The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey. It is now a cliché that the world is a smaller place. We think nothing of jumping on a plane to travel to another country or continent. The most exotic locations are now destinations for mass tourism. Small business people are dealing across frontiers and language barriers like never before. The Internet brings different languages and cultures to our finger-tips. English, the hybrid language of an island at the western extremity of Europe seems to have an unrivalled position as an international medium of communication. But historically periods of cultural and economic domination have never lasted forever. Do we not lose something by relying on the wide spread use of English rather than discovering other languages and cultures? As citizens of this shrunken world, would we not be better off if we were able to speak a few languages other than our own? The answer is obviously yes. Certainly Steve Kaufmann thinks so, and in his busy life as a diplomat and businessman he managed to learn to speak nine languages fluently and observe first hand some of the dominant cultures of Europe and Asia. Why do not more people do the same? In his book The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey, Steve offers some answers. Steve feels anyone can learn a language if they want to. He points out some of the obstacles that hold people back. Drawing on his adventures in Europe and Asia, as a student and businessman, he describes the rewards that come from knowing languages. He relates his evolution as a language learner, abroad and back in his native Canada and explains the kind of attitude that will enable others to achieve second language fluency. Many people have taken on the challenge of language learning but have been frustrated by their lack of success. This book offers detailed advice on the kind of study practices that will achieve language breakthroughs. Steve has developed a language learning system available online at: www.thelinguist.com.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Politics and the English Language, the second in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell takes aim at the language used in politics, which, he says, ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’. In an age where the language used in politics is constantly under the microscope, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is just as relevant today, and gives the reader a vital understanding of the tactics at play. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

This book is about the worlds and conflicts of TESOL teachers and researchers whose professional lives are both enriched and problematized by the cultural and political interfaces created by working with an international language. Central to this discussion is the balance of power in classroom and curriculum settings, the relationship between language, culture, and discourse, and the change in the ownership of English.

The 1975 publication of Robin Tolmach Lakoff's Language and Woman's Place, is widely recognized as having inaugurated feminist research on the relationship between language and gender, touching off a remarkable response among language scholars, feminists, and general readers. For the past thirty years, scholars of language and gender have been debating and developing Lakoff's initial observations. Arguing that language is fundamental to gender inequality, Lakoff pointed to two areas in which inequalities can be found: Language used about women, such as the asymmetries between seemingly parallel terms like master and mistress, and language used by women, which places women in a double bind between being appropriately feminine and being fully human. Lakoff's central argument that "women's language" expresses powerlessness triggered a controversy that continues to this day. The revised and expanded edition presents the full text of the original first edition, along with an introduction and annotations by Lakoff in which she reflects on the text a quarter century later and expands on some of the most widely discussed issues it raises. The volume also brings together commentaries from twenty-six leading scholars of language, gender, and sexuality, within linguistics, anthropology, modern languages, education, information sciences, and other disciplines. The commentaries discuss the book's contribution to feminist research on language and explore its ongoing relevance for scholarship in the field. This new edition of Language and Woman's Place not only makes available once again the pioneering text of feminist linguistics; just as important, it places the text in the context of contemporary feminist and gender theory for a new generation of readers.

"Language Is a Place of Struggle" is the first truly multiracial and polycultural quote book, collecting quotations from both historical and contemporary novelists and poets, activists and political leaders, and artists and musicians. Within these pages, readers will find wisdom, wit, and inspiration from Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Arab Americans, American Indians, recent immigrants to the United States, and many others. With nearly fifteen hundred quotations, this exceptional book covers a broad spectrum: from insights on spirituality to words inciting social change and justice; from the impact of colonization, slavery, and racism to observations on gender, sexuality, and identity. The quotes show how people of color in the United States have been shaped by various community histories, ongoing political and cultural struggles, and personal evolutions. Each quote reflects three core themes from the histories of people of color in America: the significance of mass movements and the role of individuals within them; the vision that binds one society to another; and the foundational relationship between an evolving society and a changing self. Each chapter—Roots, Selves, Relationship, Work and Play, Making Change, and Inner Visions—adds to the larger story about people of color in the context of history, culture, and community. An invaluable tool for speechwriters, educators, ministers, and librarians that is accessibly organized for all readers, this entertaining and thought-provoking book is a much-needed resource for anyone interested in multicultural issues. Here you will find: Gloria Anzaldúa on borders and margins; Margaret Cho on failure and success; Edwidge Danticat on women who write; Junot Díaz on masculinity; Vine Deloria, Jr., on activism; Suheir Hammad on miscegenation and identity; bell hooks on identity and oppression; Edward P. Jones on the system of racism; Philip Vera Cruz on leadership; Chögyam Trungpa on spiritual materialism; and much more.

A history of feminism and women's rights in Italy. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Identity and Language Learning draws on a longitudinal case study of immigrant women in Canada to develop new ideas about identity, investment, and imagined communities in the field of language learning and teaching. Bonny Norton demonstrates that a poststructuralist conception of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, and subject to change across time and place is highly productive for understanding language learning. Her sociological construct of investment is an important complement to psychological theories of motivation. The implications for language teaching and teacher education are profound. Now including a new, comprehensive Introduction as well as an Afterword by Claire Kramsch, this second edition addresses the following central questions: - Under what conditions do language learners speak, listen, read and write? - How are relations of power implicated in the negotiation of identity? - How can teachers address the investments and imagined identities of learners? The book integrates research, theory, and classroom practice, and is essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the fields of language learning and teaching, TESOL, applied linguistics and literacy.