My mind is awash with thoughts from last week’s linguistic landscape workshop in Ethiopia’s capital city—thoughts from the last two days of informal visits to the campus of Addis Ababa University, from a group excursion 300km through the countryside to the Debre Libanos Monastery and the Blue Nile Gorge, [...]

Back in Paris again, I had the opportunity recently to meet with French teachers and researchers of English, German and French as a foreign language. They couldn’t wait to leave on vacation and were venting their frustrations that the “bac” or high school graduating examination lets 80-85% of students through these days and thus lowers [...]

From the Lion King, one line from the Hula Song in 17 languages: Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Mex. Spanish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, and Swedish. A video tailor-made for FIT!

So instead of writing a post inspired by a rereading of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, I thought I would have a little more fun with my iMovie, and “vlog” instead of blogging. Here’s a short reflection on habitus through the scripts I have inhabited….and which have inhabited me.

Music: Jacques Dutronc, “Les cactus”

Habitus from [...]

In reading On Phenomenology and Social Relations, I was struck by some glorious lines Alfred Schutz (1970) penned on language. You find these lines in the chapter entitled Social Means of Orientation and Interpretation, which begins by situating language in the context of culture:

“In order to command a language freely as a scheme [...]

I got this email from Wolfgang E. Adolph in the Department of Mod. Lang. & Linguistics at Florida State University via the Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum listserv; considering the UC system’s ongoing budget woes and threats to our languages at Cal I thought it’d be good to cross-post in its [...]

I’ve just come down to San Diego for my first-ever AERA (American Educational Research Association) conference, and there’s much to write about. Actually, with probably around 10,000 people spread across 4 giant convention centers and hotels, there’s way too much going on to capture anything more than a tiny fragment. But one thing [...]

After being gently prodded to do a “post” on this, rather than simply offer an “aside,” I thought I’d write up “25 Language-Related Random Things” about me, inspired by the Facebook phenomenon taking the Internet by storm.

1. Sometimes when I am writing quickly in Bengali, I use Hindi letters.
2. When I was [...]

The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (the German Language Society) has recently unveiled the Wort des Jahres (Word of the Year):

Finanzkrise (Financial Crisis).

And the Unwort des Jahres (Unword of the Year) award (one that is “misleading, goes against fact,” according to my German friend) goes to:

notleidende Banken (Needy Banks)

The [...]

Youki and I found this great multilingual rendition of “Happy Birthday” on Youtube that we wanted to share with our fellow FITizens:

Sublime, huh? We wish everyone born today-a day picked oh so randomly-a very happy birthday.

Oh, and Fitzy, unwilling to be left out, offered this.

An article in the Telegraph, UK, covers what it calls a “growing backlash” in Germany against the popular trend of appropriating English words into German discourse, or what is called “Denglisch.” An increasingly globalized world, the spread of English-based technology, and a high rate of immigration into the country (there are some 10 [...]

The Independent, UK, has an article about how the highly reputed German scientific journal, Max Planck Forschung, unwittingly used a cover image with Chinese text from a Macau brothel to highlight its China issue. In place of what the editors imagined was ancient Chinese poetry, they ended up with some clearly racy text. [...]

“What’s your favorite word in another language? Why?” asks a prompt on this site. English being an “another language” for me, here’s my favorite word: “Love.” My linguistic history with the word has been a long one, probably going back two and a half decades, though I did not ever utter it to another person [...]