Language Decline And Death In Africa Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Language Decline And Death In Africa book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
The aim of this book is to inform both scholars and the public about the nature and extent of the problem of language decline and death in Africa. It resourcefully traces the main causes and circumstances of language endangerment, the processes and extent of language shift and death, and the consequences of language loss to the continent's rich linguistic and cultural heritage. The book outlines some of the challenges that have emerged out of the situation.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.
The rapid endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern, not only among linguists and anthropologists but among all concerned with issues of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized culture. By some counts, only 600 of the 6,000 or so languages in the world are 'safe' from the threat of extinction. A leading commentator and popular writer on language issues, David Crystal asks the fundamental question, 'why is language death so important?', reviews the reasons for the current crisis, and investigates what is being done to reduce its impact. This book contains not only intelligent argument, but moving descriptions of the decline and demise of particular languages, and practical advice for anyone interested in pursuing the subject further.
The rapid endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern, not only among linguists and anthropologists but among all concerned with issues of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized culture. By some counts, only 600 of the 6,000 or so languages in the world are 'safe' from the threat of extinction. A leading commentator and popular writer on language issues, David Crystal asks the fundamental question, 'Why is language death so important?', reviews the reasons for the current crisis, and investigates what is being done to reduce its impact. This 2002 book contains not only intelligent argument, but moving descriptions of the decline and demise of particular languages, and practical advice for anyone interested in pursuing the subject further.
This volume brings together a number of important perspectives on language documentation and endangerment in Africa from an international cohort of scholars with vast experience in the field. Offering insights from rural and urban settings throughout the continent, these essays consider topics that range from the development of a writing system to ideologies of language endangerment, from working with displaced communities to the role of colonial languages in reshaping African repertoires, and from the insights of archeology to the challenges of language documentation as a doctoral project. The authors are concerned with both theoretical and practical aspects of language documentation as they address the ways in which the African context both differs from and resembles contexts of endangerment elsewhere in the world. This volume will be useful to fieldworkers and documentalists who work in Africa and beyond.
Languages are dying at an alarming rate all over the world. Estimates range from 50% to as much as 90% by the end of the century. This collection of original papers tries to strike a balance between theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches to language death and language maintenance. It provides overviews of language endangerment in Africa, Eurasia, and the Greater Pacific Area. It also presents case studies of endangered languages from various language families. These descriptive case studies not only provide data on the degree of endangerment and the causes of language death, but also provide a general sociolinguistic and typological characterization the language(s) under discussion and the prospects of language maintenance (if any). The volume will be of interest to all those concerned with the ongoing extinction of the world's linguistic diversity.
This book examines the endangered languages of Africa from both documentary and theoretical perspectives, highlighting the threats of extinction many of them face and the challenges and implications each bring to bear on linguistic theory. It focuses on the symbiosis between documentary and theoretical methodologies, and its consequences for the preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly.
Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Trier, course: Applied Linguistics, language: English, abstract: A language dies when nobody speaks it any more. However, there are different ways languages die. In this regard, three types of language death can be identified: population loss, forced shift, and voluntary shift. One must, however, recognize that the divisions between them are not always clear. Many language deaths involve some combination of all three. Besides, there is a considerable grey area between forced and voluntary shift. The distinction between what is forced and what is voluntary is problematic, but the terms are useful as idealized ends of a continuum. 1. Language death 3 1.1 Types of language death 3 1.2 Causes of language shift 5 1.2.1 Economic influence 5 1.2.2 Cultural influence 6 1.2.3 Political influence 8 2. Linguistic equilibrium and punctuation – Endangered languages under increasing threat 9 2.1 The Palaeolithic equilibrium 9 2.2 The Neolithic punctuation and aftershock 10 2.3 The industrial punctuation 11 2.4 The extent of endangerment 13 3. Reasons for action 14 3.1 Linguistic diversity and sustainable economic development 14 3.2 Language and identity 15 3.3 Language and history 16 3.4 Language and human knowledge 17 3.5 Languages and linguistic knowledge 18 II. PRINCIPLES 20 1. The Diagnosis 20 1.1 Levels of endangerment 20 1.2 The stages of language death 20 2. Remedies 22 2.1 Reversing Language Shift (RLS) theory 22 2.2 Increase of prestige 25 2.3 Increase of wealth 26 2.4 The education system 26 2.5 Literacy 27 2.6 Increase of legitimate power 27 III. RECOMMENDATIONS 29 IV. REFERENCES 33
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.