The Language Revolution

The Language Revolution
Author: David Crystal
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2018-07-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0745673147

We are living through the consequences of a linguistic revolution. Dramatic linguistic change has left us at the beginning of a new era in the evolution of human language, with repercussions for many individual languages. In this book, David Crystal, one of the world’s authorities on language, brings together for the first time the three major trends which he argues have fundamentally altered the world’s linguistic ecology: first, the emergence of English as the world’s first truly global language; second, the crisis facing huge numbers of languages which are currently endangered or dying; and, third, the radical effect on language of the arrival of Internet technology. Examining the interrelationships between these topics, Crystal encounters a vision of a linguistic future which is radically different from what has existed in the past, and which will make us revise many cherished concepts relating to the way we think about and work with languages. Everyone is affected by this linguistic revolution. The Language Revolution will be essential reading for anyone interested in language and communication in the twenty-first century.

A Revolution in Language

A Revolution in Language
Author: Sophia A. Rosenfeld
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2003-08-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780804749312

What is the relationship between the ideas of the Enlightenment and the culture and ideology of the French Revolution? This book takes up that classic question by concentrating on changing conceptions of language and, especially, signs during the second half of the eighteenth century. The author traces, first, the emergence of a new interest in the possibility of gestural communication within the philosophy, theater, and pedagogy of the last decades of the Old Regime. She then explores the varied uses and significance of a variety of semiotic experiments, including the development of a sign language for the deaf, within the language politics of the Revolution. A Revolution in Language shows not only that many key revolutionary thinkers were unusually preoccupied by questions of language, but also that prevailing assumptions about words and other signs profoundly shaped revolutionaries' efforts to imagine and to institute an ideal polity between 1789 and the start of the new century. This book reveals the links between Enlightenment epistemology and the development of modern French political culture.

Revolution in Poetic Language

Revolution in Poetic Language
Author: Julia Kristeva
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2024-02-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0231561407

In Revolution in Poetic Language, Julia Kristeva explicates her foundational distinction between the semiotic and the symbolic and explores their interrelationships. Linking the psychosomatic to the literary and the literary to a larger political horizon, she questions the premises of linguistic, psychoanalytic, philosophical, and literary theories.

The Bilingual Revolution

The Bilingual Revolution
Author: Fabrice Jaumont
Publisher: TBR Books
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2017
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1947626000

The Bilingual Revolution is a collection of inspirational vignettes and practical advice that tells the story of the parents and educators who founded dual language programs in New York City public schools. The book doubles as a "how to" manual for setting up your own bilingual school and, in so doing, launching your own revolution.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)
Author: Jing Tsu
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0735214743

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Speak AI Decoding the Language Revolution

Speak AI Decoding the Language Revolution
Author: Mario Capellari
Publisher: Resilientech
Total Pages: 78
Release: 2024-02-27
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

Embark on a journey into the heart of artificial intelligence (AI) with a guide designed for those intrigued by AI technologies. This book shines a light on the essentials of AI, emphasizing the groundbreaking impact of Large Language Models (LLMs). It offers a clear pathway to understanding AI's evolution, from its foundational concepts like neural networks and natural language processing to the advanced realms of generative AI that shape our future. Discover how AI is revolutionizing various industries, including healthcare, finance, education, and the arts, demonstrating its potential to transform the world. The narrative also tackles the ethical, privacy, and societal challenges accompanying AI's rise, fostering a dialogue on bias, data privacy, and the evolving landscape of work in an AI-enhanced world. Ideal for AI enthusiasts, professionals seeking to grasp AI's relevance to their fields, and anyone interested in the broader implications of AI technologies, this book provides an insightful introduction to AI and LLMs. It invites readers to explore the opportunities and navigate the changes AI brings, preparing them to thrive amidst the ongoing AI revolution.

Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia

Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia
Author: Brigid O'Keeffe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350160660

Hoping to unite all of humankind and revolutionize the world, Ludwik Zamenhof launched a new international language called Esperanto from late imperial Russia in 1887. Ordinary men and women in Russia and all over the world soon transformed Esperanto into a global movement. Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia traces the history and legacy of this effort: from Esperanto's roots in the social turmoil of the pre-revolutionary Pale of Settlement; to its links to socialist internationalism and Comintern bids for world revolution; and, finally, to the demise of the Soviet Esperanto movement in the increasingly xenophobic Stalinist 1930s. In doing so, this book reveals how Esperanto – and global language politics more broadly – shaped revolutionary and early Soviet Russia. Based on extensive archival materials, Brigid O'Keeffe's book provides the first in-depth exploration of Esperanto at grassroots level and sheds new light on a hitherto overlooked area of Russian history. As such, Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia will be of immense value to both historians of modern Russia and scholars of internationalism, transnational networks, and sociolinguistics.

Language Evolution

Language Evolution
Author: Salikoko S. Mufwene
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2008-03-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1441175350

Languages are constantly changing. New words are added to the English language every year, either borrowed or coined, and there is often railing against the 'decline' of the language by public figures. Some languages, such as French and Finnish, have academies to protect them against foreign imports. Yet languages are species-like constructs, which evolve naturally over time. Migration, imperialism, and globalization have blurred boundaries between many of them, producing new ones (such as creoles) and driving some to extinction. This book examines the processes by which languages change, from the macroecological perspective of competition and natural selection. In a series of chapters, Salikoko Mufwene examines such themes as: - natural selection in language - the actuation question and the invisible hand that drives evolution - multilingualism and language contact - language birth and language death - the emergence of Creoles and Pidgins - the varying impacts of colonization and globalization on language vitality This comprehensive examination of the organic evolution of language will be essential reading for graduate and senior undergraduate students, and for researchers on the social dynamics of language variation and change, language vitality and death, and even the origins of linguistic diversity.

Barricades and Banners

Barricades and Banners
Author: Scott Ury
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2012-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804781044

This book examines the intersection of urban society and modern politics among Jews in turn of the century Warsaw, Europe's largest Jewish center at the time. By focusing on the tumultuous events surrounding the Revolution of 1905, Barricades and Banners argues that the metropolitanization of Jewish life led to a need for new forms of community and belonging, and that the ensuing search for collective and individual order gave birth to the new institutions, organizations, and practices that would define modern Jewish society and politics for the remainder of the twentieth century.

Language Wars and Linguistic Politics

Language Wars and Linguistic Politics
Author: Louis-Jean Calvet
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1998
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780198700210

Non-linguistic conflicts are often projected on to language differences, and may be played out in the language policies of governments and other holders of power. This text deals broadly with this interaction of language issues and political process.