Language, Writing, and Mobility

Florian Coulmas is Senior Professor for Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. From 2004 to 2014 he served as Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, and he has held appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, Georgetown University, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, and Chuo University. He is the author of the OUP volumes Guardians of Language: Twenty Voices Through History (2016), An Introduction to Multilingualism (2017), and Identity: A Very Short Introduction (2019).

• 1: Laying the groundwork: Champagne and algorithms 2: Trading goods, trading words 3: Spreading the Word of God 4: National language and transnationalization 5: Half-breed, mulatto, creole: Race and language 6: From Cosmopolis to Ethnopolis 7: Virtual contacts 8: Wanderlust

Devoted to language change through trade, religion, nationalism, migration, race, urbanization, and computer mediation, this book is interesting in terms of scope... The book will be most useful to those seeking an overview of a topic.