Inherited through the line of the berserker Angantyr and his war-loving daughter Hervor, the ever-lethal, shining sword Tyrfing and its changes of hands frame the uncanny story of The Saga of Hervor and Heidrek . A second heroic saga, Hrolf Kraki and His Champions , recounts the daring deeds of the members and entourage of the ancient Danish house of Skjoldung. Passed down orally in pre-Christian Norse times, transmitted in writing in medieval Iceland, and here wielded by the hand of Jackson Crawford, the tales told in this volume retain their sharp edges and flashes of glory that never fail to slay.

Communicative competence is an essential language skill, the ability to adjust language use according to specific contexts and to employ knowledge and strategies for successful communication. This unique text offers a multidisciplinary, critical, state-of-the-art research overview for this skill in second language learners. Expert contributors from around the world lay out the history of the field, then explore a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and empirical findings, and authoritatively set the agenda for future work. With a variety of helpful features like discussion questions, recommended further reading, and suggestions for practice, this book will be an invaluable resource to students and researchers of applied linguistics, education, psychology, and beyond.

Introducing Linguistics brings together the work of scholars working at the cutting-edge of the field of linguistics, creating an accessible and wide-ranging introductory level textbook for newcomers to this area of study. The textbook: * Provides broad coverage of the field, comprising five key areas: language structures, mind and society, applications, methods, and issues; * Presents the latest research in an accessible way; * Incorporates examples from a wide variety of languages - from isiZulu to Washo - throughout; * Treats sign language in numerous chapters as yet another language, rather than a 'special case' confined to its own chapter; * Includes recommended readings and resource materials, and is supplemented by a companion website. This textbook goes beyond description and theory, giving weight to application and methodology. It is authored by a team of leading scholars from the world-renowned Lancaster University department, who have drawn on both their research and extensive classroom experience. Aimed at undergraduate students of linguistics, Introducing Linguistics is the ideal textbook to introduce students to the field of linguistics.

The Diagnosis of Writing in a Second or Foreign Language is a comprehensive survey of diagnostic assessment of second/foreign language (SFL) writing. In this innovative book, a compelling case is made for SFL writing as an individual, contextual, and multidimensional ability, combining several theoretically informed approaches upon which to base diagnosis. Using the diagnostic cycle as the overarching framework, the book starts with the planning phase, cover design, development, and delivery of diagnostic assessment, ending with feedback and feed-forward aspects to feed diagnostic information into the teaching and learning process. It covers means to diagnose both the writing processes and products, including the design and development of diagnostic tasks and rating scales, as well as automated approaches to assessment. Also included is a range of existing instruments and approaches to diagnosing SFL writing. Addressing large-scale as well as classroom contexts, this volume is useful for researchers, teachers, and educational policy-makers in language learning.

Homecoming, haunting, nostalgia, desire: these are some of the themes evoked by the beguiling motif of the lighted window in literature and art. In this innovative combination of place-writing, memoir and cultural study, Peter Davidson takes us on atmospheric walks through nocturnal cities in Britain, Europe and North America, and revisits the field paths of rural England. Surveying a wide range of material, the book extends, chronologically, from early romantic painting to contemporary fiction, and geographically, from the Low Countries to Japan. It features familiar lighted windows in English literature (in the works of poets such as Thomas Hardy and Matthew Arnold and in the novels of Virginia Woolf, Arthur Conan Doyle and Kenneth Grahame) and examines the painted nocturnes of James Whistler, John Atkinson Grimshaw and the ruralist Samuel Palmer. It also considers Japanese prints of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; German romanticism in painting, poetry and music; Proust and the painters of the French belle epoque; Rene Magritte's 'L'Empire des Lumieres'; and North American painters such as Edward Hopper and Linden Frederick. By interpreting the interactions of art, literature and geography around this evocative motif, Peter Davidson shows how it has inspired an extraordinary variety of moods and ideas, from the romantic period to the present day.

German Grammar in Context presents an accessible and engaging approach to learning grammar. Each chapter opens with a real-life extract from a German newspaper, magazine, poem, book or internet source and uses this text as the starting point for explaining a particular key area of German grammar. A range of exercises follow at the end of the chapter, helping students to reinforce and test their understanding, and an answer key is also provided at the back of the book. This second edition features: Updated texts with current newspaper and magazine articles and new extracts from digital media such as chatrooms or blogs Inclusion of a wide-ranging selection of sources and topics to further students' engagement with issues relevant to contemporary Germany and Austria Clear and user-friendly coverage of grammar, aided by a list of grammatical terms A wide variety of inventive exercises designed to thoroughly build up grammatical understanding, vocabulary acquisition and effective comprehension and communication skills Helpful 'keyword boxes' translating difficult vocabulary in the texts A recommended reading section offering advice on additional grammar resources and website links German Grammar in Context will be an essential resource for intermediate to advanced students of German. It is suitable for both classroom use and independent study.

Publishers Weekly starred review A Best Book of 2018 in Religion, Publishers Weekly Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue, says acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior. In this book, she takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounters with great writing. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, original artwork throughout, and a foreword by Leland Ryken. The hardcover edition was named a Best Book of 2018 in Religion by Publishers Weekly. "[A] lively treatise on building character through books.'"--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Creativity in the English Curriculum is essential reading for anyone involved or interested in the teaching of English, offering both a detailed history of how creativity has informed the tradition of teaching English, and how it should be used to position this teaching in the future. Highlighting the need to promote creativity as a rich, intellectual pursuit, Creativity in the English Curriculum celebrates artistry in English past and present, and argues for its restoration to the curriculum. It emphasises that creativity is at the core of a humane education, not only through stimulating and enhancing the growth of the individual, but also through developing understanding of the importance of community, society and collaboration. Smith presents the historical relationship between curriculum policy and creativity, demonstrating that creativity has and always will be the life blood of teaching and learning. Including dialogues between expert English teaching practitioners and leading professionals concerning the place of creativity in English, Creativity in the English Curriculum includes practical, research-informed ideas for effective creative practice for any English classroom. It is a must-read for teachers, educators, parents and guardians to prepare all learners for life in and beyond school.

Jack Pun's book offers up the latest research in a variety of health communication settings to highlight the cultural differences between the East and the West. It focuses on the various clinical strands in health communication such as doctor-patient interactions, nurse handover, and cross-disciplinary communication to provide a broad, comprehensive overview of the complexity and heterogeneity of health communication in the Chinese context, which is gradually moving beyond a preference for Western-based models to one that considers the local culture in understanding and interpreting medical encounters. The content highlights the cultural difference between the East and the West, and focuses on how traditional Chinese values underpin the nature of clinical communication in various clinical settings and how Chinese patients and practitioners conduct themselves during medical encounters. The book also covers various topics that are unique to Chinese contexts such as the use of traditional Chinese medicine in primary care, and how clinicians translate Western models of communication when working in Chinese contexts with Chinese patients. This volume will appeal to researchers working in health communication in both the East and West as well as clinicians interested in understanding what makes effective communication with multicultural patient cohorts.

Another Mother gives voice to women who become mothers through the routes of adoption, surrogacy and egg donation, and their silent partners - the birth mothers, surrogate mothers and egg donors - who make motherhood possible for them. Exploring experiences of motherhood beyond the biological mother raising her child, Everington draws on interviews and a range of interdisciplinary approaches to produce illuminating personal testimonies which expand our understanding of what it means to be a mother. The life writing narratives also examine the unique and hidden relationships that exist between adopters and birth mothers, egg donors and women who become mothers through egg donation, and surrogates and women who become mothers through surrogacy. Offering a fresh approach in life writing, using hybrid form encompassing edited interview, re-imagined scenes, poetry, personal essay and quotation collage, this topical book is recommended for anyone interested in motherhood studies, gender and women's studies, life writing studies, the sociology of reproduction, creative non-fiction writing approaches, oral history, and ethnography studies.

*1. This is the only textbook on the market that takes a critical look at modern translation theory. *2. It is ideal for translation theory modules which are part of every translation studies course *3. Unlike other textbooks, it has a very clear focus on theories, includes succinct explanations and has engaging pedagogy.

In this multi-volume edition, the poetry of W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) is presented in full, with newly established texts and detailed, wide-ranging commentary. Yeats began to write verse in the nineteenth century, and over time his own arrangements of poems repeatedly revised and rearranged both texts and canon. This edition of Yeats's poetry presents all his verse, both published and unpublished, including a generous selection of textual variants from the many manuscript and printed sources. The edition also supplies the most extensive commentary on Yeats's poetry to date, explaining specific references, and setting poems in their contexts; it also gives an account of the vast range of both literary and historical influences at work on the verse. The poems are presented in order of composition, and major revisions or rewritings of poems result in separate inclusions (in chronological sequence) for these writings as they were subsequently reconceived by the poet. In this third volume, Yeats's poetry of the first decade of the twentieth century is brought into sharp focus, revealing the extent of his efforts to re-fashion a style that had already made him a well-known poet. All of the major modes in Yeats's earlier work are subject to radical re-imagining in these years, from poetic narrative founded in Irish myth, in poems such as 'Baile and Aillinn' and 'The Old Age of Queen Maeve', to the symbolist drama-poetry of The Shadowy Waters, here edited in its two (completely different) versions of 1900 and 1906. In a decade when the theatre was one of Yeats's principal concerns, his lyric poems, which were becoming increasingly explicit in personal terms, began to discover new intensities of conversational pitch and mythic resonance. Poems such as 'The Folly of Being Comforted', 'Adam's Curse', 'No Second Troy', and 'The Fascination of What's Difficult' are given close attention in this new edition, alongside topical and epigrammatic pieces that are often passed over in accounts of Yeats's development. The evolving complexities of Yeats's personal and political lives are crucial to his artistic development in these years, and the commentary gives these generous attention, showing how the poetry both feeds upon and often transcends the circumstances of its composition. The volume offers strong evidence for this decade as a crucial one in Yeats's poetic life, in which the poet created wholly new registers for his verse as well as new dimensions for his imaginative vision.

Queering Wolverine in Comics and Fanfiction: A Fastball Special interrogates the ways in which the Marvel Comics character Wolverine is a queer hero and examines his representation as an open, vulnerable, and kinship-oriented, queer hero in both comics and fanfiction. Despite claims that Wolverine embodies Reagan-era conservatism or hegemonic hyper-masculinity, Wolverine does not conform to gender or sex norms, not only because of his mutant status, but also because his character, throughout his publication history, resists normalization, making him a site for a queer-heroic futurity. Rather than focus on overt queer representations that have appeared in some comic forms, this book explores the queer representations that have preceded Wolverine’s bisexual and gay characterizations, and in particular focuses on his porous and vulnerable body. Through important, but not overly analyzed storylines, representations of his open body that is always in process (both visually and narratively), his creation of queer kinships with his fellow mutants, and his eroticized same-sex relationships as depicted in fan fiction, this book traces a queer genealogy of Wolverine,. This book is ideal reading for students and scholars of comics studies, cultural studies, gender studies, sexuality studies and literature.

A highly relevant topic, given current discussions around fake news, fake facts, and misinformation in the media and public sphere This book offers a valuable contribution to how public discourse is impacted by personal bias, beliefs, and convictions Addresses the role and impact of conviction in the public sphere, education, and in political and cultural discourse It discusses where our convictions come from and whether we are aware of them, why they compel us to certain actions, and whether we can change our convictions when presented with opposing evidence that prove our personal convictions "wrong" It brings together scholars from multiple fields, such as philosophy, psychology, comparative literature, media studies, applied linguistics, intercultural communication, and education It will be of particular interest to scholars in communication and journalism studies, media studies, philosophy, and psychology It will contribute substantially to the study of conviction as an aspect of the self we all carry within us and are called upon to examine

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'If you want to write a novel or a script, read this book' Sunday Times 'The best book on the craft of storytelling I've ever read' Matt Haig 'Rarely has a book engrossed me more, and forced me to question everything I've ever read, seen or written. A masterpiece' Adam Rutherford Why stories make us human and how to tell them better. There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story - but few have used a scientific approach. In this incisive, thought-provoking book, award-winning writer Will Storr demonstrates how master storytellers manipulate and compel us. Applying dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to the foundations of our myths and archetypes, he shows how we can use these tools to tell better stories - and make sense of our chaotic modern world. INCLUDES NEW MATERIAL.

Bringing together the latest research from world-leading academics, this edited volume is an authoritative resource on the psycholinguistic study of language production, exploring longstanding concepts as well as contemporary and emerging theories. Hartsuiker and Strijkers affirm that although language production may seem like a mundane everyday activity, it is in fact a remarkable human accomplishment. This comprehensive text presents an up-to-date overview of the key topics in the field, providing important theoretical and empirical challenges to the traditional and accepted modal view of language production. Each chapter explores in detail a different aspect of language production, covering traditional methods including written and signed production alongside emerging research on joint action production. Emphasising the neurobiological underpinnings of language, chapter authors showcase research that moves from a monologue-only approach to one that that considers production in more ecologically valid circumstances. Written in an accessible and compelling style, Language Production is essential reading for students and researchers of language production and psycholinguistics, as well as anyone that wishes to learn more about the fascinating topic of how humans produce language.