Sociolinguistics from the Periphery
Sociolinguistics from the Periphery
Alexandra Jaffe, California State University, Long Beach
Helen Kelly-Holmes, University of Limerick
Nikolas Coupland, University of Technology, Sydney
$138.00
USDThis leading team of scholars presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users. The authors refer to this network of interlinked changes as the new conditions surrounding small languages (Sámi, Corsican, Irish and Welsh) in peripheral sites. Starting from the conviction that peripheral sites can and should inform the sociolinguistics of globalisation, the book explores how new modes of reflexivity, more transactional frames for authenticity, commodification of peripheral resources, and boundary-transgression with humour, all carry forward change. These types of change articulate a blurring of binary oppositions between centre and periphery, old and new, and standard and non-standard. Such research is particularly urgent in multilingual small language contexts, where different conceptualisations of language(s), boundaries, and speakers impact on individuals' social, cultural, and economic capital, and opportunities.
- Offers new conceptualisations of the sociolinguistics of minority languages
- Brings together the research of four leading scholars in the field
- Considers the sociolinguistics of minority languages as mutually constitutive notions, rather than as geographical or political circumstances
Reviews & endorsements
'Reading the book, the authors’ passion for small languages and the selected languages in particular is very evident. This results in convincingly written passages in which the authors’ virtuosity in the field of sociolinguistics combines with interesting and sometimes even amusing examples from Corsican, Welsh, Irish and Sámi.' Sven Leuckert, The Linguist List
Product details
June 2016Hardback
9781107123885
248 pages
237 × 160 × 20 mm
0.5kg
27 b/w illus. 2 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Small languages in new circumstances?
- 2. Reflexivity and small languages: the 'meta' imperative in late modernity
- 3. Conventional and transactional authenticities in small-culture tourism
- 4. Expanding possibilities for commodification: luxury, mobility, visuality
- 5. Transgression, small languages, and changing boundaries
- 6. A view from the periphery: sociolinguistics, small languages and change.
