Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

148 Pages·2012·0.453 MB·English

by  John Edwards

Multilingualism
Also available from Continuum
Children’s Language and Multilingualism, Edited by Jane Simpson
and Gillian Wigglesworth
Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective, Adrian Blackledge and
Angela Creese
Multilingualism, Citizenship and Identity, Julie Byrd Clark
Other Books by John Edwards:
Challenges in the Social Life of Language
The Irish Language
Language and Disadvantage
Language and Identity
Language Diversity in the Classroom
Language in Canada
Language, Society and Identity
Linguistic Minorities, Policies and Pluralism
Minority Languages and Group Identity
Multilingualism
The Social Psychology of Reading
Un mundo de lenguas
Multilingualism
Understanding
Linguistic Diversity
JOhn EdwArds
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© John Edwards 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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John Edwards has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-9613-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For Mike and Marnie, with love and appreciation

COnTEnTs
Prologue x
1 The Diversity of Languages 1
The First Language 1
Comparing Languages 3
Languages and Language Families 6
2 Interpreting Language Diversity 11
Dead or Alive 11
The Problem of Names 19
3 Multilingual Abilities 25
Multilingualism in the World 25
Individual Attitudes and Abilities 29
Language as a Verb and Other Infelicities 33
4 The Emergence and Measurement of
Multilingualism 39
The Rise of Multilingualism 39
Assessing Multilingualism 41
viii COnTEnTs
5 The Consequences of Babel: Lingua Francas 47
The Lingua Franca 47
Languages of Wider Communication 48
Pidgins and Creoles 50
Constructed Languages 52
6 The Consequences of Babel: Translation 57
Translation, Ownership and Secrecy 57
Voice Appropriation 59
Translation in Practice 61
7 Keeping Languages Pure 65
Purism and Prescriptivism 65
Academies 69
Dictionaries 72
8 Languages and Identities in Transition 77
Languages in Contact 77
Language Decline and Maintenance 80
Future Directions 85
9 Endangered Languages and the Will
to Survive 89
What is Language Revival? 89
Maintaining Domains of Necessity 92
Willingness 94
COnTEnTs ix
10 Linguistic Intervention and the ‘New’ Ecology
of Language 101
Scholarship and the Social Life of Language 101
The ‘New’ Ecology of Language 105
Epilogue 113
Notes and References 117
Index 129