Handbook of the Changing World Language Map

Book excerpt: This reference work delivers an interdisciplinary, applied spatial and geographical approach to the study of languages and linguistics. This work includes chapters and sections related to language origins, diffusion, conflicts, policies, education/instruction, representation, technology, regions, and mapping. Also addressed is the mapping of languages and linguistic diversity, on language in the context of politics, on the relevance of language to cultural identity, on language minorities and endangered languages, and also on language and the arts and non-human language and communication. This reference work looks at the subject matter and contributors to the disciplines and programs in the social sciences and humanities, and the dearth of materials on languages and linguistics. The topics covered are not only discipline-centered, but in the cutting-edge fields that intersect several disciplines and also cut across the social sciences and humanities. These include gender studies, sustainability and development, technology and social media impacts, law and human rights, climate change, public health and epidemiology, architecture, religion, visual representation and mapping. These new and emerging research directions and other intersecting fields are not traditionally discipline-bounded, but cut across numerous fields. The volumes will appeal to those within existing fields and disciplines and those working the intersections at local, regional and global scales.