Language Choice and Identity Politics in Taiwan

Language Choice and Identity Politics in Taiwan PDF Author: Jennifer M. Wei
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1461633729
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
Jennifer M. Wei argues that construction and perceptions of language and identity parallel sociopolitical transformations, and language and identity crises arise during power transitions. Under these premises, language and identity are never well-defined or well-bounded. Instead, they are best viewed as political symbols subject to manipulation and exploitation during socio-historical upheavals. A choice of language—from phonological shibboleth, Mandarin, or Taiwanese, to choice of official language—cuts to the heart of contested cultural notions of self and other, with profound implications for nationalism, national unity and ethno-linguistic purism. Wei further argues that because of the Chinese Diaspora and Taiwan's connections to China and the United States, arguments and sentiments over language choice and identity have consequences for Taiwan's international and transnational status. They are symbolic acts of imagining Taiwan's past as she looks forward to the future.

Language Choice and Identity Politics in Taiwan

Language Choice and Identity Politics in Taiwan PDF Author: Jennifer M. Wei
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1461633729
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jennifer M. Wei argues that construction and perceptions of language and identity parallel sociopolitical transformations, and language and identity crises arise during power transitions. Under these premises, language and identity are never well-defined or well-bounded. Instead, they are best viewed as political symbols subject to manipulation and exploitation during socio-historical upheavals. A choice of language—from phonological shibboleth, Mandarin, or Taiwanese, to choice of official language—cuts to the heart of contested cultural notions of self and other, with profound implications for nationalism, national unity and ethno-linguistic purism. Wei further argues that because of the Chinese Diaspora and Taiwan's connections to China and the United States, arguments and sentiments over language choice and identity have consequences for Taiwan's international and transnational status. They are symbolic acts of imagining Taiwan's past as she looks forward to the future.

Language Choice - Identity Choice

Language Choice - Identity Choice PDF Author: Barbara Kannapell
Publisher: Linstok Press, Incorporated
ISBN: 9780932130150
Category : College students with disabilities
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Language and Identity

Language and Identity PDF Author: J. Joseph
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023050342X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Offering a uniquely broad-based overview of the role of language choice in the construction of national, ethnic and religious identity, this textbook examines a wide range of specific cases from various parts of the world in order to arrive at some general principles concerning the links between language and identity. It will benefit students and researchers in a wide range of fields where identity is an important issue and who currently lack a single source to turn to for an overview of sociolinguistics.

Multilingualism, Second Language Learning, and Gender

Multilingualism, Second Language Learning, and Gender PDF Author: Aneta Pavlenko
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110889404
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
This volume presents a comprehensive introduction to the study of second language learning, multilingualism and gender. An impressive array of papers situated within a feminist poststructuralist framework demonstrates how this framework allows for a deeper understanding of second language learning, a number of language contact phenomena, intercultural communication, and critical language pedagogy. The volume has wide appeal to students and scholars in the fields of language and gender, sociolinguistics, SLA, anthropology, and language education.

Understanding Language Choices

Understanding Language Choices PDF Author: Ken Decker
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN: 9781556713316
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Understanding Language Choices is an introductory textbook for anyone studying the motivations behind language use choices. It provides an introduction into the numerous factors, both internal and external, influencing such choices in a speech community: language attitudes, language learning, identity, the mobility of the community, and much more. The book also provides a foundation for the study of linguistic variation within a speech community, as well as an introduction to methods of data collection when studying the outcomes of language use choices. An important aspect of this book is its emphasis on a participatory approach to language choice research that empowers the speech community. The final chapter discusses lifestyle concerns that researchers may encounter when conducting field studies in developing nations. Written with the beginner in mind, this textbook includes numerous examples and case studies from around the world to illustrate the realities of sociolinguistic field research. A companion website keeps users of the book up to date with descriptions of the most current research methodologies. Ken Decker received his M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1992. He brings to this book over 25 years' experience in field research in the sociology of language and language development. He has conducted sociolinguistic surveys in more than 35 languages in Asia and the Americas and served as consultant on surveys in Africa, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Ken is particularly interested in the role of language research in strategic language development. John Grummitt received his M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Leicester in 2002, drawing on his decade's experience as an academic writing tutor and trainer of teachers in ESL programs in Japan and South Korea. His more recent survey work in Papua New Guinea has given him a perspective supplementary to Decker's on sociolinguistic fieldwork and language development.

Investigating the Role of Language in the Identity Construction of Scholars

Investigating the Role of Language in the Identity Construction of Scholars PDF Author: John Adamson
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443812900
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Many people across the globe are today experiencing an era characterised by increasingly dynamic population mobility. It is, consequently, a time where previously held assumptions about individual and group identities, and about the social and political semiotics that shape them, seem inadequate. Languages and cultures are at the heart of what has been termed this “superdiversity”. In contemporary superdiverse societies, the question of language poses a particularly difficult challenge, with new cultural realities giving rise to new questions. In in such circumstances, how can linguistic and cultural identities be defined? The future is likely to witness tensions and oppositions between centrifugal and centripetal forces; and tendencies towards globalisation allow some to suggest that culture is becoming increasingly uniform. This book illustrates the narrowness and reductiveness of such suggestions, and underlines the importance of embracing centrifugal forces. Central to this, and to the practices argued for in this book, is the need for greater intercultural awareness on the part of teachers, curriculum planners, teacher educators and, of course, their students. The book explores major hindrances to communication in the way in which we over-generalise, stereotype and reduce the people with whom we communicate to something different or less than they are.

Seeking Identity

Seeking Identity PDF Author: Nancy Mae Antrim
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527566986
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
"Seeking Identity: Language in Society" looks at how we define and create identity both as individuals and as a society through language. Our language choices reflect not only how we view ourselves, but how we are viewed by society. An individual's identity is reflected in various language construed identities: ethnicity, gender, and cross-cultural/counter cultural. In turn these identities are projected by society on the individual/ethnic group by the language choices society makes in describing and addressing these individuals. In the first section (Language and Identity), an ethnolinguistic approach is used to address the areas of language identity/loyalty, gender, and ethnic pride. Section two (Language and Advertising) looks at how society in turn uses language to relate to different groups by appealing to ethnic pride, language identity, and the power/prestige that using a particular language variety entails. Section three (Language and the Media) explores how the media contributes to our construction of identity. Section four (Language and Discourse) shows how written discourse can appropriate, construct, and parody identity.

Code-Choice and Identity Construction on Stage

Code-Choice and Identity Construction on Stage PDF Author: Sirkku Aaltonen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351613685
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Code-Choice and Identity Construction on Stage challenges the general assumption that language is only one of the codes employed in a theatrical performance; Sirkku Aaltonen changes the perspective to the audience, foregrounding the chosen language variety as a trigger for their reactions. Theatre is ‘the most public of arts’, closely interwoven with contemporary society, and language is a crucial tool for establishing order. In this book, Aaltonen explores the ways in which chosen languages on stage can lead to rejection or tolerance in diglossic situations, where one language is considered unequal to another. Through a selection of carefully chosen case studies, the socio-political rather than artistic motivation behind code-choice emerges. By identifying common features of these contexts and the implications of theatre in the wider world, this book sheds light on high versus low culture, the role of translation, and the significance of traditional and emerging theatrical conventions. This intriguing study encompassing Ireland, Scotland, Quebec, Finland and Egypt, cleverly employs the perspective of familiarising the foreign and is invaluable reading for those interested in theatre and performance, translation, and the connection between language and society.

The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy

The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy PDF Author: Bernard Spolsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
This is the first Handbook to deal with language policy as a whole and is a complete 'state-of-the-field' survey, covering language practices, beliefs about language varieties, and methods and agencies for language management. It will be welcomed by students, researchers and language professionals in linguistics, education and politics.

Language and Social Identity

Language and Social Identity PDF Author: John J. Gumperz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521288972
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Throughout Western society there are now strong pressures for social and racial integration but, in spite of these, recent experience has shown that greater intergroup contact can actually reinforce social distinctions and ethnic stereotypes. The studies collected here examine, from a broad sociological perspective, the sorts of face-to-face verbal exchange that are characteristic of industrial societies, and the volume as a whole pointedly demonstrates the role played by communicative phenomena in establishing and reinforcing social identity. The method of analysis that has been adopted enables the authors to reveal and examine a centrally important but hitherto little discussed conversational mechanism: the subconscious processes of inference that result from situational factors, social presuppositions and discourse conventions. The theory of conversation and the method of analysis that inform the author's approach are discussed in the first two chapters, and the case studies themselves examine interviews, counselling sessions and similar formal exchanges involving contacts between a wide range of different speakers: South Asians, West Indians and native English speakers in Britain; English natives and Chinese in South-East Asia; Afro-Americans, Asians and native English speakers in the United States; and English and French speakers in Canada. The volume will be of importance to linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others with a professional interest in communication, and its findings will have far-reaching applications in industrial and community relations and in educational practice.