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"Why are you learning Zulu?" When Mark Sanders began studying the language, he was often asked this question. In Learning Zulu, Sanders places his own endeavors within a wider context to uncover how, in the past 150 years of South African history, Zulu became a battleground for issues of property, possession, and deprivation. Sanders combines elements of analysis and memoir to explore a complex cultural history. Perceiving that colonial learners of Zulu saw themselves as repairing harm done to Africans by Europeans, Sanders reveals deeper motives at work in the development of Zulu-language learning—from the emergence of the pidgin Fanagalo among missionaries and traders in the nineteenth c...
This volume contains selected papers from the 4th Language International Conference on 'Teaching Translation and Interpreting: Building Bridges' which was held in Shanghai in December 1998. The collection is an excellent source of ideas and information for teachers and students alike. With contributions from five continents, the topics discussed cover a wide range, including the relevance of translation theories, cultural and technical knowledge acquisition, literary translation, translation and interpreting for the media, Internet-related training methods, and tools for student assessment. While complementing the volumes of the previous three conferences in exploring new methods and frontiers, this collection is particularly strong on case studies outside of the European and Anglo-American spheres.
This bold and accessible study of human languages and communication explores issues which are at the forefront of today's globalized society. The human species is divided into more than five thousand language groups that do not understand each other. And yet these groups constitute one coherent world language system, connected by multilingual speakers in a surprisingly powerful way. The chances of a language thriving depend on its position in the system. There are thousands of small, peripheral languages, each connected to one of a hundred central languages. The entire system is held together by one global language: English. A language is a ‘hypercollective' good: the more speakers it has,...
This volume presents twelve in-depth case studies that critically examine the ways in which historical linguistics and language change interact with ideology. These varying interactions have been present since the birth of historical-comparative linguistics as a field of study. Work in historical linguistics may be appropriated or rejected for ideological reasons, most notably in the debates surrounding the Indo-European homeland; it can also by influenced by ideological biases, as in the 'alternative' histories that have been proposed for Moldovan and Maltese. The development of linguistically-defined nation states may itself fuel linguistic change, for instance through the suppression of minority languages or the division of existing languages to mirror political divisions, as occurred in the Balkans; or it may lead to the formulation of pseudo-histories designed to give a nation a more prestigious past. The book will be of interest not only to historical linguists but also to anthropologists, historians, and all those interested in language policy.
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Discusses language attitudes, language planning, and education.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.
Creole Language, Democracy, and the Illegible State in Cabo Verde uses Cabo Verde as a case study to critically examine the language and politics nexus in a small Creole island state. The current sociolinguistic condition of the country is that of diglossia, whereby Portuguese assumes the language of power, prestige, and high culture at the expense of the mother tongue of its citizens, the Cabo Verdean language, locally known as Kriolu. The postcolonial diglossic language policy stands on both domestic and international factors. Thus, Abel Djassi Amado explores the country’s language policy history since colonial times and discusses how Portugal’s diplomacy grounded on language spread policy has significantly contributed to the secondarization of the mother tongue. The ultimate consequence of the current sociolinguistic situation is the development and crystallization of the illegible state as a large segment of the population cannot comprehend the processes, operations, and procedures of power carried out in a language they do not understand. The illegible state has grave consequences on political participation and the overall quality of democracy.
The Victor's Crown brings to vivid life the signal role of sport in the classical world. Ranging over a dozen centuries--from Archaic Greece through to the late Roman and early Byzantine empires--David Potter's lively narrative shows how sport, to the ancients, was not just a dim reflection of religion and politics but a potent social force in its own right. The passion for sport among the participants and fans of antiquity has been matched in history only by our own time.Potter first charts the origins of competitive athletics in Greece during the eighth century BC and the emergence of the Olympics as a preeminent cultural event. He focuses especially on the experiences of spectators and at...