从语言功能看我国少数民族语言的合理性

语言功能和语言本身严格说来不能混同。人类在礼会生活中由于需要某种东西来协调和整合人们的各种行为以构建一个有利于生存的和谐社会,才创制和发明了语言。是语言所应承载的功能决定其存在的合理性。虽然语言的表层功能多种多样,但都服务于构建和谐社会、体现民族精神的终极功能。每一种民族语言,特别是少数民族语言在其历史传承过程中以自身特有的方式履行语言的功能以使本民族和民族之间的人们能和谐共处。我国是一个多民族多语种的国家,少数民族语言是宝贵的文化遗产,和所有的语言一样,是带有普遍性的特殊性,具有必然的合理性。     

词价值获得原理探微

一般而言,词价值获得的主要途径大概有三条:一是语言学意义上的途径,即词价值由个体语言系统中的复杂联带关系所确定;二是经济学意义上的途径,即词价值首先是由劳动创造的,然后才由人对词的需求所决定;三是哲学意义上的途径,即在人与词的相互作用过程中,作为客体的词对于作为主体的人而言,不仅具有某种明确的意义或语义,而且词能满足人的某种欲望,因而词具有某种效用或有用性。所以词具备价值。     

From a cosmopolitan to a fascist land: Adriatic irredentism in motion

This article explores Adriatic irredentism, a complex political, cultural, and social movement, by specifically analyzing the unique role it played in the legitimization of Italian territorial claims over “language frontiers” such as Trieste and its hinterland. Through a close reading of first-hand sources, it examines how Italian irredentist intellectuals, public press, and associations purposefully utilized anti-Slav and anti-German arguments to shape public perception of both the Italian nation as well as Trieste’s Italian identity or “Italianità.” Although recent historiographical interpretations have emphasized continuities in local understandings of “Italianità,” this article examines the discontinuities in the debate over its identity. It suggests that although Italian identity was first conceived as an expression of cultural and linguistic autonomy within the broader intellectual framework of Adriatic multi-nationalism, this idea gradually vanished amidst the structural crisis triggered by the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867 and then inexorably faded on the eve of the Great War. Thus, notions of Italian national identity took an exclusionary and sometimes xenophobic meaning that was publicly used by a wide set of political actors to justify the territorial reincorporation of the “unredeemed” land within the borders of the new Italian state. The fascist regime, especially, utilized Italianness to further its aggressive and chauvinist agenda toward the Adriatic borderland. Consequently, Italian language and culture became instruments as well as symbols of repression and imperialism that were used to fulfill the regime’s ambitions of “fascistization” of the Slavic population living in the region.     

Sentiment and cosmopolitanism in Olaudah Equiano's Narrative

Abstract

This essay argues that Olaudah Equiano, author of the famous eighteenth-century slave narrative, displayed an international egalitarianism that was unique at the time. He was an extraordinarily well-travelled and a cosmopolitan man who criss-crossed the Atlantic, visiting every corner of the British Empire and who also endured the horrors and terrors of slavery and even as a freeman, never escaped the indignities of discrimination and racism. As a transnational figure of the African diaspora, Equiano's vision of global trade did not much differ from the tenets of British imperialism and market capitalism, which emphasized the exploitation of natural resources throughout the Empire. At the same time, in the representation of his relationship to Africa Equiano sought to establish more equalized and less exploitative international relations. Using political ideologies drawn from liberalism and republicanism, he extended them into a radical form of cosmopolitanism. Particularly in his depiction of his African childhood, and in the way he describes his participation in the Sierra Leone settlement project, is there a desire to create this new paradigm. The skillful appeal to feeling in both these sections of the narrative plays an important role in promoting this political agenda.     

Observatory's linguistic landscape: semiotic appropriation and the reinvention of space

Using a longitudinal ethnographic study of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Observatory's business corridor of Lower Main Road, the paper explores changes brought about by the influx of immigrant Africans, their artefacts and language practices. The paper uses the changes in the LL over time and the development of an “African Corner” within Lower Main Road, to illustrate the appropriation of space and the unpredictability, which comes along with highly mobile, technological and multicultural citizens. It is argued that changes in the LL are part of the act of claiming and appropriating space wherein space becomes summarily recontexualized and hence reinvented and “owned” by new actors. It is also argued that space ownership can be concealed through what we have called “brand anonymity” strategies in which the identity of the owner is deliberately concealed behind global brands. We conclude that space is pliable and mobile, and that, it is the people within space who carve out new social practices in their appropriated space.     

Cooperative justice and English as a lingua franca: the tension between optimism and Anglophones free riding

In Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, Philippe Van Parijs proposes three principles of linguistic justice. The first one applies to the fair conditions of the creation of a lingua franca understood as a common good enabling global communication. According to Van Parijs, the actual situation is unfair. The benefits are distributed evenly among speakers mastering English, but the costs are born entirely by those investing resources in learning English as a second language. I want to challenge this argument and point to a dilemma in Van Parijs’ proposition. He can either accept that English as global lingua franca (EGLF) is a done deal such that only ‘‘apocalyptical events’’ could prevent English from becoming the first global lingua franca, in which case he will have to make peace with the fact that Anglophones can enjoy the benefits this produces without having to make any kind of contribution. Or, he can temper his optimism, find reasons why natural interactions could fail at producing EGLF so as to convince native Anglophones that without their contribution, without some form of an investment in the creation of EGLF, it will not happen, or at least, it will not happen in a way that is maximally beneficial to them. I propose some arguments pointing to some benefits that would only be accessible to native Anglophones through cooperation and therefore through contributing to the creation of EGLF. Without such an argument, native Anglophones are free to benefit from the impressive by-product of the decisions to learn English of all those interested to improve their social and economic prospects: a global lingua franca.     

War,crime, empire and cosmopolitanism

The millions of deaths produced by states and governments make the 20th century ‘unnameable’, a century far more lethal than all previous ‘pre-civil’ epochs. It does not appear that contemporary state violence tends to decline or to temper the brutality commonly attributed to archaic armies, nor that the rules and limitations internationally imposed on that violence, throughout the last decades, have reduced its effects. The 20th century having gone, and while hope was growing that mass murder and destruction would also go with it, recent events appear to suggest that the twenty-first century is poised to become unnameable in its turn. In this paper a reflection is presented of the notion of war as annihilation, which emerges in contemporary international conflicts. This is followed by a review of the debate on the relationship between war, empire and crime. As a logical extension of the argument developed, war is described as a particularly devastating form of crime of the powerful. Finally, reflecting on the concept of ‘cosmopolitanism’, the discussion suggests that such a concept may offer legitimacy to those who invest their enthusiasm in supporting contemporary wars as well as to those who fight against them. The latter may find inspiration in the idea of a ‘critical’ cosmopolitanism.     

Rooting and Cultura in West Mexico

Drawing on Kwame Appiah’s discussion of the relationship between rooting and cosmopolitanism, I show that this concern was shared by many in west Mexico, where I conducted fieldwork among diverse groups of townspeople, villagers, weekend visitors from Guadalajara, and migrants working in Guadalajara and in California. All of those groups talked about belonging or rooting to specific places – villages, towns, cities, countries and so on. They also used the term cultura in a way that resonated more with Appiah’s ‘cosmopolitanism’ than with his ‘cultural particularities’. Although most people aspired to gain cultura without losing rooting, I found that many people judged themselves or others to fail in one or both respects. Migrants in California, in particular, were felt to have lost rooting without having become cosmopolitan. I focus throughout on how west Mexicans, including the novelist Juan Rulfo, used their knowledge of history as a way of claiming both rooting and cultura.     

改革开放三十年语言现象分析

语言文字作为社会交际的工具，也随着改革开放发生了重大的变革。改革开放作为重要的社会背景语境，影响了中国社会的语言面貌。其中政策法令性语言、广告语言和网络语言的发展变化，最为清晰地反映出社会前进的步伐和改革开放以后社会主义中国的崭新面貌。