Download or read book Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies written by Kurt Braunmüller and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 25 contributions of this volume represent a selection from the more than 120 papers originally presented at the International Conference on “Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies” (MIMS), held in Hamburg (October 2010) and organized by the Collaborative Research Center “Multilingualism” after twelve years of successful research. It presents a panorama of contemporary research in multilingualism covering three fields of investigation: (1) the simultaneous and successive acquisition of more than one language, including language attrition in multilingual settings, (2) historical aspects of multilingualism and variance, and (3) multilingual communication. The papers cover a vast variety of linguistic phenomena including morphology, syntax, segmental and prosodic phonology as well as discourse production and language use, taking both individual and societal aspects of multilingualism into account. The languages addressed include numerous Romance, Slavic and Germanic varieties as well as Welsh, Hungarian, Turkish, and several South African autochthonous languages.

Download or read book Polyglot How I Learn Languages written by Kat— Lomb and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: KAT LOMB (1909-2003) was one of the great polyglots of the 20th century. A translator and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, Lomb worked in 16 languages for state and business concerns in her native Hungary. She achieved further fame by writing books on languages, interpreting, and polyglots. Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, first published in 1970, is a collection of anecdotes and reflections on language learning. Because Dr. Lomb learned her languages as an adult, after getting a PhD in chemistry, the methods she used will be of particular interest to adult learners who want to master a foreign language.

Download or read book Multilingualism A Very Short Introduction written by John C. Maher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The languages of the world can be seen and heard in cities and towns, forests and isolated settlements, as well as on the internet and in international organizations like the UN or the EU. How did the world acquire so many languages? Why can't we all speak one language, like English or Esperanto? And what makes a person bilingual? Multilingualism, language diversity in society, is a perfect expression of human plurality. About 6,500-7,000 languages are spoken, written and signed, throughout the linguistic landscape of the world, by people who communicate in more than one language (at work, or in the family or community). Many origin myths, like Babel, called it a 'punishment' but multilingualism makes us who we are and plays a large part of our sense of belonging. Languages are instruments for interacting with the cultural environment and their ecology is complex. They can die (Tasmanian), or decline then revive (Manx and Hawaiian), reconstitute from older forms (modern Hebrew), gain new status (Catalan and Maori) or become autonomous national languages (Croatian). Languages can even play a supportive and symbolic role as some territories pursue autonomy or nationhood, such as in the cases of Catalonia and Scotland. In this Very Short Introduction John C. Maher shows how multilingualism offers cultural diversity, complex identities, and alternative ways of doing and knowing to hybrid identities. Increasing multilingualism is drastically changing our view of the value of language, and our notion of the part language plays in national and cultural identities. At the same time multilingualism can lead to social and political conflict, unequal power relations, issues of multiculturalism, and discussions over 'national' or 'official' languages, with struggles over language rights of local and indigenous communities. Considering multilingualism in the context of globalization, Maher also looks at the fate of many endangered languages as they disappear from the world. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Download or read book Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies written by Kurt Braunmüller and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 25 contributions of this volume represent a selection from the more than 120 papers originally presented at the International Conference on “Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies” (MIMS), held in Hamburg (October 2010) and organized by the Collaborative Research Center “Multilingualism” after twelve years of successful research. It presents a panorama of contemporary research in multilingualism covering three fields of investigation: (1) the simultaneous and successive acquisition of more than one language, including language attrition in multilingual settings, (2) historical aspects of multilingualism and variance, and (3) multilingual communication. The papers cover a vast variety of linguistic phenomena including morphology, syntax, segmental and prosodic phonology as well as discourse production and language use, taking both individual and societal aspects of multilingualism into account. The languages addressed include numerous Romance, Slavic and Germanic varieties as well as Welsh, Hungarian, Turkish, and several South African autochthonous languages.

Download or read book Multilingualism across the Lifespan written by Unn Røyneland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative collection examines key questions on language diversity and multilingualism running through contemporary debates in psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Reinforcing interdisciplinary conversations on these themes, each chapter is co-authored by two different researchers, often those who have not written together before. The combined effect is a volume showcasing unique and dynamic perspectives on such topics as multilingualism across the lifespan, bilingual acquisition, family language policy, language and ageing, language shift, language and identity, and multilingualism and language impairment. The book builds on Elizabeth Lanza’s pioneering work on multilingualism across the lifespan, bringing together cutting-edge research exploring multilingualism as an evolving phenomenon at landmarks in individuals’, families’, and communities’ lives. Taken together, the book offers a rich portrait of the different facets of multilingualism as a lived reality for individuals, families, and communities. This ground-breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars in multilingualism, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics.

Download or read book Multilingual Interaction and Dementia written by Charlotta Plejert and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2017-04-12 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together international, linguistic research with a focus on interaction in multilingual encounters involving people with dementia in care and healthcare settings. The methodologies used (Conversation Analysis, Ethnography and Discursive Constructionism) capture practices on the micro-level, revealing how very subtle details may be of critical importance for the everyday well-being of participants with dementia, particularly in settings and contexts where there is a lack of a common verbal language of interlocutors, or where language abilities have been lost as a result of dementia. Chapters analyse the practices and actions employed by interlocutors to facilitate mutual understanding, enhance high-quality social relations and assure optimal care and treatment, in spite of language and cognitive difficulties, with an emphasis put on the participants’ remaining capacities, and what can be achieved between people with dementia and their interlocutors in a collaborative fashion. This book goes beyond the study of two-party communication to address multiparty and group interactions which are common in residential care and other healthcare settings and will be of interest to professionals and policy makers as well as to medical sciences and linguistics researchers and students.

Download or read book Advances in the Neurolinguistic Study of Multilingual and Monolingual Adults written by Mira Goral and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume examines current themes in the neurolinguistic study of multilingual and monolingual adults and highlights several new directions the field is moving toward. The organization of the book is as follows. Part I focuses on language processing in multilingual and monolingual adults, Part II explores language processing in multilingual and monolingual adults with dementia, and Part III centers on language processing in multilingual and monolingual adults with stroke-induced aphasia. Chapters feature empirical data and/or literature reviews, discussing the key issues in the field that are currently engaging scholars and practitioners with topics including language attrition, cognitive flexibility, aging and the brain, eye-tracking studies of aphasia, translanguaging, and multilingualism in dementia. The book includes cuttingedge research from researchers and practitioners who are all alumni and colleagues of Professor Loraine K. Obler, to whom this book is dedicated. Presenting crucial topics in the field, the book is highly relevant for students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and language disorders.

Download or read book Language Studies in India written by Rajesh Kumar and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-04-24 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses a wide range of aspects of the study of language in a variety of domains such as cognition, change, acquisition, structure, philosophy, politics, and education. It offers a renewed discussion on normative understanding of these concepts and opens up avenues for a fresh look at these concepts. Each contribution in this book captures a wide range of perspectives and underlines the vigorous role of language, which happens to be central to the arguments contained therein. The uniqueness of this book lies in the fact that it presents simplified perspective on various complex aspects of language. It addresses a wide range of audiences, who do not necessarily need to have a technical background in linguistics. It focuses on complex relations between language and cognition, politics, education to name a few with reference to cognition, change, and acquisition. This book is for researchers with an interest in the field of language studies, applied linguistics, and socio-linguistics.

Download or read book Person to Person Peacebuilding Intercultural Communication and English Language Teaching written by Amy Jo Minett and published by Channel View Publications. This book was released on 2022-03-16 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book maps the discursive terrain and potential of person to person peacebuilding as it intersects with, and is embedded in, intercultural communication. It foregrounds the voices and discourses of participants who came together in the virtual intercultural borderlands of online exchange through a service-learning project with a non-profit organization which focused on peace through education in Afghanistan, primarily through English language tutoring. By analyzing the voices and perspectives of US-based tutors who are pre-service teachers of English as an Additional Language, in equal measure with the voices and perspectives of adult English learners in Afghanistan, the authors examine how intercultural interactants begin to work as peacebuilders. The participants describe the profound transformations they undergo throughout their intercultural tutoring journeys, transformations which evidence three dimensions of person to person peacebuilding: the personal, relational and structural. Inspired by these voices, the book further explores ways teachers and teacher educators of language and intercultural communication can more deliberately leverage the affordance of peacebuilding, whether face to face or in the virtual intercultural borderlands of online exchange.

Download or read book Multilingual Literacy written by Esther Odilia Breuer and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates multilingual literacy practices, explores the technology applied in different educational frameworks, the centrality of multilingual literacy in non-formal, informal and formal educational contexts, as well as its presence in everyday life. Thematically clustered in four parts, the chapters present an overview of theory related to multilingual literacy, address the methodological challenges of research in the area, describe and evaluate projects set up to foster multilingual literacy in a variety of educational contexts, analyze the literacy practices of multilinguals and their contribution to language and literacy acquisition. This volume aims to initiate a change in paradigms, shifting from structured and conservative problematizations to inclusive and diverse conceptualizations and practices. To that end, the book showcases explorations of different methodologies and needs in formal and non-formal educational systems; and it serves as a springboard for developing multivocal participatory spaces with opportunities for learning and identity-building for all multilinguals, across different settings, languages, ages and contexts.

Download or read book Babel No More written by Michael Erard and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “fascinating” (The Economist) dive into the world of linguistics that is “part travelogue, part science lesson, part intellectual investigation…an entertaining, informative survey of some of the most fascinating polyglots of our time” (The New York Times Book Review). In Babel No More, Michael Erard, “a monolingual with benefits,” sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like the nineteenth-century Italian cardinal Joseph Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages, as well as those of living language-superlearners such as Alexander Arguelles, a modern-day polyglot who knows dozens of languages and shows Erard the tricks of the trade to give him a dark glimpse into the life of obsessive language acquisition. With his ambitious examination of what language is, where it lives in the brain, and the cultural implications of polyglots’ pursuits, Erard explores the upper limits of our ability to learn and use languages and illuminates the intellectual potential in everyone. How do some people escape the curse of Babel—and what might the gods have demanded of them in return?

Download or read book The Multilingual Reality written by Ajit K. Mohanty and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a multidisciplinary analysis of the meaning and dynamics of multilingualism from the perspectives of multilingual societies and language communities in the margins, who are trapped in a vicious circle of disadvantage. It analyses the social, psychological and sociolinguistic processes of linguistic dominance and hierarchical relationships among languages, discrimination, marginalisation and assertive maintenance in multilingualism characterised by a Double Divide, and shows the relationship between educational neglect of languages, capability deprivation and poverty, and loss of linguistic diversity. Its comparative analysis of language-in-education policies and practices and applications of multilingual education (MLE) in diverse contexts shows some promises and challenges in the education of indigenous/tribal/minority children. This book will be of interest to students, researchers, educators and practitioners in sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, psycholinguistics, multilingualism and bilingual/multilingual education.

Download or read book Language and Identity in a Multilingual Migrating World written by and published by SIL International. This book was released on 2023-02-20 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multilingualisms vary. Given such variation, how can those from essentially mono-chromatic, monolingual backgrounds begin to appreciate the colorful multilingual realities of the majority world? This question led to the symposium Language and Identity in a Multilingual, Migrating World, May 10–15, 2018, in Penang, Malaysia. This resulting four-part collection of papers. -- J. Stephen Quakenbush

Download or read book Multilingual Text Comprehension written by Ute Schönpflug and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-16 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until today, research on monolingual text processing has offered a broad spectrum of results and theoretical explanations of how texts are processed. This book extends the current trend to cover only reading comprehension by considering extensively listening comprehension. Comprehensive presentations of research on children’s listening comprehension allow for a broader developmental perspective reaching preschool years. Although text comprehension is the essence of learning in educational settings, and children are confronted continuously with the challenge of getting information from texts, comprehensive publications on children’s text comprehension are scarce. The author posits that a comprehensive review of children’s comprehension processes has to analyze the development of fundamental cognitive processes involved in comprehension. Therefore, this book covers the impact of working and long-term memory, metamemory, inference making, and gist building on comprehension performance. The role of first and multilingual language proficiency and tasks on specific component processes of text comprehension are discussed. Research results concerning the function of multilingual proficiency and tasks in text comprehension are complemented by the author’s own published and unpublished research. Theoretical considerations lead to models attempting to cover aspects of multilingual text comprehension. The aim of the book is to present a state-of-the-art overview of the field to inform researchers and students of various disciplines and practitioners to improve their understanding of how to foster multilingual text comprehension.

Download or read book Teaching and Learning in Multilingual Contexts written by Agnieszka Otwinowska and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is clearly illogical to search for one good, universal solution for multilingual education when educational contexts differ so widely due to demographic and social factors. The situation is further complicated by the motivations of learners and teachers, and by attitudes towards multilingualism and ‘otherness’. The studies in this volume seek to investigate not only whether certain solutions and practices are ‘good’, but also when and for whom they make sense. The book covers a wide range of Western multilingual contexts, and uncovers common themes and practices, shared aims and preoccupations, and often similar solutions, within seemingly diverse contexts. In addition to chapters based on empirical data, this book offers theoretical contributions in the shape of a discussion of the appropriateness of L1-Ln terminology when discussing complex multilingual realities, and looks at how the age factor works in classroom settings.

Download or read book Foreign Language Education in Multilingual Classrooms written by Andreas Bonnet and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume challenges traditional approaches to foreign language education and proposes to redefine them in our age of international migration and globalization. Foreign language classrooms are no longer populated by monolingual students, but increasingly by multilingual students with highly diverse language backgrounds. This necessitates a new understanding of foreign language learning and teaching. The volume brings together an international group of researchers of high caliber who specialize in third language acquisition, teaching English as an additional language, and multilingual education. In addition to topical overview articles on the multilingual policies pursued in Europe, Africa, North America, and Asia, as well as several contributions dealing with theoretical issues regarding multilingualism and plurilingualism, the volume also offers cutting edge case studies from multilingual acquisition research and foreign language classroom practice. Throughout the volume, multilingualism is interpreted as a valuable resource that can facilitate language education provided it is harnessed in appropriate conditions.

Download or read book Current Research in Bilingualism and Bilingual Education written by Piotr Romanowski and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers research topics in bilingual education, language policies, language contact, identity of bilingual speakers, early bilingualism, heritage languages, and more, and provides an overview of current theory, research and practice in the field of bilingualism. Each chapter is written by a specialist in the field. Part I focuses on the numerous and heterogeneous relations between languages as well as the implications arising from bilingual speech processing. In Part II, a series of contextualized studies on bilingual classrooms are presented, with diverse research designs applied in different educational settings being a key feature of these studies. Part III bridges theory and practice by offering an insight into mono- and multilingual school settings showcasing examples of educational institutions where bilingualism successfully soared and depicts the needs related to language education.