La recherche de la langue parfaite dans la culture européenne PDF Download

Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Seuil
ISBN:
Category : Europe
Languages : fr
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Encyclopédique enquête tant sur la langue initiale avant Babel que sur les tentatives de créer une langue idéale (et unique) après ce chaos. Suivant la trame historique, d'Adam à l'espéranto, l'auteur, volubile et généreux, nous entraîne dans une entreprise culturelle ahurissante.

Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631174653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history. From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority. To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History. The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.

Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745657737
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
More than ever before, our conflict-ridden, drifting planet needs the qualities that Europe, unique among the continents, has developed in more than two millennia of history: its self-criticism, its urge to self-transcendence, exploration and experiment, its conviction that alternative and better forms of human togetherness can be achieved, as well as its dedication to the cause of seeking and promoting this improvement in practice. But today Europe is unsure of itself and its place in a fast-changing world; it is devoid of vision, limited in resources and lacking the will to pursue its vocation. It is also struggling with the consequences of a one-sided process of globalization which is divorcing power from politics, inciting the shift from the social state to security-focused governance and piling up the casualties of uncontrolled market expansion and the ethically blind commercialization of human life. Bauman argues that despite the odds Europe still has much to offer in dealing with the great challenges that face us in the twenty-first century. Through sharing its own hard-won historical lessons, Europe can play a vital role in moving from the Hobbesian-like world in which we find ourselves today towards the kind of peaceful unification of humanity that was once envisioned by Kant.

Author: Geneviève Zarate
Publisher: Archives contemporaines
ISBN: 2813000396
Category : Language and culture
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Built around the concept of linguistic and cultural plurality, this book defines language as an instrument of action and symbolic power. Plurality is conceived here as : a complex array of voices, perspectives and approaches that seeks to preserve the complexity of the multilingual and multicultural enterprise, including language learning and teaching ; a coherent system of relationships among various languages, research traditions and research sites that informs qualitative methods of inquiry into multilingualism and its uses in everyday life ; a view of language as structured sociohistorical object, observable from several simultaneous spatiotemporal standpoints, such as that of daily interactions or that which sustains the symbolic power of institutions. This book is addressed to teacher trainers, young researchers, decision makers, teachers concerned with the role of languages in the evolution of societies and educational systems. It aims to elicit discussion by articulating practices, field observations and analyses based on a multidisciplinary conceptual framework.

Author: Wojciech Skalmowski
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042912984
Category : Linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
The liber amicorum is a collection of 40 articles written by Polish, Russian, Belgian and French philologists about the themes of the jubilarian's interests and academic research: general linguistics, comparatism and etymology, relations between Poland and the World, modern Polish literature, Russian literature and culture (18-20th century). The contributions are representative for the varied horizon of historical, linguistic, literary and cultural interests of Prof. Skalmowski.

Author: Peter A. Kraus
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263612
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
This book proposes a multidisciplinary assessment of the impact of complex diversity on language politics and policies, analysing how the legacies of the old interact with the challenges of the new. Its main focus is on the interplay of multilingualism on the one hand, and the dynamics of transnationalism, globalisation, and Europeanisation on the other. This interplay confronts contemporary societies with unprecedented questions, as they face the need to come to grips with increasingly varied and pervasive manifestations of linguistic and cultural diversity. This volume develops an integrative approach that identifies the key social and political dimensions at hand, offering an innovative contribution to the ongoing conversation on the manifestations and management of multilingualism.

Author: Enrica Piccardo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351002767
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 645

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Plurilingual Language Education is the first comprehensive publication on plurilingualism, offering a multidimensional reflection on the nature, scope, and potential of plurilingualism in language education and society. Authored by a range of internationally recognized experts, the Handbook provides an overview of key perspectives on plurilingualism in a complementary range of fields. After a comprehensive introduction to the concept itself, 24 chapters are organized in six parts, each examining plurilingualism through a different lens. The Handbook spans historical, philosophical, and sociological dimensions, examines cognitive and neuroscientific implications, and the limitations of boundaries before moving to a pragmatic perspective: How is plurilingual language education developing in different contexts around the world? How can it contribute to language revitalization? How can it be expected to develop in education, digital spaces, and society as a whole? Written for an international audience, this handbook is an indispensable reference tool for scholars in education and applied linguistics, educators, graduate and post-graduate students, and policy makers.

Author: Patrick Sériot
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 1614515298
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This book identifies the Romantic notion of the whole as the fundamental epistemological source of the notion of structure in the thinking of the Prague Linguistic Circle, primarily its Russian representatives, and studies what amounted to the slow, painful process of disengagement from the organicist metaphor in an intellectual world very different from Saussure's.

Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : it
Pages : 442

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Author: Ray Taras
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 074255516X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Is Europe indeed uniting or instead falling apart as a result of anti-immigrant prejudices, a massive Islamic influx, and ancient intra-European hatreds? This innovative and engaging book explores this key question by examining the national and religious phobias and prejudices, antipathies and sympathies, stereotypes and heterotypes of Europe west and east. Considering the sources of Europe's culture-based divide, Ray Taras argues that the idea of two "Europes" is grounded both in reality and myth. The accession process that brought a dozen new members into the European Union after 2004 highlighted the persisting gulf between "old" and "new" Europe. While many concrete borders between east and west were removed (commercial, legal, passport regimes), many remained (absence of a single Euro currency zone, labor market, and security community). Virtual borders too were invented or re-imagined: the postmaterialist, inclusionary, tolerant values supposedly found in old Europe versus the materialist, nationalistic, xenophobic ones of new Europe. After reviewing the two Europes' contrasting historical legacies, Taras examines the EU institutions designed to overcome the historical European divide. He considers the treaties, political rhetoric, citizen attitudes, and literary narratives of belonging and separation that both bind and fray the fabric of Europe. Throughout, this interdisciplinary work provides a comprehensive, hard-hitting, and unabashed review of how enlarged Europe embraces contrasting understandings of its political home and of who belongs and who does not.