We talk about Sandra’s new book Multilingualism, Migration, and Domestic Work: On the Sociolinguistic Situation of Filipina Domestic Migrant Workers in Madrid. The book was published by de Gruyter in 2025 and is available open access through UPL Open.

The book explores the intersection of multilingualism and transnational migration in the global sector of domestic work in Spain, the second largest labor market in the EU. Over the course of three years, a corpus of field notes, narrative interviews, focus groups, language portraits and language maps was built with 25 Filipina domestic workers (FDWs) in Madrid, partly collected through participatory approaches. The analysis focuses on three main aspects: first, spatial repertoires; second, the multilingual everyday life and lived experiences of languages; and third, the agency of FDWs. The aim of this study is to better understand the dynamics that emerge from inequalities of multilingualism in the feminized sector of transnational domestic work.

The book expands our understanding of multilingualism and transnational migration in the feminized sector of paid domestic work. It is a pioneering contribution to the growing field of language and migration, offering new insights into the sociolinguistic aspects of migration from Spain’s only former colony in Asia to Spain. Theoretically, the study adds a postcolonial and critical approach to language and migration, using a variety of methodological techniques.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Reference

Issel-Dombert, S. (2025). Multilingualism, Migration, and Domestic Work: On the Sociolinguistic Situation of Filipina Domestic Migrant Workers in Madrid. De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111714288

Transcript

INGRID PILLER: Welcome to the Language on the Move podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Ingrid Piller, and my guest today is Professor Sandra Issel-Dombert. Sandra is a professor of Spanish linguistics at Universität Duisburg-Essen in Germany. Her research focuses on everyday multilingualism in the workplace, in healthcare, and in the family. Today, we want to talk about Sandra’s new book, Multilingualism, Migration, and Domestic Work: On the sociolinguistic situation of Filipina domestic migrant workers in Madrid. The book was published by De Gruyter in 2025 and is available open access through UPL Open.

Welcome to the show, Sandra.

Can you maybe start us off by telling us about yourself and how you got to write this book?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Yeah, I’m a Romance linguist. I’m interested in the Spanish-speaking world, and I have a strong interest in multilingualism, migration, and social injustice. Well, my grandmother, she was born in the 1920s, and please don’t get me wrong, of course, that’s really different compared to Filipina domestic migrant workers, of course. My grandmother, she shared a lot of memories, and decades later, I was for the first time in Hong Kong, and I noticed that Hong Kong is really different on Sundays because in some parts of the city, there are women gathering in parks, on bridges. And first of all, I wasn’t sure what I was observing. A couple of months later, I was in Madrid, and once again, I became aware of this phenomenon because I spotted a campaign from a transnational agency, and they were looking for Filipina domestic migrant workers, and I was wondering why they are specifically looking for Filipina women, and that’s how it started, because I was curious.

INGRID PILLER: Yeah, I was also interested that sometimes, you said in the book that sometimes, when you did your research that people actually thought, like, you were looking for a live-in maid, or they didn’t quite get that you were a researcher or your interest, and thought you were actually trying to recruit someone. And so your book is, or the research in the book is based on ethnographic fieldwork over three years from 2021 to 2023. And you did what you call a yo-yo ethnography. Can you tell us what that means, and what did you actually do? How did you collect your data, and how did you conduct your research?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Well, the concept of yo-yo ethnography was coined by Helena Wulff in 2002, and she used this metaphor to refer to the fact that it isn’t always possible to stay for a longer period in the field. And it was also, in my case, I couldn’t stay there for three years. And the idea of yo-yo ethnography refers also to the fact that you would like to protect the limited time of your participants, because in the case of domestic workers in Madrid, their time is really limited, because they have only 36 hours of free time per week.

Yeah, I mean, that’s so generous, actually, to then share time for research.

INGRID PILLER: And you also talk about how you met them at church, and in various places where they’re hanging out. So, let’s maybe start with the context a bit more. And that’s also how the book is organized. So, you start with the research problem and outline the methodology. And then you have two chapters where you talk about the different contexts, the country of origin and the destination country. Let’s start by taking a closer look at the first of these contextual chapters, Chapter Three, where you provide an overview of language and colonialism in the Philippines. Can you explain to us why your participants left and what the specific context is from which they left?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Very often the participants described the Philippines as a beautiful country with a beautiful landscape. And they shared a lot of memories of their childhood with their families growing up in the Philippines. But the problem was that it was really difficult to find a job there, in the Philippines. And that’s why they left the Philippines. And one of the participants said, we’re looking for a greener pasture also for our families, for our children.

INGRID PILLER: It’s such a migrant-sending country. And then they arrive in Spain. And before I read your book, I have to admit, I wasn’t even quite aware that domestic migration to Spain is a thing. So maybe can you tell us a bit about Spain’s transformation into an immigration destination?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Yes. Spain has a long tradition as a country of emigration. And that changed in the late 20^th century. There was a growing economy. And lots of the participants also told me that they had networks in Europe when other family members came to Spain. And they could also use these networks to come to Spain. And today, Spain is among the most important destination countries all over the world. It’s in the top 10. So this situation really changed profoundly in the last two decades.

INGRID PILLER: Yeah, it’s amazing. Because at the same time, Spain does remain a migrant-sending country, too. So yeah, that was really fascinating to read. Let’s now go a bit deeper and just meet your participants. I personally was particularly struck. I mean, they’re all amazing, touching, fascinating stories. But let’s pick out Beatriz, who I really was struck by. So this woman was just about to embark on a sciences PhD back home in the Philippines when marriage and childbirth set her on a different trajectory. And she became a live-in maid in Spain. Can you tell us a bit more with her example or another example about the linguistic repertoires and the professional trajectories and the aspirations of your participants?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Yes, Beatriz. It’s a pseudonym, of course. All names are pseudonyms except mine. I met Beatriz in the church where I met the majority of the participants and Beatriz told me a lot about her life, how it was for her growing up in the Philippines. Her father was a university professor. Her mother was a teacher. And the first thing that I remember was when she told me that at home, her parents tried- always spoke English with her. And she has a lot of practices to use or to protect also her verbal hygiene of English. And yeah, she studied and she got the opportunity to pursue a PhD. But she got married and she had four daughters. And her husband left the Philippines to work abroad in Spain. And he became ill. And that’s why Beatriz decided to care for him. And she left also the Philippines. And her four daughters stayed in the Philippines while she was living and working in the Spanish capital with her husband. Yeah, that was the life trajectory of Beatriz. And they worked together, she and her husband, they worked together in a private home for several years. And it was really hard because she couldn’t use her qualification in Madrid until today. She lives and works in Madrid in a private household as live-in. And she also told me one of her daughters later joined her. She came also to Madrid. But Beatriz did everything to make sure that her daughter could find another job. And that’s why she sent her daughter to a language course to acquire Spanish. Because, as Beatriz told me, this is what you really need. To speak Spanish to secure a job position in another field.

INGRID PILLER: It’s so interesting how the value of language resources changes across the life course and the trajectories of these women. And in terms of language repertoires, we essentially have like three big resources in play. There are the various languages from the Philippines and then there is Spanish. And as you’ve already said, and there is English. And maybe you can tell us a bit about the role of each of these languages or sets of languages in the lives of your participants and particularly in their professional experiences and their aspirations, as you’ve just done for Beatriz. Her parents taught her English to give her, you know, more opportunities. And now she’s trying to ensure that her daughter learns Spanish to have more opportunities. Can you illuminate that a bit?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Yes. Well, the other participants told me that at home, when they were growing up in the Philippines, they speak different languages, different local languages. And the situation changed when they attended school. Because in school, the instruction was in English and in Tagalog. A lot of them have told me also that they consume mass media, like television and so on, to learn English. And when they went abroad to work in other countries, communication with the employers is in English all over the world. In Spain, there was a big surprise, because for the majority of the participants, they observed that the role of English is different compared to other countries.

This has changed in the last few years. Nowadays, we can observe a phenomenon that is referred to as English frenzy or English fever, which means that the status of English has changed a lot in Spain. And there are a lot of families with children in school, they try to hire tutors or live-ins to teach English to the children or other family members. That was the first surprise. Even if you’re capable of speaking English, it would be really difficult to use this part of your multilingual repertoire when you’re, for example, in a restaurant or in a hospital, for instance. And that’s why the participants also agreed that it is necessary to learn Spanish. And of course, the languages from the Philippines also play a pivotal role, but mostly in private situations, speaking with friends, speaking with friends in the church, for example, or on other events with the Filipino community in Spain. Or, of course, when they were talking to their families in the Philippines or all over the world.

INGRID PILLER: I thought that was really well brought out. You bring that out so well, these contradictory roles that languages have, like English, for instance. On the one hand, it kind of is an additional bonus, if you will, in their job search. And it’s like value added, that they can teach English to the children of their employers. So it becomes like, you know, a bonus, added value because they’re seen as native speakers of English. So that brings economic opportunities. But on the other hand, English alone is not enough and can be quite exclusionary in terms of social participation outside of their narrow workplace. So maybe you can talk a bit about learning Spanish too? How did that go?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: That was really challenging. Because as I already mentioned, domestic workers have only 36 hours free time in a week. And with other words, you have to organize your whole life, your whole private life in these 36 hours. Some of them hired a tutor, for instance, in a group or also individual lessons. Also, the churches. There are different Filipino churches in Madrid. They also offer language courses on Saturdays or Sundays with volunteers. And, yeah, it’s really difficult to learn a language in this limited timeframe.

INGRID PILLER: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, that flies so in the face of this ideology that we often have, you know, you’re in the country and you should be, you know, immersed in the language and it becomes really easy. But at the same time, you show quite clearly that actually the circumstances of these women preclude essentially mostly Spanish language opportunities, Spanish language learning opportunities.

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Also in the workplace, in the private homes, it was often really hard for them to learn or to practice Spanish. Sometimes, they speak Spanish with the children, but the parents, try to install a monolingual English language regime at home.

INGRID PILLER: Yeah. So the various interests really conflict in terms of language policies and language desires, for sure. Um, another question I wanted to ask you. So in your final main chapter, you talk about, you show that, um, or throughout the book, we actually see that like, in Beatriz’s case, most of your participants, have a huge discrepancy between their educational and professional qualifications from back home and then the domestic work that they are undertaking in Spain. And at the same time, in this final chapter or this pre-final chapter, you describe domestic work as an “automatic pathway” for these women. Can you explain how this works, how they get from being highly educated and, and having professional qualifications, to this automatic pathway to domesticity?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Well, the Philippines are one of the biggest countries that sends live-ins all over the world. And it’s part of the campaign or the commodification of Filipina domestic migrant workers. They are commodified as highly versatile. They can easily adapt, learn foreign languages, and they are also cheap. So that’s the main idea of this commodification. A lot of participants had experiences with other family members, the mothers, sisters, for example, who were already working abroad and due to these familial ties and transnational networks, it became an opportunity to find a job. That’s the automatic pathway.

One of the participants, I called her Kate. She also tried to find another job in the cleaning service of a hotel, but it was so difficult for her because her perception was that she couldn’t speak Spanish. She could understand it, but she couldn’t talk with the employers. She couldn’t talk with guests, for instance. So that’s why she wasn’t able to secure another job position.

INGRID PILLER: It’s all embedded in these global inequalities, of course.

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Exactly.

INGRID PILLER: Before we go, what’s next for your research, Sandra?

SANDRA ISSEL-DOMBERT: Well, I’m interested in the care sector and all over the world. We can observe that there is a huge demand for personnel who works, for example, in hospitals, but also in homes for the elderly. And here in Germany, we have several programs. We try to hire personnel from different countries in Latin America. And I’m interested in their sociolinguistic situation in the migration process and also in questions of language learning, participation, discrimination as well. And the use of artificial intelligence – is it really helpful or what are the challenges? And I’m also interested in multilingual families. What happens when one of the family members is affected by dementia?

INGRID PILLER: Well, we’ll be looking forward to your next book, or two books with these kinds of projects. Thanks so much, Sandra. And thanks for listening, everyone. Sandra’s book, Multilingualism, Migration and Domestic Work, is an incredibly rich book for anyone interested in language and migration. And I hope that this conversation has whetted your appetite, and I recommend you go and read the book. As I said, it’s available open access through UPL Open. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, and recommend the Language on the Move podcast and our partner, the New Books Network, to your students, colleagues, and friends. Till next time.

Through her professional experience in the On-Country Teacher Education program in Western Australia, Carly reflects on the way educational scholarship is rooted in community engagement. The conversation provides insights into the needs of teacher education to better prepare graduate teachers and an example for an innovative pedagogical approach co-created with community and one that reflects the local language, culture and Country.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Image credit: Curtin University On Country Teacher Education)

References

Ober, R., Steele, C., Harvey, A. (2026). Strengthening Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Language Learning: For the next generation of language learners. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 49(3). https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.00049.obe
Ober, R., Steele, C., Harvey, A. (2026). Working together for stronger Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages: In the Decade of Indigenous Languages. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 49(2), 153–167. https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.00048.obe
Steele, C., Dobinson, T., Dovchin, S., Robinson, C., Oakley, G., Cumming-Potvin, W., Gower, G., Grace, K., & Manado, S. (2026). Exploring land, language and culture through playworld translanguaging: one child’s meaning-making practices. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2026.2666552
Steele, C., Chen, J., Andreassen, K., Dobinson, T., Dryden, S., Veliz, L., Partridge, D., Michell, M., Turnbull, M., Schiavi, M., & Stewart, B. (2025). To what extent do Australian universities offer dedicated units to prepare pre-service teachers to support EAL/D learners? TESOL in Context, 33(2). https://doi.org/10.21153/tesol2025vol33no2art2108
Steele, C., Gower, G., & Bogachenko, T. (2024). Creating and enacting culturally responsive assessment for First Nations students in higher education settings. Australian Journal of Education, 68(2), pp. 84–102. https://doi.org/10.1177/00049441241258496

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Transcript (coming soon)

Abstract: The headlines blare, “Cost of living crisis. Mental health crisis. Climate crisis.” And the list could go on. We find ourselves in a world where a state of crisis has become normalized and where individuals, institutions, and whole societies are besieged by internal and external threats. Literacies are deeply enmeshed in these crises, as they simultaneously are the cause of crisis (e.g., algorithmic discourses feeding the crisis of democracy), a coping tool (e.g., digital help seeking and service provision), and a means of overcoming crises (e.g., individual learning and collective organizing).

In this year’s Language-on-the-Move Symposium we will explore these intersections and tensions in contexts of linguistic diversity.

This is a free event but places are strictly limited. Please register your attendance here.

Please consider your registration as binding. If you register and your plans change, please withdraw your registration so that your spot can be allocated to someone on the waiting list.

Program

10:30-11:00        Arrive for an 11am start

11:00-11:30         Welcome addresses

• • • Simon Handley, Pro Vice Chancellor, Graduate Research, MQ
    • Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller, MQ & UHH
    • Dr Loy Lising, MQ

11:30-13:00       Keynote

“I turn to it for anything that a person can’t explain; it’s my great helper”: Exploring forced migrants’ making-do with language technologies (Dr Jenia Yudytska, UHH)

13:00:13:30        Lunch break

13:30-15:00        Lightning Talks

• • • How GenAI creates new burdens for international students seeking linguistic and academic support (Dr Ana Sofia Bruzon, UNSW & MQ)
    • Caring for multilingual students in higher education (Dr Agi Bodis, MQ)
    • How women with limited English find domestic violence support information (Tazin Abdullah, MQ)
    • When “getting by” becomes the norm: Medical receptionists and language support for patients with limited English proficiency (Brynn Quick, MQ)
    • Emotions, Digital Literacies and Care in Bengali Transnational Families in Australia (Dr Priyanka Bose, WSU)
    • Encounters in Intercultural Communication (Dr Robyn Moloney)

15:00-15:15          Short Break

15:15-16:00          Group work

Student perspectives on AI in higher education (Co-designed by Dr Agi Bodis with Master of Applied Linguistics and TESOL students, MQ: Man Nhi Chung, Berkehan Davran, Cheng-Yu Hunaf, Faranak Jalali, Vanessa Florencia Leiva Salas, Claire Livesey, Mahiat Lubaba, Hoai Ngoc Pham, Thi Ha Anh Phan, Kateryna Radmanovich, Ha Phuong Tran, Thu An Tran)

16:00-16:45         Panel

Centering people (Panelists: Dr Ana Sofia Bruzon; Dr Jenia Yudytska; Dr Hanna Torsh; Moderator: Brynn Quick)

16:45-17:00        Close-out

17:00-18:30        Reception and networking

Organizing committee

Ingrid Piller, Loy Lising, Agi Bodis, Brynn Quick, Emily Pacheco, Tazin Abdullah, Hanna Torsh, Ana Sofia Bruzon

Abstract

“I turn to it for anything that a person can’t explain; it’s my great helper”: Exploring forced migrants’ making-do with language technologies (Dr Jenia Yudystka)

For migrants who face language barriers in the country of destination, meeting informational and communicative needs can be highly challenging. This is particularly true for forced migrants, whose language learning may be impeded by the precarity of their situation. Many turn to language technologies as a resource for, for instance, dealing with housing matters or accessing healthcare; these technologies include machine translation, language learning apps and, more recently, generative artificial intelligence (genAI). This paper draws on de Certeau’s concept of ‘making-do’ (1984) – the creative, everyday tactics people employ to get things done while lacking institutional power – to explore how migrants make do with imperfect technological affordances to reach everyday communicative goals.

This topic is investigated through an ethnographic study with Ukrainian forced migrants in Austria. The data includes semi-structured interviews with six Ukrainian women in 2024, four of whom were re-interviewed in 2026; the paper also draws on participant observation from two Ukrainian-Austrian mutual aid communities on Telegram. Overall, the technologies are found to be employed for three major functions: language learning, translation and interpretation, and information gathering. Creative and at times critical usage can support forced migrants’ agency, as in the case of a participant teaching herself work-specific vocabulary with genAI. At the same time, the necessity for participants to make do with technologies in high-stakes contexts, such as relying on machine translation to discuss a cancer diagnosis with medical staff, only highlights the insufficiency of institutional support. The broader implications of forced migrants making do with language technologies are ambiguous, as effective digital tactics help individuals cope with precarity while papering over structural gaps that remain unresolved.

How GenAI creates new burdens for international students seeking linguistic and academic support (Dr Ana Sofia Bruzon)

Over the past few years, the use of GenAI tools has become rampant in higher education and international students are particularly keen adopters. Yet, the contexts, constraints and affordances of GenAI use for language and content learning as well as social integration remain poorly understood. This paper draws on a set of reflective writings by a group of international teacher trainees to examine (a) how students use GenAI; (b) how they evaluate their use of GenAI; and (c) how they envision GenAI to affect their future professional practice. Using thematic analysis, we find, first, that a majority of students report using GenAI regularly for language and content learning purposes, including working on their assessment tasks, while a minority resist the use of GenAI for academic and other purposes. Second, both groups report significant negative feelings, such as fear of inadvertently engaging in academic dishonesty, of stunting their own learning, or of missing out. Third, students fall back on widely used tropes related to AI inevitability or critical AI literacy when they consider GenAI in their future teaching practice. We conclude that the ready availability of GenAI tools in higher education coupled with the ubiquitous injunction to use GenAI “critically” is disempowering to students in the absence of open debates about students’ lived experience of AI use within the broader context of their learning and settlement. The study has implications for education service providers: without adequate supports, the rapid and widespread rollout of new technologies creates yet another burden for already marginalized students.

Caring for multilingual students in higher education (Dr Agi Bodis)

Australian universities are characterized by high levels of linguistic diversity; however, they operate through monolingual structures and processes. Research shows that international student experience is often racialized: through linguistic racism, or microaggressions, student face discrimination based on their communication styles and skills, especially if these do not overlap with “standard norms”. These dynamics can undermine students’ sense of belonging and raise questions about providing the care students are entitled to. This talk reports on international students’ linguistic experiences in Australia based on 107 survey responses and 20 semi-structured interviews. Drawing on Baker and Burke’s (2023) work reimagining care in higher education, it examines multilingual students’ linguistic experiences along three dimensions: (1) purpose, (2) power dynamics and (3) plurality and particularity of care. It calls for a co-created dialogic approach for care that views multilingualism and multilingual knowledge production as a resource.

How women with limited English find domestic violence support information (Tazin Abdullah)

In Australia, headlines frequently speak of the domestic violence (DV) crisis, with women experiencing DV at alarming rates. Women who have low English language proficiency (ELP) are particularly vulnerable in relation to a combination of their literacy needs and social circumstances. While digital spaces are inundated with DV support and service information, is this information meaningfully accessible in languages other than English (LOTEs) for vulnerable low ELP women seeking support? To investigate this question, this paper analyzes LOTE DV information provided by institutions using the 4-A standard (availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability) of language support. Triangulating data from institutional websites, survey results, and interviews with DV case workers, this study finds that availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability are affected by a) complex website features, b) lack of socio-cultural context and, c) limited understanding of the diverse needs of low ELP women in DV situations. The findings demonstrate that the convergence of collected online data, multilingual participant input, and diverse practitioner perspectives generate more inclusive, context-sensitive understandings of language access while amplifying the voices and experiences of linguistically marginalized communities. This presentation closes with implications for more inclusive design of vital DV support information.

When “getting by” becomes the norm: Medical receptionists and language support for patients with limited English proficiency (Brynn Quick)

Patients with limited English proficiency frequently encounter English-based healthcare systems in which communication depends on decisions about whether and how language support should be provided to them. Previous research has described healthcare providers’ practices of “getting by” with these patients, whereby providers use strategies such as simplifying language, relying on bilingual family members, or proceeding without professional interpreters. Such practices have generally been understood as pragmatic responses to time pressures, competing clinical priorities, and organizational constraints, with providers often recognizing them as compromises that may affect the quality and equity of care.

This study extends the concept of “getting by” by examining how medical receptionists make decisions about language support for patients with limited English proficiency. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 15 medical receptionists working in an Australian healthcare system, the study examines how receptionists make decisions around facilitating access to professional interpreting services. Participants described routinely “getting by” with patients (rather than calling for a professional interpreter) by speaking slowly, using simpler vocabulary, writing information in English rather than communicating orally, and, when other strategies failed, using Google Translate.

Unlike previous research with healthcare providers, however, receptionists did not necessarily characterize these practices as problematic or as a compromise in care. This finding reflects their distinctive institutional position. Receptionists reported receiving little or no training in linguistic diversity and described no clear institutional expectations concerning the importance of professional interpreting for patients. Consequently, the additional communicative work involved in assessing the need for and securing professional interpreters remained largely invisible as a distinct component of their role. This led to receptionists deciding to “get by” in their communication with patients with limited English proficiency as a strategy that would be less taxing on their own workflows – workflows that had never been designed to include this language support work.

The findings suggest that language access is not simply a matter of individual decisions about whether to use an interpreter. Rather, organizational workflows shape what kinds of communicative work are recognized, anticipated, and resourced. When receptionists’ additional time and effort are not incorporated into institutional understandings of their work, “getting by” can become normalized rather than recognized as necessary labor required to provide patients with limited English proficiency with communication comparable to that available to English-proficient patients.

Emotions, Digital Literacies and Care in Bengali Transnational Families in Australia (Dr Priyanka Bose)

In transnational families, digital communication provides an important space to sustain relationships, emotional connection, and heritage language (HL) practices across geographical distance. This presentation explores how Bengali immigrant families in Australia use multimodal digital communication to maintain intergenerational connections with grandparents living overseas. Drawing on data from three Bengali immigrant families in Australia, including video conversations, screenshots of online interactions and interviews, the study examines the role of emotions in digitally mediated HL practices through multimodal (inter)action analysis. The findings demonstrate how emotional contagion and digitally mediated affective communication are expressed through speech, gestures, images, emojis and other multimodal resources. These interactions show that HL is embedded within everyday acts of family bonding, with maintaining emotional connection emerging as a primary purpose of digital communication. Connecting with the symposium theme “Literacies in crisis: speeding up, making do, caring,” the presentation considers these everyday digital practices as literacies of care, through which geographically dispersed immigrant transnational families sustain emotional and linguistic connections across generations.

Encounters in Intercultural Communication (Dr Robyn Moloney)

This presentation introduces Robyn’s new book Encounters in Intercultural Communication, which examines lived experiences across diverse global workplaces. The book offers an engaging, personal approach that moves beyond traditional academic abstractions toward dynamic relational understanding. Through 30 compelling interviews with individuals from Asia, Europe, Australia and Papua New Guinea, including First Nations participants, readers encounter intercultural communication across varied professional contexts: business management, law, architecture, mining, education, healthcare, journalism, community work and creative arts. This diversity makes the book applicable across multiple academic disciplines without requiring context adaptation. Using reflexive ethnography, the work analyses key concepts while examining assumptions, beliefs, power structures, and language and social inequities that shape intercultural communication.

Location of Inner Mongolia within China (Image credit: TUBS, Wikimedia)

The Humboldt Professorship Team “Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation across the Lifespan” at Universität Hamburg is pleased to host a guest lecture by Dr Gegentuul Baioud (Uppsala Universitet) about “Language shaming at the crossroads of race and state borders.”

Time: Thursday, October 29, 12 noon-2pm
Venue: Universität Hamburg, Alsterterrasse 1, Rm. 541
Abstract: This lecture focuses on language shaming practices across the Sino-Mongolian border. By attending to the Mongolian state-orchestrated language standardization, discursive legacies and geopolitical configurations that precede and condition language shaming, it unravels the processes through which the stigmatized category of “Inner Mongols’ language” takes shape. The dataset comprises language-shaming episodes on social media and interviews with Inner Mongols (from China) residing in Mongolia. The study argues that the stigmatization of Inner Mongols’ linguistic practices is underpinned by two interrelated processes: the territorialization of Mongolian language and identity within the borders of the Mongolian state, and the socialist legacy of racialized representations of Inner Mongols as “half-breed” or “hybrid” Mongols. The study contributes to our understanding of how language intersects with ideologies of race, nation, and borders among Mongolian speakers.

Tazin and Priyanka talk about Priyanka’s research into heritage language maintenance amongst Bengali speakers in Australia and how emotions play a decisive role in sustaining heritage language use via digital means. Their conversation about Bengali transnational families explores how grandparents and grandchildren use all the resources in their linguistic repertoire in combination with the affordances of digital media to communicate in and maintain Bengali. In these exchanges, emotional factors play a crucial role, setting the scene for the continued use of Bengali between generations.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

References

Bose, P., Gao, X., Starfield, S., & Perera, N. (2024). Understanding networked family language policy: a study among Bengali immigrants in Australia. Current Issues in Language Planning, 25(4), 416–443. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2024.2349405
Bose, P., Gao, X., Starfield, S., Sun, S., & Ramdani, J. M. (2023). Conceptualisation of family and language practice in family language policy research on migrants: a systematic review. Language Policy, 22(3), 343–365. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-023-09661-8
Bose, P., Starfield, S., & Perera, N. (2025). ‘Ōlē bābālē!!!’ – Exploring emotions and digital language practices in family language policy among Bengali transnational families: A multimodal approach. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13670069251336173. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069251336173

(Image credit: Kelli McClintock via Unsplash)

Transcript

Tazin: Welcome to the Language on the Move Podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Tazin, and I’m a PhD researcher in Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

My guest today is Dr. Priyanka Bose. Priyanka is a Lecturer in English Literacy Education at the School of Education at Western Sydney University, Australia. She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales. Her PhD thesis about digital media communications amongst Bengali-speaking transnational families in Australia is the winner of the 2026 Michael Clyne Prize!

The Michael Clyne Prize, jointly administered by the Australian Linguistic Society and the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia, is awarded for outstanding postgraduate research into immigrant bilingualism and language contact.

So, I am very excited today to learn about Priyanka’s outstanding research on heritage language maintenance, with a special focus on her 2026 article: ‘Ōlē bābālē!!!’ – Exploring emotions and digital language practices in family language policy among Bengali transnational families: A multimodal approach, that she co-authored with Professor Sue Starfield and Dr. Nirukshi Perera.

Tazin: Priyanka, welcome to the show and thank you so much for joining us today!

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Thanks very much, Tazin, for inviting me to the podcast. It’s really exciting for me too!

Tazin: Well, firstly, congratulations on winning the Michael Klein Prize! What an achievement!

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Haha, thanks!

Tazin: Would you begin by telling us a little bit about yourself, your research, and how you came to be interested in heritage language maintenance?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Yeah, sure. First of all, I say, like, receiving this, Michael Clyne Prize Award is very, meaningful to me. Particularly, because, as you know, Michael Clyne’s work has had such a lasting influence on research into migration, language maintenance, and multilingualism, you see.

In regard to my academic journey, it has been influenced by a kind of a, I say, a long-standing interest in literacy, language, education and multilingualism. I myself am also an immigrant, came from an immigrant families and I grew up in a multicultural environment in… firstly in India, and then part of my schooling is in India, and also, also, I, later immigrated to Canada. So, and then. And after that, I’m later conducting research in Australia. So, I became fascinated by the ways language actually influenced people’s identities, family relationships, opportunities, learning experiences.

Also, I should say that, you know, a very important influence in my life was my maternal grandfather, the late Sir Sir Rabindranath Palodhi, a Bengali grammarian, linguist, and teacher in West Bengal, India. So, from an early age, he introduced me to language, literature. So, when I was very young, just the child, I just got the knowledge of, like, the structures of Bengali grammar. Also the English, how the…actually the grammar operates. And that, like, influenced me. And not only that, he also, I think, influenced me to do literature, all sorts of literature, philosophy, and critical thinking. So, that has helped me, in the sense, to see language is actually not only, I think, I say, a means of communication. But also as a way to understand the society and human experience. Um…so those interests led me to the applied linguistics and more to the heritage language maintenance.

In regard to my doctoral research at UNSW, I explored, how immigrant families in Australia maintain their heritage languages through digital communication among transnational family members. While digital communication was one of the focus of the study, I was more broadly interested in understanding how the factors, such as emotion, culture, religion, identity, family, relationships – all those things, and transnational connections influence language practices among these multilingual families. And what drew me to the heritage language maintenance was the recognition that language is connected to belonging, culture, and intergenerational relationships.

For many, immigrant families, maintaining a heritage language is about much more than preserving linguistic skills. So, to these, to these families, it is about cultural knowledge and family bonds across generations and across borders. So my research seeks to understand these complex realities, And to highlight the, these, such, linguistic resources, that such multilingual families bring to their contemporary societies.

Tazin: Wow! I mean, what an interesting journey, and thank you for sharing the story of your grandfather. It looks like you were meant to be an Applied Linguist, Priyanka!

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Thank you!

Tazin: But that is a lovely story, and I love, you know, how you have told us about your personal investment into your research journey, and how you view language. And I’d like to turn to your paper now about digital language practices in family language policy.

Would you explain to us what Family Language Policy – FLP – is? And in your paper, you refer to nFLP, Networked Family Language Policy. What do these terms mean in the context of heritage language maintenance?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Well, that’s a very interesting question, and thanks, Tazin, for asking. Family language policy, or FLP, refers to language-related beliefs management and practice families adopt in their everyday life. It’s drawing on Bernard Splosky’s framework. It is FLP is often understood through three interconnected components. As you say, language ideology, that is, the beliefs or views about language. Language management, referring to the deliberate efforts to influence the language use. And language practice is the actual use, the family mem…actual languages that family members use in their daily interaction.

So, in the context of heritage language maintenance, FLP means, FLP helps us, understand how families decide whether to transmit a heritage language to the next generations. And how those decisions influence, this immigrant children’s language use and identity development among, among their families.

So, traditionally, like, so far, FLP research focused on families living together in the same physical location where language practices were, largely understood as face-to-face interactions between parents and children. However, the migration, transnationalism, and the due to the rapid growth of the digital communication technologies – all of these have transformed the family life. And many immigrant families now maintain close relationships with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives who live in different countries. And these relationships are often sustained through digital platforms, such as WhatsApp, FaceTime, say, Facebook Messenger. So, this changing reality has led to the concept of Networked Family Language Policy, or nFLP. The term, as you see the term nFLP, originally proposed by Professor Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen and Huang. But, so, but I, what I did, I explored in my study of Bengali immigrant families in Australia. And, and that recognizes…this study recognizes that language socialization and heritage language maintenance, they are no longer confined to the physical home. As the term implied, they occur the term, the word network occur across networks of family members, connected through digital media and across national borders.

In our study, we found that dispersed family members, particularly grandparents, played a significant role in supporting the children’s use of Bengali through digital, day-to-day digital communications. And these interactions included, storytelling, conversations, sharing the cultural knowledge, exchanging festival greetings, singing songs, and discussing their everyday experiences. So, importantly, we found that maintaining heritage language was often intertwined with maintaining the family bonds, cultural identity and emotional connections.

In fact, many parents viewed the family…that, they said, actually, in their interview, that family bonding as the primary reason, reason for these digital interactions. While heritage language learning is secondary, or emerged as kind of like a valuable secondary outcome, with no need…

Tazin: Oh, interesting!

Dr. Priyanka Bose: No need to have the kind of, like, reading or writing. We just need to…um…want our child to maintain the communication so that they maintain the bonds. So that’s what I found very interesting. While FLP helps us understand how families manage language within home, I say, nFLP expands that perspective by recognizing that language maintenance today happens across transnational family networks and through digital communication technologies. So, it highlights the important contribution of the extended family members, digital media, emotions, culture, identity in supporting heritage language maintenance in migrant communities.

Tazin: I think then, you know, the concept of nFLP is highly relevant to our, you know, current context, especially your focus on how people use the digital tools. And in your paper, you write, and I’ll quote from there. I really like this quote, and that’s why I used it in my question. You write: “The role of emotions in HL has long since been realised by sociolinguistics researchers, even when digital media was not commonplace and the nFLP context was irrelevant.” Why are emotions significant to consider when discussing heritage language communications?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: That’s a great question, Tazin, I think and thanks for asking. Because heritage language maintenance is often discussed in terms of linguistic skills, language transmission, or educational outcomes. But language is deeply emotional, I think. In our paper, co-authored by Emeritus Professor Sue Starfield and Dr. Nirkshi Pereira, and along with myself, we argue that emotions matter. Because heritage languages are often the languages of intimacy, family relationships, and personal connections.

For many, say, immigrant families, using a heritage language is not simply about communicating information. So, it expresses affection, maintains relationships. Creates, creates a sense of belonging across generations. Research has shown that heritage language often carry strong emotional associations that develop through family interactions and socialization from childhood.

In transnational families, emotions matter even more. Grandparents, parents, children may live in different countries, and they’re unable to meet in person often. So, the only way is digital communication technologies, like WhatsApp, say, Facebook Messenger, and video calls, that help bridge that distance. So, through these interactions, family members share not only language. But also emotions through speech, facial expressions, gestures, photographs. They exchange lots of photos, videos, emojis, and other multimodal, resources. So, our study found that, I think I showed, emotional factors such as emotional contagion and digitally mediated effective communication. So these, these two factors played a central role in heritage language practice.

For example, when children and grandparents share excitement, laughter, affection, encouragement, or playfulness during online interactions. These exchanges create a meaningful, meaningful opportunities to use Bengali language. We observed that children were often motivated to engage with their grandparents because of the emotional relationships, rather than because they were intentionally trying to practice the Bengali language. Okay, have to sit and practice!

Tazin: Hmm.

Dr. Priyanka Bose: They wouldn’t do it. So, heritage language maintenance emerged naturally, what I say, through those emotionally rich interactions. And one key finding was that family bonding, I think, I said that was the primary goal of this digital wild heritage language was a secondary. So, children communicated with their grandparents because they loved them. They missed them, they enjoyed interacting with them. And especially, I took my, interview, the interview was taken, like, during the COVID, when they can’t go, and they were missing, their lots. So, they wanted to stay connected. Bengali became the vehicle through which they maintained those emotional, relationships.

So, when discussing heritage language communication, it is important to consider the emotion, because language maintenance is not only a linguistic process, I say, but also a relational and affective one. And understanding emotions helps us to see why families continue to invest time and effort in heritage language use, and how how strong are these emotional bonds, and, create meaningful and sustainable opportunities for language maintenance across generations and borders.

Tazin: I’m so fascinated by this, Priyanka, also because, you know, you and I are both Bengali speakers, right? And as you were answering my last question, I just remembered, I mean, an example from last week, you know, in my own life. So, my son wanted to go to his grandparents’ house after school.

And I realized this, I’m making this connection now after actually listening to you, right? Where I know that he could…and he was hungry, right? So he could have…he could have called and asked her in English, you know, can I come over? Or whatever it was, and they would have had, perfectly…and they would have understood each other perfectly.

But my mom told me that he called her from school and asked after school, and asked in Bangla,” তোমার বাসায় খাওয়া আছে?”(tomar bashay khawa achey?) translated, “Is there food at your house?” It’s a very dry sentence, I know, but it is interesting that he chose to ask that in Bengali, instead of calling and asking in English, can I come over and eat? And that really pulled at the heartstrings of my mom, because she said, of course, of course, come…there is so much food.

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Oh yeah, so that’s the emotion.

Tazin: That’s the emotion, and you’re correct, because my mom rang me later to say that he had told me in Bengali…instead of saying can I come, just to say do you have food in the house?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: So that’s, like, that’s the bonding, yeah, it’s created.

Tazin: Yeah, and that probably, as you said, is the emotional pull is what encouraged him to use his heritage language rather than English for communication.

I was also, Priyanka, very drawn to the emojis in the title of your paper. For our listeners, when you access the blog post for this podcast, you will find a link to Priyanka’s paper. And you will see that the title has 3 little emojis on it, which I found very interesting. Now, Priyanka, why the choice of the quote with emojis, and how is this connected to your research on emotions?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: I’m glad, Tazin, you noticed the emojis, because they were a very deliberate choice. And I understand that being a Bengali, you can understand what the meaning is, but yeah, I think I also explained that in our paper.

So, the title of the paper, “‘Ōlē bābālē”, comes directly from one of the digital interactions we observed between a Bengali-speaking child of our participant and her grandparent. Rather than choosing a conventional academic title, I wanted the title itself to reflect the lived, lived reality of contemporary fam…family communication.

So, the phrase ‘Ōlē bābālē is a Bengali expression, that conveys affection, warmth, and playful interactions, especially from elders…senior family members to the kids or childs. So, they’re showing the warmth and affection, and that actually helps, you know, for the bonding. So that’s why I thought…that’s…among the participants I chose, I thought that this would show our good bonding, this particular term.

And the emojis…add layers of meaning! That actually the participant exactly given three…this, I think…these three face-blowing kiss emoji, add that…that add layers of meaning that would be difficult to convey in words alone, I think. And in digital communication, people express, often, emotions beyond language. They also use emojis, images, GIFs, voice notes, any other multimodal resources to communicate the feelings and maintain relationships. So, this connected closely to the paper’s central argument that emotions play a crucial role in heritage language maintenance.

So, when we look at interactions between children and grandparents across the national borders, we found that heritage language use was often embedded within moments of affection, humor, teasing, excitement, and care, love and care. So, emojis became one tool for communicating and sharing these emotions. What, what I found particularly interesting was that children were not necessarily engaging in this interaction to learn or practice that Bengali language. They were communicating because they wanted to connect with their grandparents, because they loved them, they missed them, that kind of.

So the emotional…again, I say emotional bond came first, and heritage language, secondary. Those kind of and emojis, therefore, symbolize the importance of these digitally mediated interactions. So, overall, I said this title, challenges to rethink what counts as language in today’s digital world And to understand how heritage languages are maintained among transnational families, we need to look beyond spoken or written words, and pay attention to the broader communicative repertoire families use, including emojis and other digital resources. So, therefore, those three emojis in the title tell us as much about contemporary family communication as the words themselves.

I have also another paper, like, in multimodal communication, where I just showed, like, how, one, like, grandma with the child, same thing, multimodal, they are just turning their mobile phone from, upside down to this side, so just to. And then they were, like, they were kissing each other to showing affection and the languages, so that’s also a kind of emotion, yeah, how the interactions happen. Yeah, thank you.

Tazin: It is fascinating, you know, how grandparents have very quickly adapted to using whatever technology is at hand to be able to talk. I’m also very interested, Priyanka, in how you collected the data for this project, who were your participants, and what did you observe them doing to gather your data?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Yes, first, this research is a part of my larger PhD project. For this study, I worked with 5 Bengali immigrant families living in Australia. The families had young children and maintained regular contact with their relatives, particularly grandparents who were living overseas. I used a qualitative ethnographic approach, focusing on understanding family language practices in their, natural, everyday contexts.

Data collection took place over an extended period of time and involved multiple methods, including interview with parents, observations, recordings that participants provided of digital interactions between children and their transnational family members. And, one particularly interesting aspect of the study was to observe the actual digital communication, such as video calls and exchanges, through platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. And also they gave the, rather than simply asking participants what they did, I could see how they communicate, what languages they used, and how they interacted in real-life situations. So, the participants actually provided me those, video data, and also the screenshots, like, for the from the WhatsApp and all, so that actually I’m being able to observe all those.

I was also especially interested in the interactions between children and grandparents, because during these exchanges, I observed not only Bengali and English, but also digital resources, as you say, emojis, videos, gestures, all the facial expression. So, these kind of…these helped me, helped family members, like, these multimodal forms helped those…I can find that those family members express emotions, maintained relationships. Even living in different countries.

The data showed that heritage language maintenance was closely intertwined with family relationships. The children often did not participate in this interaction because they were formally taught Bengali, kind of that. Instead, they just, you know, shared jokes, told stories, kind of, like, stay connected with their loved ones, kind of. So, by observing this, I examined how emotional connections and digital technologies together contributed to heritage language maintenance among these transnational families. And one strength was that it, it let me move beyond language as just words. I can say and repeat, I see communication as a major social and emotional process, and that perspective ultimately led to many of the findings presented in the paper.

Tazin: I really enjoyed reading about Isha and her grandmother’s interactions, and the screenshots of their video calls that you put on your paper, which were excellent to, you know, just read about. Please tell us a little bit about what you’ve found from these. What are the emotional factors that appeared in these conversations via digital means?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: I’m glad to hear that, Tazin, because Isha and her grandmother’s interaction was some of the most memorable examples in the study. So, these two, they were so enthusiastic, and I think I’ve used in my other paper, as I say, in multimodal communication. What struck me most was how much emotion these digital interactions conveyed, even though the family members were separated by thousands of kilometres, say.

So, we often think of video calls as a substitute for face-to-face communication, but in this case, actually, they became a very rich social space where emotional connections could be created and maintained. One of the strongest findings was the importance of affection, humor, emotional connections, and playfulness. So, through video calls, Isha and her grandmother shared jokes, stories, laughter, and everyday, day-to-day, you know, interactions and experiences. So, these interactions shows that emotions were communicated through language as well as facial expressions, gestures and other digital resources.

As you see, like, they were…the child Isha was constantly changing the background, and they were so happy, and they were, like, the grandma is, like, actually happy, and they were…they were exchanging their happiness among themselves. So that’s one of the emotions.

Importantly, Bengali was being used not only as a learning exercise, but as a part of this meaningful, family relationships. So, I say, again, these highlights how emotional bonds can support heritage language maintenance.

Tazin: Yeah, you know, I mean, obviously I wasn’t listening to them or observing them, but just reading about them, I could tell that they were having a very playful, you know, fun interaction with each other, which is lovely. So, Priyanka, what can Australian immigrant families take from your study? What can they take away for their own heritage language maintenance practices?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: One key message is that heritage language maintenance does not have to rely solely on formal teaching. I say meaningful and enjoyable interactions can be just as important as it is. And the study also highlights the value of digital communication. Regular contact with family, grandparents and other extended family members overseas can create, authentic opportunities for these immigrant children, to use a heritage language while, strengthening family relationships.

And in many cases, maintaining the relationships comes first. And language maintenance, it just happens, it will follow naturally. So, yeah, I think that’s…that’s I can say, see.

Tazin: Well, you know, I’ve learned something from reading your paper and listening to you today, because I, I mean, I haven’t really I didn’t really put it into perspective in that way, that it is the relationships that actually encourage the use of the language. So, thank you so much for, you know, making this valuable contribution to my life today as well, Priyanka!

My final question for you is, what is next for you, and what other projects are you working on now?

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Yeah, yeah, I just want to share one, one thing before I go to my next project, is that, like, our… I started, you know, first conceptualizing family language policy as digital, and that has been published in 2021 in Language Policy journal. So, that has been featured in Nature Index article, Exploring Family Language Policy and…

Tazin: Wow!

Dr. Priyanka Bose: practices. So, if you, as a researcher interested in multilingual families, language practices of all those immigrant communities, it is, I think it is encouraging for people to see this, this area receiving a big attention. I would encourage you to, look if you, there, in the Nature Index, Family Language Policy and Multilingual Practices. So, this is one.

And, I’m currently working on an upcoming book chapter with colleagues from Curtin University titled, Sharing Your Research with a Wider Audience. Communicating with the Public. How to communicate, like, just in a public, in a natural day-to-day language. In it, we reflect, so we, me with other, other, two Curtin University colleagues, reflect on how academics can engage broader audiences through media, public talks, storytelling, and other creative approaches.

I’m also delighted, also, to be invited. I have been invited by Professor Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen to participate in a symposium at the AILA conference in Vancouver next year.

Tazin: Congratulations!

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Thank you so much. I think…I haven’t thought that it just came, where I’ll be discussing on family language policy, heritage language maintenance, children’s language and literacy development in multilingual families. I hope, yeah, yeah, I would see many of you guys.

And, also, like, I recently joined, WSU as a lecturer, and there also, like, like, I’m also involved in their research projects. I have been just in discussion…we are just thinking of, doing a research project in some school-related, things, but I haven’t…I didn’t know…I am still exploring for that.

And more broadly, I hope to continue researching multilingualism, child language acquisition, family language policy, and heritage language maintenance. While also I’m thinking to explore other, like, many other, like, similar ways or other research to make academic research more accessible to the wider community, I think.

Tazin: That’s amazing! Thank you again for your time today, Priyanka, and we look forward to reading more of your work.

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Thank you so much, Tazin. It’s really nice, and it’s really fortunate, that, yeah, I’ve been invited for the podcast, yeah.

Tazin: Oh, our pleasure!

Dr. Priyanka Bose: Thanks to Ingrid, the whole team.

Tazin: Thank you! We were very happy to have this conversation. Like I said, it’s been a very meaningful conversation. I have learned a lot from it, and I’m sure our listeners have as well!

And thanks you for listening, everyone! If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a 5-star review on your podcast app of choice, and recommend the Language on the Move podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends. Till next time!

Researchers from Macquarie University would like to talk to you about your language practices and experiences as a Coda with migrant parents as they relate to language use and sign language brokering.

We are particularly interested in your family’s language practices, the languages you use (spoken or signed), and any experiences of sign language brokering you may have.

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To participate you must be over 18 years old and have at least one Deaf parent who was born in another country than where you currently live.

Participation involves attending an informal in-person or online interview, completing a digital diary, and optionally participating in a focus group discussion with other Codas who have migrant parents.

The research is conducted by PhD candidate Emily Pacheco. Emily holds a Bachelor of Arts in American Sign Language from Framingham State University and a Master of Research from Macquarie University. For her PhD, she is exploring the signed language brokering and heritage language maintenance practices among hearing Codas with migrant parents. As a Coda and professional interpreter herself, Emily is interested in the diverse language practices of Deaf-hearing families.

The supervisors are Dr Loy Lising and Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller.

Participation in this research is voluntary and can be withdrawn at any time. You will receive a small financial token in recognition of your participation. This research has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at Macquarie University.

To register your interest and learn more about the research, contact Emily at this e-mail address.

Watch her explain her research about medical receptionists and how they facilitate language access for patients with limited English language proficiency.

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Related content

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I’ve just published a peer-reviewed ‘sequel’ to that research in the UNSW Law Journal. It’s an open access article all about the permission regimes that apply to the use of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages in parliaments across Australia.

There are six State parliaments, two Territory parliaments and a Commonwealth (national) Parliament in Australia. None of them ban languages other than English, and none of them explicitly require that parliamentary debates (or ceremonies) be in English. There are general rules against inappropriate or ‘unparliamentary’ language use in most of them, but the way those rules are applied to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language use actually varies by jurisdiction.

Summary of language use (Source: Grey, 2026, p. 501)

For instance, the West Australian Parliament uses procedural rules (called Standing Orders) about unparliamentary language to require MPs seek leave before using Aboriginal languages. By contrast, many other jurisdictions including the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, never use their similar rules to impose a permission regime onto Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language use.  New South Wales now even goes so far as the have rules that proactively allow Aboriginal language use in a ceremonial ‘language stick ceremony’ (although not in parliamentary debate).

A close up – the Northern Territory

Overall, bigger numbers of First Nations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) people are found in the more populated States of Australia, like New South Wales and Queensland, but the Northern Territory is the place with the highest proportion of First Nations residents: about 30% of the Territory population. And the Northern Territory Parliament is a microcosm of the regulatory variability. That Parliament has taken unregulated, restrictive, permissive and proactive approaches at different times over the last few decades.

When the Hon. Mr Neil Bell spoke in Pitjantjatjarra in his first speech in the Northern Territory Parliament in 1981, no leave was required, nor was it required when the Hon. Ms Alison Anderson spoke Western Desert Language in 2008. But when The Hon. Mrs Bess Nangarryi Price tried to use Warlpiri in 2015, she was stopped by the Speaker of the House (the MP who regulates debate) and warned she would be ruled disorderly if she continued. Mrs Price demanded that the Speaker name the rule she was breaking, and like her, I can’t find one. The absence of a rule is why Order 23A was then introduced in 2016 to provide the Speaker with clear authority: an Aboriginal language could now be used only with notice and only if the MP provided an English translation in advance. This new Order 23A is the most likely basis for the Speaker cutting off the Hon. Mr Yiŋiya Mark Guyula’s first speech when he began talking in Yolŋu Matha in 2016, but the record doesn’t give the reason.

Minister Bess Nungarrayi Price was stopped from interjecting in Walpiri in the NT parliament in 2016 (Image credit: ABC News, Steven Schubert)

And even in the NT, the demand has softened since 2016. Advocates against the rule pointed out that Order 23A ‘restrains rather than accommodates linguistic inclusion’. In 2019, Order23A was replaced by a rule that ‘[M]embers seeking leave to speak in languages other than English must provide the Speaker with adequate notice for the Speaker to make any arrangements to provide assistance so that the member may be understood and that the Parliamentary Record may accurately report the contribution if leave of the Assembly to speak in the other language is granted.’

This rule is kind of proactive because the assistance mentioned is publicly-funded interpreting, which is not provided in any other parliament, but it’s also still a barrier to ad hoc language use in debate. According to my research, the MPs using Aboriginal languages in the Northern Territory Parliament can (and do) generally provide their own English interpretation off-the-cuff. It’s not clear that this rule requiring advanced notice is needed to enhance anyone’s understanding.

In fact, across Australia, whenever more than a few words of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language are used in a parliament, I have found that the person talking generally provides an interpretation or explanation within their own speech. In some cases, they also provide a written English translation to the Hansard transcription staff. This common practice is clear in the Hansard data. It’s only in the Northern Territory that this has come to be a regulatory demand.

Permission from language custodians

The other permission regime that appears very occasionally in the Hansard records, and sometimes in contemporaneous media reports of Aboriginal language use in a parliament, is the permission of language custodians. I am certainly not the first person to mention that a custodial relationship to language may be embedded in both Indigenous traditions and the power imbalance at the core of Australia’s colonisation. In this sense, I’m not inventing anything or proposing a new language right. What I suggest in the article, however, is that MPs should find out whether seeking permission from language custodians would be appropriate for their use of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language and, if it is, to mention that on the parliamentary record.

This would make the specific epistemology of each language more obvious, in addition to the parliamentary speech drawing attention to the words of a language. In making this suggestion, I’m drawing on Ingrid Piller’s point that in Australia we have a ‘moral imperative to acknowledge the linguistic and cultural relativity of our views’ (Intercultural Communication, 2025). Not all cultures treat access to a language in the same way that mainstream users of Australian English treat access to English, and nor should they.

Recognizing and valuing Indigenous languages

In 2012, the Commonwealth Parliament received a recommendation in one of its own committees’ report, Our Land Our Languages, that it ‘demonstrate leadership in the recognition and valuing of Indigenous languages by: considering how to incorporate Indigenous languages in the Parliament House building and in the operations of the Parliament’.

In a talk I recently delivered as part of the University of Sydney’s Linguistic Seminar Series, I summed up my own suggestions on how to incorporate these languages not only in the Commonwealth Parliament but across Australia’s parliaments:

• The NT Parliament remove the Continuing Order requirements to give advanced notice before using Aboriginal languages.
• Parliaments formally clarify that using Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages is not contrary to Standing Orders against unparliamentary language, especially in WA.
• Hansard recording staff transcribe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages whenever they are used (as is increasingly being done).
• MPs inquire into and talk about any relevant sociocultural permissions on the parliamentary record when they use Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages (especially non-Indigenous MPs).
• Parliaments adopt NSW’s message stick protocol or similar in order to proactively invite language use.

Contribute to my ongoing research on multilingualism in Australia’s parliaments

I am still conducting research interviews about peoples’ experiences practicing multilingualism in Australia’s parliaments. If you have used an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language in a parliament, please get in touch to share your story.

References

Grey, A. (2026). Permission to speak: Who controls Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language use in Australia’s Parliaments? The University of New South Wales Law Journal, 49(2), 489–523.
Piller, I. (2025). Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction (3rd ed.). Edinburgh University Press.

As part of this project, today’s guests annotate and analyse multilingual foreign language textbooks from the 15^th to 17^th centuries.

Today’s guests discuss these textbooks, the research project, and what historical foreign language manuals can tell us about language attitudes and expectations of foreign language learning.

Ondřej Klatovsky, Ein büchlein, in behemischer und deutscher Sprach, Prag, 1549 (Image credit: FSL-Digital)

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• Can we ever unthink linguistic nationalism? Ingrid Piller in conversation with Aneta Pavlenko
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Transcript (coming soon)

It happened to me again. I said something, and my interlocutor’s reaction was: “I don’t know.” There is something in the melody of my “Czech” German that L1 German listeners interpret as a question, although I intended it as a statement.

We sing differently

Image 1: Intonation of the greeting “good morning” in different languages. (The black line shows the fundamental frequency (F0) – an acoustic correlate of the intonation of the utterance).

Every language has its own melodic patterns. For example, in a simple greeting like good morning, some languages emphasize the first part (the adjective), whereas others put the emphasis on the second part (the noun) (see Image 1).

For learners of a foreign language, mastering its intonation is one of the trickiest parts of the learning process.

What is intonation?

Think of Severus Snape drawling, “Mr. Potter… our new celebrity,” the Terminator’s iconic “I’ll be back,” or Phoebe Buffay screaming, “My eyes! My eyes!” Without their distinctive intonation and rhythm, the lines would lose much of their meaning and attitude.

Prosody, after all, is what gives words their soul.

In this article, we will talk about one of the most fascinating prosodic phenomena: intonation.

Try a simple experiment: say the word “dragonfly” as a statement, as a calling chant, as a question, with anger, with surprise, and with sadness. Hear the difference? The word stays the same — dragonfly is dragonfly — but what it communicates changes entirely.

In simple terms, intonation is the melody of speech — the rise and fall of pitch that shapes the meaning of our sentences. It helps us distinguish a statement from a question, signal which word we want to emphasize, or express attitudes such as politeness, irony, enthusiasm, or doubt. Furthermore, intonation interacts closely with grammar and meaning, and can also convey socially relevant information — such as regional accent, age, and gender, among others.

It also helps us understand how a speaker groups words into phrases and where one phrase ends and another begins. Consider the example in Image 2: “Let’s eat, Sam” versus “Let’s eat Sam!” The words are identical, but the melody and phrasing are not — a tiny pause and a subtle pitch change completely alter the meaning. When we write, we use the comma to mark this difference.

Image 2: Intonation saves lives! (Image credit: Radim Peško)

In short, intonation does a lot of work. Without it, our speech would sound flat, ambiguous, or unnatural. It also plays an important role in acquiring our first language(s): together with other prosodic cues, it helps babies identify where one linguistic unit begins and another ends.

Intonation: The overlooked hero of language learning

When learning a new language such as English, learners tend to focus on the more visible parts of the system: grammar, vocabulary, and the pronunciation of individual sounds. And of course, that makes perfect sense — you can’t say much without words and correct sentence structure. But once you’ve memorized verb paradigms and filled your notebook with new vocabulary, something still feels missing.

That something is intonation: the element that makes your speech sound alive and natural.

You can say all the right words and use perfect grammar, but if the melody is off, listeners may still misunderstand your message — or interpret your tone as bored, abrupt, or even rude, even though you had no intention of sounding that way.

Despite how central prosody is to communication, it remains one of the most overlooked aspects of language teaching and learning. Language teaching has traditionally paid considerably less attention to prosody than to grammar, vocabulary, or individual sounds, and intonation is still often treated only briefly in teaching materials. Many teachers also feel unsure about how to teach it, as prosody has historically received limited attention in teacher training.

Take questions, for example. Many people assume that a question must end with rising intonation. But this is far from universal. In many languages, some types of questions can be realized with falling intonation, while in others the crucial pitch movement occurs earlier in the utterance rather than simply at its end. And the reverse can happen too: in several varieties of English, statements may end with a rise. This phenomenon, commonly known as uptalk, shows nicely why a rising melody does not automatically mean “question”.

How learners acquire intonation: What research shows

Learning the intonation of a foreign language is more complex than simply learning whether the voice should rise or fall. The linguist Dwight Bolinger famously called intonation a “half-tamed savage”: partly shaped by linguistic rules, and partly tied to expression and emotion. Mennen (2015) proposes that learners need to master several dimensions of intonation: which melodic patterns a language uses, how these patterns are phonetically realized, what they mean, and how frequently they are used. These dimensions can develop independently — a learner may produce the right melody but use it in the wrong context, or convey the intended meaning with a melody that still sounds foreign.

Like individual sounds, intonation is shaped by the learner’s first language, similarities between the languages, and exposure to the new language. Research shows that some melodies are easier to acquire than others: basic distinctions such as statements versus questions may be easier to master, while subtler meanings such as politeness, irony, or surprise can remain challenging.

Learners also do not simply replace the melody of their first language with that of the new one. Instead, they gradually build a new intonational system of their own, combining L1 patterns with newly acquired ones — and sometimes creating individual melodic contours.

In situations of intensive language contact, even the melody of a language can change. Buenos Aires is a fascinating example. Following massive Italian immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, local Spanish developed intonational features resembling Italian. It has been said that “Buenos Aires speaks with Italian intonation.” Argentina, after all, was once known as l’Australia italiana — “the Italian Australia.”

Bringing intonation into the language classroom

So how can we help learners acquire the melody of a new language? Even short prosodic training programs can lead to measurable improvements in pronunciation, and training that combines prosody with gestures can be particularly effective.

Several techniques can make a difference:

• Raise prosodic awareness by helping learners notice melodic differences between their own language and the target one. Simply showing or explaining these contrasts can sharpen perception and support production.
• Use visualizations and recordings. Seeing their own pitch movements on a screen makes the “invisible” melody of speech easier to recognize and imitate.
• Shadowing — repeating short phrases after or along with a target model — is a useful technique for practising rhythm and pitch.
• Embodied training, such as using gesture to “feel” pitch movement, can help learners internalize prosodic patterns.
• Technology and corpora provide authentic examples and allow learners to explore real intonation data.

Listening closely

In a multilingual world, listening to the melody of another language is more than a technical skill. It is a way of tuning in to other people — of understanding not only what they say, but how they mean it.

References

Baills, F., Alazard-Guiu, C., & Prieto, P. (2022). Embodied prosodic training helps improve accentedness and suprasegmental accuracy. Applied Linguistics, 43(4), 776–804.
Mennen, I. 2015. Beyond segments: Towards an L2 Intonation Learning theory. In E. Delais-Roussarie et al. (eds.), Prosody and language in contact: L2 acquisition, attrition and languages in multilingual situations, 171–188. Heidelberg: Springer.
Vidal de Battini, B. E. (1964): El español de la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Consejo Nacional de Educación.

In this paper, Dr. Marinaro expands on the concept of “linguistic unease” as a practical framework for evaluating whether healthcare language policies truly meet patients’ communication needs. Through her research, Dr. Marinaro aims to help policymakers and healthcare organizations create more inclusive systems that ensure everyone can communicate confidently and receive equitable care.

If you liked this episode, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Hamburg University Medical Center (illustration only; not discussed in the conversation) (Image credit: UKE)

References

Gazzola, M., & Marinaro, N. (2022). Sprachenpolitik und Integration in Ausländerbehörden und Krankenhäusern: Der Fall Berlin und Leipzig. Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik, 2022, 57–84.
Marinaro, N. (2025). Operationalising linguistic unease for the evaluation of language policies in healthcare. Revista de Llengua i Dret (84), 73–93. https://doi.org/10.58992/rld.i84.2025.4492

Related content

Pacheco, E., & Quick, B. (2026). The (un)imagined work of linguistic inclusion. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/the-unimagined-work-of-linguistic-inclusion/
Piller, I., & Hlavac, J. (2024). Interpreting service provision is good value for money. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/interpreting-service-provision-is-good-value-for-money/
Quick, B., & Cho, J. (2025). Multilingual Practices and Monolingual Mindsets. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/multilingual-practices-and-monolingual-mindsets/
Quick, B., & Karliner, L. (2025). Improving quality of care for patients with limited English. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/improving-quality-of-care-for-patients-with-limited-english/

Transcript (coming soon)

In this timely book, Yaron shows that cities can provide an important counter-weight to political polarisation by forging civic identities that embrace diversity. The book traces the emergence of a city language narrative that embraces and celebrates multilingualism and helps forge a civic identity. He critiques linguaphobic discourses at a national level that regard multilingualism as deficient citizenship. Drawing on his research in Manchester, he examines the ‘multilingual utopia’, looking at multilingual spaces across sectors in the city that support access, heritage, skills and celebration. The book explores the tensions between decolonial approaches that inspire activism for social justice and equality, and the neoliberal enterprise that appropriates diversity for reputational and profitability purposes, prompting critical reflection on calls for civic university engagement.

Beyond telling the story of the Multilingual Manchester project, the book also offers an intriguing glimpse into the author’s distinguished career as a linguist, scholar, and activist.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Reference

Matras, Y. (2024). Speech and the City: Multilingualism, Decoloniality and the Civic University. Cambridge University Press.

Transcript

INGRID: Welcome to the Language on the Move podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Ingrid Piller and my guest today is Professor Yaron Matras. Yaron was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester until 2020 and now holds visiting and honorary positions at the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics in Birmingham in the UK, at the University of Haifa in Israel and the University of Hamburg in Germany. Yaron is an expert in contact linguistics and bilingualism, language documentation, Romani linguistics, Arabic dialectology, discourse pragmatics, language policy, urban multilingualism and the linguistics of Kurdish, Hebrew, and Turkish. He’s probably best known for initiating the Multilingual Manchester Project and being the driving force behind LinguaSnapp, the world’s first app designed to crowdsource linguistic landscape data. Today, we want to talk about Yaron’s new book, Speech and the City, Multilingualism, Decoloniality and the Civic University, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024.

Welcome to the show, Yaron!

YARON: Thank you for having me.

INGRID: Speech and the City is a hopeful, almost utopian book that contrasts urban multilingualism with national monolingualism. In the process, the book explores the tensions between decolonial approaches that inspire activism for social justice and equality and, on the other hand, the neoliberal enterprise that appropriates diversity for reputational and profitability purposes. The book is an important intervention in the debate how to protect cultural pluralism in contemporary society. It focuses on the UK, but is obviously relevant around the world. So, Yaron, you start the book with the multilingual biography of your family, starting with your own great-grandmother who arrived in Manchester in 1899 from Skalat, a town that I discovered is today located in Ukraine, but back then in Austrian Galicia. Can you maybe start us off by telling us about your own multilingual story?

YARON: Yes. Well, the fact that my great-grandparents met and married and had their first children in Manchester and that I ended up working in Manchester at the university and researching the city’s multilingualism and then writing about that research in this book, that’s a coincidence. There was no direct continuity. We lost our great-grandparents in the Holocaust. They didn’t survive. Some of their children survived, and that’s how I’m here. But I grew up in Israel, in Jerusalem, which is a multilingual city, and with support and encouragement of my family, my parents, close friends, we always embraced the multicultural aspects of Jerusalem.

And as everybody knows, Jerusalem can be a very tense and contradictory place, but it can also be a place where people celebrate the diversity. That does exist, even if it doesn’t reach the headlines every day.

And we were such a family. My parents had links with different communities and families. It was even just obvious in the neighborhoods. Our teachers, every teacher, had a different home language. They all spoke Hebrew with an accent. So we grew up in a creolization kind of situation. The language was a formal language, obviously, for a century, for millennia, it had been a written language. And yet, most of our teachers spoke it as a second language, and we made fun of their accents, which means that we didn’t have any kind of guiding norms, or some we did, but not on the everyday vernacular side of the language.

INGRID: So you were the first native generation?

YARON: No, my mother was really the first native speaker. My mother grew up sort of monolingually, actively, but obviously everybody had languages. So between my four grandparents, and I was lucky to know all of them, all four, they had three different home languages between them, and that was not the exception. And those languages influenced, of course, the way we spoke Hebrew, because we had all sorts of phrases and words and terminology for domestic things and emotional things embedded into our language. And that meant that every family spoke a sort of family dialect, because every family had a different combination of grandparents and words and phrases that they incorporated. So already there were several, several languages in the family. And I grew up with English and Hebrew, just even with my parents, but then, like I said, with the other grandparents’ languages, there was Yiddish, there was German, there was Russian, and many languages in the environment.

As a teenager, I was very strongly involved in Israeli, Jewish, and Palestinian Arabic, Arab peace and dialogue initiatives. And I picked up Arabic. We had Arabic as a school subject. Everybody had Arabic at school, so we learned to read and write Arabic. But because of the social distance and de facto social segregation, very few people had contact. And so people across the divide, as it were, the cultural divide, national, ethnic divide. And so none of my classmates could speak Arabic. I ventured and through these initiatives had Palestinian friends at the age of 15, 16. And at that age, I was already fluent in Palestinian Arabic. And I still pass as native or native-like sometimes. And I very much believed that I was the only, the first person of my generation.

In the meantime, the next generation, my nieces and nephews also grew up in a similar environment and also speak Arabic, like near-native. But in my generation, it’s very much the exception. There are, of course, people of my generation who learned Arabic later on in life, professionally or for various reasons, but not as a teenager. And that’s, I mean, at the time, I knew that it was an exception, but it still seemed natural to me. So there was the interest of building bridges tightly embedded with the interest in language and figuring out language and immersing myself.

I spent part of my childhood in Canada. So we were there for a couple of years. And that was the time in the 1970s where there was in Quebec going on what they refer to as la Révolution Tranquille in Canadian French and this whole kind of French language movement. And we were right across the border. We were in Ottawa on the border between Ontario and Quebec. And I used to kind of ride my bicycle across the bridges and and spent time trying to pick up Canadian French. And I was also unique. I was in an Anglophone school, but one of the only ones who could speak actually Canadian French at the time. But I was also very much inspired by this French language movement. It had many flaws on the political side, but just on the language policy side, I very much identified with it.

And sort of there was a repeat of that when I then came to to Europe to study in Germany first. And I learned other languages through immersion. I developed an interest in Turkish and Kurdish. And then I met Romani people when I moved to Hamburg for my MA and PhD, and became probably the first or only person, a non-Romani person in Western Europe at the time to learn Romani fluently at the age of around 25 or so, which later became one of my main subjects of research interests. And that was, you know, later on, around the time of the political transition in Eastern Europe. And of course, the whole world, the Romani world opened up to us. And that was a fascinating time. That was in the context of Romani civil rights movement that I kind of accompanied and supported and engaged with a little bit. So I think there’s a motive there on the one hand of, you know, absorbing the multilingualism as a day-to-day reality from the family and the neighborhood and everything, but also taking the initiative to learn languages with a very, very conscious vision of using language to build bridges and inspire others to do that. And I think that remained with me for the whole of my academic career.

INGRID: Yeah, it’s such an amazing and inspiring multilingual story. So for sure, no one could accuse you of linguaphobia, the fear of languages, yet that’s exactly the title of the first chapter in your book. And you identify Brexit as simultaneously a product and a starting point of linguaphobia. So maybe could you start off getting into the book by telling us a bit how Brexit became the launching pad for your research that’s covered in the book, in Speech and the City?

YARON: Well, it wasn’t really the launching pad of the research. It’s the step into the story in the book itself. And it’s the story that is situated around Brexit. I became interested in urban multilingualism almost a decade earlier in Manchester after doing other things and research but starting to discover the city. And I already had contacts with communities and was using languages in those contexts. But the Brexit referendum in 2016 and the public debates that accompanied it put a spotlight on issues that I’d been interested in all my life because the debates around Brexit were questioning multiculturalism and by implication and sometimes head-on multilingualism as well.

And that’s why I see linguaphobia as inherently connected to the Brexit debate.

Not everybody sees that. People see other things but the evidence is there and I presented in the book. There are many, many statements by leading Brexiteers – the politicians who promoted leaving the EU – saying, well, at the end of the day it’s not really about money; it’s not really about resources; it’s about people feeling uncomfortable when there are people living next door who speak English with an accent.

There were attacks, you know. People were during that time attacked on the streets, violently, for speaking in another language or speaking even with an accent.

Now, at the time it also struck me how academic institutions were acting in almost complete compliance with the expectations of policy makers at national level. The pro-Brexit campaign was all around fear of foreigners. Language was presented as a key tangible feature of the impact of immigration. But those who favored remaining in the EU, I think, failed to challenge that head-on. Universities were not, as you might have expected, hotspots to promote multiculturalism. Instead they by and large remained passive during the debates and once the decision was taken to leave the EU, we saw many academics – and I have a big j’accuse here. So I really you know was very unhappy and still am very frustrated with the way the modern languages community as a whole in Britain really tried to appease policy makers. Of course, the study of languages had been in crisis for quite some time, declining numbers and in the neoliberal system, of course, when numbers of enrollment decline resources decline, because they’re linked. And they really tried to revive the study of languages by appealing to the policy makers; and to the policy narrative of the day, which was the Brexit narrative. Saying, “Well, now we need languages. Now that we’re out of the EU, we need languages for security and diplomacy and trade.” In other words adjusted to the Brexit narrative the argument for studying languages became “we need languages to help protect us from others and we need languages to successfully compete with our competitors.”

The narrative of the day and the narrative that won and that’s still the dominant narrative in UK higher education is “languages are justifiable as a subject as a foreign policy instrument” and ultimately it was those debates that prompted me to leave my university position. And so the book focuses on that because I guess it was a turning point in many ways and you might even say that, you know, writing the book I guess was making use of the distance after I’d left the university for critical reflection. Perhaps also having a kind of an intellectual therapy function for me personally.

INGRID: It does feel cathartic at times and I think not only for you but for your reader as well. And then that’s really quite powerful about the book. And so maybe let’s move on. You’ve already mentioned that languages in the UK are now treated as being for international diplomacy, and the UK is not unique there ,but that the internal multilingualism of the country is largely overlooked, like that’s sort of a different area altogether. So maybe you could lead us away from the nation-level monolingual ideologies towards, as the book does, urban multilingualism, particularly in Manchester. So what’s special about linguistic diversity in Manchester?

YARON: Well, actually, I think Manchester is representative of larger cities all across Western Europe. Maybe if it was very special, it would be less worth writing about it. It’s interesting to write about it and communicate about it because it’s not exceptional at all. It’s unique in its particular history, particularly of industrialization. Manchester, as everybody knows, has a very early industrialization and that meant a very early arrival of communities of migrant background so there are many, many historical layers of immigration, and therefore layers of languages from different regions.

Manchester was also a very strong center of social movements, social political movements for many centuries: the suffrage, the universal voting rights movement, the abolitionist movement against slavery, workers rights, gay rights, you name it, all sorts of movements over the centuries. And that in turn creates a social political climate where minority communities can flourish. There’s a spirit of tolerance, and acceptance of difference. And that particular history combines immigration movements initially from Eastern Europe in the 18th 19th century; then from former British colonies, South Asia and the Caribbean; then the move from industrialization to a service economy that attracted an international workforce; and then the EU expansion, and immigration from the EU, refugee movements, and others from the Middle East from Africa. So you’ve got all of these different layers and again that’s not exceptional. It’s not unique but it’s typical in terms of the size of the city, for a city with a population of about half a million.

One of my great successes in the public engagement side of the research was to persuade the city to embrace its multilingualism and language diversity as an identity badge, and it declared itself Britain’s city of languages in the press, and the city continues to brag about that.

So I think that’s a unique experience but that was something that I initiated, you know. The research and my collaborators and the public engagement that we did.

On the other hand one of my great frustrations is that we have not been successful, in fact, in getting the city to put forward any substantial structural changes to accommodate multilingualism.

Now the identity badge is not insignificant because that was acquired and flagged precisely at a time when the national discourse was all about English first. However, in terms of accommodating long term to take language diversity into a deeper level, our approaches have not been successful, despite the fact that they were very carefully crafted. We learned how the city functions very closely, we had a lot of support from within the administration and the political side of the city council, and put forward proposals that we thought were very realistic and comfortable to achieve. And yet there was no interest. Language diversity, as you pointed out in the introduction, became really a marketing instrument to promote an image, not a deep conviction or commitment, and this is where the neoliberal aspect overrides the commitment to social justice

INGRID: For sure, and I want to come back to language activism a bit later in the conversation, but first let’s maybe shine a spotlight on one language community. I mean you have all these really fascinating stories and descriptions and it’s a real kaleidoscope of languages and communities; but I thought maybe we can chat a bit about Romani given that you’re obviously one of the world’s leading experts on Romani, and that there is a sizable speaker community in Manchester, too. So can you just tell us a bit more about Romani in the UK and in Manchester in particular?

YARON: Well, I love to talk about Romani, of course, but just before I go to that, I just want to mention that I mean the urban setting is interesting from the point of view of a dialectologist of any language because it’s a setting where dialects come together and form a new speech community – if you want to sustain the concept for a moment at least, uncritically – which don’t normally meet in their original areas where they’re spoken. That applies to Arabic dialects to Kurdish dialects to Romani dialects so you get kind of the emergence of a local urban speech community where people have ties with one another who otherwise speak differently in their countries of origin that applies across the board and that’s quite fascinating for Romani, in particular.

Well, Romani has been spoken in Britain since probably around the 16th century. It’s attested since the 17th century and it was a dialect that was related to the Romani dialects of northwestern Europe as are still spoken in Germany and adjoining areas, probably also in Scandinavia but the language hasn’t survived there either. And it was spoken for a while, and there’s quite a few attestations. We know quite a lot about it because beginning with word lists and phrases but even texts that were written down by non-Roma but who were investigating a language until the mid-19th century. And then a language shift gradually took place most likely because of intermarriage of groups of indigenous travelers with people of Romani backgrounds. So that the social position that they had in society brought them together and most likely because Romani people were bilingual anyway if somebody married into the family who didn’t know Romani then everybody switched to English. So English Gypsies, as they call themselves, English and Welsh Gypsies, today speak English. However they do have a vocabulary of several hundred words of Romani origin that is used in conversation and often so densely that outsiders cannot understand. So somebody would say something, “oh kushti dordi dordi; dik at the luvva we’ve lelled today; how kushti, I’ll never sutti torati with excitement.”

INGRID: You’ll have to translate that for me and for our listeners.

YARON: Original thing that I’ve memorized basically because I’ve lectured it and talked about it so many times but this was a speaker from the north-east of England telling us “oh kushti dordi dordi,” “it’s very good”; “dik at the luvva we’ve lelled today“,  “look how much money we’ve made today;” “I’ll never sutti torati with excitement“, “I won’t be able to sleep tonight with excitement.”

There’s such a density of words, they’re always at the discretion of the speaker. It’s never words that have to be in Romani but this is the form of speech. So you know while we as linguists might say well it’s just vocabulary, it’s not a different language in that sense; to the speakers it’s a different language because others can’t understand them. And that’s the test of what are language boundaries.

So Romani as we know it from Central Europe – what we call inflected Romani with its grammatical inflection and everything – is spoken in Britain now by immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe – so part of the EU migration with the EU accession of Central and Eastern European countries, for example people from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, in particular. And they speak Romani. And I think what stands out in particular and is worth mentioning in the context of the research that led to the book is:

Romani stands out through the lack of awareness about it.

And the lack of information about it in the public domain and public institutions; in particular education, where it’s of particular importance but also all the other accompanying facilities like social services and regeneration and housing and so on and so forth. And that is also not helped let’s say, or complemented perhaps even, by the lack of experience of most of the Roma community to identify and to explain about themselves in aspects of their community. This is changing because there’s a growing kind of activism within the Romani community but we were part of that. Me and my team we worked with Romani communities to actually train that activism and this has to do, of course, with the fact that Romani is not a state language; it’s not even a regional minority language. So there’s no region where Romani is the authentic, native, whatever you want to talk to, this language where you can say it’s part of the landscape.

So unlike languages like even Frisian or Basque, it doesn’t enjoy that status so it’s not part of the marketing or the authentication or anything. And can’t be showcased as part of the regional character of any region.

So in that sense it’s sort of orphaned and that gives rise to ignorance, and when Romani pupils come to school then teachers either don’t know and don’t realize at all that they have another language.

They just put them on the records, and in England there’s statistics of- first, it’s called first language and there’s only one that you’re allowed to have; but nevertheless there is a record of languages unlike other countries, like Germany or France, but they don’t know so they put down the language of their country of origin, and then they get confused because many come from Romania. So they don’t realize that Romani and Romanian- and, of course, many of these Romani immigrants don’t know enough English and have never had a conversation about their identity. So they don’t even know what to call their language in English which adds to the confusion.

And that has given rise to where there were attempts where people did realize okay they have another language and they started to read about it to all sorts of fantastic essentializing generalizations, and we’ve come across claims made in brochures sponsored by Manchester City Council even for the education sector asking “whether the language is mystical, whether it’s linked to magic, or even whether the absence of literacy in Romani means that Romani children have a unique ability to navigate the world without needing to read and write. And so if they don’t read and write don’t be bothered because that’s their natural culture.”

So we’ve had to work very, very hard to counter misconception; and that of course triggers- there’s a chain reaction because when you’re an academic and you come to teachers and you try to enlighten, and there’s people going in the other direction, then you become a rival so you know while some people come to you and want the expertise- and actually in my experience it’s ironically- it’s in particular the police and the healthcare sector and the emergency service are the ones who really appreciate the expertise – and the education sector for some reason or other, that they see you as a rival actually because they think they have their own refugees and then instead of being able to enlighten using the tools that we have- you know you get into these clashes of almost territoriality. Who’s going to get a school on their side to give training to teachers and that you know that was a big, big challenge that is particular to the Romani community, and doesn’t occur- or I haven’t observed in relation to other immigrant communities.

INGRID: Yeah, I mean, amazing story; and if you want to know more, read the book! So maybe going back to the clash between national ideologies of monolingualism and the de facto urban multilingualism that you describe these are not just linguistic questions, right? There are real life consequences, and you focus on a range of areas of social participation. I mean there is a strong social justice focus and one of these areas is, of course, language service provision in healthcare. That’s something that listeners to this show will have a long standing interest in, so can you maybe tell us what you found out about linguistic diversity in the national health system? And what the consequences are for the health of people who do not speak English or do not speak it well?

YARON: Yes. Well, first of all, you’re right in suggesting that the UK has a national health care system. There is a national level health care system. However, the implementation of policy in regard to language does not occur at the national level within the health care system, it’s not even regional. It’s local. And it is so local that it differs from hospital to hospital. The general legal orientation is the Equality Act: everybody should have access to health care, and any barriers that they might have, we need to overcome. And on that basis it’s applied to language but only some trusts, so some hospital trusts in Manchester, in Greater Manchester:

Actually, there is huge differences between different hospitals in how they approach the issue of language.

Now we worked with the university, NHS – so National Health System – Health Care System Trust for Central Manchester, and I think that’s a hospital trust- a hospital set up that has probably  the world’s best or unique system provision for languages, for interpreting. And I say that not because I’ve traveled the whole world but, you know, we read and we reached out, and we’ve published, and had reactions and I haven’t heard of anything comparable but again it’s only in one hospital set up hospital trust, not replicated even in neighboring trusts within the city they have a kind of a multi-tier approach.

So there’s an in-house group of interpreters, around 10 or 12, each of whom knows three or four languages. So that’s very economical as well and then they contract external agencies to supplement that for other languages, so altogether for years now they’ve been catering for about 100 different languages with a huge budget. I mean last time I was informed the budget was about 1.7 million pounds sterling, so something like around 2 million euros a year for a hospital; for one hospital trust so it’s a group of hospitals but to give you an idea of the size it’s a hospital trust that has approximately a million patient appointments a year, so not a million different people because, unfortunately, some people keep coming back.

A million clinical appointments a year and about 10% of those are mediated through interpreting services so something like 100,000 appointments a year are facilitated by interpreters.

And so and there’s a system, and we’ve worked closely with, them trying to study, it evaluate it, we also ran a student volunteer scheme that supported it for a while, as part of the multilingual Manchester project. So we had a very close connection and that was very exciting and since then when I do travel the world or have exchanges with people I kind of ask what provisions are there and like I said I haven’t come across anything comparable.

INGRID: It sounds really impressive in terms of just the funding.

YARON: Well, yes, and the thing is that clinical appointments that are arranged in advance usually have face-to-face interpreters. Spontaneous things or accident or emergency resort to telephone; it is not risk-free because when you’re working with contracted agencies you have little control over the training and vetting and qualifications so there are risks. On the other hand there are statistics because even just for accounting purposes, they have to know, you know, even which hospital department needs, you know asks for certain languages. Again that’s not completely accurate.

We’ve made the observation often that people ask for an interpreter in Urdu because Urdu is the official language of Pakistan. When the interpreter arrives after a couple of sentences they shift to Punjabi. That’s very common. You have other things, you know, Mandarin-Cantonese, and so on and so forth. And so the statistics are not always, you know, they’re for particular named languages, and they don’t always represent what the interaction is. Nevertheless they give some indication and we studied among other things the distribution among different hospital departments which gives you insights potentially also into age groups and gender groups. You know, you’ve got maternity ward, you’ve got the cataract unit, you’ve got sexual health, you know, that gives you some indications of different demographics that are using, you know, different languages to communicate. And so there’s a lot of material for research, as well.

One of the things we did was pilot- attaching to the smart city concept. The smart city is a city where everything’s digital and so on. Manchester is very advanced in that, and it’s usually about climate and air pollution and public transportation. It’s basically about physical movement from place to place, and we said, “well, okay, but once you get from A to B, what do you do? You have to communicate. So we want language in the picture.” Not everybody was interested but we piloted a system where we triangulated different data sets so the census in England asks about language. It’s also a question that’s it’s not a very good question but it gives us something. Schools ask about first language – also not accurate but gives us something. Interpreter requests. Put all of those together, we can triangulate. We can get some kind of picture of the vitality of languages and the need for languages and plan ahead.

The Linguasnapp app was about taking pictures of multilingual signs and adding indicators, descriptors, and then putting it all on a map which is interactive. And then you can filter the map and you can look for languages, you can look for alphabets, you can look for mixtures, you can look by sector, and so on. The other was the data mapping tool. Unfortunately, both were deleted by the University of Manchester and this is something unforgivable. And, you know, I don’t like to kind of use this forum to complain but this is really- this is 15 years of work, not just mine but, you know, with dozens of collaborators which was very much pioneering and innovative, and a technology that really doesn’t cost a penny to maintain. And if it did, then they could have asked, and I would have found a donation or made one myself. But after I left the University both resources were deleted, with all the data on them. It’s very difficult to go back and reconstruct. However, the idea is still there and if somebody else is interested I would gladly share.

INGRID: Is anyone sort of using that kind of approach? Because Linguasnapp has come to Hamburg and is maintained here.

YARON: Went to different places. Manchester maintained control over the servers for Melbourne, Jerusalem, and Manchester. And deleted them all. And the other one that was deleted was St. Petersburg. So Manchester is in good company in that regard, in terms of the intolerance towards the data. But, fortunately, Hamburg remains. Hamburg is thriving. Hamburg has also added additional features to the original concept, and so Hamburg is great. And if you want to see how Linguasnapp works, then go to Linguasnapp Hamburg, and you see the full concept and all the data that are still there.

INGRID: Yeah, and we’ll put the link to that in the show notes, but just going back to the other app that sort of looks at what communication needs do we have when people get to a particular spot. That really hasn’t been sort of operationalized?

YARON: Well, what we tried to do with that map was: it was a kind of a heat map based on wards – wards are municipal districts within Greater Manchester – it took quite a lot of doing and adjustment. Because different data sets- I mean they all have some indication of named languages but they’re spelt in different ways or sometimes divided in different ways. So you need to somehow unify. They all have some indication of place but some have a named school, some have a ward, some have a location, a particular one. And they all have some indication of time but sometimes it’s the date, sometimes it’s an accumulation of a whole year, of a finance year or a school year, so you get sort of different ways of- you know different metadata basically. Which we then worked hard and that’s explained in the book, exactly how we did that, and the thing was still there. It was still online when the book was published but I was already kind of suspicious, and I said, well, we managed to create a proof of concept. And now that the university that managed the server- just showed us that’s as far as the proof of concept goes.

So it’s all gone and the data are gone.

But basically what you could do with it is you could search several different data sets trying to parallel place and time, based on the same language name. With some adjustment and get a rough idea of what demand was in the different sectors, it included, for example- library. I mean that’s another thing that one could say in terms of the multilingual structure Manchester, again is not unique but had quite a bit of library stock, including neighborhood libraries, not just the central library in different languages, and was very responsive to demand for resources in different languages, and records were kept of stock acquired but also of loans. Anonymous, of course. But, you know, the book was scanned and we knew that a book was borrowed in Bengali, so you could compare how many books were borrowed in Bengali, how many interpreters in doctor surgeries were asked for in Bengali, and so on and so forth.

And for a while I was talking to the Office of National Statistics, which runs the census in England and Wales. And they were saying – this was ahead of the 2021 census – the position was this is going to be the last census. We’re going to draw on other data sources in the future to replace the census. I don’t know what the latest is on that now.

INGRID: Well, it’s a cautionary tale, also, about digital data just being deleted, and the whole thing being gone. But let’s maybe return to the question of language activism. You’ve already pointed out that you’ve worked with so many different communities, with so many different institutions. You’ve compared your experience in working with education to the experience working with the police and the healthcare system. And there is this really strong practical current of language activism that runs through your book. So I thought maybe we can focus on one particular aspect of language activism related to heritage language maintenance? And maybe you can tell us a bit how, what your experience has been with supporting heritage language maintenance, and how we can better support heritage language maintenance as a society?

YARON: Sure. This connects to a couple of earlier points that we made. One is the linguaphobic English monolingual narrative that doesn’t acknowledge Britain as a multilingual society, except for the regionally devolved governments, as they’re referred to in England, like Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland, on one hand. And, on the other hand, to the what I see as the self-serving narrative of the modern languages departments. They only want to keep their departments, which is French, sometimes German, Spanish, and don’t really care about Punjabi and Polish and so on. So, there’s very few people to talk to.

There is, for those reasons and others, no government support whatsoever for heritage language.

Now, one interesting example that I talk about in the book was that in the early 1980s there was a public inquiry in Manchester following a racially motivated murder of a school child in a secondary school in the city. And the inquiry was published as a very long book of something like four or five hundred pages but one of the conclusions and recommendations that it made was that all schools in the city should offer Urdu as heritage language. The Pakistani people of Pakistani heritage being then and still are the largest minority group. That was some 40 years ago, and still now there are only three schools in the city that offer Urdu, and a similar number Arabic. In fact, the same schools also offer Arabic, and otherwise there’s nothing.

And heritage languages are taught exclusively by community initiatives. Sometimes they come under surveillance from the local authority under either safeguarding, which is a legal requirement: they have to have fire exit and police checks or whatever checks on the staff and so on. But partly it’s politicized: so anti-radicalization campaigns especially in Muslim schools, and all sorts of things that make the staff also feel very uncomfortable but they have to cooperate. But there’s no support. They often struggle with the logistics; you know, even just renting a room is- on a yearly basis, every year they have to renegotiate, being able to meet the requirements to be what’s called an exam center, so to be able to administer exams, which obviously means they can offer qualifications and not just a good past time for their pupils. And so on.

And they’re also dependent because there’s no resources to support them, unlike countries like Sweden, for example. They’re dependent on importing curriculum materials from the origin countries and with those materials come the language ideologies of those nation states. Now if you think of languages like especially Arabic nobody speaks standard literary Arabic. Everybody speaks a regional dialect. Or then there’s some languages that are typically regional languages like Cypriot Greek or Cantonese or Western Armenian, and so on. So for many pupils and for many families, the home language is a regional variety or vernacular. For everybody who speaks Arabic – and Arabic is in Manchester fastest growing now, it’s now become the second biggest language – so kids come to those schools, they want to learn the language that their family speaks. The family wants them to be able to speak. However, the schools only have- they’re only equipped with material and the ideology to justify it for the literary language. And then the kids go on holiday and they use the literary language that they learned in the heritage language school in Manchester with their family in Jordan. And everybody makes fun of them because they sound as if they’ve just stepped out of the evening news and not as if they’re members of the family. And then they become frustrated. They go back. They don’t want to go to school because that’s not what we want, and so on and so forth.

So we need a structural change. We need recognition but we also need a concept that is equipped to address the specific requirements of heritage language teaching that is tailored to the diaspora situation.

Now on the research side there’s been especially in England a lot of research on that. People have acknowledged the translanguaging approach in the classroom, the multilinguality, the post-national or deconstruction of national ideologies that teachers do in practice, and I’ve contributed to that as well. There’s a little bit or quite a lot about that actually in the book as a whole chapter on that but that’s not translating into administrative change and structural change yet. So we have the research expertise but we haven’t yet succeeded in instigating any change but that’s the direction of change that we need.

INGRID: Yeah, look, it’s such a rich book, and so much to discover. I recommend it to everyone. Before we go what’s next for you in your research?

YARON: Well a whole bunch of things. I’m waiting first of all for the appearance in print in the coming months of a recent book on an endangered language, which is the Domari or Dom language of Aleppo in northern Syria. This is an Indic language, remotely related to Romani, and through the civil war everybody’s become refugees. They’ve all moved and, you know, very unlikely that they will ever reassemble again. I’ve had the privilege and the joy to work with a native speaker from the community who is co-author of the book. It’s a descriptive grammar of Aleppo Domari that will appear with Brill publishers hopefully later this year.

I’m also co-authoring a book now with Gertrud Reershemius, which will appear with Cambridge University Press, on linguistic landscapes. And our ambition there is, to put it somewhat immodestly, I guess reintroduce theory into the study of linguistic landscapes. We think that we’ve gone off- you know there was a big start, very encouraging- we’ve gone off track in terms of what we would like to see. So we’re going to come back with a theory of discourse pragmatics and multilingualism and combine that and apply it to the study of linguistic landscapes.

And then I’ve got, well, two more projects at least. Big ones. I’m running a project sponsored by the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg in Delmenhorst. In the city of Delmenhorst. Delmenhorst is a middle-sized city that not many people have heard of. Has a population of about 80,000. That is close to Bremen in northwest Germany. Has a history that is remarkably similar to Manchester. It also started with a textile industry in the 19th century. Drew a lot of immigrants and has a population of at least 50% of people who are multilingual.

INGRID: I was so amazed when you first told me that. I had no idea that Delmenhorst was in any way on the multilingualism-

YARON: Also very interesting languages. Minority languages languages that are of particular interest to me: Kurdish, Arabic, but also Romani. Very large Romani community from Bulgaria, and a very, very large, probably one of the country’s biggest, Aramaic speaking communities, originally from Anatolia and Turkey but also from other areas. And that’s been quite spectacular. Looking at what characterizes the running of multilingualism, so initiatives in response to multilingualism in a middle-sized city where the networks are tighter and everybody knows each other.

And finally I’m involved in an innovative language learning app for Romani as part of a project called the Dialect Atlas, and it’s an innovative approach. Very much AI-supported. And we’re starting with Romani, and the approach is not to learn a standard language but to learn various dialects and dialect variation. That’s the kind of the basic vision of the app. So we’re starting with Romani. Might launch even in a few weeks time perhaps if we’re optimistic. We’re quite advanced, and the plan is to expand then to other languages, including languages that interest me like Kurdish and others. And that’s of course an applied kind of thing but it includes a lot of both my personal interests but also data sets that I’ve collected over the years, that the app is drawing on. But also this vision of vernacular language variation rather than the kind of standard named languages as the only exquisite kind of artifact that is the target of learning.

INGRID: Yeah and such important work. I mean we talk about low resources and you’re creating resources for those languages. So that’s amazing. Well, we’re looking forward to having you again on the show about all these other projects. So thank you so much, Yaron! It’s been a real pleasure. And thanks for listening, everyone! If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to our channel, leave a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, and recommend the Language on the Move Podcast, and our partner, the New Books Network, to your students, colleagues, and friends.

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Agnes Bodis talks to Hannah Madin and Catherine White. Hannah is a Teaching and Learning Officer at the Department of Education in the Northern Territory (Australia), and Catherine White is a Teaching and Learning Coach in secondary education.

We are zooming in on learning English as an additional language or dialect in remote communities in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT). There are numerous Aboriginal languages spoken there as well as dialects of English. However, the language of schooling remains Standard Australian English.

We discuss this mismatch between first or home languages, language of education, and teacher preparedness. Hannah and Catherine outline a collaborative project by the NT Department of Education to remove these barriers to learning in the school context. The project is called “Roadmap to Stage 1 Essential English and Mathematics” and includes not only the creation of teaching support materials, but the creation of an online Community of Practice, a professional learning program and school visits.

If you liked this episode, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Additional resources

Remote school in the Northern Territory (Image credit: NT Department of Education)

Madin, H. (2026) Road to Success in the NT Department of Education and Training. In Dinneen, C., M. Reed, P. Humphreys (Eds.), Proceedings of the Macquarie University 2025 Global EMI Symposium: collaborations in EMI. Macquarie University College.

Macquarie University 2025 Global EMI Symposium recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slr6PXz-AEE

Related content

Bodis, A., & Kettle, M. (2024). Supporting multilingual families to engage with schools. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/supporting-multilingual-families-to-engage-with-schools/
Bodis, A., & Valdez, C. (2025). Your languages are your superpower! Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/your-languages-are-your-superpower/
Quick, B., & Ollerhead, S. (2025). Why teachers turn to AI. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/why-teachers-turn-to-ai/

Transcript (coming soon)

Attendees of HISS2026 “Literacies for Social Participation” pose for a group photo in front of the Emigration Museum (Image credit: Language on the Move)

In this composite post, three of our international participants – Dr Yixi (Isabella) Qiu from Tongji University, and Tazin Abdullah and Brynn Quick from Macquarie University – reflect on their experiences during their time at the University of Hamburg.

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From Student to Speaker: Finding Epistemic Belonging in HISS

Dr Yixi (Isabella) Qiu, Tongji University

Language is always on the move, and so are we.

This July, I arrived in Hamburg for the first time. Yet the city did not feel entirely unfamiliar. I had already participated in the Hamburg International Summer School (HISS) twice, first as an online student participant and later as an online teaching assistant. This summer, I finally crossed the screen and entered the classroom as an invited speaker, leading a workshop on academic literacy and artificial intelligence.

Throughout my stay in Hamburg, one question stayed with me:

What makes someone feel that they belong in a multilingual community of knowledge?

Looking back, I do not think the answer lies in one defining moment. It emerged gradually through small encounters, conversations, and quiet acts of intellectual generosity that made me feel my questions mattered and my voice had a place.

Lines from the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” misattributed to Walt Whitman in Emigration Museum display (Image credit: Language on the Move)

One of these moments took place during our visit to Hamburg’s Emigration Museum. As we walked through exhibitions on migration, ethnography, and colonial history, our conversations moved naturally between languages, histories, and perspectives. At one point, Professor Ingrid Piller noticed a citation error on one of the exhibition panels. What followed was not simply a discussion about an incorrect reference. It became a conversation about evidence and authority. What could easily have been ignored became an opportunity for collective inquiry: Who produces knowledge? Who is represented? What responsibilities do researchers have when knowledge enters the public sphere?

Perhaps this was what epistemic belonging felt like, not being given answers, but being invited to question how that knowledge had been produced, represented, and authorized.

The museums became spaces for dialogue rather than places to simply receive information. At the Museum am Rothenbaum – originally founded as a colonial museum of cultural history – conversations with fellow Language on the Move team members, including Vera Williams Tetteh, Tazin Abdullah, and Brynn Quick, invited us to reflect on colonial histories from different perspectives. Concepts such as epistemic justice and multilingual participation, which I had long encountered in my own research, became tangible through these shared conversations. They were more than analytical concepts for understanding others’ experiences. They became ways of interpreting my own participation in the multilingual encounters unfolding around me.

Answers to my question also emerged beyond lecture rooms and museums.

The museum ship Rickmer Rickmers, moored in Hamburg Harbor, with the Elbphilharmonie in the background. Hamburg has long been a place where people, languages, and ideas are on the move. (Image credit: Yixi Qiu)

Like many visitors, I quickly developed a habit of turning to generative AI in everyday life. AI helped me translate supermarket labels, understand product instructions, navigate public transport, and occasionally explore the history behind places that caught my attention. As I found myself reaching for AI almost automatically, I began to wonder whether this habit echoed what Professor Ingrid Gogolin has conceptualized as a monolingual habitus, shaping how I engaged with unfamiliar languages and places.

AI made Hamburg more accessible to me. I could understand the words and find my way around the city, yet feeling part of it depended on something more relational.

During our city walks, student organizers turned streets, buildings, and bridges into stories, introducing us to Hamburg’s Hanseatic history, multilingual heritage, and connections with the wider world. Gradually, my understanding of the city no longer depended only on translation. It grew through conversations, shared experiences, and the generosity of people who invited me into their ways of seeing the city. For example, learning to call the Elbphilharmonie “Elphi”, the local nickname Olga Vlasova, one of the student organizers, taught me, felt like a small act of participation rather than simply learning another name.

AI helped me gain access. People helped me participate.

Perhaps what stayed with me most throughout my stay in Hamburg was something I would describe as hidden hospitality. It appeared in ordinary moments: when several passersby stopped to ask whether I needed help with my luggage; when a stranger, seeing my confusion after a platform change, told me to follow her because she was also going to Lübeck; when a hotel staff member, instead of simply selling me a bottle of water, suggested that I could get one much cheaper at the nearby train station if I was not in a hurry; when someone switched into English to keep me in a conversation; or when a discussion continued long after class had ended. These moments were different. Some were practical, others linguistic or intellectual. Yet they shared something important: someone was making room for another person to participate. I began to think of this as a kind of everyday hospitality, often quiet and easily overlooked. But such gestures were not only about kindness. They also shaped who could access information, navigate unfamiliar spaces, make themselves understood, and participate on more equal terms. In this sense, everyday hospitality also had an epistemic dimension. It could soften, even if only momentarily, the inequalities of knowledge, language, and power that structure participation.

When such hospitality entered more explicitly into spaces of knowledge-making, through translation, explanation, listening, questioning, or simply taking another person’s perspective seriously, it created the conditions for epistemic belonging to grow. Through these repeated acts of hospitality and participation, knowledge began to feel less like an individual achievement and more like a collective journey.

Dr Yixi Qiu teaching a session on critical AI literacy at HISS2026 (Image credit: Language on the Move)

These reflections followed me into my workshop on academic literacy and AI, which built on Dr. Yevgeniya Yudytska’s introduction to critical AI literacy earlier that day. The workshop grew out of my ongoing research on AI-mediated academic writing, supported by the Shanghai Magnolia Pujiang Talent Program and the National Social Science Fund of China. Yet my journey in Hamburg encouraged me to take this work further by exploring it within a multilingual and multicultural space. The question, I came to realize, was not only how AI changes the ways we think and write across languages, but also how it reshapes who can participate in knowledge-making, how they participate, and whose voices are heard. Standing in front of the classroom brought this question into sharper focus. Our conversations moved beyond AI itself. Together, we explored questions of academic literacy, responsibility, multilingual trajectories, and knowledge construction, as well as what it means to write academically in collaboration with both humans and technologies.

I left Hamburg with more questions than answers, questions about multilingualism, AI, and social participation. Yet perhaps that uncertainty was, itself, part of the journey.

Epistemic belonging, I began to understand, is not about arriving at certainty, but about continuing to participate in a community where knowledge remains open to questioning and negotiation, and where new voices can enter and contribute.

My sincere thanks go to Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller for creating a space where epistemic belonging could grow, and to the organizing team, my fellow participants, and everyone who made this journey possible, a journey of growing confidence across languages, roles, and communities of knowledge.

HISS2026 reminded me that language is always on the move. And so is knowledge. And so are we.

***

HISS Highlights

Tazin Abdullah and Brynn Quick, Macquarie University

How are African literacies hidden in broad daylight? How did people in early modern Europe learn languages before these were standardized? How does AI actually work to produce plausible-sounding texts?

Participants of the doctoral symposium “Literacies for Social Participation” pose for a group photo (Image credit: Language on the Move)

These are some of the many fascinating questions explored during the Hamburg International Summer School (HISS) “Literacies for Social Participation”, which took place at the University of Hamburg over two weeks in July.

For the two of us, HISS provided an excellent opportunity to deepen our research and develop our networks as we head towards the final leg of our PhD journeys.

Thanks to the generous Postgraduate Research Funding (PGRF) from Macquarie University, we were able to travel to Hamburg and attend HISS along with a doctoral conference, also devoted to “Literacies for Social Participation.”

This very rewarding academic and personal experience was organized by the superb Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship team and hosted by the Literacy in Diversity Settings (LiDS) Research Center.

Now back in Sydney, we are very pleased to say that we achieved far beyond what we thought we would and have returned richer in knowledge and friendships. Here are the seven highlights from our time at the Hamburg International Summer School:

1. Purposeful human interactions. Summer School allowed us to meet, in person, colleagues whose work we had read or had previously only interacted with online. The great benefit of face-to-face settings stretched generously over two weeks is the space to spend quality time with our fellow researchers and learn from one another. In these settings, academic conversations are not restricted to one workshop or lecture but extend to multiple opportunities for exchanges that develop concepts and ideas. For example, our Humboldt Professorship team colleagues led us on a tour of Hamburg to places such as the Chilehaus and Speicherstadt, teaching us about the factors that have historically made it a city of both immigration and emigration. During the tour, we not only learned from these colleagues but got to know them better as well, and chats about all of our exciting research projects featured prominently along our walk.
2. Insight into diverse research contexts. We attended daily workshops and a series of presentations on cutting-edge research from around the world and from researchers at various stages in their academic journeys. The diversity of research contexts, data sources and methodologies in sociolinguistics laid out for us the possibilities to make our work relevant internationally. On full show was the truly multifaceted and inter-disciplinary nature of sociolinguistic inquiry – from teaching and learning in multilingual contexts in Canada, family language policy in Norway, linguistic landscape in the Croatian seaside to literacy challenges in Taiwan and much, much more.
3. Mentoring and feedback from senior academics. Currently at the final stages of our PhD journeys, we received priceless input from mentors who dedicated time to guide us on our data analyses and thesis writing. We were able to have multiple meetings with our mentors to discuss the work we have in common, and we set up future podcast recording dates with these mentors and other academics at HISS. Brynn even recorded one podcast episode with her mentor, so watch our Podcast space for that future episode!
4. Presentations. In addition, we had the opportunity to present our research at a doctoral symposium. During these presentations, we received feedback from professors from several universities around the world and we returned with copious notes. Imagine getting this level of attention in one place!
5. Brynn’s research highlight. Brynn really enjoyed hearing Dr. Nicole Marinaro’s lecture entitled Linguistic diversity and social participation in healthcare: overcoming communication barriers in the medical field. This lecture directly tied in to Brynn’s PhD research context where she has been investigating how Australian healthcare policies and organisations facilitate language support for patients with limited English proficiency. Dr. Marinaro offered a fascinating discussion on the European conventions regarding professional interpreters in healthcare, and Brynn was able to compare and contrast these conventions to those in Australia.
6. Tazin’s research highlight. Tazin was very inspired by the real-world impact of Dr. Martin Serif Derince’s research on the language use of the Kurdish community in Germany. Dr. Derince’s mentorship proved highly significant to Tazin’s research on the practical barriers faced by women from linguistically diverse communities when they try to access domestic violence information. Their discussions provided an excellent guide on how to present Tazin’s academic research in academic, policy, and community contexts, so that the results of the research reach appropriate audiences in a meaningful way and be of real benefit to women who may be subject to domestic violence.
7. 

   Fun at HISS2026: participants diving into the children’s exhibit at the Emigration Museum (Image credit: Yixi Qiu)

   Last but not least, networking over tours, coffees, lunches, dinners and dessert. It may sound like we were researching the culinary scene of Hamburg, but what the Summer School provided was a unique opportunity to socialize in a highly intellectual atmosphere. In the company of our colleagues, we were able to experience Hamburg through museums, exhibitions, and historical sites such as the The Emigration Museum – BallinStadt Hamburg and Museum am Rothenbaum Cultures and Arts of the World. On their own, these experiences are enriching. However, in the company of our fellow researchers and teachers, we engaged in discussions about sociolinguistics and literacy – we could see how our research connects to language in society from history to present. Of course, these were also copious opportunities to discuss future research collaborations.

Overall, the Hamburg International Summer School “Literacies for Social Participation” allowed us to make meaningful connections. It reminded us of the value of true academic friendships. We leave convinced, more than ever, that academia is not just about the formalities of exchanging information and knowledge. Our two weeks of academic companionship underlined the importance of professional and personal support to growing as academics and individuals. Our many exchanges reminded us that meaningful friendships are a combination of listening to the needs of others, applauding achievements, and guiding when necessary. We finished with a renewed and shared commitment for our research to contribute to society and to earnestly search for ways to have real-life impact in the world.

Editor’s note: The 111^th World Congress of Esperanto is currently taking place in the Austrian city of Graz. According to Austrian National TV, more than 1,100 attendees from 62 countries are attending the event to practice and celebrate the language, which was added to the list of Austria’s intangible cultural heritage only a few months ago.

After Poland and Croatia, Austria is only the third country in the world to recognize Esperanto as part of its intangible cultural heritage but the language is actually spoken worldwide, including by a thriving Esperanto community in Australia. They are proud to host the 112^th World Congress in Melbourne next year.

So, from Austria to Australia, this is a good opportunity to learn more about Esperanto. In this post, the Secretary of Esperanto NSW, Nicole Else, demystifies the language and promises a cool incentive: if you start learning Esperanto now, you’ll be ready to attend the 112^th World Congress in Melbourne next year.

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There is one language that is not often mentioned, but is used much more widely than most people assume. It is Esperanto. Even though its name sounds Spanish it has nothing to do with Spanish.

What are the origins of Esperanto?

Esperanto was developed over 100 years ago by Dr L. L. Zamenhof, an eye doctor from the multi-ethnic and multilingual city of Białystok, which was then part of the Russian Empire and is today in Poland. Confronted with inter-ethnic tensions, the young Zamenhof thought that a common language was needed to enhance intercultural understanding. He therefore intended Esperanto to be the language of world peace, and Esperanto literally means “the one who hopes”.

What makes Esperanto so easy to learn?

Zamenhof wanted his language to be easily learned, so he took out all the unnecessary difficulties that can be found in most other languages. The words come mainly from European languages like Latin, French, German, but interestingly the grammar is more similar to Chinese than to the inflectional European languages. The numbers in Esperanto work exactly in the same logical way as in Chinese and Japanese. For example in English it is not obvious what “twelve” means, but in Esperanto “12” is “dekdu”, that is “ten-two” – and that’s exactly how you say “12” in Chinese, too: you just use the word for the number 10 and then add the word for 2.

Another advantage is that the number of words that need to be memorized is much smaller than in other languages. Many people consider that a limitation and believe that you cannot fully express yourself in Esperanto or that it is suitable only for basic conversation. That’s not true at all. You can express yourself in Esperanto as well as in any other language.

Esperanto is a bit like Lego.

4th Esperanto World Congress, 1908 Dresden, including Klara und Ludwik Zamenhof (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

With a limited number of elements, you can make an infinity of words. Esperanto uses many prefixes and suffixes to build words. For instance, how do you say “hospital” in Esperanto? “sana” is an adjective that means “in good health”, “mal” is a prefix that means the opposite, therefore “sick” is “malsana”.  “ulo” is a suffix that means a person, therefore “malsanulo” is a sick person, “ejo” is a suffix that means “the place where”. Therefore “hospital” is “malsanulejo”. So you can see that where in English you have to memorize several different words, in Esperanto you just need to memorize one word and the prefixes and suffixes which you will be able to use in a wide range of words.

The spelling is phonetic, so you don’t have to worry about how to spell words.

And the grammar has rules that don’t have any exceptions at all! For example, if I take verbs: to make the present tense you replace the “i” of the base verb with “as”, for past tense you put “is”, and for future tense “os”. Therefore “I close” will be “mi fermas”, “I closed” is “mi fermis” and I suppose you can already guess what “mi fermos” means. There is not a single irregular verb. Just by reading this, you have already learned how to conjugate every single verb in Esperanto in those three tenses.

Is Esperanto artificial?

Esperanto is sometimes referred to as an “artificial” language, but for me it doesn’t feel artificial at all. Let me share a bit of my story: I grew up in France in a family where my parents and grandparents were all Esperanto speakers. Therefore, I learnt Esperanto as a young child. Through engaging with the Esperanto community and attending gatherings in various countries, I met my husband who is British, and gained many friends from all around the world, particularly Chile, Croatia, Japan, Hungary, and others.

You can learn more about people who learned Esperanto as their first language in this video.

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And there is another way to look at the artificial-natural debate: one could say that Esperanto is more natural than English. If you listen to young children speak, they will naturally want to generalize rules and say “one mouse, two mouses”. In English they are not allowed to speak in that natural way, but in Esperanto they can.

Do we need Esperanto when everyone speaks English?

First, it is of course a myth that everyone speaks English. Millions do speak it, but the majority of the world’s population (about 80%) do not speak it or have only a very basic knowledge of English. Many people struggle a lot with English, and even many native speakers can’t spell it!

It is extremely time-consuming to learn English. This means that native English speakers have a ginormous advantage as they can express themselves with ease and don’t have to spend hundreds or even thousands of hours of their lives studying a language to be able to communicate internationally.

Is Esperanto too European?

Esperanto Place, Graz (Image credit: Wikipedia)

It is true that many Esperanto words come from European languages. At first glance it would seem fairer if at least one word would come from each of the 6,000 or so languages in the world, but that would be very impractical. This is a problem to which there is no perfectly fair solution. But why should Esperanto be held to an impossible standard? Some people seem to reject Esperanto precisely because it doesn’t meet this impossible standard of total fairness. It is true that a French person will learn Esperanto a bit faster than a Chinese person. But the important thing is that Asian people will learn Esperanto much faster than English. So, the use of Esperanto would be a big improvement even for people who don’t speak Romance, Germanic or Slavic languages.

Esperanto is a nice idea, but does anyone actually speak it?

While Esperanto is not yet used as a universal second language, there are enough Esperanto speakers to make its study worthwhile. I have met so many interesting people through Esperanto – for instance, my friends include an astronomy professor from Israel and a Croatian poet, neither of who I would have met without Esperanto.

Even though it seems to me that the world would be much fairer and it would save hundreds of hours to millions of people if Esperanto would be used as a neutral, easy-to-learn common language, it is not going to happen in the near feature. That doesn’t mean that it is useless to learn Esperanto now. I think speaking Esperanto has enriched my life, not financially, but by meeting people from many different cultures, countries, walks of life.

When you travel, you don’t have to rely on chance to find Esperanto speakers, because there are lists of people who are willing to meet you, show you around, or even let you stay at their place for free.

Koala souvenir with Esperanto flag (Image credit: Melburna Esperanto-Asocio)

There are lots of Esperanto gatherings, the biggest is the World Esperanto congress which is held once a year.

Start learning Esperanto now to attend the 112^th World Esperanto Congress in Melbourne

One way to learn Esperanto is to do a free online course at www.lernu.net or on the Duolingo website. If you are in Sydney, you can attend classes on Saturdays in Redfern. The teacher is originally from Korea, btw.

If you start learning Esperanto this year, you will be ready to fully enjoy the congress next year. There will be scientific talks, concerts, discussion groups, theatre, and much more. There might not be quite as many attendees as in Graz but hundreds of Esperanto speakers from around 50 different countries are expected to attend.

I am looking forward to the event very much. Will you be there too?

It will be a unique experience with no interpreters and people communicating on an equal (or nearly equal) footing.