Tiles In A Multilingual Mosaic

Human history has been characterised by the movement of peoples from one part of the world to another. The current tendency towards globalisation has accentuated this movement. While the proliferation of economic ties and the speed of travel and communication have made the world a much smaller place, any particular location within the world is now faced with an increasing degree of contact between cultures and languages. Migrating people bring with them languages in various stages of planning, with differing status and with differing relationships to their personal and group identity. The present study explores the ways in which three immigrant communities have adjusted and adapted to a new setting in Australia , and the ways in which the host community has contributed to this process. It focuses specifically on the ways in which patterns of language use contribute to the maintenance of a pre-migration identity and/or the negotiation of a new one. The languages chosen for this research are Macedonian, Filipino/Tagalog and Somali.

Human history has been characterised by the movement of peoples from one part of the world to another. The current tendency towards globalisation has accentuated this movement. While the proliferation of economic ties and the speed of travel and communication have made the world a much smaller place, any particular location within the world is now faced with an increasing degree of contact between cultures and languages. Migrating people bring with them languages in various stages of planning, with differing status and with differing relationships to their personal and group identity. The present study explores the ways in which three immigrant communities have adjusted and adapted to a new setting in Australia , and the ways in which the host community has contributed to this process. It focuses specifically on the ways in which patterns of language use contribute to the maintenance of a pre-migration identity and/or the negotiation of a new one. The languages chosen for this research are Macedonian, Filipino/Tagalog and Somali.

Although multilingualism is the norm in the day-to-day lives of most sub-Saharan Africans, multilingualism in settings outside of cities has so far been under-explored. This gap is striking when considering that in many parts of Africa, individual multilingualism was widespread long before the colonial period and centuries before the continent experienced large-scale urbanization. The edited collection African Multilingualisms fills this gap by presenting results from recent and ongoing research based on fieldwork in rural African environments as well as environments characterized by contact between urban and rural communities of speakers. The contributors—mostly Africans themselves, including a number of emerging scholars—present findings that both complement and critique current scholarship on African multilingualism. In addition, new methods and tools are introduced for the study of multilingualism in rural settings, alongside illustrations of the kinds of results that they yield. African Multilingualisms reveals an impressive diversity in the features of local language ideologies, multilingual behaviors, and the relationship between language and identity.

Language Structure and Environment is a broad introduction to how languages are shaped by their environment. It makes the argument that the social, cultural, and natural environment of speakers influences the structures and development of the languages they speak. After a general overview, the contributors explain in a number of detailed case studies how specific cultural, societal, geographical, evolutionary and meta-linguistic pressures determine the development of specific grammatical features and the global structure of a varied selection of languages. This is a work of meticulous scholarship at the forefront of a burgeoning field of linguistics.

This volume challenges the monolingual mindset by highlighting how language-related issues surround us in many different ways, and explores the tensions that can develop in managing and understanding multilingualism. The book features analysis and discussion on the use of languages across a range of contexts, including post-migration settlement, policy, education, language contact and intercultural communication.

Multiculturalism has been the official policy of all Australian governments (Commonwealth and State) since the 1970s. It has recently been criticised, both in Australia and elsewhere. Integration has been suggested as a better term and policy. Critics suggest it is a reversion to assimilation. However integration has not been rigorously defined and may simply be another form of multiculturalism, which the authors believe to have been vital in sustaining social harmony.

A critical reality of contemporary education in a globalised world is the growing cultural, racial and linguistic diversity in schools and the issues involved in educating increasing numbers of students who are still learning the dominant language. This poses extraordinary challenges for second and foreign language teachers in many countries, where such students must engage with the mainstream curriculum in a new language. What do these increasingly plurilingual and multicultural classrooms look like? And how do language teachers address the challenges of such diverse classrooms? This book brings together a group of well-recognised language education scholars who present their research in a range of international settings. They focus on the key areas of pedagogy, language policy and curriculum and exemplify new research directions in the field.

Within the European context, linguistic diversity can be studied at the level of both official state languages and non-national languages. This comprehensive overview offers insightful crossnational and crosscontinental perspectives on non-national languages in terms of both regional and immigrant languages. The book focuses on mapping linguistic diversity in both the private and public domain. Methodological issues and empirical outcomes are explored for a variety of European and non-European countries and languages. The book consists of four parts. Part 1 provides an introduction to the subject, as well as an overview and discussion of migration statistics and language use. Part 2 deals with the mapping of regional languages in Europe, exemplified by case studies on Welsh, Basque, and Frisian. Part 3 focuses on immigrant languages in Europe and includes case studies from both national (Switzerland, Italy, France) and crossnational (Multilingual Cities Project) perspectives. Part 4 turns to mapping linguistic diversity abroad with case studies on Australia, South Africa, Turkey, and Japan.