Language on the Move

Research reflections

Language on the Move in the Middle East

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had the good fortune to be able to visit a number of universities and research organizations in the Middle East. The cities I’ve…

Ingrid PillerJanuary 23, 2011

Linguistic landscapes

The world in Arabia

The world in Arabia I spent my last day in the Middle East at Dubai Mall, the self-proclaimed “Centre of Now.” The mall guide has the heading “Welcome to Everything.”…

Ingrid PillerJanuary 21, 2011

Shop signs of hostess bars on Thaniya Road, Sala Daeng, Bangkok

Language and tourism

The dark side of intercultural communication

At 11pm at a Japanese ramen restaurant in Thaniya, Bangkok, a group of five middle-aged Japanese men and five young Thai women were dining right next to my table. It's…

Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江January 18, 2011

English as a global language

India in Arabia

Yesterday I spoke with a study agent here in the UAE and he told me that Australian universities trying to attract students from the GCC region just didn’t get the…

Ingrid PillerJanuary 17, 2011

Linguistic landscapes

During my recent lecture about “Teaching language, teaching culture” at the Fujairah Women’s College, I spoke about English language teaching materials in Japan and the ways in which they constructed…

Ingrid PillerJanuary 15, 2011

Language and globalization

Who’s inward-looking?

Yoshiko Nakano's essay in Yomiuri Newspaper “Young people in Japan no longer want to go abroad.” This news reached me in Australia last year and formed part of the background…

Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江January 11, 2011

English as a global language

Baking a cookie in Iran

The Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani has a routine about the stereotypical views of Iranians as fanatics often presented in the Western media: Every time they show us on TV they…

Ingrid PillerJanuary 6, 2011

Language and tourism

Persepolis

I visited Persepolis today. Persepolis proved to be a great way to end the year and to reflect on the passage of time. More unexpectedly, Persepolis also proved to be…

Ingrid PillerJanuary 1, 2011

Language and tourism

English in Iran

Even a casual observer of the linguistic landscape in Iran will have to conclude that Iranians have a collective fetish for English. Almost all public signage is bilingual in English…

Ingrid PillerDecember 30, 2010

Intercultural communication

Divine linguistic diversity

Divine linguistic diversity I’ve spent the past two days convening the first-ever Language-on-the-Move workshop at the University of Tehran. The idea was to explore language contact and multilingualism in the…

Ingrid PillerDecember 23, 2010

English as a global language

A gulf by any other name

In the year in which I’ve been away from the UAE, the fervor for the use of “Arabian Gulf” instead of “Persian Gulf” has certainly heated up here. This map…

Ingrid PillerDecember 20, 2010

News

Annual Language on the Move Award 2011

We are pleased to announce an open call for applications for the ALMA Award 2011! We started the Award with two awardees, Muhammad Ali Khan and Lachlan Jackson, in 2010,…

Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江December 17, 2010

English as a global language

The secret of successful intercultural communication

“What is the secret to successful intercultural communication?” This was one of the questions I was asked after my lecture on “New directions in intercultural communication” at United Arab Emirates…

Ingrid PillerDecember 15, 2010

Language learning

The textbook wall

Have you ever felt a wall of textbooks around you, obstructing your vision and thinking, rather than widening your horizon? That’s how one of my research participants, let’s call him…

Muhammad Ali KhanDecember 13, 2010

News

2010 HDR Excellence Award for Jenny Zhang

Jenny Zhang, a member of the Language on the Move team, received a 2010 Higher Degree Research Excellence Award from the Faculty of Human Sciences at Macquarie University. Congratulations, Jenny!…

Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江December 12, 2010

Reza's well-used Japanese-Persian and English-Persian dictionaries

Multilingual families

A tale of two foreigners in Japan

This is the first in a series of blog posts about my experiences undertaking an ongoing research project. In this series I will be detailing some of the methodological challenges…

Lachlan JacksonDecember 8, 2010