This volume contains 21 new and original contributions to the study of formal semantics, written by distinguished experts in response to landmark papers in the field. The chapters make the target articles more accessible by providing background, modernizing the notation, providing critical commentary, explaining the afterlife of the proposals, and offering a useful bibliography for further study. The chapters were commissioned by the series editors to mark the 100th volume in the book series Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy. The target articles are amongst the most widely read and cited papers up to the end of the 20th century, and cover most of the important subfields of formal semantics. The authors are all prominent researchers in the field, making this volume a valuable addition to the literature for researchers, students, and teachers of formal semantics. Chapter 19 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Most of our knowledge is acquired by discourse, and our ability to produce and understand discourse is impossible without the activation of massive amounts of knowledge of the world. Both 'discourse' and 'knowledge' are fundamental concepts of the humanities and social sciences, but they are often treated separately. Based on a theory of natural knowledge, the book deals with the cognitive processes, social distribution, cultural differences and the linguistic and discursive 'management' of knowledge in interaction and communication in epistemic communities. The first book to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to studying the relationship between the two concepts, Discourse and Knowledge introduces the new field of epistemic discourse analysis. Using a wide range of examples to illustrate the theory, it is essential reading for both students and academics interested in epistemology, linguistics, discourse analysis, cognitive and social psychology and the social sciences.

Meaning, Discourse and Society investigates the construction of reality within discourse. When people talk about things such as language, the mind, globalisation or weeds, they are less discussing the outside world than objects they have created collaboratively by talking about them. Wolfgang Teubert shows that meaning cannot be found in mental concepts or neural activity, as implied by the cognitive sciences. He argues instead that meaning is negotiated and knowledge is created by symbolic interaction, thus taking language as a social, rather than a mental, phenomenon. Discourses, Teubert contends, can be viewed as collective minds, enabling the members of discourse communities to make sense of themselves and of the world around them. By taking an active stance in constructing the reality they share, people thus can take part in moulding the world in accordance with their perceived needs.

This comprehensive one-volume encyclopedia charts the history and scope of the field of semiotics and highlights its relevance to the study of new forms of communication in 300 accessible and informative articles. Coverage includes the life and work of important authors and theorists, the impact of various centres and schools of thought, the meaning of key terms, and the scope of semiotic analysis in various disciplines and domains. Providing both a detailed assessment of the subject and an informed view of its many applications, the work is a definitive reference source.

This volume collects together core papers by Richard K. Larson developing what has since come to be known as the "VP Shell" or "Split VP" analysis of sentential structure. The volume includes five previously published papers together with two major unpublished works from the same period: "Light Predicate Raising" (1989), which explores the interesting consequences of a leftward raising analysis of "NP Shift" phenomena, and "The Projection of DP (and DegP)" (1991), which extends the shell approach to the projection of nominal and adjectival structure, showing how projection can be handled in a uniform way. In addition to published, unpublished and limited distribution work, the volume includes extensive new introductory material. The general introduction traces the conceptual roots of VP Shells and its problems in the face of subsequent developments in theory, and offers an updated form compatible with modern Minimalist syntactic analysis. The section introductions to the material on datives, complex predicates and nominals show how the updated form of shell theory applies in the empirical domains where it was originally developed.

First published in 1988, this book is concerned with the definite and indefinite articles in English. It provides an integrated pragmatic-semantic theory of definite and indefinite reference, on the basis of which, many co-occurance restrictions between articles and non-modifiers are explained. At the general theoretical level, the book looks at the role of semantics in the prediction of all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. At a more particular level, it explores the nature of reference, examining an important selection of subjects such as the contrast between definiteness and indefiniteness, the relationship between definite and demonstrative reference, and the relationship between pragmatic and logical aspects of determining meaning.

This book investigates philosophical and formal approaches to predication. The topics discussed include Aristotelian predication, a conceptualist approach to predication, possible formalizations of the notion, Fregean predicates and concepts, and Meinongian predication. The contributions discuss the approaches proposed by Aristotle and Frege, as well as the division of classes into a hierarchy of orders. They reanalyze the traditional notions, and offer new insights into predication theory. This book contributes to contemporary debates on predication and predicates in the philosophy of language.

Rhetoric of Femininity: Female Body Image, Media, and Gender Role Stress/Conflict offers critical and social identity intersectionalities approach to interpretations of femininity among three generations of women for a rhetorical examination of how femininity is made to mean by media and popular culture. Amplified are voices of women across multiple age, ethnic, and sexual orientation groups who shared in focus groups and interviews their perceptions of femininity and feminine ideals. Femininity is explored using theories from communication and mass media, psychology, sociology, and feminist and gender studies. Donnalyn Pompper explores femininities as shaped by cultural rituals and industries, at home and at work in organizations, on sporting fields and arenas, and in politics.

Rethinking Language and Gender Research is the first book focusing on language and gender to explicitly challenge the dichotomy of female and male use of language. It represents a turning point in language and gender studies, addressing the political and social consequences of popular beliefs about women's language and men's language and proposing new ways of looking at language and gender. The essays take a fresh approach to the study of subjects such as language and sex and the use of language to produce and maintain power and prestige. Topics explored in this text include sex and the brain; the language of a rape hearing; teenage language; radio talk show exchanges; discourse strategies of African American women; political implications for language and gender studies; the relationship between sex and gender and the construction of identity through language. A useful introductory chapter sets the articles in context, explaining the relationships that exist between them, and full cross-referencing between articles and an extensive index allow for easy access to information. The interdisciplinary approach of the text, the wide-range of methodologies presented, and the comprehensive review of the current literature will make this book invaluable reading for all upper-level undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics, gender and cultural studies.

First published in 1976. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Complex Words in English presents a comprehensive account of present-day word formation in English. Starting with a discussion of some basic issues, including the definition of 'word', motivation, lexicalization, productivity, the relevance of historical information and the usefulness of dictionaries and other data-bases, the book then moves on to describe in detail a variety of prefixing, suffixing and compounding patterns - all illustrated with copious up-to-date examples. Other topics that are explored in-depth include diminutives, backformation and other effects of reanalysis, Latin and Greek based formations and sound symbolism. Many examples are given in context: recent writing and the records of OED on CD ROM are drawn on to demonstrate the relationship between spontaneous coinages and familiar items. The comprehensive coverage allows an instructive overview and comparison of patterns and of the many and diverse factors relevant to the notion of productivity. Throughout, the discussions are placed in the context of other recent and less recent work in the area and the book also contains a useful extensive bibliography.

The author researches selected synonyms of 'skinny' and 'fatty' in the history of the English language from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The method employed in grouping the analytical material has been dictated by the nature of the processes of semantic change. The author subdivided the quantum of the analysed lexical items into the following type-groups: zoosemy (animal metaphor), foodsemy (food metaphor), plantosemy (plant metaphor), metonymy, reification, eponymy, onomatopoeia, rhyming slang and varia. Surveying a collection of English dictionaries the author makes an attempt to determine the status of a given synonym in present-day English.

This is the second volume in Sources of Dramatic Theory. This volume includes the major theoretical writing on drama and theater from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among the writers represented by their own essays or substantial extracts from longer works are: Voltaire, Diderot, Goldoni, Dr. Johnson, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, and Coleridge. Many of the texts have been freshly translated for this volume and all have been newly annotated and introduced. Recurrent topics and allusions are traced by a system of cross-references.

Uncovering the structures and functions of conversational narratives uttered within natural social networks, Laine Berman shows how working-class Javanese women discursively construct identity and meaning within the rigid constraints of an hierarchical social order. She does this by identifying the silences, the "unsaid," and by revealing both the structure and function of silence in terms of its indexical reference to local meaning. It is here that the force of the Javanese language as used in everyday interaction shows itself to be an extremely potent philosophical entity as well as a means of social control. Thus, at least in regard to the urban poor, the book boldly questions the difference between traditional definitions of Javanese elegance and oppression. This study will contribute to our understanding of the social consequences of language use, to the linguistic knowledge of Indonesia and Java, and to such basic linguistic issues as narrative structure and function, speech levels and styles, and indexicality features.

This book expands the theoretical foundations of modern public relations, a growing young profession that lacked even a name until the twentieth century. As the discipline seeks guiding theories and paradigms, rhetorics both ancient and modern have proven to be fruitful fields of exploration. Charles Marsh presents Isocratean rhetoric as an instructive antecedent. Isocrates was praised by Cicero and Quintilian as "the master of all rhetoricians," favored over Plato and Aristotle. By delineating the strategic value of Isocratean rhetoric to modern public relations, Marsh addresses the call for research into the philosophical, theoretical, and ethical origins of the field. He also addresses the call among scholars of classical rhetoric for modern relevance. Because Isocrates maintained that stable relationships must solicit and honor dissent, Marsh analyzes both historic and contemporary challenges to Isocratean rhetoric. He then moves forward to establish the modern applications of Isocrates in persuasion, education, strategic planning, new media, postmodern practices, and paradigms such as excellence theory, communitarianism, fully functioning society theory, and reflection.

This edited book provides cutting edge contributions from an international array of prominent experts who discuss the relevance of pedagogical stylistics in relation to diverse contexts and areas, including empirical approaches, corpus stylistics, creative writing, literary-linguistic criticism, students as researchers, critical discourse, academic register, text-world pedagogy, cognitive stylistics, classroom discourse, language of literary texts, L1/L2 education, EFL learners, and multimodal stylistics. Intended as a follow-up to Watson and Zyngier (2007), this volume situates the reader by offering a broad assessment of how the field has developed during the past 15 years and where it stands now. By examining both contemporary research and future challenges, it should be regarded as essential reading for all teachers, researchers, scholars, and students interested in understanding language and how to apply stylistics in educational settings. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working in stylistics, cognitive linguistics, language teaching, applied linguistics, literary studies, and materials development.

The concept of social power, who holds it and how they use it is a widely debated subject particularly in the field of discourse analysis, and the wider arena of sociolinguistics. In her new book,Joanna Thornborrow challenges the received notion that power is necessarily held by some speakers and not by others. Through the detailed analysis of communication and interaction within a range of institutional settings, she examines power as an emerging, negotiated phenomenon between participants with different status and goals. Written in a clear style which combines attention to technical detail with accessibility, Power Talk includes: a comprehensive introduction to the theme of power including the analytic approaches to power in language a wide-ranging discussion of theory and practice and, in-depth contemporary case studies. Power Talk is the first book to focus on the topic of power in situated interaction across a range of contexts. As such, it makes a timely, and important contribution to the debate surrounding social power and language use, and will be of value to both students and researchers alike.

Tuvaluan is a Polynesian language spoken by the 9,000 inhabitants of the nine atolls of Tuvalu in the Central Pacific, as well as small and growing Tuvaluan communities in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. This grammar is the first detailed description of the structure of Tuvaluan, one of the least well-documented languages of Polynesia. Tuvaluan pays particular attention to discourse and sociolinguistics factors at play in the structural organization of the language.

Written by the Han philosopher Xu Gan (A.D. 170-217), Balanced Discourses is an inquiry into the causes of political breakdown. It provides a unique contemporary account of the social, intellectual, and cosmological factors that Xu Gan identified as having precipitated the demise of the Han order. This edition of Zhonglun (or Balanced Discourses) contains the original Chinese text with annotations and, on facing pages, an English translation also accompanied by annotations. This collection of essays spans a range of topics, from Confucian cultivation to calendrical calculation. Xu's perspectives are of not only historical but also philosophical interest, for they reveal his belief in a special correlative bond that should exist between names and actualities and his understanding of what happens when that bond is broken. The translator, John Makeham, argues in his introduction that the essays display the same quality of balance that Xu Gan sees as essential to social and political equilibrium.

In this book Michael McCarthy and Ronald Carter describe the discoursal properties of language and demonstrate what insights this approach can offer to the student and teacher of language. The authors examine the relationship between complete texts, both spoken and written, and the social and cultural contexts in which they function. They argue that the functions of language are often best understood in a discoursal environment and that exploring language in context compels us to revise commonly-held understandings about the forms and meanings of language. In so doing, the authors argue the need for language teachers, syllabus planners and curriculum organisers to give greater attention to language as discourse.

Surely one of America's most popular novelists, Stephen King has only recently begun to receive serious attention from scholars and literary critics. The Dark Descent assembles fifteen illuminating original essays that consider King from a variety of intellectual orientations, addressing the major novels and central thematic concerns that represent King's contributions to American letters and elevating King scholarship to a new level of critical discourse. This volume places King firmly within the canon of contemporary American fiction. The essayists are concerned with explicating the meanings of individual narratives and creating critical contexts for their interpretion. While covering a broad range of his works and using multiple theoretical approaches--including reader-response, mythic, psychoanalytic, and structuralist criticism--to offer insights into King's fiction, most of the essayists reflect on one of two central theses: that King's body of literature may be seen as having been deeply influenced by the mainstream traditions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European fictions, and that the narratives may be read as profound commentary on the major political and social tensions shaping contemporary American life. King's supernatural horrors reflect actual horrors, and his compelling style makes art out of horror fiction. A King chronology, bibliography and an expository introduction flank the analytical essays.

Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis provides the most comprehensive overview currently available of linguistic and sociological approaches to text and discourse analysis.

Focus particles (words such as even, only, also) play an important role in English, in various syntactic and semantic domains, but their characteristics pose numerous problems for current syntactic frameworks and semantic theories. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the syntax, meaning and use of focus particles and related function words in English and many other languages. It also provides a historical perspective on their development.

A revised, updated edition of S. I. Hayakawa's classic work on semantics. He discusses the role of language, its many functions, and how language shapes our thinking. Introduction by Robert MacNeil; Index.