Professor Katrijn Maryns explains the linguistic transformations that turn "undocumented migrants" into "genuine" or "bogus refugees" Language is the inescapable medium through which we live our lives. Access to social…
Ingrid PillerApril 8, 2019
Poland in China (Artwork by the author) Intercultural communication at work in multinational companies (MNCs) is increasingly common. Workplace communication in MNCs can be highly complex, as is the case…
Michał WilczewskiFebruary 16, 2019
Professor Peter Siemund, Hamburg University, during his guest lecture at Macquarie University It is easy to assume that bilinguals are better at adding another language to their repertoire. But is…
Hanna TorshOctober 5, 2018
English is the mother tongue of the Internet, or so it seems. English is omnipresent in the architecture of this breakthrough technology. You see it in the QWERTY keyboard, domain…
Pia TenederoJune 7, 2018
The website of Hohhot Baita International Airport provides information in Chinese and English but not in Mongolian Update, Sept 16, 2020: A Mongolian translation of this blog post is now…
Gegentuul BaioudApril 18, 2018
How is your Language-on-the-Move Reading Challenge coming along? One month has gone by and you should have ticked off at least one book from our list. I started with an…
Ingrid PillerMarch 1, 2018
Multilingual "Welcome" sign in a shopping mall in Munich, Germany Have you recently seen a “welcome” sign? They constitute a strange genre: ever more ubiquitous on the one hand, yet…
Ingrid PillerOctober 31, 2017
This latest exploration in language shaming examines a language shame campaign on the internet and shows how it is used as a tool to suppress political debate and women’s public…
Ingrid PillerOctober 16, 2017
We all have childhood dreams. Mine was to become a writer, which, unfortunately, was not well received by my parents because it is a “hungry” job. Due to the absence…
Jinhyun ChoSeptember 1, 2017
Jinhyun Cho was awarded her PhD for her thesis about "Interpreting English language ideologies in Korea: dreams vs. realities" Many people around the world dream of learning English. The pursuit of…
Lg_on_the_moveNovember 24, 2016
Cover of 2008 movie "Mad about English" (Source: Zhang, Jie. Language policy and planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. ) We are repeatedly told that people around the world are…
Peter IvesOctober 11, 2016
A couple of years ago, I mused here on Language on the Move what linguistic theory would look like if its dominant cultural ideas had not been shaped in 1950s…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 29, 2016
Images of glamorous interpreters in the recent Chinese movie “Les Interprètes” (Source: dramafever.com) I recently volunteered to give a presentation on the profession of translation and interpreting as a parent…
Jinhyun ChoJuly 17, 2016
One way of looking at the outcome of the British referendum is to understand it as an act of self-sabotage: "...and in the end, Britain, which had colonized the world,…
Ingrid PillerJune 25, 2016
The Linguistic Ethnography Forum’s e-seminar devoted to Ingrid Piller’s recent book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics is currently running. Some discussions so far are concerned…
Jinhyun ChoJune 5, 2016
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