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This book takes urban Wolof beyond Senegal to consider the effects of mobility on language and examine how the diasporans engage in their daily language practices as transmigrants. The parallel between languaging and migrating underpins the author's argument, as he examines the dynamicity of languaging at both micro and macro levels, as speakers navigate across spaces and languages. Moving away from a code-based approach, the author makes a compelling case that the urbanite, rather than shuttling between codes, deploys instead idiolectal features from a unique linguistic repertoire which comprises at once semiotic, cognitive, and language features. His indigenous approach affords novel perspectives in linguistic ethnography and complements the Euro-Western methodologies.

Methods for the Ethnography of Communication is a guide to conducting ethnographic research in classroom and community settings that introduces students to the field of ethnography of communication and takes them through the recursive and nonlinear cycle of ethnographic research.This brand-new edition includes the most up-to-date research, with the authors introducing the innovative CULTURES framework to provide a helpful structure for moving through the complex process of collecting and analyzing ethnographic data and address the larger'how-to'questions that students struggle with during ethnographic research. Exercises and activities help students make the connection between communicative events, acts, and situations and ways of studying them ethnographically.Integrating a primary focus on language in use within an ethnographic framework makes this book an invaluable core text for courses on ethnography of communication and related areas in a variety of disciplines.

Eating is generally understood as a human need that people satisfy in diverse ways. Eating, however, is also an English word. Other languages, using other words, order reality differently: they may fuse eating with breathing, or distinguish chupar from comer. Anthropologists flag such differences by leaving a few of their words untranslated, but what language do we think in? This isn't necessarily English. We may be linguistically closer to those whose practices we study: them. Against this background, Eating Is an English Word argues that social scientists should let go of the dream of universal concepts. Our analytical terms had better vary. Annemarie Mol and her coauthors exemplify this in a series of material semiotic inquiries into eating practices. They employ terms like lekker, tasting with fingers, chupar, schmecka, gustar, and settling on an okay meal to explore appreciative modes of valuing. Welcome, then, to spirited stories about satisfied stomachs, love for a lamb, juicy fruit treats, and companionable lunches and dinners.

This book facilitates constructive interdisciplinary dialogue among linguistics and philology specialists concerning various languages in Vietnam, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The book's principal objective is to investigate the interdisciplinary nature of language change, with a particular focus on analyzing the structural and socio-cultural components of the evolution of specific linguistic phenomena over time. The book concentrates on the five primary language families in the East and Southeast Asian linguistic arena, namely Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, and Hmong-Mien. In doing so, it develops understanding of the extent to which language change is the result of language-internal mechanisms, prolonged contact with other languages within the same linguistic area, and the surrounding socio-cultural milieu. Given that Vietnam presents a linguistic microcosm of the East and Southeast Asia region, the book is divided into two sections. The first centers on historical linguistics relating to major languages based in Vietnam, including Vietnamese and its significant neighbors, Tay and Nung. The subsequent section examines the transformations observable in other languages prevalent across East and Southeast Asia that are historically, typologically, and geographically related to languages from Vietnam, including Chinese, Formosan, and Philippine languages, as well as Hmongic languages. A product of a workshop sponsored by the Harvard Yenching Institute held at the Institute of Sino-Nom Studies, this book encompasses a significant contribution to the field of Vietnamese historical linguistics, which has been notably underexplored in academic research. It is relevant to linguists, philologists, historians, anthropologists, and cultural scholars interested in Vietnam in particular, and the Southeast and East Asian cultural and linguistic landscape at large.

Bushnell and Moody present a rich investigation into the navigation of friendships, adopting discursive and ethnographic perspectives to examine Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and English interactional data. Since the definition of friendship is hard to pin down, most sociocultural anthropologists have tended to focus on issues of kinship and descent, while leaving friendship as a residual or interstitial issue. However, this book puts friendship as the central focus and offers unique perspectives from the participants themselves. The interactional work implicated in the accomplishment of making and being friends, and the trials and tribulations of friendship, are both explored through the many detailed analyses showing how the participants navigate the calm and rough waters of friendship in and through their everyday interactions. Researchers, undergraduates, and postgraduate students in the fields of conversation analysis, pragmatics, and other social sciences will benefit from the real-life examples in the book as well as the analysis.

Notre appartenance au monde du vivant en tant qu'Homo sapiens s'inscrit dans l'observation des objets du monde participant de notre environnement et est à l'origine de l'expérience du miroir chez les grands primates. Chez l'être humain, cette procédure, en corrélation avec le langage articulé, est à l'origine de la construction identitaire, construction qui réfère à l'identité anthropomorphique et à son évolution en synchronie et en diachronie.L'identité peut, également, prendre sa source d'un secteur professionnel spécifique ou de la structure groupale. Nombre d'exemples permettront au lecteur de mieux comprendre cette approche particulière de la mise en relation entre langage et identité.

This book sets out to try to understand why segregated schooling still exists, especially in northern Italy in South Tyrol where they practice ‘separate but equal'education. Supported by the UN, the Austrian and Italian governments, the province is considered a ‘peace model'due to its consociational approach to dealing with the region's Nazi and Fascist past, which has led to a ‘negative peace'. The autonomy statutes, which derived from this ‘peace', resulted in an education system that is linguistically segregated for the purposes of protecting South Tyrol's ethnolinguistic minorities. Broken into two parts, the book begins with the background history of the province, before describing the region's geographical layout, demographics, local identity, and its three-part schooling system. By examining responses to South Tyrol's education system, and its impact on local group dynamics, this book explores the implications that segregated schooling may have on second language acquisition. This case study will be of interest to students and scholars of Italian studies, anthropology, linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics, and second language education.

Have you ever wondered whether we are alone in the universe, or if life forms on other planets might exist? If they do exist, how might their languages have evolved? Could we ever understand them, and indeed learn to communicate with them? This highly original, thought-provoking book takes us on a fascinating journey over billions of years, from the formation of galaxies and solar systems, to the appearance of planets in the habitable zones of their parent stars, and then to how biology and, ultimately, human life arose on our own planet. It delves into how our brains and our language developed, in order to explore the likelihood of communication beyond Earth and whether it would evolve along similar lines. In the process, fascinating insights from the fields of astronomy, evolutionary biology, palaeoanthropology, neuroscience and linguistics are uncovered, shedding new light on life as we know it on Earth, and beyond.

This book explores language maintenance and development in the linguistic lives of second-, third-, and fourth-generation immigrants as they navigate migration and diaspora, highlighting the role of women in acting as custodians and gate-keepers of family languages towards creating a sense of home.The volume features an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on work from narrative, storytelling, literary studies, and linguistic anthropology, as well as interviews with multiple generations of immigrant families, to reflect on the ways these families foster a sense of home and maintain connections to their homelands through language. Robinson showcases the voices of a diverse range of families to examine the choices women in immigrant families make between the use of family languages, dominant community languages, or a mix of the two. The volume enhances our understanding of the ways in which immigrants navigate the linguistic landscapes of home and community amid migration and diaspora.This book will be of interest to students and scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, language and gender, and language and migration.

This book fills a gap in the literature as it uniquely approaches onomastics from the perspective of both anthropology and linguistics. It addresses names and cultures from 16 countries and five continents, thus offering readers an opportunity to comprehend and compare names and naming practices across cultures. The chapters presented in this book explore the cultural significance of personal names, naming ceremonies, conventions and practices. They illustrate how these names and practices perform certain culture-specific functions, such as religion, identity and social activity. Some chapters address the socio-political significance of personal names and their expression of self and otherness. The book also links the linguistic structure of personal names to culture by looking at their morphology, syntax and semantics. It is divided into four sections: Section 1 demonstrates how personal names perform human culture, Section 2 focuses on how personal names index socio-political transitioning, Section 3 demonstrates religious values in personal names and naming, and Section 4 links linguistic structure and analysis of personal names to culture and heritage.

This book presents an evolutionary theory of the origin and step-by-step development of linguistic structures and cognitive abilities from the early stages of anthropogenesis to the Upper Paleolithic. Emphasizing the social nature of the human mind and using an extended version of C.Hempel's explanatory logic, the author proves that language and consciousness emerged and evolved through the daily efforts of our ancestors to overcome mutual misunderstandings in increasingly complex social orders with increasing tasks on memory, thinking, and normative regulation of behavior, with the addition of new and new communicative concerns.The book addresses questions such as the following:What unique social conditions led to the emergence of the first protosyllables and protowords?What steps enabled the crossing of the'linguistic Rubicon'(between animal communication and human speech)?Why were syllables and phonemes needed? How did ourancestors overcome the difficulties of misunderstanding?How, when, and why did ancient people learn to speak in turns? Why did they begin to talk about past and distant events? What is consciousness and how did it evolve along with language?How many original languages were there and why are there roughly 200 philas (language macrofamilies)?How and why did the number of languages and the degree of their complexity change in pre-written history?Did the Romance languages really evolve from Latin?Accordingly, the book will appeal to scholars in various disciplines who are interested in a better understanding of the cognitive aspects of anthropogenesis and the ancient origins of language and consciousness.

This book argues for an approach to linguistic ethnography which departs from the singular gaze of the academic researcher, to amplify instead the voices of participants, researchers and collaborators. The authors offer an account of writing ethnography polyphonically, incorporating the complexity of individual voices. In doing so they challenge the imperative to make meaning from, and explain the culture of, ‘the other'. Together, the essays open up the emic perspective by considering the experiential, aesthetic, emotional, moral and ethical value people bring to encounters with others. The book is an essential addition to research methods courses in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, and an invaluable contribution to knowledge about research-based drama, theatre and creative practice.

'An assured guide'(New Scientist) to the relationship between the language we speak and our perception of such fundamentals of experience as time, space, color, and smells.We tend to assume that all languages categorize ideas and objects similarly, reflecting our common human experience. But this isn't the case. When we look closely, we find that many basic concepts are not universal, and that speakers of different languages literally see and think about the world differently.Caleb Everett takes readers around the globe, explaining what linguistic diversity tells us about human culture, overturning conventional wisdom along the way. For instance, though it may seem that everybody refers to time in spatial terms—in English, for example, we speak of time “passing us by”—speakers of the Amazonian language Tupi Kawahib never do. In fact, Tupi Kawahib has no word for “time” at all. And while it has long been understood that languages categorize colors based on those that speakers regularly encounter, evidence suggests that the color words we have at our disposal affect how we discriminate colors themselves: a rose may not appear as rosy by any other name. What's more, the terms available to us even determine the range of smells we can identify. European languages tend to have just a few abstract odor words, like “floral” or “stinky,” whereas Indigenous languages often have well over a dozen.Why do some cultures talk anthropocentrically about things being to one's “left” or “right,” while others use geocentric words like “east” and “west”? What is the connection between what we eat and the sounds we make? A Myriad of Tongues answers these and other questions, yielding profound insights into the fundamentals of human communication and experience.

Lessons from Fort Apache is an ethnography of Indigenous language dynamics on the Fort Apache reservation in Arizona with North American and global implications concerning language endangerment. Moving beyond a narrow focus on linguistic documentation, M. Eleanor Nevins examines how the linguistics and cultural identities of Indigenous populations are attributed with meaning against other sociocultural concerns and interests. While affirming the value of language documentation and maintenance, Nevins also provides a much-needed appraisal of the potential conflicts in authority claims and language practices between community members and the educators and scholars who research their linguistic heritage. Nevins argues that the debates surrounding the revitalization of Indigenous languages need broadening to include larger questions of social mediation, shifting cultural identities, and the politics intrinsic to the relationship between Indigenous community members and university-accredited experts such as language researchers and educators. This engaging ethnography examines these questions and investigates the language dynamics of the Fort Apache Reservation, including the unintended challenges that standardized textual models sometimes pose to local interests. Nevins reveals the community's historical and contemporary concerns for language documentation, maintenance, and revitalization.Lessons from Fort Apache demonstrates the need for language maintenance programs and for flexibility in finding politically sustainable forms of collaboration and exchange between researchers, teachers, and those community members who base their claims to an Indigenous language in alternate terms.

The contributions gathered in this volume attempt to take varied perspectives on current state of art within the field of linguistics, sociolinguistics and ethnolinguistics. This vast interpretative perspective stretches from the modern European and American conceptualisations of the societal identity, through the extralinguistic reality hidden behind the language expressions and phraseology in order to complete this image with the insightful presentation of various linguistic diasporas. Sociopragmatic and ethnolinguistic considerations accomplish this attempt to represent the leading themes of modern linguistic studies. Diverse methodological and empirical perspectives are employed in the present volume – from socio- and ethnolinguistic issues through (inter)cultural and communication studies to good practices in translatology.

Provides an expansive view of the full field of linguistic anthropology, featuring an all-new team of contributing authors representing diverse new perspectives A New Companion to Linguistic Anthropology provides a timely and authoritative overview of the field of study that explores how language influences society and culture. Bringing together more than 30 original essays by an interdisciplinary panel of renowned scholars and younger researchers, this comprehensive volume covers a uniquely wide range of both classic and contemporary topics as well as cutting-edge research methods and emerging areas of investigation. Building upon the success of its predecessor, the acclaimed Blackwell Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, this new edition reflects current trends and developments in research and theory. Entirely new chapters discuss topics such as the relationship between language and experiential phenomena, the use of research data to address social justice, racist language and raciolinguistics, postcolonial discourse, and the challenges and opportunities presented by social media, migration, and global neoliberalism. Innovative new research analyzes racialized language in World of Warcraft, the ethics of public health discourse in South Africa, the construction of religious doubt among Orthodox Jewish bloggers, hybrid forms of sociality in videoconferencing, and more. Presents fresh discussions of topics such as American Indian speech communities, creolization, language mixing, language socialization, deaf communities, endangered languages, and language of the law Addresses recent trends in linguistic anthropological research, including visual documentation, ancient scribes, secrecy, language and racialization, global hip hop, justice and health, and language and experience Utilizes ethnographic illustration to explore topics in the field of linguistic anthropology Includes a new introduction written by the editors and an up-to-date bibliography with over 2,000 entries A New Companion to Linguistic Anthropologyis a must-have for researchers, scholars, and undergraduate and graduate students in linguistic anthropology, as well as an excellent text for those in related fields such as sociolinguistics, discourse studies, semiotics, sociology of language, communication studies, and language education.

Taking a unique approach which combines sociolinguistics with theoretical linguistics, this book presents a view of language and grammar as both a cognitive and socio-cultural phenomena. Beginning with Bakhtin's theories of conceptual grammar and lexico-grammar, this book encompasses a broad philosophical range, engaging with the ideas of key figures such as Bergson, Chomsky, Derrida and Wittgenstein. Drawing on their work, it investigates how language progresses from an inner reflection of the rational mind to develop social and ideological aspects as it interacts with culture. In doing so, it shows how identity is unitary and rational at the linguistic core whilst multiple social identities are simultaneously shaped by linguistic differences at the cultural peripheries. Encompassing theoretical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, multilingualism, sociolinguistics and semiotics, Rationality and Interpretation demonstrates how the different branches of linguistics can complement each other and highlights the socio-cultural influences of language development, as well as how language development is shaped by those influences.

It is a feature of the twenty-first century that world languages are displacing local languages at an alarming rate, transforming social relations and complicating cultural transmission in the process. This language shift—the gradual abandonment of minority languages in favor of national or international languages—is often in response to inequalities in power, signaling a pressure to conform to the political and economic structures represented by the newly dominant languages. In its most extreme form, language shift can result in language death and thus the permanent loss of traditional knowledge and lifeways. To combat this, indigenous and scholarly communities around the world have undertaken various efforts, from archiving and lexicography to the creation of educational and cultural programs. What works in one community, however, may not work in another. Indeed, while the causes of language endangerment may be familiar, the responses to it depend on “highly specific local conditions and opportunities.” In keeping with this premise, the editors of this volume insist that to understand language endangerment, “researchers and communities must come to understand what is happening to the speakers, not just what is happening to the language.” The eleven case studies assembled here strive to fill a gap in the study of endangered languages by providing much-needed sociohistorical and ethnographic context and thus connecting specific language phenomena to larger national and international issues. The goal is to provide theoretical and methodological tools for researchers and organizers to best address the specific needs of communities facing language endangerment. The case studies here span regions as diverse as Kenya, Siberia, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Venezuela, the United States, and Germany. The volume includes a foreword by linguistic anthropologist Jane Hill and an afterword by poet and linguist Ofelia Zepeda.

This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.

What is it about humans that makes language possible, and what is it about language that makes us human?If you are reading this, you have done something that only our species has evolved to do. You have acquired a natural language. This book asks, How has this changed us? Where scholars have long wondered what it is about humans that makes language possible, N. J. Enfield and Jack Sidnell ask instead, What is it about humans that is made possible by language? In Consequences of Language their objective is to understand what modern language really is and to identify its logical and conceptual consequences for social life. Central to this undertaking is the concept of intersubjectivity, the open sharing of subjective experience. There is, Enfield and Sidnell contend, a uniquely human form of intersubjectivity, and it is essentially intertwined with language in two ways: a primary form of intersubjectivity was necessary for language to have begun evolving in our species in the first place and then language, through its defining reflexive properties, transformed the nature of our intersubjectivity. In the authors'analysis, social accountability—the bedrock of society—is grounded in this linguistically transformed, enhanced kind of intersubjectivity.The account of the language-mind-society connection put forward in Consequences of Language is one of unprecedented reach, suggesting new connections across disciplines centrally concerned with language—from anthropology and philosophy to sociology and cognitive science—and among those who would understand the foundational role of language in making us human.

In 1885, Henri Bergson addressed a class of French high school students on the subject of politeness. Bergson would go on to become one of the most influential philosophers of his time, yet although this essay set forth a striking theory of politeness and foreshadowed aspects of his later work, it remains remarkably little-known. Rethinking Politeness with Henri Bergson offers the first English translation of Discours sur la Politesse, and brings together leading linguistic anthropologists to critically engage with and expand on Bergson's ideas. At the core of Bergson's essay is a tripartite classification of politeness acts into politesse des manières ('politeness of manners'), politesse de l'esprit ('politeness of mind/spirit'), and politesse du coeur ('politeness of the heart'). Presented along a hierarchy of intersubjective attunement and ethical aspirations, Bergson's three types call for the progressive abandonment of habits when they get in the way of our ability to help others. They can also be read as an invitation to consider politeness as a dimension of human sociability that is relevant to social theory. Collectively, the essays in this volume untangle the ideological, socio-historical, and material conditions that shape notions of the ideal social agent, and propose a rethinking of politeness that serves as a bridge to larger issues of civility, citizenship, and democracy.

Introduction to Cognitive Ethnography and Systematic Field Work by G. Mark Schoepfle provides a guide to the fundamentals of cognitive ethnography for qualitative research. A focus of this technique is collecting data from flexible but rigorous interviews. These interviews are flexible because they are designed to be structured around the semantic knowledge being elicited from the speaker, not around some pre-conceived design that is based on the researcher's background, and they are rigorous because the basic linguistic and semantic structures are shared among all cultures. Written by one of the founders of this technique, this text provides a wealth of concentrated knowledge developed over years to best suit this collaborative and participant-centric research process. Eight chapters show how intertwined data collection and analysis are in this method. The first chapter offers a brief history and overview of the cognitive ethnography. Chapter 2 covers planning a research project, from developing a research question to ethics and IRB requirements. The next two chapters cover interview background, techniques, and structures. Chapter 5 addresses analysis while Chapter 6 covers transcription and translation. Chapter 7 covers observation, while a final chapter address writing a report for both consultants and outside audiences.

What role does language play in the formation and perpetuation of our ideas about nationality and other social categories? And what role does it play in the formation and perpetuation of nations themselves, and of other human groups? Language and Nationality considers these questions and examines the consequences of the notion that a language and a nationality are intrinsically connected. Pietro Bortone illustrates how our use of language reveals more about us than we think, is constantly judged, and marks group insiders and group outsiders. Casting doubt on several assumptions common among academics and non-academics alike, he highlights how languages significantly differ among themselves in structure, vocabulary, and social use, in ways that are often untranslatable and can imply a particular culture. Nevertheless, he argues, this does not warrant the way language has been used for promoting a national outlook and for teaching us to identify with a nation. Above all, the common belief that languages indicate nationalities reflects our intellectual and political history, and has had a tremendous social cost. Bortone elucidates how the development of standardized national languages – while having merits – has fostered an unrealistic image of nations and has created new social inequalities. He also shows how it has obscured the history of many languages, artificially altered their fundamental features, and distorted the public understanding of what a language is.

This book demonstrates the power and distinctiveness of the contribution that sociolinguistics can make to our understanding of everyday communicative practice under changing social conditions. It builds on the approaches developed by Gumperz and Hymes in the 1970s and 80s, and it not only affirms their continuing relevance in analyses of the micropolitics of everyday talk in urban settings, but also argues for their value in emergent efforts to chart the heavily securitised environments now developing around us. Drawing on 10 years of collaborative work and ranging across disciplinary, interdisciplinary and applied perspectives, the book begins with guiding principles and methodology, shifts to empirically driven arguments in urban sociolinguistics, and concludes with studies of (in)securitised communication addressed to challenges ahead.

This is a study of vocal expressions in the borderland between speech and song, based on performances from cultural contexts where oral transmission dominates. Approaches drawn from perspectives belonging to both ethnomusicology and linguistics are integrated in the analysis. As the idea of the performance template is employed as an analytical tool, the focus is on those techniques that make performance possible. The result is an increased understanding of what performers actually do when they employ variation or improvisation, and sometimes composition as well. The transmission of these culture-specific techniques is essential for the continuation of this form of human communication and interaction with the spirit world. By comparative study of other research, the result of the analysis is viewed in relation to ongoing processes in society.

Der Band versammelt zentrale Arbeiten von Susanne Günthner, die in ihrer thematischen Vielfalt stets Sprache in ihrem Sitz im Leben, der Interaktion und in ihrer Fülle an sozialen und kulturellen Funktionen betrachten. Die vorliegenden Beiträge spiegeln dabei die Bandbreite ihrer langjährigen Forschung wider, die von der Analyse grammatischer Strukturen interaktionaler Sprache – wie z.B. Projektorkonstruktionen oder Diskursmarker – über die Beschäftigung mit sprachlichen Mustern in kommunikativen Praktiken und Gattungen bis hin zu anthropologisch-linguistischen Perspektiven u.a. auf doing gender, auf die kommunikative Konstruktion von Kultur oder auf Aspekte medizinischer Kommunikation reicht. ; Der Band versammelt zentrale Arbeiten von Susanne Günthner, die in ihrer thematischen Vielfalt stets Sprache in ihrem Sitz im Leben, der Interaktion und in ihrer Fülle an sozialen und kulturellen Funktionen betrachten. Die vorliegenden Beiträge spiegeln dabei die Bandbreite ihrer langjährigen Forschung wider, die von der Analyse grammatischer Strukturen interaktionaler Sprache – wie z.B. Projektorkonstruktionen oder Diskursmarker – über die Beschäftigung mit sprachlichen Mustern in kommunikativen Praktiken und Gattungen bis hin zu anthropologisch-linguistischen Perspektiven u.a. auf doing gender, auf die kommunikative Konstruktion von Kultur oder auf Aspekte medizinischer Kommunikation reicht.

In diesem Open-Access-Buch wird gezeigt, dass die christliche Predigt eine multimodal realisierte rekonstruktiv-prospektive kommunikative Gattung ist, die die Aufgabe hat, eine Wissens-, Glaubens- und Praktikengemeinschaft herzustellen. Diese Gattung wurde bisher nicht konzise auf allen Gattungsebenen beschrieben. Die vorliegende Arbeit schließt diese Forschungslücke mithilfe natürlicher Audio- und Videodaten. Theoretisch und methodisch bewegt sich die Arbeit an der Schnittstelle zwischen Linguistik und Soziologie. Sie greift sowohl auf das Modell der kommunikativen Gattungen nach Luckmann als auch auf das Repertoire der Multimodalen Interaktionsanalyse zurück. Zusätzlich wird ein neues, innovatives Modell für die Transkription von Multimodalität vorgestellt.

This book offers the latest insights on language documentation, a reborn, refashioned, and reenergized subfield of linguistics motivated by the urgent task of creating a record of the world's fast disappearing languages. Language documentation provides data to challenge and improve existing linguistic theory. In addition, because it requires input from various fields to be comprehensive, language documentation serves to build bridges between linguistics and other disciplines. Language documentation also provides resources for communities interested in language and culture preservation, language maintenance, and language revitalization. This book informs, evokes interest, and encourages involvement at all levels.

This volume provides the most up-to-date and holistic but compact account of the peopling of the world from the perspective of language, genes and material culture, presenting a view from the Himalayas. The phylogeny of language families, the chronology of branching of linguistic family trees and the historical and modern geographical distribution of language communities inform us about the spread of languages and linguistic phyla. The global distribution and the chronology of spread of Y chromosomal haplogroups appears closely correlated with the spread of language families. New findings on ancient DNA have greatly enhanced our understanding of the prehistory and provenance of our biological ancestors. The archaeological study of past material cultures provides yet a third independent window onto the complex prehistory of our species.

Food plays a central role in the production of culture and is likewise a powerful resource for the representation and organization of social order. Status is asserted or contested through both the materiality of food (its substance, its raw economics, and its manufacture or preparation) and through its discursivity (its marketing, staging, and the way it is depicted and discussed). This intersection of materiality and discursivity makes food an ideal site for examining the place of language in contemporary class formations, and for engaging cutting-edge debates in sociolinguistics on language materiality. In Elite Authenticity, Gwynne Mapes integrates theories of mediatization, materiality, and authenticity in order to explore the discursive production of elite status and class inequality in food discourse. Relying on a range of methodological approaches, Mapes examines restaurant reviews and articles published in the New York Times food section; a collection of Instagram posts from @nytfood; ethnographically-informed fieldwork in four renowned Brooklyn, NY, restaurants; and a recorded dinner conversation with six food-enthusiasts. Across these varied genres of data, she demonstrates how a discourse of'elite authenticity'represents a particular surfacing of rhetorical maneuvers in which distinction is orchestrated, avowed/disavowed, and circulated. Elite Authenticity takes a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, drawing on theories from linguistics, food and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. Its presentation and analysis of aural, visual, spatial, material, and embodied discourse will be of interest to scholars and students of communication studies, critical discourse studies, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and cultural geography.

This book examines the interplay and tensions between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic language policy and processes in Tigray, a regional state of Ethiopia, in the period of pre- and post-1991. Viewing language use and language policy as dynamic social and ideological processes, the book presents Ethiopia as an example of language policy creation and implementation over time, in a highly volatile political context. The case of Ethiopia is unique in that different language policies and practices were put in place as the country's leaders changed through political takeovers. Declared language policies were not always implemented, and those implemented were often protested. The book starts with an overview and review of language policy and planning, followed by a chapter on the history of such planning in Ethiopia. It then presents the methodology used for the study, and examines the appropriation of hegemonic LPP, patterns of resistance, schools and public sites as centers of resistance,and the emergence and development of specific patterns of language use in different regions of the country. The book ends with recommendations for future research, and draws the overall conclusion that since LPP is a dynamic and multilayered contextual process, official or de facto language policy is often undermined by overt or covert unofficial language policies, ideologies, mechanisms, and agents that result in different patterns of language use.

This is the first textbook on the linguistic relativity hypothesis, presenting it in user-friendly language, yet analyzing all its premises in systematic ways. The hypothesis claims that there is an intrinsic interconnection between thought, language, and society. All technical terms are explained and a glossary is provided at the back of the volume. The book looks at the history and different versions of the hypothesis over the centuries, including the research paradigms and critiques that it has generated. It also describes and analyzes the relevant research designed to test its validity in various domains of language structure and use, from grammar and discourse to artificial languages and in nonverbal semiotic systems as well. Overall, this book aims to present a comprehensive overview of the hypothesis and its supporting research in a textbook fashion, with pedagogical activities in each chapter, including questions for discussion and practical exercises on specific notions associated with the hypothesis. The book also discusses the hypothesis as a foundational notion for the establishment of linguistic anthropology as a major branch of linguistics. This essential course text inspires creative, informed dialogue and debate for students of anthropology,linguistics, cultural studies, cognitive science, and psychology.

This book explores the concept of linguistic worldview, which is underpinned by the underlying idea that languages, in their lexicogrammatical structures and patterns of usage, encode interpretations of reality that symbolize, shape, and construct speakers'cultural experience.The volume traces the development of the linguistic worldview conception from its origins in ancient Greece to 20th-century linguistic relativity, Western ethnosemantics, parallel movements in eastern Europe, and contemporary inquiry into languacultures. It outlines the important theoretical issues, surveys the major approaches, and identifies areas of both convergence and discrepancy between them. By proposing three sample analyses, the book highlights the relevant questions addressed in different but compatible models, as well as identifies possible avenues of their further development. Finally, it considers several domains of potential interest to the linguistic worldview agenda. Because inquiry into linguistic worldviews concerns the sphere of the symbolic and the cultural, it touches upon the very essence of human lives.This book will be of interest to scholars working in cultural linguistics, ethnolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, comparative semantics, and translation studies.

This book presents a multidisciplinary overview of a little known interethnic conflict in the southernmost part of the Americas: the tensions between the Mapuche indigenous people and the settlers of European descent in the Araucania region, in southern Chile. Politically autonomous during the colonial period, the Mapuche had their land confiscated, their population decimated and the survivors displaced and relocated as marginalized and poor peasants by Chilean white settlers at the end of the nineteenth century, when Araucania was transformed in a multi-ethnic region marked by numerous tensions between the marginalized indigenous population and the dominant Chileans of European descent.This contributed volume presents a collection of papers which delve into some of the intercultural dilemmas posed by these complex interethnic relations. These papers were originally published in Spanish and French and provide a sample of the research activities of the Núcleo de Estudios Interétnicos e Interculturales (NEII) at the Universidad Católica de Temuco, in the capital of Araucania. The NEII research center brings together scholars from different fields: sociocultural anthropology, sociolinguistics, ethno-literature, intercultural education, intercultural philosophy, ethno-history and translation studies to produce innovative research in intercultural and interethnic relations. The chapters in this volume present a sample of this work, focusing on three main topics: The ambivalence between the inclusion and exclusion of indigenous peoples in processes of nation-building.The challenges posed by the incorporation of intercultural practices in the spheres of language, education and justice.The limitations of a functional notion of interculturality based on eurocentric thought and neoliberal economic rationality. Intercultural Studies from Southern Chile: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches willbe of interest to anthropologists, linguists, historians, philosophers, educators and a range of other social scientists interested in intercultural and interethnic studies.

Welchen Stellenwert hat die Kenntnis einer Grammatik für das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Welt und zu sich selbst? Und wofür braucht es Grammatik überhaupt, wenn grammatische Mehrdeutigkeit ohnehin meist unbemerkt bleibt und selten ein Verständnisproblem darstellt? Auf diese Fragen gibt Simon Kasper empirisch und theoretisch fundiert eine umfassende Antwort. Anhand einer historischen Korpusstudie an Paralleltexten dokumentiert er den erfolgreichen menschlichen Umgang mit Mehrdeutigkeit und liefert in der Folge einen anthropologischen Entwurf zum Verstehen, der sowohl der leiblichen Existenz des Menschen (Embodiment) als auch der Grammatizität seiner Sprache Rechnung trägt. Dabei bezieht er nicht nur Grundannahmen der Kognitiven Linguistik und der Philosophischen Anthropologie ein, sondern führt auch quantitative (Frequenz) und qualitative (Bedeutsamkeit) Ansätze der Sprachtheorie zusammen.

This book explores the linguistic and social practices related to same-sex desires and identities that were widely attested in the USA during the years preceding the police raid on the Stonewall Inn in 1969. The author demonstrates that this language was not a unified or standardized code, but rather an aggregate of linguistic practices influenced by gender, racial, and class differences, urban/rural locations, age, erotic desires and pursuits, and similar social descriptors. Contrary to preconceptions, moreover, it circulated widely in both public and in private domains. This intriguing book will appeal to students and academics interested in the intersections of language, sexuality and history and queer historical linguistics.

Did Neanderthals have language, and if so, what was it like? Scientists agree overall that the behaviour and cognition of Neanderthals resemble that of early modern humans in important ways. However, the existence and nature of Neanderthal language remains a controversial topic. The first in-depth treatment of this intriguing subject, this book comes to the unique conclusion that, collective hunting is a better window on Neanderthal language than other behaviours. It argues that Neanderthal hunters employed linguistic signs akin to those of modern language, but lacked complex grammar. Rudolf Botha unpacks and appraises important inferences drawn by researchers working in relevant branches of archaeology and other prehistorical fields, and uses a large range of multidisciplinary literature to bolster his arguments. An important contribution to this lively field, this book will become a landmark book for students and scholars alike, in essence, illuminating Neanderthals'linguistic powers.

This book addresses one of the most crucial and common questions confronting planners of languages other than English, that is, how the impacts of global languages on local languages should be dealt with: internationalization or local language promotion? This empirical study examines the implementation of Iran's governmental language and terminology policy to accelerate rarely used abbreviation methods in Persian in order to preserve the language from the extensiveness of borrowed English abbreviated forms. This book provides an in-depth analysis of relevant linguistic theories as well as the structure and social context of the Persian language itself, rather than relying on personal opinions or beliefs either in favour of or against abbreviation. The text appeals to politicians, language planners, terminologists, lecturers, authors and translators of scientific works, especially those who are speakers of languages other than English and seek to promote their local languages. This book is particularly relevant to linguistics students (both undergraduate and graduate students) and language teachers and researchers in the broader areas of language education and curriculum design.

The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography provides an accessible, authoritative and comprehensive overview of this growing body of research, combining ethnographic approaches with close attention to language use. This handbook illustrates the richness and potential of linguistic ethnography to provide detailed understandings of situated patterns of language use while connecting these patterns clearly to broader social structures.Including a general introduction to linguistic ethnography and 25 state-of-the-art chapters from expert international scholars, the handbook is divided into three sections. Chapters cover historical, empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions to the field, and new approaches and developments.This handbook is key reading for those studying linguistic ethnography, qualitative research methods, sociolinguistics and educational linguistics within English Language, Applied Linguistics, Education and Anthropology.

While most of the more recent influential work on swearing has concentrated on English and other languages from the Global North, looking at forms and functions of swear words, this contribution redirects the necessary focus onto a sociolinguistics of swearing that puts transgressive practices in non-Western languages into the focus. The transdisciplinary volume contains innovative case studies that address swearing and cursing in parts of the world characterized by consequences of colonialism and increasingly debated inequalities. Turning away from more conventional and established methodologies and theoretical approaches, the book envisages to address transgressive linguistic practices, performances and contexts in Africa, Asia, America and Europe –including individuals'creativity, subversive power and agency. Due to its interdisciplinary and non-mainstream focus, this volume is an essential addition to the field of studies.

Drawing from the disciplines of cognitive science, Paleolithic anthropology, art history, and semiotics, Karen A. Haworth and Terry J. Prewitt offer a novel discussion of the origins of language, based primarily in the distinction of holistic versus analytical cognitive processing. Also, by employing a refined view of human symboling capacities grounded in the writings of C. S. Peirce, they provide a short but comprehensive explanation of what the artifacts and art of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods suggest about language origins. Their interpretation supports a semiotic argument that “iconic and indexical logical modeling” precedes human elaboration of experience by symbolic reference in words or propositions, and ultimately in what Peirce called “the argument.” Further, they suggest that the use of symbols to model the world developed rapidly between about 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, and has the effect of giving emphasis to analytic thought as the dominant mode of human consciousness. Rather than seeing symbols as the impetus for human logic, they argue for presymbolic elements of logic in Peirce's sign categories shared widely by humans and other animals.Intended readers are scholars in philosophy, anthropology, psychology, linguistics, and semiotics, as well as interested nonspecialists. The presentation is also complemented with brief personal narratives, intended to offer background that helps make a dense academic argument more accessible to the widest audience possible. The authors'insights into the basis for language have ramifications for any number of other fields: education, psychology, philosophy, prehistory, and art, to name a few.

In a sweeping synthesis of new research in a number of different disciplines, this book argues that we humans are not who we think we are. As he explores the interconnections between cutting-edge work in bioanthropology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, human language and learning, and beyond, James Paul Gee advances, also, a personal philosophy of language, learning, and culture, informed by his decades of work across linguistics and the social sciences. Gee argues that our schools, institutions, legal systems, and societies are designed for creatures that do not exist, thus resulting in multiple, interacting crises, such as climate change, failing institutions, and the rise of nationalist nationalism. As Gee constructs an understanding of the human that takes into account our social, collective, and historical nature, as established by recent research, he inspires readers to reflect for themselves on the very question of who we are—a key consideration for anyone interested in society, government, schools, health, activism, culture and diversity, or even just survival.

This volume explores how linguistic and cultural diversity in Greece, caused by various waves of emigration and immigration, has transformed Greek society and its educational system. It examines the country's current linguistic diversity, which is characterised by the languages of immigrants, repatriates, refugees, Roma, Muslim minorities, and Pomaks as well as linguistic varieties and dialects; and how schools and the state have designed and implemented programmes to deal with the significant educational challenges posed by these culturally and linguistically diverse groups. In this regard, the book takes into account the nature and evolution of Greek society; Greece's traditional role as a labour-exporting country with a long history of migration to other countries; and major political, economic and social developments, such as the collapse of communism, the opening of borders in Eastern Europe, and the influx of immigrants from Muslim countries.

Telling stories is one of the fundamental things we do as humans. Yet in scholarship, stories considered to be “traditional”, such as myths, folk tales, and epics, have often been analyzed separately from the narratives of personal experience that we all tell on a daily basis. In Storytelling as Narrative Practice, editors Elizabeth Falconi and Kathryn Graber argue that storytelling is best understood by erasing this analytic divide. Chapter authors carefully examine language use in-situ, drawing on in-depth knowledge gained from long-term fieldwork, to present rich and nuanced analyses of storytelling-as-narrative-practice across a diverse range of global contexts. Each chapter takes a holistic ethnographic approach to show the practices, processes, and social consequences of telling stories.

This book addresses issues of how the cultures in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia have been Englishized in postcolonial and globcalized contexts, not just in terms of language, but also in writers'/people's subjectivity. Taking a cultural-literary approach to the study of Englishized subjectivity, the book offers a unique study of hybridized literary/language forms by relating them to bilingual thinking and bicultural sensibility. Poets, novelists and playwrights have different strategies to cope with new images and new forms of expression that can capture their sense of hybridized identity, and as a result, hybridity becomes creativity.

This book is an innovative sociolinguistic study of New Australia, an Australian immigrant community in Paraguay in 1893, whose descendants today speak Guarani. Providing fresh data on a previously under-researched community who are an extremely rare case of language shifting from English heritage language to a local indigenous language, the case study is situated within the wider context of the colonial and post-colonial spread of English in Latin America over the past century. Drawing on insights from linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, Latin American studies and history, the author presents the history of the colony before closely analysing the interplay of language and identity in this uniquely diasporic setting. This book fills a longstanding gap in the World Englishes and heritage languages literature, and it will be of interest to scholars of colonial and postcolonial languages, and minority language more generally.

This book provides a critical introduction to the current views and controversies regarding language evolution. It sheds new light on hot topics such as: How ancient is language? Did Neanderthals have some form of language? Did language evolve gradually and incrementally, through stages, or suddenly, in one leap, in all its complexity? Does language evolution involve natural selection or not? This book is essential reading for scholars and students interested in language evolution, especially those in the fields of linguistics, psychology, biology, anthropology, and neuroscience.

A unique overview of the human language faculty at all levels of organization.Language is not only one of the most complex cognitive functions that we command, it is also the aspect of the mind that makes us uniquely human. Research suggests that the human brain exhibits a language readiness not found in the brains of other species. This volume brings together contributions from a range of fields to examine humans'language capacity from multiple perspectives, analyzing it at genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and linguistic levels.In recent decades, advances in computational modeling, neuroimaging, and genetic sequencing have made possible new approaches to the study of language, and the contributors draw on these developments. The book examines cognitive architectures, investigating the functional organization of the major language skills; learning and development trajectories, summarizing the current understanding of the steps and neurocognitive mechanisms in language processing; evolutionary and other preconditions for communication by means of natural language; computational tools for modeling language; cognitive neuroscientific methods that allow observations of the human brain in action, including fMRI, EEG/MEG, and others; the neural infrastructure of language capacity; the genome's role in building and maintaining the language-ready brain; and insights from studying such language-relevant behaviors in nonhuman animals as birdsong and primate vocalization.Section editorsChristian F. Beckmann, Carel ten Cate, Simon E. Fisher, Peter Hagoort, Evan Kidd, Stephen C. Levinson, James M. McQueen, Antje S. Meyer, David Poeppel, Caroline F. Rowland, Constance Scharff, Ivan Toni, Willem Zuidema