Modern Languages: Why It Matters

by Katrin Kohl

Overview

It might seem as if globalization is making the whole world speak English. But spend time in any major city and you are likely to encounter a cornucopia of languages. Even monolingual people have different ways of speaking to their bosses or teachers, their intimate friends or their pets. And if you live in India or Nigeria, you might use five different languages during a typical day.

Katrin Kohl makes a passionate case for why we must embrace languages in all their diversity. When you study a language, you open a unique doorway into the world, immerse yourself in a different way of seeing, and discover new ways of communicating with people from different cultures on their terms. Kohl argues that language diversity is of vital importance to human societies, sustaining the complexity of human nature, culture and technology. We should care about preserving it as much as we care about preserving the diversity of our biological world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509540549
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	02/08/2021
Series:	Why It Matters
Pages:	140
Product dimensions:	4.80(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Katrin Kohl is Professor of German Literature at the University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

Preface: Why Languages Matter vii

1 Understanding Identity 1

2 Experimenting with a New Medium 22

3 Exploring Difference 40

4 Training Cultural Intelligence 62

5 Developing the Imagination 80

6 Negotiating Globalization 101

Afterword: Sustaining a Multilingual Future 125

Notes 130

Further Reading 141

Index 146