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The Language of Borders

Book cover Handbook of the Changing World Language Map

Abstract

Limits and edges of human experience, power, and control have been expressed in language from the time of earliest writing, and likely before then in the spoken words of ordering and bordering space and territory among people. Our brief discussion of the language of borders is not a comprehensive examination of the topic, but an invitation to evaluate how we speak and write about borders that are increasingly a part of our world. The This chapter conveys our view of components and processes which help to understand how language of borders emerged, where border vocabularies are headed, and why this matters as we attempt to comprehend how to accommodate global diversity and population in a finite, changing global environment. To accomplish this, we explore the imaginary of border conceptions and social construction of border words, address the expanding border lexicon, examine the expression of meaning of borders, and assess the efficacy of the language of borders in a world at once more bounded and more” “borderless”.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Victor Konrad

  2. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Jussi P. Laine, Ilkka Liikanen & James W. Scott

  3. University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada

    Randy Widdis

Authors
  1. Victor Konrad
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  2. Jussi P. Laine
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  3. Ilkka Liikanen
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  4. James W. Scott
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  5. Randy Widdis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Victor Konrad .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Kentucky Department of Geography, Lexington, KY, USA

    Stanley D Brunn

  2. Deutscher Sprachatlas, Marburg University, Marburg, Hessen, Germany

    Roland Kehrein

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Konrad, V., Laine, J.P., Liikanen, I., Scott, J.W., Widdis, R. (2019). The Language of Borders. In: Brunn, S., Kehrein, R. (eds) Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_52-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_52-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    The Language of Borders
    Published:
    26 December 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_52-2

  2. Original

    The Language of Borders
    Published:
    29 October 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_52-1

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