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…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 28, 2010
The latest issue of Cross-Cultural Studies (published by the Center for Cross Cultural Studies, Kyung Hee University, Korea) includes an article about the dark side of TESOL authored by Ingrid Piller,…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江September 13, 2010
I can only speak Pashto ABC News yesterday broke a whistleblower report that US army interpreters deployed in Afghanistan often don’t speak the local languages. ABC News reports that up…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 10, 2010
Next week, Tokyo will be the hottest hub of language and gender researchers! Tsuda College is hosting the Sixth International Language and Gender Association Conference (IGALA) Sept 18 - 20,…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江September 6, 2010
During her September visit to Japan, Ingrid is scheduled to give another special lecture at Tsuda College on September 21. Her talk is part of the COOLL Project, funded by the…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江September 3, 2010
Chinese version of my recent blog post about orientalism and tourism 东方主义，这种西方文化中对东方文化及人文的旧式及带有偏见的理解，可谓是由来已久、根深蒂固。一日偶读澳大利亚旅游杂志《出发和到达》中一篇题为“爱情游戏，中国风”的文章，我对东方主义在当今世界的影响力，尤其是在旅游文本中的呈现，感触尤为深刻。 乍看标题“爱情游戏，中国风”，觉得有趣而有些费解：什么样的“爱情游戏”可以称为“中国风”呢？接下来的副标题解释道：“远离现代社会的纷扰，中国纳西族在罕见的母系社会中独享亘古不变的清静”。文中描绘的中国西南边陲的云南白沙古镇是纳西族的故乡之一。而作者描绘的方式却使得白沙镇成为代表整个中国的一个影像：亘古不变，陷入一个远离现代文明的永恒世界。 (more…)
Chen Xiaoxiao 陈潇潇September 2, 2010
Persian version of my blog post about language evolution Translated by Anna Mirzaiyan (آنا ميرزاييان) آخرهفته سری به سایت ای بِی زدم، اما به جای وسيله ای كه دنبالش می…
Ingrid PillerAugust 31, 2010
Wiley has just launched its new Handbook of Language and Globalization, edited by Nikolas Coupland. The Handbook consists of 28 chapters by well-known sociolinguists, including our very own Ingrid Piller and Kimie…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江August 30, 2010
In the past couple of years, I have been a passenger in Sydney taxis driven, inter alia, by an agricultural engineer from India, a civil engineer from Somalia, a surgeon…
Ingrid PillerAugust 27, 2010
I am currently a visiting scholar from Isfahan, Iran, in Sydney, Australia. Therefore, I speak English most of the time. I use English with my colleagues at work although, interestingly,…
Vahid ParvareshAugust 25, 2010
I’ve just run a search for the terms “multilingual” and “multilingualism” in the National Library of Australia’s archive of Historic Australian Newspapers, 1803-1954. In the process, I have learnt that…
Ingrid PillerAugust 16, 2010
Persian version of my blog post about transliterated brand names Translated by Setareh Felfelian (ستاره فلفلیان) London Dairy ad on a building in Abu Dhabi, UAE Igloo ad on truck…
Ingrid PillerAugust 12, 2010
The monolingual myth This critique has been an important one but it runs into a problem when we consider the idea of monolingualism itself. At the same time that this…
Alastair PennycookAugust 10, 2010
Racism is an inevitable part of growing up black in Australia. As a mother of two African-Australian boys, one of the hardest things is that I can only do so…
Vera Williams TettehAugust 7, 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
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