Thank you! Now the real work begins!

Speaking English was a political choice, of a self-reliant politician, in this situation that also linguistically was quite impossible to negociate .8/8

Should have President Zelensky been speaking through a translator in his native tongue? Impossible. Why? Because his native tongue is Russian. Ukrainian is his third lqnguage, which only illustrates the imperial history of this region. 7/x

So what about Friday and EFL? President Zelensky was speaking in a foreign language, in a highly charged situation —a situation that the current US president can’t imagine, not knowing any foreign language. 6/x

And yes, we know nothing about language strategies applied by 🇵🇱 president this week, because as a prelude to Friday’s performance toward Eastern Europe, Andrzej Duda was not even in the White House and there was no presser together. 5/x

But Macron, as a power move, was also speaking 🇫🇷and using a translator, giving a clear sign that he’s engaging on his own terms. Which allowed him to interject in English about the European involvenent in Ukraine in a different register, in a less official manner. 4/x

There is also a hierarchy of accents, hierarchy of languages and their „beauty”. Macron this week elicited comments from the president when he was speaking French. 3/x

The current president has a history of „not understanding” EFL accents. It happened 3 weeks ago with an Afgan reporter, which went viral, happened on Friday again with an East European journalist. Both were women, too, btw. 2/x

With the authors of recent books innovatively using the gender/sexuality studies lens and moderated by Marjorie Lehman.
This event is a follow-up on the Conversation event organized by Marjorie and me earlier this year, markung the end of our co-chairing of the Gender/Sexuality Studies AJS division.