Our Books - Ideas That Shape Scholarship

Featuring in-depth studies of iconic reggaetón artists from Ivy Queen to Karol G, 'Puerto Rican Spanish, Reggaetón Style: The (Socio)Linguistics of Urban Music' is a groundbreaking collection that delves into the sociolinguistic intricacies of reggaetón. This volume offers innovative examinations of the genre through a linguistic lens, featuring a diverse range of methodologies and subdisciplines, including phonology, lexicography, semantics, and discourse analysis. The chapters explore the stylistic elements that define reggaetón, shedding light on the unique indexical value of sibilant and liquid consonants, the distinctive lexicon of reggaetón lyrics, and the ways in which artists use language to navigate—and challenge—racial and gender stereotypes in the construction of their performative identities. By bridging the gap between linguistic theory and popular music, this cutting-edge volume offers a fresh perspective on reggaetón’s cultural power. It is an invaluable resource for anyone working in fields like language, sociolinguistic analysis, performance studies, popular music, and Puerto Rican culture. 'Puerto Rican Spanish, Reggaetón Style: The (Socio)Linguistics of Urban Music' will not only resonate with researchers, but it will also captivate fans of reggaetón—from cultural and media critics to the everyday listener. With its thorough exploration of how language drives the global expansion and cultural significance of reggaetón, this text is essential for anyone interested in the intersections of language, music, and sociocultural identity.

'Germanic Philology: Perspectives in Linguistics and Literature' offers new, compelling, and thought-provoking contributions to the field of Germanic Linguistics. Nine authors from three different continents (North America, Europe, and South America) present in this edited volume their latest research on such diverse topics as Old High German, Old Saxon and Early New High German poetry, Yiddish, German Heritage speakers in the U.S., Germanic language periodization, paleography, and gender issues in Modern Standard German. 'Germanic Philology: Perspectives in Linguistics and Literature' strives to rekindle dialogue and discourse about topics in Germanic Linguistics while at the same time providing innovative and interesting talking points to the discipline in an international, trans-Atlantic framework. The articles featured in this volume will appeal to students and instructors of Germanic Linguistics alike as well as to anyone interested in this subject.

Cantonese (Jyut Jyu) is a language prevailing in the Guangdong province of China, Hong Kong, Macau, and ethnic Chinese groups in Southeast Asia and North America. It evolves with the engagements of the authoritarian government and globalization over time. Cantonese in China is special because it remains strong under the constant suppression from the administration and the continual interactions between the natives and migrants. However, the concern about Cantonese dying among the natives has been increasing in recent years. The speaking population, the imposed language policy, and the economy at least determine Cantonese’s life. In particular, the economy is also a window to examine the central-local relations in China due to the leading roles of the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong, and Macau in China’s economic growth. Therefore, the struggles of local language between the younger generation and the Communist Party via the Internet are exposed. The book intends to explore the rising of a potential language community around the globe that speaks Cantonese by analyzing the usage and images of Cantonese of a popular TV show on YouTube, discussion groups on Baidu Tieba and Facebook, and talk shows on Bilibili with content analysis, interviews, and cases studies. Through this research, the relations between language and collective identity will be presented in an innovative way. "Remaking a Global Cantonese Community with Television and Social Media" has something to offer everyone, regardless of age or background. For those residing in mainland China, it’s a journey back in time. Older Cantonese speakers will reminisce about their childhood, with memories of delicious Cantonese food, playful children’s songs, and cherished customs. Even those who aren’t native Cantonese speakers will recall the Cantonese TV shows, movies, and music that colored their youth. Younger readers will find familiar elements in the short videos they currently enjoy. For language preservation advocates, this book sheds light on Cantonese speakers’ efforts to protect their native language and the challenges they face. For readers outside of mainland China, it offers insights into the country’s internal changing landscape, especially grassroots practices and identities. By blending the disciplines of linguistics, political science, and communication, this book provides a broad perspective on how language is intertwined with our sense of belonging.

This manual focuses on teaching Italian as a foreign language in the academic field, taking into consideration the various subjects and disciplines that can be found in a university course in Italian Studies. Various chapters are included within that range, for example, from Italian phonetics and dialectology to art as a means to deepen elements of the Italian language, to morphology with word formations, and to translation as well as subtitling. The range also covers technology as a tool for telecollaboration, academic writing, and learning Italian through geography or the language of vulgarity. Besides, the manual takes into consideration the use of the Italian press for learning, together with the use of comics and cartoons to teach the Italian language. The contribution aims to be a point of reference both for teachers and students who are focusing on linguistics, philology, didactics, and pedagogy. It lays emphasis on the teaching methodology, the instruments of teaching, and the available resources. It also seeks to deal with the various teaching problems and reflects on the disciplines as well as alternative proposals for teaching.

Set against the rich and troubled tapestry of the West’s Greco-Roman inheritance, the Sanskrit root 'manth/-', which roughly translates to “a churn” ('mantha') or “to churn” ('manth'), serves as a cauldron into which age-old binaries are blended. A mantha of the Greek metaphysical notion of the One and the Many drives explorations of a variety of themes, including the Feminine and the Masculine, Self and Other, East and West, Heroes and Monsters, Olympians and Titans, Creativity and Innovation. Accordingly, the psychoanalytic canon is (re)introduced to a diversity of perspectives, from linguistics and Translation Studies to educational theory and horror fiction. Guided by the 'Opus Contra Culturam', Warford, infusing his background in linguistics, Translation Studies, Spanish, Sociocultural Theory, and Global Humanities, demonstrates the importance of stretching beyond what is known in one’s cultural milieu, that “one” taking many forms: the citizen, the student, the professional, the innovator, the scholar, and the infinite intersections of group identifications into which we are susceptible to being siloed. Specific topics include cultural complexes and trauma, Titanism, integrative approaches to human development and learning theory, the Monstrous, as well as creativity and innovation studies.

'Lazuri: An Endangered Language of the Black Sea' is a unique source in terms of presenting a close examination of the Laz language from multiple perspectives. This volume, edited by Züleyha Ünlü, and Brian George Hewitt, examines the current status of the Laz language, Laz speakers’ perceptions of ethnolinguistic vitality, the significance of the Laz language for theoretical research in linguistics, the examination of Laz lexical data from historical documents, the linguistic variation of the Laz language, the use of a Laz alphabet in literary genres, contemporary responses to preserve the Laz language, and reflections from applied linguistics for the future of the Laz language. Focusing on the main features of the Laz language and its present situation in Turkey and in other regions as well as the attempts to revitalize Laz and Laz culture, this book will be the first scholarly publication on Laz as a South Caucasian language in terms of being a road-map for future studies.

This volume explores the issue of social class from the point of view of its linguistic articulations. Indeed, as Machin and Richardson (2008) stated, “discourses may be variously approached as (often simultaneously) reflecting class structures, as a site of class inequalities, as expressive of class identities or class consciousness and/or as a constituent part of more performative class action.” Some of the contributions that make up the volume were presented at a conference held at Cagliari University, Italy, in 2017 and responded to the call for analyses on the role of language in reflecting, maintaining, enacting, and inculcating ideas on social class in literary and non-literary texts and discourses in any cultural or linguistic setting. This volume aspires to encourage scholars in disciplines and academic fields that have shied away from reflections on structural inequalities in favor of studies on ethnic, gender, and cultural identities in the last decades to take back on board the concept of social class and to engage with it in a novel way. The variety of approaches – ranging from the more traditional sociolinguistic one, anthropology, to literary and discourse studies – and cultural settings – with case studies coming from 3 continents – represented in the chapters show that social class is a productive and illuminating concept for trying to (re)make sense of social reproduction and change.

Anastasi introduces an alternative vision about language development and music involvement to the current scientific discourse. Her view is based on a rigorous evolutionary perspective, through which she not only demonstrates the hypothesis of vocal continuity with other species via morphological data but, more importantly, also demonstrates how music is first and foremost a biological and cognitive trait. The bond between animal and human communication is here interpreted as an interspecific universal with a clear evolutionary impact on the speech’s natural history. Such continuity does not undermine the species-specificity of our linguistic system and, at the same time, supports the theory according to which music had a clear evolutionary role in the inception of the prosodic and musical components of speech. In leaning towards a bio-naturalistic approach, the most convincing view is that of a vocal and functional continuity of music. This appears to be demonstrable through the evolutionary past of vocality in other animal species, not constrained from having some form of cultural transmission. The book evidences that the current research scenario on non-human animal communication benefits from the support of semiotics and, specifically, zoosemiotics. The latter approach enables us to interpret music and chant not only as a simple formal and meaningless exercise, but rather as a communicative element perceived and processed by organisms equipped with cognitive abilities. Anastasi argues that vocal continuity, made possible by biological constraints that mark its anatomical and physiological aspects, places human beings in a relationship of semiotic continuity with non-human communication forms. In turn, this enables us to better describe the phylogenetic processes which determined the development of musical behaviours in the Sapiens, as well as the way in which such behaviours interwove with the expressive vocality of the animal world.

Georgia is a part of the Caucasus region, located at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north and east by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres (26,911 sq mi), and its approximate population is about 3.716 million. Georgia is a motherland of Iberian or Kartvelian languages: Georgian, Svan, Megrelian and Laz, a language family native to the South Caucasus. This diverse collection is devoted to a wide range of linguistic works, such as descriptive studies of the Kartvelian languages and Georgian sign language, along with some theoretical contributions, dialectology, lexicography, psycholinguistics and computational linguistics, as well as history, ethnography, religion and educational issues. These articles are not only the best studies of Kartvelology but also clearly show its contribution to world science.