LINGUIST List 15.2118

Thu Jul 22 2004

Books: Sociolinguistics: Leitner

Editor for this issue: Neil Salmond <neillinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. julia.ulrich, Australia's Many Voices: Leitner

Title: Australia's Many Voices
Subtitle: Australian English - The National Language
Series Title: Contributions to the Sociology of LAnguage

Publication Year: 2004
Publisher:	Mouton de Gruyter
		http://www.mouton-publishers.com

Book URL: http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-3110181940-1&l=E
Author: Gerhard Leitner, Free University, Berlin, Germany

Hardback: ISBN: 3110181940, Pages: xv, 395, Price: U.K. � 98.00
	 Comment: Approx. US$ 118.00

			
Abstract:

Australia's English raises many questions among experts and the
general public. What is it like? How has English changed by being
transplanted to other parts of the world? Does the rise of Australian
English and other varieties endanger the role of English as a world
language? Past studies have often been selective, focusing on the
esoteric and non-typical, and ignoring the contact situation in which
Australian English has developed.

This book and its companion, Australia's Many Voices. Ethnic
Englishes, Indigenous and Migrant Languages. Policy and Education,
develop and apply a comprehensive and integrative approach that
anchors English in the entire "habitat" of Australia's languages that
it both upset and transformed. Based on a wide range of data and on
the assumption that all manifestations of Australian English must
cohere as a system, this book retraces the social, psycholinguistic
and linguistic history of the language. It locates the contact with
indigenous and migrant languages and with American English in the
appropriate sociohistorical context and shows how several layers of
migration have shaped it. As it stratified, it was gradually accepted
and developed into a fully-fledged national variety or epicentre of
English that could be raised to the status of national
language. Implications on educational policy and attempts to reach out
into the Asia-Pacific region have followed logically from national
status.

Gerhard Leitner is Professor of English at the Free University,
Berlin.


TO BE PUBLISHED IN SEPTEMBER 2004

Gerhard Leitner
AUSTRALIA'S MANY VOICES
Ethnic Englishes, Indigenous and Migrant Languages. Policy and
Education

2004. Approx. xiv, 346 pages. Cloth.
Approx. EUR 98.00 / sFr 157.00 / approx. US$ 118.00
ISBN 3-11-018195-9
(Contributions to the Sociology of Language 90.2)

Australia's Englishes, its indigenous, migrant and contact lan-guages
and wide-ranging language policies are well-known. Based on extensive
research, Census and other data, this book develops a comprehensive
and integrative approach to Australia's language habitat and the
transformation of the indigenous habitats since colonization. Linking
social history, linguistic development and political and educational
perspectives of language policy and planning, it provides a succinct
overview of this segment of Australia's many voices and shows how it
relates to Australian English, the national language.


Lingfield(s):	Applied Linguistics,
		Sociolinguistics
		
Written In:	English (Language Code: ENG)


 See this book announcement on our website:
 http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=10950.