TY - BOOK AU - Branson,Jan AU - Busch,Brigitta AU - Canagarajah,Suresh AU - García,Ofelia AU - Heryanto,Ariel AU - Lantolf,James P. AU - Makoni,Sinfree AU - Mashiri,Pedzisai AU - Miller,Don AU - Pennycook,Alastair AU - Richardson,Elaine AU - Schick,Jürgen AU - Souza,Lynn Mario T.Menezes De AU - Thorne,Steven L. TI - Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages T2 - Bilingual Education & Bilingualism SN - 9781853599248 U1 - 400 22 PY - 2006///] CY - Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit : PB - Multilingual Matters, KW - Language and languages KW - Semantics KW - LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics KW - bisacsh KW - language policy KW - languages KW - linguistics N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; The Contributors --; Foreword --; Chapter 1. Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages --; Chapter 2. Then There were Languages: Bahasa Indonesia was One Among Many --; Chapter 3. Critical Historiography: Does Language Planning in Africa Need a Construct of Language as Part of its Theoretical Apparatus? --; Chapter 4. The Myth of English as an International Language --; Chapter 5. Beyond ‘Language’: Linguistic Imperialism, Sign Languages and Linguistic Anthropology --; Chapter 6. Entering a Culture Quietly: Writing and Cultural Survival in Indigenous Education in Brazil --; Chapter 7. A Linguistics of Communicative Activity --; Chapter 8. (Dis)inventing Discourse: Examples from Black Culture and Hiphop Rap/ Discourse --; Chapter 9 .Educational Materials Reflecting Heteroglossia: Disinventing Ethnolinguistic Differences in Bosnia- Herzegovina --; Chapter 10. After Disinvention: Possibilities for Communication, Community and Competence --; Index; restricted access N2 - This book questions assumptions about the nature of language and how language is conceptualized. Looking at diverse contexts from sign languages in Indonesia to literacy practices in Brazil, from hip-hop in the US to education in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this book forcefully argues that a critique of common linguistic and metalinguistic suppositions is not only a conceptual but also a sociopolitical necessity. Just as many notions of language are highly suspect, so too are many related concepts premised on a notion of discrete languages, such as language rights, mother tongues, multilingualism, or code-switching. Definitions of language in language policies, education and assessment have material and often harmful consequences for people. Unless we actively engage with the history of invention of languages in order to radically change and reconstitute the ways in which languages are taught and conceptualized, language studies will not be able to improve the social welfare of language users UR - https://doi.org/10.21832/9781853599255 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781853599255 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781853599255/original ER -