Thank you, Ingrid, for drawing my attention to this interesting online forum, Language on the Move, and videos, Japanese on the Move. Based on empirical research on transnational Asian women in London,…
"Velcro on one pocket coming away at the edge. Please repair and bring back tomorrow for checking." This was the note I had dreaded from my son’s teacher. The Velcro…
Persian version of Lachlan Jackson's award-winning blog post about interlingual relationships. Translated by مطهره سامری (Motahare Sameri) "وقتی پای عشق به میان می آید ژاپنی ها محبوب ترین موجودات روی کره ی…
Having lived and taught English in Japan for more than fifteen years, until last night I’d thought I’d seen it all. That was until I stumbled across the もし彼氏が外国人だったら英会話 (What…
Japanese stop sign The current global orthodoxy holds that learning English is good: individuals who know English are supposed to have an advantage in the job market and countries with…
Futenma Airbase, right in the middle of the city I’ve recently come across the story of Chibana Shoichi, who burnt the Japanese flag in 1987 to commemorate the Okinawan victims…
Thank you all for waiting - we are thrilled to present you with the new-look Language on the Move 3.0! This is the second time we have renewed our site…
Ingrid Piller's keynote lecture at the International Gender and Language Association conference in September 2010 is now available on video and so is another guest lecture she conducted during our…
During my recent lecture about “Teaching language, teaching culture” at the Fujairah Women’s College, I spoke about English language teaching materials in Japan and the ways in which they constructed…
Yoshiko Nakano's essay in Yomiuri Newspaper “Young people in Japan no longer want to go abroad.” This news reached me in Australia last year and formed part of the background…
This is the first in a series of blog posts about my experiences undertaking an ongoing research project. In this series I will be detailing some of the methodological challenges…
Commemorative stamp, German Federal Post, 1989: 300 years French School Berlin I’ve been teaching about bilingualism for more than a decade and when I speak about bilingual education and dual-immersion…
Space challenged Shinjuku, Tokyo (September 2010): Photo by Kimie Takahashi Tokyo is getting more and more linguistically diverse every time I go back there. During this trip, I was really…
Lotus Pond (part of Shinobazu Pond) in Ueno Park “There are so many stupid Japanese women around, huh? Many Westerners are coming to our country and the stupid women love…
As a non-speaker and non-reader of Japanese I went to Japan fully expecting to be confused. However, the only confusing moment I experienced had nothing to do with anything Japanese:…
I had been led to believe that Japan was a very monolingual place interspersed with Engrish ads, commercial signage and T-shirts. Well, that has turned out to be just another…