Humans are imperfect, and problems of speaking, hearing and understanding are pervasive in ordinary interaction. This book examines the way we 'repair' and correct such problems as they arise in conversation and other forms of human interaction. The first book-length study of this topic, it brings together a team of scholars from the fields of anthropology, communication, linguistics and sociology to explore how speakers address problems in their own talk and that of others, and how the practices of repair are interwoven with non-verbal aspects of communication such as gaze and gesture, across a variety of languages. Specific chapters highlight intersections between repair and epistemics, repair and turn construction, and repair and action formation. Aimed at researchers and students in sociolinguistics, speech communication, conversation analysis and the broader human and social sciences to which they contribute - anthropology, linguistics, psychology and sociology - this book provides a state-of-the-art review of conversational repair, while charting new directions for future study.

The activities in How to be Brilliant at Writing Poetry are open-ended and focus on the process of writing - from initial idea gathering to redrafting and the final product. They recognize that a sense of audience and a purpose for writing are crucial. The 40 photocopiable worksheets aimed at 7-11 year olds (KS2) pupils provide models for different forms of poetry. Activities include: finding a beginning, using words to paint a picture, making up similes and rhyming.

This book explores two strands of Audiovisual Translation referred to as "research" and "use". As their points of convergence as well as divergence are brought to light, the contributors show that the two tend to overlap and cross-pollinate. The volume's inquiries of linguistic, cultural, sociological, computational, educational and historical nature give a comprehensive up-to-date account of AVT as an expanding and heterogeneous, yet internally coherent, field of scientific and professional endeavour. "The book offers a good balance of chapters dealing with new topics and chapters dealing with more established AVT topics from new angles. It is a must read for TS students and academics but also for practitioners and for translators from other domains, given the increased prominence and diversity of AVT modes both in TS research and translation practice." (Professor Aline Remael University of Antwerp Chair of the Department of Applied Linguistics, Translators and Interpreters)

The act of questioning is the primary speech interaction between an institutional speaker and someone outside the institution. These roles dictate their language practices. "Why Do You Ask?" is the first collected volume to focus solely on the question/answer process, drawing on a range of methodological approaches like Conversational Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Discursive Psychology, and Sociolinguistics-and using as data not just medical, legal, and educational environments, but also less-studied institutions like telephone call centers, broadcast journalism (i.e. talk show interviews), academia, and telemarketing.
An international roster of well-known contributors addresses such issues as: the relationship between the syntax of the question and its discourse function; the kind of institutional work that questions perform; the degree to which the questioner can control the direction of the conversation; and how questions are used to repackage responses, to construct meaning, and to serve the institutional goals of speakers.
Why Do You Ask? will appeal to linguists and others interested in institutional discourse, as well as those interested in the grammatical/pragmatic nature of questions.

A generic statement is a type of generalization that is made by asserting that a "kind" has a certain property. For example we might hear that marshmallows are sweet. Here, we are talking about the "kind" marshmallow and assert that individual instances of this kind have the property of being sweet. Almost all of our common sense knowledge about the everyday world is put in terms of generic statements. What can make these generic sentences be true even when there are exceptions? A mass term is one that does not "divide its reference;" the word water is a mass term; the word dog is a count term. In a certain vicinity, one can count and identity how many dogs there are, but it doesn't make sense to do that for water--there just is water present. The philosophical literature is rife with examples concerning how a thing can be composed of a mass, such as a statue being composed of clay. Both generic statements and mass terms have led philosophers, linguists, semanticists, and logicians to search for theories to accommodate these phenomena and relationships.
The contributors to this interdisciplinary volume study the nature and use of generics and mass terms. Noted researchers in the psychology of language use material from the investigation of human performance and child-language learning to broaden the range of options open for formal semanticists in the construction of their theories, and to give credence to some of their earlier postulations--for instance, concerning different types of predications that are available for true generics and for the role of object recognitions in the development of count vs. mass terms. Relevant data also is described by investigating the ways children learn these sorts of linguistic items: children can learn how to sue generic statements correctly at an early age, and children are adept at individuating objects and distinguishing them from the stuff of which they are made also at an early age.

This title explores the roles and discursive strategies that politicians enact in political discourse in order to achieve their specific goals. Politicians enact three main roles in political discourse - narrator, interlocutor and character - to achieve specific goals. This book explains these roles and how they constitute discursive strategies, correlating with political aims. In short, politicians evoke voices in discourse to strategically position themselves in relation to social actors and events. The book describes these strategies and analyzes the manner in which they are employed by three very different politicians - Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and George W. Bush. The roles are studied cross-culturally and from different ideological backgrounds. This book explains how political ideologies are constructed, defined and redefined by linguistic means, showing specific ways in which politicians manipulate language to achieve the goals on their political agenda. It applies new methodological approaches to the analysis of political discourse and also contributes to the sparse literature on political discourse analysis of Spanish-speaking politicians.

The articles in this collection focus on philosophical approaches to proper names. The issues discussed include abstract names, empty names, naming and name-using practices, definite descriptions, individuals, reference, designation, sense and semantics. The contributions show the importance and lasting influence of theories proposed by John Stuart Mill, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Donald Davidson, and Saul Kripke. Individual chapters assess traditional analyses and modern controversies, and contribute to the debate on proper names in contemporary philosophy of language.

Cognitive linguistics provides tools to discuss identity as a process. Identity depends on the underlying conceptualisation of the present, while innovation and creation are borderline phenomena in epistemology. The two may be seen as generalised accounts of causation as a process: open-ended and closed, where time is conceptualised as real or figurative. Aristotle's epistemology builds on the conceptualisation of a subject manipulating objects in the visual field. Saint Augustine and Plotinus conceive of time and identity as real and contingent or figurative and necessary. William of Ockham builds on a simple conceptualisation of a time-point matrix as opposed to a duration matrix. British National Corpus findings relate to and comment on these expert philosophical conversations through the medium of cognitive models of "innovation" and "creation", instruments of thought and reason in English.

Information and communication technology (ICT) has dramatically altered the world's social and economic landscape and is now gaining momentum in the realm of language studies. Corpora and ICT in Language Studies attempts to signal and document this phenomenon by bringing together twenty-nine contributions authored by both seasoned researchers and newcomers to the field. The contributions range from more traditional corpus-based or corpus-driven studies to those incorporating ICT as an integral part of their methodology. The volume includes a selection of conference papers given at PALC 2005, the fifth conference in the biennial cycle of meetings organized by the Department of English Language at Lodź University, as well as a number of invited papers. The papers are grouped in three parts: corpora in empirical language studies, cognitive linguistics and e-learning.

This book consists of scientific chapters devoted to innovative approaches to examination of anthropocentrism. It depicts human beings as physical, spiritual, social and cultural creatures perceived through the lingual and literary lens. The publication has an intercultural foundation, as it examines Slovak, Russian, German, English and Romanian languages. The authors of the book discuss issues which transcend the boundaries of philological research. They apply knowledge from various fields, such as psychology, communication theory, aesthetics, mass media and other social sciences in order to obtain relevant scientific results. The authors present critical analyses and interpretations of contemporary theoretical and practical problems occurring in the selected areas of expertise, and outline the perspective research possibilities.

How do we read stories? How do they engage our minds and create meaning? Are they a mental construct, a linguistic one or a cultural one? What is the difference between real stories and fictional ones? This book addresses such questions by describing the conceptual and linguistic underpinnings of narrative interpretation. Barbara Dancygier discusses literary texts as linguistic artifacts, describing the processes which drive the emergence of literary meaning. If a text means something to someone, she argues, there have to be linguistic phenomena that make it possible. Drawing on blending theory and construction grammar, the book focuses its linguistic lens on the concepts of the narrator and the story, and defines narrative viewpoint in a new way. The examples come from a wide spectrum of texts, primarily novels and drama, by authors such as William Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Jan Potocki and Mikhail Bulgakov.

Over the past few decades, cognitive linguistic research has turned metonymy from the "poor sister" of metaphor into a ubiquitous conceptual phenomenon. However, this broad notion of metonymy might run the risk of becoming too unrestricted and vacuous. In order to come to grips with the problem, the author proposes a narrower definition of metonymy, according to which linguistic metonymies co-activate the source, the target, and the relation between them so that only the target is expressed linguistically. Furthermore, he argues for a typology of metonymies based on the mental contents they involve. These results may not only prevent that the category of metonymy will become unlimited but may also take us a step closer to enhancing the empirical study of metonymic phenomena.

Originally published in 1985. This study concerns the problem of treating identity as a relation between an object and itself. It addresses the Russellian and Fregean solutions and goes on to present in the first part a surfacist account of belief-context ambiguity requiring neither differences in relative scope nor distinctions between sense and reference. The second part offers an account of negative existentials, necessity and identity-statements which resolves problems unlike the Russell-Frege analyses. This is a detailed work in linguistics and philosophy.

Most of the time our utterances are automatically interpreted as speech acts: as assertions, conjectures and testimonies; as orders, requests and pleas; as threats, offers and promises. Surprisingly, the cognitive correlates of this essential component of human communication have received little attention. This book fills the gap by providing a model of the psychological processes involved in interpreting and understanding speech acts. The theory is framed in naturalistic terms and is supported by data on language development and on autism spectrum disorders. Mikhail Kissine does not presuppose any specific background and addresses a crucial pragmatic phenomenon from an interdisciplinary perspective. This is a valuable resource for academic researchers and graduate and undergraduate students in pragmatics, semantics, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and philosophy of language.

First published in 1992, this book evokes Pandora and Occam as metaphoric corner posts in an argument about language as discourse and in doing so, brings analytic philosophy to bear on issues of Continental philosophy, with attention to linguistic, semiological, and semiotic concerns. Instead of regarding meanings as guaranteed by definitions, the author argues that linguistic expressions are schemata directing us more or less loosely toward the activation of nonlinguistic sign systems. Ruthrof draws up a heuristic hierarchy of discourses, with literary expression at the top, descending through communication-reduced reference and speech acts to formal logic and digital communication at the bottom. The book offers multiple perspectives from which to review traditional theories of meaning, working from a wide variety of theorists, including Peirce, Frege, Husserl, Derrida, Lyotard, Davidson, and Searle. In Ruthrof's analysis, Pandora and Occam illustrate the opposition between the suppressed rich materiality of culturally saturated discourse and the stark ideality of formal sign systems. This book will be of interest to those studying linguistics, literature and philosophy.

This volume presents selected contributions to an annual symposium on metaphor and metonymy held at the English Department of Heidelberg University. It brings together papers by lecturers, PhD students and graduates from three universities - Heidelberg University, Eoetvoes Lorand University in Budapest, and the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The contributions illustrate the plurality of perspectives and methods in current cognitive-linguistic research on metaphor and metonymy and exemplify some of the ways in which they can be combined. The papers also attest to the wide range of domains and topics to which metaphor- and metonymy-based research can be applied, including emotion terms, political and scientific discourse, morphology, cross-cultural variation and internet communication.

In The Language of Fraud Cases, Roger Shuy follows the now well-established format of his previous volumes on language and law. He discusses here eight cases that he himself has consulted on, and that illustrate how linguistics can help to solve the various problems that arise in trying to define fraudulent language in the context of law. He examines speech events, schemas, agendas, speech acts, conversational strategies, as well as smaller language units such as sentences, phrases, words, and sounds, and discusses how these can play a major role in deciding fraud cases. The cases chosen for this volume hinge on recorded language evidence, making them particularly relevant for linguistic analysis, and include cases of government contracts, EPA regulations, foreign corrupt business practices, trade secrets, money laundering, securities trading, art theft, and price fixing. Through his examination of these cases, Shuy demonstrates the significant contribution of linguistic analytical methodology to the understanding of language evidence and its success in revealing willful uses of fraudulent language to achieve financial gain.

After everything that's happened, how is it possible that conservatives still win debates about the economy? Time and again the right wins over voters by claiming that their solutions are only common sense, even as their tired policies of budgetary sacrifice and corporate plunder both create and prolong economic disaster. Why does the electorate keep buying what they're selling? According to political communications expert Anat Shenker-Osorio, it's all about language,and not just theirs, but ours.In Don't Buy It Shenker-Osorio diagnoses our economic discourse as stricken with faulty messages, deceptive personification, and, worst of all, a barely coherent concept of what the economy actually is. Opening up the business section of most newspapers or flipping on cable news unleashes an onslaught of economic doomsaying that treats the economy as an ungovernable force of nature. Alternately, by calling the economy unhealthy" or recovering" as we so often do, we unconsciously give it the status of a living being. No wonder Americans become willing to submit to any indignity required to keep the economy happy. Tread lightly, we can't risk irritating the economy!Cutting through conservative myth-making, messaging muddles, and destructive misinformation, Shenker-Osorio suggests a new way to win the most important arguments of our day. The left doesn't have to self-destruct every time matters economic come to the fore,there are metaphors and frames that can win, and Shenker-Osorio shows what they are and how to use them. Don't Buy It is a vital handbook for seizing victory in the economic debate. In the end, it convincingly shows that radically altering our politics and policies for the better is a matter of first changing the conversation,literally.

This is a collection of papers that resulted from the Third International Conference on Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics that was held at Shanghai International Studies University in September 2005. Their common focus lies in aspects of the contrastive semantics and pragmatics in a wide variety of languages. These aspects include several themes that arise from Gricean and neo-Gricean considerations of contrastive pragmatics; from cognitive semantics and pragmatics, including metaphor and issues that relate to the logical structure of quantification, modality and demonstration; and from contrastive lexical, constructional and discourse semantics. The languages discussed include Afrikaans, Amele, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Gokana, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Yakut and Zulu.

This is the first textbook that approaches natural language semantics and logic from the perspective of Discourse Representation Theory, an approach which emphasizes the dynamic and incremental aspects of meaning and inference. The book has been carefully designed for the classroom. It is aimed at students with varying degrees of preparation, including those without prior exposure to semantics or formal logic. Moreover, it should make DRT easily accessible to those who want to learn about the theory on their own. Exercises are available to test understanding as well as to encourage independent theoretical thought. The book serves a double purpose. Besides a textbook, it is also the first comprehensive and fully explicit statement of DRT available in the form of a book. The first part of the book develops the basic principles of DRT for a small fragment of English (but which has nevertheless the power of standard predicate logic). The second part extends this fragment by adding plurals; it discusses a wide variety of problems connected with plural nouns and verbs. The third part applies the theory to the analysis of tense and aspect. Many of the problems raised in Parts Two and Three are novel, as are the solutions proposed. For undergraduate and graduate students interested in linguistics, theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Suitable for students with no previous exposure to formal semantics or logic.

Doing Pragmatics is a popular reader-friendly introduction to pragmatics. Embracing the comprehensive and engaging style which characterized the previous editions, this fourth edition has been fully revised. Doing Pragmatics extends beyond theory to promote an applied understanding of empirical data and provides students with the opportunity to 'do' pragmatics themselves. A distinctive feature of this textbook is that virtually all the examples are taken from real world uses of language which reflect the emergent nature of communicative interaction. Peter Grundy consolidates the strengths of the original version, reinforcing its unique combination of theory and practice with new theory, exercises and up-to-date real data and examples. This book provides the ideal foundation for all those studying pragmatics within English language, linguistics and ELT/ TESOL.

This is a second edition of the ground-breaking volume Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, which was the first published collection of chapters presenting critical discourse analysis theory and practice. Critical discursive approaches have now become the main trend in most discursive and semiotic investigations. It was then, and is especially now, predominantly concerned with identifying, demystifying and resisting the ways language and semiotic systems are used to reflect, create and sustain inequalities in specific contexts. This new collection presents contributions by all six of the living authors who were central to the first edition: Norman Fairclough, Theo van Leeuwen, Teun van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, Caldas-Coulthard and Coulthard - plus an edited version of a jointly authored classic chapter originally authored by Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress. There are four new chapters written by the other leading members of the foundational 1990s European Critical Discourse Analysis group: Phil Graham, Jay Lemke, David Machin and Louisa Rojo and two by young critical discourse researchers who have risen to prominence more recently: Rodrigo Borba and German Canale. Texts and Practices Revisited: Essential Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis provides a representative collection of work which, while authored by the pioneering researchers of the first wave of CDA, illustrates their most recent concerns and their latest analytical techniques. It is an essential text for all advanced students of English language, linguistics, media and cultural studies.

"Empirical Methods in Language Studies" presents 22 papers employing a broad range of empirical methods in the analysis of various aspects of language and communication. The individual texts offer contributions to the description of conceptual strategies, syntax, semantics, non-verbal communication, language learning, discourse, and literature.

Slurs and Expressivity: Semantics and Beyond, edited by Eleonora Orlando and Andres Saab,focuses on the analysis of the expressive aspects of slur-words, namely, those words prima facie related to the conveyance of contemptuous or derogatory feelings for the members of a certain group of people identified in terms of their ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, political ideology, and other personal qualities. In as far as they are used to express emotional attitudes, slurs are, thus, a kind of expressive words. This collection provides different hypotheses regarding the way in which the expressive import of slurs and other related expressive words is semantically encoded in the grammar, and how their meaning impacts other aspects related to their use in different practices of linguistic communication. These linguistic practices are usually, but not always, related to practices of segregation and discrimination of particular human groups. Therefore, any contribution to the theory of slur meaning is, directly or indirectly, also a contribution to a better understanding of those practices and to finding the best way to eradicate them.

The book is devoted to conceptual metaphors in English according to the level of abstraction in their target domains. The findings reveal a striking difference between mappings onto concrete domains and mappings onto abstract ones. In metaphors with concrete target domains, a preexisting similarity between the source and target concepts can be revealed or highlighted. In contrast, when the target domain is abstract, the similarity between the source and target concepts is created rather than merely revealed or highlighted. To some degree, creation of similarity is possible even with concrete domains, but in abstract ones it is necessary, not optional. This is because abstract concepts have little or no schematic structure in the first place. Since abstract concepts are classified in language as kinds of physical objects, they inherit rudimentary physical properties, such as density, weight, temperature, etc. Looking at metaphors from this perspective allows us to refine the existing theories of metaphor.