The aim of this paper is to advance an understanding of power in linguistic landscape research. After setting out and discussing the concepts of 'power over', 'power to' and 'power through', we present a case study of Chinese semiotic assemblages in the Australian regional city of Bendigo. Our research includes ethnographic details of the…

This article examines the institutional and market treatment of the profession of interpreting in the English-monolingual context of Australia. Based on qualitative interview methods with 67 healthcare interpreters in Australia, the study aims to explore the impact of the linguistic hierarchies in favour of English on the financial and…

This article examines interpreters' dilemmas and choices in the case of home-based aged care assessments of elderly migrants in Australia. Based on one-on-one interviews with professional interpreters, it specifically explores tensions between power, norms and interpreters' own positionings on intercultural communication problems. Data analysis…

Research on intercultural interactions in higher education focuses on measuring student attitudes and degrees of cosmopolitanism, but there is little theoretically and empirically informed effort to understand 1) the nature of these campus interactions as ordinary, embodied, and routine, and 2) the cultural and social impact of campus…

This article tackles specific issues that arise in teaching human rights in a Western academic institution. As critical human rights scholars, we are concerned with a pedagogy of human rights that gives respect to cultural diversity and the cross-cultural applicability of concepts and social issues in ways that are not antithetical to the purpose…

This paper employs the new materialist methodology of diffraction to probe the entanglements of matter and discourse that comprise the assemblage of Pilipinx becoming, or the ways by which people are racialized as Pilipinx. By methodologically diffracting Pilipinx becoming through the public pedagogy of punk rock, this research complicates…

This article explores the construction and shifting of "expert" and "novice" roles between and within two languages (Japanese and English). Taking a language socialization perspective while drawing upon insights from conversation analysis on epistemics in interaction, it analyzes seven hours of audio recordings of dinnertime…

The global middle class (GMC) is a theoretical construct that seeks to globalise a set of attributes identified in studies of school choice in the global north, and to a lesser extent in developing nations in Asia. As theorised by Ball a mobile middle class with cosmopolitan sensibilities drives international education options in global cities.…

Parents and educators strive to help their children to develop optimally. Given the diversity of values and practices among dynamic modern populations it is important to understand all the dimensions that affect the development of children in their communities. A cultural-historical lens facilitates such a holistic understanding. Taking this lens,…

As the power of tests lies in their uses, language tests that are used to assess immigration eligibility exercise enormous power. Critical Language Testing calls for exposing the power of tests by examining the intentions of introducing tests and their effects on individuals and society, especially from the perspective of test-takers. This case…

In Australia, students from Chinese and Arabic language backgrounds form the largest minority language groups in the New South Wales (NSW) public school system. Yet the mainstream academic performance of students from these two communities show marked differences in their levels of attainment. This article explores the home literacy practices of…

This paper examines Chinese migrant young people's lifestyles and physical activity experiences in relation to the values and cultural investments of their families in Australia. The data in this paper were taken from a larger-scale study underpinned by a critical and interpretive ethnographic method conducted in two school sites. The young…

Melbourne's linguistic and cultural diversity has continually changed in response to global economic forces and shifting patterns of war and conflict. Immigrant and refugee communities have arrived with different skills, educational and professional profiles, and cultural and religious values. The ecological niches of three contrasting linguistic…

Sociolinguists have recently employed the notion of spatiotemporal scales to explain the changing social status of linguistic codes across social and geopolitical domains. Scales enable us to address the portability of semiotic resources in migration with great insight. In addition, unlike romanticized orientations to globalization and…