Download or read book The Linguistic Individual written by Barbara Johnstone and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguists usually discuss language or dialects in terms of groups of speakers. Believing that patterns can be seen more clearly in the group than the individual, researchers often present group scores with no indication of the variation within the group. Even though linguists acknowledge that no two individuals speak alike, few study individual variation and voice. Barbara Johnstone makes a case for the individual's importance and idiosyncrasies in language and linguistics. Using theoretical arguments and discourse analysis, along with linguistic examples from a variety of speakers and settings, Johnstone illustrates how speakers draw on linguistic models associated with class, ethnicity, gender, and region, among others, to construct an individual voice. In doing so Johnstone shows that certain important questions in sociolinguistics and pragmatics can only be answered with reference to individual speakers. Johnstone's study is important both for the understanding of speech as expressive of self, and for the study of variation and mechanisms of linguistic choice and change.
Download or read book The Linguistic Individual written by Barbara Johnstone and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-06-27 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguists usually discuss language or dialects in terms of groups of speakers. Believing that patterns can be seen more clearly in the group than the individual, researchers often present group scores with no indication of the variation within the group. Even though linguists acknowledge that no two individuals speak alike, few study individual variation and voice. Barbara Johnstone makes a case for the individual's importance and idiosyncrasies in language and linguistics. Using theoretical arguments and discourse analysis, along with linguistic examples from a variety of speakers and settings, Johnstone illustrates how speakers draw on linguistic models associated with class, ethnicity, gender, and region, among others, to construct an individual voice. In doing so Johnstone shows that certain important questions in sociolinguistics and pragmatics can only be answered with reference to individual speakers. Johnstone's study is important both for the understanding of speech as expressive of self, and for the study of variation and mechanisms of linguistic choice and change.
Download or read book The Applied Linguistic Individual written by Phil Benson and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A focus on learner individuality in Applied Linguistics has been considered a mark of theoretical weakness from several perspectives. One branch of second language acquisition research has systematically discounted individual characteristics in favour of a search for universal acquisition processes. Another has adopted 'individual differences' as its object of inquiry, but emphasises psychological and sociological group characteristics over those of individuals. At the other end of the spectrum, critical researchers have viewed these approaches as 'individualistic' and have emphasised instead the deeply social character of second language acquisition. More recently, however, the qualitative approaches favoured by socially-oriented researchers have begun to bring issues of individuality to the fore. Autonomy, agency and identity have emerged as important constructs through which researchers are seeking to understand relationships between individuals and the social contexts in which they learn and use languages, and case studies of individuals have become a preferred approach to Applied Linguistics research. These developments raise important questions about the relationship between the social and individual, which has now become a key philosophical and methodological issue in research. This volume addresses this issue through contributions from researchers who carry out their work in a variety of settings in Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North and South America. The authors explore how individuality is conceptualised in socially-oriented approaches to Applied Linguistics research, including Sociocultural Theory, Situated Learning, Imagined Communities, Complexity Theory, and Autonomy Theory. Is there a tension between the social and the individual in these approaches, and if so, how is it manifested and resolved in empirical research?
Download or read book Individual Differences in Language Ability and Language Behavior written by Charles J Fillmore and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2014-05-10 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individual Differences in Language Ability and Language Behavior is a collection of papers that discusses differences at the center of the study of language, specifically, on the various dimensions of linguistic ability and behavior along which individuals can differ from each other. Papers also review the development of techniques that measure these dimensions in relation to biological, psychological, and cultural parameters. Some papers review individual differences in language study in terms of different perspectives: that of a psychometrician's, of an individualistic's vantage point, and of a psycholinguistic's. Other papers discuss how each individual accesses, uses, and judges his language through fluency, biases, spatial principles, or a linguistic-phonetic mode. Several papers examine individual differences in language acquisition, such as "profile analysis," strategies in acquisition of sounds, second language learning, and duplication of adult language system. A group of papers addresses the biological aspects of language variation. These biological aspects include selective disorders of syntax (agrammatism), selective disorders of lexical retrieval (anomia), and cerebral lateralization effects in language processing. Certain papers explain individual differences in languages using sociolinguistic analysis. The collection is well suited for linguists, ethnologists, psychologists, and researchers whose works involve linguistics, learning, communications, and syntax.
Download or read book Electronic Discourse written by Boyd H. Davis and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigates the new world of computer conferencing and details how writers use language when their social interaction is exclusively enacted through text on screens.
Download or read book Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City written by Dick Smakman and published by Routledge Studies in Language and Identity. This book was released on 2022 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City focuses on how individuals navigate conversation in highly diversified contexts and provides a broad overview of state of the art research in urban sociolinguistics across the globe. Bearing in mind the impact of international travel and migration, the book accounts for the shifting contemporary studies to the workings of language choices in places where people with many different backgrounds meet and exchange ideas. It specifically addresses how people handle language use challenges in a broad range of settings to present themselves positively and meet their information and identity goals. While a speaker's experience runs like a thread through this volume, the linguistic, cultural and situational focus is as broad as possible. It runs from the language choices of Chinese immigrants to Beijing and Finnish immigrants to Japan to the use of the local lingua franca by motor taxi drivers in Ngaoundéré, Cameroon, and how Hungarian students in their dorm rooms express views on political correctness uninhibitedly. As it turns out, language play, improvisation, humour, lies, as well as highly marked subconscious pronunciation choices, are natural parts of the discourses, and this volume provides numerous and extensive examples of these techniques. For each of the settings discussed, the perspective is taken of personalised linguistic and extra-linguistic styles in tackling communicative challenges. This way, a picture is drawn of how postmodern individuals in extremely different cultural and situational circumstances turn out to have strikingly similar human behaviours and intentions. Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City is of interest to all those who follow theoretical and methodological developments in this field. It will be of use for upper level students in the fields of Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Linguistic Anthropology and related fields in which urban communicative settings are the focus.
Download or read book Mankind Nation and Individual from a Linguistic Point of View written by Otto Jespersen and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Intra individual Variation in Language written by Alexander Werth and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers several empirical, methodological, and theoretical approaches to the study of observable variation within individuals on various linguistic levels. With a focus on German varieties, the chapters provide answers on the following questions (inter alia): Which linguistic and extra-linguistic factors explain intra-individual variation? Is there observable intra-individual variation that cannot be explained by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors? Can group-level results be generalised to individual language usage and vice versa? Is intra-individual variation indicative of actual patterns of language change? How can intra-individual variation be examined in historical data? Consequently, the various theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches in this volume offer a better understanding of the meaning of intra-individual variation for patterns of language development, language variation and change. The inter- and transdisciplinary nature of the volume is an exciting new frontier, and the results of the studies in this book provide a wealth of new findings as well as challenges to some of the existing findings and assumptions regarding the nature of intra-individual variation.
Download or read book The Language Animal written by Charles Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We have been given a powerful and often uplifting vision of what it is to be truly human.” —John Cottingham, The Tablet In seminal works ranging from Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create possible ways of being, both as individuals and as a society. In his new book setting forth decades of thought, he demonstrates that language is at the center of this generative process. For centuries, philosophers have been divided on the nature of language. Those in the rational empiricist tradition—Hobbes, Locke, Condillac, and their heirs—assert that language is a tool that human beings developed to encode and communicate information. In The Language Animal, Taylor explains that this view neglects the crucial role language plays in shaping the very thought it purports to express. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning and fundamentally shapes human experience. The human linguistic capacity is not something we innately possess. We first learn language from others, and, inducted into the shared practice of speech, our individual selves emerge out of the conversation. Taylor expands the thinking of the German Romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt into a theory of linguistic holism. Language is intellectual, but it is also enacted in artistic portrayals, gestures, tones of voice, metaphors, and the shifts of emphasis and attitude that accompany speech. Human language recognizes no boundary between mind and body. In illuminating the full capacity of “the language animal,” Taylor sheds light on the very question of what it is to be a human being.
Download or read book Mankind Nation and Individual written by Otto Jespersen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-24 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was first published in 1947, Mankind, Nation and Individual is a valuable contribution to the field of English Language and Linguistics.
Download or read book Linguistic Individuals written by Almerindo Ojeda and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice written by John Baugh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the role of linguistics in promoting justice and equality with regard to ethnic minorities, legal matters and civil rights.
Download or read book Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation written by Lauren Hall-Lew and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'third wave' of variation study, spearheaded by the sociolinguist Penelope Eckert, places its focus on social meaning, or the inferences that can be drawn about speakers based on how they talk. While social meaning has always been a concern of modern sociolinguistics, its aims and assumptions have not been explicitly spelled out until now. This pioneering book provides a comprehensive overview of the central tenets of variation study, examining several components of dialects, and considering language use in a wide variety of cultural and linguistic contexts. Each chapter, written by a leader in the field, posits a unique theoretical claim about social meaning and presents new empirical data to shed light on the topic at hand. The volume makes a case for why attending to social meaning is vital to the study of variation while also providing a foundation from which variationists can productively engage with social meaning.
Download or read book Individuality in Language Change written by Lynn Anthonissen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguists have typically studied language change at the aggregate level of speech communities, yet key mechanisms of change such as analogy and automation operate within the minds of individual language users. Drawing on lifespan data from 50 authors and the intriguing case of the special passives in the history of English, this study addresses three fundamental issues relating to individuality in language change: (i) how variation and change at the individual level interact with change at the community level; (ii) how much innovation and change is possible across the adult lifespan; (iii) and to what extent related linguistic patterns are associated in individual cognition. As one of the first large-scale empirical studies to systematically link individual- and community-based perspectives in language change, this volume breaks new ground in our understanding of language as a complex adaptive system.
Download or read book The Politics of Linguistics written by Frederick J. Newmeyer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988-03-15 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguists in the past two centuries have, for the most part, approached language as an autonomous entity; their practice has been to study languages without considering the culture, society, or beliefs of the speakers. "Autonomous linguistics" has been attacked from both the left and the right. Critics on the left (in particular Marxists) argue that the separation of language from its societal context reinforces the status quo by downplaying the role of language as an instrument of ideology and social control. Critics on the right object to the value-free analyses of individual languages required by the autonomous approach and to the idea that all languages merit equal attention. The Politics of Linguistics surveys two centuries of debate over autonomy. The discussion includes the political implications of the birth of the modern field of linguistics in the Romantic movement, the views of Marx and Engels on language, the attack on structural linguistics by both Hitler and Stalin, the role of Christian missionary groups and the military in building the field in the United States, and the relation between Noam Chomsky's linguistic theories and his political views. Frederick J. Newmeyer demonstrates that external political demonstrates that external political currents have often influenced the relative popularity of the autonomous approach to language. He argues that autonomous linguistics, far from being inconsistent with progressive political goals, can be creatively applied to the fulfillment of such goals.
Download or read book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice written by Ingrid Piller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-18 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding and addressing linguistic disadvantage must be a central facet of the social justice agenda of our time. This book explores the ways in which linguistic diversity mediates social justice in liberal democracies undergoing rapid change due to high levels of migration and economic globalization. Focusing on the linguistic dimensions of economic inequality, cultural domination and imparity of political participation, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice employs a case-study approach to real-world instances of linguistic injustice. Linguistic diversity is a universal characteristic of human language but linguistic diversity is rarely neutral; rather it is accompanied by linguistic stratification and linguistic subordination. Domains critical to social justice include employment, education, and community participation. The book offers a detailed examination of the connection between linguistic diversity and inequality in these specific contexts within nation states that are organized as liberal democracies. Inequalities exist not only between individuals and groups within a state but also between states. Therefore, the book also explores the role of linguistic diversity in global injustice with a particular focus on the spread of English as a global language. While much of the analysis in this book focuses on language as a means of exclusion, discrimination and disadvantage, the concluding chapter asks what the content of linguistic justice might be.
Download or read book The Way of the Linguist written by Steve Kaufmann and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2005-11 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey. It is now a cliché that the world is a smaller place. We think nothing of jumping on a plane to travel to another country or continent. The most exotic locations are now destinations for mass tourism. Small business people are dealing across frontiers and language barriers like never before. The Internet brings different languages and cultures to our finger-tips. English, the hybrid language of an island at the western extremity of Europe seems to have an unrivalled position as an international medium of communication. But historically periods of cultural and economic domination have never lasted forever. Do we not lose something by relying on the wide spread use of English rather than discovering other languages and cultures? As citizens of this shrunken world, would we not be better off if we were able to speak a few languages other than our own? The answer is obviously yes. Certainly Steve Kaufmann thinks so, and in his busy life as a diplomat and businessman he managed to learn to speak nine languages fluently and observe first hand some of the dominant cultures of Europe and Asia. Why do not more people do the same? In his book The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey, Steve offers some answers. Steve feels anyone can learn a language if they want to. He points out some of the obstacles that hold people back. Drawing on his adventures in Europe and Asia, as a student and businessman, he describes the rewards that come from knowing languages. He relates his evolution as a language learner, abroad and back in his native Canada and explains the kind of attitude that will enable others to achieve second language fluency. Many people have taken on the challenge of language learning but have been frustrated by their lack of success. This book offers detailed advice on the kind of study practices that will achieve language breakthroughs. Steve has developed a language learning system available online at: www.thelinguist.com.
