Rethinking Languages In Contact

"Taking as its theme the interaction between Italian and other languages, and marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Weinreich's seminal Languages in Contact, this volume provides an up-to-date survey of the role of linguistic and cultural interaction in the process of language change. The range of contributions covers: theoretical issues; different forms of language contact in Medieval and Renaissance Italy; dialect transition and diversity in the North and South of Italy; lexical and morphological borrowings; register and syntactic loans in the Romance area; old and new contact varieties of Italian in the Mediterranean, including Malta and North Africa; and, finally, Italian under pressure from English in EU institutions. The volume is published in memory of Joseph Cremona (1922-2003), and includes a bibliography of his work. Anna Laura Lepschy is Visiting Professor at the Universities of Reading and Toronto, and Emeritus Professor at University College London. Arturo Tosi is Professor of Italian at Royal Holloway, University of London. With the contributions: Peter Matthews - On Re-reading Weinreich's Languages in Contact; Nigel Vincent; Languages in Contact in Medieval Italy; Brian Richardson - Latin and Italian in Contact in Some Renaissance Grammars; Cecilia Robustelli - Latin and Vernacular in Contact in the Sixteenth Century: The Latin Model of Giambullari's Grammar; and, Mair Parry - Markedness, Salience and Language Change: Exploring an Italo-Romance Transition Area. It also includes: John Green - The North-South Axis of Romance: Contact Reinforcing Typology? Martin Maiden - Accommodating Synonymy: How Some Italo-Romance Verbs React to Lexical and Morphological Borrowing; Chris Pountain - Syntactical Borrowing as a Function of Register; Adam Ledgeway - The Dual Complementizer System in Southern Italy: Spirito Greco, Materia Romanza? Rosanna Sornicola - Dialectology and History: The Problem of the Adriatic-Tyrrhenian Dialect Corridor; Alberto Varvaro - The Maghreb Papers in Italian Discovered by Joe Cremona; Joseph Brincat - Languages and Varieties in Use in Malta Today: Maltese, English, Italian, Maltese English and Maltaliano; and, Arturo Tosi - Languages in Contact with and without Speaker Interaction."

This book challenges the view that digital communication in Africa is limited and relatively unsophisticated and questions the assumption that digital communication has a damaging effect on indigenous African languages. The book applies the principles of Digital African Multilingualism (DAM) in which there are no rigid boundaries between languages. The book charts a way forward for African languages where greater attention is paid to what speakers do with the languages rather than what the languages look like, and offers several models for language policy and planning based on horizontal and user-based multilingualism. The chapters demonstrate how digital communication is being used to form and sustain communication in many kinds of online groups, including for political activism and creating poetry, and offer a paradigm of language merging online that provides a practical blueprint for the decolonization of African languages through digital platforms.

Rethinking Languages Education assembles innovative research from experts in the fields of sociocultural theory, applied linguistics and education. The contributors interrogate innovative and recent thinking and broach controversies about the theoretical and practical considerations that underpin the implementation of effective Languages pedagogy in twenty-first-century classrooms. Crucially, Rethinking Languages Education explores established understandings about language, culture and education to provide a more comprehensive and flexible understanding of Languages education that responds to local classrooms impacted by global and transnational change, and the politics of language, culture and identity. Rethinking Languages Education focuses on questions about ways that we can develop farsighted and successful Languages education for diverse students in globalised contexts. The response to these questions is multi-layered, and takes into account the complex interactions between policy, curriculum and practice, as well as their contention and implementation. In doing so, this book addresses and integrates innovative perspectives of contemporary theory and pedagogy for Languages, TESOL and EAL/D education. It includes diverse discussions around practice, and addresses issues of the dominance of prestige Languages programs for ‘minority’ and ‘heritage’ languages, as well as discussing controversies about the current provision of English and Languages programs around the world.

The study of languages in contact is an ever-relevant topic in linguistics, especially at present times when increasing globalization leads to a number of new contact situations. This volume features ten papers on various aspects of language contact by leading specialists in the field. In these papers, contact-induced change in a wide variety of languages is approached from various perspectives, reflecting the current state of affairs in language contact studies. The first main theme in the volume is related to the linguistic effects of migration, both in the present and in the past, and both in the standard language spoken by ethnic minorities, and in immigrant languages that are influenced by the standard. The second theme concerns border areas, a traditional treasure trove for the study of contact phenomena. The third theme is about contact effects without physical contact, as well as the role played by translators in this process.

“This remains the fundamental base for studies of multilingual communities and language shift. Weinreich laid out the concepts, principles and issues that govern empirical work in this field, and it has not been replaced by any later general treatment.” Prof. Dr. William Labov, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics

The second edition of the definitive reference on contact studies and linguistic change—provides extensive new research and original case studies Language contact is a dynamic area of contemporary linguistic research that studies how language changes when speakers of different languages interact. Accessibly structured into three sections, The Handbook of Language Contact explores the role of contact studies within the field of linguistics, the value of contact studies for language change research, and the relevance of language contact for sociolinguistics. This authoritative volume presents original findings and fresh research directions from an international team of prominent experts. Thirty-seven specially-commissioned chapters cover a broad range of topics and case studies of contact from around the world. Now in its second edition, this valuable reference has been extensively updated with new chapters on topics including globalization, language acquisition, creolization, code-switching, and genetic classification. Fresh case studies examine Romance, Indo-European, African, Mayan, and many other languages in both the past and the present. Addressing the major issues in the field of language contact studies, this volume: Includes a representative sample of individual studies which re-evaluate the role of language contact in the broader context of language and society Offers 23 new chapters written by leading scholars Examines language contact in different societies, including many in Africa and Asia Provides a cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world The Handbook of Language Contact, Second Edition is an indispensable resource for researchers, scholars, and students involved in language contact, language variation and change, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and language theory.

Over the past 40 years, Jim Cummins has proposed a number of highly influential theoretical concepts, including the threshold and interdependence hypotheses and the distinction between conversational fluency and academic language proficiency. In this book, he provides a personal account of how these ideas developed and he examines the credibility of critiques they have generated, using the criteria of empirical adequacy, logical coherence, and consequential validity. These criteria of theoretical legitimacy are also applied to the evaluation of two different versions of translanguaging theory – Unitary Translanguaging Theory and Crosslinguistic Translanguaging Theory – in a way that significantly clarifies this controversial concept.

Rethinking Language and Gender Research is the first book focusing on language and gender to explicitly challenge the dichotomy of female and male use of language. It represents a turning point in language and gender studies, addressing the political and social consequences of popular beliefs about women's language and men's language and proposing new ways of looking at language and gender. The essays take a fresh approach to the study of subjects such as language and sex and the use of language to produce and maintain power and prestige. Topics explored in this text include sex and the brain; the language of a rape hearing; teenage language; radio talk show exchanges; discourse strategies of African American women; political implications for language and gender studies; the relationship between sex and gender and the construction of identity through language. A useful introductory chapter sets the articles in context, explaining the relationships that exist between them, and full cross-referencing between articles and an extensive index allow for easy access to information. The interdisciplinary approach of the text, the wide-range of methodologies presented, and the comprehensive review of the current literature will make this book invaluable reading for all upper-level undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics, gender and cultural studies.