LANGUAGE CONTACT, LANGUAGE CONFLICT.Martin Pütz (Ed.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994. Pp. xv + 254. $59.00 cloth.

1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-127
Author(s):  
Mark Knowles

Language Contact, Language Conflict treats the increasingly common phenomenon of language contact and the subsequent cultural influences that contact can entail. The collection of papers is the result of a symposium held in Duisburg in March 1992 and is divided into two sections: (a) theoretical linguistic issues and (b) case studies from throughout the world. In the foreword, Hymes admits his skepticism toward the search for universals in linguistics, cognition, and human nature when “so much of anger as of joy is in the details” and, therefore, to preserve humanity, “the complex, emergent configurations of particular languages and ways of life are what need to be understood and shared” (foreword, no page number).

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-566
Author(s):  
Marcyliena Morgan

As we journey into the new millennium, few among us would bother to argue against the importance of English as a world language, especially considering its role in technology, industry, and politics. Many people of the world are introduced to English as a modern version of a contact language, since the need to know it occurs simultaneously with the need for specific knowledge (to negotiate borders and so on). Of course, there is much to the story of language contact. As Mary Louise Pratt (1992) observed, contact situations are often catastrophic events involving power relations that include conquerors and the conquered, intermediaries, onlookers, and more. The position of English as a national language in many countries and its worldwide influence have occurred within the context of civil wars, political negotiation, constant transmigration, globalization, and the formulation and reconstruction of nationalist ideologies and identities. Though the nature of today's contact may seem benign, its result may still be catastrophic and have far-reaching consequences, as the ideology and practices that accompany English may not complement all societies and situations. Today, the United States often represents the global influence of English, and as America becomes the symbol of border and civil war negotiation and policing, technology, art, conflict and power, so too does English. Predictably, the people and polities throughout the world wrestle with America's ideological influence by participating in the invigoration and transformation of English to suit their needs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110510
Author(s):  
Gustavo A. García-López ◽  
Ursula Lang ◽  
Neera Singh

Over the last decade, there has been an expansion of scholarly and activist engagement with the commons. This interest corresponds to a growing quest for alternatives to capitalism in view of ongoing socio- ecological crises. As neoliberal capitalism intensifies enclosure of the commons, local actions to reclaim old commons and invent new ones to counter these processes are also on the rise. However, there are diverse conceptions of the commons, and pitfalls in their reproduction and in mobilizing this vocabulary in the dominant neoliberal individualistic culture. Our understanding remains limited about how spaces for commons and commoning practices can be expanded, as well as about specific practices, relations and imaginaries that support commons and subjectivities of being-in-common. This Special Issue on the “Commons, Commoning and Co-becomings” seeks to deepen our understanding of ‘actually-existing’ and ‘more-than- human’ commons in the world, and how ways of relating to them open up possibilities of responding to current socioenvironmental challenges and generating beyond-capitalist ways of life. Exploring commoning experiences in diverse settings, the papers assembled in this Special Issue illustrate the role that commons and commoning practices play in reconfiguring human-nature relations. Thinking with these papers, we draw attention to three interrelated areas: relational aspects of the work of commoning (practices, labor, care) in transforming our world and being transformed by it; the role of commons and commoning practices in generating subjectivities of being-in-common; and difference and divergences (or, un-commoning) that persist and emerge in commoning processes. We offer these themes as directions to better understand and enact the potential of commons and commoning for worlding—crafting, (re)producing—of a pluriverse of post-capitalist worlds and life in- common.


Author(s):  
Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez ◽  
José A. Sánchez Fajardo

The aims of this volume are twofold: to contribute to the study of English as a contact language and its various manifestations in World Englishes, and to explore the causes and effects of the influence and diffusion of English in several languages, with particular reference to Spanish.As Schreier and Hundt (2013: 1) have noted, the English language “has been contact derived from its very beginnings” and to this we can add that due to its rapid and far reaching extension, leading to its current role as a global contact language (Görlach, 2002), it continues to be closely connected to a wide range of communities of speakers and languages across the world. In fact, as Onysko (2016: 192) claims, "the notion of language contact emerges as a valid candidate for being a unifying characteristic of all Englishes".


1996 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 425
Author(s):  
Sarah Jane Moore ◽  
Martin Putz

Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Gisa Jähnichen

The Sri Lankan Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue, and Official Languages published the work “People of Sri Lanka” in 2017. In this comprehensive publication, 21 invited Sri Lankan scholars introduced 19 different people’s groups to public readers in English, mainly targeted at a growing number of foreign visitors in need of understanding the cultural diversity Sri Lanka has to offer. This paper will observe the presentation of these different groups of people, the role music and allied arts play in this context. Considering the non-scholarly design of the publication, a discussion of the role of music and allied arts has to be supplemented through additional analyses based on sources mentioned by the 21 participating scholars and their fragmented application of available knowledge. In result, this paper might help improve the way facts about groups of people, the way of grouping people, and the way of presenting these groupings are displayed to the world beyond South Asia. This fieldwork and literature guided investigation should also lead to suggestions for ethical principles in teaching and presenting of culturally different music practices within Sri Lanka, thus adding an example for other case studies.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 320-322
Author(s):  
Robert E. Bjork

During the logocentric Middle Ages, etymology and wordplay helped exegetes, philosophers, theologians, and poets understand the world and the world’s relationship to the divine. The case studies presented in this useful and fascinating collection of essays demonstrate how.


Author(s):  
Anthea Roberts ◽  
Martti Koskenniemi

Is International Law International? takes the reader on a sweeping tour of the international legal academy to reveal some of the patterns of difference, dominance, and disruption that belie international law’s claim to universality. Both revealing and challenging, confronting and engaging, this book is a must-read for any international lawyer, particularly in a world of shifting geopolitical power. Pulling back the curtain on the “divisible college of international lawyers,” the author shows how international lawyers in different states, regions, and geopolitical groupings are often subject to differences in their incoming influences and outgoing spheres of influence in ways that affect how they understand and approach international law, including with respect to contemporary controversies like Crimea and the South China Sea. Using case studies and visual representations, the author demonstrates how actors and materials from some states and groups have come to dominate certain transnational flows and forums in ways that make them disproportionately influential in constructing the “international”—a point which holds true for Western actors, materials, and approaches in general, and Anglo-American ones in particular. But these patterns are set for disruption. As the world moves past an era of Western dominance and toward greater multipolarity, it is imperative for international lawyers to understand the perspectives of those coming from diverse backgrounds. By taking readers on a comparative tour of different international law academies and textbooks, the author encourages international lawyers to see the world through others’ eyes—an approach that is pressing in a world of rising nationalism.


Author(s):  
Susanna Braund ◽  
Zara Martirosova Torlone

The introduction describes the broad landscape of translation of Virgil from both the theoretical and the practical perspectives. It then explains the genesis of the volume and indicates how the individual chapters, each one of which is summarized, fit into the complex tapestry of Virgilian translation activity through the centuries and across the world. The volume editors indicate points of connection between the chapters in order to render the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Braund and Torlone emphasize that a project such as this could look like a (rather large) collection of case studies; they therefore consider it important to extrapolate larger phenomena from the specifics presented here


Author(s):  
Tina K. Ramnarine

This Introduction outlines various examples of ensemble performance to highlight diverse practices in the world of orchestras. It poses a fundamental question: What is an orchestra? It raises issues around collective creativity and social agency, which provide thematic foci in relation to a diversity of orchestral practices. Discussion on the conceptual aspects of adopting global perspectives on orchestras highlights comparison as a mode of theorization. The relevance of a comparative approach lies in its capacity to draw together diverse ethnographic case-studies. The Introduction thus provides a framework for reading this volume and it points out some of the conceptual connections between its chapters.


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