Language contact phenomena have been researched throughout the history of the discipline, but the intensity of the research has undoubtedly risen during the last decades due to growing globalization. This peer-reviewed volume presents twelve papers from the Second Conference on Language Contact in Times of Globalization (University of Groningen, June 2009) which deal with a wide range of topics, languages and contact situations. Five of them involve a Finno-Ugric language (Saami-Komi-Russian; Finnic-Baltic; Mordvin-Turkic; Estonian-German; Saami general), two a Slavic language (Slavic-Romance; Slavic general), two Germanic-Romance contact and three situations outside Europe (The Arabic World; Central Asia; South America). Methods range from field research and corpus analysis to historical linguistics, and both synchronic and diachronic approaches are used. The authors are Rogier Blokland and Michael Rießler, Martine Bruil, Louise-Amélie Cougnon, Anissa Daoudi, Santeri Junttila, Janneke Kalsbeek, Folke Müller and Susan Schlotthauer, Johanna Nichols, Pekka Sammallahti, Peter Schrijver, Remco van Pareren, and Willem Vermeer. Keywords / target groups: General linguistics, Contact linguistics, Finno-Ugric linguistics, Slavic linguistics.

"A fascinating examination of how an English-language mandate at a Japanese firm, Rakuten, unfolded over time and how employees reacted to it"--Back of jacket.

Written in a detailed and fascinating manner, this book is ideal for general readers interested in the English language.

Human language has changed in the age of globalization: no longer tied to stable and resident communities, it moves across the globe, and it changes in the process. The world has become a complex 'web' of villages, towns, neighbourhoods and settlements connected by material and symbolic ties in often unpredictable ways. This phenomenon requires us to revise our understanding of linguistic communication. In The Sociolinguistics of Globalization Jan Blommaert constructs a theory of changing language in a changing society, reconsidering locality, repertoires, competence, history and sociolinguistic inequality.

A sweeping account of the global rise of English and the high-stakes politics of languageSpoken by a quarter of the world's population, English is today's lingua franca- - its common tongue. The language of business, popular media, and international politics, English has become commodified for its economic value and increasingly detached from any particular nation. This meteoric "riseof English" has many obvious benefits to communication. Tourists can travel abroad with greater ease. Political leaders can directly engage their counterparts. Researchers can collaborate with foreign colleagues. Business interests can flourish in the global economy.But the rise of English has very real downsides as well. In Europe, imperatives of political integration and job mobility compete with pride in national language and heritage. In the United States and England, English isolates us from the cultural and economic benefits of speaking other languages.And in countries like India, South Africa, Morocco, and Rwanda, it has stratified society along lines of English proficiency.In The Rise of English, Rosemary Salomone offers a commanding view of the unprecedented spread of English and the far-reaching effects it has on global and local politics, economics, media, education, and business. From the inner workings of the European Union to linguistic battles over influence inAfrica, Salomone draws on a wealth of research to tell the complex story of English - and, ultimately, to argue for English not as a force for domination but as a core component of multilingualism and the transcendence of linguistic and cultural borders.

The study of languages in contact is an ever-relevant topic in linguistics, especially at present times when increasing globalization leads to a number of new contact situations. This volume features ten papers on various aspects of language contact by leading specialists in the field. In these papers, contact-induced change in a wide variety of languages is approached from various perspectives, reflecting the current state of affairs in language contact studies. The first main theme in the volume is related to the linguistic effects of migration, both in the present and in the past, and both in the standard language spoken by ethnic minorities, and in immigrant languages that are influenced by the standard. The second theme concerns border areas, a traditional treasure trove for the study of contact phenomena. The third theme is about contact effects without physical contact, as well as the role played by translators in this process.

English historical linguistics is a subfield of linguistics which has developed theories and methods for exploring the history of the English language. This Handbook provides an account of state-of-the-art research on this history. It offers an in-depth survey of materials, methods, and language-theoretical models used to study the long diachrony of English. The frameworks covered include corpus linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics and manuscript studies, among others. The chapters, by leading experts, examine the interplay of language theory and empirical data throughout, critically assessing the work in the field. Of particular importance are the diverse data sources which have become increasingly available in electronic form, allowing the discipline to develop in new directions. The Handbook offers access to the rich and many-faceted spectrum of work in English historical linguistics, past and present, and will be useful for researchers and students interested in hands-on research on the history of English.

Language is a fundamental tool for shaping identity and community, including the expression (or repression) of sexual desire. Speaking in Queer Tongues investigates the tensions and adaptations that occur when processes of globalization bring one system of gay or lesbian language into contact with another. Western constructions of gay culture are now circulating widely beyond the boundaries of Western nations due to influences as diverse as Internet communication, global dissemination of entertainment and other media, increased travel and tourism, migration, displacement, and transnational citizenship. The authority claimed by these constructions, and by the linguistic codes embedded in them, is causing them to have a profound impact on public and private expressions of homosexuality in locations as diverse as sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia and Israel. Examining a wide range of global cultures, Speaking in Queer Tongues presents essays on topics that include old versus new sexual vocabularies, the rhetoric of gay-oriented magazines and news media, verbal and nonverbalized sexual imagery in poetry and popular culture, and the linguistic consequences of the globalized gay rights movement.

This volume offers a cross-disciplinary insight into language contact research, bringing together fresh empirical and theoretical studies from various fields concerning different dimensions of language contact and variation, second language acquisition and translation. In the present-day world of globalization, population mobility and information technology, the themes of multilingualism and contact-induced language change are as topical as ever, and research on language contacts and cross-linguistic influence has expanded rapidly during the last few decades. Along with the increasing specialization of related disciplines, their research perspectives, methods and terminology have become dispersed, although language contact phenomena themselves can rarely be confined within the scope of a single discipline. This collection of articles creates dialogue between researchers from different scientific backgrounds, thus viewing language contact phenomena from a broader perspective. When language contact is re-defined to include the mental or cognitive level of contact between different languages and varieties in the minds of language learners or translators, salient links are created between the different disciplines dealing with this subject matter.

Drawing on the latest developments in bilingual and multilingual research, The Multilingual Turn offers a critique of, and alternative to, still-dominant monolingual theories, pedagogies and practices in SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education. Critics of the ‘monolingual bias’ argue that notions such as the idealized native speaker, and related concepts of interlanguage, language competence, and fossilization, have framed these fields inextricably in relation to monolingual speaker norms. In contrast, these critics advocate an approach that emphasizes the multiple competencies of bi/multilingual learners as the basis for successful language teaching and learning. This volume takes a big step forward in re-situating the issue of multilingualism more centrally in applied linguistics and, in so doing, making more permeable its key sub-disciplinary boundaries – particularly, those between SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education. It addresses this issue head on, bringing together key international scholars in SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education to explore from cutting-edge interdisciplinary perspectives what a more critical multilingual perspective might mean for theory, pedagogy, and practice in each of these fields.