A Foreign Tongue

A film by Allyson McAbee

Cyprus has a long history of cultural hybridity and cosmopolitanism. A Foreign Tongue explores aspects of cosmopolitanism and social belonging in a Greek-learning classroom (modern Greek is the official language of Cyprus). Using the University classroom, as a gateway for understanding linguistic pedagogy, it explores how students become socialised (or not) into a culture and society other than their own. Some of the students lead a stable life in Cyprus, while others are immersed in precarious positions of looking for jobs or political asylum. Such diverse composition provides a setting in which cultural, political and linguistic boundaries are transgressed, and where shared experiences occur between multilingual and multicultural individuals.