Africa – Language on the Move

Chats in Linguistic Diversity English as a global language

The Rise of English

In Episode 17 of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Rosemary Salomone about her 2021 book The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of…

Ingrid PillerMay 21, 2024

Covid-19

Bridging new and traditional media in the fight against Covid-19

Editor’s note: The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a renewed focus on linguistic diversity and the way it intersects with social inclusion. In this latest contribution to our series of language…

Vasiliki VitaAugust 12, 2020

Next Gen Literacies

Why are you not citing any African female expert?

Sociolinguistics needs to center Africa Minority language maintenance and revitalization is a sub-discipline of sociolinguistics that I mostly stay away from. My discomfort with most of the research in that…

Ingrid PillerMay 3, 2018

Multilingual histories

The devil’s handwriting

How is your Language-on-the-Move Reading Challenge coming along? Another month has passed and you should have ticked off the second book from our list. I read George Steinmetz’ The Devil’s…

Ingrid PillerApril 5, 2018

English as a global language

“We do aid, not English!”

Should ‘helping with English’ be part of the brief of humanitarian aid workers? (Source: helpage.org) Over a few years of involvement in the aid sector in Asia, I became aware…

Alexandra GreyOctober 17, 2013

Language at work

Grassroots multilingualism

Africa Town, Guangzhou (Source: ChinaSmack) What does an urban middle-class male university graduate from Conakry, the capital of Guinea, have in common with a peasant woman with little education from…

Ingrid PillerFebruary 19, 2013

Language and migration

Racism without racists

In the past couple of years, I have been a passenger in Sydney taxis driven, inter alia, by an agricultural engineer from India, a civil engineer from Somalia, a surgeon…

Ingrid PillerAugust 27, 2010

Multilingual histories

The burning children of globalization

I’ve been wondering what would be an appropriate Christmas post for the Language on the Move blog. Seeing that I’m deeply skeptical about all those claims about the wonderful advantages…

Ingrid PillerDecember 25, 2009