Language For A New Century

An extensive collection of contemporary Asian and Middle Eastern poetry includes the work of four hundred contributors from a variety of backgrounds, in a thematically organized anthology that is complemented by personal essays.

What is the future of languages in an increasingly globalized world? Are we moving toward the use of a single language for global communication, or are there ways of managing language diversity at the international level? Can we, or should we, maintain a balance between the global need to communicate and the maintenance of local and regional identities and cultures? What is the role of education, of language rights, of language equality in this volatile global linguistic mix? A group of leading scholars in sociolinguistics and language policy examines trends in language use across the world to find answers to these questions and to make predictions about likely outcomes. Highlighted in the discussion are, among other issues, the rapidly changing role of English, the equally rapid decline and death of small languages, the future of the major European languages, the international use of constructed languages like Esperanto, and, not least, the question of what role applied scholarship can and should play in mapping and influencing the future.

"Although Lipska's poems reveal an acute awareness of history and politics, she's primarily concerned with individual experience and the most difficult philosophical questions of evil. Lipska is awed by beauty despite the deep skepticism that permeates her poems, countering corruption with an unflinching commitment to conveying truth without sentimentality." --Book Jacket.

This volume incorporates the national standards for the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, Classical Languages, French, German, Italian, Japanese Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

This volume chronicles a revolution in our thinking about what makes students want to learn languages and what causes them to persist in that difficult and rewarding adventure. Topics in this book include the internal structures of and external connections with foreign language motivation; exploring adult language learning motivation, self-efficacy, and anxiety; comparing the motivation and learning strategies of students of Japanese and Spanish; and enhancing the theory of language learning motivation from many psychological and social perspectives.

This edited volume presents an analysis of the evolution of French language policies and their impact on French regional languages and their communities. It gathers studies on language revitalisation from several territorial minority languages (Breton, Alsatian, Catalan, Occitan, Basque, Corsican, Francoprovençal, Picard, Reunionese) and evaluates the challenges and opportunities that they face in the 21st century. The chapters tackle different aspects of language endangerment and language planning and adopt varied theoretical and methodological approaches. The first section of the book reconsiders the difficulties in establishing linguistic boundaries and classification for some regional languages. The second section examines the important theme of the new generation of speakers with issues of transmission and identity formation and the changes they can bring to traditional communities. The third section highlights new developments in the context of new technologies and the heightened visibility of regional languages. Finally, the last section presents an overview of the contemporary situation of minority language revitalisation in France and synthesises the key trends identified in this volume: from the educational domain to the European Charter for Minority and Regional languages. This book will appeal to students and scholars of the sociology of language, sociolinguistics, language policy, minority languages and language endangerment.