Arabic-L:LING:New Book

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 21 Aug 2006
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-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject:New Book:Language, Religion and National Identity in  
Europe and the Middle East: Myhill

-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------
1)
Date: 21 Aug 2006
From:reposted from LINGUIST
Subject:New Book


Title: Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the Middle
East
Subtitle: A historical study
Series Title: Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 21

Publication Year: 2006
Publisher: John Benjamins
	   http://www.benjamins.com/
	

Book URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi? 
bookid=DAPSAC%2021


Author: John Myhill, University of Haifa

Hardback: ISBN: 902722711X Pages: 300 Price: U.S. $ 138.00
Hardback: ISBN: 902722711X Pages: 300 Price: Europe EURO 115.00


Abstract:

This book discusses the historical record of the idea that language is
associated with national identity, demonstrating that different
applications of this idea have consistently produced certain types of
results. Nationalist movements aimed at 'unification', based upon  
languages
which vary greatly at the spoken level, e.g. German, Italian, Pan- 
Turkish
and Arabic, have been associated with aggression, fascism and genocide,
while those based upon relatively homogeneous spoken languages, e.g.  
Czech,
Norwegian and Ukrainian, have resulted in national liberation and
international stability. It is also shown that religion can be more
important to national identity than language, but only for religious  
groups
which were understood in premodern times to be national rather than
universal or doctrinal, e.g. Jews, Armenians, Maronites, Serbs, Dutch  
and
English; this is demonstrated with discussions of the Holocaust, the
Armenian Genocide, the civil war in Lebanon and the breakup of  
Yugoslavia,
the United Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements  vii
Introduction  1-26
Premodern national churches, Roman Europe, and the Caliphate  27-70
Small languages and national liberation  71-117
Big languages, delusions of grandeur, war, and fascism  119-176
Language, religion, and nationalism in Europe  177-227
Language, religion, and nationalism in the Middle East  229-276
Conclusion  277-281
Bibliography  283-293
Index  295-300


"It has always been clear that language is linked to nationalism and
nationalism to language. What John Myhill has done here is to show  
for the
first time that this easy equation ignores the linguistic facts. It  
may be
true that a "language is a dialect with an army and a navy." But it  
is not
just the army and the navy that matter. It also matters that some  
languages
are more obviously languages than others."  Peter Trudgill



Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                      Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): Arabic, Standard (arb)
                      Armenian (hye)
                      Czech (ces)
                      Dutch (nld)
                      English (eng)
                      German, Standard (deu)
                      Italian (ita)
                      Norwegian, Nynorsk (nno)
                      Ukrainian (ukr)
                      Serbian (srp)


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End of Arabic-L:  21 Aug 2006