Language is closely linked to our social relationships and is the medium through which we participate in a variety of social activities. This original study explores the important role of language in various aspects of our social life, such as identity, gender relations, class, kinship, status, and hierarchies. Drawing on data from over thirty different languages and societies, it shows how language is more than simply a form of social action; it is also an effective tool with which we formulate models of social life and conduct.
Fmany years the dominant focus in gender relations has been the differences between men and women. Authors like Chodorow, Gilligan, and Tannen (author of the best-selleror You Just Don't Understand) have portrayed males and females as possessing different traits, styles, and even different languages, viewing these gender differences as deep-seated and enduring.
This is the first comprehensive study of the intonation of different languages of the world, written by a team of leading scholars in the field, most of whom are native speakers of the language in question. Surveying twenty languages, the volume introduces a new system for the multilingual transcription of intonation patterns. The chapters are organized following the same general outline to highlight the differences among languages. The emphasis is on description and comparison, rather than on theory, making this an invaluable sourcebook for researchers in the field.
This volume presents 14 experimental studies of lexical tone and intonation in a wide variety of languages. Six papers deal with the discriminability or the function of intonation contours and lexical tones in specific languages, as established on the basis of listener responses, as well as with brain activation patterns resulting from the perception of tonal and intonational stimuli.
Language demonstrates structure while also showing considerable variation at all levels: languages differ from one another while still being shaped by the same principles; utterances within a language differ from one another while exhibiting the same structural patterns; languages change over time, but in fairly regular ways. This book focuses on the dynamic processes that create languages and give them their structure and variance.
