Social norms are valuable because they help us to understand guidelines for appropriate and ethical behavior. However, as part of that process, cultures develop taboo behaviors and topics for group members to avoid. Failure to discuss important topics, such as sex, drug use, or interpersonal violence, can lead to unwanted or unintended negative outcomes. Improving communication about forbidden topics may lead to positive social and health outcomes, but we must first develop the communication and coping skills to handle these difficult conversations. The Handbook of Research on Communication Strategies for Taboo Topics seeks both quantitative and qualitative research to provide empirical evidence of the negative social and health outcomes of avoiding taboo conversations and provides communication and coping strategies for dealing with difficult topics. Covering a range of issues such as grief and forgiveness, this major reference work is ideal for academicians, practitioners, researchers, counselors, sociologists, professionals, instructors, and students.

The longevity of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas, suggests that it is possible for a social change organization to simultaneously address racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, imperialism, environmental justice, and peace-and to succeed. Activism, Alliance Building, and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center uses ethnographic research to provide an instructive case study of the importance and challenges of confronting injustice in all of its manifestations. Through building and maintaining alliances, deploying language strategically, and using artistic expression as a central organizing mechanism, The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center demonstrates the power of multi-issue organizing and intersectional/coalitional consciousness. Interweaving artistic programming with its social justice agenda, in particular, offers Esperanza a unique forum for creative and political expression, institutional collaborations, and interpersonal relationships, which promote consciousness raising, mobilization, and social change. This study will appeal to scholars of communication, Chicana feminism, and ethnography.

Commercial sex is the occupation of a significant portion of the women of the world, providing economic support for millions of people and their families. Working at the Bar is the first-ever, long-term, longitudinal, in-depth study of a large sex work industry-and Thailand, the most prominent nation in the rapidly growing sex tourism industry, makes for an excellent case study. While previous works have provided brief glimpses of one group of workers studied from a particular point of view, author Thomas Steinfatt examines considerations of health, behavior, economics, morality, religion, and worker safety. The result of data gathered from thousands of workers and customers in Thailand over a period of twelve years, Working at the Bar covers all aspects of an industry that, although it does not conform to various Western ideals, is nevertheless enormously significant. Among the most provocative of Steinfatt's arguments is that sex work is not itself immoral, and that far from being the exploitation industry we might imagine, sex work in Thailand is beneficial to everyone involved-especially given that education in this nation has proven not to be a viable alternative. Providing an opportunity for economic progress unavailable through other means, and providing working conditions far safer than those of the average Thai factory, sex work is ripe for a study that explores all aspects and perceptions associated with it. Working at the Bar is that long overdue study.

Persuasive Attacks on Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Primary investigates the nature of persuasive attacks on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential primary campaign. It begins by extending the Theory of Persuasive Attack to include attacks on character as well as attacks on actions. William L. Benoit & Mark J. Glantz use topical analysis to understand humor (late night television jokes; video from SNL, Colbert, and Oliver; articles in The Onion, and political cartoons) and Republican "establishment" attacks from Mitt Romney and the National Review. Quantitative content analysis examines attacks in primary debates and primary TV spots. The book concludes with criticisms found on social media platforms and TV talk shows.

This book examines the concept of interculturality in English Language Teaching (ELT), using examples from diverse international and educational settings to demonstrate different approaches. Increased contact between multilingual speakers from different cultural backgrounds means that linguistic and intercultural competence must be taught hand in hand, and the approaches featured here will: encourage learners to develop intercultural sensitivity and a critical intercultural attitude; mitigate the limitations of textbooks and extend the learning to global issues, intercultural citizenship, and media literacy; show the potential of telecollaboration and popular culture as pedagogical resources; and demonstrate the value of interculturality in English as lingua franca situations and English for Academic Purposes. The chapters feature empirical studies from around the world, and include questions for reflection and recommended reading so that readers can engage more closely with key concepts, compare and adapt the practices most relevant to them. This book contributes to the literature on (inter)cultural pedagogy, English as a lingua franca, language pedagogy, and teacher professional development, and will be an invaluable tool for English language teachers, teacher trainers and educators seeking to enrich their practice. It will also be of interest to students and scholars of Applied Linguistics, especially language education.

As Chiasson and his contributors illustrate, trials are media events that can have long-reaching significance. They can, and have, changed the way people think, how institutions function, and have shaped public opinions. While this collection on ten trials is about withcraft, slavery, religion, and radicalism, it is, in many ways, the story of America. Trials are the stuff of news. Those rare moments when justice, or a reasonable facsimile, is meted out. And what offers up more high drama, or melodrama, than a highly publicized trial? Most news events enjoy short life spans. They happen; they are reported; they are quickly forgotten. As Chiasson and his contributors make clear, a trial often is a lingering, living thing that builds in tension. It is, every once in a long while, a modern Shakespearean drama with a twist: The audience becomes members of the cast because, every once in a long while, society finds itself the defendant. Trials can have lasting importance beyond how the public perceives them. A trial can have long-reaching significance if it changes the way people think, or how institutions function, or shapes public opinion. Ten such American trials covering a span of 307 years are covered here. In each, the sociological underpinnings of events often has greater significance than either the crime or the trial. The ten trials included are the Salem witch trials, the Amistad trial, the Sioux Indian Uprising trials, the Ed Johnson/Sheriff Shipp trial, the Big Bill Haywood trial, the Ossian Sweet trial, the Clay Shaw trial, the Manuel Noriega trial, and the Matthew Shepard trial. While the book is about ten crimes, the subsequent trials, and the media coverage of each, it is also a book about witchcraft, about religion, slavery, and radicalism. It paints portraits of a racist America, a capitalistic America, an anarchist America. It relates compelling tales of compassion, greed, stupidity, and hate beginning in 17th-century colonial times and ending in present-day America. In many ways, it is the story of America.

This book is the first in a three-volume set that celebrates the career and achievements of Cliff Goddard, a pioneer of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach in linguistics. In addition, it explores ethnopragmatics and conversational humour, with a further focus on semantic analysis more broadly. Often considered the most fully developed, comprehensive and practical approach to cross-linguistic and cross-cultural semantics, Natural Semantic Metalanguage is based on evidence that there is a small core of basic, universal meanings (semantic primes) that can be expressed in all languages. It has been used for linguistic and cultural analysis in such diverse fields as semantics, cross-cultural communication, language teaching, humour studies and applied linguistics, and has reached far beyond the boundaries of linguistics into ethnopsychology, anthropology, history, political science, the medical humanities and ethics.

This book is an indispensable "cutting edge" book for students and researchers of journalism studies seeking a text that illustrates and applies a range of linguistic and discourse-analytic approaches to the analysis of journalism. While the form, function and politics of the language of journalism have attracted scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines, too often this analysis has reduced the work of journalists to text-characteristics alone. In contrast, this collection is united by the principle that journalistic discourse is always socially situated and the result of a series of processes - produced by journalists in accordance with particular production techniques and in specific institutional settings - and as such, analysis requires more than the methods offered by linguists. The contributors to this book draw on a range of the most prominent theoretical and methodological approaches to media discourse - including Conversation Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, the APPRAISAL framework, Multi-modal Analysis and Rhetoric - in making sense of the language of newspapers (national, local and minority press), television and online journalism. Written in an engaging style by distinguished academic authorities, this book provides a state-of-the-art review of the subject. This book was published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

Public venues are vital to information access across the globe, yet few formal studies exist of the complex ways people in developing countries use information technologies in public access places. Libraries, Telecentres, Cybercafes and Public Access to ICT: International Comparisons presents groundbreaking research on the new challenges and opportunities faced by public libraries, community telecentres, and cybercafes that offer public access to computers and other information and communication technologies. Written in plain language, the book presents an in-depth analysis of the spaces that serve underserved populations, bridge digital divides, and further social and economic development objectives, including employability. With examples and experiences from around the world, this book sheds light on a surprising and understudied facet of the digital revolution at a time when effective digital inclusion strategies are needed more than ever.

Brands and logos are all around us - from the clothes we wear and the objects we buy, to the advertisements which cover our cities and the celebrities created by the media. We regard the brand as a new phenomenon, something born with the consumer society, but branding was born with civilization, its earliest examples dating to the Roman Empire.Branding is now a growing industry, applied not only to commodities but to charities, cities, the worlds of sport and entertainment, even government initiatives. Such is the ubiquity and power of branding that it is increasingly taken as a sign of the commodification of everyday life and the rapacity of corporate power. Examining the brand in history, the growth of national and global brands, the changing approaches of the branding industry and the exploration of new spaces for advertising, The Rise of Brands analyses exactly how brands develop and operate in contemporary society.

O'Shaughnessy, Henneberg, and their contributors examine how the theory and practice of marketing has been and can be applied to politics. Particular attention was paid to the theory of political marketing, with conceptual definitions developed to better facilitate communication between marketing professionals and political science researchers. Political marketing is about the making and unmaking of governments in a democracy. Despite its growing importance, the marketing academic profession has shown very little interest in the political ramificaitons of their discipline, while political scientists often come to political marketing with the view that it is cosmetic, if not trivial. O'Shaughnessy, Henneberg, and their contributors examine how the theory and practice of marketing has been and can be applied to politics. As they show, elections are a persuasion task writ large, most especially with the demise of inherited class loyalties. Following elections, governments can employ marketing techniques to build support for their actions, while opposition parties can press the government and its supporters through similar marketing approaches. Of particular interest to scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with politics, political communication, and the making of public policy.

From a private nature walk to an engrossing novel, humans spend a vast amount of time engaged in solitary activities. However, despite the fact that individual activities are a prevalent part of everyday life, most scholarly research has been devoted to social interaction rather than solitary action. Ira Cohen's Solitary Action fills this intellectual void, identifying and discussing four basic forms of individual action: peripatetics, engrossments, regimens, and reflexives. Cohen explores the differences and similarities among the forms, specifically delving into the structural contrast between behaviors with rigid constraints, such as the game of solitaire, and behaviors which require creativity and spontaneity, such as a solo jazz improvisation. Lucid and relatable, Solitary Action links its arguments with examples from literature, personal narrative, and daily life, shedding light upon the understated significance of individual activities. The book concludes with a discussion of extensive retreats into solitude for religious, aesthetic, and self-restorative experiences, including examples from Thomas Merton and Henry David Thoreau. Ultimately, Cohen's findings promise to inspire new inquiries into the nature of social behavior by opening a new domain of everyday activities to the attention previously reserved for social interaction.

This publication is a record of the sessions presented during the annual conference of the South Central Association for Language Learning Technology (SOCALLT) held at the University of Colorado in Boulder on April 13-14, 2002. All authors are current members of the organization. The articles of these proceedings focus on a variety of issues dealing with the integration of technology into the foreign language curriculum, the role of technology in the teaching and learning process, language media development, professional development, and language center management.

Specialised translation has received very little attention from academic researchers, but in fact accounts for the bulk of professional translation on a global scale and is taught in a growing number of university-level translation programmes. This book aims to provide three things. Firstly, it offers a description of what makes the approach to specialised translation distinctive from wider-ranging approaches to Translation Studies adopted by translation scholars and applied linguists. Secondly, unlike the traditional approach to specialised translation, this book explores a perspective on specialised translation that is much less focused on terminology and more on the function and reception of specialised (translated) texts. Finally, the author outlines a professionally-oriented hands-on approach to the teaching of specialised translation resulting from many years of teaching it to MA students. The book will be of interest to Translation Studies students and scholars, as well as professional translators who are interested in the theory on which their activity is based.

The interrelation of globalization, communication, and media has prompted many individuals to view the world in terms of a new dichotomy: the global "wired" (nations with widespread online access) and the global "tired" (nations with very limited online access). In this way, differing levels of online access have created an international rift - the global digital divide. The nature, current status, and future projections related to this rift, in turn, have important implications for all of the world's citizens. Yet these problems are not intractable. Rather, with time and attention, public policies and private sector practices can be developed or revised to close this divide and bring more of the world's citizens to the global stage on a more equal footing. The first step in addressing problems resulting from the global digital divide is to improve understanding, that is, organizations and individuals must understand what factors contribute to this global digital divide for them to address it effectively. From this foundational understanding, organizations can take the kinds of focused, coordinated actions needed to address such international problems effectively. This collection represents an initial step toward examining the global digital divide from the perspective of developing nations and the challenges their citizens face in today's error of communication-driven globalization. The entries in this collection each represent different insights on the digital divide from the perspectives of developing nations - many of which have been overlooked in previous discussions of this topic. This book examines globalization and its effects from the perspective of how differences in access to online communication technologies between the economically developed countries and less economically developed countries is affecting social, economic, educational, and political developments in the world's emerging economies. This collection also examines how this situation is creating a global digital divide that will have adverse consequences for all nations. Each of the book's chapters thus presents trends and ideas related to the global digital divide between economically developed countries and less economically developed nations. Through this approach, the contributors present perspectives from the economically developing nations themselves versus other texts that explore this topic from the perspective of economically developed countries. In this way, the book provides a new and an important perspective to the growing literature on the global digital divide. The primary audiences for this text would include individuals from both academics and industry practitioners. The academic audience would include administrators in education; researchers; university, college, and community college instructors; and students at the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.

Though much has already been written on religious freedom in the United States, these treatments have come mostly from historians, legal scholars, and advocates, with relatively little attention from rhetorical critics. In The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom in the United States, fifteen scholars from this field address the variety of forms that free, public religiosity may assume, and which rhetorical techniques are operative in a public square populated by a diversity of religious-political actors. Together they consider the arguments, evidences, and strategies defining what religious freedom means and who is entitled to claim it in the contemporary United States.

This book examines the concept of persuasion in written texts for specialist audiences in the English and Czech languages. By exploring a corpus of academic research articles, corporate reports, religious sermons and user manuals the authors aim to reveal similarities and differences in rhetorical strategies across cultures and genres. They draw on Biber and Conrad's (2009) model for contextualising interaction in specialised discourses, Bell's (1997) framework for the analysis of participants roles, Swales' (1990) genre analysis approach for considering genre constraints and Hyland's (2005) metadiscourse model for investigating writer-reader interaction. The result is a book which will appeal to researchers and students in Discourse Studies, especially those with an interest in genre and rhetorical strategies.

This book seeks for an alternative perspective in analysing cultural phenomena to supplement the norm of Western dominant theorising and conceptualisation. It engages notions and concepts of culture developed by Chinese cultural theorists when addressing Chinese teachers' cross-cultural experiences in Australian school settings. This alternative approach acknowledges the fact that the generation and development of cultural theories is contextually based. Through the reciprocated theory-data examination, it enables the arguments: Chinese culture is rooted in its written language (hanzi) which makes culture inseparable from language teaching; the core of the culture is linked back to, streamlined with and continues from China's elongated history; this core has been consistently influential on these teachers' practices and the observable cultural shift in them could be non-genuine mimicry for survival. Document analysis witnesses the current political push for the culture's stability and continuity through the national education system across sectors. This book provides background information for teachers with cultural backgrounds different from their students', and draws on a bank of practice-based evidence to suggest ways to enhance teacher-student relationships in cross-cultural settings.

This collection of essays examines the variety of ways in which communication scholarship and research contribute to the political mobilization and empowerment of citizens to act on environmental issues - environmental discourse and action in the largest sense. As seen here, the task of environmental empowerment involves a curious mixture of national and local politics, abstract principles and concrete actions, ethical frameworks and political expediency. The contributors to this volume provide a fascinating array of perspectives on how to go about this task and how "earthtalk" continues to shape and frame human perceptions and actions on environmental issues. This unique work will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and students of political communication, public policy, and the environment.