Language on the Move is back for another year and we’ll start the excitement with a reading challenge. One important piece of advice for all (aspiring) academics is to “Read,…
My banal cosmopolitan fridge magnets In response to my post about the banal cosmopolitanism of multilingual welcome signs last week, a number of people suggested that they quite enjoy finding…
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…
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…
King Sejong the Great (1397-1450) (Image source: Wikipedia) Today, South Koreans celebrate Hangul Day. Hangul Day is a national holiday to celebrate the Korean script. I am not aware of…
At the recent 16th International Conference on Minority Languages at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, I delivered a keynote lecture about “language shaming”. By “language shaming”, I mean (social) media…
Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice has won the 2017 annual book prize of the British Association of Applied Linguistics. Although I wasn’t able to attend the conference and award ceremony…
In today’s world, “literacy” is strongly associated with competence: the ability to read and write is the pre-condition for the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge and skills. The basic…
U.S. Vice President Pence ignores NASA "DO NOT TOUCH" sign. Would anyone else get away with such illiterate behavior? “Literacy” is one of those words that everyone uses as a…
In this library, children like to "cook the books" in the toy oven (Source: Smith, 2017) In preparation for a course on “Literacies” I’m teaching this semester, I spent the…
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has just come to an end. Like Christmas, Diwali or a wedding, the closing holiday, Eid al-Fitr, constitutes a massive occasion for gift-giving. In…
Intercultural communication advice is a strange genre. Filling shelves and shelves in bookshops and libraries and now with a well-established presence on the Internet and in training workshops, it portrays…
Presenters and members of the organizing team at the Bridging Language Barriers Symposium Last week the Language-on-the-Move team at Macquarie University was fortunate to host a delegation of education researchers…
Manus Island Detention Centre, where Faysal Ishak Ahmed collapsed (Source: ABC News) On December 23, 2016, as most Australians were winding down for the holiday week ahead, Faysal Ishak Ahmed,…
"Good people make a good country" by Addo Tetteh As I am trying to finalize the manuscript for the second revised edition of my 2011 book Intercultural Communication: A Critical…
Who of the three women in this image do you think German employers are most likely to consider as a potential employee and call for a job interview? Obviously, the…