How is your Language-on-the-Move Reading Challenge coming along? One month has gone by and you should have ticked off at least one book from our list. I started with an…
Ingrid PillerMarch 1, 2018
My banal cosmopolitan fridge magnets In response to my post about the banal cosmopolitanism of multilingual welcome signs last week, a number of people suggested that they quite enjoy finding…
Ingrid PillerNovember 6, 2017
Multilingual "Welcome" sign in a shopping mall in Munich, Germany Have you recently seen a “welcome” sign? They constitute a strange genre: ever more ubiquitous on the one hand, yet…
Ingrid PillerOctober 31, 2017
On the ferry from Spain to Morocco My recent book Becoming Diasporically Moroccan explores how next-generations after migration use communicative resources to feel ‘at home’ in their ancestral homeland. By…
Lauren WagnerOctober 26, 2017
This latest exploration in language shaming examines a language shame campaign on the internet and shows how it is used as a tool to suppress political debate and women’s public…
Ingrid PillerOctober 16, 2017
We all have childhood dreams. Mine was to become a writer, which, unfortunately, was not well received by my parents because it is a “hungry” job. Due to the absence…
Jinhyun ChoSeptember 1, 2017
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has just come to an end. Like Christmas, Diwali or a wedding, the closing holiday, Eid al-Fitr, constitutes a massive occasion for gift-giving. In…
Ingrid PillerJune 27, 2017
Image of dictionary burning circulating on social media On New Year’s Eve, when many people around the world were excited about firework shows, a group of Mongols in remote Inner…
Gegentuul BaioudApril 10, 2017
As we prepare for the “Bridging Language Barriers” Symposium to be hosted at Macquarie University next week on March 16, we take a step back and ask how language barriers…
Lg_on_the_moveMarch 7, 2017
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…
Lg_on_the_moveNovember 24, 2016
Cover of 2008 movie "Mad about English" (Source: Zhang, Jie. Language policy and planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. ) We are repeatedly told that people around the world are…
Peter IvesOctober 11, 2016
A couple of years ago, I mused here on Language on the Move what linguistic theory would look like if its dominant cultural ideas had not been shaped in 1950s…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 29, 2016
One way of looking at the outcome of the British referendum is to understand it as an act of self-sabotage: "...and in the end, Britain, which had colonized the world,…
Ingrid PillerJune 25, 2016
A monument near Baganuur (Outer Mongolia) with an inscription of poem "My Native Land" by Natsagdorj (Source: Wikipedia) In the middle school Mongolian textbooks there is a well-known text called…
Gegentuul BaioudNovember 18, 2015
Japan Store near the University of Yangon “Welcome to the Golden Guest Inn, Ms Takahashi! We've been expecting you!” A Chinese-Burmese man warmly welcomed me on my arrival at his…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江February 20, 2014
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