In L2 learners' second language socialisation process, males and females from different sociocultural backgrounds have diverse attitudes and access to second language acquisition. In this study, informed by feminist poststructuralist theory, we can see the highly context-sensitive nature of the gendered practices and the corresponding outcomes of…

This paper presents an analysis of the potential problems of importing media communication in the form of a television programme from another culture. In Hong Kong, as elsewhere in the world, the local television companies frequently buy successful television programmes from, for example, the USA or Britain with the expectation that they will be…

This paper is concerned with the impact that public and political discourses on the issues of language and ethnicity in Germany have on integration. It suggests that a combined effect of factors such as the traditional concept of "Germanness", peculiarities of Russian Germans' "cultural identity" and certain aspects of German language policy with…

An important feature of the interface between language and society is the use of address terms. Following Brown and Gilman (1960), research studies of address terms have been extended to several cultural settings. This study contributes to this fertile area of sociolinguistic studies by describing the address terms used among undergraduates in an…

This article presents a transcript of an interview that the author conducted with Noam Chomsky. In this interview, Chomsky talks about language acquisition and his theory of Universal Grammar. He then explains how the USA best exemplifies the individualist national culture. He also cites the challenges researchers should address in intercultural…

This paper is a report of a research project on critical multiliteracies and multimodality in Brazilian education. In the context of a growing concern for the construction of images in contemporary society, the paper discusses the interrelations between image, language and interpretation. The specific object of the investigation described below is…

The purpose of this paper is to offer a reading of "Handwriting", the book of poems by the Canadian-Sri Lankan author, Michael Ondaatje, in which he recovers the recent and ancient cultural history of the island through his reading of different types of scripts and languages. The texts that Ondaatje rewrites in his poems are visual, written, oral…

In multilingual Europe, visual discourse may function as a cross-culturally strategic form of communication, thanks in part to its perceptual and iconic availability. In this regard, we offer a social semiotic critique of a range of visual resources deployed in the official promotional texts of 30 of the 43 cities either nominated or competing for…

Henry A. Giroux became established as a leading figure in radical education theory in the 1980s. Not only did he revive the arguments for civic education proposed by the main educational theorists of the 20th century, namely Dewey, Freire and others such as the reconstructionists Counts, Rugg and Brameld, but he also advanced their theories by…

Image studies, or imagology, was traditionally subsumed under the uncritical notion of "national character", which was itself replaced by the constructivist term "national stereotype". Since its origins in comparative literature, the field has moved beyond the narrow disciplinary confines of the humanities, with their predominantly qualitative…

With the advent of European unity, understandings of the terms "Europe" and "European" have become even more complicated than they were before. A contested concept within its borders, how is "Europe" understood and seen from the outside? This paper deals with the under-researched issue of public perceptions of the European Union (EU) outside its…

This paper discusses strategies of intercomprehension in the context of the promotion of plurilingualism and intercultural competence in Europe. Plurilingualism and intercomprehension are concepts of particular importance in the multilingual and multicultural European context. These are explicit aims and requirements of the European Union when…

This paper deals with European language policy and its contribution to the formation of a European identity. The realisation of the "European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages" in Germany and the United Kingdom is discussed and evaluated. (Contains 1 table and 5 notes.)

This paper explores the policy turn of the "learning society", and how the academic world is responding to new social and political demands. It highlights some of the criticisms levelled at the learning society, as well as the voices of support. The paper also showcases the European Language Portfolio and the Transferable Skills project as two…

Danish as a second language textbooks published over the last 15 years have presented the Danish cultural identity as a homogenous and purely national phenomenon. Research into teaching theory, on the other hand, has been more broad-minded, and is based on interactivity. The aim of this paper is to explain this divergence. (Contains 2 notes.)