Title: Liquid Languages
Subtitle: Constructing Languages in Late Modern Cultures of Diffusion
Series Title: Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Book URL: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/historical-linguistics/liquid-languages-constructing-languages-late-modern-cultures-diffusion?format=HB&isbn=9781009249874

Author(s): Britta Schneider

Hardback ISBN: 9781009249874 Pages: 294 Price: U.K. £ 100.00
Hardback ISBN: 9781009249874 Pages: 294 Price: Europe EURO 116.71
Hardback ISBN: 9781009249874 Pages: 294 Price: U.S. $ 130.00

Abstract:

Which ideas about language are prevalent in cultures that are not framed in Western nationalist and literate traditions? How do people conceptualise language if speakers of the same community are multilingual, have access to different language resources and only partially share ideas about what is right and wrong in language? This book explores the 'liquid' properties of language, highlighting how languages, as discursive-material assemblages, can differ in their degree of fixity. It provides a linguistic anthropological study of the language ideologies in Belize, where ethnic belonging and language practice do not necessarily match and where stable language norms are not always considered a value. Scrutinising ethnographic data and examinations of local performances of English, it shows that languages emerge in relation to belonging, prestige and material culture. Bringing to the fore liquid language cultures, it provides important additions to our understanding of late modern language assemblages in a globalising world.

Written In: English (eng)