"Sociolinguistics deals with the social life of language, language in its sociocultural context. It is a branch of linguistics that looks less at the shape or sound of words -- morphology or phonology -- and more at how our words and sentences are influenced by the society around us--for instance, how the accent or the dialect we use has been shaped by where we come from or which social class we belong to. In this Very Short Introduction, John Edwards...

This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned...

Part travelogue and part scientist's notebook, The Last Speakers is the poignant chronicle of author K. David Harrison's expeditions around the world to meet with last speakers of vanishing languages. The speakers' eloquent reflections and candid photographs reveal little-known lifeways as well as revitalization efforts to teach disappearing languages to younger generations. Thought-provoking and engaging, this unique book illuminates the global language-extinction...

"A presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton explores the hidden power of analogy to fuel thought, connect ideas, spark innovation, and shape outcomes From the meatpacking plants that inspired Henry Ford's first moving assembly line to the "domino theory" that led America into Vietnam to the "bicycle for the mind" that Steve Jobs envisioned as the Macintosh computer, analogies have played a dynamic role in shaping the world around us-and still do...

"El silencio de todos los seres humanos, hombres y mujeres, ancianos y niños, debería ser más alabado, más protegido, mejor resguardado. No sólo el silencio, sino ese silencio activo que es la capacidad de escucha [... ] que quisiéramos todos ver mejor distribuida entre los dones de este mundo". Una sucesión de diversas escenas presenta al lenguaje, en estas páginas, como protagonista e invitado permanente. La palabra cercada de silencio,...

Résumé Parlures régionales, formes non écrites, hybridées, dominées, colonisées, marginales, migrantes, illettrées, clandestines, domestiques...S'articulent ces langues subalternes, dévaluées, ces manières du quotidien, ces lieux de mémoire et de l'intimité. Elles persistent, migrent, opèrent une cartographie souterraine, portent la mémoire du continent et les traces de l'histoire coloniale. S'opèrent alors des pratiques de liberté,...

Este libro ofrece un acercamiento a la sociolingüística y al estudio del lenguaje y la sociedad, que luego se aplica al análisis del español hablado en Estados Unidos. Además de proporcionar información clave sobre la demografía y la historia del español en dicho país, se analiza su situación sociopolítica, la relación de la lengua con las identidades latinxs, y las formas en que las ideologías y políticas lingüísticas reflejan y condicionan...

This book examines the ways in which English is conceptualised as a global language in Japan and considers how the resultant language ideologies—drawn in part from universal discourses; in part from context-specific trends in social history—inform the relationships that people in Japan have towards the language. The book analyses the specific nature of the language's symbolic meaning in Japan, and how this meaning is expressed and negotiated in...

We don't think about time much, do we? Time surrounds us. We can't think about it any more than a fish can imagine the water in which he swims. Einstein said time is an illusion. Henri Bergson sees it as "duration, a natural flow. A Buddhist would see it as a circle, a priest as eternity's antechamber, a historian a history of human development and decay. On the other hand, a lawyer might see his hours as billable units, and a psychiatrist might see...