Critical Perspectives on Linguistic Fixity and Fluidity


Book Description

This volume offers a critical perspective on current views on linguistic fixity and fluidity in sociolinguistics and highlights empirical accounts alternative to prevailing trends in the field. Featuring accounts from a broad range of regional contexts, the collection takes stock of such terms as "polylingualism", "metrolingualism" and "translanguaging" to question perceptions around multilingual and monolingual language use. The book critiques the status of fluid language use as a more "natural" language practice and in turn, its greater potential for corresponding social transformation, demonstrating the value of linguistic fixity and the continuous debate between fixity and fluidity in multilingual speakers' lives. In providing these accounts, the book seeks not to advocate for linguistic fixity or fluidity, but to argue that sociolinguists pay close attention to the way both types of linguistic practice open up or close down avenues for social transformation. This collection is a key reading for graduate students and scholars in sociolinguistics, multilingualism, and linguistic anthropology.




Language in a Globalised World


Book Description

This book takes a critical look at the role of language in an increasingly diversified and globalised world, using the new framework of 'sociolinguistics of globalisation' to draw together research from human geography, sociolinguistics, and intercultural communication. It argues that globalisation has resulted in a destabilisation of social and linguistic norms, and presents a ‘language-in-motion’ approach which addresses the inequalities and new social divisions brought by the unprecedented levels of population mobility. This book looks at language on the individual, national and transnational level, and it will be of interest to readers with backgrounds in history, politics, human geography, sociolinguistics and minority languages.




Language, Global Mobilities, Blue-Collar Workers and Blue-collar Workplaces


Book Description

This collection brings together global perspectives which critically examine the ways in which language as a resource is used and managed in myriad ways in various blue-collar workplace settings in today’s globalized economy. In focusing on blue-collar work environments, the book sheds further light on the informal processes through which top down language policies take place in different multilingual settings and the resultant asymmetrical power relations which emerge among employees and employers in such settings. Taking into account the latest debates on poststructuralist theories of language, the volume also extends its conceptualization of language to demonstrate the ways in which it extends to a wider range of multilingual and multimodal resources and communicative practices, all of which combine in unique and different ways toward constructing meaning in the workplace. The volume’s unique focus on such workplaces also showcases domains of work which have generally until now been less visible within existing research on language in the workplace and the subsequent methodological challenges that arise from studying them. Integrating a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, along with empirical data from a diverse range of blue-collar workplaces, this book will be of particular interest to students and researchers in critical sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, sociology, and linguistic anthropology.




English Language Teaching


Book Description

This book provides an overview of current trends and practices in English Language Teaching (ELT) across the European Union. It offers insights into key ELT issues which are at the forefront of twenty-first-century classrooms. It discusses theoretical and empirical work based on topics such as linguistic imperialism, English as a Medium of Instruction, contrastive language analysis, and the interplay between English and the use of countries’ respective native languages. It also explores the challenges of English Language Teaching under different circumstances such as, while using different technological platforms, working with different learner groups (those with Special Educational Needs) and revising traditional practices in grammar and vocabulary teaching. Throughout the book, the link between policy, theory and practice is explicitly highlighted and exemplified. The book is of interest to ELT instructors, course designers, language teachers and teacher trainers, and students enrolled in pre-service English training courses.




Agency in the Peripheries of Language Revitalisation


Book Description

This book addresses the question of agency in the revitalisation of minoritised languages in Europe, with each chapter presenting an ethnographic account of how language policy operates in a specific linguistic context. The chapters investigate how grassroots actors shape revitalisation, and how individuals and groups negotiate historical factors, motivations, and institutionalised initiatives and policies in a variety of efforts. Between them the chapters address both contexts where social actors have gained and exerted agency in their revitalisation efforts, and contexts where issues of authority, authenticity and lack of engagement plague efforts; these chapters provide insights into how social actors work within and against social conventions and strictures. This book is available Open Access under a CC BY ND License.




Authenticity across Languages and Cultures


Book Description

This volume centres around concepts of personal and cultural authenticity as they play out in various contexts of foreign language teaching and learning worldwide. The chapters cover a wide range of contexts and disciplines, including both theoretical and empirical work; together they comprise both a rigorous analysis of authenticity in language teaching and a step away from notions of native-speakerism and cultural essentialism with which it is often associated. Written by a group of scholars working across several continents, the chapters offer diverse perspectives regarding the role language plays in processes of personal growth, learning, development, self-actualisation and power dynamics. The book addresses the theoretical and philosophical nature of authenticity while remaining grounded in the teaching and learning of languages, with authenticity viewed as a practical concern that guides our actions and beliefs. The book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of authenticity as well as foreign language teachers interested in the theoretical underpinnings of their practice.




Languaging Relations for Transforming the Literacy and Language Arts Classroom


Book Description

Applying a languaging perspective, this volume frames the teaching and learning of literacy, literature, language, and the language arts as social and linguistic actions that generate new questions to make visible social, cultural, psychological, linguistic, and educational processes. Chapter authors explore diverse aspects of a languaging framework, the perspective of language as a series of ongoing and evolving interactional social actions and processes over time. Based on their research, the authors suggest directions for addressing substantive engagement as well as the marginalization, superficiality, and violence (symbolic and otherwise) that characterize the educational experience of so many students. Responding to the need to foster and support students’ intellectual, social, and affective worlds, this book showcases how languaging relations among teachers and students can deepen interactions and engagement with texts; enhance understandings of agency, personhood, and power relations in order to transform literacy, literature, and language arts classrooms; and improve the lives of teachers and students in educational settings.




Manual of Romance Languages in Africa


Book Description

With more than two thousand languages spread over its territory, multilingualism is a common reality in Africa. The main official languages of most African countries are Indo-European, in many instances Romance. As they were primarily brought to Africa in the era of colonization, the areas discussed in this volume are thirty-five states that were once ruled by Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, or Spain, and the African regions still belonging to three of them. Twenty-six states are presented in relation to French, four to Italian, six to Portuguese, and two to Spanish. They are considered in separate chapters according to their sociolinguistic situation, linguistic history, external language policy, linguistic characteristics, and internal language policy. The result is a comprehensive overview of the Romance languages in modern-day Africa. It follows a coherent structure, offers linguistic and sociolinguistic information, and illustrates language contact situations, power relations, as well as the cross-fertilization and mutual enrichment emerging from the interplay of languages and cultures in Africa.




Community, Solidarity and Multilingualism in a Transnational Social Movement


Book Description

*RUNNER UP FOR 2022 BAAL BOOK PRIZE* Community, solidarity and multilingualism in a transnational social movement presents a critical sociolinguistic ethnography of the Emmaus movement that analyses linguistic and discursive practices in two local communities in order to provide insight into solidarity discourses and transnational communication more broadly. Integrating perspectives from a range of disciplines, the monograph seeks to understand the ways in which social movements are maintained across disparate communities grounded in shared cultural referents and communicative practices but not necessarily a shared language. The book focuses on Emmaus, the solidarity movement that emerged in post-war France which brings formerly marginalised people together with others looking for an alternative lifestyle into live-in communities dedicated to recycling work and social projects. The book first offers a historical overview of the Emmaus movement more generally, moving into an account of its development and spread across national and linguistic borders. The volume draws on data from two Emmaus communities in Barcelona and London to analyse the everyday communicative and discursive practices that appropriate and resignify the shared transnational movement ideas in different socio-political, economic, historical and linguistic contexts. Community, solidarity and multilingualism in a transnational social movement considers the social implications of local practices on the situated (re)production and evolution of transnational social movements more generally and will be of particular interest to students and researchers in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse studies, cultural studies, and sociology.




Handbook of Pragmatics


Book Description

This encyclopaedia of one of the major fields of language studies is a continuously updated source of state-of-the-art information for anyone interested in language use. The IPrA Handbook of Pragmatics provides easy access – for scholars with widely divergent backgrounds but with convergent interests in the use and functioning of language – to the different topics, traditions and methods which together make up the field of pragmatics, broadly conceived as the cognitive, social and cultural study of language and communication, i.e. the science of language use. The Handbook of Pragmatics is a unique reference work for researchers, which has been expanded and updated continuously with annual installments since 1995. Also available as Online Resource: https://benjamins.com/online/hop




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