New publications

In December 2018, two issues of online journals were published co-edited by me, one special issue of the Journal for Intercultural Language Learning (in German) on the topic “Space and Foreign Language Learning” and a special issue of the cultural studies journal on_culture on Surveillance Cultures (in English). And in May 2019 a new volume on pluringual education will be published in which I co-authored a chapter on language education in the 21st century.

Space and foreign-language learning

The significance of spatial perceptions, orientations in space and the semiotics of apprehending space for communication as well as for understanding and interacting in and with foreign-language spaces contrasts firmly with the attention that the category of space has so far received in foreign-language pedagogy and for the conceptualisation of language learning. Since ‘space‘, alongside time, is one of the basic anthropological constants and categories of human perception and understanding there is a lot of catching up to be done here.

The special issue of the online journal on Space and Foreign Language Learning (in German) tries to do some remedial work here. In addition to the fundamental considerations in the introduction (written by the co-editors Britta Hufeisen, Darmstadt, Jörg Roche, Munich, and myself), the issue includes articles on spatial representation in textbooks, on street art, on spatial interaction, and on the cognitive-grammatical dimension of spatial (self-) positioning.

Here is the table of contents of the special issue on Space and Foreign Language Learning. All essays are available as free pdf downloads.

Surveillance Cultures

In the special issue of on_culture which I co-edited with Dr. Wibke Schniedermann (Giessen) we address the growing concerns about the fundamental interventions into social and cultural lives made by current surveillance technologies.

Pressing Questions

Recent developments in surveillance technologies have generated a number of questions that affect cultures and societies at large and fundamentally: How do societies well as individual subjects undergo, exert, and perform different forms of surveillance? How do subjects respond to the experience of actual or imagined surveillance in different environments, e.g. in the workplace, in city centers, in their homes, or online? How does the de-materialization and de-visualization of surveillance alter sociocultural as well as material realities, social and communicative practices and, in consequence, individual behaviors? And how, in the study of culture, can we grasp this culturally performative force, how can we analyze and conceptualize it, and to what extent does it affect our theorization of the social and of established notions of culture?

Zwei Surveillance Studies-Pioniere

We are particularly pleased to present two essays by pioneers in the field in this special issue. David Lyon can be considered no less than the founding father of Surveillance Studies. In his essay “Exploring Surveillance Culture” he maps the whole field of cultures of surveillance and ways of theorizing them. Dietmar Kammerer is a German pioneer of surveillance studies. In his essay he addresses the core question of any study of surveillance cultures: “Why Should We Talk About Culture When We Want to Understand ‘Surveillance’?”

Hier ist das Inhaltsverzeichnis der Themenausgabe Surveillance Cultures von on_culture. Alle Aufsätze stehen als kostenlose PDF-Downloads zur Verfügung.

Teaching German as a Second Language in Multilingual Contexts

In May, a volume will be published that responds to the increasing need to teach learners of other languages in the German-speaking education system. It is published (in German) by Klett Kallmeyer under the title: German in Multilingual Contexts. Understanding, Apprehending and Enhancing Language Competences in Secondary Schools (Deutsch im mehrsprachigen Kontext. Sprachkompetenzen verstehen, erfassen und fördern in der Sekundarstufe). The title addresses two major issues: On the one hand, we can no longer regard our cultural environments as monolingual. The national and educational language has become part of a multilingual environment in which we all live. On the other hand, as the language of schooling German is a decisive prerequisite for successful participation in the society and the ability to move in a cultural space that offers the individual a wide range of linguistic and cultural options and social connections.

Together with Ulrike Greiner (Salzburg) I have contributed the chapter Language Education in the 21st Century: From Writing to Multilieracies to this volume for teacher education. The way we understand it, this chapter rewrites the concept of language learning and the kind of languages to be acquired in the German classroom. The digitalization and diversification of communication and of the communicative practices available and established in the societies of the 21st century require a redefinition of writing and orality and a concretization of the culturally relevant generic forms and text types to which we need to allocate a place in German classrooms for people of other languages, but also in the regular German classroom.

Andrea Ender, Ulrike Greiner, Margareta Strasser (Hrsg.) (2019). Deutsch im mehrsprachigen Kontext. Sprachkompetenzen begreifen, erfassen, fördern in der Sekundarstufe. Seelze: Klett Kallmeyer.

Read more about this volume.

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Copyright © 2018 Wolfgang Hallet