What is ethnicity? Is there a 'white' way of speaking? Why do people sometimes borrow features of another ethnic group's language? Why do we sometimes hear an accent that isn't there? This lively overview, first published in 2006, reveals the fascinating relationship between language and ethnic identity, exploring the crucial role it plays in both revealing a speaker's ethnicity and helping to construct it. Drawing on research from a range of ethnic groups around the world, it shows how language contributes to the social and psychological processes involved in the formation of ethnic identity, exploring both the linguistic features of ethnic language varieties and also the ways in which language is used by different ethnic groups. Complete with discussion questions and a glossary, Language and Ethnicity will be welcomed by students and researchers in sociolinguistics, as well as anybody interested in ethnic issues, language and education, inter-ethnic communication, and the relationship between language and identity.

This book, addressed to experienced and novice language educators, provides an up-to-date overview of sociolinguistics, reflecting changes in the global situation and the continuing evolution of the field and its relevance to language education around the world. Topics covered include nationalism and popular culture, style and identity, creole languages, critical language awareness, gender and ethnicity, multimodal literacies, classroom discourse, and ideologies and power. Whether considering the role of English as an international language or innovative initiatives in Indigenous language revitalization, in every context of the world sociolinguistic perspectives highlight the fluid and flexible use of language in communities and classrooms, and the importance of teacher practices that open up spaces of awareness and acceptance of --and access to--the widest possible communicative repertoire for students.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

The goal of eliminating disparities in health care in the United States remains elusive. Even as quality improves on specific measures, disparities often persist. Addressing these disparities must begin with the fundamental step of bringing the nature of the disparities and the groups at risk for those disparities to light by collecting health care quality information stratified by race, ethnicity and language data. Then attention can be focused on where interventions might be best applied, and on planning and evaluating those efforts to inform the development of policy and the application of resources. A lack of standardization of categories for race, ethnicity, and language data has been suggested as one obstacle to achieving more widespread collection and utilization of these data. Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data identifies current models for collecting and coding race, ethnicity, and language data; reviews challenges involved in obtaining these data, and makes recommendations for a nationally standardized approach for use in health care quality improvement.

This Reader collects in one volume the key readings on language, ethnicity and race. Using linguistic and cultural analysis, it explores changing ideas of race and the ways in which these ideas shape human communication.

In line with the overall perspective of the Handbook series, the focus of Vol.9 is on language-related problems arising in the context of linguistic diversity and change, and the contributions Applied Linguistics can offer for solutions. Part I, “Language minorities and inequality,” presents situations of language contact and linguistic diversity as world-wide phenomena. The focus is on indigenous and immigrant linguistic minorities, their (lack of) access to linguistic rights through language policies and the impact on their linguistic future .Part II “Language planning and language change,” focuses on the impact of colonialism, imperialism, globalisation and economics as factors that language policies and planning measures must account for in responding to problems deriving from language contact and linguistic diversity. Part III, “Language variation and change in institutional contexts,” examines language-related problems in selected institutional areas of communication (education, the law, religion, science, the Internet) which will often derive from socioeconomic, cultural and other non-linguistic asymmetries. Part IV, “The discourse of linguistic diversity and language change,” analyses linguistic diversity, language change and language reform as issues of public debates which are informed by different ideological positions, values and attitudes (e.g. with reference to sexism, racism, and political correctness).The volume also contains extensive reference sections and index material.

This Reader collects in one volume the key readings on language, ethnicity and race. Using linguistic and cultural analysis, it explores changing ideas of race and the ways in which these ideas shape human communication.

This volume presents a comprehensive introduction to the connection between language and ethnicity.

The book presents case studies of immigrant minority groups and immigrant minority languages in Europe and abroad, analysed from demographic, sociolinguistic, and educational perspectives. The demographic perspective focuses on the role of language and ethnicity in multicultural population statistics, the sociolinguistic perspective on the vitality of immigrant minority languages, and the educational perspective on the status of immigrant minority languages in education.

Developments in the European Union over the last decade have been largely positive from the perspective of stateless and minority ethnic groups and the survival and prosperity of minority languages. This selection of sociologically and ethnographically oriented work enables the reader to compare developments in different ethno-linguistic revival movements within the European Union. The contributions also explore the impact of EU policy and discourse on the individual movements and the orientation of Western Europe as a whole towards linguistic heterogeneity and cultural diversity. A companion volume (0-333-92924-1) examines the status of minority languages in post-1989 Eastern Europe.