When I first started studying language policy, I thought I knew where it came from, how it worked, and why it mattered. In my view at the time, language policy was about national politicians trying to manage the language use of perceived outsiders. Then, ten years ago, I started researching what would become the book […]
Read MoreArthur C. Clarke famously stated that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Most of us have experienced this law with respect to the latest iterations of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4. This perspective may lead to incorrect usage of LLMs, resulting in undesirable and dangerous effects such as privacy violations, proliferation […]
Read MoreMy work as a forensic linguist provided a window into the interrogation room. One of the cases in which I consulted was a criminal appellate case in which the defendant’s invocation for counsel was deemed equivocal. The defense contended that the defendant had indeed invoked counsel unequivocally after being read his Miranda rights and hence […]
Read MoreAcademics first become interested in a research field in different ways – some by following a course at university, others through listening and talking to motivating speakers, others by events they have lived through, and some simply by accident. What triggered my interest in bilinguals and bilingualism was my own bilingualism. I started my life […]
Read MoreAssociate Professor Sebastian Rasinger and Professor Guido Rings, authors of The Cambridge Introduction to Intercultural Communication, discuss Intercultural Communication and their latest textbook What is Intercultural Communication? Is it about speaking to people from other countries? Yes – and no. Traditional approaches to intercultural communication predominantly focused on face-to-face interaction between people of different national […]
Read MorePicture a boxing ring, English on one side, diversity on the other, and you have a basic version of the history of written English in schools. English and diversity might otherwise be great friends, but they are continually pitted against one another in educational opportunity structures. In the 18th century, for example, the shift from […]
Read MoreFew would deny that emotions are fundamental to what it means to be human. Indeed, according to some, emotions are what make us human. Given that, and given the fact that humans communicate about their emotional states a great deal, you might think that theories of language and communication would include comprehensive accounts of how […]
Read MoreIn this blog, I provide answers to a few basic questions that I imagine a reader, who is not an expert in historical African linguistics, might wish to ask the author. Why this topic, what’s so interesting about it? Africa is the cradle of humankind and where human language evolved. Tens of thousands of years […]
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