Leading scholars in the field examine the role played by the English language in contemporary Japanese society. Their various chapters cover the nature, status, and function of English in Japan, focusing on the ways in which globalization is influencing language practices in the country.

This collection of essays by the Linguistic Politeness Research Group represents the results of over a decade of the group's research, discussions, seminars and conferences on the subject of linguistic politeness. The volume brings together cutting edge essays reflecting the range of discursive approaches to the analysis of politeness and impoliteness.

Minglang Zhou's highly erudite and well-researched volume on the policies concerning writing reforms for China's minorities since 1949 provides an original and well-reasoned summary of a complex process. It documents how different script reforms meet dramatically different fates according to local preferences, history, cross-border ties, and the vitality of previously-used scripts. It convincingly shows that no single variable is decisive in the success of a script, and that language planners' fixation with technical details is doomed to failure, without careful coordination of extra-code factors. It also documents the little-known Sino-Soviet cooperation in the area of writing reforms. In a style accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students, Zhou's book is of interest to language planners, sinologists, applied linguists, writing theorists, and ethnologists.

It was traditionally assumed that having a single official language was a necessary condition for the wellbeing of the state, particularly in France and Britain. This assumption is now questioned, and the regional languages are making, in some cases, an impressive comeback. It is the story of their decline, their survival and, more recently their efforts to re-establish themselves as effective tools of normal communication which is tackled in this book. Each language is analyzed in terms of its development from the earliest times, through its period of decline to present-day efforts at regeneration.

This volume presents evidence about how we understand communication in changing times, and proposes that such understandings may contribute to the development of pedagogy for teaching and learning. It expands current debates on multilingualism, asking which signs are in use and in action, and what are their social, political, and historical implications. The volume s starting-point is Bakhtin s heteroglossia, a key concept in understanding the tensions, conflicts, and multiple voices within, among, and between those signs. The chapters provide illuminating accounts of language practices as they bring into play, both in practice and in pedagogy, voices which index students localities, social histories, circumstances, and identities. The book documents the performance of linguistic repertoires in an era of profound social change caused by the shifting nature of nation-states, increased movement of people across territories, and growing digital communication.

Our thinking on language and multilingualism is expanding rapidly. Up until recently we have tended to regard languages as bounded entities, and multilingualism has been understood as knowing more than one language. Working with the concept of heteroglossia, researchers are developing alternative perspectives that treat languages as sets of resources for expressing meaning that can be drawn on by speakers in communicatively productive ways in different contexts. These perspectives raise fundamental questions about the myriad of ways of knowing and using language(s). This collection brings together the contributions of many of the key researchers in the field. It will provide an authoritative reference point for contemporary interpretations of heteroglossia and valuable accounts of how translanguaging can be explored and exploited in the fields of education and cultural studies. Professor Constant Leung, King s College London, UK.

"From rap and hip hop to taxi cabs, and from classrooms to interactive online learning environments, each of the chapters in this volume written by well-known and up-and-coming scholars provide fascinating accounts drawing on a wide diversity of rich descriptive data collected in heteroglossic contexts around the globe. Creese and Blackledge have brought together a compelling collection that builds upon and expands Bakhtin s construct of heteroglossia. These scholars help to move the field away from the view of languages as separate bounded system by providing detailed examples and expert analyses of the ways bilinguals and multilinguals draw upon their linguistic repertoires for effective and meaningful communication." Wayne E. Wright, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA."

This book presents a sociolinguistics of academic publishing from an historical and contemporary perspective. Using Swedish academia as a case study, it focuses on publishing practices within history and psychology. The author demonstrates how new regimes of research evaluation and performance-based funding are impinging on university life. His central argument, following the French sociologist Bourdieu, is that the trend towards publishing in English should be understood as a social strategy, developed in response to such transformations. Thought-provoking and challenging, this book will interest students and scholars of sociolinguistics, language planning and language policy, research policy, sociology of science, history and psychology.

Sociolinguistics in Ireland takes a fresh look at the interface of language and society in present-day Ireland. In a series of specially commissioned chapters it examines the relationship of the Irish and English languages and traces their dynamic development both in history and at present.

Examining identity in relation to globalization and migration, this book uses narratives and memoirs from contemporary authors who have lived 'in-between' two or more languages. It explores the human desire to find one's 'own place' in new cultural contexts, and looks at the role of language in shaping a sense of belonging in society.

This analysis of the rhetoric of nine successfully persuasive politicians explains how their use of language created credible and consistent stories about themselves and the social world they inhabit. It explores their use of metaphors, their myths, and how language analysis helps us to understand how politicians are able to persuade.

In the thirty-year history of the study of language and gender, theory and application have branched incrementally like the reaches of a family tree. The study of language and gender has progressed from an eye-opening review of differences between the "language" of women and men to observations that language served to preserve "domination" of one sex over another and on to a cross-cultural approach which observes that the ritual styles of talk that are observed among even the youngest girls and boys at play remain with them as women and men. Language and gender has been studied in many institutional and organizational environments including medical, legal, law enforcement, academic, and business settings. While all of those settings have historically been marked by gender-based differentials in opportunity, pay, and power, one of the most metaphorically and demographically gender-differentiated institutions has remained unexamined in the sociolinguistic literature: the military. The military is particularly interesting for linguistic study because it is veritably synonymous with the socio-cultural construction of American masculinity, and therefore a fascinating venue for the study of language, gender, and power. With this innovative study, the author opens the door to considerations of power, gender dynamics, and language and ideology in a community that has not yet been studied using the techniques of discourse analysis. And while some have criticized the utility of examining "outlying cases," particularly in studies of gender or sexuality in language, the military community, though not studied, can hardly be considered an outlying case. On the contrary, American military identity ispart of American identity in that it influences the American masculine construct and has affected 26 million veterans and their families, as well as those who may not be in the military but work with and near military members and installations on a regular basis. Also unique to this study and the author's analysis of the usage of "ma'am" and "sir" is an approach which does not necessarily examine how women and men use language, but how those in their community use language to address them as women and men. This landmark book provides a refreshing perspective on gender and language dynamics in a setting not yet examined. Language and Gender in the Military, will be a vital resource for those in gender and language studies.

The authors combine a theoretical reassessment of how we understand, study and analyze processes of identification with detailed case studies of the discourses of three-generation families living in split-border communities along the former Iron Curtain, talking about themselves and other social groups, about their way of life and their experiences past and present.

A sea change has occurred in the Indian economy in the last three decades, spurring the desire to learn English. Most scholars and media venues have focused on English exclusively for its ties to processes of globalization and the rise of new employment opportunities. The pursuit of class mobility, however, involves Hindi as much as English in the vast Hindi-Belt of northern India. Schools are institutions on which class mobility depends, and they are divided by Hindi and English in the rubric of "medium," the primary language of pedagogy. This book demonstrates that the school division allows for different visions of what it means to belong to the nation and what is central and peripheral in the nation. It also shows how the language-medium division reverberates unevenly and unequally through the nation, and that schools illustrate the tensions brought on by economic liberalization and middle-class status.

This book uncovers exactly what is involved when researchers from different disciplines engage with one another in research projects. The authors identify the opportunities and difficulties involved in interdisciplinary engagement, and challenge current claims about where the greatest difficulties are to be found. The first part of the book introduces interdisciplinarity and identifies key issues that influence our understanding of it. The second part of the book presents the findings of research based on over 50 hours of recording and nearly 450,000 words of transcript drawn from a number of university faculties, concluding with a discussion of how this might inform interdisciplinary practice. The book is accessible to the non-specialist reader while also being of interest to social scientists working in professional and academic communication.

Why do languages allow us to say 'the same thing' in so many different ways? One of the answers is that in saying what we want to say, we always position ourselves in social space as well, by speaking differently from relevant other social actors or groups. This volume explores how variability in language is exploited (and maintained) in order to perform this social identity work in interaction. It shows that variable features cluster together in socially meaningful ways when considered as social (communicative) styles linked to social identities.

Each chapter of this book analyzes the rhetoric of speeches by major American and British politicians to show how metaphor is used to create political myths of monsters, villains and heroic leaders. Metaphors are shown to interact with other figures of speech to communicate subliminal meanings by drawing on the unconscious emotional association of words. An innovative study for students and researchers in discourse analysis, political communication, journalism and media studies.

Freedom of speech is a tradition distinctive to American political culture, and this book focuses on the major debates and discourses that shaped this tradition. Today the American Bill of Rights, with its famous First Amendment, is generally taken for granted, but when James Madison proposed a Bill of Rights in 1789, the reaction among his colleagues in the first Congress was hostile. The book examines how Madison was able to prevail in spite of such opposition. It focuses on discourses connected to the Sedition Act of 1798, which represented a serious threat to freedom of speech and the first Amendment. The author sheds fresh light on key Congressional debates on the Bill of Rights and the Sedition Act by developing and applying an approach to fallacy theory that is suitable to the study of political discourse. He further focuses on criticism of the Madison administration in Federalist newspapers during the War of 1812, arguing that Madison's toleration of such criticism was important in shaping a tradition of free expression in the United States. Efforts to suppress free expression during the Wilson administration represented a serious challenge to this tradition, and the author goes on to employ fallacy theory in examining Congressional discourses for and against Wilson's policy of repression.

A lot of what we know about "exotic languages" is owed to the linguistic activities of missionaries. They had the languages put into writing, described their grammar and lexicon, and worked towards a standardization, which often came with Eurocentric manipulation. Colonial missionary work as intellectual (religious) conquest formed part of the Europeans' political colonial rule, although it sometimes went against the specific objectives of the official administration. In most cases, it did not help to stop (or even reinforced) the displacement and discrimination of those languages, despite oftentimes providing their very first (sometimes remarkable, sometimes incorrect) descriptions. This volume presents exemplary studies on Catholic and Protestant missionary linguistics, in the framework of the respective colonial situation and policies under Spanish, German, or British rule. The contributions cover colonial contexts in Latin America, Africa, and Asia across the centuries. They demonstrate how missionaries dealing with linguistic analyses and descriptions cooperated with colonial institutions and how their linguistic knowledge contributed to European domination.

This collection is unique. It is a permanent record in English, of an experiment in cultural communication - a trilingual virtual symposium lasting five months, in which ten essays by internationally renowned thinkers on the impact of the Internet on texts, intellectual life, research, communication and culture were the core texts. Each one of the ten texts grapples with one of these themes, and they include personal accounts, provocative predictions, and original analyses. The essays and the text-e project, along with a selection of contributions from the online discussion, are introduced and contextualized by Gloria Origgi.

The Rhetoric of Religious Cults takes as its departure point the notion that 'cults' have a distinctive language and way of recruiting members. First outlining a rhetorical framework, which encompasses contemporary discourse analysis, the persuasive texts of three movements - Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses and Children of God - are analysed in detail and their discourse compared with other kinds of recruitment literature. Cults' distinctive negative profile in society is not matched by a linguistic typology. Indeed, this negative profile seems to rest on the semantics and application of the term 'cult' itself.

"Routledge A Level English Guides" equip AS and A2 Level students with the skills they need to explore, evaluate, and enjoy English. Books in the series are built around the various skills specified in the assessment objectives (AOs) for all AS and A2 Level English courses. Focusing on the AOs most relevant to their topic, the books help students to develop their knowledge and abilities through analysis of lively texts and contemporary data. Each book in the series covers a different area of language and literary study, and offers accessible explanations, examples, exercises, a glossary of key terms, and suggested answers. "Language and Social Contexts" considers language within the social contexts in which it is used and understood. It covers the key skills and topics, including social contexts, transcripts and the contexts of speech, language and age, language and gender and regional talk; analyses a wide variety of spoken and written texts, from conversations and text messages to wedding invitations, road signs, police warnings and advertisements; offers a step-by-step guide to approaching texts and data and suggestions for structuring a response; and can be used as both a cours

"Language and the City "shows how the contemporary form of globalization has certain effects on language in social context and identifies the city as the most important site for the realization of these effects. The book challenges a set of assumptions that hold sustainable linguistic diversity to be inherently non-urban while regarding the city as an unproblematic site for understanding the social function of language. The central purpose of the work is to construct a fresh conceptual framework for understanding language-city relationships.

Elizabeth Martin explores the impact of globalization on the language of French advertising, showing that English and global imagery play an important role in tailoring global campaigns to the French market, with media companies undeterred by the attempts through legislation to curb language mixing in the media.

This wide-ranging volume explores how gender and language are used and transformed to discuss, enact, and project social differences in light of global economic and political changes in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries. It presents analyses of language and gender from a broad spectrum of national contexts: Catalonia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Nigeria, Vietnam, Philippines, Tonga, and the United States. Cases studies consider language and gender in changing workplaces, schools and immigrant integration workshops, as well as in new and emerging sites for consumption and the production of identity. They also analyze the changing meanings of multilingualism, and the construction of ideologies about gender and language in colonial and postcolonial/national ideologies. The papers engage with and contribute to theoretical conceptualizations of globalization, cosmopolitanism, (post)colonialism, (trans)nationalism, and public spheres by drawing on a variety of sociolinguistic analytic strategies (variation analysis, media analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of speaking, sociology of language, colonial discourse analysis).

Competence encompasses or overlaps with notions of efficiency, success, accountability, excellence and self-justification. This collection explores ways in which individuals, teams or groups in organizations discursively present themselves as competent to perform tasks or functions, possibly at a superior level.

Greenberg's Language Universals is typical of his typological-theoretical work in its stunning originality. Starting out from the observations underlying Praguian markedness, Greenberg contributes a mass of new data and generalizations and lays the foundations for a post-structuralist, usage-based theory of grammatical asymmetries. This work will continue to be influential for many years to come.