Language, Nation and Power provides students with a discussion of the ways in which language has been (and is being) used to construct national (or ethnic) identity. It focuses on the processes by which a language can be planned and standardized and what the results of these processes are. Particular emphasis is given to the historical and social effects which nationalism has had on the development of language since the French Revolution. For students of linguistics, sociology and politics.

Featuring contributions from an international team of leading and up-and-coming scholars, this innovative volume provides a comprehensive sociolinguistic picture of current spoken British English based on the Spoken BNC2014, a brand new corpus of British speech. The book begins with short introductions highlighting the state-of-the-art in three major areas of corpus-based sociolinguistics, while the remaining chapters feature rigorous analysis of the research outcomes of the project grounded in Spoken BNC2014 data samples, highlighting English used in everyday situations in the UK, with brief summaries reflecting on the sociolinguistic implications of this research included at the end of each chapter. This unique and robust dataset allows this team of researchers the unique opportunity to focus on speaker characteristics such as gender, age, dialect and socio-economic status, to examine a range of sociolinguistic dimensions, including grammar, pragmatics, and discourse, and to reflect on the major changes that have occurred in British society since the last corpus was compiled in the 1990s. This dynamic new contribution to the burgeoning field of corpus-based sociolinguistics is key reading for students and scholars in sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, pragmatics, grammar, and British English.

The term "hedging" was introduced by G. Lakoss at the beginning of the 1970s and since then has provided a starting point for theoretical and empirical studies, especially in pragmatics. This volume reviews the present state of research in the area and contains studies of hedging strategies in English, German, Finnish and Russian, using academic text-types as exemplar.This volume reviews the present state of research in the area and contains studies of hedging strategies in English, German, Finnish and Russian, using academic text-types as exemplar.

In this book, Shelby Chan examines the relationship between theatre translation and identity construction against the sociocultural background that has led to the popularity of translated theatre in Hong Kong. A statistical analysis of the development of translated theatre is presented, establishing a correlation between its popularity and major socio-political trends. When the idea of home, often assumed to be the basis for identity, becomes blurred for historical, political and sociocultural reasons, people may come to feel "homeless" and compelled to look for alternative means to develop the Self. In theatre translation, Hongkongers have found a source of inspiration to nurture their identity and expand their "home" territory. By exploring the translation strategies of various theatre practitioners in Hong Kong, the book also analyses a number of foreign plays and their stage renditions. The focus is not only on the textual and discursive transfers but also on the different ways in which the people of Hong Kong perceive their identity in the performances.

This book presents research on the instruction of two heritage languages and two foreign languages in Israeli schools. The authors explore language policy and the way languages are studied from the point of view of students, teachers, schools and curricula. Language in Israel is a loaded concept, closely linked to ideological, political, and social issues. The profound changes in language policy in the West along with two large waves of immigration from the Former Soviet Union and Ethiopia resulted in new attitudes towards immigrant languages and cultures in Israel. Are these new attitudes strong enough to change the language policy in the future? What do students and teachers think about the language instruction at school? Are the teaching materials updated and do they address modern demands? This book provides answers to these and other questions. As well as describing the instruction of two heritage languages, Russian and Amharic, and two foreign languages, French and Spanish, the book also contains an extensive background on the immigration history and acculturation process of the speakers of each of these languages. An in-depth understanding of the case of Israel will serve as a guide for other countries contending with similar issues pertaining to the adjustment of language policies in light of immigration and other challenging circumstances.

Language acquisition is a human endeavor par excellence. As children, all human beings learn to understand and speak at least one language: their mother tongue. It is a process that seems to take place without any obvious effort. Second language learning, particularly among adults, causes more difficulty. The purpose of this series is to compile a collection of high-quality monographs on language acquisition. The series serves the needs of everyone who wants to know more about the problem of language acquisition in general and/or about language acquisition in specific contexts.

Language use is a principal means by which we distinguish ourselves and our group from others. In the modern age, language use often divides ethnic groups and nations: Germans are Germans because they speak German; French citizens must accept that Standard French is a central part of their national identity. Sociologists of language consider this equation of personal language use and national identity to be a product of the nationalism which developed in Europe from the eighteenth century on. Authority and Identity: A Sociolinguistic History of Europe before the Modern Age is the first attempt to take the theoretical and methodological insights of macrosociolinguistics and apply them to the history of Europe before 1500. It analyses the recurrent tensions felt since writing technology first began to be used in Europe some 3,500 years ago between centrifugal and centripetal forces, demonstrating how similar linguistic ecologies can produce different kinds of linguistic authority and identity in individuals and groups due to differing sociolinguistic conditions.

Vernacular Palaver examines the continuing appeal of the idea of 'the local' for cultural brokers in West Africa, even in instances where they have a growing interaction with diverse global and continental languages of wider communication. It highlights the contribution of foreign and indigenous languages of wider communication to the formation of the new alliances and sodalities that are testing the relevance of locality, and reshaping the concept of local culture, in West Africa. The author traces the role of discourse about language in West African identity politics from the cultural nationalists of the early 20th century to the religious transnationals of the contemporary period. Using examples from video film, popular literature, the activity of religious associations, and educational practice, this book seeks to advance our understanding of the varied functions of non-native languages in multilingual societies.

Placed within the context of reception studies, this book investigates how advertisements that rely on re-contextualising shared cultural knowledge are understood by their viewers, and examines their persuasive potential.

This book analyses the complex relationship between directness, indirectness, politeness and impoliteness. Definitions of directness and indirectness are discussed and problematised from a discursive theoretical perspective.

This book brings together the fields of language policy and discourse studies from a multidisciplinary theoretical, methodological and empirical perspective. The chapters in this volume are written by international scholars active in the field of language policy and planning and discourse studies. The diverse research contexts range from education in Paraguay and Luxembourg via businesses in Wales to regional English language policies in Tajikistan. Readers are thereby invited to think critically about the mutual relationship between language policy and discourse in a range of social, political, economic and cultural spheres. Using approaches that draw on discourse-analytic, anthropological, ethnographic and critical sociolinguistic frameworks, the contributors in this collection explore and refine the 'discursive' and the 'critical' aspects of language policy as a multilayered, fluid, ideological, discursive and social process that can operate as a tool of social change as well as reinforcing established power structures and inequalities.

For the last twenty-five years, "Language, Discourse, Society" has been the most intellectually challenging series in English. Its titles range across the disciplines from linguistics to biology, from literary criticism to law, combining vigorous scholarship and theoretical analysis at the service of a broad political engagement. This anniversary reader brings together a fascinating group of thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic with an introductory overview from the editors which considers the development of theory and scholarship over the past two decades.

The Southwest Pacific from Southern China through Indonesia, Australia and the Pacific Islands constitutes the richest linguistic region of the world. That rich resource cannot be taken for granted. Some of its languages have already been lost; many more are under threat. The challenge is to describe the languages that exist today and to adopt policies that will support their maintenance.

The history of translation has focused on literary work but this book demonstrates the way in which political control can influence and be influenced by translation choices. In this book, new research and specially commissioned essays give access to existing research projects which at present are either scattered or unavailable in English.

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.

This book offers a critical exploration of the role of English in postcolonial communities such as India. Specifically, it focuses on some local ways in which the language falls along the lines of a class-based divide (with ancillary ones of gender and caste as well). The book argues that issues of inequality, subordination and unequal value seem to revolve directly around the general positioning of English in relation to vernacular languages. The author was raised and schooled in the Indian educational system.

This book analyzes the creation of languages across the Slavophone areas of the world and their deployment for political projects and identity building, mainly after 1989. It offers perspectives from a number of disciplines such as sociolinguistics, socio-political history and language policy. Languages are artefacts of culture, meaning they are created by people. They are often used for identity building and maintenance, but in Central and Eastern Europe they became the basis of nation building and national statehood maintenance. The recent split of the Serbo-Croatian language in the wake of the break-up of Yugoslavia amply illustrates the highly politicized role of languages in this region, which is also home to most of the world's Slavic-speakers. This volume presents and analyzes the creation of languages across the Slavophone areas of the world and their deployment for political projects and identity building, mainly after 1989. The overview concludes with a reflection on the recent rise of Slavophone speech communities in Western Europe and Israel. The book brings together renowned international scholars who offer a variety of perspectives from a number of disciplines and sub-fields such as sociolinguistics, socio-political history and language policy, making this book of great interest to historians, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists interested in Central and Eastern Europe and Slavic Studies.

This book is a comparative study of vague language based on naturally occurring data of L1 and L2 speakers in academic settings. It explores how L2 learners have diverse and culturally specific needs for vague language compared with L1s, and are generally vaguer.

This book is about the doing and experiencing of diagnosis in everyday life. Diagnoses are revealed as interactive negotiations rather than as the assigning of diagnostic labels. The authors demonstrate, through detailed discourse analyses, how the diagnostic process depends on power and accountability as expressed through the talk of those engaged in the diagnostic process. The authors also show that diagnostic decisions are not only made by professional experts trained in the art and science of diagnosis, but they can also be made by anyone trying to figure out the nature of everyday problems. Finally, diagnostic reasoning is found to extend beyond typical diagnostic situations, occurring in unexpected places such as written letters of recommendation and talk about the nature of communication. Together, the chapters in this book demonstrate how diagnosis is a communication practice deeply rooted in our culture. The book is interdisciplinary and unusually broad in its focus. The authors come from different experiential scholarly backgrounds. Each of them takes a different look at the impact and nature of the diagnostic process. The diagnoses discussed include autism, Alzheimer's disease, speech and language disorders, and menopause. The focus is not only on the here and now of the diagnostic interaction, but also on how diagnoses and diagnostic processes change over time. The book can serve as an undergraduate or graduate text for courses offered in various disciplines, including communication, sociology, anthropology, communication disorders, audiology, linguistics, medicine, and disability studies.

Read the Cultural Other contains studies on non-Western discourse. It has two principal aims. Firstly, it argues that the study of non-Western, non-White, and Third-World discourses should become a legitimate, necessary, and routine part of international discourse scholarship. Hitherto, non-Western, non-White, and Third-Word discourses have been relegated and marginalized to a 'local', 'particular', or 'other' place in (or, one might argue, outside) the mainstream. To reclaim their place, the book deconstructs the rhetoric of universalism and the continued preoccupation with Western discourse in the profession, and stresses the cultural nature of discourse, both ordinary and disciplinary, as it outlines a culturally pluralist vision. Secondly, in order to take the multicultural view seriously, it explores the complexity, diversity, and forms of otherness of non-Western discourse by examining the case of China and Hong Kong's discourses of the decolonization of the latter. Far too often, non-Western discourse has been stereotyped as externally discrete, internally homogeneous, and formally containable within a 'universal', 'general', or 'integrated' model. The present work focuses on China and Hong Kong's discourses, which have been marginalized by their Western counterparts. Through culturally eclectic linguistic analysis and local cultural analysis, it identifies and highlights the specific ways of speaking of China and Hong Kong - their concepts, concerns, aspirations, resistance, verbal strategies, etc. - with respect to similar or different issues. The culturally pluralist view and analytical practice proffered here call for a radical cultural change in international scholarship on language, communication, and discourse.

This book advocates for a new model of describing the practices of language revitalization, and decolonizing the research methods used to study them. The volume provides a comprehensive treatment of the theoretical and methodological foundations of working with communities revitalizing their languages. It lays out the conceptual framework at the heart of the project and moves into a description of the model, based on a seven-year research process working with Aboriginal communities in eastern Australia. Six case studies show the model's application in language revival practice. The book critically engages with the notion of revival languages as emergent and ever-transforming and develops a holistic approach to their description that reflects Aboriginal language practitioners' understandings of the nature of language. It seeks to demonstrate how the conceptual tools developed from this approach can support efforts to develop deeply collaborative research, highlight the diversity of language revitalisation practice and map between the realms of old and new, local and global, and the social, cultural, and textual dimensions of language, making this an ideal resource for researchers and scholars in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, education, cultural studies, and post-colonial studies.

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.

This book brings together cutting edge work by Brazilian researchers on multilingualism in Brazil for an English-speaking readership in one comprehensive volume. Divided into five sections, each with its own introduction, tying together the themes of the book, the volume charts a course for a new sociolinguistics of multilingualism, challenging long-held perceptions about a monolingual Brazil by exploring the different policies, language resources, ideologies and social identities that have emerged in the country's contemporary multilingual landscape. The book elucidates the country's linguistic history to demonstrate its evolution to its present state, a country shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces both locally and globally, and explores different facets of today's multilingual Brazil, including youth on the margins and their cultural and linguistic practices; the educational challenges of socially marginalized groups; and minority groups' efforts to strengthen languages of identity and belonging. In addition to assembling linguistic research done in Brazil previously little known to an English-speaking readership, the book incorporates theoretical frameworks from other disciplines to provide a comprehensive picture of the social, political, and cultural dynamics at play in multilingual Brazil. This volume is key reading for researchers in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, cultural studies, and Latin American studies.

The book presents most recent investigations into foreign language teaching and learning discussed by prominent scholars in the field. A wide variety of topics ranges from theoretical approaches to foreign language instruction to a discussion of findings of empirical research in language learning and pedagogy. The theoretical part of the volume tackles issues which constitute the backbone to the understanding of the processes involved in language development, learning and teaching and thus contribute to applied research. The empirical articles in Parts Two and Three of the volume report on studies focusing on such important issues as various dimensions of awareness (language, cross-cultural competence or affectivity) and specific methodologies implemented in different educational settings (such as, for instance, dyslexic learners) or in teacher training programmes.

This book emerges as a response to the increasing use of English as a lingua franca in the multilingual European context. It provides an up-to-date overview of the sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and educational aspects of research on third language acquisition by focusing on English as a third language.