Tag Archives: Switzerland

mundart Glocalization à la Suisse

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Ingrid Piller

When I lived in Basel, a city in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, I often found myself performing an involuntary field experiment in language attitudes. As likely to speak English as German in public, I was regularly confronted with strangers’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Language & globalization | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

do you speak swiiss_front Do you speak Swiss?

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Ingrid Piller

A most amazing book has just landed on my desk: Do you speak Swiss, edited by Walter Haas, is the final report on a Swiss National Research Project devoted to Linguistic Diversity and Language Competence in Switzerland. Initiated by the … Continue reading →

Posted in Language & globalization, Language & tourism, Language learning, gender & identity, Language, migration & social justice | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Finding Switzerland in Japan Finding Switzerland in Japan

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Ingrid Piller

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: when I stepped off the train at Hakone Station, I … Continue reading →

Posted in Language & tourism | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The f-word on the move

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Ingrid Piller

Installment #7 in the mini-series on multilingual signage When I lived in Basel in Switzerland, my then-preschool child was just learning to make sense of the alphabet and to sound out words – a development I obviously encouraged as much … Continue reading →

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New Swiss Christianity: Let’s build brothels

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Ingrid Piller

A few years ago I wrote a paper about the sexualization of public space in Switzerland. The paper will be published next year as “Sex in the City: On Making Space and Identity in Travel Spaces” in a book about … Continue reading →

Posted in Language & consumerism, Recent Posts | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments