Linguistics has found itself in the middle of a lively debate about its disciplinary integrity, its future and role in modern societies. The ongoing discussions thrive on impulses coming from within the field and from other disciplines that either inform linguistic expertise or are themselves informed by it. They are also encouraged by a growing language awareness of individuals and entire social groups. This collection of papers covers a wide range of linguistic topics, exposing and exploring the plurilingualism of today's meta-linguistic reflection. The topics in analytical focus include the apparent integrity and the fragmentation of linguistics, starting with the early conceptions of autonomy and modularity, and ending with their elaboration in terms of interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and, more recently, postdisciplinarity of modern scholarship. The methodological pluralism of modern linguistics is shown to depend on what were and what are today the privileged modes of communication. The role of folk and expert knowledge is emphasized in the construction of metalinguistic theories and their social legitimization. Speaking up from a variety of perspectives, the contributions in this volume show that the ventriloquation of today's metalinguistic writings is best interpretable in terms of bridges and barriers in how the metalinguistic dialogue is pursued, whether on an internal or a cross-disciplinary basis.
About the Author: The Editors: Anna Duszak is Professor of Linguistics at Institute of Applied Linguistics, Warsaw University. She has published in the area of discourse analysis, pragmatics, crosscultural communication and critical discourse analysis. Recently she co-edited with Guiseppina Cortese a volume on Identity, community, discourse: English in intercultural settings (Peter Lang, 2005).
Urszula Okulska is Assistant Professor at Institute of Applied Linguistics, Warsaw University. She has published on language change, English specialized genres, political discourse and linguistic corpora. She is the author of Gender and the formation of Modern Standard English. A socio-historical corpus study with Early Modern English in focus (Peter Lang, 2006).
Anna Duszak and Urszula Okulska co-edited the volume Speaking from the margin. Global English from a European perspective (2004), published in the same series of Polish Studies in English Language and Literature, by Peter Lang.