Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity: The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts (Volume 2)

ISBN-13: 9780195392456 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 512 str.

Joshua A. Fishman;Ofelia Garcia

Opis

Like the first volume, The Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Volume 2 is a reference work on the interconnection between language and ethnic identity. In this volume, 37 new essays provide a systematic look at different language and ethnic identity efforts, assess their relative successes and failures, and place the cases on a success-failure continuum. The reasons for these failures and successes and the linguistic, social, and political contexts involved are subtle and highly complex. Some of these factors have to do with whether the language is considered a dialect, as in the cases of Bavarian, Ebonics, and Scots (considered to be dialects of German, American English, and British English, respectively). Other factors have to do with government policy, as in the cases of Basque and Navajo. Still other factors are historical, such as the way Canaanite was supplanted in present-day Israel by another classical language-Hebrew.

Although the volume offers considerable sophistication in the treatment of language, ethnicity and identity, it has been written for the non-specialized reader, whether student or layperson. The contributors are an international group of well-known scholars in a range of fields. Fishman and Garcia provide a detailed introduction that addresses the difficulty of assessing the success or failure of a language. They also present a conclusion that integrates the data presented in the volume.

Recenzje

Overall, the volume provides a diverse set of accounts that are cross-comparable enough to serve as a miniature dataset in their own right, but unique enough that each contribution can focus on the factors that matter most for the case being studied.

O autorze

Joshua Fishamn is Distinguished University Research Professor of Social Sciences, Emeritus at Yeshiva University. Ofelia García is Professor of Urban Education and Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate Center, The City University of New York.