namely Grace Chu-Lin Chang’s Language learning challenges of overseas students and Livia Gerber’s Giving children the gift of bilingualism. Additionally, we featured research reports about resources related to Child language brokering by Alexandra Grey; to cultural concepts (Alles in Ordnung? Reflections on German order) by Rahel Cramer; and a workshop report by Donna Butorac about Australian Perspectives on “Language and Migration.”

January

We kicked off the year with reflections on ways of seeing by Ingrid Piller related to her open-access article about “Monolingual ways of seeing multilingualism” published in the Journal of Multicultural Discourses at around the same time.

Despite their commitment to diversity and equality of access, contemporary multicultural societies and their institutions struggle to find effective ways to overcome linguistic disadvantage and break down language barriers. Today’s diverse societies comprise people with a wide range of linguistic proficiencies while institutions often continue to operate through the monolingual standard language. This mismatch can create significant barriers to social cohesion, educational success, employment opportunities and community participation.

A one-day symposium at Macquarie University asks how such language barriers can best be bridged.

Bridging Language Barriers Symposium

When: Thursday, March 16, 2017

Where: Macquarie University

Overview

The focus of the symposium will be on innovative German and Australian research that engages with the social and cultural challenges resulting from linguistic diversity. Due to migration and globalization, speakers of different languages no longer live in isolation but are increasingly in contact with each other. Even so, a pervasive monolingual mindset in many contexts has meant that institutions have been slow to recognize the challenges of multilingualism for full participation. Concerted and systematic efforts to bridge institutional language barriers to full and equal participation for those from non-dominant language backgrounds are largely lacking.

The negative impacts of language barriers contribute to group segregation and are connected to exclusion from full and equal social participation in education, employment and other spheres of social life. In fact, the language barriers faced by multilinguals in monolingual institutions often remain invisible and unacknowledged as “communication” is tacitly equated with monolingual language use; and “communication breakdown” is often assumed to be the sole responsibility of social outsiders rather than the joint responsibility of everyone within the inherently cooperative processes of communication.

The symposium will have a particular focus on linguistic barriers in educational institutions, where minority students face the double challenge of having to learn a new language while also learning academic content through the medium of that new language. If limited linguistic proficiency in the dominant language is misrecognized as poor academic performance, long-term negative consequences such as limited career prospects and social alienation may result. Language barriers must therefore be understood holistically as barriers to social participation more broadly; and strategies for overcoming language barriers must be located at the intersection of institutional language policies and wider social participation in groups and networks.

Aims

Against this background, the symposium has three aims:

• To showcase German and Australian research that examines the nature and consequences of language barriers in educational institutional contexts, and at the intersection of formal and informal participation.
• To highlight positive experiences and practices that serve to mitigate linguistic barriers to full and equitable formal and informal participation.
• To explore the possibilities for joint action on the basis of research conducted by the two partner institutions of Hamburg University and Macquarie University.

Keynote speakers

Funded by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) under a partnership grant between Hamburg University and Macquarie University, we are delighted to welcome Professor Ingrid Gogolin and Professor Drorit Lengyel, both from Hamburg University, as keynote speakers.

Professor Ingrid Gogolin

Ingrid Gogolin is Professor of Comparative and Intercultural Education at the University of Hamburg, where she heads the research group “Diversity in Education Research” together with Drorit Lengyel. She is also the coordinator of the German National Research Cluster “Language Education and Multilingualism” funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. Her research focuses on migration and linguistic diversity in education. One of her current major projects takes a longitudinal perspective on the multilingual development in German, Russian and Turkish as home languages and English and French as foreign languages of over 1,800 high school students.

Ingrid Gogolin is well-known to Australian audiences due to her work on the monolingual mindset with the late Michael Clyne and we are delighted to be able to welcome her back to Australia.

Professor Drorit Lengyel

Drorit Lengyel is Professor of Education in Multilingual Contexts at the University of Hamburg and she heads the research group “Diversity in Education Research” together with Ingrid Gogolin. Her research focuses on language in early childhood education and language education (Sprachbildung) between the school and the home. She is also an expert in teacher training, where her focus is on preparing teachers to work under conditions of rapid social and cultural change. One of her current major projects is a longitudinal study of the effects of coordinated German and home language programs for children (and their parents) in the primary years.

Would you like to be part of the Bridging Language Barriers symposium?

We still have a few slots for presenters who wish to present their relevant research. If you would like to be considered as a presenter, please send a 200-word abstract to languageonthemove@mq.edu.au by January 31, 2017.

Attendance will be free but numbers are limited. To avoid disappointment, watch this space and subscribe to our newsletter in the footer line so that you will not miss out on any announcements. The full program and a sign-up facility will be made available in February.

For those who are interested in participating but unable to attend on the day, Language on the Move will host a range of related online discussions and forums throughout February and March 2017. Our Twitter hashtag will be #LOTM2017. Follow @Lg_on_the_Move

Organizing committee

Ingrid Piller (chair), Agnes Bodis, Alexandra Grey, Awatif Alshammri, Gegentuul Baioud, Hanna Torsh, Jinhyun Cho, Laura Smith-Khan, Li Jia, Livia Gerber, Loy Lising, Rahel Cramer, Shiva Motaghi Tabari, Vera W. Tetteh, Yining Wang

The 16th International Conference on Minority Languages (ICML XVI) will be held at University of Jyväskylä Language Campus

The 16^th International Conference on Minority Languages (ICML XVI) and the 34th Summer School and Conference of Applied Language Studies will be held in Jyväskylä and Närpes, Finland, August 28-30, 2017.

Conference theme: Revaluing minority languages

Minority languages have long been used by different groups of social actors for identity and community building purposes, such as the symbolic, material, and political mobilisation of linguistic and cultural rights. Currently, under changing political, economic and cultural conditions around the world, minority languages are subject to multiple, overlapping and even contradictory discourses and practices of valuation and revaluation.

The peripheral position of minority languages, as structured by nation-state logics, and the central role endowed to them in the political projects of various minority groups are now complexified by both the increasing economic value of minority languages as a resource of distinction and authenticity, and by the intensified mobility of languages and their speakers. Some of the consequences of this complexification result in re-evaluating the relationship between minority and migrant languages and the trajectories of so-called “new speakers” of minority languages.

ICML XVI will address critical questions such as how minority languages are valued, by whom and under what conditions.

The conference is open to researchers, students and stakeholders from across the multidisciplinary field of minority languages.

Academic Programme

In addition to the talks delivered by plenary speakers, the programme will consist of panel discussions, paper and poster sessions, colloquia and workshops.

Plenary speakers:

• Professor Helen Kelly Holmes (University of Limerick, Ireland)
• Professor Ingrid Piller (Macquarie University, Australia)
• Director Robert Adam (University College London, UK)
• Professor Sari Pöyhönen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

Pre- or post-conference workshops will be organized by plenary speakers.

Invited panels

• Historical language minorities in Finland and neighboring countries
• Immigration and integration in the Swedish speaking regions of Finland

Further information

The submission of proposals for papers, posters, colloquia and workshops within the research theme Revaluing Minority Languages will open in January 2017 and closes on February 28, 2017. Visit the conference website for regular updates on ICML XIV. The conference organizers can be contacted at icml2017@jyu.fi or on Twitter @ApplingJYU #ICMLXVI

Jinhyun Cho was awarded her PhD for her thesis about “Interpreting English language ideologies in Korea: dreams vs. realities”

Many people around the world dream of learning English. The pursuit of English is rarely only, or even predominantly, about language learning: it’s about self-improvement, self-transformation and the aspiration to live a better life. Unsurprisingly, with English as with anything else in life, dreams and realities do not always match. Recent PhD research conducted by Jinhyun Cho at Macquarie University examines this gap between dreams and realities of English in the national context of South Korea and for one of the most intensely engaged groups of English language learners, namely female translators and interpreters.

The thesis is now available for open-access downloaded and can be accessed here.

This research explores English language ideologies in Korea in relation to the recent phenomenon of “English fever” or yeongeo yeolpung, which refers to the frenzied pursuit of English as valued language capital among Koreans. The popularity of English in Korea has recently attracted significant scholarly attention in sociolinguistics. Despite a growing body of research on the issue of English in Korean society, the question of how the promises of English translate into lived experiences and life course trajectories remains underexplored.

Based on a multi-method qualitative approach, the study draws on three sets of data through which to present a holistic picture of the tensions between dreams and realities in relation to English in Korea: historical textual data, media discourses, and one-on-one interviews with 32 English-Korean translators and interpreters.

Historical textual data are used to trace the genealogy of English in Korea since the late 19^th century via Japanese colonization, the post-independence period and industrialization, to government-led globalization campaigns. The English language ideologies identified through the historical periodisation serve as a baseline for the analyses at macro as well as micro levels.

Contemporary English language ideologies are then elucidated through media discourse analyses of news items related to English-medium lectures in higher education in order to examine how dreams about English are sustained and how such dreams contrast with actual classroom experiences.

In order to understand the uptake of these macro-level language ideologies by individuals, interview data from translators and interpreters as the most engaged group of English language learners are then examined. This includes an exploration of the ways in which individual pursuits of linguistic perfectionism reinforce linguistic insecurity in relation to dominant neoliberal discourses of desirable language speakers. Disparities between dreams and realities in English as experienced by the participants are examined from a gender perspective to show that the pursuit of translation and interpreting is a gendered career choice in relation to societal norms of females. Particular attention is paid to the recent media phenomenon of “good-looking interpreters.” The analysis demonstrates how English has been remoulded as an embodied capital in which aesthetic qualities of speakers can enhance the value of English.

The findings of this study highlight the multiplicity and evolutionary nature of English language ideologies. The historical documentation of the development of English suggests English as multiple forms of capital – cultural, economic, political, social and symbolic – with class mobility as a key driver. In addition to the earlier meanings of English, the micro-level investigations illustrate more diverse aspects of English as a gendered tool to achieve desirable female biographies, as an instrument to enhance individual competitiveness, and as added value to personal aesthetics. While such diverse ideologies attached to English testify to the enormous value attached to English and possibly answer the question as to why English is so popular in Korea, the examination of media discourses about English-medium lectures reveals the use of English as a tool to sustain existing societal structures that advantage the already powerful conservative media. Combined with the constant mediatisation of the benefits of English, neoliberal influences on English in which achieving linguistic perfectionism is presented as real and feasible further contribute to masking the sustained gap between dreams and realities in English. As people blame themselves for lacking individual commitment to the mastery of English as celebrated in popular neoliberal personhood, the substantial costs of the pursuit of English remain hidden, which in turn drives more people to pursuing English and further fuels “English fever”.

Overall, the research illuminates historical, mediatized and gendered aspects of English as an ideological construct. The study has implications for future research and stakeholders, particularly as related to the need to rethink English as a global language, the diversification of English language ideologies in gender, and the potential of translation and interpreting for interdisciplinary research.

Related content

• English Gangnam Style
• Why does English spread in global academia
• Would you mind if your child wanted to become an interpreter?
• Internationalization and Englishization in higher education
• Early study abroad students in young adulthood
• Does internationalization change research content?
• The dark side of TESOL
• Warning: Global English may harm your mental health

References

Cho, J. (2012). Campus in English or campus in shock? English Today, 28 (02), 18-25 DOI: 10.1017/S026607841200020X
Cho, J. (2015). Sleepless in Seoul: Neoliberalism, English fever, and linguistic insecurity among Korean interpreters Multilingua DOI: 10.1515/multi-2013-0047
Cho, J. (2016). Interpreting English Language Ideologies in Korea: Dreams Vs. Realities. (PhD), Macquarie University. Retrieved from http://minerva.mq.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:60718 [open access to full thesis]
Piller, I., & Cho, J. (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy Language in Society, 42 (01), 23-44 DOI: 10.1017/S0047404512000887 [open access to full article]