Language, Capitalism, Colonialism: Toward A Critical History

About the Author Monica Heller is Professor of Anthropology and Education at the University of Toronto, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a past president of the American Anthropological Association. Bonnie McElhinny is Principal of New College, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, and former Director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute. Product Description Heller and McElhinny reinterpret sociolinguistics for the twenty-first century with an original approach to the study of language that is situated in the political and economic contexts of colonialism and capitalism. In the process, they map out a critical history of how language serves, and has served, as a terrain for producing and reproducing social inequalities. The authors ask how, and by whom, ideas about language get unevenly shaped, offering new perspectives that will excite readers and incite further research for years to come. Review "...a provocative history of the ways in which language ideologies and linguistic practices have served as a warrant for structures of social difference and social inequality from fifteenth-century imperial exploration to the neoliberal globalization of the present day." -- Richard Bauman, Indiana University, Bloomington"Ambitious, wide-ranging, and full of fascinating detail, this book really does offer a different kind of history of linguistic ideas, one that every sociolinguist and linguistic anthropologist should read." -- Deborah Cameron, University of Oxford"Sweeping and breathtaking in scope, forking and turning in unexpected directions, yet deeply intimate and honest in its reflection, this book is a new model for critical engagement with the history of linguistics as a discipline." -- Joseph Sung-Yul Park, National University of Singapore Review "...a provocative history of the ways in which language ideologies and linguistic practices have served as a warrant for structures of social difference and social inequality from fifteenth-century imperial exploration to the neoliberal globalization of the present day." (Richard Bauman, Indiana University, Bloomington)"Ambitious, wide-ranging, and full of fascinating detail, this book really does offer a different kind of history of linguistic ideas, one that every sociolinguist and linguistic anthropologist should read." (Deborah Cameron, University of Oxford)"Sweeping and breathtaking in scope, forking and turning in unexpected directions, yet deeply intimate and honest in its reflection, this book is a new model for critical engagement with the history of linguistics as a discipline." (Joseph Sung-Yul Park, National University of Singapore)