Linguistics in a Colonial World (eBook)

A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power

Joseph Errington (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2008
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-0-470-68049-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Drawing on both original texts and critical literature, Linguistics in a Colonial World surveys the methods, meanings, and uses of early linguistic projects around the world.

• 
  
• Explores how early endeavours in linguistics were used to aid in overcoming practical and ideological difficulties of colonial rule
  
• Traces the uses and effects of colonial linguistic projects in the shaping of identities and communities that were under, or in opposition to, imperial regimes
  
• Examines enduring influences of colonial linguistics in contemporary thinking about language and cultural difference
  
• Brings new insight into post-colonial controversies including endangered languages and language rights in the globalized twenty-first century

Joseph Errington is Professor of Anthropology and International and Area Studies, as well as Chair of the Council of Southeast Asian Studies, at Yale University. His research and writing have focused on linguistic dimensions of modernization and identity in Java and Indonesia, reflecting his broader interests in semiotics and the politics of language.

Inhalt

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

List of Figures and Table.

1. The Linguistic in the Colonial.

2. Early Conversions, or, How Spanish Friars Made the Little
Jump.

3. Imaging the Linguistic Past.

4. Philology's Evolutions.

5. Between Pentecost and Pidgins.

6. Colonial Linguists, (Proto)-National Languages.

7. Postcolonial Postscript.

References.

Language Index.

Persons Index.

Subject Index

Rezensionen

"This slim book covers a lot of ground, geographically,
historically, and intellectually." (Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, December 2008)



"Errington ... provides a useful overview of analytical and
methodological developments and changing applications in the
history of linguistics. Highly recommended." (CHOICE,
November 2008)

"The succinctness of the writing and the importance of the
central argument make the reviewed text likely to appear on many
course syllabi." (Journal of Sociolinguistics)

"This book provides both an introduction and an innovative argument
about the development of colonial linguistics and its place in the
rise of 19th century European linguistics as a field of expert
knowledge. This is stimulating scholarship and a valuable teaching
resource for linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, history of
linguistics, cultural studies and historiography."

Kathryn Woolard, University of California: San Diego



"This splendid history of ideas is a nuanced reflection on how
language and humanity became each other's deepest theoretical
mirrors as the world made the transition from colonialism to the
more recent forms of globalization. It is also a superb
contribution to the general dialogue between linguistics and its
cognate human sciences."

Arjun Appadurai, The New School

"In this concise, eloquent yet wide-ranging book, Joseph
Errington demonstrates the importance of understanding linguistics
as a special kind of colonial encounter. Linguistics, he shows, has
always operated within particular relations of power, constructs of
sameness and difference, and ways of reducing languages to writing.
The European science of language helped legislate on the one hand
national difference in Europe and on the other human inequality in
European empires. Linguistics, Errington shows, may claim
scientificity but it can never be insulated from the speech of
those it studies; it is always entangled with contexts, projects
and linguistic ideologies from the past. This book therefore
provides not only key historical discussion of the long and fraught
connections among colonialism, linguistic description, literacy
practices, and social imaginations, but also challenges any
contemporary practising linguist - whether engaged in
pan-human speculations about universal language, continuing
missionary linguistic projects, or attempts to save and preserve
endangered languages - to understand current postcolonial
linguistic projects in relation to the colonial past."

Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology-Sydney

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.4.2008
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Schlagworte: Angewandte Linguistik • Anthropologie • Anthropology • Applied Linguistics • Became • centuries • Colonial • Colonial World • contributing element • crucial • Exotic • Identities • important • Knowledge • Languages • Linguistic • Linguistic Anthropology • Linguistics • Linguistische Anthropologie • Literature • Methods • Original • Power • Projects • Shaping • Sprachwissenschaften • Three • uses • Work
• ISBN-10: 0-470-68049-0 / 0470680490
• ISBN-13: 978-0-470-68049-0 / 9780470680490