Professionals transitioning into a workplace face the challenge of socializing into their new working communities. One important factor in this process is humor (Plester and Sayers, 2007). We present a case study of how a newcomer transitioning towards integral status interacts with the use of humor in her new workplace. Using the Communities of Practice framework (Wenger, 1998), we examine workplace discourse collected from a new recruit, Emma, and her colleagues in a Hong Kong firm. The analysis portrays a picture of how humor is a critical element as Emma negotiates relationships with other colleagues and works towards her assigned tasks. Findings suggest that humor can be an indicator to newcomers of appropriate or inappropriate behavior. Humor can be used for newcomers’ integration into the workplace; humor can be used by integral members to mold newcomers into the normative ways of doing things. We argue that humor may be used as a regulating and coping mechanism in workplace socialization.

In content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classrooms, it is assumed that non-language content subjects provide more authentic communicative contexts for students to learn a foreign/second/additional language (L2). However, learning abstract concepts and academic language in an L2 simultaneously is also challenging for CLIL students. It is thus important for CLIL teachers to unpack and repack both abstract concepts and academic discourse for the students. ‘Semantic waves’, which model classroom practices of both unpacking and repacking, is arguably a key to understanding cumulative knowledge-building. Applying the concepts of semantic profiles and semantic waves, this paper analyses the classroom discourse of two CLIL science lessons in Hong Kong. In one lesson, the semantic profile mainly consists of downward shifts. The teacher adopted various useful strategies to unpack science concepts, especially with multimodalities, everyday L2 and students’ L1 resources. Yet, there was limited repacking. In contrast, some repacking was observed in another lesson, where the teacher provided explicit instruction on academic language and guided students through academic writing tasks. A semantic wave can thus be observed there. These findings on strategies for unpacking and repacking provide significant insights into knowledge building in CLIL contexts, and may hence illuminate CLIL pedagogical practices.

The last two decades have seen huge changes in the focus of English language education in non-Anglophone countries and jurisdictions around the world. English as a medium of instruction (EMI), as opposed to English as the object of instruction has been burgeoning in many Asian societies. While there is fruitful research on English language teaching and learning in Asia, less attention is drawn to the students’ experiences and perceptions about using English to learn academic content. Drawing on data collected in a bilingual secondary school in Bangkok, Thailand, the current study explores EFL learners’ perceptions, desires and discursively constructed identities in the EMI academic program. It is found that while the EFL students actively invest in EMI studies under multiple and sometimes contradictory desires shaped and reshaped by desires of their parents and the State as well as themselves, they seem to embrace the hegemony of white, native English. It is therefore suggested that critical and egalitarian multilingualism should be added as an element in the English-medium academic programs in Asia-pacific secondary education.