Languages and Their Status

by Timothy Shopen

Book Overview

An introduction both to languages themselves and to their social role, Languages and Their Status gives insight into the meaning, value, and function of language within culture and into the ways language behavior varies and changes. It examines the part languages play in the evolution and structure of communities and, in turn, the ways languages are shaped by the social forces impinging on their speakers.

Each chapter discusses what...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812212495
• ISBN13: 9780812212495
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent

Along with the other volume in the series, "Languages and their speakers," this is one of the top 10 books on linguistics. The book consists of a set of articles/chapters on various languages. For each language, it walks the reader through an analysis of some grammatical aspect of that language, and it also talks about the social environment of that language and its speakers. For instance, in the chapter on Mohawk, it walks you through an analysis of polysynthetic morphology. (If you're not a linguist: that's a way of forming words that seems very exotic if your native language is English.) It also talks about the near-death of the Mohawk language in Canada, and how an effective language maintenance program was instituted for Mohawk there.The book is very, very readable. I've often used chapters from it as extra-credit assignments in introductory linguistics courses, and I've read it for fun more than once myself.