Defying the Global Language: Perspectives in Ethnic Studies

Description

This book continues a conversation initiated by renowned intellectuals and writers worldwide and crossculturally who have claimed ownership of what were previously considered colonial or vehicular languages. The essays use as their reference significant works of written and oral literature, theater, and media. The theories presented in this book are some of the most important within the field of ethnic studies today and include perspectives from linguistic and literary theory as well as from feminist and disability theories. This book looks at notions of race, gender, class, and ethnicity and how these are expressed-or not-by language, and it demonstrates the latest trends in ethnic studies without dismissing the original theories that shaped the field. As the first study to concentrate on how speakers of indigenous and/or local languages significantly appropriate a dominant language as their own as a means of decolonizing communication and reinforcing cross-border commonalities on all levels of political and economic power, this is an important book for those in the fields of comparative literature, ethnic studies, linguistics (especially sociolinguistics), women's and gender studies, African and African American studies, Asian studies, French and francophone studies, Caribbean studies, English, disability studies, cultural studies, Middle Eastern studies, and postcolonial studies. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Defying the Global Language • Cheryl Toman 1 The Question of Having a Body in Ethnic Studies • Therí Alyce Pickens 2 Marilyn Chin’s Dialectic of Chinese Americanness • Anastasia Wright Turner 3 Women’s Literature Orature and Male Castration • Gilbert Doho 4 French as an Assaulted Language • Louis Yapo 5 The African Comic Book as the New African Proverb • Julia diLiberti 6 Indian Womanhood in Novels by Naipaul and Espinet • Anita Baksh 7 Defiant Language in Chamoiseau’s Code-switching • Elisabeth M. Lore Index About the Contributors