Language on the Move
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languageonthemove.bsky.social
Language on the Move
@languageonthemove.bsky.social

Linguistic diversity in social life

By Ingrid Piller, author of "Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice" "Intercultural Communication" and "Life in a New Language"

https://www.languageonthemove.org/

Ingrid Piller is an Australian linguist, who specializes in intercultural communication, language learning, multilingualism, and bilingual education. Piller is Distinguished Professor at Macquarie University and an elected fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Piller serves as Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Multilingua and as founding editor of the research dissemination site Language on the Move. She is a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts. .. more

Communication & Media Studies 41%
Psychology 16%

After our end-of-year publishing break, Language on the Move is back with an important post about how ChatGPT can actually weaken migrant mutual aid efforts, by @schenior.bsky.social

Another example where GenAI is useful in theory but damaging in reality

languageonthemove.com/digital-mutu...
Digital mutual aid among migrants, in the shadow of ChatGPT
For nearly four years now, I’ve been heavily involved in online (Telegram-based) communities for Ukrainian forced migrants in Austria. Such communities sprang up all across Europe after Russia’s fu…
languageonthemove.com
Are you an early career researcher interested in communicating linguistics to broader audiences?

Consider applying for a @lingcomm.org grant!
Deadline April 30, via @lingthusiasm.com

lingcomm.org/grants/
Grants
2026 LingComm Grants – Small Grants for Communicating Linguistics to Wider Audiences We want to see more linguistics in the world!  The 2026 LingComm Grants are $300 (USD) to support lin…
lingcomm.org

"Language educators are reminded not to separate language proficiency from the contexts in which language is used and the communicative purposes it serves."

New review of "Life in a New Language" (@academic.oup.com)

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/A7VKQ...
Life in a new language
Published in International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Ahead of Print, 2026)
www.tandfonline.com

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

When I talk about the ethics of using AI it’s this kind of thing that is on my mind.

Every lesson plan or admin task produced by an LLM is constructed on the back of real emotional harm and exploitation of labour in the global south. /1

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
‘In the end, you feel blank’: India’s female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI
Women in rural communities describe trauma of moderating violent and pornographic content for global tech companies
www.theguardian.com
A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.

"In every discipline, women, as soon as they die, are usually erased."

Powerful tribute to Deborah Cameron by Teresa Moure
mircouam.com/en/archivos/...
Lang may yer lum reek! In memory of Deborah Cameron – mirco
mircouam.com

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

Just finished the
@languageonthemove.bsky.social
podcast- Alexandra Grey speaks with Zozan Balci about Zozan’s new book, Erased Voices and Unspoken Heritage (2025). Having the same name with my late sister, Zozan portrays a wonderful discussion around names among several other issues. Great talk!

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

As a teacher, I believe there is no such thing as a stupid question; as a researcher, I know there are plenty of stupid questions. What you ask and how you ask it makes or breaks the quality of your research.
I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊

Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.
Part 1: How do LLMs work?
YouTube video by Andrew Perfors
www.youtube.com

So sad to hear about the passing of Deb Cameron!
One of the brightest, most incisive and most fun voices in sociolinguistics.
She will be sadly missed!
If you want to honor her by re-reading some of her work, this old post is still worth a read: www.languageonthemove.com/language-lie...

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the term “language shift”? What are the circumstances that lead to the extinction of a language, and how can we participate in its protection and survival? The @uni-hamburg.de invites you to the LiDS Lunch Lecture with Dr. Hannah Sarvasy

Always good to form good habits🤗

Thanks for highlighting the show with @marcosantello.bsky.social, who focusses on the lived experience of migration, of people in interaction ... and finds it's more likely to be an experience of constraint rather than liberation

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

My new habit is listening to @languageonthemove.bsky.social podcast. The last one was
"Migration, constraints, and suffering" in which Ingrid Piller talks to Marco Santello about his research with Gambian migrants in Italy. Constraints & suffering are keywords in the highly engaging conversation.
are you displeased with today’s AI safety evaluation landscape and curious about what greater conceptual clarity, methodological soundness, and rigour in AI evaluation could look like? if so, consider coming to Dublin to pursue a PhD with me

apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a...

pls repost

Nominations for the Penny Pether Award for Law and Language Scholarship close on Jan 31

law.unlv.edu/lawyering-pr...
The Penny Pether Award for Law and Language Scholarship
law.unlv.edu

Little piece of good news to end the year on a high note: the Language-on-the-Move Podcast @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social has won the Australian Linguistic Society's 2025 Talkley Award in recognition of our contributions to public knowledge about language 🤩👏🫶

www.languageonthemove.com/language-on-...
Language on the Move Podcast wins Talkley Award 2025
Final piece of good news for the year before we head into a publishing break over January: we’ve just heard that the Language-on-the-Move Podcast has won the 2025 Talkley Award 🙌🙌🏿🙌🏾🙌🏽🙌🏼🙌🏻 Th…
www.languageonthemove.com

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

Honored that our article, "The Myth of AGI", was one of Tech Policy Press's Top 30 read pieces of the year.

In some great company here, especially with @eryk.bsky.social's "Anatomy of an AI Coup".

www.techpolicy.press/top-30-most-...

(with @emilymbender.bsky.social)
Top 30 Most Read Pieces on Tech Policy Press in 2025 | TechPolicy.Press
In 2025, Tech Policy Press published over 1,100 posts, including articles, analyses, perspectives, transcripts, trackers, podcasts, and more.
www.techpolicy.press

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

Been seeing a lot of blacked out text recently?

Well here's a post that looks similar but shares something altogether different. A poem about language, identity and migration from the @languageonthemove.bsky.social
Malay Sketches
Editor’s note: We are delighted to bring to our readers today another outstanding experience of bilingual creativity, the poem Malay Sketches by Sydney author Aisyah Shah Idil, a runner up of…
www.languageonthemove.com

End-of-year greetings and good wishes from the Language-on-the-Move Team, along with our 2025 annual report 🤗
Check out most-read posts, most-downloaded podcasts, and other highlights 🤩
www.languageonthemove.com/language-on-...
Language on the Move 2025
Unbelievably, another year has passed and it’s time to write another annual report. 2025 has been incredibly busy for us. Apart from everything we do in the real world, we’ve published 64 blog post…
www.languageonthemove.com
The shorteste daye
The longest nighte
Welcome, sun
Welcome, lighte

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

Not a part of the article I just linked, but: of the most important things I’ve learned is how the hippie to technofascist pipeline occurred in part bc men like Jobs understood that computers, which were once seen as “the system,” needed to be marketed as tools of free thinking individualism.

Reposted by Ingrid Piller

If you missed out on the Language-on-the-Move Symposium about "New Technologies in Intercultural Communication" at Macquarie University last week, Jemima Rillera Kempster has a wrap for you: tech must always be about centering people!

www.languageonthemove.com/centering-pe...
Centering people in technology-mediated communication
On a crack-of-dawn flight early Monday morning last week, I flew to Sydney for the day to attend “New Technologies in Intercultural Communication”, a symposium hosted by the Language on…
www.languageonthemove.com
Yet another example of what happens if we allow LLMs to become a form of epistemic grounding for society.
This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites.

The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.
This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites.

The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.
When the AI boom began, copywriters were singled out as one of the jobs most vulnerable to AI. Now, three years later, I wanted to hear from workers on the frontlines of the industry, to hear what had actually taken place on the ground.

For many, it was even worse than they'd feared.
"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry
Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms. These are their stories, three years into the AI era.
www.bloodinthemachine.com

This is the 2026 fortune I drew at today's end-of-year party in the Macquarie #Linguistics Department - watch out for the Piller spot 😅