Suchergebnisse

Only a few hundred of the world's languages have any kind of official status, and it is only speakers of official languages (speakers of dominant majority languages) who enjoy all linguistic human rights. As many of the collected papers in this book document, most linguistic minorities are deprived of these rights. This volume describes what linguistic human rights are, who has and who does not have them and why and suggests which linguistic rights should be regarded as basic human rights. ""Linguistic Human Rights"" introduces an area that combines sociolinguistics, educational and minority c

Linguistic Anthropology. Alessandro Duranti. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.398 pp.

Linguistic Fieldwork. Paul Newman and Martha Ratliff. eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 288 pp.

The world is full of situations of asymmetric bilingualism: the members of one linguistic group learn the language of another without the latter reciprocating. In such a situation, the cost of learning is borne by one group, whereas the benefit is enjoyed by both. This paper first argues that, in the absence of any cost-sharing device, such situations are unjust. Next, it critically examines four potential criteria of linguistic justice, each of which offers a distinct answer to the question of how to allocate between two linguistic groups the cost of one of them learning a second language. Criteria suggested by Church and King, Jonathan Pool and David Gauthier are spelled out and rejected in favour of a criterion of equal ratios of benefit to cost. Lastly, the paper sketches some policy implications concerning what is owed by English natives to the rest of mankind as a result of English being adopted as a worldwide lingua franca.

The linguistic relativity hypothesis, the proposal that the particular language we speak influences the way we think about reality, forms one part of the broader question of how language influences thought. Despite long-standing historical interest in the hypothesis, there is relatively little empirical research directly addressing it. Existing empirical approaches are classified into three types. 1. Structure-centered approaches begin with language differences and ask about their implications for thought. 2. Domain-centered approaches begin with experienced reality and ask how different languages encode it. 3. Behavior-centered approaches begin with some practical concern and seek an explanation in language. These approaches are compared, and recent methodological improvements highlighted. Despite empirical advances, a theoretical account needs to articulate exactly how languages interpret experiences and how those interpretations influence thought. This will entail integrating theory and data concerning both the general relation of language and thought and the shaping influence of specific discursive structures and practices.

Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- The Contributors -- Chapter 1: Spain's Multilingual Make-up: Beyond, Within and Across Babel -- Chapter 2: The Catalan-speaking Communities -- Chapter 3: The Basque-speaking Communities -- Chapter 4: The Galician Speech Community -- Chapter 5: The Occitan Speech Community of the Aran Valley -- Chapter 6: The Asturian Speech Community -- Chapter 7: The Sign Language Communities -- Chapter 8: The Gitano Communities -- Chapter 9: The Jewish Communities -- Chapter 10: The Brazilian Community -- Chapter 11: The Cape Verdean Community -- Chapter 12: The Chinese Community -- Chapter 13: The Italian Community -- Chapter 14: The Maghrebi Communities -- Chapter 15: The Portuguese Community -- Chapter 16: The UK Community -- Chapter 17: The US American Speech Community

Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson. eds. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, 17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 488 pp.