Publisher's Synopsis
Acknowledging and challenging the difficult heritage of linguistics as a colonial discipline, this volume presents examples of how (in)hospitality may emerge in contexts of language encounters and language research. It considers how a more hospitable approach might shape and define the ways we interact with languages and language communities. The authors examine how we might re-imagine language as being hospitably open to the unexpected, to moments of crisis, surprise, and revelation, instead of being under control.
This book presents alternative, Indigenous and critical approaches to language research and language encounters in case studies and contexts all over the world, from Shetland and the Viking Hebrides to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, from research encounters in Nigeria, Namibia and Kenya to the situations of migrants in Glasgow and Ghana. The authors describe their attempts to establish connectedness and resonance, as well as how they have negotiated ways of making sense of these exchanges in the midst of violence, disruption and ruination. Based on such acts of exchange and resonant connection, the volume presents a fresh definition of language in its most inclusive, least domesticated sense, challenging the boundaries of linguistics as a field, to explore the possibilities of a "hospitable linguistics".
