Language, Place and Learning

This Hot Topic paper, Language, Place and Learning, addresses issues associated with language, place and learning. The starting point for Lo Bianco's analysis, the claim that we can anticipate that half of the world's population will soon speak some form of English, is a provocative starting point. He proceeds to outline the role of the Americans in this process, and the way in which the English language has been implicit in the economic, political and cultural imperialism of the United States over the last two hundred years. The culmination of this process leads to a key step in Joe's thesis in this Hot Topic, that English is now 'a very stretched language, pushing the idea of connection between talk and place, people and place, very wide and far, more than any linguistic medium' (p. 5).