This work explores the importance of meaningful action for language teaching and learning, paying tribute to the enduring influence of Earl Stevick. With contributions from 19 ELT authors and influential academics, Meaningful Action draws upon and acknowledges the huge influence of Earl Stevick on language teaching. Stevick's work on 'meaningful action' explored how learners can engage with activities that appeal to sensory and cognitive processes, ensuring that meaning is constructed by the learner's internal characteristics, and by their relationship with other learners and the teacher. This edited volume focuses on meaningful action in three domains: learner internal factors and relationships between the people involved in the learning process; classroom activity; and diverse frameworks supporting language learning.

There are around 6,000 living languages in the world, but as of 2012, less than 4 percent of them can claim official status in one of more of the 196 existing states. This lack of official status, along with other cultural, political, and legal factors, is contributing to a worldwide loss of linguistic diversity and cultural richness. The essays in this book explore the many facets of language rights and language protection from a variety of theoretical, legal, and academic perspectives. Important lessons are taken from the Basque case in Europe, and Native American and French-Canadian cases in North America. Woven throughout the book is the belief in the power of discourse and research to protect and even enhance linguistic diversity through legal recognition and other means. Language protection, however, is only possible if we encourage the acceptance of cultural diversity and multilingualism as a positive outcome for the whole population of the state, not just for a minority with in it. We should abandon the idea of the monolingual mono-cultural nation-state, and encourage the population of each country to adopt the concept of a multi-cltural state.

This volume presents a new approach to motivation that focuses on the concept of ‘vision’. Drawing on visualisation research in sports, psychology and education, the authors describe powerful ways by which imagining future scenarios in one’s mind’s eye can promote motivation to learn a foreign language. The book offers a rich selection of motivational strategies that can help students to ‘see’ themselves as potentially competent language users, to experience the value of knowing a foreign language in their own lives and, ultimately, to invest effort into learning it. Transformational leaders’ vision for change is one of the prerequisites of turning language classrooms into motivating learning environments, and the second part of the book therefore focuses on how to ignite language teacher enthusiasm, how to re-kindle it when it may be waning and how to guard it when it is under threat.

Urtero, euskararen erabileraren nondik norakoak aztertzeko, euskaltzaindiaren jagon sailaren sustapen batzordeak jagon jardunaldiak antolatzen ditu. Hizkuntzaren corpusaz arduratzen baldin bada ere, halaber, euskararen estatus sozialaren arreta hartzen du Euskaltzaindiak, 1920ko sortarauek erraten duten bezala. Euskararen sustatzea, erabileraren zabaltzea, hizkuntzaren kalitatea bermatzea eta hiztunen eskubideak zaintzea, horiek dira jagon sailaren eginkizun nagusiak.

2013an, Jagon Sailaren Sustapen batzordeak Nafarroan, Iruñean, jardunaldiak antolatu zituen. Jardunaldi horiek erakutsi nahi zuten elkarteek, erakundeek nola lan egiten zuten euskararen alde, zein ziren alde itxaropentsuak eta besteak, eta, aitzina begira, lan egiteko norabide berri eta eraginkorrak zein izan zitezkeen.

Jardunaldietako ekarpenen artean bat zinez azpimarratzekoa izan zen, Paula Kasares euskaltzain urgazlearena. Paula Kasares Baztango Udaleko euskara teknikaria da eta Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoko Filologia eta Hizkuntzaren Didaktika saileko irakaslea ere. Bi kargu horiek erakusten dute landa-lana ezagutzen duela baina bai ere soziolinguistikan teoriek hizkuntzen transmisioaz, hizkuntzen erabileraz ekartzen dutena.

Koldo Izagirrek gure hizkuntzan artseniko aztarnak aurkitu zituen bezala, Pako Aristi euskararen inguruko diskurtsoa kutsatzen duten gezurrak detektatzen saiatu da liburu honetan: euskara politizatua dagoela, ez dela modernoa, subentzionatua dagoela, erakargarritasuna falta zaiola…
Horretarako mila urteko historia marrazten du, Nafarroako Erresumaren garaitik hasi eta gaurdaino euskarak jasan duen endekapen planifikatua deskribatuz.
Botere hegemonikoak, berez bereizia zen lurralde bat menderatu duenean, gezurrak asmatzen baititu bere aurpegia ederresteko, eta menderatua konplexuz betetzeko. Gero gezurrok inposatzen ditu, eta guk irentsi egiten ditugu, azkenik, gezurren gainean eraikitako ekimenak antolatzeko.
Liburu hau zaplazteko bat da diskurtso desideologizatuen aurpegian; kolpe bat gogoeta alienatuen mahai gainean. Astindua, eta ondoren, katarsia. Hori guztia estilo bizian idatzia, istorio, pasadizo, aipu eta gogoeta zorrotzak erabiliz.
Liburu pertsonala, guztiz, baina herri baten hatsa jaso nahi duena. Aspertu behintzat, irakurle, ez zara aspertuko.
 

In South America indigenous languages are extremely diverse. There are over one hundred language families in this region alone. Contributors from around the world explore the history and structure of these languages, combining insights from archaeology and genetics with innovative linguistic analysis. The book aims to uncover regional patterns and potential deeper genealogical relations between the languages. Based on a large-scale database of features from sixty languages, the book analyses major language families such as Tupian and Arawakan, as well as the Quechua/Aymara complex in the Andes, the Isthmo-Colombian region and the Andean foothills. It explores the effects of historical change in different grammatical systems and fills gaps in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) database, where South American languages are underrepresented. An important resource for students and researchers interested in linguistics, anthropology and language evolution.

• Explores the role of language contact and the importance of social interaction and cultural exchange in language change
• Examines the current linguistic diversity through the lens of structural features, using the latest documentation and analyses of these understudied languages
• Bases much of the analysis on a large-scale database of hundreds of features from 60 languages
 

Are minor languages the lifeblood of cherished local identities or just passports with restricted validity, serving no purpose in today’s transnational, global world? Italy’s north-eastern region of Friuli is a case in point: in this area, around half a million people speak Friulian, a Romance language of the Rhaeto-Romance family, which is attested to in written texts since 1150 and acquired official minority language status in 1999. Geographically and politically off-centre, Friuli remained isolated for a long part of its history and developed a unique language that sustained a distinctive identity and culture. Starting from the nineteenth century, large-scale migration towards Northern Europe and the Americas brought Friulian into contact with other languages and contexts of use. The Friulian Language: Identity, Migration, Culture is the first comprehensive study in English of this little-known language to consider its history and the variety of its cultural manifestations from antiquity to the present day. The volume gathers together the work of ten contributors who are specialists in the fields of history (Fulvio Salimbeni), law (William Cisilino), linguistics (Paola Benincà, Franco Finco, Fabiana Fusco and Carla Marcato), literary studies (Rosa Mucignat and Rienzo Pellegrini), and migration (Javier P. Grossutti and Olga Zorzi Pugliese). The focus of the book is on Friulian, its varieties, its linguistic characteristics and its use in literature from fourteenth-century ballads to Pier Paolo Pasolini, and more recent poetry by Novella Cantarutti and others. Equal attention is given to the Friulians themselves, the social and political transformations of the region, and the experience of migration, in particular the case of high-skilled mosaic craftsmen from the Alpine foothills. Thanks to its multidisciplinary approach, the book sheds light on the questions of why Friulian has developed the way it has, what its significance as a minor language is, and how it can negotiate its relationship to other languages on a global scale.

Social Media is fast becoming a key area of linguistic research. This highly accessible guidebook leads students through the process of undertaking research in order to explore the language that people use when they communicate on social media sites.
This textbook provides:
• An introduction to the linguistic frameworks currently used to analyse language found in social media contexts
• An outline of the practical steps and ethical guidelines entailed when gathering linguistic data from social media sites and platforms
• A range of illustrative case studies, which cover different approaches, linguistic topics, digital platforms, and national contexts
Each chapter begins with a clear summary of the topics covered and also suggests sources for further reading to supplement the initial discussion and case studies. Written with an international outlook, Researching Language and Social Media is an essential book for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Linguistics, Media Studies and Communication Studies.
 

The human mind is an unlikely evolutionary adaptation. How did humans acquire cognitive capacities far more powerful than anything a hunting-and-gathering primate needed to survive? Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder with Darwin of evolutionary theory, saw humans as “divine exceptions” to natural selection. Darwin thought use of language might have shaped our sophisticated brains, but his hypothesis remained an intriguing guess—until now. Combining state-of-the-art research with forty years of writing and thinking about language evolution, Derek Bickerton convincingly resolves a crucial problem that both biology and the cognitive sciences have hitherto ignored or evaded.
What evolved first was neither language nor intelligence—merely normal animal communication plus displacement. That was enough to break restrictions on both thought and communication that bound all other animals. The brain self-organized to store and automatically process its new input, words. But words, which are inextricably linked to the concepts they represent, had to be accessible to consciousness. The inevitable consequence was a cognitive engine able to voluntarily merge both thoughts and words into meaningful combinations. Only in a third phase could language emerge, as humans began to tinker with a medium that, when used for communication, was adequate for speakers but suboptimal for hearers.
Starting from humankind’s remotest past, More than Nature Needs transcends nativist thesis and empiricist antithesis by presenting a revolutionary synthesis—one that instead of merely repeating “nature and nurture” clichés shows specifically and in a principled manner how and why the synthesis came about.