Convergence Culture

Convergence Culture

Author: Henry Jenkins

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2008-09

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0814742955

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“What the future fortunes of [Gramsci’s] writings will be, we cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure, and justifies the historical study of his international reception. The present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation for this.” —Eric Hobsbawm, from the preface Antonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world's greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world's preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the first time in English, Santucci’s masterful intellectual biography of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary. Gramscian terms such as “civil society” and “hegemony” are much used in everyday political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to do with Gramsci’s purposes in developing them. Rather what we must do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection of Gramsci’s writings, is absorb Gramsci’s methods. These can be summed up as the suspicion of “grand explanatory schemes,” the unity of theory and practice, and a focus on the details of everyday life. With respect to the last of these, Joseph Buttigieg says in his Nota: “Gramsci did not set out to explain historical reality armed with some full-fledged concept, such as hegemony; rather, he examined the minutiae of concrete social, economic, cultural, and political relations as they are lived in by individuals in their specific historical circumstances and, gradually, he acquired an increasingly complex understanding of how hegemony operates in many diverse ways and under many aspects within the capillaries of society.” The rigor of Santucci’s examination of Gramsci’s life and work matches that of the seminal thought of the master himself. Readers will be enlightened and inspired by every page.


Cultural Contact and Linguistic Relativity Among the Indians of Northwestern California

Cultural Contact and Linguistic Relativity Among the Indians of Northwestern California

Author: Sean O'Neill

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780806139227

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Examines the linguistic relativity principle in relation to the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk Indians Despite centuries of intertribal contact, the American Indian peoples of northwestern California have continued to speak a variety of distinct languages. At the same time, they have come to embrace a common way of life based on salmon fishing and shared religious practices. In this thought-provoking re-examination of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, Sean O’Neill looks closely at the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk peoples to explore the striking juxtaposition between linguistic diversity and relative cultural uniformity among their communities. O’Neill examines intertribal contact, multilingualism, storytelling, and historical change among the three tribes, focusing on the traditional culture of the region as it existed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He asks important historical questions at the heart of the linguistic relativity hypothesis: Have the languages in fact grown more similar as a result of contact, multilingualism, and cultural convergence? Or have they instead maintained some of their striking grammatical and semantic differences? Through comparison of the three languages, O’Neill shows that long-term contact among the tribes intensified their linguistic differences, creating unique Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk identities. If language encapsulates worldview, as the principle of linguistic relativity suggests, then this region’s linguistic diversity is puzzling. Analyzing patterns of linguistic accommodation as seen in the semantics of space and time, grammatical classification, and specialized cultural vocabularies, O’Neill resolves the apparent paradox by assessing long-term effects of contact.


The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages

The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages

Author: Peter K. Austin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-03-24

Total Pages: 581

ISBN-13: 113950083X

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It is generally agreed that about 7,000 languages are spoken across the world today and at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of this century. This state-of-the-art Handbook examines the reasons behind this dramatic loss of linguistic diversity, why it matters, and what can be done to document and support endangered languages. The volume is relevant not only to researchers in language endangerment, language shift and language death, but to anyone interested in the languages and cultures of the world. It is accessible both to specialists and non-specialists: researchers will find cutting-edge contributions from acknowledged experts in their fields, while students, activists and other interested readers will find a wealth of readable yet thorough and up-to-date information.


Language Contact in the Territory of the Former Soviet Union

Language Contact in the Territory of the Former Soviet Union

Author: Diana Forker

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2021-06-15

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 902726001X

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The former Soviet Union (USSR) provides the ideal territory for studying language contact between one and the same dominant language (Russian) and a wide range of genealogically and typologically diverse languages with varying histories of language contact. This is the first book that bundles different case studies and systematically investigates the impact of Russian at all linguistic levels, from the lexicon to the domains of grammar to discourse, and with varying types of outcomes such as relatively rapid language shift, structural changes in a relatively stable contact situation, pidginization and super variability at the post-pidgin stage. The volume appeals to linguists studying language contact and contact-induced language change from a broad range of perspectives, who want to gain insight into how one of the largest languages in the world influences other smaller languages, but also experts of mostly minority languages in the sphere of the former Soviet Union.


Arabic in the City

Arabic in the City

Author: Catherine Miller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-12-14

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 1135978751

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Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the first examination of the interplay between urbanization, language variation and language change in fifteen major Arab cities. The Arab world presents very different types and degrees of urbanization, from well established old capital-cities such as Cairo to new emerging capital-cities such as Amman or Nouakchott, these in turn embedded in different types of national construction. It is these urban settings which raise questions concerning the dynamics of homogenization/differentiation and the processes of standardization due to the coexistence of competing linguistic models. Topics investigated include: History of settlement The linguistic impact of migration The emergence of new urban vernaculars Dialect convergence and divergence Code-switching, youth language and new urban culture Arabic in the Diaspora Arabic among non-Arab groups. Containing a broad selection of case studies from across the Arab world and featuring contributions from leading urban sociolinguistics and dialectologists, this book presents a fresh approach to our understanding of the interaction between language, society and space. As such, the book will appeal to the linguist as well as to the social scientist in general.


Global Media Convergence and Cultural Transformation: Emerging Social Patterns and Characteristics

Global Media Convergence and Cultural Transformation: Emerging Social Patterns and Characteristics

Author: Jin, Dal Yong

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2010-11-30

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 1609600398

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"This book aims to engage the complex relationship between technology, culture, and socio-economic elements by exploring it in a transnational, yet contextually grounded, framework, exploring diverse perspectives and approaches, from political economy to cultural studies, and from policy studies to ethnography"--Provided by publisher.


Dynamics of Language Contact

Dynamics of Language Contact

Author: Michael G. Clyne

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-03-20

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9780521786485

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Discusses disparate findings to examine the dynamics of contact between languages in an immigrant context.


Language Contact

Language Contact

Author: Yaron Matras

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-09-10

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1139480529

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Most societies in today's world are multilingual. 'Language contact' occurs when speakers of different languages interact and their languages influence each other. This book is an introduction to the subject, covering individual and societal multilingualism, the acquisition of two or more languages from birth, second language acquisition in adulthood, language change, linguistic typology, language processing and the structure of the language faculty. It explains the effects of multilingualism on society and language policy, as well as the consequences that long-term bilingualism within communities can have for the structure of languages. Drawing on the author's own first-hand observations of child and adult bilingualism, the book provides a clear analysis of such phenomena as language convergence, grammatical borrowing, and mixed languages.


Convergence and Divergence in Language Contact Situations

Convergence and Divergence in Language Contact Situations

Author: Kurt Braunmüller

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 9027219281

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This book deals with the consequences of converging and diverging processes and their development in language contact situations. It provides insights into the various forms of language contact and the conditions under which bilingual speakers master their every-day life in bilingual communities. Its nine contributions cover both theoretical and typological aspects, such as the classification of languages, the role of language contact, linguistic complexity and spontaneous speech innovations, and convergence and divergence processes in translation, (morpho)syntax and phonology/phonetics. Taken together, these studies provide challenges for linguistic theories that generalize from situations of monolingualism suggesting instead that a sound linguistic theory cannot be a theory for just one single, isolated language but must be a theory for at least two languages. It must also account for the fact that some structures involved in contact situations are not kept apart but develop in such a way that the distance decreases between the languages involved.