Last week I was fortunate to be able to attend the 2016 annual conference of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. In my…
The New Books Network has just published an interview with Ingrid Piller about her new book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. The host of the show, Chris Cummins, sums up the…
Tetteh, Vera W. 2015. Language, Education and Settlement: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography on, with, and for Africans in Australia. PhD thesis, Macquarie University. Vera Williams Tetteh has just completed her PhD…
In my own research, I have frequently run into difficulty in talking about a ‘native speaker’. What criteria must be met to be ‘native’? How can I, as a researcher,…
Christmas party at an International High School in Yunnan Over the past few decades, an increasing number of Burmese international students have enrolled in high schools in Yunnan, a province…
Linguistic diversity in Sydney (Source: Sydney Morning Herald) The media in Anglophone countries regularly engage in a bit of a bragfest about the linguistic diversity of their cities. In Sydney,…
"Speak English or Die!" Vilification on a Melbourne bus caught on camera About a year ago, a video of a language-related altercation on a Melbourne bus was widely reported in…
Excerpt from the 1233 Exchequer Roll, a tax record of the payments made by Jewish people in the city of Norwich (Source: nationalarchives.gov.uk) Diversity is today widely seen as a…
Montana: the picture postcard state is not conducive to the empowerment of migrant women It is international women’s day today and the world’s women are on the move like never…
In today’s immigration countries, adherents of the “one nation, one language” idea face a unique ideological problem: to claim that the national language is a sign of national loyalty and…
Speak English, people! says British politician Ed Miliband (Source: msn.com) Every ten years the UK government conducts a census, which every British resident is obliged by law to take part…
"Wir neuen Deutschen" and "Growing up Lebanese Muslim in Australia" A little while ago, my daughter, who attends Year 5 in an Australian public school, received a “Resilience Award” for…
Plaque commemorating the work of migrants in the construction of the Mundaring Weir In response to my blog post about the disparity between educational qualifications and employment outcomes faced by…
Average employment outcomes of the tertiary-educated (Source: Colic-Peisker 2011, p. 647) The labour market integration of migrants presents a persistent conundrum. The Australian story – as that of other migrant…
Receptionist: Help yourself to a cap! Shiva: Pardon me? Receptionist: Help yourself to a cap! Shiva: This was a conversation I had in the reception area of a storage company on…
Caroline Tennant Kelly with two of her photos from the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement (Source: Sydney Morning Herald at http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/the-bohemian-and-her-mission-20100416-skgk.html)In 1924 the first university Department of Anthropology in Australia was founded…