Hospitable Linguistics: Alternative, Indigenous and Critical Approaches to Language Research and Language Encounters(4 Global Forum on Southern Epistemologies)

Challenging the boundaries of linguistics as a field, and transgressing the limitations of genre in writing about language, this book explores the possibilities of what the authors call a ‘hospitable linguistics’. It offers a critical discussion of how linguistics endeavors to domesticate, subdue and integrate both people and languages into existing academic structures and theories, and how as a discipline academic linguistics has barely begun to move beyond its colonial, patriarchal and conservative foundations. In this book, leading figures in their fields reflect on their own and others’ practices and experiences in three key areas: the agency and power of refugees and migrants; Indigenous people’s (in)hospitable responses to strangers; and hospitable language as expressed through art, music and artefacts. As a whole, the book represents a crucial intervention in attempts to fashion a new, more integrative, responsible and respectful linguistics that makes way for the ideas of people who are often the object of study. 

Table of Contents:
Tables and Figures Contributors Acknowledgements Sinfree Makoni: Foreword Chapter 1. Anne Storch and Nicholas Faraclas: Introduction            Part 1: Language As a Gift Chapter 2. Anne Storch: Sunset at a Place Visited for No Ordinary Reason Chapter 3. Arpad Szakolczai: The Decline of Hospitality and the Rise of Linguistic Imperialism Chapter 4. Judith A. Mgbemena: Linguistics and Nigerian Language Studies in Nigeria: Building Bridges for a More Viable and Hospitable Linguistics Chapter 5. Ian Hancock: The Trans-Atlantic Shipment of Romanies ('Gypsies') to the Americas: Discursive Silencing, Erasure and Inhospitableness Chapter 6. Renathe Meroro-Tjikundi and Anette Hoffmann: (Not) Speaking to a German Africanist in Namibia in 1954: On Refusal and Hospitality as Responses to Linguistic Research Chapter 7. Fiona Mc Laughlin: The Pew Inscriptions at First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia Part 2: Language and Sharing Chapter 8. Charleston Thomas: The Art and Role of Listening and Verbal Gestures in Tobagonian: Returning to the Oral/Aural Chapter 9. Dannabang Kuwabong: Dagaaba Travel Experience Names Chapter 10. Federico Olivieri: La carta que te escribo sobre festivales de cine y hospitalidad Chapter 11. Priya Parrotta: 'Paradise', 'Hospitality', and the Transformative Power of Environmental Music: When the Island Sings Chapter 12. Melinda Maxwell-Gibb: Pluri-living in the 'In' Hospitable Deep South of the US Part 3: Language, Resisting and Undoing Enclosures Chapter 13. Alison Rendall: Shetland Stories in Knitting Chapter 14. Andrea Hollington: The Fieldworker as a Human Being Chapter 15. Fatou Cissé Kane: Resistance et Hospitalité  Chapter 16. Ellen Hurst-Harosh and Fridah Kanana Erastus: Pastiche: A Conversation Between Kenyan Sheng and South African Tsotsitaal Youth Language Speakers Chapter 17. Nalini Natarajan: Women: The Hospitable 'Race' who were 'Already There' Chapter 18. Alison Phipps: On Strike on Mother Language Day: Critical Reflections, Toilet Signs and Language Geneaologies Part 4: Language and Reassuming Sovereignty Chapter 19. Angelika Mietzner: Narratives of Reciprocity and Envy in a Digo Community in Tiwi, Kenya Chapter 20. Meg Rodger: Auծur the Deep Minded Chapter 21. Penelope Allsobrook: Childhood Memories and the Call to Being Hospitable in the Bar’chu, the Bell and the Bilal Chapter 22. Ragnhild Ljosland: Giving Voice to the Witches of the Orkney Witchcraft Trials: ‘Answered, She Spoke it for Weakness of Her Owne Flesh, and for Feare of Her Lyfe’ Chapter 23. Alison Phipps: A World Glasgow Minding on the International Day of Peace Jan Knipping and Nico Nassenstein: Afterword: Hospitable Linguistics – Thoughts on Current Directions Index

About the Author :
Nicholas G. Faraclas is Full Professor in Linguistics at the University of Puerto Rico. His research focuses on language and power, language and the colonial construction of race, gender and class, linguistic contact and hybridity, indigeneity and linguistic sovereignty, critical literacy and popular education, and the linguistic and cultural repertoires of the Afro-Atlantic and Melanesia. Anne Storch is Full Professor in Afrikanistik / African Linguistics at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her research focuses on linguistic manipulation and marginalized languages, linguistic typology, colonial linguistics and anthropological linguistics. Viveka Velupillai is an Honorary Professor in the Department of English at the University of Giessen, Germany and Visiting Professor at the Language Sciences Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland. Her research focuses on linguistic typology, language contact and historical linguistics, Creoles and marginalized languages.

Review :
This is a wonderful volume that examines how mother tongues can articulate resistance to colonial sovereignty. This book contributes significantly to research around indigenous languages – keeping stories alive, telling the untold tales and highlighting the wrongs of colonialism. This volume is an urgent must-read for social-justice activists with interest in language and linguistics. Its multilingual approach to topics well beyond the conventional confines of linguistics contributes to the multidisciplinary foundation that's needed for truly inclusive research where Indigenous and marginalised voices have a say in discourses of decolonisation. This rigorous publication invites the reader to consider that the boundaries created between disciplines and languages by the colonial order are artificial. The inclusive methodologies in each chapter and the transformative approach of the book in its entirety challenge us to reflect on new ways of understanding the study of language.