Official coronation portrait (Image credit: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2015) The Queen and the English language are both unique within their categories. The Queen enjoyed special…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 12, 2022
The house of the English high school teacher in the village in Sulawesi where Pasassung conducted his fieldwork In a recent post, I reviewed language policy research that shows how…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 1, 2013
Ad for a private English language school in Taiwan: the normalization of American English is obvious in the name and imagery There is no denying the fact that English has…
Jackie ChangJanuary 22, 2013
Multilingual Hong Kong (Katherine Chen and Gray Carper, 2005-2007) During our visit to Hong Kong, Kimie and I met Katherine Chen, who introduced us to a sociolinguistic film she has…
Ingrid PillerDecember 3, 2012
Bangladeshi manager speaking English and subtitled in British educational video "How fair is fashion?" The other day I watched a show about global textile production. How fair is fashion? by…
Ingrid PillerAugust 27, 2012
I’m one of the comparatively unlucky few swimming against the global linguistic tide. I’m a mother tongue speaker of English, “the” global language. That means if I want to become…
Christof Demont-HeinrichApril 3, 2012
English belongs to everyone? The claim that “English belongs to everyone who uses it” has continued to gain more and more cultural cache, at least in global (English) academic circles.…
Christof Demont-HeinrichMarch 26, 2012
“PR” is probably one of the abbreviations I have heard most since coming to Australia. Despite the fact that PR – “permanent residence” for the non-initiated - is the much-coveted…
Grace Chu-Lin ChangAugust 5, 2011
Pakistan Swat Valley 2009 Ingrid briefly mentioned Zubeida Mustafa’s new book Tyranny of Language in Education: The Problem and its solution recently. Since then, we’ve had numerous enquiries about the…
Muhammad Ali KhanJuly 1, 2011
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…
Ingrid PillerJune 27, 2011
The United Arab Emirates are celebrating their 39th national day this month. Trucial Oman, as it was then known, became independent from their semi-colonial relationship with Britain in December 1971…
Ingrid PillerDecember 5, 2010
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…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江October 11, 2010
Some Language-on-the-Movers based here in Sydney had the opportunity to attend Professor Masaki Oda’s lecture about the current state of the English language in Japan yesterday. With major Japanese companies…
Ingrid PillerAugust 5, 2010
In Japan, “English as official language policy” (英語公用語化) is currently trending on social networking sites. Two large Japanese corporations, Rakuten and Uniqlo, recently announced the adoption of English as their…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江July 22, 2010
Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia) Italian version of my blog post about Chinglish. Translated by Emanuela Moretto Per un attimo provate a pensare che il New York Times abbia…
Ingrid PillerJuly 18, 2010
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