In this book, the author examines the transformation of the Pacific language region under the impact of colonization, westernization and modernization. By focusing on the linguistic and socio-historical changes of the past 200 years, it aims to bring a new dimension to the study of Pacific linguistics, which up until now has been dominated by questions of historical reconstruction and language typology. In contrast to the traditional portrayal of linguistic change as a natural process, the author focuses on the cultural and historical forces which drive language change. Using the metaphor of language ecology to explain and describe the complex interplay between languages, speakers and social practice, the author looks at how language ecologies have functioned in the past to sustain language diversity, and, at what happens when those ecologies are disrupted. Whilst most of the examples used in the book are taken from the Pacific and Australian region, the insights derived from this area are shown to have global applications. The text should be useful for linguists and all those interested in the large scale loss of human language.

Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Region (The Politics of Language)

Politics & Social Sciences

Mühlhäusler, Peter

Social Sciences

Routledge

Pidgin & Creole Linguistics (Language in Society)

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Blackwell Pub.

Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (Language in Society Series)

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Blackwell*publishers

In recent years the idea of a determinate relation between language and reality, both social and physical, has been revived, and in consequence the writings of Sapir and Whorf have once again come to be of interest. In this book Rom Harre and Peter Muhlhausler defend a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, with emphasis on the role of language in the creation and maintenance of social relations. Since pronouns are, they believe, the main grammatical devices by which acts of speaking are tied to the persons who are engaged in the conversation, they investigate how pronouns are employed as a means of coming to understand the ways that speech and society are related. Their book has a second simultaneous concern with the social and situational contexts of grammar. Using this approach in the study of pronouns, several assumptions, such as the hypothesis of the independence of grammar, the choice of the sentence as the unit of analysis and the "substitution" theory of pronoun use, have all come into question. The conclusions drawn in this book are based on a broad corpus of data from many and diverse cultures, coupled with a survey of the literature concerning this topic.

Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity

Harré, Rom

Greenspeak: A Study of Environmental Discourse

In this interdisciplinary examination of the discourse of environmentalism, the authors explore the linguistic, philosophical, psychological and cultural-historical aspects of environmental discourse; rather than environmental phenomena themselves. This volume is not advocacy on environmentalism, rather, it is an analysis of the means of persuasion and the techniques of advocacy used by both sides of the environmental debate between `conservationists′ and `conservatives′. The book includes an analysis of the concepts of time and space in their linguistic manifestations. Another theme is the interdependencies of the natural world with political and economic institutions.

Business & Money

Brockmeier, Jens

Economics

Sage Publications, Inc.

Thirty years ago a new linguistic paradigm was created when Einar Haugen combined language with ecology. For Haugen, 'the ecology of language' meant the study of the interrelations between languages in the human mind and in the multilingual community. Since then a special branch of linguistics, named Ecolinguistics, has developed in which the connection between language and ecology has been established in a variety of ways and using a multitude of methods and approaches. In addition to the original ecolinguistic topics of language interrelation, language endangerment and language pressure, Ecolinguistics Reader also gives due consideration to the themes of biological and linguistic diversity as well as the ecocritical aspect. &gt;

Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment

Bloomsbury Academic

Thirty years ago, a new linguistic paradigm was created when Einar Haugen, for the first time, combined language with ecology. For Haugen, 'the ecology of language' meant the study of the interrelations between languages in the human mind and in the multilingual community. Since then a special branch of linguistics, named ecolinguistics, has developed in which the connection between language and ecology has been established in a variety of ways and by using a multitude of methods and approaches. This reader contains important articles from all the different fields of ecolinguistics - a volume long overdue for a discipline now recognized as a significant contribution to variety within the subject.

Fill, Alwin

Continuum

Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Region

This book tells the story of the language of the Bounty mutineers and their Polynesian consorts that developed on remote Pitcairn Island in the late 18th century. It is an in-depth study of the complex linguistic and sociohistorical forces that have been involved in the formation and subsequent development of this unique endangered language on both Pitcairn and Norfolk islands.

Pitkern-Norf’k: The Language of Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island (Dialects of English [DOE], 17)

De Gruyter Mouton

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