NSW Police (Image credit: Edwina Pickles, SMH) Editor's note: The Language on the Move team closely collaborates with the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Researchers’ Network (LLIRN). To raise awareness of…
Language on the MoveJuly 1, 2024
Malinche mediating between the Spanish and the Americans (Source: Lienzo de Tlaxcala, mid 16th c) We live in an age of crisis, as humanity confronts an ever-escalating climate and environmental…
Ingrid PillerOctober 30, 2021
Easter chocolates in the supermarket (Image credit: Wikimedia) I’ve been thinking a lot about chocolate lately. Maybe because it is Easter and supermarkets in my part of the world…
Ingrid PillerApril 5, 2021
Celeste Rodriguez Louro and Glenys Collard, University of Western Australia *** The histories and everyday experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia are etched in the landscape,…
Language on the MoveSeptember 14, 2020
Few people have ever heard about a fascinating form of visual communication used by Indigenous Australians: message sticks. When I teach about the invention of writing, I usually mention them…
Ingrid PillerAugust 18, 2020
The Phoenician abjad - the ancestor of almost all scripts in use today (Image credit: Wikipedia) Today, literacy has become near universal with the global literacy rate around 85 percent.…
Ingrid PillerAugust 4, 2020
As a child, the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) loved stories and he loved reading. Like many children, he was particularly fascinated with tales of adventure, exploration, and discovery. In…
Ingrid PillerAugust 18, 2019
Native and non-native teachers at Lord Harris' School, Royapett, Madras, 1865 (Source: British Library) For some time now, a debate has been raging in TESOL about the relative merits of…
Ingrid PillerMay 31, 2018
Students at the German-Chinese College, ca. 1910 (Source: German Federal Archives) The dichotomy of East and West is a recent phenomenon and associated with European industrialization. Yet, it is difficult…
Gegentuul BaioudMay 10, 2018
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
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
How is your Language-on-the-Move Reading Challenge coming along? One month has gone by and you should have ticked off at least one book from our list. I started with an…
Ingrid PillerMarch 1, 2018
In today’s world, “literacy” is strongly associated with competence: the ability to read and write is the pre-condition for the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge and skills. The basic…
Ingrid PillerAugust 15, 2017
"The English" migrated to their "ancestral homeland" in the first few centuries of the Common Era (Source: Wikipedia) “Indigenous languages” and “immigrant languages” are much discussed in language policy research,…
Dave SayersAugust 12, 2015
Promoting the University of Bolton's Ras Al-Khaimah branch campus on the streets of Ajman The other day I was stuck in traffic in Ajman, one of the smaller of the…
Ingrid PillerMay 22, 2013
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