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Exploring Language Change - Mari Jones

Exploring Language Change

By: Mari Jones, Ishtla Singh

Hardcover | 17 November 2005 | Edition Number 1

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This book explores the phenomenon of language change, with a particular focus on the social contexts of its occurrence and its possible motivations, including speakers' intentions and attitudes.
Using wide-ranging case studies presenting new or little-known data, Jones and Singh draw a distinction between "unconscious" and "deliberate" change. The discussion on "unconscious" change considers phenomena such as the emergence and obsolescence of individual languages, while the book also includes detailed discussion on "deliberate" change, traditionally marginalised in favour of explorations of the "unconscious" variety. The sections on "deliberate" change focus on issues of language planning, including the strategies of language revival and revitalisation movements, and also include a detailed exploration of what is arguably the most extreme instance of "deliberate" change; language invention for real-world use.
As a student-friendly text which covers a wide variety of language situations, it also makes a clear, but often ignored, distinction between concepts such as language policy and planning, and language revival and revitalisation, and the innovative case studies which permeate the text demonstrate that real-life language use is often much more complex than theoretical abstractions might suggest.
This book will be extremely useful to students on a variety of courses including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and language policy and planning.
Industry Reviews

'Informative and eminently readable, the book covers most of the ground one would expect in an introductory work, using a refreshing mix of well-known and less familiar examples. The book is neatly structured, its seven chapters following a logical sequence and guiding the reader almost seamlessly through the separate stages of a well-developed argument. While all the chapters are self-contained and the reader may 'dip in' at any point, this is one linguistics textbook which reads well from cover to cover.' - The Linguist List

'This book on a much-debated topic opens up a number of significant new perspectives ... an erudite and user-friendly volume which presents a wealth of new data. It is likely to be widely welcomed.' - MLR

'This book is a handy and useful reference to the processes of language change and the social, political, educational and economic change it invariably includes.' - BAAL News


'This book on a much-debated topic opens up a number of significant new perspectives ... an erudite and user-friendly volume which presents a wealth of new data. It is likely to be widely welcomed.' - MLR

'This book is a handy and useful reference to the processes of language change and the social, political, educational and economic change it invariably includes.' - BAAL News

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