This book builds on cognitive stylistics, humour studies and psychological approaches to literature and film to explore the emotional aspects of humorous narrative comprehension. It investigates how the linguistic features of comic novels and short stories (by, for example, Douglas Adams, Joseph Heller and Nick Hornby) can shape readers' experience of comedy, considering the ways in which moods, characters and the plot is used to trigger blends of positive and negative emotion. The book offers an approach to such features of comedy as dark humour, cringe humour and comic suspense, emphasising the relationship between humorous language and mental states which are typically considered serious. Agnes Marszalek's focus on the non-humorous side of experiencing comedy offers a key contribution to the study of humorous narratives. By investigating humour as part of a narrative world, this book moves towards addressing the complexity of the experience of humour in narrative texts, providing implications not only for the linguistics of humour, but also for those approaches to discourse comprehension which explore the affective side of engaging with texts.

A foundational text of twenty-first-century rhetorical studies, Vernacular Voices addresses the role of citizen voices in steering a democracy through an examination of the rhetoric of publics. Gerard A. Hauser maintains that the interaction between everyday and official discourse discloses how active members of a complex society discover and clarify their shared interests and engage in exchanges that shape their opinions on issues of common interest.In the two decades since Vernacular Voices was first published, much has changed: in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, US presidents have increasingly taken unilateral power to act; the internet and new media have blossomed; and globalization has raised challenges to the autonomy of nation states. In a new preface, Hauser shows how, in an era of shared, global crises, we understand publics, how public spheres form and function, and the possibilities for vernacular expressions of public opinion lie at the core of lived democracy. A foreword is provided by Phaedra C. Pezzullo, associate professor of communication at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Native American Rhetoric is the first book to explore rhetorical traditions from within individual Native communities and Native languages. The essays set a new standard for how rhetoric is talked about, written about, and taught. The contributors argue that Native rhetorical practices have their own interior logic, which is grounded in the morality and religion of their given traditions. Once we understand the ways in which Native rhetorical practices are rooted in culture and tradition, the phenomenological expression of the speech patterns becomes clear. The value of Native communities and their languages is underlined throughout the essays. Lawrence W. Gross and the contributors successfully represent several, but not all, Native communities across the United States and Mexico, including the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Choctaw, Nahua, Chickasaw and Chicana, Tohono O'odham, Navajo, Apache, Hupa, Lower Coast Salish, Koyukon, Tlingit, and Nez Perce. Native American Rhetoric will be an essential resource for continued discussions of Native American rhetorical practices in and beyond the discipline of rhetoric.

This book presents the essential approaches that you need to know when you start doing discourse analysis for the first time. Over 11 chapters, Discourse Analysis: An Introduction outlines the core methodological and theoretical premises, tracing their development and discussing the most recent trends. Providing you with an essential discourse analytic toolkit, each chapter explores a different approach from a wide variety of global perspectives, looking at discourse and society, discourse and pragmatics, discourse and genre, discourse and conversation, discourse grammar, corpus approaches, multimodal discourse and critical discourse analysis. Now fully revised to take account of recent developments, this third edition includes: - A new chapter on discourse and digital media - New topics, including English as a lingua franca, linguistic landscapes and translanguaging - Updated examples drawn from a variety of global perspectives and contexts, ranging from North America to East Asia - Updated discussion questions throughout With each chapter supplemented with exercises, discussion questions and lists of further reading, along with a comprehensive companion website featuring lecture slides, extended readings and enhanced bibliographies, this is the only book you need for discourse analysis.

Drawing on poststructuralist approaches, Craig Martin outlines a theory of discourse, ideology, and domination that can be used by scholars and students to understand these central elements in the study of culture. The book shows how discourses are used to construct social institutions-often classist, sexist, or racist-and that those social institutions always entail a distribution of resources and capital in ways that capacitate some subject positions over others. Such asymmetrical power relations are often obscured by ideologies that offer demonstrably false accounts of why those asymmetries exist or persist. The author provides a method of reading in order to bring matters into relief, and the last chapter provides a case study that applies his theory and method to racist ideologies in the United States, which systematically function to discourage white Americans from sympathizing with poor African Americans, thereby contributing to reinforcing the latter's place at the bottom of a racial hierarchy that has always existed in the US.

This book is the first comprehensive account of 'body language' as 'paralanguage' informed by Systemic Functional Semiotics (SFS). It brings together the collaborative work of internationally renowned academics and emerging scholars to offer a fresh linguistic perspective on gesture, body orientation, body movement, facial expression and voice quality resources that support all spoken language. The authors create a framework for distinguishing non-semiotic behaviour from paralanguage, and provide a comprehensive modelling of paralanguage in each of the three metafunctions of meaning (ideational, interpersonal and textual). Illustrations of the application of this new model for multimodal discourse analysis draw on a range of contexts, from social media vlogs, to animated children's narratives, to face-to-face teaching. Modelling Paralanguage Using Systemic Functional Semiotics offers an innovative way for dealing with culture-specific and context specific paralanguage.

This book explores the linguistic patterns of conflict, crisis and threat generation in Polish political rhetoric that have been at the heart of state-level policies since the Law and Justice (PiS) Party came to power in October 2015. Analysing a vast corpus of speeches, statements and remarks by prominent Law and Justice Party politicians, this book sheds light on internal parliamentary and presidential discourse against opponents of the government, before widening its lens to Poland's strained relations with the EU regarding refugee distribution and immigration. Drawing on theories from contemporary critical discourse studies and critical-cognitive pragmatics, the book shows how the crisis, conflict and threat elements in these discourses produce public coercion and strengthen the Party's leadership. Piotr Cap extends his argument further to examine discursive examples from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, Italy and the UK, highlighting the correlation between the Law and Justice Party and broader socio-political and rhetorical trends in contemporary Europe. The result is an authoritative panorama of the mutual dependencies and shared discursive strategies of European right-wing groups.

Southern rhetoric is communication's oldest regional study. During its initial invention, the discipline was founded to justify the study of rhetoric in a field of white male scholars analyzing significant speeches by other white men, yielding research that added to myths of Lost Cause ideology and a uniquely oratorical culture. Reconstructing Southern Rhetoric takes on the much-overdue task of reconstructing the way southern rhetoric has been viewed and critiqued within the communication discipline. The collection reveals that southern rhetoric is fluid and migrates beyond geography, is constructed in weak counterpublic formation against legitimated power, creates a region that is not monolithic, and warrants activism and healing. Contributors to the volume examine such topics as political campaign strategies, memorial and museum experiences, television and music influences, commemoration protests, and ethnographic experiences in the South. The essays cohesively illustrate southern identity as manifested in various contexts and ways, considering what it means to be a part of a region riddled with slavery, Jim Crow laws, and other expressions of racial and cultural hierarchy. Ultimately, the volume initiates a new conversation, asking what would southern rhetorical critique be like if it included the richness of the southern culture from which it came? Contributions by Whitney Jordan Adams, Wendy Atkins-Sayre, Jason Edward Black, Patricia G. Davis, Cassidy D. Ellis, Megan Fitzmaurice, Michael L. Forst, Jeremy R. Grossman, Cynthia P. King, Julia M. Medhurst, Ryan Neville-Shepard, Jonathan M. Smith, Ashli Quesinberry Stokes, Dave Tell, and Carolyn Walcott.

This book presents the essential approaches that you need to know when you start doing discourse analysis for the first time. Over 11 chapters, Discourse Analysis: An Introduction outlines the core methodological and theoretical premises, tracing their development and discussing the most recent trends. Providing you with an essential discourse analytic toolkit, each chapter explores a different approach from a wide variety of global perspectives, looking at discourse and society, discourse and pragmatics, discourse and genre, discourse and conversation, discourse grammar, corpus approaches, multimodal discourse and critical discourse analysis. Now fully revised to take account of recent developments, this third edition includes: - A new chapter on discourse and digital media - New topics, including English as a lingua franca, linguistic landscapes and translanguaging - Updated examples drawn from a variety of global perspectives and contexts, ranging from North America to East Asia - Updated discussion questions throughout With each chapter supplemented with exercises, discussion questions and lists of further reading, along with a comprehensive companion website featuring lecture slides, extended readings and enhanced bibliographies, this is the only book you need for discourse analysis.

Engaged Persuasion in a Post-Truth World provides an innovative approach to inspire students' interest in persuasive communication in today's ever-evolving world. The book moves beyond theory and addresses new media, engaged citizenship, and deconstructing messages in a post-truth world to deepen students' exploration of persuasion. This multi-disciplinary, research-driven textbook highlights contemporary studies in persuasion. It covers the dynamics of persuasion, including important source, receiver, and message components while also exploring the effects of persuasive communication on receivers' attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. Students examine the application of persuasive communication concepts and theories to their lives in multiple contemporary contexts, such as campus, residence, workplace, classroom, and online communities. Unique themes explored in the book include the application of contemporary persuasion theory and research to the post-truth era, the influence of new media on persuasive communication, and how students can use persuasion to become civically engaged and advance the common good. A highly relevant and wholly original approach, Engaged Persuasion in a Post-Truth World is an exemplary text for courses in persuasive communication.

Critical and Creative Thinking is a vital resource that expands how we think and employ the basic skills involved in the identification and evaluation of an argument. It provides a basic foundation for teaching and learning critical and creative thinking. The text provides readers with the fundamental skills they need to approach ideas and opinions on current social issues. The selected readings have been carefully chosen for their ability to bring a wide range of perspectives and importance to the critical and creative thinking approach in the text. The first section explores approaches to critical and creative thinking, followed by readings for application, and then additional learning activities and resources. Specific topics include gender, education, race and immigration, inequality, and family. This new edition includes updated content and activities, as well as new and relevant readings that deal with current day issues (e.g., online learning and microaggressions). Critical and Creative Thinking is an ideal primary text for courses in critical thinking, social problems, social work, and sociology. It can also serve as a supplementary text for English courses, especially those with emphasis on critical and creative thinking.

Women at Work presents the field of rhetorical studies with fifteen chapters that center on gender, rhetoric, and work in the US in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Feminist scholars explore women's labor evangelism in the textile industry, the rhetorical constructions of leadership within women's trade unions, the rhetorical branding of a twentieth-century female athlete, the labor activism of an African American blues singer, and the romantic, same-sex collaborations that supported pedagogical labor. Women at Work also introduces readers to rhetorical methods and approaches possible for the study of gender and work. Contributors name and explore a specific rhetorical concern that animates their study and in so doing, readers learn about such concepts as professional proof, rhetorical failure, epideictic embodiment, rhetorics of care, and cross-racial coalition building.

Although US history is marred by institutionalized racism and sexism, postracial and postfeminist attitudes drive our polarized politics. Violence against people of color, transgendered and gay people, and women soar upon the backdrop of Donald Trump, Tea Party affiliates, alt-right members like Richard Spencer, and right-wing political commentators like Milo Yiannopoulos who defend their racist and sexist commentary through legalistic claims of freedom of speech. While more institutions recognize the volatility of these white men's speech, few notice or have thoughtfully considered the role of white nationalist, alt-right, and conservative white women's messages that organizationally preserve white supremacy. In Rebirthing a Nation: White Women, Identity Politics, and the Internet, author Wendy K. Z. Anderson details how white nationalist and alt-right women refine racist rhetoric and web design as a means of protection and simultaneous instantiation of white supremacy, which conservative political actors including Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Ivanka Trump have amplified through transnational politics. By validating racial fears and political divisiveness through coded white identity politics, postfeminist and motherhood discourse functions as a colorblind, gilded cage. Rebirthing a Nation reveals how white nationalist women utilize colorblind racism within digital space, exposing how a postfeminist framework becomes fodder for conservative white women's political speech to preserve institutional white supremacy.

What occurs within coma? What does the coma patient experience? How does the patient perceive the world outside of coma, if at all? The simple answer to these questions is that we don't know. Yet the sheer volume of literary and media texts would have us believe that we do. Examining representations of coma and brain injury across a variety of texts, this book investigates common tropes and linguistic devices used to portray the medical condition of coma, giving rise to universal mythologies and misconceptions in the public domain. Matthew Colbeck looks at how these texts represent, or fail to represent, long-term brain injury, drawing on narratives of coma survivors that have been produced and curated through writing groups he has run over the last 10 years. Discussing a diverse range of cultural works, including novels by Irvine Welsh, Stephen King, Tom McCarthy and Douglas Coupland, as well as film and media texts such as The Sopranos, Kill Bill, Coma and The Walking Dead, Colbeck provides an explanation for our fascination with coma. With a proliferation of misleading stories of survival in the media and in literature, this book explores the potential impact these have upon our own understanding of coma and its victims.

Now known to the Chinese as the ""ten years of chaos,"" the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76) brought death to thousands of Chinese and persecution to millions. In Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Xing Lu identifies the rhetorical practices and persuasive effects of the polarizing political language and symbolic practices used by Communist Party leaders to legitimize their use of power and violence to dehumanize people identified as class enemies. Lu provides close readings of the movement's primary texts--political slogans, official propaganda, wall posters, and the lyrics of mass songs and model operas. She also scrutinizes such ritualistic practices as the loyalty dance, denunciation rallies, political study sessions, and criticism and self-criticism meetings. Lu enriches her rhetorical analyses of these texts with her own story and that of her family, as well as with interviews conducted in China and the United States with individuals who experienced the Cultural Revolution during their teenage years. In her new preface, Lu expresses deep concern about recent nationalism, xenophobia, divisiveness, and violence instigated by the rhetoric of hatred and fear in the United States and across the globe. She hopes that by illuminating the way language shapes perception, thought, and behavior, this book will serve as a reminder of past mistakes so that we may avoid repeating them in the future.

Investigating the efforts of the Kichwa of Tena, Ecuador to reverse language shift to Spanish, this book examines the ways in which indigenous language can be revitalized and how creative bilingual forms of discourse can reshape the identities and futures of local populations. Based on deep ethnographic fieldwork among urban, periurban, and rural indigenous Kichwa communities, Michael Wroblewski explores adaptations to culture contact, language revitalization, and political mobilization through discourse. Expanding the ethnographic picture of native Amazonians and their traditional discourse practices, this book focuses attention on Kichwas' diverse engagements with rural and urban ways of living, local and global ways of speaking, and indigenous and dominant intellectual traditions. Wroblewski reveals the composite nature of indigenous words and worlds through conversational interviews, oral history narratives, political speechmaking, and urban performance media, showing how discourse is a critical focal point for studying cultural adaptation. Highlighting how Kichwas assert autonomy through creative forms of self-representation, Remaking Kichwa moves the study of indigenous language into the globalized era and offers innovative reconsiderations of indigeneity, discourse, and identity.

In December 2018, the United States Senate unanimously passed the nation's first antilynching act, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act. For the first time in US history, legislators, representing the American people, classified lynching as a federal hate crime. While lynching histories and memories have received attention among communication scholars and some interdisciplinary studies of traditional civil rights memorials exist, contemporary studies often fail to examine the politicized nature of the spaces. This volume represents the first investigation of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum, both of which strategically make clear the various links between America's history of racial terror and contemporary mass incarceration conditions, the mistreatment of juveniles, and capital punishment. Racial Terrorism: A Rhetorical Investigation of Lynching focuses on several key social agents and organizations that played vital roles in the public and legal consciousness raising that finally led to the passage of the act. Marouf A. Hasian Jr. and Nicholas S. Paliewicz argue that the advocacy of attorney Bryan Stevenson, the work of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), and the efforts of curators at Montgomery's new Legacy Museum all contributed to the formation of a rhetorical culture that set the stage at last for this hallmark lynching legislation. The authors examine how the EJI uses spaces of remembrance to confront audiences with race-conscious messages and measure to what extent those messages are successful.

Vicki Tolar Burton argues that John Wesley wanted to make ordinary Methodist men and women readers, writers, and public speakers because he understood the powerful role of language for spiritual formation. His understanding came from his own family and education, from his personal spiritual practices and experiences, and from the evidence he saw in the lives of his followers. By examining the intersections of literacy, rhetoric, and spirituality as they occurred in early British Methodism-and by exploring the meaning of these practices for class and gender-the author provides a new understanding of the method of Methodism.

Language is integral to the construction of personal, socio-cultural and socio-political identities. Language, Identity and Symbolic Culture closely investigates the relationship between language and identities, offering a comprehensive yet progressive view of how linguistics relates to development and education, both in theoretical and real world applications. Progressing from a theoretical core examining the connection between language and individual identity, this book moves on to look at the wider socio-political discourse involving the marginalization and resistance of communities in the world. Beginning with the philosophical paradigms of language, Evans questions whether language shapes personal identities in its daily use or whether language is simply a tool for describing, rather than creating, the world. Extrapolating on this, the contributors utilise case studies from across the globe to see how these linguistic perspectives are played out in the real world, considering the role of language in issues surrounding power, colonization, marginalization and education. Language, Identity and Symbolic Culture offers a view of language identity conflicts around the world and an understanding of the opportunities of political and cultural emancipation created through language and open discourse.

No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner is a history of the career of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834-1915), specifically focusing on his work from 1896 to 1915. Drawing on the copious amount of material from Turner's speeches, editorial, and open and private letters, Andre E. Johnson tells a story of how Turner provided rhetorical leadership during a period in which America defaulted on many of the rights and privileges gained for African Americans during Reconstruction. Unlike many of his contemporaries during this period, Turner did not opt to proclaim an optimistic view of race relations. Instead, Johnson argues that Turner adopted a prophetic persona of a pessimistic prophet who not only spoke truth to power but, in so doing, also challenged and pushed African Americans to believe in themselves. At this time in his life, Turner had no confidence in American institutions or that the American people would live up to the promises outlined in their sacred documents. While he argued that emigration was the only way for African Americans to retain their ""personhood"" status, he also would come to believe that African Americans would never emigrate to Africa. He argued that many African Americans were so oppressed and so stripped of agency because they were surrounded by continued negative assessments of their personhood that belief in emigration was not possible. Turner's position limited his rhetorical options, but by adopting a pessimistic prophetic voice that bore witness to the atrocities African Americans faced, Turner found space for his oratory, which reflected itself within the lament tradition of prophecy.

Critical Questions in Persuasion Research presents students with a refreshing way to study persuasion, communication theory, and human behavior. Rather than examining different types of persuasion research and reviewing each one at a time, communication scholars Franklin J. Boster and Christopher J. Carpenter explore eight key controversies, as well as research and theory related to each topic: What constitutes a strong persuasive message, and does it matter? How do we adapt persuasive messages to diverse audiences? Do persuasive messages have side effects? How can we manage the buzz? How can we maintain attitude change? Can a persuasive message be counterproductive? How can we encourage resistance to persuasion? To what extent does action follow from attitudes? By focusing on how various disciplines deal with the big controversies in the persuasion process, students gain an understanding not only of key ideas and theories, but how the ideas and theories fit together in a meaningful whole. By framing persuasion as a series of critical questions, students learn that social science is a dynamic and exciting way in which to study persuasion. Critical Questions in Persuasion Research is an ideal textbook for courses with focus on persuasion, communication, and human behavior.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. This book demonstrates the central role played by the stylistic features of online news in constructing meaning and shaping cultural representations of people and places - in particular, France and Muslims/Islam. Taking the 2016 violent attack in Nice, France as a case study, Ashley Riggs analyses online news coverage of the attack from the UK, Spain, and Switzerland, three distinct linguistic and cultural spaces. An innovative mixed-methods approach, including content analysis and elements of translation criticism and comparative stylistics, is used to analyse this corpus, revealing the frequency and influence of stylistic devices found in online news and exploring how they help to shape reader interpretations. Drawing conclusions about journalistic practices by place and interrogating the notions of 'European identity' and 'European journalism', Stylistic Deceptions in Online News reveals how stylistic features may vary according to both political leanings and national and regional contexts, and the influence these features have upon readers.

Across national and cultural borders, the archetype of the fool has played a significant role in how communities interpret and ascribe identity. As Charles Campbell and Johan Cilliers remind us, the Christian preacher, tasked with delivering a paradoxical gospel, is a fool. In a delicate exploration with enlightening results, Preaching Fools uses a diverse representation of fools and foolish actions to show how modern preaching is inseparable from the folly of the cross. Campbell and Cilliers walk the fine line between the ugliness and beauty of the gospel and challenge readers toward a deeper engagement with its unsettling message.

Bringing together leading and emerging scholars in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this book explores the contributions made to SFL theory by James Robert Martin. A leading light in the field for 40 years, this book reviews, explores and develops the theoretical agendas set out in his momentous body of work. Focussed around the four themes of systemic functional theory, linguistic typology, educational linguistics and (positive) discourse analysis, chapters debate and develop the key concepts of Martin's work. Engaging with cutting edge theoretical debates in areas such as discourse-semantics, register and genre and affiliation, Discourses of Hope and Reconciliation examines Martin's lasting impact on the field, developing his momentous contributions to point the way to exciting future research directions in SFL.

This book offers a collection of conversation analytic investigations into how one US-based philanthropic organization communicates its mission of improving public health. In contrast to political speeches or news interviews with prominent figures, much communication with the public involves the routine work undertaken by institutional representatives as they interact with external audiences: this book considers precisely how this work is accomplished. Communicating with the Public broadens the scope of conversation analysis by unveiling the interactive, multi-party, and multi-modal nature of institutional messaging that might otherwise be construed as a scripted, monologic undertaking. To this end, it examines a diverse array of contemporary platforms, including webinars, podcasts, and television interviews, as well as face-to-face conversations following public talks and panel discussions. Chapters reveal how both foundation representatives and their interlocutors target messaging to specific audiences that may or may not be present, manage the logistics of delivering this messaging, and position themselves as credible experts or a unified institutional collective.