Southernizing Sociolinguistics

This innovative collection offers a pan-Southern rejoinder to hegemonies of Northern sociolinguistics. It showcases voices from the Global South that substitute alternative and complementary narrations of the link between language and society for canonical renditions of the field. Drawing on Southern epistemologies, the volume critically explores the entangled histories of racial colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy in perpetuating prejudice in and around language as a means of encouraging the conceptualization of alternative epistemological futures for sociolinguistics. The book features work by both established and emerging scholars, and is organized around four parts: The politics of the constitution of language, and its metalanguage, in the Global South; Who gets published in sociolinguistics? Language in the Global South and the social inscription of difference; and Learning and the quotidian experience of language in the Global South. This book will be of interest to scholars in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, critical race and ethnic studies, and philosophy of knowledge. Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

This book, which combines scholarly articles with interviews, seeks to imagine a decolonized sociolinguistics. All the chapters are firmly grounded in southern approaches to knowledge production, focusing not only on epistemology but also on the complex relationship between epistemology and ontology. The chapters address issues ranging from author positionality to the central theorists of a southern sociolinguistics, and roam from the language classroom to the church, in ways which invite us to begin to decolonize ourselves and rethink normative assumptions about everything from academic writing to research methods and language teaching. The book provides scholars and teachers with inspiration for how to teach linguistics in ways that challenge colonial hegemonies and that allow one to ‘do’ sociolinguistics otherwise. It also makes a powerful argument that debates about decolonization, southern theory and social justice are not just academic pursuits: what is at stake is our future and how we imagine it.

This Handbook centers on language(s) in the Global South/s and the many ways in which both "language" and the "Global South" are conceptualized, theorized, practiced, and reshaped. Drawing on 31 chapters situated in diverse geographical contexts, and four additional interviews with leading scholars, this text showcases: Issues of decolonization Promotion of Southern epistemologies and theories of the Global South/s A focus on social/applied linguistics An added focus on the academy A nuanced understanding of global language scholarship. It is written for emerging and established scholars across the globe as it positions Southern epistemologies, language scholarship, and decolonial theories into scholarship surrounding multiple themes and global perspectives.

This book argues that Linguistics, in common with other disciplines such as Anthropology and Sociology, has been shaped by colonization. It outlines how linguistic practices may be decolonized, and the challenges which such decolonization poses to linguists working in diverse areas of Linguistics. It concludes that decolonization in Linguistics is an ongoing process with no definite end point and cannot be completely successful until universities and societies are decolonized too. In keeping with the subject matter, the book prioritizes discussion, debate and the collaborative, creative production of knowledge over individual authorship. Further, it mingles the voices of established authors from a variety of disciplines with audience comment and dialogue to produce a challenging and inspiring text that represents an important step along the path it attempts to map out.

Bringing together work from a team of international scholars, this groundbreaking book explores how language users employ translingualism playfully, while, at the same time, negotiating precarious situations, such as the breaking of social norms and subverting sociolinguistic boundaries. It includes a range of ethnographic studies from around the globe, to provide us with insights into the everyday lives of language users and learners and their lived experiences, and how these interact in translingual practices. A number of mixed methodological frameworks are included to study language users' behaviours, experiences and actions, cover the complexity of language evolutionary processes, and ultimately show that precarity is as fundamental to translingualism as playfulness. It points to a future research direction in which research should be pragmatically applied into real pedagogical actions by revealing the sociolinguistic realities of translingual users, fundamentally addressing broader issues of racism, social injustice, language activism and other human rights issues.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Decolonizing Linguistics, the companion volume to Inclusion in Linguistics, is designed to uncover and intervene in the history and ongoing legacy of colonization and colonial thinking in linguistics and related fields. Taken together, the two volumes are the first comprehensive, action-oriented, book-length discussions of how to advance social justice in all aspects of the discipline. The introduction to Decolonizing Linguistics theorizes decolonization as the process of centering Black, Native, and Indigenous perspectives, describes the extensive dialogic and collaborative process through which the volume was developed, and lays out key principles for decolonizing linguistic research and teaching. The twenty chapters cover a wide range of languages and linguistic contexts (e.g., Bantu languages, Creoles, Dominican Spanish, Francophone Africa, Zapotec) as well as various disciplines and subfields (applied linguistics, communication, historical linguistics, language documentation and revitalization/reclamation, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, syntax). Contributors address such topics as refusing settler-colonial practices and centering community goals in research on Indigenous languages; decolonizing research partnerships between the Global South and the Global North; and prioritizing Black Diasporic perspectives in linguistics. The volume's conclusion lays out specific actions that linguists can take through research, teaching, and institutional structures to refuse coloniality in linguistics and to move the field toward a decolonized future.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Youth Culture offers the first essential grounding of critical youth studies within sociolinguistic research. Young people are often seen to be at the frontline of linguistic creativity and pioneering communicative technologies. Their linguistic practices are considered a primary means of exploring linguistic change as well as the role of language in social life, such as how language and identity, ideology and power intersect. Bringing together leading and cutting-edge perspectives from thought leaders across the globe, this handbook: • addresses how young people’s cultural practices, as well as forces like class, gender, ethnicity and race, influence language • considers emotions, affect, age and ageism, materiality, embodiment and the political youth, as well as processes of unmooring language and place • critically reflects on our understandings of terms such as ‘language’, ‘youth’ and ‘culture’, drawing on insights from youth studies to help contextualise age within power dynamics • features examples from a wide range of linguistic contexts such as social media and the classroom, as well as expressions such as graffiti, gestures and different musical genres including grime and hip-hop. Providing important insights into how young people think, feel, act, and communicate in the complexity of a polarised world, The Routledge Handbook of Language and Youth Culture is an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers in disciplines including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, multilingualism, youth studies and sociology.

Language and Decolonisation is the first collection to bring together views from across scholarly communities that are committed to the agenda of decolonising knowledge in language study. Edited by leading figures in the field, the chapters offer new insights on how ‘decolonising’ can be adopted as a methodology for charting the next steps in solving practical language-related problems in educational and related social policy areas. Divided into two sections, the book covers the coloniality of language, the materiality of culture and colonial scripts, the decolonisation imperative, multilingualism discourse and decolonisation, and decolonising languages in public discourse. With 20 chapters authored by experts from across the globe, this pioneering collection is an essential reference and resource for advanced students, scholars, and researchers of language and culture, sociolinguistics, decolonial studies, racial studies, and related areas.

With help from a global cast of scholars, Kumiko Murata explores the remodelling of the discipline of applied linguistics, which traditionally regarded Anglophone native-speaker English as the standard for English as a lingua franca (ELF). This edited volume probes the dichotomy between the current focus of applied linguistic research and a drastically changed English use in a globalised world. This division is approached from diverse perspectives and with the overarching understanding of ELF as an indispensable area of applied linguistics research. The volume includes theoretical backgrounds to English as a lingua franca, the nature of ELF interactions, language policy and practice from an ELF perspective, and the relationship between multilingualism and ELF. A resourceful book not only to ELF researchers but also applied linguists in general, as well as policy makers, administrators, practicing teachers, and university students from diverse linguacultural backgrounds.

This collection presents a holistic picture of the sociolinguistic landscape in Bangladesh, offering a critical understanding of language ideologies and social inequalities in the country, as they connect more widely to dynamics in the Global South. The book seeks to untangle the voices embedded in the language practices of a range of communities and professions in the region, which have been little studied in the literature, and encourage a rethinking of the relationships between language and nationality, class, ethnicity, race, and gender. Highlighting perspectives from established and emerging researchers and drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches and methodologies, the volume is organized around such key themes as bilingualism and diglossia; language variation across domains; language and identity in literature; and the interconnectedness of language, identity, and globalization. Taken together, the collection calls attention to the socially and spatially situated nature of language practices in Bangladesh and in turn, the ways in which scholars in the Global South make sense of the sociolinguistic landscape at both the local and global levels. This book will appeal to scholars working in sociolinguistics, particularly those working on language policy, language and identity, language variation, and in or about the Global South.