Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-138

Title: Life in a New Language
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Oxford University Press
http://www.oup.com/us
Book URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/life-in-a-new-language-9780190084295?utm_source=linguistlist&utm_medium=listserv&utm_campaign=linguistics

Author(s): Ingrid Piller, Donna Butorac, Emily Farrell, Loy Lising, Shiva Mo

Reviewer: Elise Alberts

SUMMARY

Piller et al.’s Life in a New Language is a comprehensive ethnographic exploration of migrants’ lived experiences in moving to Australia, focusing on the struggles, hardships and occasional successes involved in adapting to life in a new country. The book offers a human-centred alternative to the predominance of quantitative research on migration, foregrounding social and emotional dimensions that often remain obscured in statistical accounts. Ultimately, the book is a call to stop seeing migrants “for what they lack, rather than for what they have to offer” (p. 117) and to rethink the mental, social, and linguistic effects of migration.

The context of the book is Australia, an incredibly diverse country with a rich history of immigration. As the authors demonstrate, by the early twentieth century Australia had been ideologically constructed as a White, anglophone nation, with English positioned as the gatekeeping language of national belonging. Through language policies, migrants with a lower English proficiency were deterred from entering the country. The authors focus on a diverse group of migrants who settled in Australia between 1970 and 2013, representing 34 countries and a wide range of linguistic backgrounds. Their own positionalities as migrants or children of migrants (which is briefly discussed on page 12), shape their research and analysis, and contribute to the activist stance of the book, especially in its final chapters.

The book is structured around chapters titled 'doing something' in a new language, each examining a different aspect of migrant life: arriving, looking for work, finding a voice, having a family, facing discrimination, and ultimately shaping one’s identity. As the authors explain, some of these themes emerged organically from the ethnographic data – employment, for example, was a recurring concern among participants – while others were developed as focal points by one of the researchers. Chapter 2 explores the experience of first arriving in Australia as a migrant and the linguistic shock that often accompanies it. For many, English had served as a valuable asset in their countries of origin, opening up opportunities. Yet in Australia, they found themselves positioned at the margins. The authors highlight the case of 34 Iranian migrants who reported that the formal, test-orientated English they had learnt proved to be largely ineffective in everyday interaction. Conversely, African migrants, many of whom had strong oral skills – what the authors call "street English" – and rich multilingual backgrounds, were deemed linguistically deficient because of their lower literacy skills. Both groups, as the chapter shows, received inadequate support and a lack of institutional recognition from the Australian government.

Arguably the most pivotal chapter, due to both its impact on migrant feelings of belonging and its relevance for policy making, is Chapter 3, which examines the experiences and struggles of migrants in seeking work. The chapter illustrates how migrants are poorly supported during their job search and how English proficiency is frequently used as a pretext to exclude candidates – regardless of their actual language competence. The authors argue that the barrier to employment “is created by the ideological association of migrants with an English-language deficit” (p. 37). The chapter also shows how the Australian government systematically invalidates prior qualifications from other (non-Western) countries, even when migrants possess extensive professional experience. It underscores both the significance of work for personal fulfilment and the ways racism and sexism pervade the job-seeking process. As the authors argue, job-seeking becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: “their English language proficiency is assumed to be low, regardless of their actual proficiency or the communicative requirements of a specific position” (p. 37). Even more alarming, participants describe internalising these externally imposed deficits, leading to diminished confidence in their job search even when their level of English is objectively high. As the authors note, these beliefs “function to transform the linguistic barrier to employment from a social fact to an individual responsibility” (p. 4).

Although racism and discrimination in migrant experiences are present as underlying themes throughout the book, Chapter 6 confronts these issues more explicitly. It explores how racialised appearances – being perceived as non-White – places a disproportionate burden on migrants, who must constantly navigate microaggressions. The authors show that perceptions of language proficiency are deeply racialised. White migrants are often assumed to be more fluent in English than non-White migrants, creating a feedback loop in which they receive more opportunities to practise and improve. Although legal protections prohibit exclusion on the basis of race, nationality, or ethnic origin, language frequently serves as a socially acceptable proxy through which access to employment is denied. The stories of Asian and Black participants, even those who are already Australian citizens, are particularly harrowing, to the point that the amount of “Othering, exclusion, discrimination, and racism” is simply “exhausting” (p. 97).

The final chapter shifts the book from a narrative perspective to a more activist stance. It critiques Australian migrant policies, particularly those which apply in the workforce, that fail to help migrants transition into their new lives. The authors advocate for a context-dependent view of language proficiency, one that recognises the specific communicative demands of different roles and the multilingual resources that migrants bring with them. The book concludes with a call for the Australian government “to better understand its sociocultural identity and how its dominant constructions of language proficiency and competence, as well as employability skills, needs to be updated to build a more inclusive, tolerant, and egalitarian 21st century society” (p. 127).

EVALUATION

The book offers a refreshing and immersive glimpse into the lives of migrants. Its narrative approach makes it accessible to a broad readership, and the inclusion of discussion questions and chapter summaries at the end makes the book suitable for teaching environments. While it is easy to dismiss migrants’ language challenges by urging them simply to ‘learn the language’, this book presents a sobering account of the persistent difficulties faced by language learners and the complexities of being perpetually viewed as an imperfect speaker. Although written by multiple authors, the book maintains a clear thematic coherence, with chapters that reinforce and build upon one another.

One of the notable contributions of the book is its ethnographic approach to a topic that is often examined through a quantitative lens. As the authors describe, fieldwork was conducted in “adult education centres, community language schools, and workplaces” (p. 11). In practice, however, much of the material appears to be based on in-depth interviews and participants’ personal narratives, with a relatively limited inclusion of field notes and observations. While the final chapter foregrounds the value of ethnographic methods for capturing lived experience, the book’s primary focus rests on migrants’ accounts rather than the social and institutional settings in which those experiences unfold. There are some references to fieldwork, for example when the authors talk about the participant Mamuna and her involvement in the community (p. 114), which seems to be partly based on participant observation, but these are the exception rather than the rule. A more explicit engagement with the ethnographic process, including how interviews and fieldwork informed one another, could have further strengthened the book’s methodological contribution. Given that the final chapter positions the study as a “model” and “framework” for future research (p. 119), a separate methodological chapter might have clarified the collaborative process behind the study, the challenges encountered, and how others might adopt or adapt a similar approach to linguistic ethnography.

In addition, the book uses the concept ‘lived experience’ to discuss not only language but also “how language intersects with what it means to be a citizen, a worker, or a parent” (pp. 10-11). This perspective works well with the topic of migration, as it shifts the focus from a purely linguistic dimension to a more all-encompassing description of the migrant’s experience. However, embedding the discussion more explicitly in existing methodological literature on the lived experience of language, such as that of Busch (2017), might have further deepened this conceptual framing. By using this concept, the authors might have also been able to strengthen their discussion of the affective dimensions in their data: for example, in Chapter 4, (‘Finding a Voice in a New Language’), which deals with a range of emotions such as language anxiety, embarrassment and shame. While the book draws on relevant research (e.g. Liyanage & Canagarajah, 2019; Horwitz, 2010) dialogue with work on affect (e.g. Ahmed, 2004; Wetherell, 2013) might have enhanced the analytical approach.

Chapter 7, with its focus on (multiple) belongings and processes of self-making, offers an insightful look into the emotional labour of building a new identity in a new country. It stands out as the most grounded in fieldwork, but simultaneously, also the least focused on language. Although it touches on how language shapes identity – for instance, the idea that speaking another language brings on a new identity – the chapter leans more heavily on the social and emotional dimensions of migration. These are valuable contributions in themselves, but a more sustained analysis of the role of language in identity formation could have added further depth to the discussion, particularly given the book’s overarching focus.

To conclude, Life in a New Language offers a rich and valuable account of what it means to migrate and live in another language – an account which is generalisable not only to the Australian context but to contexts where migrants face similar social and institutional barriers. The book demonstrates how learning a new language, and speaking and living in it, are complex processes, particularly when shaped by exclusionary policies and social prejudice. It challenges the simplistic notion that language acquisition guarantees integration, instead foregrounding the broader structural and ideological obstacles that migrants face. The book offers a valuable resource for scholars examining the intersections of language and migration, educators wishing to include a migrant perspective of language learning, and policymakers aiming to develop more inclusive, contextually-informed approaches.

REFERENCES

Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. New York & Oxford: Routledge.

Busch, B. (2017). Expanding the notion of the linguistic repertoire: On the concept of Spracherleben – the lived experience of language. Applied Linguistics 38(3), 340-358.

Horwitz, E. (2010). Foreign and second language anxiety. Language Teaching, 43(2), 154-167.

Liyanage, I., & Canagarajah, S. (2019). Shame in English language teaching: Desirable pedagogical possibilities for Kiribati in neoliberal times. TESOL Quarterly, 53(2), 430-455.

Wetherell, M. (2013). Affect and discourse– What’s the problem? From affect as excess to affective/discursive practice. Subjectivity, 6. 349-368.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Elise Alberts is a PhD candidate at the Leiden University and the Protestant Theological University. In her research, she is investigating the effect of multilingualism on faith experience. In particular, she is examining how language attitudes and ideologies influence the way that multilingual Christians perceive their faith, and to what extent different languages can affect their lived theology. Her research is conducted within transnational church communities in the Netherlands.