Daniel Nettle

Suzanne Romaine

Nettle and Romaine paint a breathtaking landscape that shows why so many of the world's languages are disappearing-and more importantly, why it matters. - BOOK JACKET.

The Extinction of the World's Languages

Vanishing Voices

Why have 1,500 separate languages developed in Melanesia? Why is a Cornish accent rated higher than Cockney speech but lower than Oxford English? Linguistics tends to ignore the relationship between languages and the societies in which they are spoken, while sociology generally overlooks the role of language in the constitution of society. Suzanne Romaine provides a clear, lively, and accessible introduction to the field of sociolinguistics, emphasizing the constant interaction between society and language. In her examples she draws on studies of cultures all over the world, including her own extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea.

An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

Language in Society

The Acquisition of Communicative Competence

The Language of Children and Adolescents

Why have 1500 separate languages developed in the Pacific region? Why do Danes understand Norwegians better than Norwegians understand Danish? Is Ebonics a language or a dialect? Linguistics tends to ignore the relationship between languages and the societies in which they are spoken, while sociology generally overlooks the role of language in the constitution of society. In this book Suzanne Romaine provides a clear, lively, and accessible introduction to the field of sociolinguistics and emphasizes the constant interaction between society and language, discussing both traditional and recent issues including: language and social class, language and gender, language and education, and pidgins and creoles. The text shows how our linguistic choices are motivated by social factors, and how certain ways of speaking come to be vested with symbolic value and includes examples drawing on studies of cultures and languages all over the world. This new edition incorporates new material on current issues in the study of gender as well as other topics such as the linguistic dimension to the ethnic conflict in the Balkans, and the controversy over Ebonics in the United States.

Donald Winford

Salikoko S. Mufwene

Mervyn C. Alleyne

Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo

This book explores the manner in which language and language choice reflect and mediate the social landscape of those societies that evolved from European-conceived and controlled plantation labor systems. These plantation systems merged the lives of people of different nations, cultures, and languages so that they could serve as either indentured workers or slaves. For this reason, creole language studies-- more than any other area of linguistics-- provides invaluable insight into the nature of diaspora, ethnicity, nationalism, identity, and language loyalty.

Language & the Social Construction of Identity in Creole Situations

Since it was first published in 1989, Suzanne Romaine's book has been recognized as the most authoritative introduction to the sociolinguistics of bilingualism. The new edition has been completely revised to incorporate recent work in this fast developing field. Throughout the book, bilingualism is seen as both a societal and cognitive phenomenon. Professor Romaine explores various aspects of bilingual behavior, such as code switching and language mixing, in terms of neurolinguistic organization in the individual speaker. The author also assesses the positive and negative claims made for the effects of bilingualism on children's cognitive, social and academic development, and examines the assumptions behind various language policies and programs for bilingual children. In all this, Professor Romaine draws on her own research with Punjabi /Engllish bilinguals in Britain, and Tok Pisin/ English bilingual children in Papua New Guinea.

Bilingualism

Language in Society provides a clear, lively, and accessible introduction to the field of sociolinguistics, emphasizing the constant interaction between society and language. The text discusses both traditional and recent issues such as language and social class, language and gender, language and education, pidgins and creoles, and language change, and it shows how our linguistic choices are motivated by social factors and how certain ways of speaking come to be vested with symbolic value. Examples draw on studies of cultures and languages all over the world, including Romaine's own extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Hawai'i, and the UK.

Peter Mühlhäusler

Thomas E. Dutton

Tok Pisin is one of the most important languages of Melanesia and is used in a wide range of public and private functions in Papua New Guinea. The language has featured prominently in Pidgin and Creole linguistics and has featured in a number of debates in theoretical linguistics. With their extensive fieldwork experience and vast knowledge of the archives relating to Papua New Guinea, Peter Mühlhäusler, Thomas E. Dutton and Suzanne Romaine compiled this Tok Pisin text collection. It brings together representative samples of the largest Pidgin language of the Pacific area. These texts represent about 150 years of development of this language and will be an invaluable resource for researchers, language policy makers and individuals interested in the history of Papua New Guinea.

From the beginning to the present

Tok Pisin Texts

Richard M. Hogg

R. W. Burchfield

Volume 1, Beginnings to 1066: This volume deals with the history of English up to the Norman Conquest and contains chapters on Indo-European and Germanic, phonology and morphology, syntax, semantics and vocabulary, dialectology, onomastics, and literary language. Each chapter, as well as giving a chronologically-oriented presentation of the data, surveys scholarship in the area and takes full account of the impact of developing and current linguistic theory on the interpretation of the data. The chapters have been written with both specialists and non-specialists in mind.

The Cambridge History of the English Language: English in Britain and Overseas : origins and development

Norman Francis Blake

Roger Lass

Volume two of this set covers the Middle English Period, approximately 1066-1476, and describes and analyses developments in the language from the Norman Conquest to the introduction of printing.

The Cambridge History of the English Language: 1066-1476

The volumes of The Cambridge history of the English language reflect the spread of English from its beginnings in Anglo-Saxon England to its current role as a multifaceted global language that dominates international communication in the 21st century.

The Cambridge History of the English Language

Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, Suzanne Romaine's main concern is to show how language and discourse play key roles in understanding and communicating gender and culture. In addition to linguistics--which provides the starting point and central focus of the book--she draws on the fields of anthropology, biology, communication, education, economics, history, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The text covers the "core" areas in the study of language and gender, including how and where gender is indexed in language, how men and women speak, how children acquire gender differentiated language, and sexism in language and language reform. Although most of the examples are drawn primarily from English, other European languages and non-European languages, such as Japanese are considered. The text is written in an accessible way so that no prior knowledge of linguistics is necessary to understand the chapters containing linguistic analysis. Each chapter is followed by exercises and discussion questions to facilitate the book's use as a classroom text. The author reviews scholarly treatments of gender, and then uses her own data material from the corpora of spoken and written English usage. Special features include an examination of contemporary media sources such as newspapers, advertising, and television; a discussion of women's speculative fiction; a study of gender and advertising, with special attention paid to the role played by language in these domains; and a review of French feminist thought, particularly as it relates to the issue of language reform.

Communicating Gender

John R. Rickford

This collection in honor of creolist Charlene Junko Sato (1951-1996) brings together contributions by leading specialists in pidgin-creole studies in three primary areas: Pidgin-Creole Genesis and Development; Attitudes and Education, and Creole Discourse and Literature. The varieties covered come from English, French and Spanish lexical bases and from places as far apart as Africa, Australia, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. Editors Rickford and Romaine introduce each of the papers and provide a biography and bibliography of Sato. A short story and poems in Hawaiian Creole, Sato's native language and the variety which was the focus of her research and writing, round out the collection.

Studies Celebrating Charlene J. Sato

Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse

Linguists and non-linguists will find in this volume a guide and reference source to the rich linguistic heritage of Australia.

Language in Australia

Richard Hogg

The Cambridge History of the English Language is the first multi-volume work to provide a full account of the history of English. Its authoritative coverage extends from areas of central linguistic interest and concern to more specialised topics such as personal and place names. The volumes dealing with earlier periods are chronologically based, whilst those dealing with more recent periods are geographically based, thus reflecting the spread of English over the last 300 years. Volume 1 deals with the history of English up to the Norman Conquest, and contains chapters on Indo-European and Germanic, phonology and morphology, syntax, semantics and vocabulary, dialectology, onomastics, and literary language. Each chapter, as well as giving a chronologically-oriented presentation of the data, surveys scholarship in the area and takes full account of the impact of developing and current linguistic theory on the interpretation of the data. The chapters have been written with both specialists and non-specialists in mind; they will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of English.

This book defines and describes the linguistic features of these languages and considers the dynamic developments that bring them into being and lead to changes in their structure.

Pidgin and Creole Languages

Few people know that nearly one hundred native languages once spoken in what is now California are near extinction, or that most of Australia's 250 aboriginal languages have vanished. In fact, at least half of the world's languages may die out in the next century. Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine assert that this trend is far more than simply disturbing. Making explicit the link between language survival and environmental issues, they argue that the extinction of languages is part of the larger picture of near-total collapse of the worldwide ecosystem. Indeed, the authors contend that the struggle to preserve precious environmental resources-such as the rainforest-cannot be separated from the struggle to maintain diverse cultures, and that the causes of language death, like that of ecological destruction, lie at the intersection of ecology and politics. In addition to defending the world's endangered languages, the authors also pay homage to the last speakers of dying tongues, such as Red Thundercloud, a Native American in South Carolina; Ned Mandrell, with whom the Manx language passed away in 1974; and Arthur Bennett, an Australian who was the last person to know more than a few words of Mbabaram. In our languages lies the accumulated knowledge of humanity. Indeed, each language is a unique window on experience. Vanishing Voices is a call to preserve this resource, before it is too late.

Merton Professor of English Language Suzanne Romaine

Robert Burchfield

Volume 5 covers the dialects of England since 1776, the historical development of English in the former Celtic-speaking countries, and English other countries.

Suzanne Romaine

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