The Other Tongue

When The Other Tongue appeared in 1982, it was called "required reading for all those concerned with English teaching in non-native situations, from the classroom teacher to the policy planner", Jowhn Platt, English World-Wide) and "an extremely useful and stimulating collection" (William C. Ritchie, Language). It introduced refreshingly new perspectives for understanding the spread and functions of English around the world. This dramatically revised volume contains eight new chapters, replacing or updating more than half of the first edition. The Other Tongue is the first attempt to integrate and address provocative issues relevant to a deeper understanding of the forms and functions of English within different sociolinguistic, cross-cultural, and cross-linguistic contexts. The volume discusses linguistic, literary, pedagogical, and attitudinal issues related to world Englishes.

When This Book First Appeared It Was Widely Acclaimed For Introducing Refreshingly New Perspectives For Understanding The Spread And Functions Of English Around The World And Rapidly Became A `Classic` In The Field.

“Vastly informative and vastly entertaining…A scholarly and fascinating book.” —Los Angeles Times With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can’t), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world’s largest growth industries.

As our millennium draws to a close, we find ourselves in the midst of great and rapid global changes with nations and political systems dissolving all around us and the world becoming one of shifting identities--of peoples unified and divided by such distinctions as nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, and colonial status. The articulation and construction of these distinctions, the very language of difference, is the subject of An Other Tongue. This collection of essays by a group of distinguished scholars, including Norma Alarcón, Gayatri Spivak, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerald Vizenor, explores the interconnections between language and identity. The Chicanos, the U.S./Mexico borderland polyglots whose sense of history, nationality, and race is as mixed as their language, are the book's prime example. But the authors recognize that border zones, like diasporas and post-colonial relations, occur globally, and their discussion of hybrid or mestizo identities ranges from the United States to the Caribbean to South Asia to Ireland. Drawing on personal experience, readings of poetry and fiction, and cultural theory, the authors detail the politics of being human through the mediation of language. What does "shadow" mean to the Native American Indian, or diaspora to the East Indian immigrant? How does British colonialism yet affect Irish and Indian nationalist literary production? Why is the split between Eastern and Western European language use necessarily schizophrenic? So much of our sense of difference today is constructed as we speak, and An Other Tongue speaks with eloquence to this phenomenon and will be of great interest to those concerned with the discourse of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and the remapping of world literature. Contributors. Norma Alarcón, Alfred Arteaga, Juan Bruce-Novoa, Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Michael G. Cooke, Edmundo Desnoes, Eugene C. Eoyang, David Lloyd, Lydie Moudileno, Jean-Luc Nancy, Tejaswini Niranjana, Ada Savin, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Michael Smith, Tzvetan Todorov, Luis A. Torres, Gerald Vizenor

Drawing on research by French authors, this book introduces a major new concept, the (M)other tongue, and shows its relevance to language learning and pediatrics in a multicultural society. It is for students and lecturers in languages, linguistics, translation studies and education, and for child psychologists, psychiatrists and speech therapists.

The author "presents the latest and most controversial research from the origins of language itself to the way the human brain makes and stores it, as well as how infants create it."--Jacket.