Language on the Move 2020

Everyone has a serious case of 2020 fatigue by now, and the Language on the Move team is no exception. We are therefore going offline for a few weeks to take an end-of-year break.

Before we do, here is our annual review.

Much of our work this year has been focused on the language and communication challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of editing a special issue of Multilingua devoted to “Linguistic Diversity in a Time of Crisis” and hosting a number of dedicated events, we have had authors from 16 different countries on all continents contribute to our “Covid-19 Crisis Communication” series.

In addition to multilingual crisis communication, we have published research related to intercultural communication, language and law, language and politics, literacies, and much more.

On top of our core area – the latest sociolinguistics research devoted to language in social life – we have also brought to you reflections about research and professional development, including a mini-series of “ethics rants” by members of the Research Collegium of Language in Changing Society (RECLAS) at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

Along with publishing 78 research blog posts this year, we have restarted our long-dormant Language on the Move YouTube channel to share a variety of lectures and teaching resources.

Indeed, one of the consequences of the move to online teaching for us has been that Language on the Move has been increasingly used as a freely available, engaging and stimulating teaching resource in universities around the world.

We’ve been able to attract a truly international readership. Except for three African countries (Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of the Congo) and North Korea, our 200,000 readers this year have come from every nation on earth.

Seeing our work resonating so much has been a privilege, and keeps us going. We thank everyone involved in Language on the Move for their hard work and dedication!

To celebrate, please find a list of our blog posts this year below so that you can re-read your favorites or discover new ones.

As always, make sure to keep in touch by subscribing to Language on the Move in the ‘Newsletter subscription’ box in the footer below; or join our ever-growing number of Twitter followers @lg_on_the_move. And if you are not following us on Twitter yet, please do so and help us reach our next milestone of getting to 22,000 followers 🙏

We look forward to seeing you all in 2021 for another round of essays, events, and interactions related to linguistic diversity in social life.

In the meantime, please accept our best wishes for the end-of-year holidays! And bon courage for the New Year! 

December

1. Livesey, Claire, Home schooling in Covid-19: challenges for migrant families
2. Neve, Monica, From language barriers to linguistic resources in COVID safe business registration
3. Abbasi, Kinza Afraz, Mismatched public health communication costs lives in Pakistan
4. O’Keefe, Peter, The quality of COVID-19 communication is a test of social cohesion
5. Hidayat, Yudha, Why Indonesian villagers don’t know how to protect themselves against COVID-19
6. Parveen, Nusrat, Teaching remotely during COVID-19 in a disadvantaged and multilingual school
7. Hermosa Cavero, Alejandra, Paying lip service to Indigenous inclusion in Peru’s COVID-19 prevention campaign
8. Language on the Move Reading Challenge 2021 – this year we got our reading challenge up early 😊

November

9. Abdullah, Tazin, Supporting ELICOS students through Covid-19
10. Faine, Miriam, English language proficiency and national cohesion
11. Piller, Ingrid, How to teach TESOL ethically in an English-dominant world

Penn_TESOL_2020_LinguisticDiversity

12. Roche, Gerald, & Troy, Jakelin, Indigenous language denialism in Australia

October

13. Phillipson, Robert, Brexit and the politics of English
14. Symposium: Linguistic Diversity in a Time of Crisis
15. Williams Tetteh, Vera, My African-Australian story
16. Li, Jia, & Lv, Yong, Foreign language learning for minority empowerment?
17. Li, Jia, & Lv, Yong, Minority languages on the rise?
18. Li, Jia, & Lv, Yong, Power to fangyan!
19. Grey, Alexandra, Language learning is integral to practice-based legal education
20. Piller, Ingrid, More on crisis communication in multilingual Australia
21. Piller, Ingrid, Crisis communication in multilingual Australia

September

22. Taiebine, Mohamed, Covid-19 misinformation between globalization and the reptilian brain
23. McMullen, Gabrielle, Alexander von Humboldt visits Australia
24. Rodríguez Louro, Celeste, & Collard, Glenys, Decolonizing sociolinguistic research
25. Sif Karrebæk, Martha, & Sørensen, Solvej Helleshøj, Covid-19 exposes language and migration tensions in Denmark
26. Piller, Ingrid, Linguistic Diversity in a Time of Crisis
27. Piller, Ingrid, Does every Australian have an equal chance to know about Covid-19 restrictions?

August

28. Baioud, Gegentuul, Will education reform wipe out Mongolian language and culture? – our 2nd most popular post this year
29. McElvenny, James, Why the linguist needs the historian
30. Literacy in heritage language maintenance

31. Tenedero, Pia, Communicating globally while working remotely
32. Piller, Ingrid, What can Australian Message Sticks teach us about literacy?

Kelly_AboriginalMessageSticks

33. Vita, Vasiliki, Bridging new and traditional media in the fight against Covid-19
34. Piller, Ingrid, Is English spelling an insult to human intelligence?
35. Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Message- vs community-centered models in risk communication
36. Piller, Ingrid, Who invented writing?

July

37. Wierzbicka, Anna, Essential messages for our time
38. Piller, Ingrid, Why are academic lectures so weird?
39. Ahmad, Rizwan, “I regret having named him Sahil”: Urdu names in India
40. Missing the Hamburg International Summer School?
41. Raza, Kashif, Language policy for China-Pakistan cooperation
42. Hopkyns, Sarah, Linguistic diversity and inclusion in the era of COVID-19
43. Multilingualism, religion and spirituality in Australian life
44. Lising, Loy, COVID-19 health information campaigns in the Philippines
45. Gil, Jeffrey, What does the post-COVID-19 future hold for Confucius Institutes?
46. Ennser-Kananen, Johanna, Coming to terms with ourselves in our research
47. Tenedero, Pia, How to communicate while working from home
48. D’hondt, Sigurd, The ethics of collection data in public spaces

June

49. Saarinen, Taina, Are funding decisions based on “societal impact” ethical?
50. Laihonen, Petteri, Do concepts and methods have ethics?
51. Haimovich, Gregory, & Márquez Mora, Herlinda, Why it’s important to use Indigenous languages in health communication
52. Torsh, Hanna, Whose job is it to raise the kids (bilingually)?
53. Grey, Alexandra, How to improve Australia’s public health messaging about Covid-19

May

54. Ma, Yuanmeng, Empowerment of Chinese Muslim women through Arabic?
55. Barakos, Elisabeth, & Plöger, Simone, Recent-arrival migrant students during the Covid-19 school closures
56. Duan, Wei, Can Chinese Language Learning Reinforce English Supremacy?
57. Home-schooling during COVID-19: Research participants wanted – we ended up interviewing 60 Australian parents from non-English-speaking backgrounds for this research and our findings will be ready for publication early in the New Year
58. Kalman, Judy, Signs of the times: Small media during Covid-19 in Mexico City
59. Ollerhead, Sue, Mati, Shepi, & Hendricks, Monica, Staring down the Covid-19 lockdown with multilingual humor
60. Smith-Khan, Laura, Five myths about refugee credibility
61. Piller, Ingrid, COVID-19 forces us to take linguistic diversity seriously

 April

62. Piller, Ingrid, Language challenges of COVID-19 are a pressing issue
63. Ahmad, Rizwan, Multilingual resources key to fighting COVID-19
64. Wang, Lifei, Sun, Jiangwei, Ren, Jie, & Meng, Yongye, How are language service providers affected by COVID-19?

March

65. Li, Yuming, Language lessons of COVID-19 and linguistic disaster preparedness
66. Piller, Ingrid, Linguistic diversity and public health: sociolinguistic perspectives on COVID-19 – the CfP that resulted in the special issue of Multilingua devoted to “Linguistic Diversity in a Time of Crisis”
67. Tenedero, Pia, Preparing Filipino accountants to communicate in global workplaces – the first virtual conference presentation by one of our team members
68. Piller, Ingrid, Female academics and shamans face the same glass ceiling
69. Li, Jia, Coronavirus meets linguistic diversity – our most popular post this year!

February

70. Baioud, Gegentuul, Fighting COVID-19 with folklore
71. Zhang, Jie, Racism hinders the fight against COVID-19
72. Critical inclusion and the doctoral student – the announcement of our final Lecture in Linguistic Diversity; although we didn’t know it at the time
73. Yu Lha, Fighting the coronavirus in local languages – our first post on the topic that ended up consuming much of our attention this year
74. Language Diversity, Education, and Social Participation – at that point we were still thinking the Hamburg International Summer School would go ahead in July
75. Ben Nafa, Hana, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice in Arabic

January

76. Smith-Khan, Laura, Linguistics meets law
77. Roche, Gerald, Language revitalization and radical politics
78. Piller, Ingrid, Language on the Move Reading Challenge 2020

Previous annual reports

For an even deeper trip down memory lane, here is the list of our full archives:

1. Language on the Move 2019
2. Language on the Move 2018
3. Language on the Move 2017
4. Language on the Move 2016
5. Language on the Move 2015
6. Language on the Move 2014
7. Language on the Move 2013
8. Language on the Move 2012
9. Language on the Move 2011
10. Language on the Move 2010
11. Language on the Move 2009