Author: Robert McCrum Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393339777 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
Discusses how Anglo-American has become the language of the world, and describes the changes that English has brought to far-away cultures in distant places.
Author: Jean-Paul Nerriere Publisher: ISBN: 9780578028798 Category : Foreign Language Study Languages : en Pages : 184
Book Description
"I must congratulate you on GLOBISH THE WORLD OVER. It's a pioneering text of great importance, full of enthralling insights for native and non-native English users alike." -- Robert McCrum, author, The Story of English and Literary Editor, London Observer. Globish, as a concept, takes to task the world hegemony of arrogant English-speakers. Hence the landmark book Don't Speak English - Parlez Globish became a best-seller in French, and other languages, but it never appeared in English. GLOBISH THE WORLD OVER is the first book written in Globish-English. Non-native English speakers from non-Anglophone countries use English better between themselves than with any native English speaker. Globish codifies their very efficient "similar limitations." The word Globish may strike English-speakers as an "odd" way to rename their English. However billions of speakers in Brazil, Russia, India and China will be the new "owners" of what the world is now calling Globish. The implications are far-reaching. GLOBISH THE WORLD OVER discusses this phenomenon, and demonstrates that Globish - as a deliberate and sufficient subset of English for international communication - is limited more by a person's communication ability than by mere words.
Author: Robert McCrum Publisher: Anchor Canada ISBN: 0385663765 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 354
Book Description
A small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbours, becomes the dominant world power in the 19th century. As its power spreads, its language follows. Then, across the Atlantic, a colony of that tiny island grows into the military and cultural colossus of the 20th century. These centuries of empire-building and war, international trade and industrial ingenuity will bring to the world great works of literature and extraordinary movies, cricket pitches and episodes of Dallas, the printing press and the internet. But what happens next is quite unprecedented. While the global dominance of Anglo-American power appears to be on the wane, the English language has acquired an astonishing new life of its own. With a supra-national momentum, it is now able to zoom across time and space at previously unimaginable speeds. In Robert McCrum's analysis, the cultural revolution of our times is the emergence of English, a global phenomenon as never before, to become the world's language. In the 21st century English + Microsoft = Globish. Globish takes us on a riveting and enlightening journey of the spread of a global English, from the icy swamps of pre-Roman Saxony to the shopping malls of Seoul, from the study of 'Crazy English' TM in China to crowds of juvenile wizards mobbing bookshop tills across the world. Along the way it gives new meaning to a faded old brown parchment (the Magna Carta), a 272 word presidential speech (the Gettysburg address) and a scratchy black and white film of a couple of men in space suits.
Author: Massimo Laganà Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1527529436 Category : Foreign Language Study Languages : en Pages : 166
Book Description
This book illustrates the objectives and assumptions—as well as the construction techniques and the structure—of some of the most interesting forms of reduced English, including Basic English, Special English, Plain English, Simplified English, Easy English, Specialized English, Nuclear English, Globish, and Basic Global English. Although they have different cultural approaches and are aimed at communication purposes which are not always homogeneous and are sometimes divergent, all the studies underpinning these projects share a common goal: bearing in mind the globalization processes of the contemporary world, their primary aim is to use English as a starting point from which to build a language tool to be employed as a lingua franca for effective and adequate international communication in economic, scientific, and cultural fields. The book is primarily intended for students and scholars interested in the various attempts that have been made to simplify the English language in order to make it universally available for a simple, effective and global communication.
Author: Barbara Seidlhofer Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0194426203 Category : Study Aids Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
A complete introduction to the theoretical nature and practical implications of English used as a lingua franca. Explore the theories and principles of English as a Lingua Franca with leading expert Barbara Seidlhofer
Author: Regis Debray Publisher: Verso Books ISBN: 1788734068 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
American civilization’s dominance over Europe—and what to do about it In 1900, an American of taste was a European in exile; in 2000, a trendy European is a frustrated American—or one waiting for a visa. Régis Debray explores America’s global cultural ascendancy in this provocative and witty analysis of our contemporary condition. Whereas Europe once foregrounded the importance of time and writing, America is a civilization of spectacle and kinetics, blind to the tragic complexities of human life. A measure of America’s success is how its jargon has been adopted by European languages, but there is much more than that to the States’ infiltration into all aspects of modern life. For Debray, the dominance of American civilization is a historical fait accompli. Yet he envisions a sanctuary for the best of Europe modelled on Vienna at the cusp of the twentieth century, where art and literature flowered in the rich soil of a decaying empire. For decades to come, Europe can still offer a rich cultural seedbed. “Some will call it decadence,” writes Debray, “others liberation. Why not both?”
Author: Ben Macintyre Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 1408816849 Category : Humor Languages : en Pages : 377
Book Description
'A sprinkling of delightful nuggets about the uses and abuses of the English Language' Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year '[There are] myriad delights in Ben Macintyre's musings on language' The Times, Books of the Year _____________________ Do you know your geek-speak from your geek-chic? Ever wanted to put Humpty Dumpty together again? Can you distinguish Spanglish from Chinglish? We adapt words from other languages, from slang, from developments in science, literature and art. Learn the advantages of having your own signature word; why the lifts in the House of Commons have posh accents; and discover the discreet art of the loophemism. Witty and utterly delightful, The Last Word will tease, tickle and tantalise those who enjoy all things lexical.
Author: Roy Olivier Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190257431 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
Olivier Roy, world-renowned authority on Islam and politics, finds in the modern disconnection between faith communities and socio-cultural identities a fertile space for fundamentalism to grow. Instead of freeing the world from religion, secularization has encouraged a kind of holy ignorance to take root, an anti-intellectualism that promises immediate, emotional access to the sacred and positions itself in direct opposition to contemporary pagan culture. The secularization of society was supposed to free people from religion, yet individuals are converting en masse to fundamentalist faiths, such as Protestant evangelicalism, Islamic Salafism, and Haredi Judaism. These religions either reconnect adherents to their culture through casual referents, like halal fast food, or maintain their momentum through purification rituals, such as speaking in tongues, a practice that allows believers to utter a language that is entirely their own. Instead of a return to traditional religious worship, we are now witnessing the individualisation of faith and the disassociation of faith communities from ethnic and national identities. Roy explores the options now available to powers that hope to integrate or control these groups; and whether marginalisation or homogenisation will further divide believers from their culture.
Author: Anna Wierzbicka Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0199321507 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
Imprisoned in English argues that in the present English-dominated world, social sciences and the humanities are locked in a conceptual framework grounded in English and that scholars need to break away from this framework to reach a more universal, culture-independent perspective on things human.
Author: Jonathon Keats Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199750939 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 190
Book Description
The technological realm provides an unusually active laboratory not only for new ideas and products but also for the remarkable linguistic innovations that accompany and describe them. How else would words like qubit (a unit of quantum information), crowdsourcing (outsourcing to the masses), or in vitro meat (chicken and beef grown in an industrial vat) enter our language? In Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology, Jonathon Keats, author of Wired Magazine's monthly Jargon Watch column, investigates the interplay between words and ideas in our fast-paced tech-driven use-it-or-lose-it society. In 28 illuminating short essays, Keats examines how such words get coined, what relationship they have to their subject matter, and why some, like blog, succeed while others, like flog, fail. Divided into broad categories--such as commentary, promotion, and slang, in addition to scientific and technological neologisms--chapters each consider one exemplary word, its definition, origin, context, and significance. Examples range from microbiome (the collective genome of all microbes hosted by the human body) and unparticle (a form of matter lacking definite mass) to gene foundry (a laboratory where artificial life forms are assembled) and singularity (a hypothetical future moment when technology transforms the whole universe into a sentient supercomputer). Together these words provide not only a survey of technological invention and its consequences, but also a fascinating glimpse of novel language as it comes into being. No one knows this emerging lexical terrain better than Jonathon Keats. In writing that is as inventive and engaging as the language it describes, Virtual Words offers endless delights for word-lovers, technophiles, and anyone intrigued by the essential human obsession with naming.
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Author: Robert McCrum
Author: Jean-Paul Nerriere
Author: Robert McCrum
Author: Massimo Laganà
Author: Barbara Seidlhofer
Author: Regis Debray
Author: Ben Macintyre
Author: Roy Olivier
Author: Anna Wierzbicka
Author: Jonathon Keats