Major Versus Minor Languages And Literatures In A Globalized World

Download or read book Major versus Minor? – Languages and Literatures in a Globalized World written by Theo D’haen and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do the notions of “World Lingua Franca” and “World Literature” now need to be firmly relegated to an imperialist-cum-colonialist past? Or can they be rehabilitated in a practical and equitable way that fully endorses a politics of recognition? For scholars in the field of languages and literatures, this is the central dilemma to be faced in a world that is increasingly globalized. In this book, the possible banes and benefits of globalization are illuminated from many different viewpoints by scholars based in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania. Among their more particular topics of discussion are: language spread, language hegemony, and language conservation; literary canons, literature and identity, and literary anthologies; and the bearing of the new communication technologies on languages and literatures alike. Throughout the book, however, the most frequently explored opposition is between languages or literatures perceived as “major” and others perceived as “minor”, two terms which are sometimes qualitative in connotation, sometimes quantitative, and sometimes both at once, depending on who is using them and with reference to what.

Download or read book Beyond Babel written by Tom Clark and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contribution that scholarly organizations make to the study of languages and literatures is a service to the value of systematically learning and using meaning—understanding that meaning operates in systems. Constructively speaking, these organizations support the teaching and research of our world’s experts in grammar, genre, medium, production, reception, exchange, critique, appreciation, and so on. More defensively, they are bulwarks against systems of misinformation, against the empowerment of misrepresentation and distrust between people. The chapters in this volume range from the Old Testament to Facebook and from East Asia to West Africa via Australia, the Americas, and Europe. The scholarly strength forged across that range speaks to similar strengths that so many scholarly organizations devoted to studies in languages and literatures have cultivated and maintained—often in the face of government indifference or hostility towards the Humanities. Beyond Babel makes a powerful case for their potential.

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Translation written by Kirsten Malmkjær and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translation is a rapidly developing subject of study, especially in China, Australia, Europe and the USA. This Handbook offers an accessible and authoritative account of the many facets of this buoyant discipline, intended for students, teachers and scholars of translation studies, modern languages, linguistics, social studies and literary studies.

Download or read book Literary Communication as Dialogue written by Roger D. Sell and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As traced by Roger D. Sell, literary communication is a process of community-making. As long as literary authors and those responding to them respect each other’s human autonomy, literature flourishes as an enjoyable, though often challenging mode of interaction that is truly dialogical in spirit. This gives rise to author-respondent communities whose members represent existential commonalities blended together with historical differences. These heterogeneous literary communities have a larger social significance, in that they have long served as counterweights to the hegemonic tendencies of modernity, and more recently to postmodernity’s well-intentioned but restrictive politics of identity. In post-postmodern times, their ethos is increasingly one of pleasurable egalitarianism. The despondent anti-hedonism of the twentieth century intelligentsia can now seem rather dated. Some of the papers selected for this volume develop Sell’s ideas in mainly theoretical terms. But most of them offer detailed criticism of particular anglophone writers, ranging from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other poets and dramatists of the early modern period, through Wordsworth and Coleridge, to Dickens, Pinter, and Rushdie.

Download or read book Dutch and Flemish Literature as World Literature written by Theo D'haen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent return of 'world literature' to the centre of literary studies has entailed an increased attention to non-European literatures, but in turn has also further marginalized Europe's smaller literatures. Dutch and Flemish Literature as World Literature shows how Dutch-language literature, from its very beginnings in the Middle Ages to the present, has not only always taken its cue from the 'major' literary traditions of Europe and beyond, but has also actively contributed to and influenced these traditions. The contributors to this book focus on key works and authors, providing a concise, yet highly readable, history of Dutch-language literature and demonstrating how this literature is anchored in world literature.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to World Literature written by Ben Etherington and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion presents lucid and exemplary critical essays, introducing readers to the major ideas and practices of world literary studies.

Download or read book A History of the Study of the Indigenous Languages of North America written by Marcin Kilarski and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The languages indigenous to North America are characterized by a remarkable genetic and typological diversity. Based on the premise that linguistic examples play a key role in the origin and transmission of ideas within linguistics and across disciplines, this book examines the history of approaches to these languages through the lens of some of their most prominent properties. These properties include consonant inventories and the near absence of labials in Iroquoian languages, gender in Algonquian languages, verbs for washing in the Iroquoian language Cherokee and terms for snow and related phenomena in Eskimo-Aleut languages. By tracing the interpretations of the four examples by European and American scholars, the author illustrates their role in both lay and professional contexts as a window onto unfamiliar languages and cultures, thus allowing a more holistic view of the history of language study in North America.