The basic claim of this book is that for 2000 years and more the western tradition has relied on two very dubious assumptions about human communication: that each national language is a unique code and that linguistic communication consists in the utilization of such codes to transfer messages from mind to mind.
The basic claim of this book is that for 2000 years and more the western tradition has relied on two very dubious assumptions about human communication: that each national language is a unique code and that linguistic communication consists in the utilization of such codes to transfer messages from mind to mind.
Exploring the nature of possible relationships between Integrational Linguistics and Southern Epistemologies, this volume examines various ways in which Integrational Linguistics can be used to support the decolonizing interests of Southern Epistemologies, particularly the lay-oriented nature of Integrational Linguistics that Southern Epistemologies find productive as a ‘positive counter-discourse.’ As both an anti-elitist and antiestablishment way of thinking, these chapters consider how Integrational Linguistics can be consistent with the decolonial aspirations of Southern Epistemologies. They argue that the relationship between Southern Epistemologies and Integrational Linguistics is complicated by the fact that, while Integrational Linguistics is critical of what it calls a segregationist view of language, i.e., ‘the language myth,’ Southern Epistemologies in language policy and planning and minority language movements find the language myth helpful in order to facilitate social transformation. And yet, both Integrational Linguistics and Southern Epistemologies are critical of approaches to multilingualism that are founded on notions of ‘named’ languages. They are also both critical of linguistics as a decontextualized, and institutionalized extension of ordinary metalinguistic practices, which at times influence the prejudices, preconceptions and ideologies of dominant western cultures. This book will prove to be an essential resource for scholars and students not only within the field of integrational linguistics, but also in other language and communication fields, in particular the dialogic, distributed, and ecological-enactive approaches, wherein integrational linguistics has been subjected to scrutiny and criticism.
Linguists routinely emphasise the primacy of speech over writing. Yet, most linguists have analysed spoken language, as well as language in general, applying theories and methods that are best suited for written language. Accordingly, there is an extensive 'written language bias' in traditional and present day linguistics and other language sciences. In this book, this point is argued with rich and convincing evidence from virtually all fields of linguistics.
This cutting-edge book, located at the intersection of sociolinguistics and Hip Hop Studies, brings together for the first time an international group of researchers who study Hip Hop textually, ethnographically, socially, aesthetically, and linguistically. It is the harvest of dialogue between these two separate yet interconnected areas of study. A missing gap in the Hip Hop literature is the centrality and an in-depth analysis of the very medium that is used to express and perform Hip Hop -- language. Global Linguistic Flows fills this gap.
By foregrounding language practices in educational settings, this timely volume offers a postcolonial critique of the languaging of higher education and considers how Southern epistemologies can be used to further the decolonization of post-secondary education in the Global South. Offering a range of contributions from diverse and minoritized scholars based in countries including South Africa, Rwanda, Sudan, Qatar, Turkey, Portugal, Sweden, India, and Brazil, The Languaging of Higher Education in the Global South problematizes the use of language in various areas of higher education. Chapters demonstrate both subtle and explicit ways in which the language of pedagogy, scholarship, policy, and partcipiation endorse and privelege Western constructs and knowledge production, and utilize Southern theories and epistemologies to offer an alternative way forward – practice and research which applies and promotes Southern epistemologies and local knowledges. The volume confronts issues including integrationism, epistemic solidarity, language policy and ideology, multilingualism, and the increasing use of technology in institutions of higher education. This innovative book will be of interest to researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students in the fields of higher education, applied linguistics, and multicultural education. Those with an interest in the decolonization of education and language will find the book of particular use.
In legal interpretation, where does meaning come from? Law is made from language, yet law, unlike other language-related disciplines, has not so far experienced its "pragmatic turn" towards inference and the construction of meaning. This book investigates to what extent a pragmatically based view of l linguistic and legal interpretation can lead to new theoretical views for law and, in addition, to practical consequences in legal decision-making. With its traditional emphasis on the letter of the law and the immutable stability of a text as legal foundation, law has been slow to take the pragmatic perspective: namely, the language-user 's experience and activity in making meaning. More accustomed to literal than to pragmatic notions of meaning, that is, in the text rather than constructed by speakers and hearers the disciplines of law may be culturally resistant to the pragmatic turn. By bringing together the different but complementary perspectives of pragmaticians and lawyers, this book addresses the issue of to what extent legal meaning can be productively analysed as deriving from resources beyond the text, beyond the letter of the law. This collection re-visits the feasibility of the notion of literal meaning for legal interpretation and, at the same time, the feasibility of pragmatic meaning for law. Can explications of pragmatic meaning support court actions in the same way concepts of literal meaning have traditionally supported statutory interpretations and court judgements? What are the consequences of a user-based view of language for the law, in both its practices of interpretation and its definition of itself as a field? Readers will find in this collection means of approaching such questions, and promising routes for inquiry into the genre- and field-specific characteristics of inference in law. In many respects, the problem of literal vs. pragmatic meaning confined to the text vs. reaching beyond it will appear to parallel the dichotomy in law between textualism and intentionalism. There are indeed illuminating connections between the pair of linguistic terms and the more publicly controversial legal ones. But the parallel is not exact, and the linguistic dichotomy is in any case anterior to the legal one. Even as linguistic-pragmatic investigation may serve legal domains, the legal questions themselves point back to central conditions of all linguistic meaning.
Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of 'domicide' or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology.