Towards a Critical Sociolinguistics

Towards a Critical Sociolinguistics
Author: Rajendra Singh
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 363
Release: 1996
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027236283

This collection of twelve essays, some of which have been written specifically for this volume by well-known European and North-American sociolinguists, reflects an increasing recognition within the field that sociological and theoretical innocence can no longer be underwritten by it, and offers a multi-pronged and multi-methodological way to move towards a critical, reflexive, and theoretically responsible socio-linguistics. It explores, with courage and sensitivity, some very important areas in the enormous space between Bloomfieldian 'idiolect' and Chomskyan 'UG' in order to situate the human linguistic enterprise, and offers valuable insights into human linguisticality and sociality. These explorations expose the limits of correlationism, determinism, and positivistic reificationism, and offer new ways of doing sociolinguistics.Intended for both practicing and future sociolinguists, it is an ideal text-book for the times, particularly for graduate and advanced undergraduate students.

Critical Sociolinguistic Research Methods

Critical Sociolinguistic Research Methods
Author: Monica Heller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2017-10-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317577574

Critical Sociolinguistic Research Methods is a guide to conducting concrete ethnographic and discourse analytic research projects, written by top scholars for students and researchers in social science fields. Adopting a critical perspective focusing on the role of language in the construction of social difference and social inequality, the authors walk the reader through five key moments in the life of a research project: composing research questions, designing the project, doing fieldwork, performing data analysis and writing academic texts or otherwise engaging in conversation with different types of social actors about the project. These moments are illustrated by colour-coded examples from the authors’ experiences that help researchers and students follow the sequential stages of a project. Clear and highly applicable, with a detailed workbook full of practical tips and examples, this book is a great resource for graduate-level qualitative methods courses in linguistics and anthropology, as well as methods courses in the humanities and social sciences that focus on the role of language in research. It is a timely text for investigating language issues that matter and have consequences for people’s lives.

Critical Sociolinguistics

Critical Sociolinguistics
Author: Alfonso Del Percio
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2024-10-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1350293539

Providing a series of crucial debates on language, power, difference and social inequality, this volume traces developments and dissonances in critical sociolinguistics. Eminent and emerging academic figures from around the world collaboratively engage with the work of Monica Heller, offering insights into the politics and power formations that surround knowledge of language and society. Challenging disciplinary power dynamics in critical sociolinguistics, this book is an experiment testing new ways of producing knowledge on language and society. Critically discussing central sociolinguistic concepts from critique to political economy, labor to media, education to capitalism, each chapter features a number of scholars offering their distinct social and political perspectives on the place played by language in the social fabric. Through its theoretical, epistemological, and methodological breadth, the volume foregrounds political alliances in how language is known and explored by scholars writing from specific geopolitical spaces that come with diverse political struggles and dynamics of power. Allowing for a diversity of genres, debates, controversies, fragments and programmatic manifestos, the volume prefigures a new mode of knowledge production that multiplies perspectives and starts practicing the more inclusive, just and equal worlds that critical sociolinguists envision.

Critical Inquiries in the Sociolinguistics of Globalization

Critical Inquiries in the Sociolinguistics of Globalization
Author: Tyler Andrew Barrett
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1788922867

The studies in this collection seek to examine the notions of ‘linguistic diversity’ and ‘hybridity’ through the lenses of new critical theories and theoretical frameworks embedded within the broader discussion of the sociolinguistics of globalization. The chapters include critical inquiries into online/offline languages in society, language users, language learners and language teachers who may operate ‘between’ languages and are faced with decisions to navigate, negotiate and invent or re-invent languages, local and global and virtual spaces. The research took place in contexts that include linguistic landscapes, schools, classrooms, neighborhoods and virtual spaces of Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, South Korea and the USA.

Critical Applied Linguistics

Critical Applied Linguistics
Author: Alastair Pennycook
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2001
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135650187

This accessible guide and introduction to critical applied linguistics provides a clear overview, highlighting problems, debates, and competing views in language education, literacy, discourse analysis, language in the workplace, translation and other language-related domains. Covering both critical theory and domains of practice, the book is organized around five themes: the politics of knowledge, the politics of language, the politics of texts, the politics of pedagogy, and the politics of difference. It is an important text for anyone involved in applied linguistics, TESOL, language education, or other language-related fields.

Linguistic Justice

Linguistic Justice
Author: April Baker-Bell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2020-04-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1351376705

Bringing together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic supremacy, this book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts. By highlighting the counterstories of Black students, Baker-Bell demonstrates how traditional approaches to language education do not account for the emotional harm, internalized linguistic racism, or consequences these approaches have on Black students' sense of self and identity. This book presents Anti-Black Linguistic Racism as a framework that explicitly names and richly captures the linguistic violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization Black Language-speakers endure when using their language in schools and in everyday life. To move toward Black linguistic liberation, Baker-Bell introduces a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students. This volume captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in classrooms while simultaneously illustrating how theory, research, and practice can operate in tandem in pursuit of linguistic and racial justice. A crucial resource for educators, researchers, professors, and graduate students in language and literacy education, writing studies, sociology of education, sociolinguistics, and critical pedagogy, this book features a range of multimodal examples and practices through instructional maps, charts, artwork, and stories that reflect the urgent need for antiracist language pedagogies in our current social and political climate.

The Sociolinguistics of Hip-hop as Critical Conscience

The Sociolinguistics of Hip-hop as Critical Conscience
Author: Andrew S. Ross
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2017-12-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3319592440

This book adopts a sociolinguistic perspective to trace the origins and enduring significance of hip-hop as a global tool of resistance to oppression. The contributors, who represent a range of international perspectives, analyse how hip-hop is employed to express dissatisfaction and dissent relating to such issues as immigration, racism, stereotypes and post-colonialism. Utilising a range of methodological approaches, they shed light on diverse hip-hop cultures and practices around the world, highlighting issues of relevance in the different countries from which their research originates. Together, the authors expand on current global understandings of hip-hop, language and culture, and underline its immense power as a form of popular culture through which the disenfranchised and oppressed can gain and maintain a voice. This thought-provoking edited collection is a must-read for scholars and students of linguistics, race studies and political activism, and for anyone with an interest in hip-hop.

Critical Perspectives on Linguistic Fixity and Fluidity

Critical Perspectives on Linguistic Fixity and Fluidity
Author: Jürgen Jaspers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0429890389

This volume offers a critical perspective on current views on linguistic fixity and fluidity in sociolinguistics and highlights empirical accounts alternative to prevailing trends in the field. Featuring accounts from a broad range of regional contexts, the collection takes stock of such terms as "polylingualism", "metrolingualism" and "translanguaging" to question perceptions around multilingual and monolingual language use. The book critiques the status of fluid language use as a more "natural" language practice and in turn, its greater potential for corresponding social transformation, demonstrating the value of linguistic fixity and the continuous debate between fixity and fluidity in multilingual speakers' lives. In providing these accounts, the book seeks not to advocate for linguistic fixity or fluidity, but to argue that sociolinguists pay close attention to the way both types of linguistic practice open up or close down avenues for social transformation. This collection is a key reading for graduate students and scholars in sociolinguistics, multilingualism, and linguistic anthropology.

Sociolinguistics and Language Education

Sociolinguistics and Language Education
Author: Nancy H. Hornberger
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2010-06-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1847694012

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.