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Keywords: Language

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stop correcting other people’s grammar

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 20 February 2019
    28 Comments

    There is still a segment of the internet obsessed with enforcing 'correct' grammar: the self-styled Grammar Police. In communicating with others, grammar provides clarity, and Australian standard grammar is one way of accomplishing that. But knowing the standardised rules is a skill not everyone has the same access to.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Pittsburgh's hymn of hate

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 29 October 2018
    6 Comments

    Analysts have commented often and at length on the divisive nature of politics in today's USA, citing Trump's inflammatory language and anti-immigration policies. One commentator went so far to say Trump did not 'pull the trigger on Jews in Pittsburgh, but he certainly prepped the shooter'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The case for banning gay conversion therapy

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 06 September 2018
    7 Comments

    When I watch the video 'How women become gay', it hurts. Not because of the anti-gay content, but because it uses language about God's love, the type of religious language I grew up with, to sneak past my defenses. For a moment, despite years of learning to accept myself, I waver.

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  • RELIGION

    When religious language turns public

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 August 2018
    10 Comments

    When conversation in a community is restricted to the public language of broader society, its power to engage community members is diminished. That has happened in the development of a theology of religions within Christian churches. It often emphasises themes that unite religions and are less specifically and distinctively Christian.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A love letter to libraries

    • Sheila Ngoc Pham
    • 10 August 2018
    12 Comments

    We had some books at home so I wasn't wholly deprived but I did have to discover reading without any real parental guidance; English wasn't even our home language. But when I started working at my local public library, it became clear that while I might have been the child of refugees, for many, libraries themselves were a refuge.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Parents, it's time to spike the spank

    • Barry Gittins
    • 19 June 2018
    4 Comments

    If you are inclined to discount expert opinion from medicos, lawyers and criminologists, you could consider the evidence of your own eyes. Observe the body language around you if a parent hits their kid in public. A hush descends and tension increases. Post-Royal Commission, violence against kids is more and more on the nose.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stop maiming the gift of Aboriginal languages

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 12 June 2018
    17 Comments

    As I watched the debacle over the ill-advised Meanjin cover last week, I couldn't help but reflect on Aboriginal languages and how, when our words or histories do come to the forefront, they're continually disrespected or treated as a massive threat to the white patriarchal status quo. Meanjin is only the latest example.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The rewards of reviving languages

    • Sheila Ngoc Pham
    • 27 April 2018
    4 Comments

    As someone who has a language background which will in all likelihood not make it past one more generation in my family here in Australia, I've long understood the way language loss can occur as a result of migration, to say nothing of acts like colonisation. These are great forces that are difficult but, as I've found, not impossible to resist.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Another dog day for cultural appropriation

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 11 April 2018
    1 Comment

    The commentary around the film's appropriation of Japanese culture has been sustained and substantial. At least these allusions are for the most part detailed and respectful; that the hero is named after a defunct American video game company is less palatable. Trickier still are the creative decisions related to language.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Books saved from waste extend the story cycle

    • Julie Perrin
    • 03 April 2018
    7 Comments

    Jill Allan wants to see good stories in circulation. As she holds a book in her hands she asks herself, 'Would a child want this?' She's been a children's librarian for years, she's read the research. The number of books in the home is a crucial factor influencing language and literacy outcomes.

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  • RELIGION

    Rising from the ruins of 2010 Mass translation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 February 2018
    46 Comments

    In Christian churches the celebration of liturgy is always contentious. Fr Gerald O'Collins' latest book deals with a relatively small and domestic issue: the ingeniously engineered launch and spluttering subsidence of a revised English Catholic Mass translation. Though small, the events carry a large symbolic weight.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Bursting Australia's monolingual bubble

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 15 January 2018
    6 Comments

    Over 250 languages were spoken across Australia at the time that English arrived with British colonisation. Since then, English has been a strict marker of the contours of Australianness. Were it reframed as a lingua franca rather than the mandatory language, the linguistic diversity in this nation would have more room to breathe.

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