The changing demographics of higher education are bringing the teaching of English and the teaching of foreign languages closer together. For an increasing number of students, English is a foreign, a second, an international, or a global language, not the language of a unitary mother tongue and culture. Increasingly, students of French, German, or Spanish are learning a foreign language on the background of experiences of migrations, displacements, and expatriations but also on the background of multilingual and multicultural experiences. The typical language learner is, for example, a Nigerian with a Canadian passport learning German at the University of Texas, or a Czech citizen with a knowledge of English, German, and French enrolled in a Japanese class at the University of California, Berkeley. The common denominator among language learners is their interest in language in all its manifestations: literary and nonliterary, academic and nonacademic, as a mode of thought, as a mode of action, and as a symbol of identity. At UC Berkeley, the current success of courses with titles like Language, Mind, and Society; Language in Discourse; Language and Power; and Language and Identity—as they are offered by English programs, foreign language programs, linguistics departments, or schools of education—is a sign of a renewed interest in the way language expresses, creates, and manipulates “alien wisdoms” through discourse.