Book picks similar to
Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine by Laada Bilaniuk
ukraine
language
anthropology
eastern-europe
The Story of Language
Mario Andrew Pei - 1949
New features in this revised edition:-A new chapter on "SELF-DESIGNATION" discusses the names by which countries and people call themselves, as opposed to the names outsiders give them.-A new chapter on "LANGUAGE AND PSYCHOLOGY" covers one of the mysterious areas of language - the connection of words with the mental processes of both the individual and the social group.-Detailed discussion of such additional languages as Vietnamese and the African tongues.-New material on nonlinguistic systems of communication, such as gestural and symbolic language, and animal talk.-Most recent findings on the origin of language and how a child learns to speak.-Coverage of slang (American, British, foreign); underworld cant and professional jargons; government gobbledygook; the language of euphemism, politeness and insult brought up to date.
The Social Life of Ink
Ted Bishop - 2014
Ink is so much a part of daily life that we take it for granted, yet its invention was as significant as the wheel. Ink not only recorded culture, it bought political power, divided peoples, and led to murderous rivalries. Ancient letters on a page were revered as divine light, and precious ink recipes were held secret for centuries. And, when it first hit markets not so long ago, the excitement over the disposable ballpoint pen equalled that for a new smartphone--with similar complaints to the manufacturers. Curious about its impact on culture, literature, and the course of history, Ted Bishop sets out to explore the story of ink. From Budapest to Buenos Aires, he traces the lives of the innovators who created the ballpoint pen--revolutionary technology that still requires exact engineering today. Bishop visits a ranch in Utah to meet a master ink-maker who relishes igniting linseed oil to make traditional printers' ink. In China, he learns that ink can be an exquisite object, the subject of poetry, and a means of strengthening (or straining) family bonds. And in the Middle East, he sees the world's oldest Qur'an, stained with the blood of the caliph who was assassinated while reading it. An inquisitive and personal tour around the world, Ink asks us to look more closely at something we see so often that we don't see it at all.
The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine
Shigehisa Kuriyama - 1999
But when we look into the past, our sense of reality wavers: accounts of the body in diverse medical traditions often seem to describe mutually alien, almost unrelated worlds. How can perceptions of something as basic and intimate as the body differ so? In this book, Shigehisa Kuriyama explores this fundamental question, elucidating the fascinating contrasts between the human body described in classical Greek medicine and the body as envisaged by physicians in ancient China. Revealing how perceptions of the body and conceptions of personhood are intimately linked, his comparative inquiry invites us, indeed compels us, to reassess our own habits of feeling and perceiving.The Expressiveness of the Body was awarded the 2001 Welch Medal by the American Association for the History of Medicine.
Language and Gender
Penelope Eckert - 2002
It covers the main topics, beginning with a clear discussion of gender and of the resources that the linguistic system offers for the construction of social meaning. The body of the book offers unprecedented breadth and depth in its coverage of the interaction between language and social life. It is the ideal textbook for students in language and gender courses in several disciplines, including linguistics, gender studies, women's studies, sociology, and anthropology.
The Story of Writing
Andrew Robinson - 1995
They may wonder how, when and where did writing evolve? Do alphabets function better than hieroglyphs? And are we today, in the computer age, moving towards a universal language of signs and symbols?
Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages
Nancy Bonvillain - 1993
It examines the multi-faceted meanings and uses of language and emphasizes the ways that language encapsulates speakers' meanings and intentions.
The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews
Neal Karlen - 2007
Its survival has been an incredible journey, especially considering how often Jews have tried to kill it themselves. Underlying Neal Karlen's unique, brashly entertaining, yet thoroughly researched telling of the language's story is the notion that Yiddish is a mirror of Jewish history, thought, and practice—for better and worse.Karlen charts the beginning of Yiddish as a minor dialect in medieval Europe that helped peasant Jews live safely apart from the marauders of the First Crusades. Incorporating a large measure of antique German dialects, Yiddish also included little scraps of French, Italian, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, the Slavic and Romance languages, and a dozen other tongues native to the places where Jews were briefly given shelter. One may speak a dozen languages, all of them Yiddish.By 1939, Yiddish flourished as the lingua franca of 13 million Jews. After the Holocaust, whatever remained of Yiddish, its worldview and vibrant culture, was almost stamped out—by Jews themselves. Yiddish was an old-world embarrassment for Americans anxious to assimilate. In Israel, young, proud Zionists suppressed Yiddish as the symbol of the weak and frightened ghetto-bound Jew—and invented modern Hebrew.Today, a new generation has zealously sought to explore the language and to embrace its soul. This renaissance has spread to millions of non-Jews who now know the subtle difference between a shlemiel and a shlimazel; hundreds of Yiddish words dot the most recent editions of the Oxford English Dictionary.The Story of Yiddish is a delightful tale of a people, their place in the world, and the fascinating language that held them together.
Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality
Eric J. Hobsbawm - 1990
his incontrovertible excellence as an historian, and his authoritative and highly readable prose'. Recent events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics have since reinforced the central importance of nationalism in the history of political evolution and upheaval. This second edition has been updated in the light of those events, with a final chapter addressing the impact of the dramatic changes that have taken place. It also includes additional maps to illustrate nationalities, languages and political divisions across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings
Walter Benjamin - 1978
Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. He moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most versatile writers of the twentieth century. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times.
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
Gretchen McCulloch - 2019
Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.Because Internet is essential reading for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.
The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary
R.S. McGregor - 1993
This handy paperback dictionary is designed to meet the needs of the growing number of people now learning tospeak Hindi. It provides translations for over 36,000 headwords, using illustrative material to show words in use. Students of Hindi and South Asian studies of all kinds will find extensive coverage of historical Hindi, together with the most up-to-date colloquial and literary vocabulary. In addition, the Urdu vocabulary of Hindi is well represented. Providing contemporary, idiomatic Hindi and English, TheOxford Hindi-English Dictionary is the perfect reference guide for students, businesspeople, and travelers alike.
EarthBound (Legends of Localization #2)
Clyde Mandelin - 2016
Get ready for hundreds of pages filled with surprising revelations, inside information, obscure trivia, and universal cosmic destruction. This legend of localization doesn’t stink!
Sexuality Now: Embracing Diversity
Janell L. Carroll - 2004
Janell Carroll clearly conveys foundational biological and health issues, extensively cites both current and classic research, and addresses all material in a fresh and fun way; her book helps teach students what they need, and want, to know about sexuality. Her focus takes into account the social, religious, ethnic, racial, and cultural contexts of today's students. Dr. Carroll has used feedback from the first edition to add even further value to this popular title-streamlining student pedagogy and providing dynamic learning opportunities through Active Summaries at the end of chapters, a new online student tutorial, new video components, and content for Classroom Response Systems. This continues to be the text most representative of today's students, incorporating new sexual position art, a new pronunciation guide, and (for instructors) a new cross-cultural Slang Guide.
Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages
Gaston Dorren - 2018
Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world's 7.4 billion people in their mother tongues, you would need to know no fewer than twenty languages. He sets out to explore these top twenty world languages, which range from the familiar (French, Spanish) to the surprising (Malay, Javanese, Bengali). Babel whisks the reader on a delightful journey to every continent of the world, tracing how these world languages rose to greatness while others fell away and showing how speakers today handle the foibles of their mother tongues. Whether showcasing tongue-tying phonetics or elegant but complicated writing scripts, and mind-bending quirks of grammar, Babel vividly illustrates that mother tongues are like nations: each has its own customs and beliefs that seem as self-evident to those born into it as they are surprising to the outside world. Among many other things, Babel will teach you why modern Turks can't read books that are a mere 75 years old, what it means in practice for Russian and English to be relatives, and how Japanese developed separate "dialects" for men and women. Dorren lets you in on his personal trials and triumphs while studying Vietnamese in Hanoi, debunks ten widespread myths about Chinese characters, and discovers that Swahili became the lingua franca in a part of the world where people routinely speak three or more languages. Witty, fascinating and utterly compelling, Babel will change the way you look at and listen to the world and how it speaks.
Scram!: The Gripping First-hand Account of the Helicopter War in the Falklands
Harry Benson - 2012
This is the thrilling untold story of the young helicopter pilots -- most barely out of their teens -- who risked their lives during this brief but ferocious war. In April 1982 Harry Benson was a 21 year-old Royal Navy commando helicopter pilot, fresh out of training and one of the youngest helicopter pilots to serve in the Falklands War. These pilots, nicknamed 'junglies', flew most of the land-based missions in the Falklands in their Sea King and Wessex helicopters. Much of what happened in the war -- the politics, task force ships, Sea Harriers, landings, Paras and Marines -- is well-known and documented. But almost nothing is known of the young commando helicopter pilots and aircrewmen who made it all happen on land and sea. This is their 'Boys Own' story, told for the very first time. Harry Benson has interviewed forty of his former colleagues for the book creating a tale of skill, initiative, resourcefulness, humour, luck, and adventure. This is a fast-paced, meticulously researched and compelling account written by someone who was there, in the cockpit of a Wessex helicopter. None of these pilots has spoken before about: - The two helicopter crashes and eventual rescue following a failed SAS mission high up on an in hospitable glacier in South Georgia - The harrowing story of the Exocet strike that sunk the transport ship Atlantic Conveyor - The daring missile raid on the Argentine high command in Port Stanley - The constant mortar fire faced while supporting troops and evacuating casualties - The hair-raising head-on attacks by Argentine jets on British helicopters - The extraordinary courage shown during the evacuation of the bombed landing ship 'Sir Galahad' If you liked Apache, Vulcan 607 and Chickenhawk, you'll love Scram! The word "Scram" was coined by Falklands helicopter pilots to warn other 'junglies' to go to ground or risk being shot down as Argentinean jets blasted through 'bomb alley'. The term has never been used before or since.