Language and Culture in ELT

Book synopsis: The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teaching is the definitive reference volume for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students of Applied Linguistics, ELT/TESOL, and Language Teacher Education, and for ELT professionals engaged in in-service teacher development and/or undertaking academic study

Translating culture in global times: an introduction

This special issue is a spin-off from the colloquium of the same title at AILA World Congress in Rio 2017 and took inspiration from the Translating Cultures programme by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK. The papers all grapple with issues of diversity and the translation of experience across social and cultural domains, whether as overt, covert or translanguaging processes and they explore the impact of global information and communication technologies on these processes. The first paper by Juliane House lays the ground for understanding the process of translation itself. The four subsequent papers by Kramsch, Zhu Hua et al, Johnson and Park examine four different sites where cultural translation forms the core of the activity under study: foreign language classrooms in California, a karate club in London, a family with the deaf child of a hearing mother in the U.S., and the workplace of a multinational corporation in Singapore. They each deal with the commodification of language and the attempts to make untranslatable experiences translatable across cultural boundaries. Even though language teachers, karate club owners, hearing technology manufacturers and multinational corporations attempt to break down these boundaries through various means: the use of a common global language (Kramsch; Zhu Hua et al.), cochlear implants (Johnson), or diversity management techniques (Park), there is always an untranslatable residue that reveals unbridgeable cultural differences. The sixth paper, by David Gramling discusses the futuristic vision of the computer industry currently building algorithms of perfect and total translatability across languages. In the Commentaries section which serves as a coda, all the contributors were invited to reflect on the main theme of this special issue and to enter into dialogue with one another

Pr\ue9cis du Plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme

This handbook is organized around linguistic and cultural plurality. The French concept of \uab plurality \ubb has different political connotations than the Angloamerican term \uab diversity \ubb. While \uab diversity \ubb is the ideal of a neo-liberal democracy, \uab plurality \ubb is the ideal of a republican society committed to the tenets of the French Revolution. Following Bourdieu (1977), it defines language as an \uab instrument of action (or of power) \ubb and aims to reconstruct the complexity of social and linguistic practices that constitute our relationship to the foreign. Plurality here is not defined as the mere coexistence of various languages, but rather as a specific social activity characterized by the circulation of values across borders, the negotiation of identities, and the inversions\u2013indeed, the inventions\u2013of meaning that are often masked by the shared illusion of successful communication. Plurality is approached in this book: - as a complex aggregate, rather than as the simplified object of a communicatively oriented language pedagogy primarily concerned with intelligibility - as a coherent system of relationships whose description cannot be reduced to a series of mechanical operations - as a socio-historical construct, observable from many simultaneous, spatiotemporal points of view, such as that of everyday interactions or that of institutions whose symbolic force cannot be accounted for from one point of view alone

International education: a force for peace and cross-cultural understanding?

This paper discusses the notion that the international sojourn has the potential to transform sojourners into cultural mediators who carry the power to improve global relations. A year-long ethnographic study of the adjustment experiences of international postgraduate students in England revealed a universal early enthusiasm for cross-cultural contact that was matched by a widespread adoption of segregated patterns of interacting. The most common friendship networks were described by bonds with conationals, and yet all students attested to an increase in their cultural learning and mindfulness by the end of the sojourn. Nevertheless, intercultural competence was maximised only in those few students who pursued a multicultural strategy of interaction, leading the researcher to call on Higher Education Institutions to instigate policies to encourage lasting cross-cultural contact

Translanguaging and Public Service Encounters: Language Learning in the Library

This article explores the information desk of a city library as a site for language learning. Using a linguistic ethnographic approach, the interactions between a customer experience and information assistant and the many library users who approach her information desk were analysed. Findings are that, in addition to providing information about library resources, information desks are sites at which bits and pieces of different languages are taught and learned. Such language teaching and learning episodes created interactions of inclusion and welcome that went far beyond purely transactional information. Rather, language‐related episodes created moments of human contact and engagement, which were upheld through the translanguaging practices of interactants, the disposition and workplace competence of library staff, and the spatial ecology of the information desk. Furthermore, the article contributes to ongoing theoretical debates about translanguaging by noting that normativity and pressure toward uniformity are as much a part of languaging processes as creativity and flexibility. Our definition of translanguaging recognises the opposing pull of centrifugal and centripetal forces. The article ends by asking what schools, and language education, might learn from public libraries in creating arenas that maintain communitarianism, diversity of expression, and the development of civic skills

Translating culture in global times: dialogues

As a way of concluding this thematic issue, we have created a space for our contributors to read each other’s articles and to reflect on the main theme, i.e. translating culture in global times. We invited their response to four questions that we believe are not only central to the aims of the special issue, but also encourage further dialogues on the role of translation in applied linguistics and translation as mission and practice. • How does the distinction between cultural difference and cultural diversity help us understand the way culture and translation are conceptualized and operationalized? • How does the translanguaging perspective help to understand cultural translation and what are the limitations or issues for future exploration? • What are the ethical challenges in cultural translation and how do we as applied linguists address ethical issues in cultural translation? • What implications do the new ways of understanding cultural translation debated in the special issue have for the field of applied linguistics

Negotiating topic changes:native and non-native English speakers in conversation

There is a tendency to view conversations involving non‐native speakers (NNSs) as inevitably fraught with problems, including an inability to handle topic management. This article, in contrast, will focus on effective topic changes made by non‐native speakers during informal conversations with native speakers of English. A micro‐analysis of ten conversations revealed several ways of shifting conversational topics; however, the article concentrates on those strategies which the participants used to effect a particular type of topic move, namely ‘marked topic changes’, where there is no connection at all with previous talk. The findings show how these topic changes were jointly negotiated, and that the non‐native speakers’ contributions to initiating new topics were competently managed

Language and anxiety: an ethnographic study of international postgraduate students

This paper presents some findings from an ethnographic study of international postgraduate students at a university in the South of England, which involved interviews and participant observation over a twelve-month academic year. One of the major themes that emerged from this research was students’ anxiety over their level of English language. Although all students entered their course with a minimum level of IELTS 6, the majority felt disadvantaged by particularly poor spoken English, and suffered feelings of anxiety, shame and inferiority. Low self-confidence meant that they felt ill-equipped to engage in class discussion and in social interaction which used English as the medium of communication. A common reaction to stress caused by language problems was to retreat into monoethnic communication with students from the same country, further inhibiting progress in language. Whilst some linguistic progress was made by nearly all students during the academic sojourn, the anxiety suffered by students in the initial stage must not be underestimated, and appropriate support systems must be put in place to alleviate their distress