Language, Capitalism, Colonialism

Author: Monica Heller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781487594169
Category : Sociolinguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"Providing an original approach to the study of language by linking it to the political and economic contexts of colonialism and capitalism, Heller and McElhinny reinterpret sociolinguistics for a twenty-first century audience. The authors map out a critical history of how language serves as a terrain for producing and reproducing social inequalities. The book, organized chronologically, and beginning in the period of colonial expansion in the sixteenth century, covers the development of the modern nation state and then the fascist, communist, and universalist responses to the inequities such nations created. It then moves through the two World Wars and the Cold War that followed, as well as the shift to liberal democracy, the welfare state, and decolonization in the 1960s, ending with the contemporary period, characterized by a globalized economy and neoliberal politics since the 1980s. Throughout, the authors ask how ideas about language get shaped, and by whom, unevenly across sites and periods, offering new perspectives on how to think about language that will both excite and incite further research for years to come."--

Language, Capitalism, Colonialism

Author: Monica Heller
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442606207
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Book Description
Providing an original approach to the study of language by linking it to the political and economic contexts of colonialism and capitalism, Heller and McElhinny reinterpret sociolinguistics for a twenty-first-century audience. They map out a critical history of how language serves as a terrain for producing and reproducing social inequalities. The book, organized chronologically, and beginning in the period of colonial expansion in the sixteenth century, covers the development of the modern nation state and then the fascist, communist, and universalist responses to the inequities such nations created. It then moves through the two World Wars and the Cold War that followed, as well as the shift to liberal democracy, the welfare state, and decolonization in the 1960s, ending with the contemporary period, characterized by a globalized economy and neoliberal politics since the 1980s. Throughout, the authors ask how ideas about language get shaped, and by whom, unevenly across sites and periods, offering new perspectives on how to think about language that will both excite and incite further research for years to come.

Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism

Author: Onur Ulas Ince
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190637293
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
In Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism, Onar Ulas Ince combines an analysis of political economy with normative political theory to examine the formative impact of colonial economic relations on the historical development of liberal thought in Britain. Focusing on the centrality of liberal economic principles to Britain's self-image as a peaceful commercial society, Ince investigates some of the key historical moments in which these principles were thrown into question by the processes of forcible expropriation and exploitation that typified the British imperial economy as a whole.

Not Like a Native Speaker

Author: Rey Chow
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231522711
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering historical experience of being caught among unequal languages, is the subject of Rey Chow's book. A diverse group of personae, never before assembled in a similar manner, make their appearances in the various chapters: the young mulatto happening upon a photograph about skin color in a popular magazine; the man from Martinique hearing himself named "Negro" in public in France; call center agents in India trained to Americanize their accents while speaking with customers; the Algerian Jewish philosopher reflecting on his relation to the French language; African intellectuals debating the pros and cons of using English for purposes of creative writing; the translator acting by turns as a traitor and as a mourner in the course of cross-cultural exchange; Cantonese-speaking writers of Chinese contemplating the politics of food consumption; radio drama workers straddling the forms of traditional storytelling and mediatized sound broadcast. In these riveting scenes of speaking and writing imbricated with race, pigmentation, and class demarcations, Chow suggests, postcolonial languaging becomes, de facto, an order of biopolitics. The native speaker, the fulcrum figure often accorded a transcendent status, is realigned here as the repository of illusory linguistic origins and unities. By inserting British and post-British Hong Kong (the city where she grew up) into the languaging controversies that tend to be pursued in Francophone (and occasionally Anglophone) deliberations, and by sketching the fraught situations faced by those coping with the specifics of using Chinese while negotiating with English, Chow not only redefines the geopolitical boundaries of postcolonial inquiry but also demonstrates how such inquiry must articulate historical experience to the habits, practices, affects, and imaginaries based in sounds and scripts.

Language and Power

Author: Benedict R. O'G. Anderson
Publisher: Equinox Publishing
ISBN: 9789793780405
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
In this lively book, Benedict R. O'G. Anderson explores the cultural and political contradictions that have arisen from two critical facts in Indonesian history: that while the Indonesian nation is young, the Indonesian nation is ancient originating in the early seventeenth-century Dutch conquests; and that contemporary politics are conducted in a new language. Bahasa Indonesia, by peoples (especially the Javanese) whose cultures are rooted in medieval times. Analyzing a spectrum of examples from classical poetry to public monuments and cartoons, Anderson deepens our understanding of the interaction between modern and traditional notions of power, the mediation of power by language, and the development of national consciousness. Language and Power, now republished as part of Equinox Publishing's Classic Indonesia series, brings together eight of Anderson's most influential essays over the past two decades and is essential reading for anyone studying the Indonesian country, people or language. Benedict Anderson is one of the world's leading authorities on Southeast Asian nationalism and particularly on Indonesia. He is Professor of International Studies and Director of the Modern Indonesia Project at Cornell University, New York. His other works include Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism and The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World.

Egypt's Occupation

Author: Aaron G. Jakes
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503612627
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Book Description
The history of capitalism in Egypt has long been synonymous with cotton cultivation and dependent development. From this perspective, the British occupation of 1882 merely sealed the country's fate as a vast plantation for European textile mills. All but obscured in such accounts, however, is Egypt's emergence as a colonial laboratory for financial investment and experimentation. Egypt's Occupation tells for the first time the story of that financial expansion and the devastating crises that followed. Aaron Jakes offers a sweeping reinterpretation of both the historical geography of capitalism in Egypt and the role of political-economic thought in the struggles that raged over the occupation. He traces the complex ramifications and the contested legacy of colonial economism, the animating theory of British imperial rule that held Egyptians to be capable of only a recognition of their own bare economic interests. Even as British officials claimed that "economic development" and the multiplication of new financial institutions would be crucial to the political legitimacy of the occupation, Egypt's early nationalists elaborated their own critical accounts of boom and bust. As Jakes shows, these Egyptian thinkers offered a set of sophisticated and troubling meditations on the deeper contradictions of capitalism and the very meaning of freedom in a capitalist world.

Linguistic Imperialism

Author: Robert Phillipson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780194371469
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Book Description
This study explores the contemporary phenomenon of English as an international language, and sets out to analyze how and why the language has become so dominant. It examines the historical spread of the language, the role it plays in Third World countries, and the ideologies it transmits.

Language and Migration

Author: Tony Capstick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351207709
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
Language and Migration provides a lively introduction to the relationship between language and migration. Drawing on real-world case studies from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and New Zealand, this book investigates the language and literacy practices which sustain, extend, or curb different forms of migration. Individual trajectories, family networks, and societal level policy are examined through an interdisciplinary perspective on empires and colonialism, transnationalism, and globalization. Exploring the linguistic diversity which has resulted from voluntary and forced migration, this book covers theories from migration studies, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, sociology, and education studies, and offers broad coverage of different contexts of migration across the globe. It provides students and teachers with: Migration theories to interrogate current thinking on human mobility. Concepts from applied linguistics combined with other disciplines to explore complex migration experiences in countries of origin and destination. A critical understanding of language and power in economic migration and forced migration. An introduction to the role of language in broader debates about the impact of migration on national and international policies such as international development, global security, and education. Practical guidance on using discourse analysis to identify how migrant identities are constructed in the media and how this affects our understandings of asylum, immigration, and social cohesion. Featuring a range of activities and case studies in each chapter, Language and Migration is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying this topic.

Contracting Colonialism

Author: Vicente L. Rafael
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822313410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
In an innovative mix of history, anthropology, and post-colonial theory, Vicente L. Rafael examines the role of language in the religious conversion of the Tagalogs to Catholicism and their subsequent colonization during the early period (1580-1705) of Spanish rule in the Philippines. By tracing this history of communication between Spaniards and Tagalogs, Rafael maps the conditions that made possible both the emergence of a colonial regime and resistance to it. Originally published in 1988, this new paperback edition contains an updated preface that places the book in theoretical relation to other recent works in cultural studies and comparative colonialism.

The Archaeology of Capitalism in Colonial Contexts

Author: Sarah K. Croucher
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461401925
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
The Archaeology of Capitalism in Colonial Contexts: Postcolonial Historical Archaeologies explores the complex interplay of colonial and capital formations throughout the modern world. The authors present a critical approach to this topic, trying to shift discourses in the theoretical framework of historical archaeology of capitalism and colonialism through the use of postcolonial theory. This work does not suggest a new theoretical framework as such, but rather suggests the importance of revising key theoretical terms employed within historical archaeology, arguing for new engagements with postcolonial theory of relevance to all historical archaeologists as the field de-centers from its traditional locations. Examining case studies from North America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, and Europe, the chapters offer an unusually broad ranging geography of historical archaeology, with each focused on the interplay between the particularisms of colonial structures and the development of capitalism and wider theoretical discussions. Every author also draws attention to the ramifications of their case studies in the contemporary world. With its cohesive theoretical framework this volume is a key resource for those interested in decolonizing historical archaeology in theory and praxis, and for those interested in the development of modern global dynamics.