In this pioneering exploration of African American slang - a highly informal vocabulary and a significant aspect of African American English - Maciej Widawski explores patterns of form, meaning, theme and function, showing it to be a rule-governed, innovative and culturally revealing vernacular. Widawski's comprehensive description is based on a large database of contextual citations from thousands of contemporary sources, including literature and the press, music, film and television. It also includes an alphabetical glossary of 1,500 representative slang expressions, defined and illustrated by 4,500 usage examples. Due to its vast size, the glossary can stand alone as a dictionary providing readers with a reliable reference of terms. Combining scholarship with user-friendliness, this book is an insightful and practical resource for students and researchers in linguistics, as well as general readers interested in exploring lexical variation in contemporary English.

"Ever since the collapse of the West Indies Federation in 1958, debate has raged on the subject of regional integration. In this collection, the contributors illustrate that Caribbean people s similarities far outweigh any drawbacks from their diversity. The survival and success of regional institutions in health, social services, youth empowerment, education and agriculture, among others, have served to create a common bond of understanding and appreciation of the oneness of the Caribbean people. While the regional integration movement is primarily an institutional activity, its success will depend largely on the impact on the people of the region by these institutions. The contributors argue that an approach which puts people a the centre of development is necessary for the construction and effective functioning of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy the linchpin of Caribbean survival in the new globalized dispensation. "

Adejunmobi highlights the continuing appeal of local identities for participants in social networks where communication occurs in languages that are not mother tongues. He shows how in West Africa notions of localness & locality remain important despite the growing prominence of global languages.

"Over the past several years, Anglo-Saxon studies-alongside the larger field of medieval studies-has undergone a reckoning. Outcries against the misogyny and sexism of prominent figures in the field have quickly turned to issues of racism, prompting Anglo-Saxonists to recognize an institutional, structural whiteness that not only bars the door to people of color but also prohibits scholars from confronting the very idea that race and racism operate within the field's scholarship, scholarly practices, and intellectual history. Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, postSaxon Futures traces the integral role that colonialism and racism play in Anglo-Saxon studies by tracking the development of the "Anglo-Saxonist," an overtly racialized term that describes a person whose affinities point towards white nationalism. That scholars continue to call themselves "Anglo-Saxonists," despite urgent calls to combat racism within the field, suggests that this term is much more than just a professional appellative. It is, this book argues, a ghost in the machine of Anglo-Saxon studies-a spectral figure created by a group of nineteenth-century historians, archaeologists, and philologists responsible for not only framing the interdisciplinary field of Anglo-Saxon studies but for also encoding ideologies of British colonialism and Anglo-American racism within the field's methods and pedagogies. Anglo-Saxon(ist) pasts, postSaxon Futures is at once a historiography of Anglo-Saxon studies, a mourning of its Anglo-Saxonist "fathers," and an exorcism of the colonial-racial ghosts that lurk within the field's scholarly methods and pedagogies. Part intellectual history, part grief work, this book leverages the genres of literary criticism, auto-ethnography, and creative nonfiction in order to confront Anglo-Saxonist pasts in order to imagine speculative postSaxon futures inclusive of voices and bodies heretofore excluded from the field of Anglo-Saxon studies"--

"This entrancing book looks at [the clash of class and caste within the black community] . . . . An important reexamination of African American history." —Choice The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago showed the world that America had come of age. Dreaming that they could participate fully as citizens, African Americans flocked to the fair by the thousands. "All the World Is Here!" examines why they came and the ways in which they took part in the Exposition. Their expectations varied. Well-educated, highly assimilated African Americans sought not just representation but also membership at the highest level of decision making and planning. They wanted to participate fully in all intellectual and cultural events. Instead, they were given only token roles and used as window dressing. Their stories of pathos and joy, disappointment and hope, are part of the lost history of "White City." Frederick Douglass, who embodied the dream that inclusion within the American mainstream was possible, would never forget America's World's Fair snub.