The Language on the Move Reading Challenge is designed to encourage broad reading in the discipline and beyond, and to make linguistics reading fun. Anyone with an interest in the intersection of linguistic diversity and social life can join. After the Language on the Move Reading Challenges of 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 this is the fifth time we are running the Language on the Move Reading Challenge.
Based on recommendations from our team, we have created a monthly calendar of readings to keep you company throughout the year. Throughout the year, make sure to watch out for in-depth reviews and interactive conversations related to these and other readings, both here on Language on the Move and over on Twitter @lg_on_the_move.
Enjoy the recommendations from our team and feel free to add your own recommendations in the comment section below! We are interested in any good reads illuminating the intersection of language and social life.
You might also wish to check back on the Language on the Move Reading Challenge 2021, where, over the course the year, readers have added over 50 recommendations in addition to our original 12.
Girt, True Girt, and Girt Nation
As a bonus recommendation for December 2021, Ingrid Piller recommends the Girt trilogy about Australian history by David Hunt. Girt covers the early colony, True Girt continental expansion, and Girt Nation federation. Australian history becomes a comedy of errors and absurdities that is in equal parts hilariously funny and breathtakingly nasty. Hunt is not only a brilliant historian and writer but also a meticulous linguist and astute observer of intercultural relationships. And any academic will turn green with envy at the footnotes. Who knew that footnoting could be elevated to a true art!
Mixed Messages
To start the year, Gegentuul Baioud recommends Mixed Messages: Mediating Native Belonging in Asian Russia. Based in the Buryat region in the Russian Far East, Cathryn Graber illuminates how minoritized language media affect everyday discourses and linguistic practices, and vice versa. Graber presents a vivid picture of how Buryat journalists produce minority language media; how Buryat (semi)speakers experience performance anxiety during interviews; and how these media products circulate in living rooms and kitchens. Above all, Graber situates her analyses in the historical legacies of the Soviet Union, including the Soviet nationality policy, the development of Buryat language media to produce modern Soviet Buryatia, and efforts to standardize the Buryat language. Essential reading in minority and indigenous language shift and maintenance, language standardization, minority language media, and cultures and histories of Siberia and central Asia.
Decolonising Multilingualism in Africa
For February, Vera Williams Tetteh recommends Decolonising Multilingualism in Africa: Recentering Silenced Voices from the Global South by Finex Ndhlovu and Leketi Makalela. As most research in the social sciences continues to be informed by global north ways of viewing the world, Decolonising Multilingualism in Africa offers a refreshing insight from global south experiences and more nuanced ways of viewing the world. Ndhlovu and Makalela ground the reader in a decolonial agenda by tracing their own parents’ multilingual language practices free from normative approaches to numeracy and literacy. They also use examples from continental and diasporic African communities to challenge monolingual ways of researching multilingualism and to push for a rethink of sociolinguistic methods. A thoroughly enjoyable read offering fresh ways of seeing multilingual practices at the margins.
I saw the dog
For March, Hanna Torsh recommends I saw the dog: How language works by Alexandra Aikenvald. Drawing on the author’s considerable linguistic and cultural expertise, this book answers the question what language is and how it works to create our social world. Written for a general audience, this book is clear and accessible in its explanation of central concepts in the study of linguistic diversity. The author argues passionately that although all languages are similar in their fundamentals, the differences between them are not superficial but fundamental to different subjective experience. Losing a language then is akin to losing an entire world.
Another book cover illustrated by the talented Sadami Konchi
Bilingual Development in Childhood
For April, Ana Sofia Bruzon recommends Bilingual Development in Childhood by Annick De Houwer. This book reviews novel literature on bilingual child-rearing in monolingual contexts, where a societal language is used in education and government, and a non-societal language is used in the home. De Houwer shows that language hierarchies and different language learning environments significantly impact the learning trajectories of bilingual children. She also debunks some of the most deep-seated myths associated with bilingualism in childhood, such as the idea that bilingual children show slower language development than their monolingual peers.
Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice
For May, Madiha Neelam recommends Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice by Ingrid Piller. The book explains the global languages system and how linguistic subordination is linked to social stratification. The book has gained renewed relevance and urgency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as it not only provides insights into linguistic and social inequality but also includes many practical suggestions how to achieve greater social justice.
Dancing with Strangers
For June, students in the “Languages and Cultures in Contact” unit in Macquarie University’s postgraduate program in Applied Linguistics recommend Inga Clendinnen’s Dancing with Strangers.
Inga Clendinnen "Dancing with Strangers"
In this thread students @MQLinguistics read Clendinnen's historical #ethnography based on the diaries of the officers of the 1st fleet to learn about #InterculturalCommunication between British colonizers and Sydney's Indigenous people pic.twitter.com/dfm6DbHNU7
— Language on the Move (@Lg_on_the_Move) October 7, 2021
Art of Islam: Language and Meaning
For July, Tazin Abdullah recommends Art of Islam: Language and Meaning by Titus Burckhardt with photographs by Roland Michaud. A visual delight to flip through, Art of Islam may, initially, appear to be just another book of beautiful photographs from the Islamic world. But this expansive work does much more: it reveals the history behind artistic creations from the birth of Islam to the most prominent manifestations of Islamic thought in buildings, paintings and artifacts. With meticulous attention to the ideological and metaphysical processes behind the construction of artworks, this book affirms that history, culture and expression are inextricably bound. Burckhardt and Michaud’s ethnographic presentation of the Islamic world is a profound historical insight into many of the most discussed aspects of Muslim thought and life.
On not speaking Chinese
For August, Jinhyun Cho recommends On not speaking Chinese: living between Asia and the West by Ien Ang. This book critically examines tensions between Asia and the West in both Australian and global contexts with a particular focus on the disparate meanings of Chineseness. Ang illustrates multiculturalism as a form of symbolic politics aimed at redefining national identity but suppressing a problematization of race and racism. As a result, Asians in Australia are ambivalently situated between official inclusion and practical exclusion.
We Children and the Narrow Road to the Deep North
September is always a busy month so Sadami Konchi recommends a special treat: the picture book We Children and the Narrow Road to the Deep North by Libby Hathorn and illustrated by Sadami Konchi herself. The book breaks new ground in Australian publishing by showcasing a famous Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). The charming and heart-warming story of three village children’s meeting with the poet stimulates the imagination, promotes understanding of Japanese culture, and showcases world poetry. The book also celebrates nature and provides insight into the human condition and intercultural understanding from the children’s eye level. The book is an important addition to the limited resources supporting the Australian curriculum with quality stories and teaching materials about Japanese culture and literature, particularly haiku.
How to Pronounce Knife
For October, Loy Lising recommends How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa. The book offers glimpses into the challenges and triumphs that Lao immigrants face in their new country through 14 short stories covering diverse themes of love, power, survival, identity, and belonging. The title story is about a schoolgirl who brings home a book and asks her immigrant dad for help with an unfamiliar word. Unfortunately, he mispronounces it, and repeating the mispronunciation in school lands her in a lot of trouble …
Language and Spirit
For November, Robyn Moloney recommends Language and Spirit: Exploring languages, religion and spirituality in Australia today. Edited by Robyn Moloney and Father Shenouda Mansour, the book will be published by Palgrave Macmillan earlier in 2022. This book portrays the often neglected connection between language and faith in a mix of 36 personal narratives and 11 academic studies. All major religions and over 40 languages are represented. For instance, teachers of Indigenous languages speak of the critical connection between language, spirituality of Country, and well-being. A pre-print of the chapter about Chinese converts to Christianity and their language learning and settlement experiences is available here.
Learning Languages in Early Modern England
Last but not least, Ingrid Piller recommends Learning Languages in Early Modern England by John Gallagher. A further nail in the coffin of the idea that multilingualism and superdiversity are modern phenomena, this book traces language learning in the early modern period – of European languages by British people and English by immigrants to the British Isles. The book is a brilliant attempt to historicize the concept of linguistic competence. It is also one of those rare academic books that are both meticulously researched and a delight to read.
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