Language Across Boundaries

Book excerpt: Language across Boundaries is a selection of papers from the millennium conference of the British Association of Applied Linguistics. The thirteen papers are written by applied linguists, from Britain, mainland Europe, the USA, Australia and Singapore, working in a variety of sub-disciplines of the field. The 'boundaries' of the title have been widely interpreted and the book reflects a spectrum of research, ranging from work on the linguistic repercussions of individual and group identity boundaries to work dealing with ways of crossing national and cultural boundaries through language learning and language mediation in the form of translation. Included in the volumes are the plenary papers given by Jennifer Coates, well known for her work on language and gender, on the expression of alternative masculinities; and by Bencie Woll, holder of the first chair of Sign Language and Deaf Studies in the UK, on the insights to be gained from sign language in exploring language, culture and identity.