We Are Our Language

We Are Our Language PDF Author: Barbra A. Meek
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816504482
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
For many communities around the world, the revitalization or at least the preservation of an indigenous language is a pressing concern. Understanding the issue involves far more than compiling simple usage statistics or documenting the grammar of a tongue—it requires examining the social practices and philosophies that affect indigenous language survival. In presenting the case of Kaska, an endangered language in an Athabascan community in the Yukon, Barbra A. Meek asserts that language revitalization requires more than just linguistic rehabilitation; it demands a social transformation. The process must mend rips and tears in the social fabric of the language community that result from an enduring colonial history focused on termination. These “disjunctures” include government policies conflicting with community goals, widely varying teaching methods and generational viewpoints, and even clashing ideologies within the language community. This book provides a detailed investigation of language revitalization based on more than two years of active participation in local language renewal efforts. Each chapter focuses on a different dimension, such as spelling and expertise, conversation and social status, family practices, and bureaucratic involvement in local language choices. Each situation illustrates the balance between the desire for linguistic continuity and the reality of disruption. We Are Our Language reveals the subtle ways in which different conceptions and practices—historical, material, and interactional—can variably affect the state of an indigenous language, and it offers a critical step toward redefining success and achieving revitalization.

We Are Our Language

We Are Our Language PDF Author: Barbra A. Meek
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816504482
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
For many communities around the world, the revitalization or at least the preservation of an indigenous language is a pressing concern. Understanding the issue involves far more than compiling simple usage statistics or documenting the grammar of a tongue—it requires examining the social practices and philosophies that affect indigenous language survival. In presenting the case of Kaska, an endangered language in an Athabascan community in the Yukon, Barbra A. Meek asserts that language revitalization requires more than just linguistic rehabilitation; it demands a social transformation. The process must mend rips and tears in the social fabric of the language community that result from an enduring colonial history focused on termination. These “disjunctures” include government policies conflicting with community goals, widely varying teaching methods and generational viewpoints, and even clashing ideologies within the language community. This book provides a detailed investigation of language revitalization based on more than two years of active participation in local language renewal efforts. Each chapter focuses on a different dimension, such as spelling and expertise, conversation and social status, family practices, and bureaucratic involvement in local language choices. Each situation illustrates the balance between the desire for linguistic continuity and the reality of disruption. We Are Our Language reveals the subtle ways in which different conceptions and practices—historical, material, and interactional—can variably affect the state of an indigenous language, and it offers a critical step toward redefining success and achieving revitalization.

The Liberty of Our Language Revealed

The Liberty of Our Language Revealed PDF Author: Thomas Blackwell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692056790
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
Clem walked to the corner of the room and picked up a wooden box. From inside the box, he pulled out an old, worn-out book. Stuffed in the back of the binding were several pieces of paper filled with hand-written notes. He pulled out the notes and handed me the book. The book appeared to have been sitting in that box for many years. The title was carved into the dried-up leather cover by some sort of nail or perhaps a knife. I read the title: The Liberty of Our Language Revealed. "You ever heard of it before?" Clem inquired. "No, I haven't," I answered, opening its dusty pages. "Wait, these pages are blank, and there is no author!" I declared, as I flipped back to the front cover to see if any name was written. Clem paused and made eye contact with me, "You are the author, Thomas; you are the author of The Liberty of Our Language Revealed."On the walls of the abandoned escape route someone had etched several phrases. I studied each one. "Change your language, change your life." "Improve your results, create a better environment." "Increase your productivity, transform your economy." "Elevate your performance, and achieve higher standards."

Who Are We?

Who Are We? PDF Author: Anneke Forzani
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781636850047
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Who Are We? helps us to understand and appreciated the diversity in our community. This multicultural book, part of the Language Lizard Living in Harmony Series, includes access to free lesson plans and fun activities to support diversity education.

Because Internet

Because Internet PDF Author: Gretchen McCulloch
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735210942
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!! Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Amazon, and The Washington Post A Wired Must-Read Book of Summer “Gretchen McCulloch is the internet’s favorite linguist, and this book is essential reading. Reading her work is like suddenly being able to see the matrix.” —Jonny Sun, author of everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.

Why Only Us

Why Only Us PDF Author: Robert C. Berwick
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262533499
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

Cultish

Cultish PDF Author: Amanda Montell
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062993178
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
“One of those life-changing reads that makes you see—or, in this case, hear—the whole world differently.” —Megan Angelo, author of Followers “At times chilling, often funny, and always perceptive and cogent, Cultish is a bracing reminder that the scariest thing about cults is that you don't realize you're in one till it's too late.”—Refinery29.com The New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Magical Overthinking and Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how “cultish” groups, from Jonestown and Scientologists to SoulCycle and social media gurus, use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.

Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy

Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy PDF Author: Sandra Laugier
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022682957X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Get Book Here

Book Description
Now in paperback, Sandra Laugier's reconsideration of analytic philosophy and ordinary language. Sandra Laugier has long been a key liaison between American and European philosophical thought, responsible for bringing American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Stanley Cavell to French readers—but until now her books have never been published in English. Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy rights that wrong with a topic perfect for English-language readers: the idea of analytic philosophy. Focused on clarity and logical argument, analytic philosophy has dominated the discipline in the United States, Australia, and Britain over the past one hundred years, and it is often seen as a unified, coherent, and inevitable advancement. Laugier questions this assumption, rethinking the very grounds that drove analytic philosophy to develop and uncovering its inherent tensions and confusions. Drawing on J. L. Austin and the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she argues for the solution provided by ordinary language philosophy—a philosophy that trusts and utilizes the everyday use of language and the clarity of meaning it provides—and in doing so offers a major contribution to the philosophy of language and twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy as a whole.

Language at the Speed of Sight

Language at the Speed of Sight PDF Author: Mark Seidenberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465019323
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
We’ve been teaching reading wrong—a leading cognitive scientist tells us how we can finally do it right

Elastic Language

Elastic Language PDF Author: Grace Q. Zhang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107028442
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
Language is like a slingshot, stretching for various communicative targets. This book reveals the art of purposive and powerful language stretching.

We Can Talk

We Can Talk PDF Author: Rachel Arntson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615299501
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
WE CAN TALK techniques provide a format that other professionals, including speech-language pathologists and early childhood teachers, could share with their students and families. WE CAN TALK is very simply my %u201Ctricks of the trade%u201D that I have learned and feel compelled to offer others. Readers will be able to identify what helps your child become verbal.