Over the next few weeks my introductory sociolinguistics students are doing a group work task in which they explore the linguistic landscape in their suburb and relate the visibility of…
I am deeply saddened by the passing of Erwin Koller, one of my teachers and mentors, in Lisbon this weekend. It’s a special gift when teacher and student become friends…
Non-English speakers’ access to emergency services in Australia is in the news again as a Melbourne man has been convicted of the murder of his wife. What makes the case…
About ten years ago an overseas student from South Korea who was about to fail a unit I was teaching left a suicide note under my office door. She described…
I have served as book review editor for Discourse and Society for ten years and recently resigned from my roles as book review editor for Discourse Studies and Discourse and…
English-speaking countries have a poor track record when it comes to language learning. Educators in Australia, the UK and the USA regularly bemoan that fact and call for a change…
Must-read post by Dennis Baron over at the Web of Language! A US university student who majors in Middle Eastern Studies was detained at Philadelphia Airport for carrying Arabic language…
I went onto e-bay this weekend and, instead of the gadget I was after, found some non-standard uses of English negation: “We not ship to Russia” or “We not use…
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…
Deborah Cameron noted in 1995 that “linguistic bigotry is among the last publicly expressible prejudices left to members of the Western intelligentsia.” In the same vein, one could point out…
London Dairy ad on a building in Abu Dhabi, UAE Igloo ad on truck in Abu Dhabi, UAE I’ve just come across a 2006 University of South Africa MA thesis investigating…
Not only is Korean an increasingly popular choice of study as a foreign language, now South Korea is also promoting the use of the Hangul script to write languages other…
While my Christmas post was of the gloomy kind, most blogs I follow had more heart-warming stories. Sociolingo Africa picked up a press release coming out of Orlando, Florida issued…
I’ve been wondering what would be an appropriate Christmas post for the Language on the Move blog. Seeing that I’m deeply skeptical about all those claims about the wonderful advantages…