As US college campuses continue to be embroiled in demonstrations and internal conflict over the Israel-Hamas War more than one year after its outbreak, it is worth examining how the conflict initially boiled over into American higher education. To this end, the authors analyzed how university leaders chose to initially communicate with their…

The present study examined the role of hedges in a referential communication task. Pairs of participants received an identical set of cards, each card displaying a geometric configuration (a "tangram"). One participant, the director, instructed their partner, the matcher, to reproduce a series of predetermined tangram sequences using…

The world has become seemingly smaller with the advancements of technologies, instead of taking days to receive a written letter, it takes seconds to get an email. While the connection is obvious there still seems to be a barrier between the majority of the world's population: Language. Though it seems irrelevant in people's small communities, the…

Originally conceptualized by Chester Pierce (1970), microaggressions have taken on increasing utility in recent years as a tool to teach undergraduate students about everyday forms of oppressive behavior. As the concept gains increased currency in educational contexts, however, it is important to consider the ways in which individuals understand…

The presence of Africans in China has been phenomenal since the late 1990s. In recent years, there has been a dramatic uptick in people from Africa coming to the major cities of China such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Yiwu, Shanghai, and Beijing. They are in the process of building linguistic, cultural, and economic bridges between their source…

Transitioning into civilian life after military service is a challenging prospect. It can be difficult to find employment and maintain good mental health, and up to 70 percent of veterans experience homelessness or alcoholism. Upon discharge, many veterans pursue higher education as a way to reintegrate into civilian society. However, many studies…

This theoretical study aims at raising awareness of the existence of lexical false friends (FFs) in English and Arabic as genetically unrelated languages. It also provides a general categorization for FFs from a semantic point of view. A sample of more than fifty FF pairs is examined by contrasting their form, pronunciation and meaning. The…

Drawing on Conversation Analysis, this paper investigates how an English native speaker interviewer utilizes clarification requests as a form of recipient design during an interview to resolve problems of non-understanding. This data is contrasted with interviews between English language learners at a private university in Taiwan. The findings…

In the current conditions of globalization and the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF), the notions of pragmatic competence and appropriateness as well as pragmatic failure become of paramount importance to the language learners and instructors. The current article discusses these questions through an approximate replication of Jaworski's…

This paper is based on the data collected during fieldwork in the northern part of Mexico's state of Puebla in 2018-2019. During that period, there was a need to gather information that would serve as a starting point for the participatory-action research project in San Miguel Tenango, a village where the majority of people speak Nahuatl as their…

In this paper, through a personal narrative discourse, I explore the influence and the contribution of my cross-cultural study experience in China on my development as a young researcher. Through the Chinese academic culture, I learned some best practices that I consider essential for the blossoming and development of a student. Nonetheless, I…

Since 2002, which marks the end of the Civil War in Angola, a large multilingual and multicultural workforce from various corners of the world has entered the Angolan education system. This paper investigates language barriers experienced in the classroom of Spanish speaking lecturers by Portuguese speaking students. The study focuses on a group…