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The ultimate beginnings of this book lie in the interest that we the editors have expressed in the role that socioeconomic structures have played in determining the varying language choices speakers make in situations of language contact and multilingualism. Contrary to the received doctrine in the scholarship on language endangerment and loss, we have argued that globalization as discussed especially by economists accounts only partly for the spread of English as the foremost lingua franca of business, diplomacy, and science and technology around the world. It plays a negligible role in the general demise of indigenous languages and the death of nondominant European languages in former European settlement colonies, which is contrary to the fate of the vast majority of indigenous languages in the former exploitation colonies of Africa and Asia, where large numbers of small populations, typically rural, have maintained their ethnic vernaculars.

This monograph introduces students and scholars in linguistics, anthropology, and intercultural communication to anthropological linguistics, with a special focus on Africa. Among the topics addressed are semantic fields such as kinship or colour terminology, spatial orientation, linguistic relativity and the link between language and cognition, onomastics, the ethnography of communication, interactional sociolinguistics, emotions, (im)politeness strategies, conversation analysis, and non-verbal communication

Chapter 1. Introduction: What Can Linguistics and Language(s) Contribute to Development Practices? (Felix K. Ameka and Deborah Hill) -- Chapter 2. Localising Global Financial Key Terms: Case Studies from East Africa (Froukje Krijtenburg, Michelle Tjeenk Willink, Felix K. Ameka, Aflatoun) -- Chapter 3. Asset-Based Community Development in Diverse Cultural Contexts: Learning from Mindanao, The Philippines (Ann Hill, Anselmo B. Mercado, Anne Shangrila Fuentes, and Deborah Hill) -- Chapter 4. The Changing Conceptions of Work and the Language of Work in Ghana: Towards a Research Agenda (Akosua K. Darkwah and Dzodzi Tsikata) -- Chapter 5. The Importance of Mutual Understanding of Key Terminology in Development Projects: A Png Example (Jo Caffery, Lalen Simeon and Kiteni Kusunan Kurika) -- Chapter 6. Peer-To-Peer Learning: The Dynamics of Kin Relations, Matriliny, and Gender (Deborah Hill, Delmay Basi and Godwin Rahe) -- Chapter 7. "I Could Still Be Myself as a Warlpiri Person": How Bilingual Education Achieves Community Development Aims (Carmel O'Shannessy, Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri, Elaine Johnson Nangala and Gracie White Napaljarri) -- Chapter 8. English Language Learning as a Trojan Horse? Examining Early Childhood Teachers' Views of Teaching Young Children in an English-Medium Ngo in India (Zinnia Mevawalla and Sanobia Palkhiwala) -- Chapter 9. The Place of a Lingua Franca in Development Practice: The Case of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea (Catherine Levy) -- Chapter 10. Lost in Translation: Disorienting Research Dilemmas in a Multilingual Country (Barbara Pamphilon) -- Chapter 11. The Linguist, Language, and Economic Development: A Commentary on Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices (Salikoko S. Mufwene).

How different are sign languages across the world? Are individual signs and signed sentences constructed in the same way across these languages? What are the rules for having a conversation in a sign language? How do children and adults learn a sign language? How are sign languages processed in the brain? These questions and many more are addressed in this introductory book on sign linguistics using examples from more than thirty different sign languages. Comparisons are also made with spoken languages. This book can be used as a self-study book or as a text book for students of sign linguistics. Each chapter concludes with a summary, some test-yourself questions and assignments, as well as a list of recommended texts for further reading. The book is accompanied by a website containing assignments, video clips and links to web resources.

For three decades theoretical linguistics has had little impact on language teaching, although sociolinguistics has been employed in curriculum design and test construction. Applied linguistics has been eclectic and has seldom applied pure linguistic research. Theoretical linguists, for their part, have not encouraged attempts to apply their results. Theory and practice were separated largely because the theoretical results were so tentative. However, recent theoretical advances suggest important applications for linguistic theory in foreign language teaching and in the testing of proficiency. The acquisition of a nonnative language is probably subject to biological constraints that are closely related to those factors that guide and control first language acquisition. Methodology and test construction must allow for this. Research must determine precisely what the factors are and how they interact. Theoretical linguists interested in such research should be included in interdisciplinary teams working on foreign language learning and testing.

The paper sets out to prove that the influence of the learner's first/second language on the acquisition and use of other languages may be minimized, and ultimately eliminated, if the process of language teaching and language learning centers on the conceptual structures underlying the semantics of language units. Such conceptual structures (the conceptual inner form) shaping the peculiarities of the mode of expression characteristic of the given language community determine the choice of words in the process of communication and word combinability; if applied in second language teaching and learning they help avoid subconscious translation from the learner's first language into a second/third, thus bringing down the interfering effects.

"This collection showcases the contributions of the study of endangered and understudied languages to historical linguistic analysis and the broader relevance of diachronic approaches toward developing better informed approaches to language documentation and description. Bringing together perspectives from both established and up-and-coming scholars representing a globally and linguistically diverse range of languages, the volume demonstrates the ways in which endangered languages have and can challenge existing models of language change based around standard languages and generate innovative insights into linguistic phenomena, including pathways of grammaticalization, forms and dynamics of contact-drive change, and the diachronic relationship between lexical and grammatical categories. In so doing, the book highlights the notion that processes of language change long held to be universal are in fact shaped by cultural and typological variability. Taken together, this collection brings together perspectives from language documentation and historical linguistics toward pointing the way forward for richer understandings of language change and documentation and description, making this key reading for scholars in these fields"--

"Cultural Linguistics" -- "Editorial page" -- "Title page" -- "LCC data" -- "Table of contents" -- "List of figures" -- "About the author" -- "Acknowledgements" -- "Preface" -- "Note on transliteration conventions of Persian transcripts" -- "Chapter 1. Cultural Linguistics: An overview" -- "1.1 Cultural Linguistics" -- "1.2 The theoretical framework of Cultural Linguistics" -- "1.3 The analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics" -- "1.4 An assessment of Cultural Linguistics" -- "Chapter 2. Cultural conceptualisations and language: The analytical framework" -- "2.1 Cultural schemas" -- "2.2 Cultural categories" -- "2.3 Cultural metaphors" -- "2.3.1 Cultural metaphors relating to the Land" -- "2.3.2 Cultural metaphors relating to Medicine" -- "2.3.3 Creative cultural metaphors" -- "2.3.4 The cognitive processing continuum of cultural metaphors" -- "2.4 Concluding remarks" -- "Chapter 3. Embodied cultural metaphors" -- "3.1 Embodiment and embodied cognition" -- "3.2 Conceptualisations relating to del in contemporary Persian" -- "3.3 Del in psychological, intellectual, and person-bound concepts" -- "3.3.1 del as the seat of emotions, feelings, and desires" -- "3.3.2 del as the centre of thoughts and memories" -- "3.3.3 del as the centre of personality traits, character, and mood" -- "3.3.4 Summary" -- "3.4 Cultural conceptualisations behind the notion of del" -- "3.5 Iranian Traditional Medicine (ITM) and temperature terms in Persian" -- "3.6 Concluding remarks" -- "Chapter 4. Research methods in Cultural Linguistics" -- "4.1 Conceptual-associative analysis" -- "4.2 Conceptual analysis of story recounts" -- "4.3 (Meta)discourse analysis" -- "4.4 Corpus-based analysis" -- "4.5 Ethnographic-conceptual text/visual analysis" -- "4.6 Diachronic/synchronic conceptual analysis" -- "4.7 Concluding remarks