Life in a New Language

By: Ingrid Piller, Donna Butorac, Emily Farrell, Loy Lising, Shiva Motaghi-Tabari

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Paperback | 25 September 2024

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216 Pages

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23.52 x 15.67 x 1.19

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International migration and the social diversity it creates constitute one of the key global challenges of the early 21st century. Language and communication barriers can compromise equitable access in diverse societies, and where socioeconomic disadvantage becomes entrenched, it poses risks to security, productivity and quality of life. Clearly this is an important issue, and migrants and their language choices are heavily politicized; though political and media debates often rely on anecdotal conjecture or are ill-informed.

Life in a New Language examines the language learning and settlement experiences of 130 migrants to Australia from 34 different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America over a period of 20 years. Reusing data shared from six separate sociolinguistic ethnographies, the book illuminates participants' lived experience of learning and communicating in a new language, finding work, and doing family. Additionally, participants' experiences with racism and identity making in a new context are explored. The research uncovers significant hardship but also migrants' courage and resilience. The book has implications for language service provision, migration policy, open science, and social justice movements.

Industry Reviews

"This volume breaks new ground by focusing on Doings: a group of diverse researchers collaboratively doing close listening and looking over 20 years, as adult immigrants to Australia engage in doing life, things, words, family, and work in a new language. The result is not only new understandings of the participants' self-making, but also the making of a new research trajectory that focuses not simply on the learning of a language, but on humanity doing life in language." Ofelia García, The Graduate Center, City University of New York) "This is a moving book that represents the voices of migrants on their challenges and successes across different kinds of boundaries. It embodies impersonal structural and geopolitical pressures as negotiated in the dreams and aspirations of migrants. The authors share findings from decades-long separate research projects to develop richer insights, as a model for data sharing and ethical research." Suresh Canagarajah, Pennsylvania State University

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