You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
In this interdisciplinary volume, sociolinguists and sociologists explore the intersections of language, culture, and identity for rural populations around the world. Challenging stereotypical views of rural backwardness and urban progress, the contributors reveal how language is a key mechanism for constructing the meaning of places and the people who identify with them. With research that spans numerous countries and several continents, the chapters in this volume add broadly to knowledge about status and prestige, authenticity and belonging, rural-urban relations, and innovation and change among rural peoples and in rural communities across the globe.
Language acts are acts of identity, and linguistic variation reflects the multifaceted construction of verbal alternatives for transmitting social meaning, where style-shifting represents our ability to take up different social positions due to its potential for linguistic performance, rhetorical stance-taking and identity projection.Traditional variationist conceptualizations of style-shifting as a primarily responsive phenomenon seem unable to account for all stylistic choices. In contrast, more recent formulations see stylistic variation as initiative, creative and strategic in personal and interpersonal identity construction and projection, making a significant contribution to our unders...
Set on the Italian island of Sardinia, Sing Me Back Home explores language and culture through songwriting as an ethnographic method. Based on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork writing songs with Sardinian musicians, artisans, shepherds, poets, and language activists, Kristina Jacobsen asks: How are Sardinian lives and language ideologies narrated against the backdrop of American music? The book shows how Sardinian musicians sing their own history between the lines. It reveals how Sardinian songs become a site of transduction where, through the process of songwriting, recording, and performance, the energy from one genre of music and lingua-culture is harnessed to signal another one much closer to home. Sing Me Back Home is accompanied by original songs written and recorded in the field, with links to songs in each chapter. It includes songwriting prompts and lyrics, a glossary of key terms, and photographs from the field. Drawing on work from critical collaborative research, auto-ethnography, public anthropology, arts-based research, and ethnographic poetry, this sensory ethnography offers new ways for us to hear culture through stories and songs.
Language Variation – European Perspectives V is based on papers presented at the Seventh International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 7), which was held in Trondheim, Norway from 26 to 28 June 2013. The 17 papers included in the book explore phonetic and phonological variation (Bitenc and Kenda-Jež; Hildenbrandt and Moosmüller; Jansen; Schaufuß; Schleef, Flynn and Ramsammy; Stuart-Smith, Rathcke, Sonderegger and Macdonald), morphology (Padilla-Moyano), syntax (Christensen and Juel Jensen; Jónsson, Brynjólfsdóttir and Sverrisdóttir), morphosyntax (Auger and Wycoff; Cerruti and Regis), language ideology, linguistic practices and language attitudes (Strand; Hall-Lew, Fairs and Lew; Dunmore and Smith-Christmas), code-switching (Amadou; Bucher) and language documentation (Kühl). The book is essential reading for scholars working on variation and change in European languages. The articles in the present volume investigate Romani, Turkish, Greek, Slovene, Picard, Swiss-German, Basque, Danish, Italian, English, Gaelic, Icelandic Sign Language, Faroe Danish and Norwegian.
Why did a rural dialect from the heart of Norwegian farm country win a national dialect popularity contest? What were the effects of this win, and what has happened to the winning dialect since? A Winning Dialect tells a story of linguistic and cultural transformation in the rural district of Valdres, Norway. It shows how lifelong residents have adapted to changing social, economic, and political circumstances – particularly the shift from family farming to tourism development – and how they have used local linguistic and cultural resources to craft a viable future for themselves and the places their ancestors have called home for centuries. Once stigmatized as poor and uneducated, the distinctive dialect of Valdres now holds a special place as a valuable part of Norwegian national heritage, as well as a marker of local belonging. Based on two decades of research and fieldwork, A Winning Dialect considers how a traditional dialect is transformed – linguistically and culturally – as it is put to new uses in the contemporary world.
The goal of The Oxford Handbook of African American Language is to provide readers with a wide range of analyses of both traditional and contemporary work on language use in African American communities in a broad collective. The Handbook offers a survey of language and its uses in African American communities from a wide range of contexts organized into seven sections: Origins and Historical Perspectives; Lects and Variation; Structure and Description; Child Language Acquisition and Development; Education; Language in Society; and Language and Identity. It is a handbook of research on African American Language (AAL) and, as such, provides a variety of scholarly perspectives that may not ali...
The Basque language, Euskara, is one of Europe’s most ancient tongues and a vital part of today’s lively Basque culture. Reclaiming Basque examines the ideology, methods, and discourse of the Basque-language revitalization movement over the course of the past century and the way this effort has unfolded alongside the simultaneous Basque nationalist struggle for autonomy. Jacqueline Urla employs extensive long-term fieldwork, interviews, and close examination of a vast range of documents in several media to uncover the strategies that have been used to preserve and revive Euskara and the various controversies that have arisen among Basque-language advocates.
Sociolinguistic Styles presents a new and in-depth, historically rooted overview of the phenomenon of style-shifting in sociolinguistic variation. Written by an internationally acclaimed expert in the field, the text explores why, where and when it occurs. Full examination of the complex phenomenon of style-shifting in sociolinguistics, focusing on its nature and social motivations, as well as on the mechanisms for its usage and its effects In-depth, up-to-date critical overview of the different theoretical approaches accounting for stylistic variation, exploring their historical roots not only in sociolinguistics and stylistics or semiotics but also in classical fields such as rhetoric and oratory Coverage of a wide range of related concepts and issues, from the oldest Greek ethos and pathos or Roman elocutio and pronuntiatio to the contemporary enregisterment, stylisation, stance, or crossing Written by an academic who has been instrumental in developing theory in this area of sociolinguistics
The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics presents a comprehensive introduction to the main concepts and terms of sociolinguistics, and of the goals, methods, and findings of sociolinguistic research. Introduces readers to the methodology and skills of doing hands-on research in this field Features chapter-by-chapter classic and contemporary case studies, exercises, and examples to enhance comprehension Offers wide-ranging coverage of topics across sociolinguistics. It begins with multilingualism, and moves on through language choice and variation to style and identity Takes students through the challenges involved in conducting their own research project Written by one of the leading figures in sociolinguistics