The French Speaking World

Download or read book The French-Speaking World written by Rodney Ball and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-07 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible textbook offers students the opportunity to explore for themselves a wide range of sociolinguistic issues relating to the French language and its role in societies around the world. It is written for undergraduate students who have a sound practical knowledge of French but who has little or no knowledge of linguistics or sociolinguistics. It combines text with practical exercises and discussion questions to stimulate readers to think for themselves and to tackle specific problems. In Part One Rodney Ball looks at the diversity of the French-speaking world and the function of French in particular countries and regions, including Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. He explores its status in relation to other languages and its role in intercommunity relations. In Part Two the focus shifts to individual language features and among topics explored are regional speech forms, the differences between written and spoken French, the `social meaning' of different styles and levels of language, and French used by immigrants. Part Three looks at recent developments in the French language particularly in France itself. Key features of this book: * Informative and comprehensive: covers a wide range of current issues * Practical: contains a variety of graded exercises and tasks plus an index of terms * Topical and contemporary: deals with current situations and provides up-to-date illustrative material * Thought-provoking: encourages students to reflect and research for themselves Rodney Ball is a lecturer in French in the School of Modern Languages, Southampton University. He teaches General Linguistics and French Sociolinguistics, on which he has published a number of articles, and is involved in designing practical courses.

Download or read book When The World Spoke French written by Marc Fumaroli and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Review Books Original During the eighteenth century, from the death of Louis XIV until the Revolution, French culture set the standard for all of Europe. In Sweden, Austria, Italy, Spain, England, Russia, and Germany, among kings and queens, diplomats, military leaders, writers, aristocrats, and artists, French was the universal language of politics and intellectual life. In When the World Spoke French, Marc Fumaroli presents a gallery of portraits of Europeans and Americans who conversed and corresponded in French, along with excerpts from their letters or other writings. These men and women, despite their differences, were all irresistibly attracted to the ideal of human happiness inspired by the Enlightenment, whose capital was Paris and whose king was Voltaire. Whether they were in Paris or far away, speaking French connected them in spirit with all those who desired to emulate Parisian tastes, style of life, and social pleasures. Their stories are testaments to the appeal of that famous “sweetness of life” nourished by France and its language.

Download or read book Teaching French as a Multicultural Language written by John D. Ogden and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This booklet proposes to approach the teaching of French from a multicultural perspective. The introductory section presents the reasons for recommending this orientation and the pedagogical advantages to be derived from it, emphasizing the fact that French serves as a link between several Francophone nations and their widely different cultures. Accordingly, a multicultural approach is viewed as more realistic than one that focuses solely on France, and more likely to broaden the appeal of the language as a tool for international communication. The second section offers a panorama of the Francophone regions of the world, with brief introductions to the historical and linguistic contexts into which the French language and culture were thrust, and with a list of basic readings on Francophone literature. The third section presents various activities for teaching about the cultures of the French-speaking world, arranged by level of language proficiency. The fourth section suggests ways of making or collecting instructional materials. The fifth section, a selected bibliography and guide to resources, lists sources of print and audiovisual materials for each Francophone region, including addresses of U.S. distributors and of Francophone nations' embassies in Washington. (MES)

Download or read book Postcolonial Thought in the French Speaking World written by Charles Forsdick and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-01 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1990’s, Postcolonial Studies risked imploding as a credible area of academic enquiry. Repeated anthologization and an overemphasis on the English-language literatures led to sustained critiques of the field and to an active search for alternative approaches to the globalized and transnational formations of the post-colonial world. In the early twenty-first century, however, postcolonial began to reveal a new openness to its comparative dimensions. French-language contributors to postcolonial debate (such as Edouard Glissant and Abdelkebir Khatibi) have recently risen to greater prominence in the English-speaking world, and there have also appeared an increasing number of important critical and theoretical texts on postcolonial issues, written by scholars working principally on French-language material. It is to such a context that this book responds. Acknowledging these shifts, this volume provides an essential tool for students and scholars outside French departments seeking a way into the study of Francophone colonial postcolonial debates. At the same time, it supplies scholars in French with a comprehensive overview of essential ideas and key intellectuals in this area.

Download or read book Colonial Continuities and Decoloniality in the French-Speaking World written by Sarah Arens and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume pays tribute to the work of Professor Kate Marsh (1974-2019), an outstanding scholar whose research covered an extraordinarily wide range of interests and approaches, encompassing the history of empire, literature, politics and cultural production across the Francophone world from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Each of the chapters within engages with a different aspect of Marsh’s interest in French colonialism and the entanglements of its complex afterlives — whether it be her interest in the longevity of imperial rivalries; loss and colonial nostalgia; exoticism and the female body; decolonization and the ends of empire; the French colonial imagination; the policing of racialized bodies; or anti-colonial activism and resistance. As well as reflecting the geographical and intellectual breadth of Marsh’s research, the volume demonstrates how her work continues to resonate with emerging scholarship around decoloniality, transcolonial mobilities and anti-colonial resistance in the Francophone world. From French India to Algeria and from the Caribbean to contemporary France, this collection demonstrates the persistent relevance of Marsh’s scholarship to the histories and legacies of empire, while opening up conversations about its implications for decolonial approaches to imperial histories and the future of Francophone Postcolonial Studies.

Download or read book The Languages of the World written by Kenneth Katzner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third edition of Kenneth Katzner's best-selling guide to languages is essential reading for language enthusiasts everywhere. Written with the non-specialist in mind, its user-friendly style and layout, delightful original passages, and exotic scripts, will continue to fascinate the reader. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries, and up-to-date data on populations. Features include: *information on nearly 600 languages *individual descriptions of 200 languages, with sample passages and English translations *concise notes on where each language is spoken, its history, alphabet and pronunciation *coverage of every country in the world, its main language and speaker numbers *an introduction to language families

Download or read book The Handbook of International Trends in Environmental Communication written by Bruno Takahashi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-27 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a comprehensive review of communication around rising global environmental challenges and public action to manage them now and into the future. Bringing together theoretical, methodological, and practical chapters, this book presents a unique opportunity for environmental communication scholars to critically reflect on the past, examine present trends, and start envisioning exciting new methodologies, theories, and areas of research. Chapters feature authors from a wide range of countries to critically review the genesis and evolution of environmental communication research and thus analyze current issues in the field from a truly international perspective, incorporating diverse epistemological perspectives, exciting new methodologies, and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. The handbook seeks to challenge existing dominant perspectives of environmental communication from and about populations in the Global South and disenfranchised populations in the Global North. The Handbook of International Trends in Environmental Communication is ideal for scholars and advanced students of communication, sustainability, strategic communication, media, environmental studies, and politics.