Overview
Living Memory investigates the complex question of language and its place at the heart of Bergamasco culture in northern Italy. • Integrates extensive participant observation with sociolinguistic data collection • Reveals the political and social dynamics of a national language (Italian) and a local dialect (Bergamasco) struggling for survival • Introduces the original concept of the “social aesthetics of language”: the interweaving of culturally-shaped and emotionally felt dimensions of language-choice • Written to be accessible to students and specialists alike • Part of the Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture Series
Full Product Details
Author: Jillian R. Cavanaugh (Brooklyn College)
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Imprint: Wiley-Blackwell
Dimensions:
Width: 16.30cm
, Height: 2.80cm
, Length: 23.90cm
Weight: 0.572kg
ISBN: 9781405168823
ISBN 10: 140516882
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 20 February 2009
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Out of Print
Availability: In Print
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.
Reviews
"""Living Memory is a very solid piece of academic work on language maintenance, shift, linguistic ideologies and cultural dynamics in an Italian region and town. It makes a significant contribution to linguistic anthropology."" -Lukas D Tsitsipis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki ""An engaging study of the kinds of tensions and paradoxes that make so many minority language situations such nail biters: will conscious effort to revalorize a flagging vernacular strengthen it or kill it? Does highlighting the language's cultural heritage revitalize it or turn it into an attractive but irrelevant museum piece? 'Living Memory' beautifully documents the complex and delicate situation of a stubborn Italian dialect. In doing so, it helps us understand the role language plays in contemporary debates about identity, belonging, citizenship and rapid social change."" -Don Kulick, University of Chicago"
Living Memory is a very solid piece of academic work on language maintenance, shift, linguistic ideologies and cultural dynamics in an Italian region and town. It makes a significant contribution to linguistic anthropology. -Lukas D Tsitsipis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki An engaging study of the kinds of tensions and paradoxes that make so many minority language situations such nail biters: will conscious effort to revalorize a flagging vernacular strengthen it or kill it? Does highlighting the language's cultural heritage revitalize it or turn it into an attractive but irrelevant museum piece? 'Living Memory' beautifully documents the complex and delicate situation of a stubborn Italian dialect. In doing so, it helps us understand the role language plays in contemporary debates about identity, belonging, citizenship and rapid social change. -Don Kulick, University of Chicago
Author Information
Jillian R. Cavanaugh is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brooklyn College CUNY. She has published in a range of journals, including Language and Communication, Ethnos, and the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.
