Liquid Languages - Constructing Languages in Late Modern Cultures of Diffusion

"Focusing on the multilingual Caribbean, this book examines ethnographic data and local performances of English to explore how language is constructed in discourse and via media practices. It is ideal reading for scholars of language contact, the sociolinguistics of globalisation, language ideology research, and African and Caribbean Studies"--

List of contents

1. Liquid languages: studying languages under conditions of complexity; 2. Constructing languages, constructing social life: linguistic anthropological, sociolinguistic, and posthumanist perspectives on languages as discourse constructs; 3. Language ideologies and the Creole context; 4. Insights into language ideologies, methodological steps and analytical approaches; 5. A diverse Caribbean island: historical, social, and linguistic perspectives on a Belizean village; 6. Language ideologies of belonging; 7. Language ideologies of prestige; 8. Material language culture between ideologies of fixity and resistance; 9. Public English: syntactical, phonetic, and prosodic variation in a formal genre; 10. Liquid languages - languages as socio-material processes in a polycentric world.

About the author

Britta Schneider is a Professor in the Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences at European University, Viadrina. Her research examines the intersection of language ideology, material culture and technology.

Summary

Focusing on the multilingual Caribbean, this book examines ethnographic data and local performances of English to explore how language is constructed in discourse and via media practices. It is ideal reading for scholars of language contact, the sociolinguistics of globalisation, language ideology research, and African and Caribbean Studies.

Foreword

Focusing on the Caribbean, this book shows how languages come into being in social discourse, institutional practices and material culture.

Product details

• Authors: Britta (European University Viadrina ) Schneider, Schneider Britta
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 31.07.2025
• EAN: 9781009249874
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0924987-4
• No. of pages: 314
• Series: Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Belize, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General, Sociolinguistics, Historical & comparative linguistics, Bilingualism & multilingualism, Bilingualism and multilingualism, Historical and comparative linguistics, South American and Caribbean indigenous languages, South American & Caribbean indigenous languages