Books in the Advances in Sociolinguistics series

This book examines the powerful role of writing in society. The invention of writing, independently at various places and times in history, always stood at the cradle of powerful civilizations. It is impossible to imagine modern life without writing. As individuals and social groups we hold high expectations of its potential for societal and personal development. Globally, huge resources have been and are being invested in promoting literacy worldwide. So what could possibly be tyrannical about writing?The title is inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure''s argument against writing as an object of linguistic research and what he called la tyrannie de la lettre. His critique denounced writing as an imperfect, distorted image of speech that obscures our view of language and its structure. The chapters of the book, written by experts in language and literacy studies, go beyond this and explore tyrannical aspects of writing in society through history and around the world: from Medieval Novgorod, the European Renaissance and 19th-century France and Germany over colonial Sudan to postcolonial Sri Lanka and Senegal and present-day Hong Kong and Central China to the Netherlands and Spain. The metaphor of ''tyranny of writing'' serves as a heuristic for exploring ideologies of language and literacy in culture and society and tensions and contradictions between the written and the spoken word.

Drawing on a range of disciplines from within the humanities and social sciences, Multilingual Memories addresses questions of remembering and forgetting from an explicitly multilingual perspective. From a museum at Victoria Falls in Zambia to a Japanese-American internment in Arkansas, this book probes how the medium of the communication of memories affirms social orders across the globe.Applying linguistic landscape approaches to a wide variety of monuments and memorials from around the world, this book identifies how multilingualism (and its absence) contributes to the inevitable partiality of public memorials. Using a number of different methods, including multimodal discourse analysis, code preferences, interaction orders, and indexicality, the chapters explore how memorials have the potential to erase linguistic diversity as much as they can entextualize multilingualism. With examples from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North and South America, this volume also examines the extent to which multilingual memories legitimize not only specific discourses but also individuals, particular communities, and ethno-linguistic groups - often to the detriment of others.

A historically, spatially and methodologically rich sub-field of sociolinguistics, Linguistic Landscapes (LL) is a rapidly evolving area of research and study. With contributions by an international team of experts from the USA, Europe, the UK, South Africa, Israel, Hong Kong and Colombia, this volume is a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary account of the most recent theoretical and empirical developments in this area. It covers both the conceptual tools and methodologies used to define and question, and case studies of real-world phenomena to showcase Linguistic Landscapes methods in action.Divided into four parts, chapters bring into dialogue themes relating to reterritorialization practices and the productive nature of boundaries and spaces. This book considers the contemporary challenges facing the field, the politics and processes of identifying and demarcating 'sites of research', and the ethics and pedagogical applications of LL research.With comprehensive lists of further reading, extended discussion questions and suggestions for independent research at the end of each chapter, this is an essential reference work for all LL scholars and students who wish to keep abreast of the current state of the art.

Originally published as the author's doctoral thesis (University of Southampton) under the title Language, discourse and ideology: the Real Academia Espaanola and the standardisation of Spanish. 2008.

Deals with linguistic minorities and social change, seen through the lens of a linguistic minority school, meeting the challenges of globalization. Through an examination of the language practices in the daily life of a minority language school, this work explores issues such as nationalism, language policy, bilingualism, identity, and more.

How language shapes and is shaped by identity is a key topic within sociolinguistics. An individual's identity is constituted through a variety of different factors, including the social, linguistic, cultural and ethnic contexts. This book looks at these issues against the theoretical background of the sociology of knowledge, and ethnolinguistics.

Examines the ways in which the media represents language-related issues, but also how the media's use of language is central to the construction of what people think language is, could or ought to be like. This work is a multilingual survey of the construction of language in and by the media.

Academic discussions and public debates frequently focus on the importance of defending languages against various kinds of dangers. This book argues that the discussions in question are not about language itself, but rather ideological struggles which are about the position of nation states and of minorities in the globalized world order.

Offers students with an overview of the field of institutional discourse, introducing the key theorists including Foucault, Habermas, Weber, Giddens, Althusser and Gramsci, among others. This book covers a range of institutional contexts including the workplace, the media, prison, courtroom and academia.