Focusing on urban youth culture and language crossing, this foundational volume by Ben Rampton has played a pivotal role in the shaping of language and ethnic identity as a domain of study. It focuses on language crossing - the use of Panjabi by adolescents of African-Caribbean and Anglo descent, the use of Creole by adolescents with Panjabi and Anglo backgrounds, and the use of stylized Indian English. Crossing’s central question is: how far and in what ways do these intricate pr...

A first synthesis of work done in sociolinguistic superdiversity, this volume offers a substantial introduction to the field and the issues and state-of-the-art research papers organized around three themes: Sketching the paradigm, Sociolinguistic complexity, Policing complexity. The focus is to show how complexity rather than plurality can serve as a lens through which an equally vast range of topics, sites, and issues can be tied together.Superdiversity captures...

This book demonstrates the power and distinctiveness of the contribution that sociolinguistics can make to our understanding of everyday communicative practice under changing social conditions. It builds on the approaches developed by Gumperz and Hymes in the 1970s and 80s, and it not only affirms their continuing relevance in analyses of the micropolitics of everyday talk in urban settings, but also argues for their value in emergent efforts to chart the heavily securitised environments n...

**This New York Times bestseller is an exciting and fearless investigation of language from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Sense of Style and Enlightenment Now."Curious, inventive, fearless, naughty."--The New York Times Book Review**Bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide l...

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...

Language attitudes and ideologies are of key importance in assessing the chances of success of revitalisation efforts for endangered languages. However, few book-length studies relate attitudes to language policies, or address the changing attitudes of non-speakers and the motivations of members of language movements. Through a combination of ethnographic research and quantitative surveys, this book presents an in-depth study of revitalisation efforts for indigenous languages in three smal...

Linguistics is a subject that has remained largely confined to the academy, rather than being integrated into school curricula. This is unfortunate but not surprising, as although some teacher education programs include courses on linguistics, it is not comprehensively integrated into teacher education, so it is largely absent from the curriculum. This volume brings together a team of leaders in the field of linguistics and education, to provide an overview of the current state of research...

Ways with Words, first published in 1983, is a classic study of children learning to use language at home and at school in two communities only a few miles apart in the south-eastern United States. 'Roadville' is a white working-class community of families steeped for generations in the life of textile mills; 'Trackton' is an African-American working-class community whose older generations grew up farming the land, but whose existent members work in the mills. In tracing the children's lan...

Superdiversity has rendered familiar places, groups and practices extraordinarily complex, and the traditional tools of analysis need rethinking. In this book, Jan Blommaert investigates his own neighbourhood in Antwerp, Belgium, from a complexity perspective. Using an innovative approach to linguistic landscaping, he demonstrates how multilingual signs can be read as chronicles documenting the complex histories of a place. The book can be read in many ways: as a theoretical and methodolog...

Spanish in the Southwest region of the United States predates the appearance of English in this country. The language has had an uninterrupted presence in the Río Grande corridor since 1598, and has spread geographically and demographically over the last four centuries. Despite that growth, it is being lost among younger generations that trend toward English monolingualism; thus, Spanish exists in a tremendous state of flux in the U.S. Southwest. The present volume´s principal goal is to p...

This interdisciplinary volume brings together leading scholars from several disciplines to uncover the key to young people’s socialization within institutional settings, from school to the workplace. Among the questions they consider are: what aspects of interactional competence are relevant for participation in practical activities within those settings? What are the interactional procedures through which diverse facets of interactional competence are recognized, legitimized and assessed ...

This practical, teacher-friendly book provides indispensable guidance for implementing research-based reading instruction that is responsive to students' diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Structured around the “big five” core topics of an effective reading program—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—the book explains tried-and-true teaching strategies for fostering all students' achievement. Key topics include engaging diverse students in classroo...