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This collection brings together contributions from a new wave of research into language, space, and place, at the intersection of various disciplines, from geography to sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. The authors investigate the myriad ways that people conceive of-and thereby describe-the world around them, studying the impact these ideas have on their identities, and highlighting the tension between conflicting ontologies of space.
It is a timely and invaluable new resource for researchers and students in linguistics, geography, anthropology and communication.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- Part I. Reconceptualizing the Landscape.- 2. Southeast Asian Island City-State, Singapore: Multi-Scalar Spatial Fictions and the Hinterland within.- 3. The Geographic Sides of Small-Scale Multilingualism: New Challenges in Linguistic Cartography.- 4. Border Texts: Border-Crossing Narratives and Local Myths in the Russian-Chinese Border Areas of Russia.- Part II. Decolonize This Space.- 5. Na Wahi Pana I Ho onalowale Ia...A Loa a Hou: Hawaiian Place Name Loss and Recovery In "Paradise".- 6. Place Names and their Places: Considering Layers of Language, Landscape, and Relief.- 7. ""Often Confused as": Contestations of Colonial Place Making in the Yukon Territory, Canada.- Part III. Speaking of the Environment.- 8. What Role Does Language Play in Conserving Forests and Culture? Multi-lingual Ethnobotanical Booklets in the African Savanna.- 9. "Trolls Had Been Moving Your Tongues:" Language, Landscape, and Folklore in Iceland.- Part IV. Grassroots Linguistic Geography.- 10. Toponymic Ambiguity and Plural Toponymies on Private Property.- 11. Ancestral Centers and Bureaucratic Boundaries: Sociolinguistic Scaling in an Eastern Indonesian Polity.- 12. Participatory Urban Planning Rituals in Brazil: Technical Language as a Challenge to the Democratic Production of Space.- 13. Between Toponymy and Cartography: An Evolving Geography of Heritage in George Town, Malaysia.
About the author
Greg Niedt completed a PhD in Communication, Culture, and Media at Drexel University, and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Liberal Arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Their research is focused on the visibility of minority Discourses in the physical landscape, especially those related to ethnolinguistic and/or queer communities in multicultural cities.
