When Languages Collide

When Languages Collide

When Creole and Spanish Collide

Generations of West Indian migrants have long called Central America home. The descendants of these Creole English speakers live in communal enclaves along the Caribbean coast of Central America, where their Creole heritage and language are in contact zones with Spanish language and culture. When Creoles and Spanish Collide: Language and Culture in the Caribbean presents contemporary insight into these intra-Caribbean diasporic communities on how they grapple with evolving Creole identity and representation, language contact, language endangerment, and linguistic discrimination. Communal resilience oftentimes manifests itself via linguistic innovation and creativity. Editors Glenda-Alicia Leung and Miki Loschky showcase the scholarship of emerging and established regional and transatlantic scholars in When Creoles and Spanish Collide, which serves as a decolonizing research space.

A War of Words

Yasir Suleiman's 2004 book considers national identity in relation to language, the way in which language can be manipulated to signal political, cultural or even historical difference. As a language with a long-recorded heritage and one spoken by the majority of those in the Middle East in a variety of dialects, Arabic is a particularly appropriate vehicle for such an investigation. It is also a penetrating device for exploring the conflicts of the Middle East, the diversity of its peoples and the diversity of their viewpoints. Suleiman's book offers a wealth of empirical material, and intriguing, often poignant illustrations of antagonisms articulated through pun or double entendre.