“But that’s in bad faith”, a student retorted to my comment. “It’s done in bad faith”, they emphasized. “How so?”, I asked back. “We just saw it from research”, I added, with a somewhat rising intonation. “Well, it’s just… it’s bad faith… yeah”, the student shrugged with a tight-lipped, resigned smile. Hmm, is it? […]
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a pattern I’ve been noticing—but low-key ignoring—in my daily linguistic interactions with some Montrealers. That is, for some reason, my interactions would almost always start in French, but will never end in French. Instead, such interactions would typically switch into English within 5 seconds. But I suppose it’s […]
Perhaps the beauty—and challenge—of doing second language research lies in its propensity to provide the researcher unexpected moments of reflexivity. In the following text (for a lack of a better word), I share my reflections about language, identity, and one’s ‘right to talk,’ inspired from reading and discussing Norton’s (2013) book on identity in language […]
This blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text. “If the Land is a person, how would you introduce yourself to it?” My academic ate ([‘atɛ]; “big sister” in Tagalog) Rhonda asked that while […]
We are all plurilinguals (Piccardo, 2019). This is a quote from one of my courses in Fall 2020, one that has resonated with me profoundly. It’s a line that I keep hearing in my head, and a lesson that I’ll take with me beyond this course’s online classroom (thanks for that, COVID-19!). For the final […]
