“Appropriateness” in foreign language acquisition and use: some theoretical, methodological and ethical considerations

In this contribution, I focus on the concept of “appropriateness” in the usage, the learning and the teaching of foreign languages. Using a participant-based emic perspective, I investigate multilinguals’ perceptions of appropriateness in their foreign languages. Referring to the existing literature, and using previously unpublished material collected through a web questionnaire (Dewaele and Pavlenko 2001–2003), I will show that multilinguals develop their judgements of appropriateness, a crucial aspect of sociopragmatic and sociocultural competence, as part of their socialisation in a new language/culture. However, their ability to judge appropriateness accurately does not imply that they will always act “appropriately”. Indeed, the presence of conflicting norms in their other languages may contribute to conscious or unconscious divergence from the “appropriate” norm in a particular language. Some implications for foreign language teaching will be considered

‘Waltzing St. Kilda’: Writing in Polish in Australia

This article is an overview of literature in Polish produced in Australia. As Michael Jacklin has argued (2009), LOTE (Languages Other Than English) writing in Australia ‘has yet to be recognised’. Multilingual writing constitutes a hidden history within Australian literary studies. Polish-language writing is one such hidden history. The two largest waves of emigration from Poland to Australia took place in the decade after the Second World War (ca. 1947-1956), and in the 1980s and 1990s, in the wake of the martial law imposed by General Jaruzelski in 1981 to suppress the opposition movement, Solidarity (Kujawa 142). Our primary focus in this article is the literature in Polish created by authors who came to Australia as part of these two waves. We also discuss the work of Liliana Rydzyńska, who arrived in Australia in 1969, i.e. between the two waves. We then offer a brief survey of more recent Australian writing in Polish, from 2000 till the present. We close with reference to work produced in English by Australian authors of Polish-speaking heritage. Our research on Polish-language writing in Australia traces an evolution from post-WWII writing, on the one hand dominated by traumatic memories of war and experiences of alienation, on the other characterized by exuberant satirical impulses, to post-Solidarity-era writing, largely reflective of a closer engagement with Australian landscapes and culture, and often, a sense of cosmopolitan and transnational identity.

Evoking a Displaced Homeland: the ‘Poetic Memoir’ of Andrzej Chciuk

This article looks at some poems by Polish Australian writer Andrzej Chciuk (1920-1978). Chciuk migrated to Australia from France in 1951, having escaped Nazi-occupied Poland as a twenty-year-old in 1940. In Australia he worked as a schoolteacher in Melbourne while continuing to write poetry and fiction in Polish. His work was published in prestigious Polish emigré outlets like the Paris-based journal Kultura and in Australia with sponsorship from the Polish migrant community; to date no English translations of it have appeared. My article focuses on a sequence of poems in his 1961 Pamiętnik poetycki (Poetic Memoir) called ‘Tamta Ziemia’ (That Other Land), about the cities and towns of Chciuk’s childhood: Lwów, Borysław and his hometown of Drohobycz. When the author was growing up these towns were in eastern Poland; by the time of his writing, in the 1950s, however, they had become part of Soviet Ukraine, and were thus doubly removed from his life in Australia. He wrote as a displaced person whose childhood home had itself been displaced. Hence the powerful note of longing that pervades his ‘poetic memoir’. Through a reading of some passages in my English translation, I hope to convey something of Chciuk’s lively poetic voice, and to show that he deserves admission to discussions of twentieth-century transnational Australian literature

Putin's Annus Mirabilis: Changing the Shape of Eurasia

Many foreign observers have joined with commentators within the Russian regime to declare Vladimir Putin’s performance on the world stage during 2013 a triumph. Russians of dissident persuasion have tended to acknowledge his successes, too, while accentuating the downsides in the hope of descrying a trend, and I will be attempting to do something similar. But first the triumph

Socialist population politics : the political implications of recent demographic trends in the USSR, Poland and Yugoslavia

This thesis attempts to describe the main areas and the main ways in which population trends affect politics in the USSR, Poland and Yugoslavia. Discussion is concentrated on the domestic rather than the international aspects of the problems involved, and special attention is devoted to the fields of ethnic relations and population policy-making. While a loosely comparative framework has been adopted, each of the three main countries is treated as an individual case study. Special endeavours have been made to avoid the repetition and the lack of regional colour and authenticity that comparative studies are sometimes apt to fall into. While considerations of space have prevented extending the analysis to the remaining countries of Socialist Europe, comparative references to them are frequent; and the general chapters 2 & 6 are partly devoted to them. In this way, it is hoped that some of the contrasts and similarities between the three main countries in the study and the other countries in the area will be brought out. A rather fuller statement of the problems tackled in the thesis can be found in the Introduction

The emotional weight of "I love you" in multilinguals' languages

The present paper considers the perceived emotional weight of the phrase I love you in multilinguals’ different languages. The sample consists of 1459 adult multilinguals speaking a total of 77 different first languages. They filled out an on-line questionnaire with open and closed questions linked to language behavior and emotions. Feedback on the open question related to perceived emotional weight of the phrase I love you in the multilinguals’ different languages was recoded in three categories: it being strongest in (1) the first language (L1), (2) the first language and a foreign language, and (3) a foreign language (LX). A majority of speakers felt I love you was strongest in their L1. Participants offered various explanations for their perception. Statistical analyses revealed that the perception of weight of the phrase I love you was associated with self-perceived language dominance, context of acquisition of the L2, age of onset of learning the L2, degree of socialization in the L2, nature of the network of interlocutors in the L2, and self-perceived oral proficiency in the L2

Nebuliser therapy in the intensive care unit

The relationship between identity, lived experience, sexual practices and the language through which these are conveyed has been widely debated in sexuality literature. For example, ‘coming out’ has famously been conceptualised as a ‘speech act’ (Sedgwick 1990) and as a collective narrative (Plummer 1995), while a growing concern for individuals’ diverse identifications in relations to their sexual and gender practices has produced interesting research focusing on linguistic practices among LGBT-identified individuals (Leap 1995; Kulick 2000; Cameron and Kulick 2006; Farqhar 2000). While an explicit focus on language remains marginal to literature on sexualities (Kulick 2000), issue of language use and translation are seldom explicitly addressed in the growing literature on intersectionality. Yet intersectional perspectives ‘reject the separability of analytical and identity categories’ (McCall 2005:1771), and therefore have an implicit stake in the ‘vernacular’ language of the researched, in the ‘scientific’ language of the researcher and in the relationship of continuity between the two. Drawing on literature within gay and lesbian/queer studies and cross-cultural studies, this chapter revisits debates on sexuality, language and intersectionality. I argue for the importance of giving careful consideration to the language we choose to use as researchers to collectively define the people whose experiences we try to capture. I also propose that language itself can be investigated as a productive way to foreground how individual and collective identifications are discursively constructed, and to unpack the diversity of lived experience. I address intersectional complexity as a methodological issue, where methodology is understood not only as the methods and practicalities of doing research, but more broadly as ‘a coherent set of ideas about the philosophy, methods and data that underlie the research process and the production of knowledge’ (McCall 2005:1774). My points are illustrated with examples drawn from my ethnographic study on ‘lesbian’ identity in urban Russia, interspersed with insights from existing literature. In particular, I aim to show that an explicit focus on language can be a productive way to explore the intersections between the global, the national and the local in cross-cultural research on sexuality, while also addressing issues of positionality and accountability to the communities researched