The present study explores the aesthetic productivity of idiomatic ambiguity in children's literature. Looking at the connection between context and understanding of idiomatic expressions in either their phrasal or their compositional reading, the study investigates how ambiguity is activated, if, how, and when it is perceived on the different levels of communication, and how literary texts use this ambiguity in playful ways.

Este libro reune contribuciones de destacados investigadores de la linguistica hispanica para ofrecer un panorama integral de los castellanos del Peru, incluidos algunos que han sido tradicionalmente objeto de discriminacion, como el castellano andino, el amazonico y el afroperuano. Los capitulos se concentran en diferentes variedades habladas en el Peru desde distintos enfoques teoricos y metodologicos, atendiendo a su formacion, su contexto social e historico y los fenomenos de contacto que las caracterizan. De este modo, aunque el volumen tiene un foco regional muy especifico, los problemas que aborda son de interes y relevancia para el estudio de otras variedades del espanol, para el tratamiento de otros problemas derivados del contacto linguistico y para la dialectologia e historia de los castellanos latinoamericanos en general. Escrito en castellano, este volumen sera de interes para estudiantes graduados en linguistica hispanica e investigadores dedicados a la dialectologia, la sociolinguistica y la linguistica del contacto.

Papua New Guinea's struggle for development is intimately bound up with the history of Tok Pisin, an English-based pidgin that is the product of nineteenth-century colonialism in the Pacific. The language has since become the most important lingua franca in the region, being spoken by more than a million people in a highly multilingual society. In this book, Romaine examines some of the changes that are taking place in Tok Pisin as it becomes the native language of the younger generation of rural and urban speakers. These linguistic processes, which are by no means complete, have to be understood in the socio-historical context of colonial expansion and strategies for socio-economic development in the post-colonial era.

Southern Min (also known as Hokkien or Minnan) is a major branch of Chinese spoken mainly in Fujian and Taiwan, but also in Guangdong, Hainan and Hong Kong, as well as in many countries of Southeast Asia. Highly conservative in its linguistic profile, it is considered by many scholars to be a living language fossil due to the preservation of many archaic features that reflect its long-lasting history and culture. Yet to date there has been no comprehensive study of Southern Min using a typological framework, as the tendency is to base analyses on the model of Mandarin Chinese, the standard language. This grammar aims to present a systematic description of the Hui'an variety of Southern Min, mainly based on data collected via naturally occurring conversation. The volume includes four parts: nominal structure, predicate structure, clause structure and complex sentences, as well as a brief overview of phonology. It will have great appeal for heritage speakers, graduate students and scholars in both Chinese linguistics and typology.

Folklinguistics and Social Meaning in Australian English presents an original study of Australian English and, via this, insights into Australian society. Utilising folklinguistic accounts, it uncovers everyday understandings of contemporary Australian English through variations across linguistic systems (sounds, words, discourse and grammar). Focusing on one variation at time, it explores young speakers' language use and their evaluations of the same forms. The analysis of talk about talk uncovers ethnic, regional and social Others in social types and prevailing ideologies around Australian English essential for understanding Australian identity-making processes, as well as providing insights and methods relevant beyond this context. These discussions demonstrate that while the linguistic variations may occur in other varieties of English, they are understood through local conceptualisations, and often as uniquely Australian. This book harnesses the value and richness of discourse in explorations of the sociocultural life of language. The findings show that analysis attending to language ideologies and identities can help discover the micro-macro links needed in understanding social meanings. The volume explores a wide range of language features but also provides a deep contemplation of Australian English.

This series of HANDBOOKS OF LINGUISTICS AND COMMUNICATION SCIENCE is designed to illuminate a field which not only includes general linguistics and the study of linguistics as applied to specific languages, but also covers those more recent areas which have developed from the increasing body of research into the manifold forms of communicative action and interaction. For "classic" linguistics there appears to be a need for a review of the state of the art which will provide a reference base for the rapid advances in research undertaken from a variety of theoretical standpoints, while in the more recent branches of communication science the handbooks will give researchers both an overview and orientation. To attain these objectives, the series aims for a standard comparable to that of the leading handbooks in other disciplines, and to this end strives for comprehensiveness, theoretical explicitness, reliable documentation of data and findings, and up-to-date methodology. The editors, both of the series and of the individual volumes, and the individual contributors, are committed to this aim. The language of publication is English. The main aim of the series is to provide an appropriate account of the state of the art in the various areas of linguistics and communication science covered by each of the various handbooks; however no inflexible pre-set limits will is imposed on the scope of each volume. The series is open-ended, and can thus take account of further developments in the field. This conception, coupled with the necessity of allowing adequate time for each volume to be prepared with the necessary care, means that there is no set time-table for the publication of the whole series. Each volume is a self-contained work, complete in itself. The order in which the handbooks are published does not imply any rank ordering, but is determined by the way in which the series is organized; the editors of the whole series enlist a competent editor for each individual volume. Once the principal editor for a volume has been found, he or she then has a completely free hand in the choice of co-editors and contributors. The editors plan each volume independently of the others, being governed only by general formal principles. The series editors only intervene where questions of delineation between individual volumes are concerned. It is felt that this (modus operandi) is best suited to achieving the objectives of the series, namely to give a competent account of the present state of knowledge and of the perception of the problems in the area covered by each volume. To discuss your handbook idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

Dialectology proper has traditionally focused on the geographic distribution of language variation as an end in itself and has remained relatively segregated from other branches of linguistic and extra-linguistic inquiry. Cross-fertilizing winds have been blowing through the field for more than a decade, but much work remains for adequate synthesis. This book seeks to further the interdisciplinary integration of the field by highlighting, and harnessing, the many dialectic tensions inherent in language variation research and dialect definition. Undertaking a broadscale experiment in applied dialectics, the book demonstrates multiple grounds for insisting on a more robust, integrational approach to dialectology while simultaneously demonstrating grounds for defining the Phula languages of China and Vietnam. The Phula languages belong to the Burmic sub-branch of the Tibeto-Burman family and are primarily spoken in southeastern Yunnan Province, China. With origins as early as the ninth century, these language varieties have been left undefined, and largely unresearched, for hundreds of years. Based on extensive original fieldwork, the book identifies 24 synchronic Phula languages descended from three distinct macro-clades diachronically. This is accomplished by blending typological-descriptive, historical-comparative and socio-cognitive perspectives. Diagnostics include both qualitative and quantitative measurements, and insights from history, geography, ethnology, language contact, sociolinguistics and more are called on for data interpretation. This dialogic approach incorporates complexity by asserting that dialectology itself best flourishes as an interdependent dialectic - a dynamic synthesis of competing perspectives.

This volume brings together researchers whose analysis and insights provide a comprehensive and up-to-date account of Singapore's rich linguistic diversity. Applying a combination of descriptive, empirical, and theoretical approaches, the authors investigate not only official languages such as English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, but also minority languages such as the Chinese vernaculars and South Asian and Austronesian languages. The chapters in this volume trace the historical development, contemporary status, and functions of these languages, as well as potential scenarios for the future. Exploring the tension between language policies and linguistic realities in Singapore, the contributions in this volume capture the shifting educational, political, and societal priorities of the community through its past and contemporary present.

While variation within individual languages has traditionally been focused upon in sociolinguistics, its relevance for grammatical theory has only recently been acknowledged. On the methodological side, there is an ongoing competition between large-scale statistical analyses and investigations that rely more heavily on introspection and elicited grammaticality judgements. The aim of this volume is to bridge the 'cultural gap' between empirical-variationist and formal-theoretical approaches in linguistics. The volume offers case studies that seek to combine corpus-based and competence-based approaches to the description of variation. In doing so, it opens up new avenues for locating and analyzing variability, both at the level of the individual speaker and between speakers of different dialects and generations. The contributions document the plurality of current research into models of grammatical competence that live up to the challenge of variationist data. More specifically, parameter-based (e.g. Minimalist), constraint-based (e.g. Optimality Theoretic), and usage-based (e.g. Construction Grammar) approaches to variation are discussed. The volume therefore is of interest to a broad public within linguistics, including syntacticians of different theoretical persuasion, morphologists and sociolinguists. While a majority of contributions addresses facets of variation in English and German, the volume also includes variationist studies written by specialists of French, Dutch, Icelandic, and Uralic.

Social processes and the nature of language variation have driven sibilant variation across the Spanish-speaking world. This book explores the current state of Spanish sibilants and their dialectal variations. Focusing on different processes undergone by sibilants in Spanish (e.g., voicing, devoicing, weakening, aspiration, elision) in various geographical areas and language contact situations, each chapter offers an analysis on a unique sociolinguistic case from different formal, experimental, and data-based approaches. The opening chapter orients the reader with an overview of sibilant system's evolution, which serves as an anchor to the other chapters and facilitates understanding for readers new to the topic. The volume is organized around three thematic sections: part one, Spain; part two, United States; and part three, Central and South America. The collection includes research on dialects in both Peninsular and Trans-Atlantic Spanish such as Jerezano, Caribbean Spanish in Boston and New York City, Cuban Spanish in Miami, Colombia-Barranquilla Spanish, northern Buenos Aires Argentine Spanish, and USA heritage Spanish, among other case studies. This volume offers an original and concise approach to one of the most studied variables in Spanish phonetics, taking into account geographically-based phonetic variation, sociolinguistic factors, and various Spanish language contact situations. Written in English, this detailed synthesis of the wide-ranging geolinguistic features of Spanish sibilants provides a valuable resource for scholars in Hispanic studies, linguistics, Spanish dialectology and sociolinguistics.

Keep your swearing as fresh as a f*cking daisy with The Little Book of Profanities. There's nothing better than that perfect swear word. In a battle of wits, it can make all the difference. And, like all things in life, variety is the spice of swear words. Why call someone a d*ck, when a choad is so much more - satisfying. Stuffed with 100 of the obscene, offensive and outrageous swear words known to construction workers all over the world, The Little Book of Profanities encourages you to flex and stretch your foul-mouthed muscles so when that awesome opportunity to use a big, hairy curse word arises you're not hoisted by your own petard. In these uncertain and challenging times of political and social chaos, when all you want to do is shout obscenities at the world for being crap, The Little Book of Profanities is here to help you survive the day in style. Swearing - it's big, it's clever and anyone who thinks otherwise can f*ck off. 'The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just a f*cking lunatic.' Stephen Fry on the joy of swearing, as seen on theguardian.com, 20 August 2007, by Sam Wollaston. Fact: The word's etymology can be traced back to around 450AD when scite (dung), scitte (diarrhoea) and scitan (to defecate) were all thrown about. Sh*t evolved millennia later into schitte (excrement) and shiten (to defecate). Example: 'Life is a crap carnival with sh*t prizes.' - Stephen King.

This volume brings together researchers whose analysis and insights provide a comprehensive and up-to-date account of Singapore's rich linguistic diversity. Applying a combination of descriptive, empirical, and theoretical approaches, the authors investigate not only official languages such as English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, but also minority languages such as the Chinese vernaculars and South Asian and Austronesian languages. The chapters in this volume trace the historical development, contemporary status, and functions of these languages, as well as potential scenarios for the future. Exploring the tension between language policies and linguistic realities in Singapore, the contributions in this volume capture the shifting educational, political, and societal priorities of the community through its past and contemporary present.

Mary Shapiro explores the use of regional and ethnic dialects in the works of David Foster Wallace, not just as a device used to add realism to dialogue, but as a vehicle for important social commentary about the role language plays in our daily lives, how we express personal identity, and how we navigate social relationships. Wallace's Dialects straddles the fields of linguistic criticism and folk linguistics, considering which linguistic variables of Jewish-American English, African-American English, Midwestern, Southern, and Boston regional dialects were salient enough for Wallace to represent, and how he showed the intersectionality of these with gender and social class. Wallace's own use of language is examined with respect to how it encodes his identity as a white, male, economically privileged Midwesterner, while also foregrounding characteristic and distinctive idiolect features that allowed him to connect to readers across implied social boundaries.

This book provides a comprehensive linguistic exploration of textism use by bilingual young adults, illustrating the function of alternative and creative linguistic features and their role in conveying tone through text. Drawing on a corpus of nearly 45,000 text messages donated by bilingual young adults in New York City, this volume explores the ways in which the use of texting features such as 'lol,' emojis, abbreviations, and acronyms is systematic and essential. In part, toward the aim of exposing the tensions bilinguals face navigating a platform that preferences monolingual language practices, the book highlights creativity as a means of both constructing meaning and performing identity for bilingual youths. These findings are extended to explore the role texting plays in communication and identity construction in contemporary society more generally. This volume extends the boundaries of emerging research on language and digital communication, and will be of particular interest to graduate students and scholars in computer-mediated communication, pragmatics, and new media.

This collection brings together contributions from both leading and emerging scholars in one comprehensive volume to showcase the richness of linguistic approaches to the study of pop culture and their potential to inform linguistic theory building and analytical frameworks. The book features examples from a dynamic range of pop culture registers, including lyrics, the language of fictional TV series, comics, and musical subcultures, as a means of both providing a rigorous and robust description of these forms through the lens of linguistic study but also in outlining methodological issues involved in applying linguistic approaches. The volume also explores the didactic potential of pop culture, looking at the implementation of pop culture traditions in language learning settings. This collection offers unique insights into the interface of linguistic study and the broader paradigm of pop culture scholarship, making this an ideal resource for graduate students and researchers in applied linguistics, English language, media studies, cultural studies, and discourse analysis.

Featuring an international contributor list, this long-awaited and broad-ranging collection examines the key issues, topics and research in pidgin and creole studies. * A comprehensive reference work exploring the treatment of core aspects of pidgins/creoles, focusing on the questions that animate creole studies* Brings together newly-commissioned entries by an international contributor team* Accessibly structured into four sections covering: the character of pidgins and creoles; the relation of pidgins/creoles to other language phenomena and other languages; issues in pidgin/creole genesis; and the role of pidgins/creoles in society* Provides a valuable resource for students, scholars and researchers working across a number linguistic disciplines, including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and the anthropology of language

Este libro reune contribuciones de destacados investigadores de la linguistica hispanica para ofrecer un panorama integral de los castellanos del Peru, incluidos algunos que han sido tradicionalmente objeto de discriminacion, como el castellano andino, el amazonico y el afroperuano. Los capitulos se concentran en diferentes variedades habladas en el Peru desde distintos enfoques teoricos y metodologicos, atendiendo a su formacion, su contexto social e historico y los fenomenos de contacto que las caracterizan. De este modo, aunque el volumen tiene un foco regional muy especifico, los problemas que aborda son de interes y relevancia para el estudio de otras variedades del espanol, para el tratamiento de otros problemas derivados del contacto linguistico y para la dialectologia e historia de los castellanos latinoamericanos en general. Escrito en castellano, este volumen sera de interes para estudiantes graduados en linguistica hispanica e investigadores dedicados a la dialectologia, la sociolinguistica y la linguistica del contacto.

Linguistic Planets of Belief presents a way for people to notice, examine, and question the role language plays in identifying, recognizing, and understanding those around them. This book introduces the metaphor of 'planets of belief' as a framework for understanding both the connections of language and identity, and the reasons we hold these perceptions so dear. It explains why we make up our minds about who people are and what they are like, even if they have only spoken a few words to us, as well as how language can dictate what we think of others as a whole. In doing so, it: Takes a large survey of linguistic research in the field of perceptual dialectology and assesses hundreds of accounts of people and their speech from hundreds of respondents. Uses maps at the state, regional, and national level in the US to expose how our linguistic perceptions of geographical regions cluster into planets of belief. Challenges readers to critically assess these assumptions and empowers readers to shift the way they think about language and to understand why they stereotype others based on speech. Equipped with such a large data set, Linguistic Planets of Belief explains the patterns that labels from perceptual maps show us and will make you consciously aware of the interaction between language use, perceptions, and stereotypes. It is essential interdisciplinary reading for students of English language, linguistics, and sociolinguistics, and will also be of interest to anyone concerned with the ways that language, ideology, and discrimination intersect.

Linguistic Planets of Belief presents a way for people to notice, examine, and question the role language plays in identifying, recognizing, and understanding those around them. This book introduces the metaphor of 'planets of belief' as a framework for understanding both the connections of language and identity, and the reasons we hold these perceptions so dear. It explains why we make up our minds about who people are and what they are like, even if they have only spoken a few words to us, as well as how language can dictate what we think of others as a whole. In doing so, it: Takes a large survey of linguistic research in the field of perceptual dialectology and assesses hundreds of accounts of people and their speech from hundreds of respondents. Uses maps at the state, regional, and national level in the US to expose how our linguistic perceptions of geographical regions cluster into planets of belief. Challenges readers to critically assess these assumptions and empowers readers to shift the way they think about language and to understand why they stereotype others based on speech. Equipped with such a large data set, Linguistic Planets of Belief explains the patterns that labels from perceptual maps show us and will make you consciously aware of the interaction between language use, perceptions, and stereotypes. It is essential interdisciplinary reading for students of English language, linguistics, and sociolinguistics, and will also be of interest to anyone concerned with the ways that language, ideology, and discrimination intersect.

Drawn from the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, with the emphasis on the expressions used or coined before 1914.

The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English presents all the slang terms from The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in a single volume. Containing over 60,000 entries, this concise new edition of the authoritative work details the slang and unconventional English of from around the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English dating information for each headword in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term's origins and meaning. New to this second edition: a new preface noting slang trends of the last eight years over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia, reflecting important developments in language and culture new terms from the language of social networking from a range of digital communities including texting, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and online forums many entries now revised to include new dating and new glosses, ensuring maximum accuracy of content. The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning - it's rude, it's delightful, and it's a prize for anyone with a love of language.

Drawing on a dual expertise of rare intensity, Mirco Ghini's book is a major contribution to both Romance dialectology and phonological theory. It gives a comprehensive account of the segmental and metrical phonology of the Ligurian dialect of the village of Miogliola, North-west Italy. Based on the author's own fieldwork, it is the first in-depth study of this area, also tracing its development from Latin. Feature assignment, underspecification, and quantity alternations are most prominent among the general theoretical issues on which the particulars of Miogliola phonology, meticuously analysed, are brought to bear with elegance and force.

Methods in Dialectology is a venerable institution, having started in 1972 in London, Western Ontario, Canada. This book is a collection of papers presented at Methods XVI in Tachikawa, Japan, in 2017. It was the first time Methods took place in Asia. In this volume, the emphasis is on diverse methods and diverse research questions. Many of the papers focus on language innovation, language change, corpus studies and linguistic atlas from different perspectives. At the same time, methodological innovation is very much in focus. Its emphasis meant that several papers showcased cutting-edge quantitative techniques that allow dialectologists to address questions that had been thought impossible to answer only a few years ago.

The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.

Can language change be modelled as an evolutionary process? Can notions like variation, selection and competition be fruitfully applied to facts of language development? The present volume ties together various strands of linguistic research which can bring us towards an answer to these questions. In one of the youngest and rapidly growing areas of linguistic research, mathematical models and simulations of competition based developments have been applied to instances of language change. By matching the predicted and observed developmental trends, researchers gauge existing models to the needs of linguistic applications and evaluate the fruitfulness of evolutionary models in linguistics. The present volume confronts these studies with more empirically-based studies in creolization and historical language change which bear on key concepts of evolutionary models. What does it mean for a linguistic construction to survive its competitors? How do the interacting factors in phases of creolization differ from those in ordinary language change, and how - consequently - might Creole languages differ structurally from older languages? Some of the authors, finally, also address the question how different aspects of our linguistic competence tie in with our more elementary cognitive capacities. The volume contains contributions by Brady Clark et al., Elly van Gelderen, Alain Kihm, Manfred Krifka, Wouter Kusters, Robert van Rooij, Anette Rosenbach, John McWhorter, Teresa Satterfield, Michael Tomasello and Elizabeth C. Traugott. The book brings together contributions from two areas of research: the study of language evolution by means of methods from artifical intelligence/artificial life (like computer simulations and analytic mathematical methods) on the one hand, and empirically oriented research from historical linguistics and creolisation studies that uses concepts from evolutionary theory as a heuristic tool in a qualitative way. The book is thus interesting for readers from both traditions because it supplies them with information about relevant ongoing research and useful methods and data from the other camp.