First published in 1985, this book aims to develop an approach to speech acts that has the virtue of being straight-forward, explicit, formal and flexible enough to accommodate many of the more general problems of interactive verbal communication. The first chapter introduces situation semantics with the second addressing the assumptions implied by the problem of representing speaker intentionality. The third chapter presents a streamlined theory of speech acts and the fourth tests the predictions of the theory in several hypothetical discourse situations. A summary and suggestions for further research is provided in chapter five, and appendices facilitate reference to key concepts.

First published in 1990, this collection investigates grammatical categories associated with the verb as they are used by speakers and writers in real discourses and texts. Focusing on tense, aspect, mood, and voice in French, Spanish, and Italian, each chapter underscores the importance of context in our understanding of how grammatical categories work. Above and beyond their basic 'grammatical functions', categories of the verb are shown to operate in such capacities as structuring information in discourse, establishing point of view in a text, and creating textual cohesion. Importantly, this volume reflects the crucial role discourse-pragmatics factors play in our interpretation of the meanings of categories of grammar.

First published in 1993, this book provides clear illustrations of discourse analytic work and empirical critiques of the traditional psychological approaches. Drawing on a range of examples, the contributors argue that identity, deeply felt emotions, prejudice, and attitudes to social issues are created by the language that describes them rather than being intrinsic to the individual. In illustrating the variety of methods available through their studies of punk identity, sexual jealousy, images of nature, political talk, sexism in radio, education case conferences and occupational choice, the contributors provide a challenging presentation of discourse analysis in a psychological context.

First published in 1988, this book focuses on diversity and discourse, and collects contemporaneous research across a wide range of topics including: description, polemic, narrative analysis, DJ talk, philosophical history, conversation, children's books and nuclear deterrence. The essays demonstrate analyses of discourse in the service of stylistic inquiry, exploring relationships of text and context. This reflects the overall argument that discourse analyses aiming to represent diversity of social context will necessarily approach the task selectively, since all dimensions are of potential relevance to any and every communicative manifestation. Some of contextual dimensions that are addressed include: interpersonal, socio-structural, modal, ideological, and pragmatic.

First published in 1985, this book studies several common items in English conversation known variously as 'discourse particles', 'interjections', 'discourse markers', and, more informally, 'hesitations' or 'fillers'. While the analysis primarily focuses on 'like', 'well' and 'you know', the larger concern is the entire set of items of which these are members and as such 'I mean', 'now', 'oh', 'hey', and 'aha' are also examined. These discourse particles are analysed at length and then a framework is proposed in which their use individually makes sense and allows revealing comparisons to be made between them. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics

First published in 1983, the aim of this book is to diagnose linguists' failure to advance satisfactory theories of lexical meaning, then to propose the requirements that such a theory should meet and, drawing on work in philosophy and psychology, to take the first steps towards satisfying these requirements. It begins by discussing the work of Quine on the indeterminacy of translation and it is shown that attempts by linguists to answer Quine's arguments by proposing universal 'semantic primitives' or their equivalents is unsatisfactory. The relation between the theory of word meaning and the theory of categorisation is explored, and an alternative to Rosch's 'family resemblance' account of the 'prototype' effect in both nouns and verbs is provided. The author argues that identification of certain implicit categories like 'action' and 'event' can be related to principles of individuation, and builds on the work of Kripke and Putnam on proper names and natural kind terms. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics and the philosophy of language.

First published in 1982, this book looks at a wide variety of issues concerning the vast field of study that is 'semiotics. It begins by tracing the beginnings of modern semiotics in the works two pioneering figures - Saussure and Peirce - in order to present fundamental assumptions, notions and distinctions which provide an essential background to the more recent developments. The author then goes on to look at Behavioural Semiotics, Luis Prieto's idea of "l'Acte Semique", Austin's theory of 'Speech Acts' and Searle's elaborations, Barthes' move away from philosophical and scientific approaches in his ideology of Socio-Cultural Signification, Functionalism and Axiomatic Functionalism, style as a form of communication, semiotics of the cinema, and communicative behaviour in non-human species.

First published in 1997, this book focuses on the semantics of definite and indefinite descriptions - taking the presuppositional theory of definiteness and indefiniteness proposed by Heim as a starting point. It seeks to show that there exists a special type of indefinites that have an interpretation commonly associated with definites. It further argues that the felicity conditions associated with indefinite NP's can vary and develops a more fine-grained theory of novelty within the framework of File Change Semantics. More generally, this work can be seen as providing an empirical argument in favour of a dynamic theory of meaning and against the more traditional truth-conditional theory.

First published in 1959, this book aims to provide a practical introduction to semantics, relating the critical study of language to real-life situation, with a wealth of anecdotes and numerous illustrations drawn from everyday personal predicaments. This book provides much information and much material for profitable discussion, helping to make accessible what can be a highly academic subject comprehensible only to a minority. This book provides a highly valuable foundation for students of linguistics and will provide preparation for further study.

First published in 1987, this book is an attempt to re-establish semiotic on the basis of principles consistent with its past history, rather than the 'cultural semiotics' of the European tradition, and especially with the guiding ideas of Peirce and Morris. The book is divided into two parts, with the first two chapters providing the background for the more systematic discussions of signs at different levels taken up in the last three. In the final chapter issues that have become the focus of recent philosophy of language regarding the reference, meaning, and truth of sentences are discussed in light of the analogies to more primitive signs developed in the preceding two chapters.

First published in 1994, this book is concerned with certain kinds of wh-clauses, whose interpretations are easily and, the author argues, plausibly rendered by a logicosemantic analysis on which wh-phrases translate as open sentences, that is, as expressions of the semantically interpreted representation which contain free variables. After a review of influential contemporary analyses of the semantics of questions, concentrating on issues related to the truthconditional interpretation of these constructions, the author goes on to analyse logicosemantic similarities between wh-phrases and indefinite NPs. This analysis is extended in chapter V to account for asymmetries between wh-phrases and indefinites, but is preceded by the engagement and refutation of some of the challenges to it. The appendices discuss some peripheral points relating to the central points made by the author which are in need of further study.

First published in 2000, this book is about sentences containing the word or, dealing primarily with sentences in which or conjoins clauses, but also some cases in which it conjoins expressions of other categories. The author aims to give an account of the discourse properties and felicity conditions of disjunction, and to use this account in explaining the behaviour of presupposition projection and of anaphora in disjunctive sentences. The author begins by giving an account of the discourse properties and felicity conditions of disjunction before turning to the presupposition projection problem. The final two chapters discuss anaphora and its interactions with disjunction.

This handbook brings together 26 ethnographic research reports from around the world about communication. The studies explore 13 languages from 17 countries across 6 continents. Together, the studies examine, through cultural analyses, communication practices in cross-cultural perspective. In doing so, and as a global community of scholars, the studies explore the diversity in ways communication is understood around the world, examine specific cultural traditions in the study of communication, and thus inform readers about the range of ways communication is understood around the world. Some of the communication practices explored include complaining, hate speech, irreverence, respect, and uses of the mobile phone. The focus of the handbook, however, is dual in that it brings into view both communication as an academic discipline and its use to unveil culturally situated practices. By attending to communication in these ways, as a discipline and a specific practice, the handbook is focused on, and will be an authoritative resource for understanding communication in cross-cultural perspective. Designed at the nexus of various intellectual traditions such as the ethnography of communication, linguistic ethnography, and cultural approaches to discourse, the handbook employs, then, a general approach which, when used, understands communication in its particular cultural scenes and communities.

Originally published in 1980, this title began as a set of questions posed by faculty on the campus of Carnegie-Mellon University: What do we know about how people write? What do we need to know to help people write better? This resulted in an interdisciplinary symposium on "Cognitive Processes in Writing" and subsequently this book, which includes the papers from the symposium as well as further contributions from several of the attendees. It presents a good picture of what research had shown about how people write, of what people were trying to find out at the time and what needed to be done.

This book is based on a close study of modern drama texts. In the first section - Dialogue - it studies specific drama texts. Drama has been neglected by linguistic studies of literature, and this book develops a new area of literary-linguistic stylistics. It demonstrates how recent advances in the sociolinguistic analysis of conversation (discourse analysis) can account for readers' and audiences' intuitions about dramatic dialogue. The second section - Discourse - uses these studies to develop a powerful and general model of spoken discourse. As well as accounting for the utterance-by-utterance organization of dramatic texts, it provides a descriptive model for the analysis of naturally occurring conversation. Literary texts and natural conversation are used to illustrate each other.

The centrality of narrative analysis in the investigation of social processes and practices has become an established fact in the human sciences. The focus on narrative and displacement in this volume provides a starting point for a reflection on current issues in narrative theory as well as a timely interrogation of the role of narrative in illuminating social phenomena that are central to modernity such as migration and displacement. At the centre of the analyses presented in the book are stories that are ignored, silenced and othered by contemporary public discourses on displacement, migration and settlement. Drawing on insights from narrative theory, linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics and cultural studies, contributors to the volume examine both how migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and marginalized minorities position themselves through narrative practices and how they are positioned in institutional and official narratives.

This book questions gendered readings of violence by analyzing how this paradigm has become normalized in Italy since the feminist term 'femminicidio', or 'femicide', entered the mainstream media during the 2013 general election. It also sheds light on discourses of contestation on the part of family activists, men's rights campaigners and divorced fathers' groups. Two counter-discourses emerge. The first is what the author terms an 'ideology narrative', for which discourses built around the conceptual category of 'gender' normalize simplistic representations of relationships between men and women. The second is a 'female violence discourse', which sheds light on under-represented aggressor-victim relations and modifies dominant representations of femininity and masculinity. The author argues that integrating these two discourses into public debates helps to reappropriate the complexity and biological dimensions of (violent) relationships between men and women, often overshadowed by gender/feminist perspectives. In this way, she concludes, we can address neglected social issues that contribute to violence beyond gender. This thought-provoking book will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, critical discourse studies and gender.

First published 1984. In a provocative study, this book argues that the problems posed by Shelley's notoriously difficult style must be understood in relation to his ambivalence towards language itself as an artistic medium - the tension between the potential of language to mirror emotional experience and the recognition of it's inevitable limitations. Through an exposition of Shelley's idea of language, as reflected in his theoretical writings and individual poems, this book makes a strong case for his artistic worth. A definitive introduction to Shelley, useful for both scholars and newcomers, this book will be interest to students of literature.

Language, both spoken and written, is key to understanding learning processes in the classroom. Research Methods for Classroom Discourse is for those who want to investigate spoken interaction or other discourse in the classroom. It lays out clearly the different approaches which are possible, identifying the key principles of each. It addresses the differences between them and the consequences these differences might have for teachers and researchers. Each approach is outlined in terms of practical methods advice, reasons for use, and case studies in which the approach has been used in classroom discourse. Common approaches such as conversation analysis, positioning theory, and critical discourse analysis are included alongside more specialised approaches such as discursive psychology and corpus linguistics. The context of classroom research is used to frame all discussions, with connections to other uses and applications where it can enhance the research being undertaken. The authors demonstrate the relationship between these different theoretical approaches through considering particular applications to common topics within classroom research, such as multilingual learners, knowledge/ knowing and identity. The authors assume no prior knowledge of technical terms and a glossary of key term terms is included. Practical issues such as ethics, data collection and transcription are an integral part of the discussion throughout, providing students with all the knowledge needed to embark upon a successful research project in this area.

Systemic Functional Linguistics is a functional model of language inspired by the work of Saussure, Hjelmslev, Whorf, and Firth. SFL was developed by Michael Halliday and his colleagues in the 1960s and has grown into a widely studied and research field, with growing interest in China, Latin America, and North America. This new five-volume collection from Routledge focuses on the foundational papers underlying SFL theory and practice and illustrative papers that have inspired succeeding work.

"Feminism" and "rhetoric" have not always been overlapping terms. While neglected as subjects of scholarly interest for many years, women were nonetheless developing rhetorical practices and traditions all along. In recent decades women writers, speakers, and feminist scholars have forged new theories of and practices for feminist rhetoric. These women have struggled to see, re-shape, and re-deploy the rhetorical tradition in ways that not only admit but embrace and celebrate women and feminist understandings to the benefit of all people. This volume is the culmination of much of the work done by those scholars. Edited by the leading experts in field, Cheryl Glenn and Andrea A. Lunsford, Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and Feminism earns its significance in several key ways: it includes work done by scholars from departments of communication, English, and writing studies as well as a variety of public intellectuals; it traces a series of encounters between rhetoric and feminism during the last three decades; and it highlights five themes that represent the history of encounters between rhetoric and feminism including (1) recovery and recuperation, (2) methods and methodologies, (3) practices and performances, (4) pedagogical applications and implications, and (5) new theories and histories.

This book's innovative approach proposes Language for Teaching Purposes as a distinct field of enquiry and practice within Language for Specific Purposes. It uses robust theoretical and empirical evidence to demonstrate the specificity of language used by teachers teaching language, and the complex decisions teachers make around language choice and use in language classrooms. These complexities are shown to affect Non-native Speaker Language Teachers in particular so that their language needs must be met in teacher training programmes. Set in the Anglophone foreign language teaching world, this book will appeal to anyone involved in teacher training, language teaching or the investigation of classroom discourse.

This edited volume represents the best of the scholarship presented at the 18th National Communication Association/American Forensic Association Conference on Argumentation. This biennial conference brings together a lively group of argumentation scholars from a range of disciplinary approaches and a variety of countries. Disturbing Argument contains selected works that speak both to the disturbing prevalence of violence in the contemporary world and to the potential of argument itself, to disturb the very relations of power that enable that violence. Scholars' essays analyze a range of argument forms, including body and visual argument, interpersonal and group argument, argument in electoral politics, public argument, argument in social protest, scientific and technical argument, and argument and debate pedagogy. Contributors study argument using a range of methodological approaches, from social scientifically informed studies of interpersonal, group, and political argument to humanistic examinations of argument theory, political discourse, and social protest, to creatively informed considerations of argument practices that truly disturb the boundaries of what we consider argument.

"Feminism" and "rhetoric" have not always been overlapping terms. While neglected as subjects of scholarly interest for many years, women were nonetheless developing rhetorical practices and traditions all along. In recent decades women writers, speakers, and feminist scholars have forged new theories of and practices for feminist rhetoric. These women have struggled to see, re-shape, and re-deploy the rhetorical tradition in ways that not only admit but embrace and celebrate women and feminist understandings to the benefit of all people. This volume is the culmination of much of the work done by those scholars. Edited by the leading experts in field, Cheryl Glenn and Andrea A. Lunsford, Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and Feminism earns its significance in several key ways: it includes work done by scholars from departments of communication, English, and writing studies as well as a variety of public intellectuals; it traces a series of encounters between rhetoric and feminism during the last three decades; and it highlights five themes that represent the history of encounters between rhetoric and feminism including (1) recovery and recuperation, (2) methods and methodologies, (3) practices and performances, (4) pedagogical applications and implications, and (5) new theories and histories.

This book presents research into various types of professional discourse through the prism of the functional linguistics approach. Focusing mainly on practical aspects of speech, the book discusses various topics, such as structural, semantic, cognitive and pragmatic characteristics of professional discourse, argumentation strategies, humour in professional discourse, and word-building processes. It also highlights communicative effectiveness methods in professional discourse. Offering new ideas and discussing the latest findings, the book is intended for researchers, lecturers and professionals in the field.