Languages after Brexit


Book Description

This book represents a significant intervention into the debates surrounding Brexit and language policy. It analyses the language capabilities and resources of the United Kingdom in a new, post-referendum climate, in which public hostility towards foreign languages is matched by the necessity of renegotiating and building relationships with the rest of Europe and beyond. The authors scrutinize the availability of key resources in diverse sectors of society including politics, economics, business, science and education, while simultaneously offering practical advice and guidance on how to thrive in the new international environment. This extremely timely edited collection brings together leading researchers from across the field of language policy, and is sure to appeal not only to students and scholars of this subject, but also to practitioners, policy makers and educators.




Languages Are Good for Us


Book Description

This is a book about languages and the people who love them. Sophie Hardach is here to guide us through the strange and wonderful ways that humans have used languages throughout history. She takes us from the earliest Mesopotamian clay tablets and the 'book cemeteries' of medieval synagogues to the first sounds a child hears in their mother's womb and their incredible capacity for language learning. Along the way, Hardach explores the role of trade in transmitting words across cultures and untangles riddles of hieroglyphics, cuneiform and the ancient scripts of Crete and Cyprus. This is a book about languages, the people who love them and the linguistic threads that connect us all. 'Impeccably researched and engagingly presented... Sophie Hardach tells wonderful stories about words that have travelled vast distances in space and time to make English what it is' David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything




Learning Languages in Early Modern England


Book Description

In the early-modern period, the English language was practically unknown outside of Britain and Ireland, so the English who wanted to travel and trade with the wider world had to become language-learners. John Gallagher explores who learned foreign languages in this period, how they did so, and what they did with the competence they acquired.




Brexit, Language Policy and Linguistic Diversity


Book Description

This book argues that Brexit will wholly re-shape the legal framework and public policy norms relating to linguistic diversity that have dominated public life in the UK and the EU since the Treaty on European Union in 1993. First, Brexit de-anchors the linguistic actors engaged with sub-state nationalisms in the UK (in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland) from the ethno-linguistic imaginary of the so-called ‘Europe of the regions’. This strengthens the case both for the de jure recognition of English as the official language of the UK and for embedding autochthonous minority language rights and freedoms in a transformed UK constitution. Second, Brexit strengthens the normative case for English as the lingua franca of the EU, by reducing the injustices associated with the rise of English as the EU and global lingua franca. The book will appeal to students and scholars across the fields of political science, political theory, law, language policy and planning, and sociolinguistics.




The EU after Brexit


Book Description

Much attention has been paid to the ongoing and unpredictable Brexit negotiations between the EU and the UK, but much less on what the absence of the UK might entail for the remaining 27 EU Member States. This book explores the range of implications for the EU after Brexit, and whether it is likely to become stronger or weaker as a result. It reviews the different attitudes on the EU’s future within both the member states and the individual EU institutions, and examines the impacts of Brexit on the composition of the EU institutions and on the balance of power between the member states. It also looks at linguistic and cultural impacts, the UK’s wider legacy for the EU and possible changes in EU priorities. The author concludes that Brexit has reinforced the EU’s unity in the short term, but that the EU will have to confront a number of key challenges if it is to be reinforced in the longer term. This book will appeal to practitioners, scholars and students interested in EU politics and integration in general, and Brexit in particular.




Metaphors of Brexit


Book Description

How were social media posts, scripted speeches, traditional news media and political cartoons used and understood during the Brexit campaign? What phrases and metaphors were key during and after the 2016 Brexit referendum? How far did the Remain and Leave campaigns rely on metaphor to engage with supporters in communicating their political positions? These questions, and many others, can be answered only through a systematic analysis of the actual language used in relation to Brexit by the different parties involved. By drawing on a range of data sources and types of communication, and presenting them as 'frames' through which individuals can attempt to understand the world, the author provides the first book-length examination of the metaphors of Brexit. This book takes a detailed look at the rhetorical language behind one of the major political events of the era, and it will be of interest to students and scholars of linguistics and political science, as well as anyone with a special interest in metaphor, rhetoric, Brexit, or political communication more broadly.




Political English


Book Description

From post-truth politics to “no-platforming” on university campuses, the English language has been both a potent weapon and a crucial battlefield for our divided politics. In this important and wide-ranging intervention, Thomas Docherty explores the politics of the English language, its implication in the dynamics of political power and the spaces it offers for dissent and resistance. From the authorised English of the King James Bible to the colonial project of University English Studies, this book develops a powerful history for contemporary debates about propaganda, free speech and truth-telling in our politics. Taking examples from the US, UK and beyond - from debates about the Second Amendment and free-speech on campus, to the Iraq War and the Grenfell Tower fire - this book is a powerful and polemical return to Orwell's observation that a degraded political language is intimately connected to an equally degraded political culture.




Discourses of Brexit


Book Description

Discourses of Brexit provides a kaleidoscope of insights into how discourse influenced the outcome of the EU referendum and what discourses have sprung up as a result of it. Working with a wide variety of data, from political speeches to Twitter, and a wide range of methods, Discourses of Brexit presents the most thorough examination of the discourses around the British EU referendum and related events. It provides a comprehensive understanding of the discursive treatment of Brexit, while also providing detailed investigations of how Brexit has been negotiated in different contexts. Discourses of Brexit is key reading for all students and researchers in language and politics, discourse analysis and related areas, as well as anyone interested in developing their understanding of the referendum.




First Language Attrition


Book Description

This volume consists of a collection of papers that focus on structural/grammatical aspects of the process of first language attrition. It presents an overview of current research, methodological issues and important questions regarding first language attrition. In particular, it addresses the two most prominent issues in current L1 attrition research: Can attrition effects impact on features of core syntax, or are they limited to interface phenomena?, and; What is the role of age at onset (pre-/post-puberty) in this regard? By investigating attrition in a variety of settings, from a case study of a Spanish-speaking adoptee in the US to an empirical investigation of more than 50 long-term attriters of Turkish in the Netherlands, the investigations presented take a new perspective on these issues. Originally published in Language, Interaction and Acquisition - Langage, Interaction et Acquisition 2:2 (2011).




Observing Eurolects


Book Description

Focusing on the multi-faceted topic of Eurolects, this volume brings together knowledge and methodologies from various disciplines, including sociolinguistics, legal linguistics, corpus linguistics, and translation studies. The legislative varieties of eleven EU official and working languages (Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latvian, Maltese, Polish, Spanish) are analyzed using corpus methodologies in order to investigate the variational dynamics and translation-induced patterns of the different languages. The underlying assumption is that, within the sociolinguistic continua of the EU languages, it is possible to single out specific legislative varieties (Eurolects) that originate at a supra-national level. This research hypothesis is strongly supported by the empirical findings derived from detailed corpus analyses of each language. This work represents the first systematic and comprehensive linguistic research conducted on a wide range of EU languages using the same protocol and applying corpus methodologies to the extensive Eurolect Observatory Multilingual Corpus.