Please Note: This is a new version of a previously announced text.
A collected volume on the interconnection between language and ethnic identity.
Like the first volume, The Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Volume
2 is a reference work on the interconnection between language and ethnic
identity. In this volume, 37 new essays provide a systematic look at
different language and ethnic identity efforts, assess their relative
successes and failures, and place the cases on a success-failure continuum.
The reasons for these failures and successes and the linguistic, social,
and political contexts involved are subtle and highly complex. Some of
these factors have to do with whether the language is considered a dialect,
as in the cases of Bavarian, Ebonics, and Scots (considered to be dialects
of German, American English, and British English, respectively). Other
factors have to do with government policy, as in the cases of Basque and
Navajo. Still other factors are historical, such as the way Canaanite was
supplanted in present-day Israel by another classical language-Hebrew.
Although the volume offers considerable sophistication in the treatment of
language, ethnicity and identity, it has been written for the
non-specialized reader, whether student or layperson. The contributors are
an international group of well-known scholars in a range of fields. Fishman
and Garcia provide a detailed introduction that addresses the difficulty of
assessing the success or failure of a language. They also present a
conclusion that integrates the data presented in the volume.