Language Shift And Cultural Reproduction

This book, first published in 1992, is an anthropological study of language and cultural change among the people of Gapun, a small community in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea.

A comprehensive discussion of the key aspects of this important sub-field of language contact and multilingualism studies.

While "economic forces" are often cited as being a key cause of language loss, there is very little research that explores this link in detail. This work, based on policy analysis and ethnographic data, addresses this deficit. It examines how neoliberalism, the dominant economic orthodoxy of recent decades, has impacted the vitality of Irish in the Republic of Ireland since 2008. Drawing on concepts well established in public policy studies, but not prominent in the subfield of language policy, the neoliberalisation of Irish-language support measures is charted, including the disproportionately severe budget cuts they received. It is argued that neoliberalism’s antipathy towards social planning and redistributive economic policies meant that supports for Irish were inevitably hit especially hard in an era of austerity. Ethnographic data from Irish-speaking communities reinforce this point and illustrate how macro-level economic disruptions can affect language use at the micro-level. Labour market transformations, emigration and the dismantling of community institutions are documented, along with many related developments, thereby highlighting an issue of relevance to communities around the world, the fundamental tension between neoliberalism and language revitalisation efforts.

In the course of the last 15 years, sociolinguistics (or the sociology of language) has established itself as an academic subject in many countries. The discipline promises to be of benefit in solving practical problems in such areas as language planning and standardization, language teaching and therapy, and language policy. Both research projects and publications and university teaching programmes in sociolinguistics now span such a wide field that it is hardly possible even for the experts to review the whole scope of the subject. A number of specialist periodicals and introductions and sur.

Understanding sociolinguistics as a theoretical and methodological framework hopefully could attempt to promote change and social development in human communities. Yet it still presents important political, epistemological, methodological and theoretical challenges. A sociolinguistics of development, in which the revitalization of linguistic communities is the priority, opens new perspectives for the emerging field of linguistic documentation, in which the societal aspects of research, stressed by sociolinguistics, have frequently been marginal. The need to focus on the documentation of linguistic communities to contribute to the revitalization of these communities requires an in-depth revision of a number of different perspectives. Especially regarding the links between commonly separated fields of enquiry such as sociolinguistics, documentation and revitalization. Instead of creating mere museum pieces of academic contemplation for the future, as has been the major trend up to now in language documentation and even sociolinguistics, there is a growing concern to join forces to revitalize the actual use of endangered languages in order to place languages as a main focus of a community s development which constitutes a major challenge for both scholars, civil society and speakers alike."

Youth Culture and Linguistic Survivance documents a decade of life and language use in a remote Alaskan Yup?ik community. It illuminates how schooling and migration shape complex linguistic ecologies; how youth broker sociolinguistic transformation; and how Indigenous peoples? wide-ranging forms of linguistic survivance sustain unique lifeways in an interconnected world.

Linguistic Anthropology theme is a component of Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. Linguistic anthropology is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to the study of language from an anthropological perspective. This means that, over the years, linguistic anthropologists have regarded language as a sophisticated sign system that contributes to the constitution of society and the reproduction of specific cultural practices. In addition to being a powerful tool for exchanging information, language has been shown to play a crucial role in the classification of experience, the identification of people, things, ideas, and emotions, the recounting of the past and the imagining of the future that is so critical for joint activities and problem solving. The Theme on Linguistic Anthropology discusses essential aspects such as History of Linguistic Anthropology; Language Socialization; Languages in Contact; Comparative and Historical Linguistics; Language and Culture; Social Use of Language (Sociolinguistics); Language and Gender; Multilingualism and Language Planning; Language and Education; Non-Human Primates and Communication; Ape Language Studies; Language, Cognition and Thought; Language Shift and Maintenance; Gesture as Cultural and Linguistic Practice; Linguistic Relativity and Spatial Language; Documenting Endangered Languages and Maintaining Language Diversity. This volume is aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers, NGOs and GOs.

Documenting how in the course of acquiring language children become speakers and members of communities, The Handbook of Language Socialization is a unique reference work for an emerging and fast-moving field. Spans the fields of anthropology, education, applied linguistics, and human development Includes the latest developments in second and heritage language socialization, and literary and media socialization Discusses socialization across the entire life span and across institutional settings, including families, schools, work places, and churches Explores data from a multitude of cultures from around the world