Search results for ""author rajend mesthrie""

A scholarly and entertaining study of words, phrases and idioms which reflects the diverse social and linguistic currents within which the Indian South African community has developed. It focuses on the effects of language contact in borrowings, grammatical interference and semantic shifts as speakers of Indic languages came into contact with speakers of English, Afrikaans, Fanagalo and African languages. It focuses on the Indic lexical items which are common to all speakers, irrespective of whether their ancestral language was Tamil or Bhojpuri; on the lexical items restricted to particular subgroups depending on their ancestral language. It further annotates the idiomatic and slang phrases found principally amongst speakers of SAIE and identifies the specific grammatical and phonological features which characterise this variety of English. Mesthrie's work shows clearly both the distinctiveness of SAIE and its South Africanness. This lexicon provides an invaluable source of comparison with Indian English, the Creoles of the Caribbean, and with the linguistic experience of other overseas South Asian communities."Mesthrie's A Lexicon of South African Indian English, described by the author as a supplement (and also complement) to the 1980 edition of A Dictionary of South African English (ed. Jean Branford) is a valuable and interesting endeavour in its own right. It is a valid contribution to the study of language and should appeal to students of linguistics, sociologists, anthropologists and cultural historians. The Lexicon also adds to the growing body of works on the contributions of the Indian South Africans."Rambhajun Sitaram, LexicosRajend Mesthrie was born in Durban, South Africa. He wrote his doctorate on the transformation of Bhojpuri in South Africa. He currently teaches linguistics at the University of Cape Town.

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Sociolinguistics is one of the central branches of modern linguistics and deals with the place of language in human societies. This second edition of Introducing Sociolinguistics expertly synthesises the main approaches to the subject. The book covers areas such as multilingualism, code-choice, language variation, dialectology, interactional studies, gender, language contact, language and inequality, and language and power. At the same time it provides an integrated perspective on these themes by examining sociological theories of human interaction. In this regard power and inequality are particularly significant. The book also contains two chapters on the applications of sociolinguistics (in education and in language policy and planning) and a concluding chapter on the sociolinguistics of sign language. New topics covered include speaking style and stylisation, while current debates in areas like creolisation, globalisation and language death, language planning, and gender are reflected. Written collaboratively by teachers and scholars with first hand experience of sociolinguistic developments on four continents, this book provides the broadest introduction currently available to the central topics in sociolinguistics. Features: * Provides a solid foundation in all aspects of sociolinguistics and explores important themes such as power and inequality, sign language, gender and the internet * Well illustrated with maps, diagrams, inset boxes, drawings and cartoons * Accessibly written with the beginner in mind * Uses numerous examples from multilingual settings * Explains basic concepts, supported by a glossary * Further Reading lists, a full bibliography, and a section on 'next steps' provide valuable guidance.

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