Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 496
•
Trim: 7¼ x 10½
978-1-5381-1479-7 • Hardback • March 2019 • $184.00 • (£142.00)
978-1-5381-1480-3 • Paperback • March 2019 • $99.00 • (£76.00)
Nancy Bonvillain is professor of anthropology and linguistics at Bard College at Simon's Rock. She is the author of over twenty books on language, culture, and gender, including a series on Native American peoples. In her field work she studied the Mohawk and Navajo, and she has published a grammar and dictionary of the Akwesasne dialect of Mohawk. She received her PhD from Columbia University and has taught at Columbia University, The New School, SUNY Purchase and Stonybrook, and Sarah Lawrence College.
Preface
About the Authors
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: The Form of the Message
Chapter 3: Language and Cultural Meaning
Chapter 4: Contextual Components: Outline of an Ethnography of Communication
Chapter 5: Communicative Interactions
Chapter 6: Digital Communications and Signed Languages
Chapter 7: Learning Language
Chapter 8: The Acquisition of Communicate Competence
Chapter 9: Societal Segmentation and Linguistic Variation: Class and Race
Chapter 10: Language and Gender
Chapter 11: Multilingual Nations
Chapter 12: Multilingual Communities
Chapter 13: Language and Institutional Encounters
Summary
References
Index
Features- Non-technical terminology - Used throughout the text, this makes the content less intimidating and more accessible to students.
- Chapter-opening vignettes — Short vignettes illustrate each chapter's theme, and draw students into actual situations they can relate to and to which they can applyupcoming concepts.
- Functions of languages - Interactional, situational, and social functions of languages introduce students to the various aspects of languages as they take place and are actively created within cultural contexts.
- Gender difference - Provides students with useful insights they can apply to their own interpersonal experiences, and helps them better understand the subtleties of intercultural communication that can often cause misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict between men and women.
- Evaluation - The use and evaluation of talk within speech communitiesshows students how talk reveals social and cultural beliefs about the way that society is structured, and the ways that people are expected to act and interact.
- Power implications of language - Shows students how language can be used as a tool—and sometimes a weapon—in interpersonal and written communication, enabling them to be better prepared in a variety of situations, e.g., social, workplace, political, etc.