Diversity has come to be recognized as one of the central concerns in our thinking about society, culture and politics. At the same time, it has proved one of the most difficult issues to deal with on the basis of established theories and methods, particularly in the social sciences. Studying diversity not only challenges widespread views of who we are and what we do in social life; it also challenges the theories, models and methods by means of which we proceed in studying diversity. Diversity exposes the boundaries and limitations of our theoretical models, in the same way it exposes our social and political organizations.
Encounters sets out to explore diversity in language, diversity through language and diversity about language. Diversity in language covers topics such as intercultural, gender, class or age-based variations in language and linguistic behaviour. Diversity through language refers to the way in which language and linguistic behaviour can contribute to the construction or negotiation of such sociocultural and political differences. And diversity about language has to do with the various ways in which language and diversity are being perceived, conceptualized and treated, in professional as well as in lay knowledge - thus including the reflexive and critical study of scientific approaches alongside the study of language politics and language ideologies. In all this, mixedness, creolization, crossover phenomena and heterogeneity are privileged areas of study. The series title, Encounters, is intended to encourage a relatively neutral but interested stance towards diversity, moving away from the all too obvious 'cultures-collide' perspective that is dominant within the social sciences.
The target public of Encounters includes scholars and advanced students of linguistics, communication studies, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, as well as students and scholars in neighbouring disciplines such as translation studies, gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, postcolonial studies.
Jan Blommaert is former Research Director of the IPRA Research Centre of the University of Antwerp and currently Professor of Languages in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is author of Discourse (2005), co-author of Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance (1998), editor of Language Ideological Debates (1999), and co-editor of the Handbook of Pragmatics (1995-2003) and The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication (1991).
Marco Jacquemet is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of San Francisco. His work focuses on the complex interaction of different languages and communicative practices in a globalized world. His current research seeks to assess the communicative mutations resulting from the intersection in the Mediterranean area between mobile people (migrants, local and international aid workers, missionaries, businessmen, etc.) and electronic texts (content distributed by satellites, local television stations, Internet connectivity, cellular telephony). As part of this research, in the early 1990s he studied the communicative practices of criminal networks in Southern Italy and the emerging Italian cyberculture. In 1994 he conducted fieldwork in Morocco and Italy on migratory patterns between the two countries. Since 1998, he has been involved in multi-site ethnographic fieldwork in Albania and Italy, investigating the linguistic and socio-cultural consequences of Albania's entry into the global system of late-modern capitalism. Marco Jacquemet is author of Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials (1996).
Ben Rampton is Professor of Applied and Sociolinguistics at King's College London. His work involves ethnographic and interactional discourse analysis, frequently also drawing on anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. His publications cover urban multilingualism; language, youth, ethnicities and class; language education; second language learning; and research methodology. Ben Rampton is author of Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents (1995/2005), Language and Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School (forthcoming), co-author of Researching Language: Issues of Power & Method (1992), and co-editor of The Language, Ethnicity & Race Reader (2003).
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