Defying the Global Language

Defying the Global Language
Author: Cheryl Toman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2013
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781934844847

This book continues a conversation initiated by renowned intellectuals and writers worldwide and crossculturally who have claimed ownership of what were previously considered colonial or vehicular languages. The essays use as their reference significant works of written and oral literature, theater, and media. The theories presented in this book are some of the most important within the field of ethnic studies today and include perspectives from linguistic and literary theory as well as from feminist and disability theories. This book looks at notions of race, gender, class, and ethnicity and how these are expressed-or not-by language, and it demonstrates the latest trends in ethnic studies without dismissing the original theories that shaped the field. As the first study to concentrate on how speakers of indigenous and/or local languages significantly appropriate a dominant language as their own as a means of decolonizing communication and reinforcing cross-border commonalities on all levels of political and economic power, this is an important book for those in the fields of comparative literature, ethnic studies, linguistics (especially sociolinguistics), women's and gender studies, African and African American studies, Asian studies, French and francophone studies, Caribbean studies, English, disability studies, cultural studies, Middle Eastern studies, and postcolonial studies.

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat
Author: Celucien L. Joseph
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2019-09-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000012522

Providing an intellectual interpretation to the work of Edwidge Danticat, this new edited collection provides a pedagogical approach to teach and interpret her body of work in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Edwidge Danticat starts out by exploring diasporic categories and postcolonial themes such as gender constructs, cultural nationalism, cultural and communal identity, and moves to investigate Danticat’s human rights activism, the immigrant experience, the relationship between the particular and the universal, and the violence of hegemony and imperialism in relationship with society, family, and community. The Editors of the collection have carefully compiled works that show how Danticat’s writings may help in building more compassionate and relational human communities that are grounded on the imperative of human dignity, respect, inclusion, and peace.

Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought

Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought
Author: Gabrielle Jamela Hosein
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2016-11-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137559373

Bringing together three generations of scholars, thinkers and activists, this book is the first to trace a genealogy of the specific contributions Indo-Caribbean women have made to Caribbean feminist epistemology and knowledge production. Challenging the centrality of India in considerations of the forms that Indo-Caribbean feminist thought and praxis have taken, the authors turn instead to the terrain of gender negotiations among Caribbean men and women within and across racial, class, religious, and political affiliations. Addressing the specific conditions which emerged within the region and highlighting the cross-racial solidarities and the challenges to narratives of purity that have been constitutive of Indo-Caribbean feminist thought, this collection connects to the broader indentureship diaspora and what can be considered post-indentureship feminist thought. Through examinations of literature, activism, art, biography, scholarship and public sphere practices, the collection highlights the complexity and richness of Indo-Caribbean engagements with feminism and social justice.

New Body Politics

New Body Politics
Author: Therí A. Pickens
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2014-02-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317819500

In the increasingly multi-racial and multi-ethnic American landscape of the present, understanding and bridging dynamic cross-cultural conversations about social and political concerns becomes a complicated humanistic project. How do everyday embodied experiences transform from being anecdotal to having social and political significance? What can the experience of corporeality offer social and political discourse? And, how does that discourse change when those bodies belong to Arab Americans and African Americans? Therí A. Pickens discusses a range of literary, cultural, and archival material where narratives emphasize embodied experience to examine how these experiences constitute Arab Americans and African Americans as social and political subjects. Pickens argues that Arab American and African American narratives rely on the body’s fragility, rather than its exceptional strength or emotion, to create urgent social and political critiques. The creators of these narratives find potential in mundane experiences such as breathing, touch, illness, pain, and death. Each chapter in this book focuses on one of these everyday embodied experiences and examines how authors mobilize that fragility to create social and political commentary. Pickens discusses how the authors' focus on quotidian experiences complicates their critiques of the nation state, domestic and international politics, exile, cultural mores, and the medical establishment. New Body Politics participates in a vibrant interdisciplinary conversation about cross-ethnic studies, American literature, and Arab American literature. Using intercultural analysis, Pickens explores issues of the body and representation that will be relevant to fields as varied as Political Science, African American Studies, Arab American Studies, and Disability Studies.

Does Science Need a Global Language?

Does Science Need a Global Language?
Author: Scott L. Montgomery
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2013-05-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0226535037

In early 2012, the global scientific community erupted with news that the elusive Higgs boson had likely been found, providing potent validation for the Standard Model of how the universe works. Scientists from more than one hundred countries contributed to this discovery—proving, beyond any doubt, that a new era in science had arrived, an era of multinationalism and cooperative reach. Globalization, the Internet, and digital technology all play a role in making this new era possible, but something more fundamental is also at work. In all scientific endeavors lies the ancient drive for sharing ideas and knowledge, and now this can be accomplished in a single tongue— English. But is this a good thing? In Does Science Need a Global Language?, Scott L. Montgomery seeks to answer this question by investigating the phenomenon of global English in science, how and why it came about, the forms in which it appears, what advantages and disadvantages it brings, and what its future might be. He also examines the consequences of a global tongue, considering especially emerging and developing nations, where research is still at a relatively early stage and English is not yet firmly established. Throughout the book, he includes important insights from a broad range of perspectives in linguistics, history, education, geopolitics, and more. Each chapter includes striking and revealing anecdotes from the front-line experiences of today’s scientists, some of whom have struggled with the reality of global scientific English. He explores topics such as student mobility, publication trends, world Englishes, language endangerment, and second language learning, among many others. What he uncovers will challenge readers to rethink their assumptions about the direction of contemporary science, as well as its future.

Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race

Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race
Author: Jonathan Rosa
Publisher:
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2019
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0190634723

Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race examines the emergence of linguistic and ethnoracial categories in the context of Latinidad. The book draws from more than twenty-four months of ethnographic and sociolinguistic fieldwork in a Chicago public school, whose student body is more than 90% Mexican and Puerto Rican, to analyze the racialization of language and its relationship to issues of power and national identity. It focuses specifically on youth socialization to U.S. Latinidad as a contemporary site of political anxiety, raciolinguistic transformation, and urban inequity. Jonathan Rosa's account studies the fashioning of Latinidad in Chicago's highly segregated Near Northwest Side; he links public discourse concerning the rising prominence of U.S. Latinidad to the institutional management and experience of raciolinguistic identities there. Anxieties surrounding Latinx identities push administrators to transform "at risk" Mexican and Puerto Rican students into "young Latino professionals." This institutional effort, which requires students to learn to be and, importantly, sound like themselves in highly studied ways, reveals administrators' attempts to navigate a precarious urban terrain in a city grappling with some of the nation's highest youth homicide, dropout, and teen pregnancy rates. Rosa explores the ingenuity of his research participants' responses to these forms of marginalization through the contestation of political, ethnoracial, and linguistic borders.

Defying Maliseet Language Death

Defying Maliseet Language Death
Author: Bernard C. Perley
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0803266804

Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Today, indigenous communities throughout North America are grappling with the dual issues of language loss and revitalization. While many communities are making efforts to bring their traditional languages back through educational programs, for some communities these efforts are not enough or have come too late to stem the tide of language death, which occurs when there are no remaining fluent speakers and the language is no longer used in regular communication. The Maliseet language, as spoken in the Tobique First Nation of New Brunswick, Canada, is one such endangered language that will either be revitalized and survive or will die off. Defying Maliseet Language Death is an ethnographic study by Bernard C. Perley, a member of this First Nation, that examines the role of the Maliseet language and its survival in Maliseet identity processes. Perley examines what is being done to keep the Maliseet language alive, who is actively involved in these processes, and how these two factors combine to promote Maliseet language survival. He also explores questions of identity, asking the important question: “If Maliseet is no longer spoken, are we still Maliseet?” This timely volume joins the dual issues of language survival and indigenous identity to present a unique perspective on the place of language within culture.

Women Writers of Gabon

Women Writers of Gabon
Author: Cheryl Toman
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2016-10-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498537219

Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory demonstrates how the invisibility of women (historically, politically, cross-culturally, etc.) has led to the omission of Gabon’s literature from the African canon, but it also discusses in depth the unique elements of Gabonese women’s writing that show it is worthy of critical recognition and that prove why Gabonese women writers must be considered a major force in African literature. This book is the only book-length critical study of Gabonese literature that exists in English and although there are titles in French that provide analyses of the works of Gabonese women writers, no one work is comprehensive nor is the history of women’s writing in Gabon considered in the such a manner. Throughout the various chapters, the book explores, among other things, contributions that are unique to Gabonese women writers such as: definitions of African feminisms as they pertain to Gabonese society, the rewriting of oral histories, rituals, and traditions of the Fang ethnic group, one of the first introductions of same-sex couples in African Francophone literature, discussions on the impact of witchcraft on development, and the appropriating of the epic poetry known as the mvet by women writers. The chapters explore works by all major voices in Gabonese women’s writing including Angèle Rawiri, Justine Mintsa, Sylvie Ntsame, Honorine Ngou, and Chantal Magalie Mbazoo-Kassa and the book concludes with brief introductions of a younger generation of Gabonese women writers such as Edna Merey-Apinda, Alice Endamne, Nadia Origo, Miryl Eteno, and Elisabeth Aworet among others.

Challenging the Colonialism in World Language-Learner Literature

Challenging the Colonialism in World Language-Learner Literature
Author: Kristi Lentz
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre:
ISBN: 9781737107309

In this current historical moment, many authors and publishers face challenges of how to create books with authentic representations of literary characters from different identities. In the field of world language education, many teacher-authors, particularly if they are not members of the cultures that speak the languages they teach, are asking: "If I honor the #OwnVoices movement, where is there space for my own creativity?" In response, the Staying in Our Lanes Project believes: Every voice is essential. We all have a place from which to write.We can do better on how we make space for all voices. This book articulates models for writing that make space for everyone's voice, and addresses the urgent need for a more respectful interculturality in world language-learner literature.

Bilingual Couples Talk

Bilingual Couples Talk
Author: Ingrid Piller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027241368

This sociolinguistic study of the linguistic practices of bilingual couples describes the conditions, processes and results of private language contact. It is based on a unique corpus of more than 20 hours of private conversations between partners in bilingual marriages. Adding to its breadth of coverage, these private conversations are supplemented with larger public discourses about international couplehood. The volume thus offers a corpus-driven investigation of the ways in which ideologies of gender, nationality and immigration mediate linguistic performances in private cross-cultural communication. The author embraces social-constructionist, feminist and postmodern approaches to second language learning, multilingualism and cross-cultural communication. In contrast to other titles in the field which have focused almost exclusively on the socialization of bilingual children, this book explores what it means to one's sense of self to become socialized into a second language and culture as a late bilingual.