Browse Results For:
Language and Linguistics


Buying into English
Language and Investment in the New Capitalist World
Many developing countries have little choice but to “buy into English” as a path to ideological and material betterment. Based on extensive fieldwork in Slovakia, Prendergast assembles a rich ethnographic study that records the thoughts, aspirations, and concerns of Slovak nationals, language instructors, journalists, and textbook authors who contend with the increasing importance of English to their rapidly evolving world. She reveals how the use of English in everyday life has becomes suffused with the terms of the knowledge and information economy, where language is manipulated for power and profit. Buying into English presents an astute analysis of the factors that have made English so prominent and yet so elusive, and a deconstruction of the myth of guaranteed viability for new states and economies through English.


By Way of Interruption
Levinas and the Ethics of Communication
By Way of Interruption presents a radically different way of thinking about communication ethics. While modern communication thought has traditionally viewed successful communication as ethically favorable, Pinchevski proposes the contrary: that ethical communication does not ultimately lie in the successful completion of communication but rather in its interruption; that is, in instances where communication falls short, goes astray, or even fails. Such interruptions, however, do not mark the end of the relationship, but rather its very beginning, for within this interruption communication faces the challenge of alterity. Drawing mainly on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Pinchevski explores the status of alterity in prevalent communication theories and Levinas’s philosophy of language and communication, especially his distinction between the Said and the Saying, and demonstrates the extent to which communication thought and practice have been preoccupied with the former while seeking to excommunicate the latter. With a strong interdisciplinary spirit, this book proposes an intellectual adventure of risk, uncertainty and the possibility of failure in thinking through the ethics of communication as experienced by an encounter with the other.


The C-SPAN Archives
An Interdisciplinary Resource for Discovery, Learning, and Engagement
The C-SPAN Archives records, indexes, and preserves all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, and research uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, from all House and Senate sessions in the US Congress, to hearings, presidential speeches, conventions, and campaign events, totaling over 200,000 hours, is contained in the video library and is immediately and freely accessible through the database and electronic archival systems developed and maintained by staff. Whereas C-SPAN is best known as a resource for political processes and policy information, the Archives also offers rich educational research and teaching opportunities. This book provides guidance and inspiration to scholars who may be interested in using the Archives to illuminate concepts and processes in varied communication and political science subfields using a range of methodologies for discovery, learning, and engagement. Applications described range from teaching rhetoric to enhancing TV audience’s viewing experience. The book links to illustrative clips from the Archives to help readers appreciate the usability and richness of the source material and the pedagogical possibilities it offers. Many of the essays are authored by faculty connected with the Purdue University School of Communication, named after the founder of C-SPAN Brian Lamb. The book is divided into four parts: Part 1 consists of an overview of the C-SPAN Archives, the technology involved in establishing and updating its online presence, and the C-SPAN copyright and use policy. Featured are the ways in which the collection is indexed and tips on how individuals can find particular materials. This section provides an essential foundation for scholars’ and practitioners’ increased use of this valuable resource. Parts 2 and 3 contain case studies describing how scholars use the Archives in their research, teaching, and engagement activities. Some case studies were first presented during a preconference at the National Communication Association (NCA) convention in November 2013, while others have been invited or solicited through open calls. Part 4 explores future directions for C-SPAN Archive use as a window into American life and global politics.


Caesaris Augusti
Res Gestae et Fragmenta
The Res Gestae and Fragmenta by Caesar Augustus best exemplify the "pure" Latin of the Classical period. the sentences are clear and concise, with examples of almost every common phrase of Latin syntax. The material presented here in textbook form contains extensive annotation and commentary so that beginning Latin students will be able to read and comprehend the language with ease. The Res Gestae, a public statement Augustus left at the time of his death, is an autobiographical sketch of the emperor's life and is considered to be the most important extant Latin inscription. Herbert Benario's expanded notes, historical material, additional photographs, and assistance in translation make this revised volume useful and appropriate for the contemporary Latin student. A vocabulary section is included.


California Indian Languages
Nowhere was the linguistic diversity of the New World more extreme than in California, where an extraordinary variety of village-dwelling peoples spoke seventy-eight mutually unintelligible languages. This comprehensive illustrated handbook, a major synthesis of more than 150 years of documentation and study, reviews what we now know about California’s indigenous languages. Victor Golla outlines the basic structural features of more than two dozen language types, and cites all the major sources, both published and unpublished, for the documentation of these languages—from the earliest vocabularies collected by explorers and missionaries, to the data amassed during the twentieth-century by Alfred Kroeber and his colleagues, and to the extraordinary work of John P. Harrington and C. Hart Merriam. Golla also devotes chapters to the role of language in reconstructing prehistory, and to the intertwining of the language and culture in pre-contact California societies, making this work, the first of its kind, an essential reference on California’s remarkable Indian languages.


Calling All Cars
Radio Dragnets and the Technology of Policing


Calunga and the Legacy of an African Language in Brazil
Although millions of slaves were forcibly transported from Africa to Brazil, the languages the slaves brought with them remain little known. Most studies have focused on African contributions to Brazilian Portuguese rather than on the African languages themselves. This book is unusual in focusing on an African-descended language. The author describes and analyzes the Afro- Brazilian speech community of Calunga, in Minas Gerais. Linguistically descended from West African Bantu, Calunga is an endangered Afro-Brazilian language spoken by a few hundred older Afro-Brazilian men, who use it only for specific, secret communications. Unlike most creole languages, which are based largely on the vocabulary of the colonial language, Calunga has a large proportion of African vocabulary items embedded in an essentially Portuguese grammar. A hyrid language, its formation can be seen as a form of cultural resistance.
Steven Byrd’s study provides a comprehensive linguistic description of Calunga based on two years of interviews with speakers of the language. He examines its history and historical context as well as its linguistic context, its sociolinguistic profile, and its lexical and grammatical outlines.


Camfranglais: The Making of a New Language in Cameroonian Literature
This study raises awareness to the emergence of a new genre in world literatureóhybridized literature. It rejects the assumption according to which literatures written in less commonly taught languages should be subsumed into one universally accessible global idiom. Instead, Vakunta challenges literary scholars and readers of literature to regard untranslatability as the key to cross-cultural engagement. The bookís multiple approaches and innumerable sources generate complex interdisciplinary connections and provide an excellent introduction to a complex literary phenomenon alien to literati resident outside the officially bilingual multicultural and multilingual Republic of Cameroon.


Canadian Cultural Exchange / Échanges culturels au Canada
Translation and Transculturation / traduction et transculturation
The essays in Canadian Cultural Exchange / Échanges culturels au Canada provide a nuanced view of Canadian transcultural experience. Rather than considering Canada as a bicultural dichotomy of colonizer/colonized, this book examines a field of many cultures and the creative interactions among them. This study discusses, from various perspectives, Canadian cultural space as being in process of continual translation of both the other and oneself.
Les articles réunis dans Canadian Cultural Exchange / Échanges culturels au Canada donnent de l’expérience transculturelle canadienne une image nuancée. Plutôt que dans les termes d’une dichotomie biculturelle entre colonisateur et colonisé, le Canada y est vu comme champ où plusieurs cultures interagissent de manière créative. Cette étude présente sous de multiples aspects le processus continu de traduction d’autrui et de soi-même auquel l’espace culturel canadien sert de théâtre.


The Canadian Journal of Linguistics / La revue canadienne de linguistique
Vol. 48 (2003) through current issue
The Canadian Journal of Linguistics publishes articles in linguistics in both English and French. The articles deal with linguistic theory, linguistic description of English, French and a variety of other natural languages, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, first and second language acquisition, and other areas of interest to linguists. The journal also includes reviews of recent books in linguistics.