Author(s): Helen Kelly-Holmes (Editor), Tommaso M. Milani
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
Publication Date: 12 Jun. 2013
Language: English
Print length: 157 pages
ISBN-10: 9789027202680
ISBN-13: 9027202680
Book Description
This volume analyses the complex relations between multilingualism and the media: how the media manage multilingualism; how multilingualism is presented and used as media content; and how the media are discursive sites where debates about multilingualism and other language-related issues unfold. It is precisely this inter-relatedness that we want to flag up when we talk about “thematising” multilingualism in the media. More specifically, the focus of this volume is on the empirical and theoretical opportunities and challenges posed by the thematisation of multilingualism in the media. The volume, originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Language and Politics 10:4 (2011), presents a number of case studies from a variety of linguistic, media, political, social, and economic contexts: from print-media debates on trilingual policies in Luxembourg to “new media” discussions about the “sexiness” of Irish or the “national” value of Welsh; from issues of linguistic “authority” and “authenticity” in an American television programme to Wikipedia’s multilingual policy and practice.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Kelly-Holmes and Milani have provided a valuable synthesis of critical sociolinguistic research on mass media, but also a range of stimulating original new frameworks and perspectives. The volume is a theoretically rich interpretation of what media ‘do’ with linguistic diversity and multilingualism, based on well-chosen case studies. It is a persuasive demonstration of why sociolinguistic theorising must orient to mass media, and why media research needs sociolinguistics. — Nikolas Coupland, Cardiff University
This volume addresses the many – frequently creative – ways in which linguistic diversity is represented in the media (both traditional media as well as new social media), for the first time in such an innovative linguistic, detailed, systematic and comprehensive way. Thus, salient questions such as the management of multilingualism and metalinguistic comments about linguistic diversity are investigated as well as technical issues such as dubbing of films or issues of subtitling. Moreover, case studies illustrate how the specific national language policies interact with policies of media outlets and identity politics, i.e. the discursive construction of individual as well as collective multilingual identities. A ‘must read’ for everybody as multilingualism has become an inherent and necessary characteristic of everyday and institutional discourses in our globalised world. — Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University
The close and detailed analyses of situated discursive practices in the media have made valuable literature to the field on multilingualism and the media. — Jing Huang, Lancaster University, in Journal of Language and Politics, Vol. 15:6 (2016)
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