Books on the topic 'Linguistic cultural characteristics'

This research stems from the need of the Italian Cultural Institute to map the institutions involved in teaching Italian in the area considered and to analyse the quality of the teaching and learning process of the Italian language. The objectives are multiple and linked to the importance of finding the causes that slow the growth of the study of Italian in Japanese Kansai. Therefore, the first part of this action research will outline the cultural and linguistic education coordinates that characterize the Japanese context; in the second part, the research data will be interpreted in order to trace new methodological development trajectories to increase the quality of the Italian teaching process in Kansai.Part 1 This part focuses on the situation of foreign language teaching in Japan. It also describes the strategies to promote the teaching of the Italian language in Japan from 1980 to now. 1 Modern Language Policy in Japan Between Past and Present This first chapter describes linguistic policy for the promotion of foreign languages in Japan by the Ministry of Education (MEXT). 2 Japanese Educational System Focus of this chapter are the cultural, pedagogical and linguistic education characteristics of the context under investigation. 3 Teaching Italian Language in Japan The purpose of this chapter is to outline the general frame of the spreading of the Italian cultural model in a traditional Japanese context. Part 2In the second part the action research and the training project design are described. 4 The Action-Research Project This chapter describes the overall design of the research and the research questions that inspired an investigation in the context under study. The aim is to understand whether there is a link between the methodological choices of the teachers and the difficulties in learning Italian for Japanese students. Part 3 In this third part, the situation of teaching Italian in relation to different learning contexts in Japanese Kansai will be examined. 5 A Case Study at Italian Culture Institute in Osaka The goals of this chapter are to analyse the problems of teaching Italian at the IIC and suggest methodological improvement paths for teachers of Italian language at IIC. 6 A Case Study at Osaka University The data obtained by the informants will be used to analyse the situation of the teaching of Italian at Department of Italian language of this university and suggest curricular and methodological improvements to increase the quality of teaching and learning Italian. 7 A Case Study at Kyoto Sangyo University The chapter outlines the methodological and technical characteristics used to teach Italian at Kyoto Sangyo University and suggests strategies aimed at enhancing students’ language learning.

The essays gathered in this volume are devoted to different aspects of the reception of Humanism and the Renaissance in Slavic countries. They mark the beginning of a dialogue among scholars of different Slavic languages and literatures, in search of the ways in which the entire Slavic world – albeit to varying degrees – has participated from the very beginning in European cultural transformations, and not simply by sharing some characteristics of the new currents, but by building a new identity in harmony with the changes of the time. By overcoming the dominant paradigm, which sees all cultural manifestations as part of a separate ‘national’ linguistic, literary and artistic canon, this volume is intended to be the first step in outlining some ideas and suggestions in view of the creation, in the future, of an atlas that maps the relevance of Humanism and the Renaissance in the Slavic world.

The monograph is devoted to the problem of recreating the linguistic-ethnic unity of the Old Russian anthroponymic and toponymic systems, the discovery of direct connections between the proper name and mental landmarks. The monograph provides a comprehensive description of the onomasticon of ancient Russian monuments of writing in line with comparative historical linguistics, taking into account the encyclopedic, ethnolinguistic and etymological characteristics of proper names. The system and structure of the onomastic space of monuments of ecclesiastical and secular content of the XI-XIII centuries are investigated, conceptual approaches to their description are proposed. The study of the functions of proper names, their morphemics and semantics allowed us to establish the national and cultural specifics of the Old Russian onomastic vocabulary, to determine the prospects for its evolution, as well as the formation of the modern Russian anthroponymic system. Modeling of the Old Russian onomastic space both in the field of anthroponymy and toponymy takes into account the connection of proper names with contextual usage. The participation of nominal signs in the formation of the space of written and artistic texts of the era of the Kievan state is based on the attachment of certain proper names to texts of a religious and secular nature. Nomination in the space of proper names is considered in the monograph not only as a process of activity of a creative nature, but also as a means of onymic word production in the older era. It is addressed to specialists in historical lexicology and onomastics, language history, teachers of literature, local historians.

The emergence of the Safavid Empire in the early sixteenth century marked a significant change in the geopolitics of the Middle East. This momentous change coincided with the widening of Ottoman expansion eastward and the exploration by European powers, especially by Venice, of the possibilities of forming alliances against the Ottomans with the involvement of the Safavids. Thus, Ottoman threat and commercial interests contributed to the emergence and development of diplomatic, cultural, and trade relations between the Republic of Venice and the Safavid Empire, which lasted until the end of the seventeenth century. Drawing on the documents from the Venetian State Archives and other contemporary sources, this book focuses mainly on some aspects of Safavid diplomacy, including the language of the Safavid polity, the role of European subjects as interpreters for the shahs, material and visual characteristics of Safavid diplomatic letters to Venice, the attitude of the Safavids towards resident diplomacy, the reception of the European envoys in the Safavid court and Europeans’ perception of Safavid diplomatic practices, as well as the characteristics of the Safavid embassies to Venice. We have tried to explain the role of Turkish as a language of diplomacy and communication in Safavid-Venetian encounters. We have also attempted to explore briefly how the Venetians distinguished Safavid subjects according to their ethno-linguistic affiliations. Finally, we examine the Ottoman factor in Safavid-Venetian relations in order to establish to what extent, if any, the Ottomans had an impact on the overall character of Safavid-Venetian relations.

This essay focuses on the ‘voice’ as it sounds in a specific type of recordings. This recordings always reproduce a poet performing a poem of his/her by reading it aloud. Nowadays this kind of recordings are quite common on Internet, while before the ’90 digital turn it was possible to find them only in specific collection of poetry books that came with a music cassette or a CD. These cultural objects, as other and more ancient analogic sources, were quite expensive to produce and acquire. However, all of them contain this same type of recoding which share the same characteristic: the author’s voice reading aloud a poem of his/her. By bearing in mind this specific cultural objet and its characteristics, this study aims to analyse the «intermedial relation» that occur between a poetic text and its recorded version with the author’s voice. This «intermedial relation» occurs especially when these two elements (text and voice) are juxtaposed and experienced simultaneously. In fact, some online archives dedicated to this type of recording present this configuration forcing the user to receive both text and voice in the same space and at the same time This specific configuration not just activates the intermedial relation, but also hybridises the status of both the reader, who become a «reader-listener», and the author, who become a «author-reader». By using an interdisciplinary approach that combines philosophy, psychology, anthropology, linguistics and cognitive sciences, the essay propose a method to «critically listening» some Spanish poets’ way of vocalising their poems. In addition, the book present Phonodia web archive built at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice as a paradigmatic answer to editorial problems related to online multimedia archives dedicated to these specific recordings. An extent part of the book is dedicated to the twenty-eight interviews made to the Spanish contemporary poets who became part of Phonodia and agreed in discussing about their personal relation to ‘voice’ and how this element works in their creative practice.

The dictionary contains more than 5000 eponymous, acronymic and figurative terms used in such a modern and popular sport in Russia and abroad as ice hockey. Special attention is paid to terms from the field of game technology, its history and rules. The dictionary includes figurative expressions that are actively used in modern hockey. Terminology from the field of sports medicine is widely presented-names of symptoms, syndromes, diseases, injuries that occur in hockey. The dictionary is provided with historical excursions-description of rules, traditions adopted in hockey, stories about famous players of the past, awards given in their honor. The dictionary also contains modern and historical names of hockey arenas in the world, indicating the names of the clubs that play on them, and the main technical characteristics of the arenas. The dictionary provides a wide range of typologies of hockey clubs currently playing and clubs that have become history. The publication contains a large number of examples of the use of hockey terms in modern sports journalism and scientific literature. These examples are taken from articles by North American sports journalists describing each national hockey League championship game. The book is based on more than thirty years of experience of the author-a professional translator who has been a passionate fan of ice hockey since childhood. The dictionary is intended for students of higher educational institutions who are studying in bachelor's and master's degrees in the areas of Linguistics, Journalism, Philology, International relations, Advertising and public relations, and Physical culture, as well as for teachers of these areas. This dictionary can also be useful for professional hockey players, coaches, referees, hockey commentators, and specialists. The publication will also be of interest to a wide range of readers who are interested in such a popular and actively developing sport around the world as ice hockey.

This chapter describes the rationale for and scope of this volume. As this volume demonstrates, Milton’s works have been read across the centuries and around the globe in large part through translation. It outlines the literary, linguistic, theoretical, and cultural underpinnings of this project and links the volume’s scope, organizational structure, selection of languages, among other matters, such as the impact of religious contexts and linguistic characteristics on translations of Milton’s works. This chapter’s overview of the twenty-eight chapters of the six parts, as well as the epilogue, gives a sense of the unique characteristics of the various translations as well as some shared characteristics and trends among them.

Like the other archipelagos of Remote Oceania, Fiji was colonized by Lapita voyagers approximately 1000 b.c. Over the subsequent three millennia, Fijian populations underwent considerable change, resulting in the unique cultural, biological, and linguistic characteristics that differentiate Fiji from populations in both Polynesia to the east and Melanesia to the west. This essay summarizes the Lapita archaeology of the archipelago and later culture history including change in ceramic horizons, the spatial scale of interaction within the archipelago, and potential migrations into Fiji from other island groups. The rise of Fijian chiefdoms is also examined with these polities closely linked to increasing competition, fortifications, and defendable agricultural resources. Finally, artifactual, linguistic, and biological data characterizing Fijian populations are examined, and it is concluded that the generalization of Fiji as “not quite Melanesian, not quite Polynesian” can best be explained within a cultural transmission framework that separates analogous and homologous similarity.

This chapter discusses body part nouns, a part of language that is central to human life, and the polysemy that arises in connection with them. Examples from everyday speech and narrative in various contexts are examined in a Papuan language called Koromu and semantic characteristics of body part nouns in other studies are also considered. Semantic templates are developed for nouns that represent highly visible body parts: for example, wapi ‘hands/arms’, ehi ‘feet/legs’, and their related parts. Culture-specific explications are expressed in a natural metalanguage that can be translated into Koromu to avoid the cultural bias inherent in using other languages and to reveal both distinctive semantic components and similarities to cross-linguistic examples.

In this chapter we outline some of the discussions around the role of memory, mobile media, and culturally specific notions of grief. We then focus on the key characteristics of mobile media practices that recalibrate particular forms of intimacy through a sense of a networked public that makes intimate the fabric of what it means to be a public. We discuss the methods deployed in the book and then finish with a roadmap for the particular cartographies of mobile media loss. Far from being exhaustive, Haunting Hands seeks to provide some nuanced understandings of the complex, dynamic, and rapidly changing role of mobile media in processes of loss as part of a broader context of technological, cultural, social, linguistic, and generational shifts.

This chapter examines translation theory and practice in the context of the specific linguistic and cultural challenges that arise when translating Milton’s poetry into accessible Japanese. Milton has been known in Japan as being as important as Shakespeare, but his works have a limited readership while Shakespeare has had a strong presence. Elements that account for Milton’s reception are Milton scholarship in Japan, characteristics of the Japanese language, the archaic sound of Milton’s grand English style especially given Japanese translational choices, and a Christianity articulated too immediately and profoundly for a culture in which Christian training and history are almost absent. This chapter then provides a personal account and the theoretical underpinnings of Sano’s recent Japanese translation of Samson Agonistes and her participation in a well-received production in 2012 of poet Takahashi’s adaptation of Milton’s tragedy in the Noh style.

This article begins by defending the so-called Proposition 1, which claims that for the linguist Arabic is the most interesting language in the world. It then describes the handbook’s scope and choice of topics, followed by a discussion of the real world of research on Arabic. It suggests that the study of a language must be more than the sum of its parts. However, as far as Arabic goes, a holistic linguistic tradition remains an unrealized desideratum. A number of factors continue to militate against this development, including the fact that Arabic is a very large language, the stovepiping characteristic of contemporary academia and the clash of academic and cultural traditions. Finally, the article discusses how the only approach that does justice to Proposition 1 is one grounded in radically open-minded empiricism.

The introduction traces how, through the comparison to Egyptian hieroglyphs, twentieth-century writers, directors, and theorists incessantly invoked other media as well as other nations as they sought to define the most essential qualities and capabilities of their own. Rather than attempting to combine media, the modernists defined the uniqueness of any medium by its hybridity, its ability to enclose or embody the sonic, visual, or semantic characteristics of other media forms. At the same time, by situating conceptions of hieroglyphics within the historical context of Egypt in the 1920s and in relation to the novels of Tawfiq al-Hakim and Naguib Mahfouz, the book insists on the fundamental connection between theories of new technologies on the one hand and colonialism, nationalism, and the universalist desire to bridge linguistic and cultural boundaries on the other.

Modernism in mathematics – this unusual notion turns out to provide new perspectives on central questions in and beyond literary modernism. This books draws on prose texts by mathematicians and on historical and cultural studies of mathematics to introduce the so-called ‘foundational crisis of mathematics’ in the early twentieth century, and it analyses major novels that employ developments in mathematics as exemplary of wider modernist movements. The monograph focuses on Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006) and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Hermann Broch’s novel trilogy The Sleepwalkers (1930-32), and Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities (1930/32). These novels accord mathematics and its modernist transformation a central place in their visions and present it as interrelated with political, linguistic, epistemological and ethical developments in the modern West. Not least, the texts explore the freedoms and opportunities that the mathematical crisis implies and relate the emerging notion of ‘fictional’ characteristics of mathematics to the possibilities of literature. By exploring how the novels accord mathematics a central role as a particularly telling indicator of modernist transformations, this book argues that imaginative works contribute to establishing mathematics as part of modernist culture. The monograph thus opens up new frames of textual and cultural analysis that help understand the modernist condition from the interdisciplinary perspective of literature and mathematics studies, and it demonstrates the necessity to account for the specificity of mathematics in the field of literature and science studies.

Mauritania, a Muslim country the majority of whose population speaks Ḥassāniyya Arabic, is at the western edge of the Arabic-speaking world. At the birth of Islam, the western part of the Sahara was inhabited by Berbers, with Black African populations bordering their territories to the south and south-east. After the arrival of the Banī Maˤqil at the end of the thirteenth century, Arabic- and Berber-speaking groups coexisted more or less peacefully, the Arabic speakers achieving supremacy little by little, starting in the military and political sphere and ending with cultural and linguistic domination. But if the close contact between those groups made a deep impression on Zenaga Berber (resulting ultimately in its disappearance), Zenaga also contributed a number of its characteristics to the Ḥassāniyya Arabic dialect. This chapter reviews the different stages of Arabization and offers a historical reconstruction of Ḥassāniyya through an assessment of the features shared with other Arabic dialects.

This is an encyclopedic dictionary covering hundreds of important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy--or any--translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages--English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more. The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas.

The monograph reflects the problems of Russian psycholinguistics from the moment of its inception in Russia to the present day and presents its main directions that are currently developing. In addition, theoretical developments and practical results obtained in the framework of different directions and research centers are described in a concise form. The task of the book is to reflect, as far as it is possible in one edition, firstly, the history of the formation of Russian psycholinguistics; secondly, its methodology and developed methods; thirdly, the results obtained in different research centers and directions in different regions of Russia; fourthly, to outline the main directions of the further development of Russian psycholinguistics. There is no doubt that in the theoretical, methodological and applied aspects, the main problems and the results of their development by Russian psycholinguistics have no analogues in world linguistics and psycholinguistics, or are represented by completely original concepts and methods. We have tried to show this uniqueness of the problematics and the methodological equipment of Russian psycholinguistics in this book. The main role in the formation of Russian psycholinguistics was played by the Moscow psycholinguistic school of A.A. Leontyev. It still defines the main directions of Russian psycholinguistics. Russian psycholinguistics (the theory of speech activity - TSA) is based on the achievements of Russian psychology: a cultural-historical approach to the analysis of mental phenomena L.S. Vygotsky and the system-activity approach of A.N. Leontyev. Moscow is the most "psycholinguistic region" of Russia - INL RAS, Moscow State University, Moscow State Linguistic University, RUDN, Moscow State Pedagogical University, Moscow State Pedagogical University, Sechenov University, Moscow State University and other Moscow universities. Saint Petersburg psycholinguists have significant achievements, especially in the study of neurolinguistic problems, ontolinguistics. The most important feature of Russian psycholinguistics is the widespread development of psycholinguistics in the regions, the emergence of recognized psycholinguistic research centers - St. Petersburg, Tver, Saratov, Perm, Ufa, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Kursk, Chelyabinsk; psycholinguistics is represented in Cherepovets, Ivanovo, Volgograd, Vyatka, Kaluga, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Abakan, Maikop, Barnaul, Ulan-Ude, Yakutsk, Syktyvkar, Armavir and other cities; in Belarus - Minsk, in Ukraine - Lvov, Chernivtsi, Kharkov, in the DPR - Donetsk, in Kazakhstan - Alma-Ata, Chimkent. Our researchers work in Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, China, France, Switzerland. There are Russian psycholinguists in Canada, USA, Israel, Austria and a number of other countries. All scientists from these regions and countries have contributed to the development of Russian psycholinguistics, to the development of psycholinguistic theory and methods of psycholinguistic research. Their participation has not been forgotten. We tried to present the main Russian psycholinguists in the Appendix - in the sections "Scientometrics", "Monographs and Manuals" and "Dissertations", even if there is no information about them in the Electronic Library and RSCI. The principles of including scientists in the scientometric list are presented in the Appendix. Our analysis of the content of the resulting monograph on psycholinguistic research in Russia allows us to draw preliminary conclusions about some of the distinctive features of Russian psycholinguistics: 1. cultural-historical approach to the analysis of mental phenomena of L.S.Vygotsky and the system-activity approach of A.N. Leontiev as methodological basis of Russian psycholinguistics; 2. theoretical nature of psycholinguistic research as a characteristic feature of Russian psycholinguistics. Our psycholinguistics has always built a general theory of the generation and perception of speech, mental vocabulary, linked specific research with the problems of ontogenesis, the relationship between language and thinking; 3. psycholinguistic studies of speech communication as an important subject of psycholinguistics; 4. attention to the psycholinguistic analysis of the text and the development of methods for such analysis; 5. active research into the ontogenesis of linguistic ability; 6. investigation of linguistic consciousness as one of the important subjects of psycholinguistics; 7. understanding the need to create associative dictionaries of different types as the most important practical task of psycholinguistics; 8. widespread use of psycholinguistic methods for applied purposes, active development of applied psycholinguistics. The review of the main directions of development of Russian psycholinguistics, carried out in this monograph, clearly shows that the direction associated with the study of linguistic consciousness is currently being most intensively developed in modern Russian psycholinguistics. As the practice of many years of psycholinguistic research in our country shows, the subject of study of psycholinguists is precisely linguistic consciousness - this is a part of human consciousness that is responsible for generating, understanding speech and keeping language in consciousness. Associative experiments are the core of most psycholinguistic techniques and are important both theoretically and practically. The following main areas of practical application of the results of associative experiments can be outlined. 1. Education. Associative experiments are the basis for constructing Mind Maps, one of the most promising tools for systematizing knowledge, assessing the quality, volume and nature of declarative knowledge (and using special techniques and skills). Methods based on smart maps are already widely used in teaching foreign languages, fast and deep immersion in various subject areas. 2. Information search, search optimization. The results of associative experiments can significantly improve the quality of information retrieval, its efficiency, as well as adaptability for a specific person (social group). When promoting sites (promoting them in search results), an associative experiment allows you to increase and improve the quality of the audience reached. 3. Translation studies, translation automation. An associative experiment can significantly improve the quality of translation, take into account intercultural and other social characteristics of native speakers. 4. Computational linguistics and automatic word processing. The results of associative experiments make it possible to reveal the features of a person's linguistic consciousness and contribute to the development of automatic text processing systems in a wide range of applications of natural language interfaces of computer programs and robotic solutions. 5. Advertising. The use of data on associations for specific words, slogans and texts allows you to predict and improve advertising texts. 6. Social relationships. The analysis of texts using the data of associative experiments makes it possible to assess the tonality of messages (negative / positive moods, aggression and other characteristics) based on user comments on the Internet and social networks, in the press in various projections (by individuals, events, organizations, etc.) from various social angles, to diagnose the formation of extremist ideas. 7. Content control and protection of personal data. Associative experiments improve the quality of content detection and filtering by identifying associative fields in areas subject to age restrictions, personal information, tobacco and alcohol advertising, incitement to ethnic hatred, etc. 8. Gender and individual differences. The data of associative experiments can be used to compare the reactions (and, in general, other features of thinking) between men and women, different social and age groups, representatives of different regions. The directions for the further development of Russian psycholinguistics from the standpoint of the current state of psycholinguistic science in the country are seen by us, first of all:  in the development of research in various areas of linguistic consciousness, which will contribute to the development of an important concept of speech as a verbal model of non-linguistic consciousness, in which knowledge revealed by social practice and assigned by each member of society during its inculturation is consolidated for society and on its behalf;  in the expansion of the problematics, which is formed under the influence of the growing intercultural communication in the world community, which inevitably involves the speech behavior of natural and artificial bilinguals in the new object area of psycholinguistics;  in using the capabilities of national linguistic corpora in the interests of researchers studying the functioning of non-linguistic and linguistic consciousness in speech processes;  in expanding research on the semantic perception of multimodal texts, the scope of which has greatly expanded in connection with the spread of the Internet as a means of communication in the life of modern society;  in the inclusion of the problems of professional communication and professional activity in the object area of psycholinguistics in connection with the introduction of information technologies into public practice, entailing the emergence of new professions and new features of the professional ethos;  in the further development of the theory of the mental lexicon (identifying the role of different types of knowledge in its formation and functioning, the role of the word as a unit of the mental lexicon in the formation of the image of the world, as well as the role of the natural / internal metalanguage and its specificity in speech activity);  in the broad development of associative lexicography, which will meet the most diverse needs of society and cognitive sciences. The development of associative lexicography may lead to the emergence of such disciplines as associative typology, associative variantology, associative axiology;  in expanding the spheres of applied use of psycholinguistics in social sciences, sociology, semasiology, lexicography, in the study of the brain, linguodidactics, medicine, etc. This book is a kind of summarizing result of the development of Russian psycholinguistics today. Each section provides a bibliography of studies on the relevant issue. The Appendix contains the scientometrics of leading Russian psycholinguists, basic monographs, psycholinguistic textbooks and dissertations defended in psycholinguistics. The content of the publications presented here is convincing evidence of the relevance of psycholinguistic topics and the effectiveness of the development of psycholinguistic problems in Russia.

This article discusses the revival of Hebrew, linguistic characterization, typology, the study of Hebrew, the Muslim world in the first centuries of the Hegira, Hebrew among the Karaites, and the role of Hebrew in the modern era. The term ‘Hebrew’ designates a language which has been the Jewish people's linguistic vehicle of cult, culture, and communication. Hebrew ceased to be spoken in the third century ce and persisted only in a written form. From the third century onwards Hebrew continued to be used for juridical, intellectual, philosophical, poetic, and liturgical purposes but not for daily oral communication. In Muslim Spain, written Hebrew acquired some new characteristics: it is Medieval Hebrew (MdH). At the turn of the twentieth century it became anew the mother tongue of an ever-increasing population.

This chapter examines three figurative modes Romantic authors used to represent the ineffable: allegory, symbol, and myth. In literary studies, these terms identify verbal structures which are usually evaluated in linguistic or semantic terms, although visual expression also has a ‘language’. The chapter emphasizes the linguistic context while also exploring analogies with visual art, explaining how allegory, symbol, and myth provide familiar reference systems both for the verbal and visual artists who employed them and for the audiences who perceived them. All three modes offered ways of encoding, communicating, and interpreting human experience through semantically organized data whose complex referentiality seeks both to reconcile the differences and to reveal the continuities characteristic of a culture of shared experience during the Romantic era.

This book provides an account of the size and characteristics of India’s population stretching from the arrival of modern human beings until the present day. The periods considered include those of: the millennia that were occupied by hunting and gathering; the Indus valley civilization; the opening-up of the Ganges basin; and the eras of the Delhi Sultanate, Mughal Empire, and British colonial rule. The book also devotes substantial consideration to the unprecedented changes that have occurred in India since 1947. With reference to these and other periods, key topics addressed include: the scale of the population; the levels of mortality and fertility that prevailed; regional demographic variation; the size of the main cities; the level of urbanization; patterns of migration; and the many famines, epidemics, invasions and other events which affected the population. The book is a work of synthesis—albeit one with few certainties. It draws on research of many different kinds—e.g. archaeological, climatic, cultural, economic, epidemiological, historical, linguistic, political, and demographic. The book considers the past trajectory of India’s population compared to the trends which seem to have been shared by China and Europe. In addition, it highlights some misconceptions about the history of India’s population.

This article provides specific details on the alphabetic script and language of the Phrygians, who appeared in Anatolia during the Early Iron Age, ca. 1200–1000 BCE and retained a distinctive identity there until the end of Classical antiquity. Phrygian settlements can be recognized by the presence of texts in the Phrygian language, architecture and visual arts, and characteristic installations of Phrygian cult practice. The geographical extent of Phrygian territory covers a broad area, including Daskyleion near the Sea of Marmara in northwestern Anatolia, Gordion and Ankara in central Anatolia, and Boğazköy and Kerkenes Dağ east of the Halys River. Taken together, the linguistic and material evidence suggests that Phrygian culture was an influential element in the ethnic mix of populations on the Anatolian plateau.

Sa'adyah Gaon was an outstanding tenth-century Jewish thinker — a prominent rabbi, philosopher, and exegete. He was a pioneer in the fields in which he toiled, and was an inspiration and basis for later Jewish writing in all these areas. The last major English-language study of his work was published in 1921, long before Genizah research changed the understanding of the time in which he lived. This work, covering Sa'adyah's biography and his main areas of creativity in an accessible way, is a reassessment of an outstanding figure. The opening chapter, on the geonic period that formed the background to Sa'adyah's life, is followed by an overview that brings out the revolutionary aspects of his work and the characteristic features of his writings. Subsequent chapters consider his philosophical works; his Bible commentaries; his pioneering linguistic work; his poetry; his halakhic activity; and his activity as a polemicist, notably against the Karaites. An epilogue sums up his importance in medieval Jewish culture. Particularly valuable features of the book are the copious quotations from Sa'adyah's works, which facilitate familiarity with his style as well as his ideas; the clarity in presenting complex and difficult concepts; the constant assessment of his relationship to his predecessors in his various fields of study and his own unique contributions to each field; and the contextualization of his contribution within the political, cultural, and religious climate of his times so that both revolutionary and conservative elements in his thought can be identified and evaluated.

This multidisciplinary volume reflects the shifting experiences and framings of Finnishness and its relation to race and coloniality. The authors centre their investigations on whiteness and unravel the cultural myth of a normative Finnish (white) ethnicity. Rather than presenting a unified definition for whiteness, the book gives space to the different understandings and analyses of its authors. This collection of case-studies illuminates how Indigenous and ethnic minorities have participated in defining notions of Finnishness, how historical and recent processes of migration have challenged the traditional conceptualisations of the nation-state and its population, and how imperial relationships have contributed to a complex set of discourses on Finnish compliance and identity. With an aim to question and problematise what may seem self-evident aspects of Finnish life and Finnishness, expert voices join together to offer (counter) perspectives on how Finnishness is constructed and perceived. Scholars from cultural studies, history, sociology, linguistics, genetics, among others, address four main topics: 1) Imaginations of Finnishness, including perceived physical characteristics of Finnish people; 2) Constructions of whiteness, entailing studies of those who do and do not pass as white; 3) Representations of belonging and exclusion, making up of accounts of perceptions of what it means to be ‘Finnish’; and 4) Imperialism and colonisation, including what might be considered uncomfortable or even surprising accounts of inclusion and exclusion in the Finnish context. This volume takes a first step in opening up a complex set of realities that define Finland’s changing role in the world and as a home to diverse populations.

The Oxford Handbook of Egyptology presents a series of articles by colleagues working across the many archaeological, philological and cultural subdisciplines within the study of ancient Egypt from prehistory through to the end of the Roman Period. The volume seeks to place Egyptology within its theoretical, methodological, and historical contexts, both indicating how the subject has evolved and discussing its distinctive contemporary problems, issues and potential. Transcending conventional boundaries between archaeological and ancient textual analysis, it stresses the need for Egyptology to seek multidisciplinary methods and broader collaborations if it is to remain contemporary and relevant. It therefore serves as a reference work not only for those working within the discipline, but also as a gateway into Egyptology for archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists and linguists. The book is organized into ten parts, the first of which examines the many different historical and geographical perspectives that have influenced the development and current characteristics of the discipline. Part II addresses the various environmental aspects of the subject: landscapes, climate, flora, fauna and the mineral world. Part III considers a variety of practical aspects of the ways in which Egyptologists survey, characterize and manage landscapes. Part IV discusses materials and technology, from domestic architecture and artefacts through to religious and funerary items. Part V deals with Egypt’s relations with neighbouring regions and peoples, while Part VI explores the sources and interpretive frameworks that characterize different phases of ancient Egyptian history. Part VII is concerned with textual and iconographic approaches to Egyptian culture, and Part VIII comprises discussions of the key aspects of ancient Egyptian scripts and philology. Part IX presents summaries of the current state of the subject in relation to a variety of textual genres, from letters and autobiographies to socio-economic, magical and mathematical texts. The final section covers different aspects of museology and conservation.

Methodism was originally a loosely connected network of religious clubs, each devoted to promoting holy living among its members. It was part of the Evangelical Revival, a movement of religious ideas which swept across the North Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. This chapter charts the growth and development, character and nature, and consolidation and decline of British Methodism in the nineteenth century from five distinct perspectives. First, Methodism grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century but struggled to channel that enthusiasm in an effective way. As a result, it was beset by repeated secessions, and the emergence of rival Methodist groups, each with their own distinctive characteristics, of which Wesleyan Methodism was the largest and most influential. Second, while Methodism grew rapidly in England, it struggled to find a successful footing in the Celtic fringes of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Here, local preoccupations, sectarian tensions, and linguistic differences required a degree of flexibility which the Methodist leadership was often not prepared to concede. Third, the composition of the Methodist membership is considered. While it is acknowledged that most Methodists came from working-class backgrounds, it is also suggested that Methodists became more middle class as the century progressed. People were attracted to Methodism because of its potential to transform lives and support people in the process. It encouraged the laity to take leadership roles, including women. It provided a whole network of support services which, taken together, created a self-sufficient religious culture. Fourth, Methodism had a distinctive position within the British polity. In the early nineteenth century the Wesleyan leadership was deeply conservative, and even aligned itself with the Tory interest. Wesleyan members and almost all of Free Methodism were reformist in their politics and aligned themselves with the Whig, later Liberal interest. This early conservatism was the result of Methodism’s origins within the Church of England. As the nineteenth century progressed, this relationship came under strain. By the end of the century, Methodists had distanced themselves from Anglicans and were becoming vocal supporters of Dissenting campaigns for political equality. Fifth, in the late nineteenth century, Methodism’s spectacular growth of earlier decades had slowed and decline began to set in. From the 1880s, Methodism sought to tackle this challenge in a number of ways. It sought to broaden its evangelical message, and one of its core theological precepts, that of holiness. It embarked on an ambitious programme of social reform. And it attempted to modernize its denominational practices. In an attempt to strengthen its presence in the face of growing apathy, several branches of Methodism reunited, forming, in 1932, the Methodist Church in Britain. However, this institutional reorganization could not stop the steady decline of British members into the twentieth century. Instead, Methodism expanded globally, into previously non-Christian areas. It is now a denomination with a significant world presence. British Methodism, however, continues to struggle, increasingly of interest only as a heritage site for the origins of a much wider and increasingly diverse movement.