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Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

Contemporary Advances in Theoretical and Applied Spanish Linguistic Variation by Juan J. Colomina-Almiñana, reframes the understanding of language variation and change as an intimate interplay between both linguistic features and social factors always occurring in unison in the same historical process. Its ten chapters, divided into four parts, provide both a synchronic and a diachronic view of Hispanic sociolinguistics, focusing not only on the historical development of Spanish as a Romance language, but also analyzing certain idiosyncratic elements of non-standard Spanish varieties across multiple regions, nations, and diasporas. In addition, the volume offers an enchronic perspective of this phenomenon by analyzing how certain sustained cultural practices may drive concrete linguistic developments.
 
This volume makes three major contributions to Hispanic sociolinguistics. First, it covers variation in less commonly studied varieties, which are new areas of interest in a broader world where certain minorities and their languages are crucial. Second, it offers recent and innovative approaches to variation coming from formal theories in order to spark a debate about methodology that is more comprehensive of the diverse approaches to variation currently practiced in the field. Finally, it includes chapters that combine quantitative and qualitative analysis of different linguistic variables.
 

Translingualism perceives the boundaries between languages as unstable and permeable; this creates a complex challenge for writing pedagogy. Writers shift actively among rhetorical strategies from multiple languages, sometimes importing lexical or discoursal tropes from one language into another to introduce an effect, solve a problem, or construct an identity. How to accommodate this reality while answering the charge to teach the conventions of one language can be a vexing problem for teachers. Crossing Divides offers diverse perspectives from leading scholars on the design and implementation of translingual writing pedagogies and programs.

The volume is divided into four parts. Part 1 outlines methods of theorizing translinguality in writing and teaching. Part 2 offers three accounts of translingual approaches to the teaching of writing in private and public colleges and universities in China, Korea, and the United States. In Part 3, contributors from four US institutions describe the challenges and strategies involved in designing and implementing a writing curriculum with a translingual approach. Finally, in Part 4, three scholars respond to the case studies and arguments of the preceding chapters and suggest ways in which writing teachers, scholars, and program administrators can develop translingual approaches within their own pedagogical settings.

Illustrated with concrete examples of teachers’ and program directors’ efforts in a variety of settings, as well as nuanced responses to these initiatives from eminent scholars of language difference in writing, Crossing Divides offers groundbreaking insight into translingual writing theory, practice, and reflection.

Contributors: Sara Alvarez, Patricia Bizzell, Suresh Canagarajah, Dylan Dryer, Chris Gallagher, Juan Guerra, Asao B. Inoue, William Lalicker, Thomas Lavelle, Eunjeong Lee, Jerry Lee, Katie Malcolm, Kate Mangelsdorf, Paige Mitchell, Matt Noonan, Shakil Rabbi, Ann Shivers-McNair, Christine M. Tardy