In this article I describe the transition of a group of university students in Australia into an online learning environment during COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. I reflect upon my intersubjective experiences as the lecturer in an unexpected situation of urgency and physical distancing. Research has acknowledged synchronous virtual learning…

This article explores public debates about credibility in media discourse regarding a Somali refugee who was raped on Nauru. Given the pseudonym "Abyan", she was living on Nauru as a result of Australian refugee policy and was brought to Australia for medical assistance. Her treatment by the Australian authorities became the subject of…

To properly understand sex education, it is important to consider the informal education that takes place outside the classroom. Students often seek out other resources to supplement the education they receive in school, especially to cover topics which are absent or underdeveloped in the formal sex education curriculum. A key resource for this,…

The National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has been a key tenet of Australian education policy since its launch over a decade ago. Print media coverage of NAPLAN and myschool.edu.au, which displays and compares NAPLAN results across Australia, has played a role in both reporting and shaping this aspect of education policy.…

Until relatively recently, financial planning typically involved investment advisers advising relatively wealthy and financially literate individuals about where to place their abundant disposable incomes. Today, many financial planners are focused on advising individuals with modest incomes and little understanding of finance how best to manage…

A number of linguistic studies on courtroom discourse deal with witness examinations, however counsels' opening statements have been given relatively little attention. Drawing on the analysis of a Crown Prosecutor's opening statement in a murder trial held at the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and using the Systemic…

International education constitutes a key industry in Australia and international students represent a third of university students at Australian universities. This paper examines the media representation of international students in terms of their English language proficiency. The study applies Critical Discourse Analysis to the multimodal data…

Focusing specifically on the negotiation of commonality, this study explores rapport building (Spencer-Oatey, 2000) in online intercultural text chat, where Australian students of Italian interact with L1 Italian speakers. Although the initial purpose of the examined chat exchanges is to facilitate L2 acquisition, analysis of transcripts indicates…

From its inception in 1977 until its last year of publication by an Australian publisher in 2015, the "Australian Review of Applied Linguistics" featured over 700 articles related to applied linguistics. This publication history provides a unique resource for tracing the scope and change of the applied linguistics landscape in Australia…

Based on Darvin and Norton's (2015) reconceptualization of identity theory highlighting the recursive relationship between identity, capital, and ideology, this study posits that refugee and asylum seeker adolescents and adults in transit on Nauru are ascribed a 'displacement identity' through externally imposed normative ideologies. In addressing…

This study examines stance in cross-cultural media discourse by comparing disaster news reports on the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008 in a Chinese, an Australian Chinese, and an Australian newspaper. The stance taken in the news reports is examined using the Attitude sub-system of Martin and White's (2005) Appraisal framework. The analysis…

While most language-planning and policy (LPP) studies have focussed on language decisions made by government bodies, in recent years there has been an increased interest in micro-level language planning in immigrant contexts. Few studies, however, have used this framework to retrospectively examine the planning decisions of religious institutions,…

Within the Australian education system, Aboriginal students' use of non-standard English features is often viewed simplistically as evidence of non-attainment of literacy and oral-English milestones. One reason for this is the widespread use of assessment tools which fail to differentiate between native-English speakers and students who are…

This paper explores the language used by Australian Football League (AFL) footballers and Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) journalists in their post-match interviews broadcast on ABC (774 Melbourne) radio. From Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Appraisal is used to investigate the evaluative language expressed by the AFL footballers in…

This paper reports on a study of peer interaction in ten foreign language (FL) classes, six secondary and four primary, over a period of four months. The focus of this paper is the nature of peer interaction, including the purposes of second language use, and language choice. The data, comprising observation, audio and video recordings of five…