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The Handbook of Mirza Ghalib's Poetry and Poetics: Commentaries and Contemporary Concerns is a seminal contribution to Ghalib studies. It provides a detailed commentary in English on the poetry of Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, known as Ghalib (1797-1869), arguably the greatest poet of Urdu not only of the 19th century, when he lived, but of all time. Each couplet is explained in English and is underpinned by historical references. Each chapter is rigorous, thorough, and jargon-free, making it accessible to all readers. The commentary relates to the historical reality of Ghalib's time as well as the contemporary period. It quotes several couplets from Urdu, Punjabi and English literature as well as other significant texts that have influenced civilisations, such as the Bible, the Quran, Dhammapada, Bhagwat Gita, Plato, and so on. It touches upon cultural history, too. Ghalib's commentaries - rich in cultural, historical, and literary references - make his work relevant to a wide range of contemporary concerns. The book is a social and literary guide to Indo-Islamicate culture, Iranian pre-Islamic cultural influences and local folk Indian Islam. The Urdu text of Ghalib and poetry in the literary languages of South Asia -- Persian, Urdu and Punjabi -- are transliterated according to a list of symbols that maintain accuracy and accessibility. The book introduces the reader not only to Ghalib's couplets but also to the most famous form of Islamicate poetry, the ghazal, found in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu literary traditions. In turn, it provides an alternative lens to understanding Islam and its interdisciplinary connections within the fields of international relations, politics, and sociology.

This handbook is the largest and most comprehensive publication on Berber linguistics to date, covering the variety of Berber dialects and related linguistics trends. Extensive and diverse at thematic and theoretical levels, with the aim of deepening students and scholars' understanding of the workings of Berber as a linguistic phenomenon, it explores a multitude of angles through which the diachronic and synchronic intricacies of Berber varieties can be examined. It enables a better understanding of the issues in the various components of North African languages, as well as their theoretical and typological significance and implications. The work covers phonology and phonetics, morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, socio-linguistics and dialectology, language teaching and psycholinguistics, lexicology, language contact and comparative linguistics, historical linguistics and etymology. Sub-themes explored include prosody, ideophones (and expressive language in general), morpho-syntactic categories, sociolinguistic variation and several other seminal interdisciplinary explorations. The chapters reflect the diversity of Berber varieties and include up-to-date scholarship by leading Berberists, with varieties including Figuig, Kabyle, Senhaja, Siwa, Standard Moroccan Amazigh, Tamazight, Tarifit, Tashlhit, Touareg, Tunisian Berber, Znaga, as well as Proto-Berber. A large geographical territory is covered, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. With contributions from these Berber-speaking countries and their diaspora, there are also chapters from prominent Berber scholars from America, Australia and Europe. To this end, the volume includes perspectives and theories from different schools of linguistics. In including original French contributions and English translations of research from top scholars in the field, the book includes another vital dimension in terms ofthe resources, and sources. As a comprehensive reference, this work is of interest to North Africanists from various disciplines, including anthropologists, linguists, and sociologists, but particularly linguists interested in endangered languages, and those working on the historical and comparative study of the Afroasiatic language phylum.

Bringing together a wide selection of work on cultural linguistics and pragmatics, this comprehensive handbook offers global, comparative insights into the field. Diversity does not always imply differences, but it also offers insights into surprising similarities and parallels when it comes to expressions. By the same token, this collection shows that when we see that linguistic differences, when they exist, stem from not merely language, but from the cultural and historical context that cultivates and nurtures them. Within that paradigm, then, this handbook locates the importance of philosophy, religion (or even the lack thereof), political affiliations, and so on, in forming expressions. In addition, comparisons with other models of cultural linguistics are undertaken. These trends provide readers with a comprehensive introduction to issues in cultural linguistics, addressing the peculiarities of the field under the rubric of localized studies, and speaking to the possibilities that exist in interpretation of what metaphors are. The book highlights the complexities that are so tightly interwoven into the fabric of every word and a sentence, across cultures and linguistic traditions. A must-have collection for anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, philologists, theoreticians, rhetoricians, and scholars of poetics, this is the one-stop reference in cultural linguistics.