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Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice wins Prose Award

By February 9, 2017July 19th, 20172 Comments6 min read2,808 views

Ingrid Piller’s “Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” wins Prose Award

Language on the Move is finally back from our summer break. The New Year has started well for us with exciting news that Ingrid Piller’s Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 2016) has won the 2017 Prose Award in the “Language and Linguistics” category. The Prose Awards are presented by the American Association of Publishers and have been recognizing “the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content” since 1976.

If you would like to refresh your memory of the book, there is also a cool podcast interview with the author on the New Books Network.

Last year we ran a draw and raffled off five copies of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. Entrants and winners came from around the world and just in time for Christmas we dispatched prizes to lucky winners in Croatia, Finland, Philippines, Switzerland, and UK. In return we received some lovely thank-you notes, which we are sharing here with the winners’ permission.

“A source of inspiration”

An early Christmas present! What a blessing to be one of the lucky winners of this precious work by Dr. Ingrid Piller! Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice will be a sure source of inspiration and insight for my current research on the language experiences of Filipino migrant nurses in the Middle East. I’ll be sure to share my findings with Language on the Move. I’m happy to be part of this community of scholars that values the equality of languages and the people who speak them.

“Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” in its new home in Manila

Thank you Dr. Ingrid! More power to you and the amazing work that you do!

I am an assistant professor and associate researcher in the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines. I have presented and published papers in oral communication, forensic linguistics, and English for Specific Purposes. It is my hope that my research can help design language courses that enable people to perform better in different professions.

From 2013 to 2015, I studied how new accountants use English in audit firms in Manila. These industry-informed findings were then used to design an English for Accountants course that targets specific language competencies that accounting students need in order to meet their future employers’ skills requirements. Articles based on this project have been published in Business and Professional Communication Quarterly and English for Specific Purposes.

The scope of my research recently expanded to investigate the language use, struggles, and coping strategies of Filipino migrant workers in different destination countries. The first phase of the study probes the experience of Filipino nurses in the Middle East, and in the future I hope to bring this study to Sydney, Australia. (Pia Patricia Tenedero, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines)

“Highlights the importance of linguistic diversity as a driving force for social justice”

Warm greetings from Finland!!!

“Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” in its new home in Jyväskylä

I am a doctoral student at the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. I study discourses on language, employment and integration in the non-governmental organisation (NGO) and within the wider Finnish context. In particular, I explore the role of language in the integration of migrants into the Finnish working life. I also zoom in on multilingual resources that migrant NGO practitioners make use of and practice in the workplace. The key participants in my study are multilingual migrant NGO practitioners, that is, employees, apprentices, trainees, interns, and volunteers with diverse backgrounds. My own role as a researcher and a volunteer in the NGO with a multilingual and a migrant background contributes both to my interpretation of the findings from all those different perspectives and shapes the ways that the participants are engaged in my research. At the same time, my participants, their practices and narratives, too, shape my understanding of the studied phenomena.

Language on the Move portal has been a valuable source on the most recent developments in the field of Sociolinguistics. Furthermore, it has been an important platform for me as a junior researcher to be informed and involved in fruitful scientific and societal conversations through research blog posts from around the globe. It was through Language on the Move that I got acquainted with the recently published book by Professor Ingrid Piller, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. In this new book, one of the main findings indicates that migrants’ proficiency of the host country language creates barriers for their access to employment, which is also one of the conclusions I draw in my own study on migrants in Finland. What I find most important in the book is that it illustrates the role of language in social stratification and highlights the importance of linguistic diversity as a driving force for social justice. (Sonya Sahradyan, University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

“Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” in its new home in Berne

“Great teaching resource”

I am a sociolinguist at the University of Bern’s Institute for Spanish Language and Literatures. As a scholar interested in attitudes to language, Ingrid’s book represents a go-to reference for grasping the subtle (and less subtle) ways in which language may serve to ingrain inequalities among users as well as to give cause for instances of discrimination in a so-called globalized world. It will be of great use in the classes I teach in discussing these dynamics with my students, as they are prevalent in Switzerland, a country in which authorities measure migrants’ level of integration in terms of demonstrated abilities in one of the national languages. In addition to that, as an introduction to applied sociolinguistics, Ingrid’s book provides my students and I with tools to act upon these inequalities and instances of discrimination in an effective manner. (Víctor Fernández-Mallat, University of Berne, Switzerland)

“Ingrid’s book makes me feel much braver”

“Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice” in its new home in London

I’m not an academic and I don’t work formally in the sociolinguistics field. However I am a freelance teacher and a teacher adviser in English schools, with a career-long specialism in English, Literacy and EAL; and sociolinguistics has informed my understanding and practice for a very long time (since 1984 when I read Peter Trudgill during my teacher training year). A snapshot of my own views about language and EAL learners in an English context can be found on my Flexilingual blog, which is a curatorial learning hub about literacy, language, EAL and multilingualism.

I am always educated and stimulated by the Language on the Move blog with its international dimension so I was thrilled to win Ingrid Piller’s book!

I advocate for linguistic diversity and social justice in my online interactions and professional practice. My work is usually quite practical and hands on but it’s very important for that to be informed by research and illuminated by relevant theory. Ingrid’s work is very accessible and full of narratives and case studies which offer powerful leverage on my work and help me engage and educate others.

I’m currently using the book to help me plan a workshop at the “Decolonizing Teacher Education” conference in Exeter in March this year. It’s a great honour to participate in the conference and also quite daunting. Ingrid’s book makes me feel much braver. I will definitely be recommending it to delegates. (Di Leedham, Flexilingual, UK)

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