In this ground-breaking new book on the Nortena and Surena (North/South) youth gang dynamic, cultural anthropologist and linguist Norma Mendoza-Denton looks at the daily lives of young Latinas and their innovative use of speech, bodily practices, and symbolic exchanges that signal their gang affiliations and ideologies. Her engrossing ethnographic and sociolinguistic study reveals the connection of language behavior and other symbolic practices among Latina gang girls in California, and their connections to larger social processes of nationalism, racial/ethnic consciousness, and gender...

In this ground-breaking new book on the Nortena and Surena (North/South) youth gang dynamic, cultural anthropologist and linguist Norma Mendoza-Denton looks at the daily lives of young Latinas and their innovative use of speech, bodily practices, and symbolic exchanges that signal their gang affiliations and ideologies. Her engrossing ethnographic and sociolinguistic study reveals the connection of language behavior and other symbolic practices among Latina gang girls in California, and their connections to larger social processes of nationalism, racial/ethnic consciousness, and gender...

Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place is the fascinating story of an urban neighborhood undergoing rapid gentrification.

• Explores how members of a multi-ethnic, multi-class Washington, DC, community deploy language to legitimize themselves as community members while discrediting others.
• Discusses such issues as public toilets and public urination, the -morality- of co-ops and condos, and characterizations of -good- girls and -bad- boys.
• Draws on linguistic anthropology and discourse analysis to provide insight into the ways that local activity...

Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place is the fascinating story of an urban neighborhood undergoing rapid gentrification.

• Explores how members of a multi-ethnic, multi-class Washington, DC, community deploy language to legitimize themselves as community members while discrediting others.
• Discusses such issues as public toilets and public urination, the -morality- of co-ops and condos, and characterizations of -good- girls and -bad- boys.
• Draws on linguistic anthropology and discourse analysis to provide insight into the ways that local activity...

A rich and engrossing account of 'sexual outlaws' in the Hausa-speaking region of northern Nigeria, where Islamic law requires strict separation of the sexes and different rules of behavior for women and men in virtually every facet of life.

• The first ethnographic study of sexual minorities in Africa, and one of very few works on sexual minorities in the Islamic world
• Engagingly written, combining innovative, ethnographic narrative with analyses of sociolinguistic transcripts, historical texts, and popular media, including video, film, newspapers, and song-poetry
...

Transcultural Teens provides readers with a window onto the cultural and linguistic creativity of the housing projects, or cites, that ring Paris, showing how young people of Algerian Arab origins play with language in fascinating ways that subvert commonly held notions of intercultural animosity.

• Provides solid, real-world evidence in the often abstracted theoretical debate on globalization and transnationalism
• Offers detailed data on linguistic practices that is more focused than generalized anthropological studies
• Includes the...

Transcultural Teens provides readers with a window onto the cultural and linguistic creativity of the housing projects, or cites, that ring Paris, showing how young people of Algerian Arab origins play with language in fascinating ways that subvert commonly held notions of intercultural animosity.

• Provides solid, real-world evidence in the often abstracted theoretical debate on globalization and transnationalism
• Offers detailed data on linguistic practices that is more focused than generalized anthropological studies
• Includes the...

Part historic ethnography, part linguistic case study and part a mother's memoir, Kisisi tells the story of two boys (Colin and Sadiki) who, together invented their own language, and of the friendship they shared in postcolonial Kenya.

• Documents and examines the invention of a 'new' language between two boys in postcolonial Kenya

• Offers a unique insight into child language development and use

• Presents a mixed genre narrative and multidisciplinary discussion that describes the children's border-crossing friendship and their unique...

Part historic ethnography, part linguistic case study and part a mother's memoir, Kisisi tells the story of two boys (Colin and Sadiki) who, together invented their own language, and of the friendship they shared in postcolonial Kenya.

• Documents and examines the invention of a 'new' language between two boys in postcolonial Kenya

• Offers a unique insight into child language development and use

• Presents a mixed genre narrative and multidisciplinary discussion that describes the children's border-crossing friendship and their unique...