Trends in Bilingual Acquisition

This book provides a snapshot of the current state of research on bilingual acquisition and reflect the diversity of issues, methodologies, and language combinations that can be found in contemporary work in the field.

In this course, Professor Michael D. C. Drout traces literature back to its ultimate sources in oral tradition. Drout shows us how works as varied as the Odyssey, Beowulf, the Finnish Kalevala, and epic songs from the former Yugoslavia were shaped by their origins as songs sung - and composed - before a live audience. Understanding the oral roots of these great works lets us see them in a whole new light. From classical texts to contemporary digital media, Drout demonstrates how the dynamics of oral tradition shape the verbal art that makes us who we are.

Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti, which remained unpublished in his own lifetime, now appears for the first time in English. Me-ti counselled against 'constructing too complete images of the world'. For this work of fragments and episodes, Brecht accumulated anecdotes, poems, personal stories and assessments of contemporary politics. Given its controversial nature, he sought a disguise, using the name of a Chinese contemporary of Socrates, known today as Mozi.

This fourth edition has been fully revised and continues to provide a balanced and detailed guide to the theoretical landscape. Each theory is applied to a wide range of languages, including Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Punjabi, Portuguese and Spanish. A broad spectrum of texts is analysed, including the Bible, Buddhist sutras, Beowulf, the fiction of García Márquez and Proust, European Union and UNESCO documents, a range of contemporary films, a travel brochure, a children’s cookery book and the translations of Harry Potter.

Contemporary Latin America presents the epochal political, economic, social, and cultural changes in Latin America over the last 40 years and comprehensively examines their impact on life in the region, and beyond.