Language and Culture

Language and Culture
Author: Karen Risager
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1853598585

The book presents a new theory of the relationship between language and culture in a transnational and global perspective. The fundamental view is that languages spread across cultures, and cultures spread across languages, or in other words, that linguistic and cultural practices flow through social networks in the world along partially different paths and across national structures and communities.

Contacts and Contrasts in Cultures and Languages

Contacts and Contrasts in Cultures and Languages
Author: Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-02-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3030049817

This volume provides descriptions and interpretations of social and cognitive phenomena as well as processes that emerge at the interface of languages and cultures in the context of contrastive and contact linguistics and media discourse. Different contexts are explored with rich empirical findings and authentic exemplifying materials. The book includes fifteen papers, divided into three parts. Part 1 addresses conceptual reflection on languages and cultures in contact and contrast, while Part 2 focuses on contact linguistics and borrowing. Part 3 discusses cultural and linguistic aspects of media discourses.

Literacy Across Languages and Cultures

Literacy Across Languages and Cultures
Author: Bernardo M. Ferdman
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780791418154

This book examines the linkage between literacy and linguistic diversity, embedding them in their social and cultural contexts. It illustrates that a more complete understanding of literacy among diverse populations and in multicultural societies requires attention to issues of literacy per se as well as to improving an educational process that has relevance beyond members of majority cultures and linguistic groups. The focus of the book is on the social and cultural contexts in which literacy develops and is enacted, with an emphasis on the North American situation. Educators and researchers are discovering that cognitive approaches, while very valuable, are insufficient by themselves to answer important questions about literacy in heterogeneous societies. By considering the implications of family, school, culture, society, and nation for literary processes, the book answers the following questions. In a multi-ethnic context, what does it mean to be literate? What are the processes involved in becoming and being literate in a second language? In what ways is literacy in a second language similar and in what ways is it different from mother-tongue literacy? What factors must be understood to better describe and facilitate literacy acquisition among members of ethnic and linguistic minorities? What are some current approaches that are being used to accomplish this? These are vital questions for researchers and educators in a world that has a large number of immigrants, a variety of multi-ethnic and multi-lingual societies, and an increasing degree of multinational activity. Beyond addressing applied concerns, attending to these questions can provide new insights into basic aspects of literacy.

Between Languages and Cultures

Between Languages and Cultures
Author: Anuradha Dingwaney
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2010-11-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0822974681

Translated texts are often either uncritically consumed by readers, teacher, and scholars or seen to represent an ineluctable loss, a diminishing of original texts. Translation, however, is a cultural practice, influenced also by social and political imperatives, which can open more doors than it closes. The essays in this book show how the act of translation, when vigilantly and critically attended to, becomes a means for active interrogation.

Discourse Across Languages and Cultures

Discourse Across Languages and Cultures
Author: Carol Lynn Moder
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2004
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027230782

This volume seeks to answers such questions as: how is conscious experience translated into discourse? How are foregrounding and backgrounding accomplished? What is the function of features like lexical choice and referential choice? And many more.

Between Languages and Cultures

Between Languages and Cultures
Author: Rosemary Chapman
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2009-04-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0773575804

Gabrielle Roy is one of the best-known figures of Québec literature, yet she spent much of the first thirty years of her life studying, working, and living in English. For Roy, as a member of Manitoba's francophone minority, bilingualism was a necessary strategy for survival and success. How did this bilingual and bicultural background help shape her work as a writer in French? The implications of her linguistic and cultural identity are explored in chapters looking at education, language, translation, and the representation of Canada's other minorities, from the immigrants in Western Canada to the Inuit of Ungava. What emerges is a new reading of Roy's work. Drawing on archival material, postcolonial theory, and translation studies, Between Languages and Cultures explores the traces and effects of Roy's intimate knowledge of English language and culture, challenging and augmenting the established view that her work is distinctly French-Canadian or Québécois.

Language and Culture in the Intercultural World

Language and Culture in the Intercultural World
Author: Vesna Mikolič
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2020-12-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1527563421

The intensification of contacts between cultures and languages has a major impact on all social spheres today. Multiculturalism and multilingualism are important elements of the local, regional, national and global community. Much of the world’s conflict stems from the contrast between globalization and nationalism, fuelled by religions, racial divisions, traditions and other cultural particularities. Focusing mainly on the situation in Central and South-eastern Europe, this book addresses how cultural identities develop through tourism, education, literature and other social fields, and how language and literature teaching should be planned in this context. It consists of the following sections: Language, Culture and Tourism; Interculturalism, Multilingualism and Approaches to Language Learning; and Culture in Literature and Translation. The volume will be of interest to teachers and researchers of cultural and tourism studies, linguistics and language learning, literary studies and translation, while also addressing wider readers interested in contemporary intercultural society.

Culture, Body, and Language

Culture, Body, and Language
Author: Farzad Sharifian
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2008-11-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110199106

One of the central themes in cognitive linguistics is the uniquely human development of some higher potential called the "mind" and, more particularly, the intertwining of body and mind, which has come to be known as embodiment. Several books and volumes have explored this theme in length. However, the interaction between culture, body and language has not received the due attention that it deserves. Naturally, any serious exploration of the interface between body, language and culture would require an analytical tool that would capture the ways in which different cultural groups conceptualize their feelings, thinking, and other experiences in relation to body and language. A well-established notion that appears to be promising in this direction is that of cultural models, constituting the building blocks of a group's cultural cognition. The volume results from an attempt to bring together a group of scholars from various language backgrounds to make a collective attempt to explore the relationship between body, language and culture by focusing on conceptualizations of the heart and other internal body organs across a number of languages. The general aim of this venture is to explore (a) the ways in which internal body organs have been employed in different languages to conceptualize human experiences such as emotions and/or workings of the mind, and (b) the cultural models that appear to account for the observed similarities as well as differences of the various conceptualizations of internal body organs. The volume as a whole engages not only with linguistic analyses of terms that refer to internal body organs across different languages but also with the origin of the cultural models that are associated with internal body organs in different cultural systems, such as ethnomedical and religious traditions. Some contributions also discuss their findings in relations to some philosophical doctrines that have addressed the relationship between mind, body, and language, such as that of Descartes.

Pragmatics across Languages and Cultures

Pragmatics across Languages and Cultures
Author: Anna Trosborg
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 658
Release: 2010-08-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 311021444X

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview, as well as breaking new ground, in a versatile and fast growing field. It contains four sections: Contrastive, Cross-cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics, Interlanguage Pragmatics, Teaching and Testing of Second/Foreign Language Pragmatics, and Pragmatics in Corporate Culture Communication, covering a wide range of topics, from speech acts and politeness issues to Lingua Franca and Corporate Crises Communication. The approach is theoretical, methodological as well as applied, with a focus on authentic, interactional data. All articles are written by renowned leading specialists, who provide in-depth, up-to-date overviews, and view new directions and visions for future research.

Translation as Communication across Languages and Cultures

Translation as Communication across Languages and Cultures
Author: Juliane House
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2015-10-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317362659

In this interdisciplinary book, Juliane House breaks new ground by situating translation within Applied Linguistics. In thirteen chapters, she examines translation as a means of communication across different languages and cultures, provides a critical overview of different approaches to translation, of the link between culture and translation, and between views of context and text in translation. Featuring an account of translation from a linguistic-cognitive perspective, House covers problematic issues such as the existence of universals of translation, cases of untranslatability and ways and means of assessing the quality of a translation. Recent methodological and research avenues such as the role of corpora in translation and the effects of globalization processes on translation are presented in a neutral, non-biased manner. The book concludes with a thorough, historical account of the role of translation in foreign language learning and teaching and a discussion of new challenges and problems of the professional practice of translation in our world today. Written by a highly experienced teacher and researcher in the field, Translation as Communication across Languages and Cultures is an essential resource for students and researchers of Translation Studies, Applied Linguistics and Communication Studies.