The book explores the role of age in communication under consideration of various age groups (the elderly, middle-aged, teenagers, children), genres, cultures and languages. The social skewing of the contributions explains the book's focus on discourse-mediated social identities, with age implicated as a viable controller of how social action is strategically deployed for alignment and alienation, accommodation and divergence. The studies in the book show the particular importance of the discursive construction of age in the face of new challenges of globalization, increased human mobility and rising intergenerational conflicts.
This book explores the diverse landscapes wherein women struggle for their personal and social identities and lives, between biology and culture, destiny and choice, shared and individual worlds, tradition and modernity. Their “peripheral lives” have “central meaning” (Chaudhary, this volume) in any society – and as such are approached as a primary subject in this book, as the chapters traverse ten different countries on three continents: North America (United States); Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Colombia); Asia (India); and Europe (United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Finland, Estonia). Throughout these different places, women's lives are an interesting stage for observing the interaction between biology and culture (e.g. sex vs. gender; pregnancy and childbirth vs. transition to motherhood). The focus on the cultural variability of human experience opens the door for the search of commonalities so needed in psychological theorizing. Here, this search is directed by how cultural models of womanhood (and motherhood) constrain personal experiences, especially through developmental transitions. This book is, ultimately, an opportunity to approach women’s lives from the perspective of the women themselves, particularly making audible and explicit their voices and the axis of logic that structures their world. Undoubtedly, it is a valuable opportunity for women and men interested in understanding and constructing human experience inside better worlds.
Smart phones, tablets, Facebook, Twitter, and wireless Internet connections are the latest technologies to have become entrenched in our culture. Although traditionalists have argued that computer-mediated communication and cyberspace are incongruent with the study of folklore, Trevor J. Blank sees the digital world as fully capable of generating, transmitting, performing, and archiving vernacular culture. Folklore in the Digital Age documents the emergent cultural scenes and expressive folkloric communications made possible by digital “new media” technologies. New media is changing the ways in which people learn, share, participate, and engage with others as they adopt technologies to complement and supplement traditional means of vernacular expression. But behavioral and structural overlap in many folkloric forms exists between on- and offline, and emerging patterns in digital rhetoric mimic the dynamics of previously documented folkloric forms, invoking familiar social or behavior customs, linguistic inflections, and symbolic gestures. Folklore in the Digital Age provides insights and perspectives on the myriad ways in which folk culture manifests in the digital age and contributes to our greater understanding of vernacular expression in our ever-changing technological world.
Written by an international team of leading scholars, this groundbreaking reference work explores the nature of language change and diffusion, and paves the way for future research in this rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field. Features 35 newly-written essays from internationally acclaimed experts that reflect the growth and vitality of the burgeoning area of historical sociolinguistics Examines how sociolinguistic theoretical models, methods, findings, and expertise can be used to reconstruct a language's past in order to explain linguistic changes and developments Bridges the gap between the past and the present in linguistic studies Structured thematically into sections exploring: origins and theoretical assumptions; methods for the sociolinguistic study of the history of languages; linguistic and extra-linguistic variables; historical dialectology, language contact and diffusion; and attitudes to language
There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom. Since then, researchers have continued to investigate the nature of learning and have generated new findings related to the neurological processes involved in learning, individual and cultural variability related to learning, and educational technologies. In addition to expanding scientific understanding of the mechanisms of learning and how the brain adapts throughout the lifespan, there have been important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures provides a much-needed update incorporating insights gained from this research over the past decade. The book expands on the foundation laid out in the 2000 report and takes an in-depth look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. How People Learn II will become an indispensable resource to understand learning throughout the lifespan for educators of students and adults.
With a synthesis of research on issues key to understanding family interaction, as well as an analysis of many theoretical and methodological choices made by researchers studying family communication, the Handbook serves to advance the field by reframing old questions and stimulating new ones. The contents are comprised of chapters covering: theoretical and methodological issues influencing current conceptions of family; research and theory centering around the family life course communication occurring in a variety of family forms individual family members and their relationships dynamic communication processes taking place in families family communication embedded in social, cultural, and physical contexts. Key changes to the second edition include: updates throughout, providing a thorough and up-to-date overview of research and theory new topics reflecting the growth of the discipline, including chapters on "singles" as family members, emerging adults, and physiology and physical health. Highlighting the work of scholars across disciplines--communication, social psychology, clinical psychology, sociology, family studies, and others--this volume captures the breadth and depth of research on family communication and family relationships. The well-known contributors approach family interaction from a variety of theoretical perspectives and focus on topics ranging from the influence of structural characteristics on family relationships to the importance of specific communication processes.
During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's position in the Mediterranean during this period. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, the individual chapters detail its connections with imperial and scholarly centres, its role in cross-regional trade networks, and its participation in Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultural developments, including their impact on its own literary and material production. With unparalleled detail, the book tracks the mechanisms and structures through which Egypt connected politically, economically and culturally to the world surrounding it.
Professor Sapir analyzes, for student and common reader, the elements of language. Among these are the units of language, grammatical concepts and their origins, how languages differ and resemble each other, and the history of the growth of representative languages--Cover.
The Routledge Handbook of Language and Youth Culture offers the first essential grounding of critical youth studies within sociolinguistic research. Young people are often seen to be at the frontline of linguistic creativity and pioneering communicative technologies. Their linguistic practices are considered a primary means of exploring linguistic change as well as the role of language in social life, such as how language and identity, ideology and power intersect. Bringing together leading and cutting-edge perspectives from thought leaders across the globe, this handbook: • addresses how young people’s cultural practices, as well as forces like class, gender, ethnicity and race, influence language • considers emotions, affect, age and ageism, materiality, embodiment and the political youth, as well as processes of unmooring language and place • critically reflects on our understandings of terms such as ‘language’, ‘youth’ and ‘culture’, drawing on insights from youth studies to help contextualise age within power dynamics • features examples from a wide range of linguistic contexts such as social media and the classroom, as well as expressions such as graffiti, gestures and different musical genres including grime and hip-hop. Providing important insights into how young people think, feel, act, and communicate in the complexity of a polarised world, The Routledge Handbook of Language and Youth Culture is an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers in disciplines including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, multilingualism, youth studies and sociology.
The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.
