Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City focuses on how individuals navigate conversation in highly diversified contexts and provides a broad overview of state of the art research in urban sociolinguistics across the globe. Bearing in mind the impact of international travel and migration, the book accounts for the shifting contemporary studies to the workings of language choices in places where people with many different backgrounds meet and exchange ideas. It specifically addresses how people handle language use challenges in a broad range of settings to present themselves positively and meet their information and identity goals. While a speaker’s experience runs like a thread through this volume, the linguistic, cultural and situational focus is as broad as possible. It runs from the language choices of Chinese immigrants to Beijing and Finnish immigrants to Japan to the use of the local lingua franca by motor taxi drivers in Ngaoundéré, Cameroon, and how Hungarian students in their dorm rooms express views on political correctness uninhibitedly. As it turns out, language play, improvisation, humour, lies, as well as highly marked subconscious pronunciation choices, are natural parts of the discourses, and this volume provides numerous and extensive examples of these techniques. For each of the settings discussed, the perspective is taken of personalised linguistic and extra-linguistic styles in tackling communicative challenges. This way, a picture is drawn of how postmodern individuals in extremely different cultural and situational circumstances turn out to have strikingly similar human behaviours and intentions. Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City is of interest to all those who follow theoretical and methodological developments in this field. It will be of use for upper level students in the fields of Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Linguistic Anthropology and related fields in which urban communicative settings are the focus.

Uses epigraphic and linguistic evidence to track movements of people around the ancient Mediterranean.

Presenting a detailed examination of the origins, evolutions, and state-of-the-art of linguistic landscape research, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes is a comprehensive guide to the burgeoning field of linguistic landscapes and the study of meaning and interpretation in public spaces and settings. Providing a thorough synopsis of the theories, methodologies, and objects of study which inflect linguistic landscape research across the world, this book is the ideal companion for both new and experienced readers interested in the processes of communication in public spaces across diverse settings and from a broad range of perspectives. Through a wide selection of case studies and original research, the handbook highlights the global reach of linguistic landscape theories and practices. Scrutinising an array of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodological approaches for analysing a wide spectrum of meaning-making phenomena, it investigates semiosis in contexts ranging from graffiti and street signs to tattoos and literature, visible across a variety of sites, including city centres, rural settings, schools, protest marches, museums, war-torn landscapes, and the internet.

This book is a collection of innovative studies on language contact. It contains novel works on unexplored issues related to language contact in different settings and aims to contribute multi-perspective insights to the current state of the art on language contact. Novel approaches to contact-related change, variation, attrition, and emergence of new varieties are explored from the lens of sociolinguistic, typological, synchronic, and diachronic perspectives. The contact settings vary from official and majority languages to minority, endangered and/or non-official varieties in different parts of the world.

Combining empirical and theoretical approaches from a range of disciplines, Linguistic Identities in the Arab Gulf States examines current issues surrounding language and identity in the Arab Gulf states. Organized in four parts, the book addresses the overarching theme of ‘waves of change’ in relation to language and power, linguistic identities in the media, identities in transition, and language in education. The authors of each chapter are renowned experts in their field and contribute to furthering our understanding of the dynamic, changeable, and socially constructed nature of identities and how identities are often intricately woven into and impacted by local and global developments. Although the book geographically covers Gulf region contexts, many of the concepts and dilemmas discussed are relevant to other highly diverse nations globally. For example, debates surrounding tolerance, diversity, neoliberal ideologies in English-medium instruction (EMI), media representation of language varieties, and sociolinguistic inequalities during coronavirus communication are pertinent to regions outside the Gulf, too. This volume will particularly appeal to students and scholars interested in issues around language and identity, gender, language policy and planning, multilingualism, translingual practice, language in education, and language ideologies.

Language and Identity in the Arab World explores the inextricable link between language and identity, referring particularly to the Arab world. Spanning Indonesia to the United States, the Arab world is here imagined as a continually changing one, with the Arab diaspora asserting its linguistic identity across the world. Crucial questions on transforming linguistic landscapes, the role and implications of migration, and the impact of technology on language use are explored by established and emerging scholars in the field of applied and socio-linguistics. The book asks such crucial questions as how language contact affects or transforms identity, how language reflects changing identities among migrant communities, and how language choices contribute to identity construction in social media. As well as appreciating the breadth and scope of the Arab world, this anthology focuses on the transformative role of language within indigenous and migrant communities as they negotiate between their heritage languages and those spoken by the wider society. Investigating the ways in which identity continues to be imagined and re-constructed in and among Arab communities, this book is indispensable to students, teachers, and anyone who is interested in language contact, linguistic landscapes, and minority language retention as well as the intersections of language and technology.

New Approaches to Language and Identity in Contexts of Migration and Diaspora draws together expertise and contemporary research findings in respect of language and identity in migrant and diasporic contexts throughout the world. Over thirteen chapters, contributors examine the intersection between migration, language, and identity through analyses of migration discourses, language practices, and legal policy, as well as the ideologies embedded and revealed within them. A wide range of subject areas and interdisciplinary approaches are represented, with fifteen authors drawn from the fields of education, intercultural communication, linguistics, geography, migration studies, psychology, and sociology. This volume will primarily appeal to scholars and researchers in fields such as migration, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, multilingualism, and heritage language learning.