Sociolinguistics from the Periphery: Small Languages in New Circumstances

by Sari Pietikäinen, Alexandra Jaffe, Helen Kelly-Holmes, Nikolas Coupland

Overview

This leading team of scholars presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users. The authors refer to this network of interlinked changes as the new conditions surrounding small languages (Sámi, Corsican, Irish and Welsh) in peripheral sites. Starting from the conviction that peripheral sites can and should inform the sociolinguistics of globalisation, the book explores how new modes of reflexivity, more transactional frames for authenticity, commodification of peripheral resources, and boundary-transgression with humour, all carry forward change. These types of change articulate a blurring of binary oppositions between centre and periphery, old and new, and standard and non-standard. Such research is particularly urgent in multilingual small language contexts, where different conceptualisations of language(s), boundaries, and speakers impact on individuals' social, cultural, and economic capital, and opportunities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107123885
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/02/2016
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.33(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Sari Pietikäinen is Professor of Discourse Studies in the Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

Alexandra Jaffe is the author of Ideologies in Action (1999), a prize-winning book on language politics on Corsica.

Dr Helen Kelly-Holmes is Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics and New Media and Director of the Centre for Applied Language Studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland.

Nik Coupland is Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, and Honorary Professor at the Department of Nordic Research, University of Copenhagen.

Table of Contents

1. Small languages in new circumstances?; 2. Reflexivity and small languages: the 'meta' imperative in late modernity; 3. Conventional and transactional authenticities in small-culture tourism; 4. Expanding possibilities for commodification: luxury, mobility, visuality; 5. Transgression, small languages, and changing boundaries; 6. A view from the periphery: sociolinguistics, small languages and change.

Editorial Reviews

'Reading the book, the authors’ passion for small languages and the selected languages in particular is very evident. This results in convincingly written passages in which the authors’ virtuosity in the field of sociolinguistics combines with interesting and sometimes even amusing examples from Corsican, Welsh, Irish and Sámi.' Sven Leuckert, The Linguist List

From the Publisher