Academic literature on the topic 'Cultural and Linguistic Diversity'

The linguistic uniformity of Europe (or the globe) is currently enforced not only by powerful economic and political forces but also by sociologists and social philosophers. At first, the learning of global English was only considered to be a necessary professional skill, then, the positive connotations of “plurilingualism” were evoked for fostering its universal adoption. Now, the acquisition of “globalese” is promoted as a means to achieve social justice. The rhetoric of justice immunises this discourse against any criticism (what can you say against justice?). Its political aims and measures are reminiscent of the aims and measures of the linguistic Jacobinism in the French Revolution. The propagandistic moves of the social sciences are accompanied by a polemic against linguistic diversity and the connection of language to culture. They are based on a reductive conception of language that underestimates their cognitive and, hence, cultural potential.

The concept of «cultural person» is studied from the point of view of various scientific areas. Its interpretation is considered in the framework of philosophy, sociology, cultural studies and linguistics. The concept of «cultural person» is presented as complex and diverse. Important features are highlighted: the translation of the specific characteristics of verbal and non-verbal behavior, synonymy in the gender-specific relationship with the concept of «elitist linguistic personality», possession and transmission of the norms of the literary language.

Evolutionary approaches to cultural change are increasingly influential, and many scientists believe that a ‘grand synthesis’ is now in sight. The papers in this Theme Issue, which derives from a symposium held by the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (University College London) in December 2008, focus on how the phylogenetic tree-building and network-based techniques used to estimate descent relationships in biology can be adapted to reconstruct cultural histories, where some degree of inter-societal diffusion will almost inevitably be superimposed on any deeper signal of a historical branching process. The disciplines represented include the three most purely ‘cultural’ fields from the four-field model of anthropology (cultural anthropology, archaeology and linguistic anthropology). In this short introduction, some context is provided from the history of anthropology, and key issues raised by the papers are highlighted.

This study is focused on the repository of linguistics among the inmates in district prison Quetta, the prison was established by the British regime in 1939.the large number of inmates are imprisoned in this prison, recently more than eight hundred inmates are imprisoned inside the prison, the inmates belong to different cultural and linguistic background, where they interact with one another, because the inmates live in one common barrack where they share lunch, food, clothing bathing and even they share common mod of living, the inmates in Quetta prison belong to different part of province even from all over the country, because the district prison Quetta is the most populated prison in the province, the Quetta city is the capital of province where different cultural , tribal, linguistic people are living, the major languages in the capital are Pashtu and Brahvi languages but the Hazargi , Punjabi, Seraiki, Kashmiri Sindhi and several more languages are spoken, there are several cultural traits also in the capital. Due to multilingual and multicultural context of the city the prison also has the multilingual and multicultural inmates inside the prison in Quetta, the Quetta prison also have large number of inmates from foreign countries such as Afghanistan and Iran, Bangladesh , Sudan ,turkey and many more because of several reason the foreigninmates are in the prison, because of being capital of province the district prison Quetta has several type of inmates which are involved in different type of antisocial activities. The prison have different type of barracks where juvenile, female and male inmates are imprisoned in different barracks, the inmates not only transfer their languages but also their cultural and vocational skills. This process of skill transfer creates several type of interactions among the inmates.

Investigations of linguistic variation are interesting and important both from the point of view of theoretical linguistics and from that of social and cultural studies. This special issue of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics focuses on linguistic diversity from a theoretical perspective and presents five selected papers that combine the study of dialect data with linguistic theorizing.