For more Language on the Move resources related to this topic, see Life in a New Language, Discrimination by any other name: Language tests and racist immigration policy in Australia, Intercultural Communication – Now in the third edition, and Judging Refugees.

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.

Transcript (coming soon)

(Image credit: Australian Government, Study Australia)

In her 2007 ethnographic study of eight US law schools, Elizabeth Mertz traces the process through which law students learn to “think like a lawyer” in order to become one. She shows how this process is essentially about language: learning to think like a lawyer means adopting new ways of reading, writing and talking.

Crucially, Mertz demonstrates that underlying these processes is a set of linguistic ideologies – assumptions we make about language and how it should manifest in particular social contexts. For example, she identifies a practice in legal analysis and reasoning, as taught in these classrooms: the social characteristics and personal perspectives of people who appear in legal cases and problem questions are rendered irrelevant and made invisible, in favour of the legally relevant facts. Issues of morality and emotion are likewise pushed aside as unimportant.

As students undergo this transformative process of learning to think and speak like a lawyer, Mertz questions the effects this may have on how law students see the world, their ability to see social diversity and inequality and to identify and challenge issues of injustice in their future work.

But what about how students think about themselves? What if they personally face marginalization? And what of their diverse language repertoires? If thinking like a lawyer depends on speaking like one, what is this speech expected to sound like? And what impact does sounding differently have on one’s sense of professional identity and self-worth?

These were just some of the questions raised in my recent digital ethnographic research with students enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Migration Law and Practice (GDMLP). This one-year university program is required for people who do not have an Australian legal qualification to become Registered Migration Agents (RMAs) and offer professional assistance to people applying for a visa in Australia. Unlike law degrees, which remain difficult to access for many, it has been estimated that at least half of the GDMLP cohort has English as a second language (L2), and perhaps even more are first generation migrants.

I attended online workshops during which students practiced their client interviewing skills through role-plays, observing this practical work and debriefing with them. I also conducted research interviews with students at various points during their study and after graduating, over a period of three years. To have immediate impact, I also offered my interdisciplinary expertise to enhance learning, presenting on various aspects of communication, and helping the teaching team to develop and refine learning materials (see Smith-Khan & Giles 2025).

In a new article, I share some of the ways students talk and think about their study, their future professional goals, their existing strengths, and the skills they wish to improve and how. The discussions brought up beliefs about language, closely tied to ideas about proficiency, professionalism and identity.

Bilingualism: optional benefit, real risk

While every participant who speaks multiple languages planned to use them in their future job, with at least some of their clients, there was a clear hierarchy in how different languages were valued, with English appearing at the apex as non-negotiable, and other languages more as optional extras (see also Piller & Gerber 2021).

Paolo*  The English level, I think it’s very very important too.

Laura   Yeah.

Paolo    I’m Italian, as I said before, I work with a lot of Italians, and they don’t speak English. And will have, a hundred percent sure that I will have a lot of consultations within Italian community. I will go to Italy to do seminars, and that will be in Italian.

Laura   Yeah.

Paolo    So in that way, if you think in that, in that way, you don’t need English, okay?

Laura   Yes.

Paolo    I mean, ‘I don’t need to have a very high English level, because my-, ‘I’m Chinese, I just talk in Mandarin, my consultation in Mandarin, my clients are in Mandarin.’ Okay. And it makes sense. But then you have to do applications in English, you have to study the uh legislation in English. So if the legislation, if you don’t understand properly the legislation, if you mixed up a word, all your translation in Chinese, or in Italian, or in any other language, won’t be, won’t be correct.

Okay? So it’s very, very important that they understand, the people that they want to become a migration agent, that they understand everything. [Paolo, interview 1/2, 2020]

On one level, this makes perfect sense: the work does indeed require close engagement with legal and institutional texts that are only available in English, and application forms required to be submitted to the Immigration Department only are allowed in English. However, this type of discourse also assumes bilingualism is a potential risk to English language proficiency: rather than acknowledging the crucial skills bilingual and multilingual people bring to this work, the fact that they speak more than one language is regarded as a threat to their English. This resembles political and institutional discourses in which the ‘monolingual mindset’ is evident, including in the language proficiency rules around becoming an RMA, and in other areas like skilled migration and university admission, where proficiency is assumed for some, but not for others (Smith-Khan 2021a; Piller & Bodis, 2023). Such discourses are also evident in public political debates about migration and registered migration agents (Smith-Khan 2021b).

‘Australian’ native speakers and language choice

Perceptions about identity are also closely connected with these types of ideologies. As L2 English speakers discuss their experiences and efforts to develop speaking skills in class and connect these evaluations with their future language practices and career plans.

Gemma: If you have poor communication you give them the impression you’re not professional. You probably have lots of knowledge in your mind but you just can’t express yourself properly, or too slow, or I don’t know. You’ve got to give them, the client the impression that oh no, you are professional. I can trust you. You can do the job for me. So I try to, the reason why I said um, um, the native English speaker is better, probably that’s just one side about um, they easily use language um, uh, like more vocabulary than us. We can’t use like beautiful words or whatever it is to express myself uh, precisely. So uh, that will give client the impression like, you not professional like I can’t trust you…. So, yes. So that’s why I said if I speak to Chinese, probably I’ll be more confident. They, they will, will feel less, um, less suspicious. I don’t know. Um, less, how will I say? Um, more trust on you than English-speaking people. [Gemma, interview 1/1, 2020]

Evaluations like these compare L2 English speakers’ skills vis-à-vis what they consider the ideal student and future RMA, an L1 English speaker, with implications for professional identity and future work plans. They also link general professional competence with language proficiency and oral fluency, something that again also comes up in the broader discourse (see Smith-Khan 2021b).

However, these ideologies extend even further, to national identity and moral worth.

Gemma: Yes, with my, one of my classmates… Uh, at the beginning it wasn’t very good. Oh, he’s local. He’s Australian. And he’s very, I feel he pick up very quickly and easily and then he has to put up with me because I have to think. And, you know, thinking probably slower than, than him and then speak slowly. Uh, yes so I find the difference and I try to, I just want to try to improve that by talking more [Gemma, interview 1/1, 2020].

In this encounter, Gemma evaluates herself in relation to an “Australian”, “local” L1-speaking classmate. Here, speaking and thinking are closely connected, and she comes out positioned as a burden in the interaction – something her classmate must “put up with” because of her slower thinking and speaking.

While such discourse is not surprising in this particular social and political context, it sits uneasily against the facts we have about Gemma’s personal and professional background, along with the direct linguistic data collected in the project. She came to Australia as a skilled migrant and was granted a permanent visa because of her professional qualifications. She has been an Australian citizen for over a decade, working as a civil servant in a professional role, in a regional Australian city, in a highly monolingual English office environment. Her English language proficiency is indisputably high. Yet her evaluation demonstrates the power of native-speaker and monolingual mindset ideologies about languages: her capability, her professionalism, and even her nationality become inferior and vulnerable to the point that she imagines herself as at best a burden, and at worst incapable of being trusted, for an L1 English speaking audience in this context (see Piller et al 2024).

Hard work, pushback and pragmatism

However, all is not lost for this group of aspiring migration practitioners. Both L1 and L2 English speakers heavily stressed the need to practice speaking and to study hard to continue to improve their professional skills. While this emphasises individual responsibility and creates an additional burden for L2 speakers, it still allows for a degree of agency and a sense of opportunity: developing professional skills and identity are not regarded as impossible.

At the same time, students also demonstrated a critical awareness of the broader social and political contexts, and what these mean for how people are (sometimes unfairly) evaluated. For example, one student pointed to the broader political context of migration and perceptions of migrants to make sense of how RMAs are perceived: if the government is “very anti-immigration”, it follows that RMAs would be seen as “unnecessary” or a “pain to deal with”, and it would be made difficult for them to enter the profession.

Another student pushed back against the apparent need for people to speak standard Australian English. Nitin explained how whether someone comes across as rude can be a matter of the listener’s perception. He was thus able to turn the spotlight onto the interlocutor, who may misjudge L2 speakers who “don’t have those little, nice touches” in their speech, rather than the “deficient” speaker, and at the same time claim an advantage over L1 interlocutors, as more compassionate and knowledgeable in interactions involving speakers of diverse language varieties or proficiency. However, Nitin still ends on a pragmatic note, related to his own lived reality:

Nitin: People, when I talked to the native speakers here, sometimes they’d think I’m talking rude. My colleagues said that on a few occasions, and I started thinking, what was rude in that? … So I adapted it over a period of about nine years. Now I know what to speak and what not to speak. [Nitin, interview 1/2, 2020]

Therefore, while it is clear that students may come to internalize linguistic ideologies that frame their language practices and repertoires as inferior or in need of ongoing improvement, there is still space to reclaim and challenge these ideologies. However, even while doing so, they must still navigate the very real and enduring practical effects such ideologies have within their social and professional contexts.

Note

*Participant names are pseudonyms.

References

Mertz, E. (2007). The language of law school: Learning to “think like a lawyer”. Oxford University Press.

Piller, I. & Bodis, A. (2024). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society, 53(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404522000689

Piller, I. & Gerber, L. (2021). Family language policy between the bilingual advantage and the monolingual mindset, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, (24)5, 622-635. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1503227

Piller, I. et al. (2024). Life in a New Language. Oxford University Press.

Smith-Khan, L. (2025, AOP). Language, culture and professional communication in migration law education, Language, Culture and Curriculum, https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2025.2481051

Smith-Khan, L. (2021). ‘Common language’ and proficiency tests: a critical examination of registration requirements for Australian registered migration agents. Griffith Law Review, 30(1), 97–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2021.1900031

Smith-Khan, L. (2021b). Deficiencies and loopholes: Clashing discourses, problems and solutions in Australian migration advice regulation. Discourse & Society, 32(5), 598-621. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265211013113

Smith-Khan, L., & Giles, C. (2025, AOP). Improving client communication skills in migration law and practice education. Alternative Law Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/1037969X251314205

In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast, I speak with Dr Clara Holzinger (University of Vienna) about her PhD research investigating how employment officers deal with the day-to-day communication challenges arising when clients have low levels of German language proficiency.

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.

Employment Office, Vienna

Further reading

Holzinger, C. (2020). ‘We don’t worry that much about language’: street-level bureaucracy in the context of linguistic diversity. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(9), 1792-1808.
Holzinger, C. (2023). “Wir können nicht alle Sprachen der Welt sprechen”. Eine Studie zu Street-level Bureaucracy im Kontext migrationsbedingter Heterolingualität am Beispiel des österreichischen Arbeitsmarktservice [“We can’t speak all the languages of the world”. A study of street-level bureaucracy in the context of migration-induced heterolingualism as exemplified by Austrian employment services]. PhD thesis. Universität Wien.
Holzinger, C., & Draxl, A.-K. (2023). More than words: Eine mehrsprachigkeitsorientierte Perspektive auf die Dilemmata von Street-level Bureaucrats in der Klient*innenkommunikation. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 52(1), 89-104.
Scheibelhofer, E., & Holzinger, C. (2018). ‘Damn it, I am a miserable eastern European in the eyes of the administrator’: EU migrants’ experiences with (transnational) social security. Social Inclusion, 6(3), 201-209.
Scheibelhofer, E., Holzinger, C., & Draxl, A.-K. (2021). Linguistic diversity as a challenge for street-level bureaucrats in a monolingually-oriented organisation. Social Inclusion, 9(1), 24-34.

Transcript (coming soon)

International migration is at an all-time high as ever more people move across national borders for work or study, in search of refuge or adventure. Regardless of their motivations and whether they intend their moves to be temporary or permanent, all transnational migrants face the challenge of re-building their lives in a different cultural and linguistic context, far away from family and friends, and the everyday routines of their previous lives. Established populations in destination countries may treat migrants with benign neglect at best and outright hostility at worst.

How then do migrants make a new life?

To answer that question, Life in a New Language examines the language learning and settlement experiences of 130 migrants to Australia from 34 different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America over a period of 20 years. Reusing data shared from six separate sociolinguistic ethnographies, the book illuminates participants’ lived experience of learning and communicating in a new language, finding work, and doing family. Additionally, participants’ experiences with racism and identity making in a new context are explored. The research uncovers significant hardship but also migrants’ courage and resilience. The book has implications for language service provision, migration policy, open science, and social justice movements.

Today, Brynn chats with Loy Lising, one of the book’s six co-authors, with a focus on low-skilled migrants and how their experiences are shaped by monolingual ideologies.

Use promo code AAFLYG6 for a discount when you purchase from Oxford University Press.

Advance praise

“This volume breaks new ground by focusing on Doings: a group of diverse researchers collaboratively doing close listening and looking over 20 years, as adult immigrants to Australia engage in doing life, things, words, family, and work in a new language. The result is not only new understandings of the participants’ self-making, but also the making of a new research trajectory that focuses not simply on the learning of a language, but on humanity doing life in language.” (Ofelia García, The Graduate Center, City University of New York)

“This is a moving book that represents the voices of migrants on their challenges and successes across different kinds of boundaries. It embodies impersonal structural and geopolitical pressures as negotiated in the dreams and aspirations of migrants. The authors share findings from decades-long separate research projects to develop richer insights, as a model for data sharing and ethical research.” (Suresh Canagarajah, Pennsylvania State University)

Related reference

Lising, L. (2024). Multilingual mindset: A necessary concept for fostering inclusive multilingualism in migrant societies. AILA Review

Transcript (by Brynn Quick, added 05/08/2024)

Brynn: Welcome to the Language on the Move Podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Brynn Quick and I’m a PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Today’s episode is part of a series devoted to Life in a New Language.

Life in a New Language is a new book just out from Oxford University Press. It’s co-authored by Ingrid Piller, Donna Butorac, Emily Farrell, Loy Lising, Shiva Motaghi Tabari and Vera Williams Tetteh. In this series, I’ll chat to each of the co-authors about their perspectives.

Life in a New Language examines the language learning and settlement experiences of 130 migrants to Australia from 34 different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America over a period of 20 years. Reusing data shared from six separate sociolinguistic ethnographies, the book illuminates participants’ lived experience of learning and communicating in a new language, finding work and doing family. Additionally, participants’ experiences with racism and identity-making in a new context are explored.

The research uncovers significant hardship, but also migrants’ courage and resilience. The book has implications for language service provision, migration policy, open science, and social justice movements. My guest today is Dr. Loy Lising.

Dr. Lising is a senior lecturer in linguistics at Macquarie University, as well as a senior fellow with the Higher Education Academy. She’s a member of the International Advisory Panel for Migration Linguistics Unit at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. She served as program director for the Department of Linguistics Master of Cross-Cultural Communication Program at the University of Sydney from 2012 to 2014.

In 2015, she was awarded the Andrew Gonzales Distinguished Professorial Chair in Linguistics and Language Education by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines. Loy is a sociolinguist whose research interests lie at the intersection of multilingualism and migration. Employing both ethnographic and corpus approaches, she investigates the enduring consequences of this convergence on key issues such as heritage language maintenance, the evolving variation in languages in society, induced by language context situations between diasporic communities and mainstream society, and the de facto multilingual practices present on the ground in a society that continues to hold the monolingual ideal.

Welcome to the show, Loy. We’re really excited to have you here today.

Dr. Lising: Thank you, Brynn. I’m really excited to be here and thanks for having me.

Brynn: To get us started, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you and your co-authors got the idea for Life in a New Language?

Dr. Lising: So to begin, I am an Australian linguist of Filipino, particularly Cebuano heritage. And so, the kind of work I do pay homage to those dual identities. My family and I migrated to Australia in 2004.

And in 2005, I started research work in a unit that was then called the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research. And in 2007, that unit ceased to exist and was replaced by a smaller unit called Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre for which Ingrid became the centre director. And so, in 2008 and 2009, Ingrid hired me as a postdoc to coordinate this national longitudinal multi-sided research project that was funded by the Australian government department called at that time Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which we now know as Department of Home Affairs.

And the focus of this project was on language training and settlement success of migrants to Australia. So, in that study, we shadowed around 150 migrants to Australia across different states and territories. And in that role is where I also met the other authors.

Emily joined from Sydney Uni as Ingrid’s PhD student, and then Donna, Vera and Shiva then started their PhD journey with Ingrid as well. So, I would say that that particular research project was for me transformative and really laid the groundwork for my future research work in trying to understand how living a life in a new country is impacted by how migrants also need to learn a new language or at least a new way of doing and performing a different kind of English to the one they have already and also to their language learning. So, I think our work in the center gave the five of us who were supervised by Ingrid an opportunity to catch her vision and passion for this kind of research focus.

So really Ingrid is the driving force behind this book and her work on this started in 2001 when she was at Sydney Uni and investigated the success and failure in second language learning. And so having supervised the four other authors and also supervised my own research in 2009, really I would say was the starting point of the idea for this book.

Brynn: It sounds like it was a really natural progression for all of you to come together and work on this together. And what’s interesting about Life in a New Language is that this book is all about this reuse of ethnographic data. And as you said, you and the other co-authors each had your own projects that you were working on, but then in order to create this book, you brought it all together.

Can you tell us about the original research project that your contribution is based on?

Dr. Lising: So my original research project, which my contribution to this book was drawn from was a research study funded by Macquarie University new staff grant in 2009. And so, this was at the end of the AMAPRC first phase research project that I was the research manager for. And so, this MQNS project shadowed Filipino-skilled migrants to Australia on a temporary long-stay business visa, or as it was popularly known then, 457 visa.

And 457 visa had eight streams, and the one that my participants were under was the labour agreement stream. This visa was introduced in 1996, and it was intended to attract workers to Australia in areas where there are shortages. And so, the temporary visa is limited to four years with the possibility of extension if the work contract is renewed, and then also they can have the possibility of applying for permanent residency.

So Ingrid supervised that project, and it was modelled in design and reproach, I guess, on the AMAP national project that we worked on together. It was qualitative investigation through rapid multi-sided ethnography, shadowing three cohorts of Filipino skilled workers, abattoir workers, prefabricated home workers that included both IT professionals and carpenters, making prefab harms for the mining companies and also nurses. And they were situated across three states, so Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales.

So that’s the work on which my contribution to this book has been derived from.

Brynn: And you just mentioned that the participants that you were shadowing were doing quite different types of work, the abattoir workers, the nurses and the skilled labourers.

Dr. Lising: Yeah, prefabricated home workers that included the carpenters who actually built the homes and then the IIT professionals that I guess made the homes technology ready.

Brynn: So, it’s quite different work. However, what you really looked at in your part of your work and that the other authors looked at as well was this idea of finding work in Australia once you’ve come to settle. Can you tell us about what you found about your participants’ employment trajectories in these very different fields?

Dr. Lising: The Filipino skilled workers that I interviewed and shadowed were quite different to some of the participants that we have reanalysed for this book in that they came to Australia already having a job because the temporary long-stay business visa required for them to be identified for a specific work shortage. And so, in that sense, there wasn’t a lot of grief in terms of actually finding work. What there was grief about, however, was in their experiences once they came and did their part.

And that was largely to do with one of the main findings that we have in this book, and that is to do with this notion of linguistic proficiency. And so, for example, the abattoir workers, it’s a no-brainer to note that most people who go into abattoir work, other than those who really love that kind of work, would be coming from an educational trajectory where, you know, they have low education, okay? And that’s why they end up doing abattoir work.

And so, the Filipino workers that were hired for this work were hired by an Australian manager who actually went to the Philippines and observed their knife skills. And so “at the time of, for this particular cohort of abattoir workers, at the time of their employment, English language requirement wasn’t actually on the table. And so, so long as they had an offer of work, that was fine.

And so, the grief for them was when they came and the policy changed, and there was then an English language requirement attached to the renewal of their contract and of course permanent residency. And the requirement for those were pegged on an IELTS, so an International English Language Testing System band score of about five. Now, speaking, listening are perhaps things that you can grow to learn in doing work and life in a predominantly English-speaking country, but literacy skills of writing and reading are totally a different skill set that you need to have a sufficient education to be able to improve on those and be able to meet the band score that you need.

So it was that. And then there was also the issue of doing work in a workplace context that were quite intolerant of multilingual practices. And so, I’ve actually, based on that original research study in 2009, I’ve published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, this paper that I entitled, Speak English, Social Acceleration and Language Learning in the Workplace.

And so, the analytical lens I use there is the notion of speed at work. And so, we have this expectation that when people do come and they don’t have a lot of English, they’ll learn it at work anyway. But you know, abattoir workers work in a conveyor belt-like system.

And so, if they keep talking, they’re going to be behind with their work. But then again, this intolerance of multilingual practices also kind of, or just talk in general while working, really limited their ability to practice their English anyway. But equally challenging for them was this limitation they felt in having this comfort conversations with co-nationals in their own language, because colleagues who only spoke English would actually be suspicious of them.

And often they are told off for speaking other languages.

Brynn: It feels like a real damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, where they don’t have the literal time during their workday to quote unquote improve their English. But then when they do try to communicate using the resources that they have, maybe the language that they came to Australia with, they’re told not to.

And to me, I remember when I read that part of the book, the first thing that I thought of was nail salon technicians, because I feel like that is the same thing that I hear, especially monolingual English speakers say when they go to a nail salon, and they’ll hear, usually the women that work there will be speaking Vietnamese or sometimes Thai, and so these monolingual English speakers will be saying, I bet they’re talking about me. I bet they’re talking about how bad my feet are, things like that. And it made me wonder if that’s what was potentially happening in the abattoir as well, was that these English speakers were thinking, well, if they’re speaking in a language that I don’t understand, they must be talking about me.

Brynn: Certainly, so one of the participants from that original work that’s featured in this book, Ellen, she’s real aspiration to improve her English. She only finished high school and she has this very accented English, but she understood that if she just kept speaking English, she will become better. But also, I think coupled with that was she one day was pulled aside by the manager and he told her that he gets really embarrassed when other people are speaking their language because he’s not sure what they’re talking about.

So, I think, yeah, I think and that is a monolingual mindset. Absolutely. So, I’ve just written and actually, incidentally, it’s come out just on Friday, this paper on the multilingual mindset.

Brynn: And I’m glad that you’re mentioning this because I did do an episode a while back talking about the monolingual mindset. And until Friday, we didn’t really have anything to compare that to. And now you’ve written about it.

Dr. Lising: I was very excited about that. And I’m very proud of the work. So, it’s entitled Multilingual Mindset, A Necessary Concept for Fostering Inclusive Multilingualism in Migrant Societies.

And it’s in IELA Review and it’s a special issue that’s actually time for 60th IELA Conference in Kuala Lumpur in August, where Ingrid is one of keynote speakers. Yeah. So, in that, I talk about how, you know, the multilingual mindset refers to a way of thinking about languages that is mindful and expectant of variation in not just language proficiency, but also variation in language repertoire and variation in language practices.

So, if we have a shift for a moment that we go to work and we don’t have an expectation that everybody should just be speaking my language so that I can understand what they’re all saying, because otherwise they can be talking about me, but rather that if we step back for a moment and actually think, well, what is a language for? And the language is you has many functions, right? Not only does it index who you are and your identity, you use it for various purposes, and one of which is to connect with “co-nationals, your banter, to exchange humour for levity and for, you know, just to kind of, you know, have fun.

There’s no point in translating those jokes just for the sake of the English speaker who might think that they’re talking about them. And so, yeah, so I think and I hope that people will read that because I think even if they don’t necessarily accept the argument I put forward, I think it’s based on multilingual reality that we live in. But yet we’re still holding on to this monolingual ideal that yes, we have over 400 languages in Australia, but let’s just speak English anyway.

Because if we entertain this notion that it’s perfectly fine for people to operate in the languages that they have, I mean, obviously it’s different when they’re talking to somebody who’s speaking English and achieving a different communicative purpose, right? I’m not talking about that. I’m just talking about the other uses of languages.

And so, this notion of multilingual mindset allows us to kind of step back and reconsider, okay, well, these are the other things that language or languages are achieving.

Brynn: Yeah. In this section that you contributed especially, you really do get that feeling as you read that it just felt really bad for these workers, especially the ones in the abattoir situation, to be told, no, you can’t speak this language in order to achieve some semblance of comfort during the day, or connection or something like that.

In your opinion, what can we do to make things easier for new migrants, especially in this context where maybe they are doing this more quote unquote unskilled labour, which is silly to me because it sounds like it’s quite skilled, but especially for these people who come and work these long hours, or who are not able to speak their own languages, what can we do to make things easier for them?

Dr. Lising: If I could just pivot back to the main three findings, particularly for that chapter on work that we have, and so the three common themes there are in the experiences of our participants relative to Australian work experience, linguistic proficiency and educational qualification. If I can just revisit each and then I’ll get to the answer to your question. So, in terms of Australian work experience, one of the common things we found is that people are asked Australian work experience before work becomes readily available for them.

And it’s like a chicken and egg scenario where no one’s going to give me work, so how can I have a work experience so that I can actually work? And I guess I can answer your question. So, to that, for the migrants themselves, I find that the way to go around that is to actually do volunteer work.

Now that can only go for so long, right? Especially if you’re the breadwinner of the family, like in our book, Story Franklin, for example, who is a qualified English teacher, and he was allowed to do volunteer work at a Catholic school, but won’t be considered for paid work because his qualification is not recognized.

And so that’s the other thing, educational qualification, so not having your overseas qualification recognized, so not just in Franklin, but the story, for instance, of Vesna, who comes from Bulgaria, who’s a midwife, and, you know, as you know, we have such a shortage of midwives in Australia and a lot of other health workers, but the Overseas Qualifications Authority deemed her qualification insufficient for her to actually be working, and so here’s this woman who is done work on midwifery through four years of bachelor’s studies in Bulgaria and did 30 years of work experience in various countries, one of which is in United Arab Emirates, where she worked at a British hospital, and yet those things are not recognised.

I’ve asked permission and I have been given permission by my husband that I can share his story. So, my husband is a vet. So, he got his veterinary medicine from the University of the Philippines, but he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in veterinary medicine from the University of Queensland.

And for a long time, for about 20 or so years, he served in an international multinational company as the technical services manager for Southeast Asia, and also started a similar work here in Australia. And that’s what brought us to Australia, and he can create vaccination programs for large swine farms, but he cannot write prescriptions because he is not recognized as a vet unless he studies all over again. Mind you, at some point in his career, he’s a recognized swine specialist, considered to be top 50 in the world and was always guest speaking everywhere.

So, you know, qualification, educational qualification. So to that, I guess, in answer to your question, I think we need to rethink the way that we think about the qualifications and we need to reassess our policy relative to recognizing these overseas qualifications in a way that provides new migrants clear and more accessible pathway on how to have their qualification recognized, right?

“In university, we have an RPL system, recognition of prior learning. And so applying the same principle, if you have similar bachelor’s degree, a tremendous amount of work experience, I mean, sure, you need to have some mechanism to ensure that, you know, there is standard quality of work that will be given, but not this just, you know, outright rejection of qualification, you know, so I think there needs to be some reassessment of that. And the other refining we have, of course, is the linguistic proficiency in terms of our participants in this book, both in terms of assured deficit in language and, you know, and kind of automatically assigned to an English class where they find themselves, you know, sitting in a room learning something that’s not really useful because they know English.

And also, I think that’s related to the non-recognition of varieties of other English varieties. And so, this, I think Ingrid has written about that with Hannah Torsch and Laura Smith-Khan, in terms of, you know, white English complex, this notion of a kind of prejudice against other kinds of Englishes as well that is non-white. So, this understanding again, and going back to what I talk about in the Multilingual Mindset paper of an expectation or variation in terms of language proficiency, right?

So, it’s that it’s really about just pay attention and accommodating the other person. And often it’s about perception. So, it’s kind of like if you like the other person, you’ll listen to them and you’ll understand.

But if you look at them and you have kind of an assumption of who they are or prejudice against who they are, and you’re bound to kind of make a judgment that you’re not going to understand them, even if they’re speaking the same language as you.

Brynn: And that’s what really comes through in the book, not just in the portion that you contributed, but with the other authors as well, is this idea of, okay, at the moment, we seem to only have one standard when it comes to either language or employment, and recognizing the recognition of prior learning, like what you talked about. This is the standard of English that you must meet, or this is the standard of employment or education that you must meet. And it feels like there’s no room for nuance, or to really look and judge on a case-by-case basis. And that just feels unattainable.

Dr. Lising: I can share another story that is actually quite raw, because I’m tutoring somebody at the moment who’s a religious person. And he’s here with his family from a war-torn country. And for him to advance to the next visa category that will allow him to qualify for a permanent residency application, he needs to achieve an IELTS band score of five overall and 4.5 in individual bands.

Brynn: And can you remind us, what is the highest band?

Dr. Lising: Nine. So, nine is the highest band that an English speaker who’s paying attention in the test can gain. And if they’re not paying attention, they will not even get that.

But the point of it is, as you were saying, there’s no opportunity here for new ones in accommodation. So, there are two kinds, perhaps there are more, but the two kinds of standard, and for those listening, I’m doing this in air quotes, tests that our government accepts are the IELTS test and the PTE test. And the PTE is computer based and it’s also computer marked.

And so, this person, and I’m sure he sat the test and was highest in IELTS speaking, 6.5, which is by the way, a university entry mark. But when he sat the PTE, he could only get 28 out of 30. And so there lies your real example, precisely of how there’s no nuance in this test.

And the standard against which I would assume his production in terms of speaking would have been judged against would be British speaker and American speaker. So, but yet in his work, he would speak in Arabic. That’s what his work requires him to do.

And he speaks French, but never mind that.

Brynn: But never mind, we’re not going to recognize all of these other proficiencies.

So, let’s shift gears a little bit into the actual writing of this book. So, I’ve spoken to each of your co-authors, minus one so far, and I’ve asked them all the same questions.

Now I’ll ask you, what was it like to co-author a monograph with five other people? Because as I said to one of your co-authors, I’ve done group projects before, they’re not my favourite. Was it like that or was it something different?

What did you do especially because so much of this took place during COVID? What were the ups and downs of this writing process?

Dr. Lising: I mean, group projects can be fun. And it can be fun if it’s in this way that I’m about to describe. So, for me, the experience of writing this book over the last five years among six of us, have been actually quite an enjoyable experience.

Yes, there are moments where it was hard work and we ensured that we crossed our T’s and dotted our I’s and we made sure all the facts that we have about all the participants. Because you’re talking about putting together a book based on 130 participants drawn from six projects over the last 20 years. So, there are, as you can imagine, there are real challenges there in ensuring quality of the outcome.

But I think that for me, there are two main reasons why there has been an enjoyable experience for me. And I think, judging by my observation of others for theirs as well, are that of friendship and trust. So, the six of us, as I’ve said to you at the beginning, have known each other since 2008.

I’ve known Ingrid since 2007. So that’s about 17 years of working together and we’re still working together. So, it’s gone well.

So, all these years, Ingrid has been constant in the way that she has guided us in our scholarly growth. And the great trust in the group, you know, because of that individual relationship, but also the collective relationship, and there’s a lot of, you know, respect. So, the great trust in the group has allowed us to work seemingly so seamlessly together.

Ingrid has been a glue that has bound us together. But I think knowing that we have the same passion, we have the same understanding on how things are to be done and how we interpret things, I think has really been quite enjoyable for me. I can’t really think of the down.

Maybe the only down was that a significant part of the five years in which we were working this book was COVID years. And so that meant that we had Zoom meet a lot of meetings.

Brynn: A lot of Zoom meetings. Everyone did.

Dr. Lising: That’s right. But we managed a few, you know, face to face, except for Em, who’s quite distant. I think that that relationship that has been there all along and knowing how each other works has been a real formula for the success in this group work.

Brynn: This is a good example of group work then. And I really do love how you all came together to do this because I just think that there needs to be more of this in academia. And I think that’s what is so wonderful about the Language on the Move research group is that it brings us all together.

We have friendships, we have academic relationships, and you don’t feel alone, especially for those of us who are just starting out in this academic process. We can ask questions; we can talk to those of you who know what you’re doing. And I think that many academics don’t get that relationship.

And that’s why I would encourage as many academics as possible to do this kind of collaboration and collaborative work that you’ve all done.

Dr. Lising: And it’s been such a bonus as well to actually have done this at a time when the notion of data sharing is just new. And so, we were all so enthused and excited to be part of this innovation.

Brynn: So, before we wrap up, can you tell us what you’re working on now? What do you have any projects going on? Research, teaching, what are you up to?

Dr. Lising: So, I’m in a teaching and research academic job family. And that means that I do equal part teaching and research. So, I love teaching.

And I think that in as much as you have audience in terms of your own research, who can read the work that you do, engagement with the students and being able to translate the research that I do to advance students’ understanding of the field really just excites me and makes me come to work every day happily, joyfully. So, in my teaching, I teach across the undergraduate. So, in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, we have undergraduate courses and postgraduate courses.

So, I teach in the undergraduate course and in the postgraduate. So, in the undergraduate, I convene this large, two large units. One is an introduction to social linguistics, which is one of my most loved content that I like talking about.

And talk about that in terms of the history of the discipline, but also talking about the two parallel strands in terms of social linguistics, so social linguistics in society and micro social linguistics, social linguistics in languages. So, one has the focuses on language and how language features change because of social factors, and the other one takes society as a starting point and looks at how societal structures and features impact on languages. And so, I love that and I also can be in a unit called professional and community engagement unit, which our linguistics major take and that allows them to do workplace, work-integrated learning and relate that to their own understanding of linguistics.

And I shouldn’t have to tell you because you, you tutor with me in that unit.

Brynn: And I love it!

Dr. Lising: And in the postgraduate, our master of applied linguistics and TESOL course, I teach pragmatics and intercultural communication. Those are my teaching tasks in terms of my research.

I’m currently working on a number of collaborations and those collaborations sit within my social linguistic research program, which is in multilingualism and social participation. So, this has two focuses for me in the Australian context. And those are, one is on the employment experiences of non-English speaking backer and migrants in Australia, and also a macro social linguistic focus.

And the micro social linguistic one is the influence of migrant languages on Australian English. And then there are, I also do a couple of other international collaboration on multilingualism in the Philippines. So yeah, that’s what I have in store.

Brynn: I don’t know how you have time to sleep, but I love everything that you do. And I also took your pragmatics course, which I also loved. So, I can attest to that one.

Loy, I so appreciate you talking to me today. Thank you so much.

Dr. Lising: Thank you for having me.

Brynn: And thank you 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. Till next time.

Cover art by Sadami Konchi

International migration is at an all-time high as ever more people move across national borders for work or study, in search of refuge or adventure. Regardless of their motivations and whether they intend their moves to be temporary or permanent, all transnational migrants face the challenge of re-building their lives in a different cultural and linguistic context, far away from family and friends, and the everyday routines of their previous lives. Established populations in destination countries may treat migrants with benign neglect at best and outright hostility at worst.

How then do migrants make a new life?

To answer that question, Life in a New Language examines the language learning and settlement experiences of 130 migrants to Australia from 34 different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America over a period of 20 years. Reusing data shared from six separate sociolinguistic ethnographies, the book illuminates participants’ lived experience of learning and communicating in a new language, finding work, and doing family. Additionally, participants’ experiences with racism and identity making in a new context are explored. The research uncovers significant hardship but also migrants’ courage and resilience. The book has implications for language service provision, migration policy, open science, and social justice movements.

Today, Brynn chats with Ingrid Piller, one of the book’s six co-authors, with a focus on migrants’ challenges with finding work.

Use promo code AAFLYG6 for a discount when you purchase from Oxford University Press.

Advance praise

“This volume breaks new ground by focusing on Doings: a group of diverse researchers collaboratively doing close listening and looking over 20 years, as adult immigrants to Australia engage in doing life, things, words, family, and work in a new language. The result is not only new understandings of the participants’ self-making, but also the making of a new research trajectory that focuses not simply on the learning of a language, but on humanity doing life in language.” (Ofelia García, The Graduate Center, City University of New York)

“This is a moving book that represents the voices of migrants on their challenges and successes across different kinds of boundaries. It embodies impersonal structural and geopolitical pressures as negotiated in the dreams and aspirations of migrants. The authors share findings from decades-long separate research projects to develop richer insights, as a model for data sharing and ethical research.” (Suresh Canagarajah, Pennsylvania State University)

Transcript (by Brynn Quick, added on July 03, 2024)

Brynn: Welcome to the Language on the Move podcast, a channel on the New Books Network!

My name is Brynn Quick, and I’m a PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

Today’s episode is part of a series devoted to Life in a New Language.

Life in a New Language is a new book just out from Oxford University Press. It’s co-authored by Ingrid Piller, Donna Butorac, Emily Farrell, Loy Lising, Shiva Motaghi Tabari, and Vera Williams Tetteh. In this series, I’ll chat to each of the co-authors about their perspective.

Life in a New Language examines the language learning and settlement experiences of 130 migrants to Australia from 34 different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America over a period of 20 years. Reusing data shared from six separate sociolinguistic ethnographies, the book illuminates participants’ lived experience of learning and communicating in a new language, finding work, and doing family. Additionally, participants’ experiences with racism and identity making in a new context are explored. The research uncovers significant hardship but also migrants’ courage and resilience. The book has implications for language service provision, migration policy, open science, and social justice movements.

My guest today is Ingrid Piller.

Ingrid Piller is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. There is so much I could say about her prolific academic work, but for now I’ll introduce her as the driving force behind the research blog Language on the Move and the lead author on Life in a New Language.

Welcome to the show, Ingrid!

Dist Prof Piller: Hi, Brynn.

Brynn: To get us started, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got the idea for Life in a New Language?

Dist Prof Piller: Yeah, sure! Look, I’ve been researching linguistic diversity and social justice for like 30 years. So, the key question of my research has been like, what does it mean to learn a new language at the same time that you actually need to do things with that language? So that it’s not just a classroom exercise.

It’s not just something that, you know, you do for fun, but you actually need to find a job through that language. You need to, I don’t know, get health care. You need to rent a house. You need to get a new phone contract. You need to go down to the shops. You need to, you know, make a new life, make new friends.

And so that’s sort of been the key question of my research in various aspects for a really long time. And sort of around in the mid 2010s, I kind of felt like I’ve been doing so many projects in this area. My students have been doing so many projects in this area, and we really should actually pool these resources and these findings and all this research that’s sort of all over the place and bring it together in one coherent systematic exploration of what it actually means to simultaneously learn a new language and have to do things through that language.

And so that’s the story behind the book.

That’s such a big part about starting a new life in a new language. And I think a lot of people don’t necessarily realise that. They sort of separate the idea of language learning and life, and they don’t tend to think of the two together.

Brynn: And something that you’ve just mentioned is about how you had students, other people that you were working with throughout the course of all of these years, who were doing this type of research. And the book, Life in a New Language, is all about the reuse of this ethnographic data. Can you tell us about the original research project that your contribution is based on?

Dist Prof Piller: Okay, so I supervised each and every one of the projects. That is actually the basis. So, in a sense, I’ve had a finger in the pie of each of the research projects that we brought together in Life in a New Language.

But the sort of the one key piece of data that is mine, if you will, came from a research project that I did or that I started in 2000, so 24 years ago. And the interest there was to understand how people achieved really high proficiency. And at the time, I just finished my research with bilingual couples, where, you know, one partner comes from one language background, the other partner from another language background.

And one thing that came out sort of as an incidental finding in that research project, amongst many, particularly of the German participants I had there, is that many of them were sort of often like testing themselves if they could pass. So, they spoke about these passing experiences, like, you know, they, I don’t know, they’ve gone to the shops and someone had asked them like, Oh, are you from some other city down the road in the UK or something? And so hadn’t realized straight away that they had a non-native accent.

This was sort of an incidental finding that people or high-performing second language speakers were really interested in these passing experiences. And so, I kind of thought, Oh, that’s an interesting research project. And let’s do that as a separate research project.

And I got some first internal research funding from the University of Sydney, where I worked at the time, and then later from the ARC to actually investigate high-performing second language speakers. So, people who identified themselves as having been very successful in their second language learning. And so, I conceived that as kind of an individual ethnographic study, mostly an interview study.

And so, we started by just distributing ads and asking for people who thought they’d been really successful in their English language learning here in Sydney. And, you know, lots of people put their hands up in interesting ways, actually. And some of them then when we actually spoke to them, we usually started the conversation with like, you’ve put your hand, been highly successful in second language.

And then they go like, now you tell me whether I’m highly successful. So, it was kind of, you know, really, really interesting. And then the data that we collected from that project over a couple of years also became part of life in a new language.

Brynn: That’s so cool because I feel like we very rarely have those research opportunities with people who feel like they have been successful in the language. I feel like so often, I mean, rightly so, we do a lot of research with people who might feel like they’re struggling with the language.

What did you find with them just out of curiosity? Was there any sort of through line?

Dist Prof Piller: One of the most interesting people on that study, and someone I sort of went from participant to friend, was a guy who’d signed up. And when we interviewed him, the first interview we did, I did that together with the research assistant, Sheila Pham. And we had this conversation.

We were chatting about all kinds of things, like, you know, his language learning stories. He was from Shanghai. He was really like extrovert and kind of talking a lot about how Shanghai is so great and Sydney is so boring and provincial by comparison.

And anyways, after we’d done that interview, Sheila and I, we looked at each other and it was like, we found the Holy Grail. We found a second language speaker who started to learn English actually in his early 20s and, you know, who’s indistinguishable from a native Australian speaker. Doesn’t have an accent.

And it was like, oh, wow. So, you know, so this is going to be like our focal case. And we’re so excited.

Next thing we did, we transcribed the interview and looked at it on paper. It was actually, I mean, it wasn’t good at all. Like, I mean, there was so many like grammatical errors.

You know, if you look at it like in terms of grammar, in terms of syntax, anyway, it wasn’t high level actually. So, there was a complete mismatch in a sense between the performance, the oral performance of this person, which was like, you know, as I said, indistinguishable. We both agreed and we then, you know, got other people to kind of assess him as well.

Everyone sort of agrees, you know, no, wouldn’t have realized that he hasn’t grown up in Australia. If you actually sort of look at it from like a grammar perspective, no, that is really, really fascinating. And in many ways, I didn’t do enough with that case study because I went on to do other things.

But the kind of embodied performance, the way you behave, the things you talk about that is really, really important. And as language teachers or in, you know, in TESOL, we often think so much about accuracy. But in many ways, accuracy isn’t really so important in language.

And so, language is never only about language. I guess that’s one of the key messages of this book and also of my research. I mean, language is OK, we’re linguists, but language is never just about language itself is not interesting.

What is interesting is what people do with it and how they become different persons in a different language or how people react to them and how we kind of organize our society as a linguistically diverse society. So, it’s really the sideways looking, the social aspect that interests me as opposed to like what’s going on with the grammar.

Brynn: Yeah, and I think that’s so important to keep in mind, especially when we think about people who are doing all of these things with language in maybe a new place, especially in this participant’s case, being in their early 20s, starting to learn English and something that you have to face in your early 20s is the idea of work. And that’s something that is a big topic in the book, Life in a New Language is the idea of settling in a new place and finding work. So, can you tell us about what you found about the participant’s employment trajectories in the book?

Dist Prof Piller: Yeah, so that was a really, really big topic and employment work came up really across the data, even if the initial focus of data collection or of the study had not been about employment. Like, I mean, as I told you, the focus of the data I brought to it had been high performance and high-level proficiency. Employment came up for everyone is really, really big topic.

And that, of course, relates to some. I mean, it’s not entirely surprising. It relates to something we know from the statistics that amongst migrants, there are much higher levels of unemployment and underemployment than there are amongst the native born.

And underemployment means you have work at a lower level than for which you’re qualified or you work fewer hours than you want to work. And both unemployment and underemployment are really high. We know that in the typical explanation that is given for that is that we find like in the business literature, the migration literature is, you know, migrants.

English isn’t good enough, so they’re struggling with language. That’s a barrier to their employment. Their qualifications aren’t good enough.

You know, they’re not as strong or as high as qualifications of people trained in Australia. So essentially, the explanation is migrants have a human resource deficit. To me or to us as the authors of the book, this has never been entirely convincing.

And the reason I don’t find that convincing is that in Australia in particular, the migrants have a particular, bring relative high human resources to Australia. And to understand that I need to say a few things about Australia’s migration program, because Australia’s migration program is essentially organized in re-streams. And that’s a real simplification because at any one time during the 20 years we did this study, there were like close to 200 different visa types on the books.

But all these different visa types essentially fall into three categories. One category is related to skills. So, you get a visa to Australia because you bring something to Australia.

So usually that’s your professional skills, work skills. You can apply as an individual migrant, like many of our participants came from Iran. So, let’s say you are an IT engineer in Iran.

You are like in your late 20s or early 30s. You have a bit of professional experience. You’re interested in migrating to Australia.

You put in an application and you get points for your qualification and also for your English. So, in order to come in under the skills program, most of the skilled migrants need English. And the skilled migration program takes up, and that can be temporary or permanent, so lots of variations.

But essentially everyone in that program needs English. There are a couple of exceptions. Like if you bring a lot of money, you do not necessarily have such great English.

But overall, we can say like around 80% of our migration program are people who come in for their skills. And part of that skills is actually they need to show they have high levels of English language proficiency. Then the other two groups and they are much smaller are family reunion migrants and humanitarian entrants.

So, these people get their visa because for family reasons, so because they are the spouse of an Australian citizen or the parents of an Australian citizen, or for humanitarian reasons because they deserve our protection and chief refuge in Australia. Now for these two groups, they don’t need to demonstrate English language skills because they are assessed on something else. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t speak English necessarily, right?

I mean, so it’s true that, you know, many family reunion migrants do not speak English, but at the same time, they may have learned English already, right? And the same for refugees. I mean, one thing that we found amongst the refugees in particular was that many of them were really, really highly qualified, spoke English, had been educated through English, particularly from various African nations, post-colonial nations.

And still they were always seen like they’re refugees. They haven’t got any qualifications. They don’t speak English.

So that’s not the truth at all. Now, to go back to the original point that I was making is that we have these people who come in under these different visa categories. For most of them, they need to demonstrate English to even get into Australia.

So why then, once they’re here, they don’t actually find jobs because their English isn’t good enough. Something doesn’t add up there. And so, what we found was that English actually becomes like this global criterion on the basis of which you read people are excluded from the job market just because you don’t want them or it becomes like every employer, every person who has anything to say takes it upon themselves to pass judgment on the English language proficiency of newcomers, regardless whatever their qualifications are. I mean, they usually have no qualifications whatsoever, but still they go, Oh, your English isn’t good enough.

And so, we found things like, I mean, one participant, for instance, from Kenya, she was applying for like receptionist jobs. And so, she was having an interview with a small business and small business owner goes, Look, I love you. You’re fantastically qualified, but I can’t really have you as a receptionist because my customers won’t understand your English. Now her, I mean, she’s been educated through the medium of English. Her English is like Queen’s English, British English, very, very standard, very easy to understand.

I mean, maybe a bit of an East African little, that’s it. You know, this is fairly clearly a pretence for something else, right? And she was actually offered then kind of back-end work in the same company where she didn’t have, where she didn’t need that good English, but in reality, I think where she wasn’t in a customer facing role.

So that’s one thing you can, it’s illegal in Australia to discriminate against anyone on the basis of their national origin, their ethnicity, their race, but it’s not illegal to discriminate on the basis of language. And there really is no recourse. I mean, I can always tell you your English isn’t good enough, right?

And what can you do? I mean, that’s one issue there. Another issue around English language proficiency as this exclusionary criterion is that it’s simply applied holus bolus regardless of the job you’re applying for.

And so, we had a couple of fairly low educated people in our study who objectively didn’t speak a whole lot of English. And they weren’t aspiring to like, you know, language work. They were looking for like cleaning work and couldn’t get cleaning work because people told them or employers told them your English isn’t good enough.

And so, what was going on there essentially is in order to… And they were going like, you know, I’m like one participant, she was from South Sudan and had sort of a complicated migration story, had lived in transit in Egypt for like a decade. And she was saying, look, I mean, in Egypt, I lived like the Egyptians. I was cleaning houses. I was looking after children and it wasn’t difficult. I can do that. And that’s all I want to do here. I want to clean people’s houses. I want to be a cleaner. I want to maybe look after children. But really, she was aspiring to cleaning. But wherever I go, they tell me, your English isn’t good enough.

And she was like, part of that is that you actually in Australia, you need certification, right? Like if you’re cleaning, you need some certificate that you’re not going to mix up the various cleaning products so that you know how to do that hygienically. And that’s really difficult to do if you have low levels of literacy.

And so there were these like really artificial barriers where English kind of becomes an intermediary artificial barrier to doing work you’re perfectly qualified for and you have the right language for. And so, I mean, I’ve spoken a bit about cleaning now, but we sort of also have that at the other end of the spectrum, like another of our participants. She was really, really highly proficient.

She had studied English all her life, had an English language teaching degree from Chile, then had been on Australia for quite a while. And she was retraining as a TESOL teacher and trying to get an MA in TESOL to become an English language teacher. And that was like 20 years ago.

So, it may have changed now. But anyways, she needed to do an internship as part of her degree. And she just couldn’t get a practicum place.

And she tells the story that, you know, she was calling up one. I mean, it’s just like, I called up every TESOL and every ELICOS and every language school in Sydney. And they’d always say things like, oh, yeah, we don’t have a place at the moment.

Or, you know, can you call back again like next year or whatever? And she had this one story where she said, on a Monday, I called this particular school and, you know, I asked, can I do my practicum there? And the person in charge told her, no, we are full for this term or whatever. Call back again next year, next term. And on Wednesday, she spoke to a classmate and the classmate said, look, I’ve just called this particular school this morning and I’m going to do my practicum there. And so, it was like two days later, there was this space.

And the only difference between these two people was that, you know, our participant was from Chile, spoke with a bit of a Spanish accent. And the other participant was, she called it Australian. And when our participant said Australian, it was always native-born Anglo-Australian.

So really the absence of this accent was the, and so that’s the only explanation. So she gave up on the TESOL degree because she kind of said, look, if I can’t even get an internship to graduate, how am I ever going to find a job, right? And so, yeah, language is this really, so in a sense, we, it’s not migrants who have an English language deficit.

It’s actually that we create artificial barriers through making language proficiency, this kind of global construct that is this big barrier, and then apply it whenever we sort of have any kinds of concerns or prejudices or just don’t need that person, whatever. It becomes the explanation for everything, but that really doesn’t do anyone any favours. And I think that’s where one of the important lessons of the book is we actually need to unpack what it means to speak English well, to speak English so that you can do a particular job you’re aspiring to, because that is beneficial, it’s beneficial for the economy. It’s beneficial for everyone, right?

Brynn: And that’s what is so interesting to me is when you talk about “we” in that context, you know, we need to remove this artificial barrier. And a lot of times I think about that in two different ways.

One is sort of the more policy driven. So, like, people in the government, you know, things that we can do policy-wise that would remove those barriers. But then another thing that I think about is just kind of your average person, especially your monolingual English speaking, in this case, Australian, all of these things that these participants have had to go through sounds so difficult. How can we, and this could be, you know, either or, the policymakers or sort of your average Joe on the street, how can we improve things to make it easier for migrants to come to Australia, whether they have this high level of English or not, but to find work and to begin to settle?

Dist Prof Piller: Look, that’s a good question and it’s of course a difficult question and one that our society has been struggling with for years and decades. And overall, I guess we also need to say that Australia is actually doing things pretty well in international comparison. I think that’s always important to keep in mind.

I think it’s a lot harder in North America, a lot harder in Europe, but in different ways, I guess. And so, what’s the lesson for us here? I guess in terms of policy lessons, one thing would be that we need a better alignment across different decision makers, because one thing that we found is particularly with those independent, skilled migrants, once they received their visa to Australia, because they’d gone through that process, you know, they put in their application, they demonstrated their qualifications, they’d done their IELTS test and sometimes, you know, a number of times and kind of should I’ve got the right IELTS score.

So, they’ve done all these things and then they received the visa and they kind of felt like, you know, the Australian government is now telling me I’m ready, I’m good to go, I’m welcome, I can make a contribution to this society. And then they arrive and it’s nothing like that, because all of a sudden there are different bodies that make decisions over their qualifications. And so, for instance, like with all the medical professionals we spoke to, that’s a huge barrier.

So, they get their visa and then they come here and then they need to be re-accredited. And the re-accreditation process is independent from the government visa process. And so all of a sudden, it’s actually not so straightforward.

So, one of our participants, it’s a really interesting story. So, she was a midwife from Romania and she had like 30 years of experience delivering babies. And so, she had the qualification from Bulgaria.

I think it was actually Bulgaria, but it doesn’t matter. So, she had like, you know, this four years training qualification. But in Europe, most of continental Europe, midwives are actually not trained at universities.

Like they’re here, they’re sort of hospital trained, but it’s also a four-year process. And, you know, they do a lot of theory at the same time. And so, she had that training and then she had experience for like 30 years working not only in her native country, but also overseas through the medium of English in the Gulf, somewhere in the UAE.

And there she met her husband an Australian, and they together moved to Australia when she was in her 50s. And she was totally optimistic that, you know, she would go on to deliver babies for another 10, 20 years until her retirement. And before they moved, she had looked up like job ads and seen, you know, there was a real midwife – I mean there is a midwife shortage and has been a midwife shortage in Australia for quite a while. They were moving somewhere regional in Western Australia. It was like, should be easy, very straightforward, and benefit both for the personal career of this woman, but also for Australia’s society. I mean, for our health care system, right? But that’s not how it turned out.

So, she arrives and they go like, I know your four years of hospital training, they’re not equivalent to what we do here. So, you need to do, and the 30 years practice experience, they don’t count. And so, you need to redo your midwife training. And that’s three years.

But because in Western Australia, every midwife is also a registered nurse, you first need to do your nursing degree. And so that’s like six years. And she was like, I’m in my mid-fifties.

I’m not going to study for six years also. My English is good enough to work, but it’s not the kind of English that I can write a big essay. I can’t necessarily go and study and be successful at university.

I can perfectly do the work. I have all the experience, but she ended up doing a phlebotomy course and now in a blood collection unit somewhere. And I’m just sort of happy that she’s still back in the hospital.

But of course, it’s a huge demotion. It’s extremely frustrating for her personally and such a loss for our society. And so that’s really where policy can do something, where you can actually create a pathway that you align the visa decision processes with the various professional qualification processes and also simplify professional qualification processes to the degree that you actually identify, like, what is the gap here?

I’m not saying, you know, everyone can work in whatever, not everything is equivalent. I mean, there’s no doubt about that. But like, what is the gap?

So, you’ve got this kind of level of training, you’ve got this kind of experience. So, maybe you need to learn something, something that is specific to Australia or that is specific to the way this role works here or, you know, whatever. But we really need to create those pathways.

And it’s not very difficult to map these things. But it shouldn’t be that we’re saying, like, you need to do all of your midwife training again and then on top of that, you need to become a registered nurse. And that’s just not feasible for people who are in middle age and, you know, who’ve done all their studies and all their qualifications.

Most people also needed to, you know, support their families and make a living and, you know, life is short. So, you just can’t redo something that you’ve already done. So, we really need to be much smarter about identifying the gaps and aligning decision-making processes.

So that’s one thing. You also asked about, like, what can individual people do? And I think, I mean, that’s where our book comes in, in a sense.

I mean, what we’re trying to create, I guess, is empathy for the challenge and the extreme courage it takes to actually make a new life in a new country at a time when, you know, your socialization, if you will, has already been largely completed in another place. So, to pivot to another world, it really takes a lot of courage, a lot of resilience. These are very bright people.

And so, yeah, empathy for this dual challenge. And just because someone doesn’t speak English all that well, that doesn’t mean they are stupid, right? I think that’s one of the things that we often see.

You just sort of feel, going back to this thing that we said earlier, people don’t necessarily understand what it means to learn a new language. If you have an adult who doesn’t speak English or your language well, you just see them as this deficit person, and you just see what they can’t do in English. You don’t think, well, they’re actually a whole other person in their other language, and they’ve got skills and knowledge, and they’re funny and interesting and whatever.

It may just be that they need a bit of help to express that in English as well. And so, we really need to treat people with a bit more compassion and empathy, I think.

Brynn: And I think that’s what this book does so well, is in pulling together all of these different participants from across so many different years, it really paints this picture of what we, as the English speakers in a dominant English-speaking country, what we need to keep in mind when we are interacting with these migrants. And on that idea, I think that this is a good time to mention that you co-authored this with five other people. So, there were six people total that did this, and you all brought your own studies and your own participants and your own research to kind of paint that picture.

But what I want to know is what was that like to work as a group of six? What were the ups and downs of the writing process? How did you even go about doing that?

Dist Prof Piller: Look, I mean, one thing, in addition to everything else we brought, in addition to our research, we also brought our lived experience. So, four of us actually have this experience of moving to Australia as adults. And so, I think that’s another dimension that we brought to it as people who had also been on that journey and rebuilding our lives here.

So, what was it like to co-author? It was a lot of fun. It was also a lot of work.

So, I guess these are the two things. So, one thing people might think like, you know, you have six people to author a book. So that’s like, you know, a sixth of the work.

And so, it should have been really quick. That’s not true at all, I would say. And I mean, I’ve written a couple of books as a sole author.

I would say this was more work. On me as an individual, I contributed more and that’s true for all the other five authors. So, it’s hugely inefficient in a sense.

But at the same time, it’s not at all because, you know, none of us individually would have been able to write this thing. So it really needed the collaboration. And that’s another that’s a reason I’m really proud of that book, because I think it does something that we don’t do often enough in our field, where you sort of have this collaboration and joined.

You know, you share your data, obviously, but do your analysis together. You do your writing together. And that really is much more than the sum of its parts.

And I mean, one decision that we made, like right at the beginning of this is we don’t want this to be like an edited book or we don’t want this to be just, you know, each of us writes a chapter and then we kind of all go over it and adapt it a bit. We made a decision that we wanted this to be our combined voice, if you will, that we write in a particular voice. But we do this really together as, you know, you couldn’t say like, oh, this part is written by Ingrid and this part is written by Vera or something like that.

So that’s not how it works. And what we’ve achieved in the process is something that, you know, I think is a real advance or a real innovation in qualitative research, that we’ve actually been able to kind of add generalizability to ethnographic research, because, you know, usually you don’t expect ethnographic research to be generalizable. And that’s how it works.

But by actually pooling all these resources and redoing the analysis, based on new codes and new research questions, we’ve been able to paint a much broader picture. And I think that’s, you know, that’s actually quite fantastic. And I’m really, really happy with that.

And in terms of fun, it really, I mean, it took a long time. It was hard work. But it’s also great, actually, to work on something together.

Like if you have the Sisyphus Project where you always feel like, you know, you need to push and push. If you do this together and celebrate things together and kind of be able to laugh about things and kind of end the day on a little WhatsApp chat about like, what have we achieved? What haven’t we achieved? Where have we gone backwards? That’s actually good. So, it really keeps you motivated and it kept us going and was actually, I mean, it took longer than expected. And I think that’s fair enough.

Brynn: And I really do too. I think it’s so important in our field of academia to encourage that collaboration and to celebrate that collaboration, because it’s not something that tends to get done that much in academia. And it’s just so nice to see that sort of positive collaboration happening because then that could happen more.

That could happen more between more authors, more researchers to give us these more generalizable ethnographic studies, which I think are really important, like you said, to paint that picture for people. And this book is really readable. You don’t have to be a linguist to enjoy this book or to learn something from this book.

And I think it’s important to say that because it is something that even monolingual English speakers can really learn from through all of these stories that come together. And just before we wrap up, can you talk to us about your next project? What are you working on now?

Are there going to be more books? What are you up to?

Dist Prof Piller: I’ve always got too many things on the boil. But one thing I really want to keep going is this kind of collaboration, I guess, and doing things together. And one more, one more harking back to your previous question, like, what was this like?

I think academia can be quite hard on people, particularly on early career researchers. And there’s always this pressure to perform. And, you know, how many articles have you published?

And how often have you been cited and whatnot? And by actually building a community. And I think, you know, we’ve built an author community and a community of practice with this book.

But Life in a New Language is also part of this broader community that we’ve built with Language on the Move and the various PhD projects and research projects and collaborations and all kinds of directions that are going on there. And so that really is important for me to keep going, to continue all these various joint projects that we are doing. And, you know, this podcast is, of course, another one of these projects that I’m very excited about that, you know, you are taking forward in such wonderful ways and that we’ve only just started quite recently.

In terms of my individual writing, the next thing I’m working on is actually the third edition of Intercultural Communication. So that’s this textbook that I originally wrote in 2011, and that’s been doing really well. And so, the third edition is almost ready, and it will include a new chapter on health communication and sort of the lessons that we’ve learned for intercultural communication from the pandemic.

Brynn: That’s very exciting to me, particularly, because as you know, as my supervisor, that is what I’m working on on my PhD. So, I’m very much excited to hear that. That’s awesome.

Ingrid, thank you so much for chatting. Really, really appreciate you taking that time and talking to us about the book today.

Dist Prof Piller: Thanks a lot, Brynn. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you.

Brynn: And thanks 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!

Video available at Faculti: https://faculti.net/like-the-fish-not-in-water/

Editor’s note: Despite its diversity, Australia continues to be imagined as a White nation. In this post, which is also available as a 20-minute video, Donna Butorac explains how this idealized image of the White nation shapes the settlement trajectories of women migrants from Asia and Europe in different ways.

Teaching in Australia’s Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP)

I did research on language learning and identity among people who were studying in the Australian Adult Migrant English Program (we call it the AMEP for short), where I taught for 9 years. This is a federally funded and administered settlement English program that provides subsidised language classes for new migrants who have Beginner to Intermediate levels of English proficiency on arrival. The program is delivered by organisations that successfully bid for fixed-term contracts through a competitive tendering process, and historically it has most often been delivered by state-based post-secondary colleges of further education. However, during the time I was working at the AMEP we saw a successful move into the space by profit-seeking private sector organisations.

At the AMEP I often taught classes that were mostly made up of women and I developed a curiosity about what it was like to be them – to be sitting in that class, learning English in this context. I wondered how it made them feel about themselves and how it impacted their relationships and their sense of the future, of who they were and who they felt they could be in the world. This led me to design a study that was about language learning, identity and gendered subjectivity in the context of migration. I wanted to find out how developing a voice in English might impact a woman’s sense of self, her aspirations and also her key family relationships. I also wanted to understand how the way she was being constructed in Australian society might impact her aspirational sense of self and to compare this with her socialisation in her primary languages and country of origin.

An AMEP classroom (Image credit: Immigration Department)

English teaching in the AMEP for the labour market

The AMEP has been around in Australia since the late 1940s but it has evolved quite a bit over that time. Successive governments, whether they are conservative or centre-left, have always tied inward migration to economic development goals but in the time that I was working at the AMEP in the early 2000s, we saw this connection being more overtly expressed within the framing of the contract terms and in the design of the language courses we delivered. It was also expressed by politicians in their media statements and in their presentations to AMEP teachers and researchers. For example, one government spokesperson told us that new arrivals who had come from difficult circumstances were “very marketable in the workplace” because of their “willingness to do jobs that many Australians reject” (Andrew Robb, 2006) and another federal minister described the role of immigration as a “job-matching agency for the nation”, because “as Australians take up the skilled work opportunities available, shortages of labour in the service and regionally based industries will become more and more acute” (Chris Evans, 2008).

So, the government was increasingly seeing the AMEP as leading new migrants from “the airport to the workplace” (as another politician put it in 2007) and this put pressure on the settlement English programs to adopt this outcome as a goal for English language development. Remember that they have to bid every few years for a new contract, so they closely examine government messaging for clues as to how best to frame their programs in the next contract round so they can beat out the competition.

Meet each of the 130 migrants in our book over the next months in a serialized Twitter thread

2nd: Lena from Russia
Lena realized her white privilege from observing casual racism and selective incivility towards Asian people at her new tennis club in Australia.
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— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) March 8, 2023

An example of how this translated into program change while I was conducting my study of new migrant women was that some of the curriculum and assessment content was reframed to focus on gaining skills needed for applying for a job, doing a job interview or communicating in the workplace, and there was a strong emphasis placed on helping migrants decide on their future study and employment goals. Each student had to meet with a vocational guidance officer when they arrived and set up a learning plan. This plan was updated by teachers and vocational guidance officers over the course of their time at the AMEP and the students all met with the vocational guidance officer again when they were exiting the program.

Learning a language, when it’s framed like this, becomes a commodity to attain in order to achieve economic settlement goals rather than a way of seeking knowledge and personal growth and a sense of belonging through developing a voice in a new language and culture.

And the way that the migrant language learner is positioned in this kind of context is as someone who is deficient in English, rather than as someone who is an emergent bilingual or multilingual.

But there is no place in all of this where the deficiencies of the society or of the labour market are ever problematised or discussed.

So, for example, racism in the Australian labour market, which has been well attested in the research literature, is never discussed and new migrants are not given strategies for how to counter this. What is also not discussed is that Australia still has a persistent monolingual mindset, in spite of there being hundreds of languages spoken in the community. In this kind of context, people may be judged only for their proficiency in English, rather than for their combined language capital. But in the settlement English program, language learners are led to believe that if they develop English proficiency, they will be able to achieve their social and economic settlement goals. When they struggle to realise these goals even after they have achieved a good level of functional English, and this was the case for some of the women in my project, they may naturally assume that the failing is theirs, and that their English is not good enough, when it might actually be a failing of a prejudiced English monolingual labour market or an unwillingness of employers to adequately acknowledge the skills and qualifications that the person brings with them.

Doing a sociolinguistic ethnography in the AMEP

To realise my research goals, I carried out an ethnographic study of 9 women who had recently migrated from a range of countries and who were studying in an Intermediate level class in the AMEP. I wanted to research with them over an extended period during the early phase of their post-migration settlement because I wanted to find out if the development of their voice in English actually made changes in the way they saw themselves and their aspirations. There had been other interview studies done on language learning and identity following migration, but these had more often been a retrospective reflection on the process. I wanted to try to capture this as it was being experienced.

I used qualitative methods of inquiry and data collection and this included two semi-structured personal interviews with each woman at the beginning and end of a 22-month data collection period, and I held a series of focus groups in the first year of the project; I also gave them an essay task at the beginning and end of the data collection period, in which I asked them to write about their aspirations for the future. In the final interview, I gave each woman the same broad prompts I had given them in the first interview because I was curious to know if their ideas had changed over the intervening period, perhaps as a result of changes in their sense of self from learning and using English. I also asked them to keep an email journal of their experience of learning and using English and how they felt about their lives. Because they were emergent users of English, I had thought that they might find it easier to write in English than to speak it; however, I was proven very wrong because for the most part they didn’t really engage with the journal task but seemed happy to talk to me and to each other! So, I ended up covering this topic in a third personal interview that I set up in the middle of the data collection period.

What emerged from the first stage analysis of the raw data was that the impact of language learning on identity could be usefully organised into three domains where the self is both constructed and performed – the self in key family relationships, the self in wider social interactions, and the self in work. I analysed each of these domains to identify sub-themes related to language, race and gender that emerged from across the data set. I was exploring identity and language learning, but this was also a way in to understanding what it’s like to be someone who has undertaken transnational migration involving language change and who is trying to find inclusion and belonging in a new society.

Migrant trajectories to social inclusion

Michiko from Japan cultivated a unique English language learning and practice strategy: she set up stalls at flea markets. In addition to interaction opportunities, she also gained insights into everyday life in Australia, including casual racism …
13/n pic.twitter.com/HOlZy9HJHI

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) March 22, 2023

Social inclusion is a term that has been in use since the 1990s to convey ideas about the goal of creating pathways for economically marginalised people to achieve greater participation in society through employment. It is also used to refer to the inclusion of people from diverse cultures and languages within the mainstream in multiethnic societies. We might think of people who have migrated to a new society as being on trajectories of belonging and inclusion, where they might be on the social edges when they arrive, especially when the dominant language is not one they use well, but eventually the idea is that they will gain acceptance and inclusion and a sense of belonging within the mainstream of that society, in part through developing better competence in a dominant language.

What studies like mine have found is that this trajectory towards social inclusion is not always straightforward or complete for many migrants, often due to things a person may have little control over, like the way their race or their gender is viewed, or the way their language proficiency is judged, as a result of ideologies and prejudices within the receiving society.

Experiences of everyday racism shape pathways to inclusion

In my study I didn’t actually set out to explore race and prejudice but to explore the way a woman’s sense of self was being impacted by language learning in this cultural context; however, as I listened to the experiences of the women who participated in the study, both in interview and in conversation with each other, I realised that race was something I needed to discuss because it was a determiner of differences in the experiences and imaginings of inclusion and belonging that the women were reporting. For example, the women from European countries all expressed the realisation that they were just like everyone else because it seemed to them that most people in Australia came from families that had at some point in their history migrated from somewhere else.

These women felt despondent in the early settlement period about their English proficiency and how hard it was to communicate with others, but they could easily imagine becoming a part of the mainstream as their English improved. This kind of trajectory is normalised in the history of European migration to Australia and in the lives of the people they interacted with. So, the European women communicated a sense of optimism about their trajectories of inclusion and belonging in Australia. In contrast, the Asian women in the study did not express this kind of optimism about their settlement trajectories and they talked about the everyday racism that they and people they knew experienced, as well as what it was like trying to gain meaningful employment.

In the focus group discussions, some of the Asian women expressed the feeling that they might never achieve settlement success and might end up leaving Australia to have a better career. This really surprised the European women, who would say things like “But your English is really good; I don’t understand why you feel so hopeless about your future”.

Actually, one of the Asian women did end up going offshore, soon after the project ended, because she was offered a job with a global company that valued both of her languages, instead of just her English. In Australia, where only her English proficiency was being judged, she had constantly been rebuffed in the labour market and told that she needed to brush up on her English, which was functionally very good and certainly adequate to the jobs she was applying for. But offshore, she was being judged for her entire language capital, which included Japanese and English, and she was seen as a ‘fantastic bilingual’ as she described it.

When a migrant’s full language capital is being considered, as was the case with another Asian woman in the study, the employment outcome was quite different. This woman had migrated from China and she had a similar English proficiency to the woman I have just described, but when she began exploring professional employment opportunities she was immediately successful because the first company that interviewed her for a legal role was trying to build their client list in China and so they saw her as a bilingual, bi-cultural asset to the team instead of someone who was deficient in English. Actually, in the entire hiring process they never once commented on or asked about her English proficiency.

Tina from China already had two law degrees and experience as a corporate lawyer when she arrived in Australia, but she could only get work as a paralegal because her degrees were not recognized.
118/130 pic.twitter.com/HGsqEBmS76

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) August 20, 2023

Another finding from the study related to how new migrants might feel socially excluded by the language practices of locals. Some of the women in my study reported that in social situations with locals, for example at Church or with fellow students in post-secondary courses, locals in the group would speak in rapid colloquial English, using lots of idiomatic expressions, or they would speak to everyone else but never make eye contact with the women or speak to them. This practice made the women feel invisible, and it’s a fairly overt micro-aggression that excludes newcomers. Actually, this kind of experience was only reported by the Asian women in my study. But it seemed some of the European women were listening because towards the end of the project one of them told me in her final interview that she remembered what the Asian women had said about being made to feel invisible by locals and although she had never experienced this herself, she witnessed it with some Asian members of her tennis club that she played social games with. She had reflected on all this and she expressed a sense of her white privilege when she said to me “it’s nice to be beautiful white woman”.

Aside from these findings on race, there were really interesting findings on negotiating language use in key family relationships, and on how some women felt that they could express a different, more confident self in English than they could in their primary language.

Language learning and finding work

There are a number of conclusions related to language and race that come out of my study. For example, the way language proficiency is framed in the labour market impacts how successful new migrants are in achieving settlement goals through meaningful employment. As I’ve suggested, the Australian labour market is predominantly English monolingual, and this usually means that a migrant’s full language capital is not often considered when they are looking for work. However, in the few instances when their full language capital is being considered, this has the potential to greatly improve the settlement trajectory of new migrants and also to allow the economy to benefit from better utilising the qualifications and skills that migrants bring. It’s ironic really, because skilled migration is desired for Australia’s continued economic development and it makes up the largest proportion of the country’s annual migration intake, yet many people who come under that scheme struggle to find meaningful work in the fields they are qualified for, in part because of the way that ideologies about language and attitudes to race impact hiring practices.

One of the implications of these findings is that they can be used to develop the way that English language learning is framed within the settlement English program. In my experience, language learning was framed as the development of a kind of ideology-free, bounded lexico-grammatical system, and learners were encouraged to believe that developing proficiency in English was the key to social and economic inclusion.

Studies like mine have shown that this is not necessarily the case and their findings suggest that instead of framing learners as deficient speakers of English, we should be seeing them as emergent bi- or multilinguals, and we should be problematising interactions they have in the wider society and using an evidence-based approach to better inform language learners in the settlement English program about what to expect when they are looking for employment, and then we should be advising them on strategies for managing their entry into these important spaces of belonging and inclusion. Without this kind of approach, many new migrants end up blaming themselves for their lack of settlement success and the society as a whole denies itself the valuable contributions that could be made by its newest members.

Life in a New Language

Maria, a Chinese Brazilian, came to Australia via Japan. A savvy business woman and devout Christian, she told us she needed "many faces" to successfully navigate interactions, and foreground or background her multiple identities according to context
26/n pic.twitter.com/AtLZyvjtTW

— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) April 13, 2023

Many of the findings of my study are included in a forthcoming co-authored book from Oxford University Press called Life in a New Language. It’s a collaboration that sees data from six existing ethnographic studies of language learning and migration in Australia combined into a single large data set with over 100 participants. Sociolinguistic ethnography usually involves small data sets and rich data, but it is often considered to lack generalizability and rarely makes an impact outside specialist circles because it is widely dismissed as “anecdotal.” This book project marries depth with scale by combining and re-analysing data sets from these existing small-scale longitudinal ethnographic studies with the objective of making convincing conclusions about language learning and social inclusion, based on the premise that a larger qualitative data set increases the scope for generalisability. It represents something of an innovation in linguistic ethnography, as an after-the-fact multisite ethnographic study.

Life in a New Language will be published in June – watch this space for updates!

References

Butorac, D. (2011). Imagined Identity, Remembered Self: Settlement Language Learning and the Negotiation of Gendered Subjectivity (PhD). Macquarie University, Sydney. Retrieved from http://languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/DButorac_PhD.pdf
Butorac, D. (2014). ‘Like the fish not in water’: How language and race mediate the social and economic inclusion of women migrants to Australia. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 234-248.
Piller, I., Bodis, A., Butorac, D., Cho, J., Cramer, R., Farrell, E., . . . Quick, B. (2023). Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration Inquiry into ‘Migration, Pathway to Nation Building’. Canberra: Parliament of Australia. Retrieved from https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=8c0d9316-2281-4594-9c7b-079652683f54&subId=735264
Piller, I., Butorac, D., Farrell, E., Lising, L., Motaghi-Tabari, S., & Tetteh, V. W. (2023). Scholarly sisterhood: Collaboration is our academic superpower. Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/scholarly-sisterhood-collaboration-is-our-academic-superpower/
Piller, I., Butorac, D., Farrell, E., Lising, L., Motaghi-Tabari, S., & Williams Tetteh, V. (in press, 2024). Life in a new language. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Attendees at “Linguistic Inclusion Today” workshop pose for a group photo

There is only one Australian university that has a program in Croatian Studies: Macquarie University. A few weeks ago, the University proposed to disestablish this program, along with four other language programs, citing low enrollment numbers, expected advances in language technologies that would make language learning redundant, and a strategic shift to generic cultural competence focused on Asia.

Against this background, we explored the role of languages in Australian higher education at last week’s Linguistic Inclusion Today workshop.

In a powerful keynote the director of the Croatian Studies Centre at Macquarie, Dr Jasna Novak Milić, explored the role of Croatian Studies in Australia.

The lecture clearly identifies the academic, community, and socio-cultural benefits of a “small” languages program in Australian higher education. Since its founding in 1983, Croatian Studies at Macquarie has built a strong model for a university language program that is closely integrated with the Croatian community in Australia and also has deep international ties.

The curricular and funding model created by Croatian Studies at Macquarie University provides excellent language education in a language that is both learned as heritage and international language. Additionally, it also has the potential to serve as a template of a successful university-community partnership for other languages within Australia’s multicultural fabric.

Ultimately, the question is not why we need a Croatian Studies program at an Australian university. The answer to that question is abundantly clear. The real question should be why we would consider destroying something that is so valuable to so many people.

This part of their professional identity is largely hidden for at least two reasons. First, most of their communication work is done virtually and, in some cases, from home, as in the experience of home-based offshore accountants. These professionals have been managing the communication challenges (including feelings of isolation) linked to working from home long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced other office workers across the globe to work remotely. Second, the prevailing occupational stereotype tags them as good with numbers but bad with words, along with the stigma of being boring, grey, and introverted to a fault, as popularly depicted in media.

The perennial shaming of accountants’ linguistic competence motivated my linguistic ethnographic study of this occupational group. Using critical discourse analysis and the sociolinguistic lens of performance, I examined how students in top accounting schools in Metro Manila are trained to communicate for the globalized workplace and how they communicate on the job as onshore and offshore accountants. This project offers some novel threads in ongoing discussions about the linguistic experience of workers in the rapidly expanding, highly multicultural and multilingual offshoring industry in Global South countries like India and the Philippines.

My research builds on current understandings of these number-centric workers theoretically and methodologically. In terms of theory, I argue that since ‘good communication’ is a social construct that is rhetorically and interactionally reproduced in academia and the profession, labelling accountants as ‘poor communicators’ should not be treated as fact. Rather, as in other stereotypes tied to different social groups, it should be interrogated. While previous studies have predominantly explored how accountants are ‘poor communicators,’ I take a step back and ask: Where and how is this idea of ‘accountants as poor communicators’ deployed, by whom, and for what reasons? In terms of method, my study demonstrates how examining together (rather than separately) the education and work domains can help provide a big-picture understanding of how language practice and ideologies are (re)produced and (re)shaped across the entire field continuity—from formal education to hiring to employment. This approach has revealed that the echoing of the deficit discourse that highlights curricular and competence gaps of accounting schools and accounting practitioners is a very limited and limiting view of Global South accountants and their globalized work.

I briefly present some of my PhD thesis findings in my 3MT. But for a more detailed and exciting discussion about this special group of language workers, you may check out my new monograph, Communication that Counts: Language Practice and Ideology in Globalized Accounting. It is the latest title in the “Language at Work” series of Multilingual Matters lined up for release in December 2022. You may want to take advantage of the generous discount offered until the end of the year by using the code: CCLPIGA75 when you place your order through the publisher’s website.

About the book

To date, communication research in accounting has largely focused on the competencies that define what constitutes ‘effective communication’. Highly perception-based, skills-focused and Global North-centric, existing research tends to echo the skills deficit discourse which overemphasizes the role of the higher education system in developing students’ work-relevant communication skills. This book investigates dominant views about communication and interrogates what shapes these views in the accounting field from a Global South perspective, exploring the idea of ‘good communication’ in the globalized accounting field. Taking the occupational stereotype of shy employees who are good with numbers but bad with words as its starting point, this book examines language and communication practices and ideologies in accounting education and work in the Philippines. As an emerging global leader in offshore accounting, the Philippines is an ideal context for an exploration of multilingual, multimodal and transnational workplace communication.

What others are saying about the book

This book is a welcome addition to the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) materials in the field of accounting. It explores the way students and professionals in accounting communicate and emphasizes the importance of well-defined relationships and effective communication in globalized accounting work. The volume is one of only a handful of resources ever produced focusing on ESP in accounting and in the context of the Philippines. (Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, The Philippines)

Tenedero comprehensively and carefully traces how ideologies about languages and effective communication are mobilized in the field of globalized accounting – from the Philippine classrooms where communication skills are part of the accounting curriculum to the workplaces where offshore and onshore accounting services are offered. A must read for understanding what counts as communication and how communication counts in work where language is seemingly marginal. (Beatriz P. Lorente, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Reference

Tenedero, Pia Patricia P. (2022). Communication that Counts: Language Practice and Ideology in Globalized Accounting. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

[Image credit: “Language, power and identity share an entangled relationship”, Michael Joiner, 360info]

Yu Qi and Venus are both victims of a language barrier in Australia that seriously affects their wellbeing. Language barriers can make public communication inaccessible and exclude people from equitable participation in education, employment, healthcare, welfare, and all aspects of social life.

The number of people who suffer from linguistic exclusion is high. UNESCO estimates that 40 percent of students worldwide experience a mismatch between their language repertoires and the language of instruction. Even within OECD countries, the literacy skills of over 30 percent of the adult population are insufficient to cope with complex bureaucratic demands.

Language barriers can relate to language choice, medium, and platform.

Language choice barriers exist where institutions privilege one particular language in communication with multilingual populations. These barriers mostly affect migrant and indigenous minorities. The mismatch between the language of the institution and that of stakeholders can be egregious. Australian research, for instance, found that schools communicated enrollment information exclusively in English, even if up to 98 percent of families in the catchment area spoke a language other than English.

Even people who speak the language of the institution well may be confronted with language barriers because institutions usually preference the written medium. Written communication is often mismatched to the audience’s level of education. The readability of COVID-19 restrictions published by the NSW Health Department, for instance, was found to be pitched at readers with a tertiary education. This means many people did not have a fair chance to understand what was required of them. Even so, children as young as 13 and people with an intellectual disability were fined for not abiding by these restrictions.

These two forms of language barriers increasingly combine with a third, where an institution’s communication platform may not be equally accessible. As more and more communication has become digitised, people without computer access or with low levels of computer literacy may be excluded from vital information. For example, the health authorities in Indonesia’s West Nusa Tenggara province provided information about how to stop the spread of COVID-19 mostly on the web. Yet only 20 percent of the population use digital technologies to access written materials.

Yu Qi’s problem was a language choice barrier: her dominant language is Chinese, and she feels overwhelmed by the written English information she receives from her son’s school. At the same time, she lacks the linguistic confidence to request or attend a parent-teacher interview. Therefore, she relies on information she can glean from her son, from other Chinese parents, and she seeks extracurricular tutoring from commercial Chinese-language services. She is not aware that government-sponsored interpreting services exist in Australia, which could help mediate her communication with her son’s school.

Venus experienced a different sort of language barrier: having grown up in West Africa, she is a fluent English speaker. However, her literacy level is low, and she has hardly any knowledge of Australian occupational health and safety legislation, leave entitlements, and workers’ compensation provisions. Therefore, all she could do was “argue” with her supervisor. She could not set in motion the written bureaucratic process of documenting her injury and making a claim that would have secured proper care and mitigated any long-term health consequences.

Supporting language diversity is a matter of social justice. It is a starting point to making institutions more accessible and inclusive. Australia put a plan in place at the national level in the 1980s with the National Policy on Languages. However, having since fallen into disuse, the National Policy on Languages would require an update to adequately serve the changing communication needs of the times.

A comprehensive, effective language access plan includes the provision of translated materials and interpreting services as necessary. It also includes robust communication chains, where low-literacy people have the chance to talk things over as needed. And a needs assessment of the platforms best suited to communicate with the target population would help the plan be accessible and inclusive.

There is no one size fits all but providing information in the languages of key stakeholders, and adjusting the communication medium and platform to their capacities is key to reaching everyone in the community.

In a linguistically diverse world, institutions are likely to already have people with the right linguistic skills among their ranks. Harnessing and rewarding those linguistic skills unlocks potential and allows institutions and individuals to thrive. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, communication is a vital aspect of disaster preparedness and response. As we take lessons in a post-pandemic world, every institution could benefit from having a language and communication task force embedded.

(Image credit: John Schaidler via Unsplash)

The Next Generation Literacies international research network hosts a free 2-day research symposium devoted to language diversity and participation across generations and contexts.

When: December 10 and 11, 2021
Where: online (register your attendance here)
Who: Researchers in education and language in social life

Language diversity is a feature of all contemporary differentiated societies around the globe. Due to migration, globalization and new communication technologies, individuals need to cope with and be able to use multiple languages in order to actively participate in society. This symposium contextualizes the potential of multiliteracy throughout an individuals’ lifespan in multiple contexts (academia, education, home and workplace). The symposium looks at the development and support of multiliteracy in the family, educational pathways, and integration in the work place. More specifically, the talks give insight into how families use digital media and how professionals in school deal with and foster multiliteracy. Across the lifespan, as individuals get older, multilingual skills may become an asset for professional success, including in academic settings.

Day 1: Friday, December 10, 08:00 am – 12:15 am CEST

08:00 – 08:45 am CEST, Keynote lecture

Laura Smith-Khan, University of Technology Sydney, Believe it or not: Linguistic diversity and credibility in asylum procedures

09:00 – 09:55 am CEST, Network meeting (by invitation only)

10:00 – 11:00 am CEST, Session 1 “Inclusion in academic publishing”

• Ingrid Piller, Macquarie University, Does the language of publication change research content?
• Yongyan Zheng, Fudan University, You’ve got to keep above the water not to drown: The translingual journey of a multilingual scholar’s academic publishing practices

11:15 – 12:15 am CEST, Session 2 “Access to the work place”

• Lucy Taksa, Centre for Workforce Futures, Macquarie Business School, Language diversity and access to the workplace: reflecting on different forms of communication and approaches to teaching and learning
• Eva Markowsky & Miriam Beblo, Universität Hamburg, Multiple languages and their return on the labor market

Day 2: Saturday, December 11, 12:00 am – 02:00 pm CEST

12:00 – 1:00 pm CEST, Session 1 “Empowering vulnerable groups in education”

• Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer, Universität Hamburg, Coping with the dynamics of language and inequality in a primary school in Germany
• Josh Prada, Indiana University, Translanguaging as a pedagogy of empowerment: insight from a composition course for bilingual Latinxs in a US university

1:00 – 2:00 pm CEST, Session 2 “Multilingual potential across the life span”

• Ingrid Gogolin, Universität Hamburg, Yes, they can! Development of multiliteracy in secondary education
• Jannis Androutsopoulos, Universität Hamburg, Digital polycentricity and diasporic connectivity: engagement in multilingual families

Please register your attendance here.

Besides meetings, webinars, and classes, another traditionally face-to-face event organized this year via Zoom is the 3-minute thesis (3MT) competition.  This yearly academic contest, which challenges students to explain their thesis in three minutes to a non-specialist audience, was started during one of the worst droughts in the history of Australia. With the current COVID-19 pandemic far from over, the 3MT organizers decided to go virtual this year.

On 11 August 2020, the Macquarie University Linguistics Department hosted its first-ever virtual 3MT competition. My contribution, which won the People’s Choice Award, is about the communication practices and ideologies of globalized accountants in the Philippines. Unlike many, they did not start to work remotely during the pandemic but have been doing so for a long time. In my presentation, I highlight the unique challenges of professional communication from home in multilingual, global work contexts. These points are discussed at length in my online lectures on how Global South accountants are prepared to communicate in Global North workplaces and lessons about working from home.

While it is tempting to think that joining a virtual 3MT is faster and easier, my experience is quite the opposite. Surely, the competition proper was a less tensed moment for me and my fellow-participants as we sat and watched our pre-recorded presentations. However, such a small production involves a big investment of time and effort, as faculty members doing online teaching this semester can testify. Even so, a memorable learning experience!

***

“The trend of the future is working from home. The big question is: Are Filipinos ready for this kind of work?” This question was asked by an employer of Filipino virtual accountants providing offshore services to clients overseas during my fieldwork in June 2018. Two years later, office workers all over the world find themselves forced to do just that—work from home—as a social distancing measure in light of the COVID-19 pandemic situation. In Australia alone, 1.6 million reported this significant change in their working conditions.

Unsurprisingly, there are many different reactions to this global shift to remote-work setup—some readily embracing it as the new normal, others taking a more critical stance. In the interim, as working from home continues to be the norm for some occupation groups, the experience of offshore accountants, who are employed to work remotely, pandemic or no pandemic, provides a picture of how this work arrangement works on a permanent basis.

A sociolinguistic analysis of the globalized accountant experience of working from home was the subject of a webinar co-organized on 3 July 2020 by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines (LSP) and the Lasallian Institute for Development and Educational Research.

In this online lecture, I explore how working remotely has shaped communication practices and ideologies in globalized accounting practice in the Philippines. Examining communication in this context is important as the demand for off-shored (including home-based) accounting services is increasing. This trend comes with the positioning of the Philippines as an emerging global provider of knowledge process outsourced services to businesses headquartered overseas. Ethnographic data collected from this work context for my PhD thesis (in progress) is analyzed using the lenses of performance and audit. Findings show that the way accountants communicate has evolved to fit the shape of virtual work environments. Digital solutions are making communication skills more salient and creating new norms and protocols of transparency that contribute to tensions between autonomy and accountability. The lessons highlighted from accountants’ experiences potentially reflect communication challenges and opportunities in other work domains especially during this period of COVID-19 pandemic, when mandatory physical distancing is redefining workplace interactions.

You can watch this virtual presentation uploaded in the LSP YouTube channel.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.

Muslim women praying in a Minquan mosque

While everyone knows that China is now the second largest economy in the world, few people realize that there are still over five million people living in poverty in the country. The majority of China’s poor live in its multilingual and multicultural peripheral regions.

Therefore, as part of its efforts to eradicate poverty, the Chinese government has implemented the nationwide project to promote Putonghua as a form of linguistic capital. This promotion of Putonghua – along with widespread English language learning – from above has been widely discussed and researched by Chinese sociolinguists (see, for instance, these PhD theses available right here on Language on the Move: Grey, 2017, Li, 2017, Yang, 2013, Zhang, 2011).

However, what seems to have been largely overlooked is language learning of other languages from below and the empowerment it can bring, as I learned in my research into Arabic language learning in Minquan, a Muslim-centered and poverty-stricken region.

Socioeconomic and demographic features of Minquan

Located in the far east of Henan Province, central China, Minquan County has a population of 870,000. The vast majority of these are farmers. Because the ever more frequent droughts have rendered production of the main crops of maize, cotton, peanuts, and wheat unstable, an increasing number of young people are leaving Minquan for China’s big developed cities in search of better opportunities.

Education and literacy levels in Minquan are low in comparison with the rest of China and only two third of teenagers in Minquan continue their studies beyond compulsory junior high school education.

Another feature of Minquan is its sizable Hui ethnic minority, whose members are Muslim. In Minquan it is common for local people to exchange greetings in Arabic and for the women to wear colorful hijabs. Five times a day, the streets echo with the Muslim call to prayer chanted slowly and sonorously in Arabic over the audio systems of the local mosques.

Arabic as a way out for Minquan’s Muslim women

The Hui ethnic group do not have their own language but speak Chinese. However, in recent years, I have observed an increasing trend for local people to study Arabic, the holy language of Islam, not only for religious purposes but also for material profit. For my graduation research project at Yunnan University, I probed the Arabic language learning experiences of three Muslim women from Minquan. All three participants, two of whom are my relatives, were born and raised in Muslim families in Minquan. Their mother tongue is Chinese and they all started to study Arabic formally in their teens.

Their reasons for Arabic language study were initially due to their limited opportunities.

The youngest participant, Ma Lifang (all names are pseudonyms) is a 19-year-old high-school graduate, who has studied Arabic in a mosque since 2018. After failing the gaokao (the national university entrance exam), she followed an imam’s recommendation to learn Arabic in order to maintain her education and with an eye to a profitable future through Arabic as experienced by Ma Zhenyi (32) and Ma Xiangling (39).

Ma Zhenyi is an entrepreneur who now runs her own translation and interpreting company in Yiwu, the world largest wholesale market. Despite her excellent academic performance in junior high school and her desire to continue her studies, she was denied the opportunity of receiving a high school education because of her family’s poverty. The traditionally low expectations on Muslim women in her community also played a role. While she did not have the courage at age 15 to oppose her parents when it came to high school, she found a way to convince them to let her study Arabic in the mosque:

别人都一直说，都是建议让我跟爸爸妈妈讲（我想学），然后当时也没那么大的勇气。因为我姐姐她也想去学习，但是爸妈没同意，就没学成。我也没有那么大的勇气去说。后来越学越感兴趣，越学越感兴趣。然后，就鼓起勇气说。
Others kept telling me, suggesting that I should tell my parents (I want to study), but I didn’t have the courage. My older sister also meant to study, but my dad and mom refused and she could not. I just didn’t have the courage. Later Arabic interested me more and more, I had to be brave enough to tell them. (Interview with Ma Zhenyi)

Perhaps it was Ma Zhenyi’s talent in memorizing Arabic verses that contributed to her success; or the fact that her older sister could share the family’s financial burden so that Ma Zhenyi could have the chance of further study for a couple of years. Either way, while seeking her spiritual asylum in the holy language of Islam, Ma Zhenyi could continue to study and build her dream for the future.

Middle-Eastern buyer checking cargo with seller in Yiwu (Image credit: promotional video for Yiwu)

Her excellent performance together with her deep faith next launched her to another opportunity to continue her Islamic and Arabic studies in Xi’an, one of China’s largest cities and the capital of Shaanxi Province. At that stage, she won a scholarship to go to Egypt for further Arabic study. There, she met her husband and when both of them returned to China, they settled in Yiwu, where they first took up Arabic translation and interpreting jobs and eventually opened their own translation company in 2012.

Ma Xiangling (39) also works as an Arabic-Chinese translator and interpreter in Yiwu. Like Ma Zhenyi, she was denied a senior high school education after graduating from junior high school in 1998. She was sent to learn Arabic at a local mosque-based school instead. At the time, she did not expect any material rewards from learning Arabic at all. She simply followed the local expectation of being a good Muslim woman in the hope that she might assist her future husband and educate their child in the faith. Upon graduation, she got married but almost immediately found herself engulfed in constant domestic violence. Over many years, Ma Xiangling’s life was torn to pieces as her only financial support was her tormenting husband. She finally managed to regain her freedom through a painful divorce. In 2014, with the help of friends doing business in Yiwu, she revived her Arabic language skills and migrated to Yiwu to work as translator there.

Self-transformation through Arabic

Confronting their disadvantages in age, gender and poverty, these three women turned to Arabic as a way out.

All three women started to learn Arabic as a low-cost study option when they failed to progress in the Chinese public educational system. Their parents believed that learning Arabic would increase their daughters’ marriage prospects by making them good assistants to their future husbands serving the faith. The value of speaking Arabic as a profitable commodity in the new contexts of China’s global expansion was not obvious to my participants until they embarked on their journey and seriously invested in learning Arabic. Nevertheless, their Arabic skills have shaped a brand new life vision for them.

Ma Xiangling’s social media post in Chinese and Arabic about destiny (my English translation)

Their years of investment into Arabic have transformed their identities from poor subjugated Muslim women into independent and enterprising individuals. Despite failing to gain admission to a Chinese university, Ma Lifang, for instance, now even considers PhD study within her reach:

有的(课本）都是北大的什么的… 还有那种全阿语的.都是老师们从国外给带来的。好多老师也是从国外的毕业，还有博士学位。
Some (textbooks) are from Peking University, and some are written in Arabic, imported from abroad. Many teachers graduated from abroad, some with PhD degree. (Interview with Ma Lifang)

When asked what she wanted to do with her life, Ma Lifang readily talked about several options, such as taking up a translation job in China’s booming export industry or going abroad for higher education, just like her teachers.

Ma Zhenyi has experienced the transformational career that Ma Lifang anticipates. Learning Arabic has expanded her life trajectory from a poor village girl first to the big city of Xi’an and from there to Egypt. The level of Arabic language proficiency she gained there, enabled her to work as an interpreter and translator in Yiwu, and later to establish her own business there.

Business opportunities related to Arabic are plentiful, as she explained to me:

大概有目前来说有102个国家的人来这里(义乌)进行购物。其中呢大概有40到50个国家，大概了50%左右是以阿拉伯语为沟通媒介的……我现在接触的这些人啊，多数都是在40以上的。年龄40以上的人并没有意识到他们需要学英语你知道吗。
There are foreign businessmen from 102 countries coming to Yiwu to purchase commodities. 40 or 50 countries out of 102, about 50% of foreigners use Arabic for communication…the majority of my foreign customers are over 40 years old. You know, people over 40 are not aware of the necessity to speak English. (Interview with Ma Zhenyi)

Although Ma Xiangling’s career has been less stellar, Arabic has transformed her, too, into an economically and spiritually independent woman supporting herself and her family. In January 2020, her family (her parents and her disabled son) was able to move into a newly built two-storey house.

Tensions and contradictions of Arabic

Despite their empowerment, Arabic is not a panacea and all three women face tensions and contradictions embedded in wider structural constraints that are beyond their control.

Reflecting on the profits Arabic has brought to her, Ma Zhenyi, for instance strongly feels the tension between its material and spiritual rewards. While she is grateful for the material rewards that learning Arabic has brought her, she also finds herself in a constant state of dilemma between her entrepreneurial identity as a successful businesswoman and her sense of guilt at not having enough time for prayer and reading Quran, or for mothering her school-aged daughter.

The gendered market also impacts their opportunities to invest in their future, as Arabic language practices are more gendered than those of many other languages. Ma Xiangling explained that women can only go so far with Arabic. While they might be able to secure a translation job in Yiwu or elsewhere in China, their opportunities to work abroad or even travel for business are heavily constrained, particularly when it comes to major Arabic-speaking trading partners like Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Ma Xiangling’s reflections on working abroad must be understood against the emerging oversupply of Arabic speakers in China as Chinese universities have begun to actively promote non-English foreign languages. As a middle-aged woman without a degree, Arabic proficiency alone is no longer enough to make her feel confident about her future.

Arabic as a third space

Arabic has become a significant foreign language for China’s relationship with the Middle East. However, for the women in my study, it is much more than that. Arabic also functions as a way out, as a reachable escape route for Muslim women who have been trapped in the cage of poverty and religion.

Reciting Arabic verses as a child, reading the Holy Quran as a teenager, and eventually translating for Sino-Middle East trade as adults, Chinese Muslim women from less-developed areas have turned the Arabic language into a third space where they can continue their education, obtain career success, and achieve emancipation in their daily lives. In Minquan, this impoverished corner of the world, Arabic provides both a spiritual asylum and financial independence. It frees and awakens Muslim women tormented by misogyny and poverty.

After quoting to me the Hadith “all men are brothers”, Ma Zhenyi added what has been missing from there: “and women are sisters.”

References

Grey, A. (2017). How do language rights affect minority languages in China? An ethnographic investigation of the Zhuang minority language under conditions of rapid social change. (PhD), Macquarie University.
Li, J. (2017). Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China. (PhD), Macquarie University.
Yang, H. (2012). Naxi, Chinese and English: Multilingualism in Lijiang. (PhD), Macquarie University.
Zhang, J. (2011). Language Policy and Planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics: An Investigation of the Discursive Construction of an Olympic City and a Global Population. (PhD), Macquarie University.

***

Editor’s note: In our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, we today switch perspectives away from health communication to the economy: how is the crisis affecting translation and interpreting service providers, as well as other language services? Findings from a survey of Chinese language service providers conducted at the end of February provide some preliminary insights.

***

Language services are a thriving industry in China but have been hit hard by the corona crisis

As an emerging service industry, China’s language services industry has grown quickly in the last decade into a sizable industry which provides different kinds of services and products to facilitate multilingual and cross-cultural exchanges (Luo et al., 2018). By estimation of the Translators Association of China, in June 2018, there were 320,874 language-related enterprises in China, among which 9,652 are specialized in language services and translation. In 2018, the total output value of China’s LSPs reached 35.93 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 10% (Translators Association of China, 2019).

How has this burgeoning language services industry been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis?

To provide relevant information to stakeholders and offer language service providers (LSPs) helpful suggestions, the Academy of Global Language Services Sciences (AGLSS), and the School of Translation and Interpreting(STI), Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) , and the Institute of Language Services, Hebei Normal University for Nationalities (HBUN) jointly launched a survey to assess the impact of the epidemic on LSPs in China. The joint team started the survey of companies specializing in language services throughout the nation in the form of online questionnaires on February 23, and surveyed 113 LSPs by February 25.

The following provides an overview of some of the results.

Composition of the survey participants

Participants of the survey comprise 113 language service firms from the Chinese mainland, including eight state-owned enterprises (SOEs), 14 joint-stock companies, 89 private companies, and two foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). 31.86% of the surveyed LSPs have more than 100 employees, and 68.14% have less than 100 employees. About one-third of the total number have a staff of less than 20 persons. The data are basically in line with the composition of LSPs in China.

In terms of main business, 76.11% of the surveyed companies provide mainly translation and interpretation services, followed by those engaged in localization services (35.40%) and in language technology services (32.74%). Those in R&D of software, consulting services, and foreign language training have a relatively low proportion, accounting for 23.01%, 19.47%, and 17.70%, respectively. In terms of the scope of services, most of the companies offer a package of services, covering interpretation, translation, localization and language technology services.

Orderly resumption of operation

Our findings show that over 90% of companies had resumed work through telecommuting, and nearly half had started work in-office by the survey date. Most of the companies resumed operation to a large degree through the Internet, cloud-based computer aided translation (CAT) platforms, and online business management systems. The resumption rate of work through telecommuting exceeded 90%. Only 3.54% of the firms chose to suspend their business. Conversely, 4.42% reported 100 percent staff back at work in the office; all of these firms are in the provinces of Jiangsu, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Shandong, which had good control of the epidemic and were less severely impacted. They include two SOEs, one joint-stock company, and two private companies.

53.98% of the surveyed LSPs required all their employees to start work from home. Through checking on work attendance and holding video conferences regularly, they actively carry out online production for self-help and overcome the adverse effects caused by the epidemic. In some less-affected areas, due to a contraction of business, 19.47% of the LSPs required only a part of their staff back to work in the office, and 15.04% choose to work through telecommuting with part-time attendance.

It is evident that companies in the language service sector, as largely supported by internet and information technology, have the advantage of being able to conduct online business under the stress of the epidemic. They have relatively strong capability to respond to emergencies compared with the business model of physical stores, and therefore, COVID-19 has had limited impact on them.

Contributing to the fight against COVID-19

It is worth noting that more than 70% of the LSPs surveyed had contributed to the fight against the epdidemic in various forms and to different extents. Specifically, 46.02% of them provide online interpretation and translation services; 13% even offer on-site interpretation services in the epidemic-hit areas at great risk, showing the spirit of selflessness and dedication.

In addition, 23.01% provide language services related to overseas donations; 16.81% offer consulting services to foreigners. A small part of the services are about epidemic-related training and the R&D of anti-epidemic mobile products. For example, following instructions issued by the Ministry of Education, a 40+ strong “Language Service Corps”, comprising professionals from Transn, one of the country’s leading LSPs, and several higher education institutions such as BLCU and other organizations, has developed online platforms and a mobile app, Hubei Dialect Guidebook, to help medical workers from other parts of the country who do not understand Hubei dialects.

As COVID-19 spread quickly from Wuhan to the rest of the nation, countries all over the world have assisted China in different ways to combat the coronavirus, and many overseas Chinese have donated money and supplies, which have created a growing demand for emergency language services. The LSPs in China, actively responding to the government’s call, have made use of their strength in providing specialized interpreting and translation services to support the battle against the epidemic and assume their social responsibilities.

Impacts of COVID-19 on the surveyed LSPs by business forms

Loss of business

Nearly 80% of participants were worried about a decline in business due to a sharp fall of on-site language services. The survey indicates that the operating income of the LSPs is closely related to that of their clients. With the spread of COVID-19 virus around the world, both domestic and international clients of language services are affected by the epidemic to varying degrees and face the risk of income decline. As a countermeasure, they are likely to cut their less urgent needs and lower the cost of urgent services.

According to the survey, 64.6% of the participants consider the “drop or loss of existing translation business” as the major challenge, as it will bring high uncertainty to their operation. Furthermore, “funds shortages” is also a bottleneck restricting the LSPs’ development (accounting for 42.48%).

China’s language services industry has a cup lid-shaped structure (China Language Service Industry Development Report, 2018); that is, 98% of companies in the industry have a registered capital of less than 10 million yuan, and are comparatively weak in fending off risks. A lesser concern are layoffs, resignation of employees, or breach of contracts by their partners, as the LSPs have sufficient supply of labor. During the epidemic prevention and control period, part-time employees and freelancers have a lot of free time, leading to an abundant supply or even oversupply of workforce.

The survey shows that the on-site business of LSPs has suffered a severe blow, as have on-site services or exchanges in other sectors, because of control measures like isolation, closed-off management, and lockdowns of cities. On-site interpretation is worst hit (62.83%), followed by public relations (PR) (52.21%), on-site translation (34.51%), and marketing (29.20%).

Hard-hit English language services

The survey finds that services related to English are struck hardest by the coronavirus epidemic, to a high rate of 67%, while the figure for services involving other languages is below 20%. This is mainly because more than 90% of Chinese LSPs are providing English-related services (China Language Service Industry Development Report, 2018), which are easily impacted by the strict restrictions imposed on China by English-speaking countries such as the United States and Australia.

It is estimated that the withdrawal of nationals, suspension of flights and issuance of visas and other restrictive measures will directly or indirectly hamper the development and cooperation of overseas business. Some English-speaking nations may stop or cancel deals with the language service firms in China, striking a heavy blow to English-related services.

It appears that the epidemic has much less influence on business related to other languages, but given the fact that such businesses overall take a small share and some companies do not have multilingual business at all, a rate of 13-17% is rather high.

Overall, the epidemic has had a large impact on the language services industry in China. Without strong support from central and local authorities, a number of companies might close down or go bankrupt, and a lot of people will lose their jobs. The relevant authorities, therefore, should pay close attention to the conditions of the businesses.

Post-epidemic recovery

Projected Impacts of COVID-19 on performance of the surveyed LSPs

According to the survey data, the coronavirus outbreak has hurt multiple activities of the surveyed businesses, affecting the communication between LSPs and clients by 51.33%, financial settlement by 46.9%, and contract signing by 40.71%. As a result, the operating income has dropped and liquidity has tightened. Nevertheless, by enhancing internal system building, the LSPs have remained strong in providing service solutions and delivering services. As long as the LSPs continue to strengthen their capacity building and keep good communication with their clients, they will surely recover business after the end of the epidemic.

The epidemic will eventually end and things will get back to normal, just as the winter has gone and the winter jasmine are in full bloom. People who go through the difficult time will continue their life with an even stronger will.

Businesses are making every effort to resume operation by themselves, but meanwhile, they hope to get help from the government. The survey data show that 75.22% of the participants expect tax reduction or exemption; 57.52% want to get rent reduction or exemption; 46.02% hope to receive job subsidies; 35.4% are eager for loans and financing.

As for aid directly related to fighting the virus, 38.05% want to receive masks and other protective supplies, and 20% need effective guidance on epidemic prevention and control to ensure the health of their staff.

Behind the data is the determination of companies to restore production and their general expectation for support from relevant government authorities and trade associations. To this end, we call for a joint action by the government, the public and the trade associations to help the businesses rise to the current challenges. At the same time, the companies themselves should also do what they can to pull themselves through.

Adjusting business models

More than 90% of companies surveyed put adjustment of business models on their agenda. Comprising mostly micro and small enterprises, the language service industry in China has been confronted with many problems.

The outbreak of COVID-19 brings these problems to the surface. They mainly relate to business portfolio (47.79%), crisis response (42.48%), capital chain (42.48%), and strategic planning (26.55%).

The disaster gives companies a chance to review the mix of their business and identify weak areas, and then to adjust their strategies and business models to meet the challenges posed by globalization and the 5G era. Efforts may include strengthening capacity building in risk tolerance, strategic planning, human resources, technology development, and crisis response.

The survey finds that 94% of the companies surveyed think it is necessary to change their business models, and 59.29% plan to improve the layout of online business. The participants also put the following issues on the agenda: improving efficiency and efficacy of telecommuting (52.21%), raising digital marketing capabilities (41.59%), increasing investment in intelligent technology and products (35.4%), and providing more remote services (38.94%). In this sense, the epidemic is not just a disaster, but a driving force to make companies seek changes, expand growth space, open up new business areas, and lead the digital era.

Conclusion and Suggestions

The survey results indicate that COVID-19 epidemic has had a huge impact on LSPs in China. The language services industry will face certain downturn pressure in the full year of 2020. The adverse spillover effect will surface in the second half of the year and pose severe threats to some companies. On the basis of the results of this survey, we put forward the following suggestions for China’s LSPs:

1. Regions affected less by the disease should resume work as early as possible for self-help instead of overreacting or waiting too long. They should seize the day to minimize the losses and costs caused by the epidemic. Our recommendation is to conduct dynamic management based on real conditions and take business-specific measures. Through resuming operation in an orderly manner, companies are expected to sustain their activities to prevent “secondary disasters” like closure and layoff.
2. As upstream or downstream companies to support the large enterprises, the LSPs under safe conditions should resume operation as early as possible to ensure the production restoration of big firms.
3. Both the central and local governments have already introduced a slew of measures to help enterprises affected by the epidemic. Major incentives include reducing or exempting the social insurance payment for SMEs from February to June and halving such payment for large companies, among others. Nevertheless, to help businesses sustain production and operation, more flexible and targeted measures should be applied to reduce the financial burden on SMEs, including tax and fees cuts, financial support, and rent subsidies or reductions.
4. The LSPs should endeavor to explore the market, seek new opportunities, and develop new business, with a view to turning the impact into an impetus for their growth. Efforts could be made to enhance strategic planning and carry out training on improving telecommuting ability for employees, changing business models, and improving layout of Internet-based business.

Acknowledgment

We record our sincere thanks to the people involved in translation and proofreading, and all the participants of this survey.

References

• 2018 China Language Service Industry Development Report. Beijing: Translators Association of China, 2018.
• Luo H, Meng Y, Lei Y, et al. China’s language services as an emerging industry. Babel, 2018, 64(3): 370-381.
• Translators Association of China, China academy of translation industry development strategies. 2019 China language service industry development report. Beijing: Translators Association of China, 2019.

About the authors

Lifei Wang is Professor in the School of Translation and Interpreting, Beijing Language and Culture University, China. His research interests include language services studies, business lingua franca, and applied linguistics.

Jiangwei Sun is a PhD candidate in the School of Translation and Interpreting, Beijing Language and Culture University in Beijing, China. His research interests include language services studies and translation economics.

Jie Ren is a PhD candidate in the School of Translation and Interpreting, Beijing Language and Culture University in Beijing, China. Her research interests include language services studies and business lingua franca.

Yongye Meng, PhD graduate from the University of International Business and Economics, is Dean of Institute of Language Services, Hebei Normal University for Nationalities in Chengde, China. His research interests include language services and internationalization of standards.

Related content

To view the full Language-on-the-Move coverage of applied and sociolinguistic perspectives on the COVID-19 crisis visit our COVID-19 series.

Watch this research presentation by Pia Tenedero to find out.

This presentation was originally intended for the Georgetown University Roundtable (GURT) 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. Not only was Pia successful in having her abstract “Preparing Global South Accountants to Communicate in Global North Workplaces” selected for inclusion in the GURT 2020 program but she also received a highly competitive Macquarie University Postgraduate Research Fund travel grant to enable her to attend and share her research.

Imagine her disappointment when GURT 2020 had to be cancelled due to the global COVID-19 outbreak!

We are taking this opportunity to actually extend the reach of Pia’s conference presentation by making it available to a global audience. Consider this a virtual opportunity to attend Pia’s talk. Sit back at your leisure to watch her 20-minute presentation about “Preparing Global South Accountants to Communicate in Global North Workplaces”. And please feel free to post comments and questions below. Pia will be on stand-by over the next few weeks to respond to comments and questions. The presentation is part of her doctoral research and your feedback will help to support a high-quality submission later in the year.

Abstract

Preparing Global South Accountants to Communicate in Global North Workplaces

Pia Tenedero, Macquarie University

This paper investigates how universities in the Philippines prepare accounting students for communication in global workplaces. For some years now, the country has positioned itself as an emerging global leader in knowledge process outsourcing, providing offshored accounting services to companies in the Global North. The growing demand for communicatively competent accountants who can be deployed globally consequently places a greater onus on the education system to produce accounting graduates with these desired qualities. This paper examines the way “effective (global) communication” is constructed in two top-performing accounting schools in Manila. Using ethnographic data, I do this by first investigating how education authorities frame the notion of “effective communication” in accountancy program documents and by examining how students and teachers, in turn, enact this notion in classroom interactions. Analysis of the discursive and interactional construction of communication in accounting education shows tensions in ideologies about English and Filipino, which are differentially valued relative to students’ global opportunity and national identity, their future work and present learning goals, and their specialized knowledge and relational competence. Ideological tensions are reflected in the shifts in the framing of effective communication in curricular guidelines as closely tied to English and in the way local actors interpret and shape communication in the classrooms, where Filipino comes to the fore. The study has implications for the language instruction of future accountants aspiring to participate in the global enterprise.

The project team at a partners meeting in Leeuwarden, Netherlands

Europe recently experienced a dramatic influx of refugees. By the end of 2015, the European Union as a whole had received over 1.2 million first-time asylum claims (IOM, 2015). A small but significant sub-group of these people on the move are highly qualified professionals – doctors, architects, lawyers, teachers, engineers – who often find themselves in low-skilled, minimum-wage jobs for which they are over-qualified. Their skill sets and professional experience often count for little, as host countries in an alarming number of cases fail to utilise the potential of much sought-after qualified personnel. The integration of these highly-skilled individuals into the labour market is crucial in order to avoid their long-term dependency and marginalization, and to create a positive image in the eyes of the public.

Against this backdrop the ‘Critical Skills for Life and Work’ project (2017-2019), funded by the European Union’s flagship research programme Erasmus+, sought to identify and articulate the profession-relevant communicative, interactional and intercultural needs of highly-skilled refugees, which would enable them to find employment in a professional domain for which they are qualified.

The multinational consortium was led by Newcastle University in the UK in partnership with the University of Graz in Austria, Fryske Academy in the Netherlands, and Action Foundation, a Newcastle-based refugee charity.

Trialling workshop in the Netherlands

The team’s ultimate aim was to design and implement effective training tools for enhancing the professional intercultural communicative competence (PICC) of highly-skilled refugees and the language teachers who work with them. The four project partners worked with a number of highly-skilled refugees and migrants, and with teachers across the UK, Austria and the Netherlands to co-create a set of resources that can be useful in a diversity of European contexts. The result was an online toolkit for teachers and learners.

The toolkit was developed as part of a two-stage collaborative process.

In stage one (research stage) the team investigated in detail the lives and experiences of people who had successfully made the transition from refugee status back into the professional sphere. This was done through ethnographic interviews (‘success stories’) which sought to discover exactly how these people had made the transition, what had helped them, what had hindered them, and what they could pass on to others like them by way of advice. Additionally, focus groups were held with learners and teachers in the different locations, to gauge current provision and their needs in relation to developing PICC.

Findings from this stage pointed to the importance of agency, resilience, self-motivation, as well as language and intercultural communication skills.

Structure of the toolkit

In stage two (co-production), the team worked closely with local refugees and volunteer language teachers to develop learning and teaching materials. These were then piloted and trialled through a series of workshops and multiplier events with different target groups, including agencies working with skilled refugees, teaching organisations such as colleges of further and higher education, and relevant employers and employment agencies. The aim was to create a model which can be extended to other contexts.

The final version of the toolkit was launched at the project conference on 21^st June 2019.

The toolkit offers two modules:

Module A: Teaching professional intercultural communicative competence
Module B: Professional intercultural communicative competence for work and life

Each module consists of five parallel units: (1) context & background, (2) finding a job, (3) applying for a job, (4) being interviewed and, (5) starting a job. Each unit includes a set of activities designed for classroom use (for teachers) or for self-study (learners). All activities relate to the development of PICC. Supplementary materials and extension tasks are included at the end of each unit.

The units are self-standing to allow teachers and learners to choose units and activities depending on their own specific needs and circumstances.

From a linguistic perspective, the toolkit is built around the assumption that refugee and migrant professionals will have some linguistic capital. The primary aim of the toolkit is to develop PICC, as opposed to linguistic proficiency in any specific ‘target language’. Using all their plurilingual resources, learners might engage with input in one language and generate meaning in contextually appropriate ways.

The toolkit is available to download for free on the project website (http://cslw.eu/). Relevant sections of the toolkit have been translated and localised into German and Dutch, and the team are hoping to provide further translations and different language versions in due course.

Follow our updates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cslwproject/ or find us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/critical-skills-for-life-and-work/

Reference

IOM (2015). Global migration trend factsheet. Retrieved from http://gmdac.iom.int/global-migration-trends-factsheet