Chapter 1. Exploring Agency, Ideology, and Semiotics of Language across Communities by Netta Avineri and Jesse Harasta
Part One: Language Defining Belonging
Chapter 2. Contested Hebrew: Ethnolinguistic Infusion and Metalinguistic Communities in U.S. Jewish Complementary Schools by Netta Avineri, Sarah Bunin Benor, and Nicki Greninger.
Chapter 3. “Anyone who speaks just a little bit of Náhuat knows she's only babbling...” : Metapragmatic discourses on proficiency in the Náhuat language revitalization (El Salvador) by Quentin Boitel.
Chapter 4. Intimate Politics and Language Revitalization in Veneto, Northern Italy by Sabina Perrino.
Chapter 5. Metalinguistic discourse and ‘Grenglish’ in narratives of return migration by Jennifer Sclafani and Alexander Nikolaou.
Part Two: Language as a Tool Against Erasure
Chapter 6. Where the Language Appears, We Also Appear: Tehuelche Language Reclamation in Patagonia by Javier Domingo.
Chapter 7. Utilization of Ethnolinguistic Infusion in the Construction of a Trifurcated Metalinguistic Community: An Example from the Kernewek (Cornish) language of Britain by Jesse Harasta.
Chapter 8. Retaking Hãhãhãe: Revitalization and Reindigenization in a Context of Indigenous Erasure by Jessica Fae Nelson.
Part Three: Language Mediating Relations with the State
Chapter 9. ’I didn't know it was a language back then’: The ideological value of recognition among Gallo advocates in Brittany by Sandra Keller.
Chapter 10. Raciolinguistic Ideologies of Spanish Speakers in a California Child Welfare Court by Jessica López-Espino.
Chapter 11. The historical tie that binds: Deploying Kurdish to index ownership, authenticity, collective memory, and distinction within Kawaguchi’s Kurdish metalinguistic community by Anne Schluter
Chapter 12. Reclamation and Metalinguistic Communities by Wesley Y. Leonard
Netta Avineri is an Associate Professor of Language Teacher Education and Chair of the Intercultural Competence Committee at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, USA. An applied linguistic anthropologist, she is the author of Research Methods for Language Teaching: Inquiry, Process, and Synthesis, co-editor of Language and Social Justice in Practice, and Series Editor for Critical Approaches in Applied Linguistics (De Gruyter Mouton).
Jesse Harasta is an Associate Professor of Social Science and program director for International Studies at Cazenovia College, USA. A cultural and linguistic anthropologist, he studies the symbolic and political uses of language and language as an object (e.g. signage, font). He researches Kernewek and other European lesser-used languages.
“Metalinguistic Communities: Case Studies of Agency, Ideology, and Symbolic Uses of Language offers readers a wide-ranging exploration of the many ways “language as object” serves as an important channel of symbolic communication. The diverse case studies highlight the variety of ways community members deploy “linguistic” markers in social semiotic domains to promote language reclamation, challenge hegemonic regimes, and assert language-based subjectivities. The chapters in this volume are timely examples of much needed contributions to language and social justice.”
-Bernard C. Perley, Director, Associate Professor, The Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada
This edited volume brings together ten compelling ethnographic case studies from a range of global settings to explore how people build metalinguistic communities defined not by use of a language, but primarily by language ideologies and symbolic practices about the language. The authors examine themes of agency, belonging, negotiating hegemony, and combating cultural erasure and genocide in cultivating meaningful metalinguistic communities. Case studies include Spanish and Hebrew in the USA, Kurdish in Japan, Pataxó Hãhãhãe in Brazil, and Gallo in France. The afterword, by Wesley L. Leonard, provides theoretical and on-the-ground context as well as a forward-looking focus on metalinguistic futurities. This book will be of interest to interdisciplinary students and scholars in applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology and migration studies.
Netta Avineri is an Associate Professor of Language Teacher Education and Chair of the Intercultural Competence Committee at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, USA. An applied linguistic anthropologist, she is the author of Research Methods for Language Teaching: Inquiry, Process, and Synthesis, co-editor of Language and Social Justice in Practice, and Series Editor for Critical Approaches in Applied Linguistics (De Gruyter Mouton).
Jesse Harasta is an Associate Professor of Social Science and program director for International Studies at Cazenovia College, USA. A cultural and linguistic anthropologist, he studies the symbolic and political uses of language and language as an object (e.g. signage, font). He researches Kernewek and other European lesser-used languages.