As someone who is concerned about Australia’s monolingual mindset and the damage it does to individuals and our society as a whole, I probably should have been pleased to discover…
In his recent post “Accent and History,” Khan asked whether it’s possible to escape the prison of our accent and our language. Looking at the civil war and humanitarian disaster…
This is the story of a young Pakistani man, let’s call him Reza. Reza spent his early years in what was then East-Pakistan and what is today a different country,…
Installment #6 in the mini-series on multilingual signage Multilingualism sells! Some forms of multilingualism that is. In the world of marketing, languages operate like brands: they are a signifier for…
Installment #5 in the mini-series on multilingual signage Signage not only appears in public space. Through our consumption of all kinds of products, we bring a multiplicity of signs into…
Installment #2 in the mini-series on multilingual signage Much of the signage that can be found in contemporary public spaces is commercial. It is a form of advertising, and language…
National holidays are there to celebrate the nation and the opinion pages tend to be full of self-congratulation on such occasions. Australia is no exception and one of the more…
Seeing that Kraft’s idea to brand their new Vegemite cheese spread as iSnack 2.0 has just backfired badly on them, I’m not so sure about the wisdom of talking about…