Language on the Move

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Professor David Palfreyman (United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain) about his 2023 book Bilingual writers and corpus analysis.

Palfreyman, D. M., & Habash, N. (2023). Bilingual writers and corpus analysis. Routledge. Link here

Bilingual writers and corpus analysis is one of the first to represent the usage of bilingual writers in both their languages, offering insight into language corpora as extremely valuable tools in contemporary applied linguistics research, and in turn, into how much of the world’s population operate daily.

This book discusses one of the first examples of a bilingual writer corpus, the Zayed Arabic-English Bilingual Undergraduate Corpus (ZAEBUC), which includes writing by hundreds of students in two languages, with additional information about the writers and the texts. The result is a rich resource for research in multilingual use and learning of language. The book takes the reader through the design and use of such a corpus and illustrates the potential of this type of corpus with detailed studies that show how assessment, vocabulary, and discourse work across two very different languages.

This volume will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and educators in bilingualism, plurilingualism, language education, corpus design, and natural language processing.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.
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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with PhD candidate Brynn Quick (Macquarie University, Australia) about her 2025 paper, The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ English language proficiency. The conversation focuses on language policies in healthcare, the monolingual logic, and language access.

Quick, B., Piller, I., & Lising, L. (2025). The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ English language proficiency. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2025.2594462

Abstract. This study investigates how Australian healthcare policies imagine communication between limited English proficiency (LEP) patients and healthcare providers to occur. This is done through a work as imagined (WAI) vs. work as done (WAD) analysis of 13 Australian medical policies from four levels of governance. Findings reveal that policies mostly conceptualise the work of determining if a patient needs a professional interpreter as an act of self-assessment that patients will do themselves. When policies direct healthcare staff to assess patients’ English language proficiency, they often instruct staff to ‘determine if the patient can understand English’, usually without clear instruction on how to do this. Finally, while communication is the goal that drives many of these policies, ‘successful’ communication is conceptualised as language-neutral, implicitly privileging English and erasing LEP patients’ language needs. These findings reflect a novel way of framing policies’ monolingual logic of WAI within the multilingual reality of WAD and mark an innovative contribution to the study of language access rights.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.
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In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast Dr Hanna Torsh talks to Katharina Gensch (University of Hamburg) about her new paper "English language education for older adults in a multilingual urban environment," which has just been published in Educational Gerontology.

Gensch, K. (2025). English language education for older adults in a multilingual urban environment. Educational Gerontology, 1-14. Paper here

Abstract. This paper explores how older adults in the German capital of Berlin react to the perceived increase of English as a commonly used language in their urban environment. Drawing from an interview study with participants of English classes for older adults, the article identifies different attitudes expressed in reaction to linguistic changes in their environment. These attitudes include embracing the concept of an international city and linguistic diversity, framing anglicization as an integral – yet not necessarily well-liked – part of certain neighborhoods, and rejecting it as a discriminatory, ageist practice. Furthermore, the interviewees were found to employ English learning and use as a versatile strategy to participate more fully in their environment’s communicative practices. Due to global dynamics, older adults living in multilingual cities can be expected to become an ever more relevant population group. Research on the language practices of older adults in multilingual environments often focuses on the perspective of migrants’ language acquisition and practices. The article argues that, against the background of globalization, educational gerontology will need to focus more on foreign language acquisition – including research on older migrants, but also on older adults who do live in countries where their first language is the official one, but nevertheless make use of an additional language in order to fully participate in their daily surroundings’ communicative practices.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.
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In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast Dr Hanna Torsh talks to Lindsay McMahon, founder of the All Ears English Podcast, about pronunciation teaching for global English.

What does it mean to speak well? And what does it mean to teach others to speak English well? What does good English sound like for you?

These are questions which teachers of English, as a first, second or foreign language and everything in-between, need to grapple with.

In the interview, Hanna and Lindsay talk about their approach to English language teaching, connection not perfection, and how this translates to a focus on pronunciation which is suited for the needs of students. This means using authentic interactions as much as possible, and working to change minds about the value of ‘native’ accents if most of your interactions are actually using English in global contexts with other multilingual speakers rather than in inner-circle countries with first language speakers. Finally, they touch briefly on what the surge in speech technologies means for teaching and learning pronunciation.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.
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In this episode of Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah talks to Dr. Laura Rademaker (Australian National University), the author of Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission.

The conversation explores the distinctive historical context of Australia’s Northern Territory as a location for Christian missionary activity. Tazin and Laura talk about the multiple tensions and elements involved in language interactions between monolingual English-speaking missionaries and multilingual Indigenous communities, against the background of settler colonialism.

Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission was published by University of Hawai’i Press in 2018.

About the book

Found in Translation is a rich account of language and shifting cross-cultural relations on a Christian mission in northern Australia during the mid-twentieth century. It explores how translation shaped interactions between missionaries and the Anindilyakwa-speaking people of the Groote Eylandt archipelago and how each group used language to influence, evade, or engage with the other in a series of selective “mistranslations.”

In particular, this work traces the Angurugu mission from its establishment by the Church Missionary Society in 1943, through Australia’s era of assimilation policy in the 1950s and 1960s, to the introduction of a self-determination policy and bilingual education in 1973. While translation has typically been an instrument of colonization, this book shows that the ambiguities it creates have given Indigenous people opportunities to reinterpret colonization’s position in their lives.

Laura Rademaker combines oral history interviews with careful archival research and innovative interdisciplinary findings to present a fresh, cross-cultural perspective on Angurugu mission life. Exploring spoken language and sound, the translation of Christian scripture and songs, the imposition of English literacy, and Aboriginal singing traditions, she reveals the complexities of the encounters between the missionaries and Aboriginal people in a subtle and sophisticated analysis.

Rademaker uses language as a lens, delving into issues of identity and the competition to name, own, and control. In its efforts to shape the Anindilyakwa people’s beliefs, the Church Missionary Society utilized language both by teaching English and by translating Biblical texts into the native tongue. Yet missionaries relied heavily on Anindilyakwa interpreters, whose varied translation styles and choices resulted in an unforeseen Indigenous impact on how the mission’s messages were received. From Groote Eylandt and the peculiarities of the Australian settler-colonial context, Found in Translation broadens its scope to cast light on themes common throughout Pacific mission history such as assimilation policies, cultural exchanges, and the phenomenon of colonization itself.

This book will appeal to Indigenous studies scholars across the Pacific as well as scholars of Australian history, religion, linguistics, anthropology, and missiology.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.
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