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This book looks at language in unexpected places. Drawing on a diversity of materials and contexts, including farewell addresses to British workers in colonial India, letters written from parents to their children at home, a Cornish anthem sung in South Australia, a country fair in rural Australia, and a cricket match played in the middle of the 19th century in south India, this book explores many current concerns around language, mobility and place, including native speakers, generic forms, and language maintenance. Using a series of narrative accounts – from a journey to southern India to eating cheese in China, from playing soccer in Germany to observing a student teacher in Sydney – this book asks how it is that language, people and cultures turn up unexpectedly and how our lines of expectation are formed.
This book offers Pennycook's always innovative theoretical insights in a brilliant, original blend of fine scholarship and personal narrative. It evocatively describes the author’s retracing of his family’s history in colonial India, draws on concepts from many disciplines, and makes unexpected and illuminating connections with language education.
Alastair Pennycook is Professor of Language Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is widely known for his work on the politics of language, language and globalization, language and popular culture and language education. His current research is exploring urban multilingualism (metrolingualism). His recent book Language as a Local Practice was shortlisted for the BAAL book award, which he has won on two previous occasions for The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language and Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows.
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Retracing Routes: Manjari Seeds and Nutmeg Trees
Chapter 2 Turning up in Unexpected Places
Chapter 3 Through Others’ Eyes and Thinking Otherwise
Chapter 4 Constrained Mobilities: Epistolary Parenting
Chapter 5 Resourceful Speakers
Chapter 6 Elephant Tracks
Chapter 7 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackboard
Chapter 8 Beyond the Boundaries of Expectation