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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning) > General
"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.
"Topical Themes in Argumentation Theory" brings together twenty exploratory studies on important subjects of research in contemporary argumentation theory. The essays are based on papers that were presented at the 7th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA) in Amsterdam in June 2010. They give an impression of the nature and the variety of the kind of research that has recently been carried out in the study of argumentation. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of 'dissensus' and 'deep disagreement'. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of 'dissensus' and 'deep disagreement'. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of 'dissensus' and 'deep disagreement'. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse."
The volume comprises papers that were presented at the 14th European conference on "Formal Description of Slavic Languages 10.5" at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. The conference focuses on formal approaches to Slavic phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. The present contributions describe interesting data patterns found in Slavic languages and analyze them from the perspective of formal grammar, including generative syntax, Distributed Morphology, formal semantics and others.
Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics is a comprehensive introductory text which discusses the development of pragmatics - its aims and methodology - and also introduces themes that are not generally covered in other texts. Jenny Thomas focuses on the dynamic nature of speaker meaning, considering the central roles of both speaker and hearer, and takes into account the social and psychological factors involved in the generation and interpretation of utterances. The book includes a detailed examination of the development of Pragmatics as a discipline, drawing attention to problems encountered in earlier work, and brings the reader up to date with recent discussion in the field. The book is written principally for students with no previous knowledge of pragmatics, and the basic concepts are covered in considerable detail. Theoretical and more complicated information is highlighted with examples that have been drawn from the media, fiction and real-life interaction, and makes the study more accessible to newcomers. It is an ideal introductory textbook for students of linguistics and for all who are interested in analysing problems in communication.
This book focuses on values and valuation in the State of the Union addresses delivered by the former U.S. President George W. Bush. What values are invoked in the speeches? How are these values constructed? How can they be classified? How are particular construals of values conducive to the actions the speaker wants to legitimize? Drawing on Critical Discourse Studies, the book examines pragmalinguistic tools applied in political legitimization, such as proximization, metaphor or assertion. The analysis reveals three ideological values used in the context of foreign policy making: security, terrorism and freedom.
Truth Be Told explains how truth and falsity result from relations that sentences have to the contexts in which they occur and the circumstances at which they are evaluated. It offers a precise conception of truth and a clear diagnosis of the Liar and Grelling paradoxes. Currently, semantic theory employs generalized quantifiers as the extensions of noun phrases in explanations of the composition of truth-values. Generalized quantifiers are direct descendants of the second-level functions to truth-values that Gottlob Frege considered to be the referents of his unrestricted quantifiers. During the past fifty years, Frege's original quantifier referents have been revised and generalized with the result that now every noun phrase, of any type, has a generalized quantifier as its extension. This evolution of noun-phrase extensions from Frege's referents has retained two of the original theory's flaws. First, generalized quantifiers inherit a troublesome intrusion of predicate extensions. Second, the senses of names and deictic terms are still not identified, with the result that their extensions are not sharply distinguished from their referents. Truth Be Told frees semantic theory from these Fregean flaws. Its theory of sense, quantity, and extension yields an intuitive composition of sentence truth-values and secures an accurate understanding of truth. Its final chapter applies the theory in a diagnosis of the Liar and Grelling paradoxes that is immune to the notorious revenge paradoxes. Truth Be Told can be used for courses in philosophy of language, semantics, and the foundations of logic.
In Pragmatics, the study of meaning derived from context, Jean Stilwell Peccei offers a practical introduction to this core area of linguistics. Pragmatics: encourages the reader to look at different levels of meaning within sentences provides a basic understanding of key pragmatic concepts introduces two highly influential approaches to pragmatics: the Co-Operative Principle and Speech Act Theory encourages the reader to apply basic analytical tools to real data, eg. advertising language and children's conversations provides a range of activities, discussion questions, an answer key and further reading.
It is increasingly important in our globalised world for people to successfully manage interpersonal relationships. This is the first book to tackle this vital topic, by taking an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the process of relating across cultures. Drawing together key concepts from politeness theory, intercultural communication, and cross-cultural/intercultural psychology, it provides a robust framework for analysing and understanding intercultural encounters. It explores the ways in which individuals make judgements about others, deal with offence and conflict, maintain smooth relations, and build new relationships. These processes are explained conceptually and illustrated extensively with authentic intercultural examples and empirical data. With accessible explanations and follow-up activities, it will appeal not only to academics working in the areas of intercultural communication, pragmatic theory, conflict research and other related academic disciplines, but also to students of these topics, as well as professionals such as intercultural trainers and those working in the third sector.
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.
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, this book looks at the role of semantics in the prediction of all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. A generalisation is proposed uniting semantic oppositions underlying ungrammaticality with syntactic oppositions between conditions of application on transformational generative rules. A procedure is suggested for distinguishing semantic from syntactic causes of ungrammaticality. At a more particular level, the book explores the nature of reference. It examines 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.
First published in 1979, this book develops a grammatically orientated semantics (as opposed to a semantically orientated grammar) of mood and condition in English. It seeks to establish correspondences between areas of semantic organisation ('planes') and surface grammar, without reverting to an intermediate notion of deep grammar. The chapters explore topics including the differences between 'literal meaning' and 'significance', speech roles, and constructions of condition and reason in terms of the four panes discussed earlier in the volume.
Pedagogies of Public Memory explores opportunities for writing and rhetorical education at museums, archives, and memorials. Readers will follow students working and writing at well-known sites of international interest (e.g., the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum), at local sites (e.g., vernacular memorials in and around Muncie, Indiana and the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania), and in digital spaces (e.g., Florida State University's Postcard Archive and The Women's Archive Project at the University of Nebraska Omaha). From composing and delivering museum tours, to designing online memorials that challenge traditional practices of public grief, to producing and publishing a magazine containing the photographs and stories of individuals who lived through historic moments in the Freedom Struggle, to expanding and creating new public archives - the pedagogical projects described in this volume create richly textured learning opportunities for students at all levels - from first-year writers to graduate students. The students and faculty whose work is represented in this volume undertake to reposition the past in the present and to imagine possible new futures for themselves and their communities. By exploring the production of public memory, this volume raises important new questions about the intersection of rhetoric and remembrance.
Within the historical literary genre, stylistics is widely applicable but as yet under deployed. This book acts as a showcase for the range of analysis possible. Although the analytic focus within the genre has traditionally been on literary criticism, stylistics has much to offer. Bringing together text and context, Patricia Canning synthesizes stylistic models with literary theory and critical theory. The historical and contextual focus throughout the book is on religious, political and ideological issues that animated and defined Reformation England. Each chapter interrogates the dichotomous concept of 'word' and 'image' by considering the ways in which writers of this period deal with these contentious subjects in their dramatic and poetic works. 'Representation' is proposed not just as a matter of semiotics but of ideology.
This book draws attention to the logical contradictions, unstable premises, and unquestioned assumptions that underlie arguments about Man's distinction, while also demonstrating that the way we think about nonhuman animals is only one possibility among many. Vestiges of older ways of thinking continue to inform our understanding of the human-nonhuman animal relationship, disturbing the simple narrative that Man has mastered nature. The reader will additionally find here a history that illuminates popular attitudes toward nature as well as intellectual traditions about the relationship between Man and other animals. As a result, each chapter is an overview of how the past continues to inform the present. The chapters, then, move back and forth between ancient ideas like the myths of Prometheus and Orpheus, Age of Reason philosophers like Francis Bacon and Immanuel Kant and modern practices like petkeeping and vivisection.
This volume presents innovative research on the multimodal dimension of discourse specific to academic settings, with a particular focus on the interaction between the verbal and non-verbal in constructing meaning. Contributions by experienced and emerging researchers provide in-depth analyses in both research and teaching contexts, and consider the ways in which multimodal strategies can be leveraged to enhance the effectiveness of academic communication. Contributors employ both quantitative and qualitative analytical methods, and make use of state-of-the-art software for analyzing multimodal features of discourse. The chapters in the first part of the volume focus on the multimodal features of two key research genres: conference presentations and plenary addresses. In the second part, contributors explore the role of multimodality in the classroom through analyses of both instructors' and students' speech, as well as the use of multimodal materials for more effective learning. The research presented in this volume is particularly relevant within the context of globalized higher education, where participants represent a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Multimodal Analysis in Academic Settings contributes to an emerging field of research with importance to an increasing number of academics and practitioners worldwide.
"Metaphor and Intercultural Communication" examines in detail the dynamics of metaphor in interlingual contact, translation and globalization processes. Its case-studies, which combine methods of cognitive metaphor theory with those of corpus-based and discourse-oriented research, cover contact linguistic and cultural contacts between Chinese, English including Translational English and Aboriginal English, Greek, Kabyle, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish.Part I introduces readers to practical and methodological problems of the intercultural transfer of metaphor through empirical (corpus-based and experimental) studies of translators' experiences and strategies in dealing with figurative language in a variety of contexts. Part II explores the universality-relativity dimension of cross- and intercultural metaphor on the basis of empirical data from various European and non-European cultures. Part III investigates the socio-economic and political consequences of figurative language use through case studies of communication between aboriginal and mainstream cultures, in the media, in political discourse and gender-related discourses. Special attention is paid to cases of miscommunication and of deliberate re- and counter-conceptualisation of cliches from one culture into another. The results open new perspectives on some of the basic assumptions of the 'classic' cognitive paradigm, e.g. regarding metaphor understanding, linguistic relativity and concept-construction.
This book presents a cross-linguistic investigation of the behaviour of negation in gapping sentences. Sophie Repp focusses on German and English with reference to Dutch, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Slovak. She shows that these languages exhibit important differences in the interaction of gapping and negation and further that no account in the literature explains why this should be. Dr Repp also argues that the precise interpretation of an elided negation depends on varying combinations of syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic factors. Illustrating her argument by the interpretation of the negation in examples such as "Pete hasn't got a video and John a DVD," "Pete didn't clean the whole flat and John laze around all afternoon," and "To Mary, Pete didn't say anything and to Sue, only that he was hungry," Dr Repp questions a basic assumption in the analysis of gapping: that the meaning of the two conjuncts must be parallel in the elided material. This leads her to a wide-ranging discussion of the interpretation of scope and the nature of negation. She then proposes a syntactic analysis that both takes into account the interaction of the grammatical interfaces and is at the same time compatible with more general assumptions of current generative theory. She concludes by considering the implications of her findings for linguistic theory more generally.
The idea for this volume took root during a recent annual convention of the American Psychological Association. The contributors share a common vision of research in their particular area and have had an opportunity to debate and clarify their ideas. Taken as a whole, the fifteen chapters provide an exciting perspective of the field and form a basic set of readings for courses on individual and group decision making in a variety of disciplines. The coverage from basic laboratory research to complex applied group decision processes should challenge researchers and students to pursue the field of decision making as enthusiastic scientists and practitioners.
The Political Language of Food addresses why the language used in the production, marketing, selling, and consumption of food is inherently political. Food language is rarely neutral and is often strategically vague, which tends to serve the interests of powerful entities.Boerboom and his contributors critique the language of food-based messages and examine how such language-including idioms, tropes, euphemisms, invented terms, etc.-serves to both mislead and obscure relationships between food and the resulting community, health, labor, and environmental impacts. Employing diverse methodologies, the contributors examine on a micro-level the textual and rhetorical elements of food-based language itself. The Political Language of Food is both timely and important and will appeal to scholars of media studies, political communication, and rhetoric.
Most people have to communicate with colleagues every day and persuade them to understand their opinions or to accept their views. This handbook is intended for anyone who is interested in such goal-oriented language. It extracts 300 persuasive tactics from research findings in communication, linguistics, pragmatics and related fields, and presents them in a clear, concise and consistent manner. Such tactics as analogy, argument presentation, humour and metaphor are included. Each tactic is presented on a separate page with an analysis of its persuasive value. Two indexes - one by persuasive need and the other by tactic - allow readers full flexibility to use the handbook in their own way. This work should be of interest in courses which deal with the management of interaction, pragmatics, discourse analysis and communications.
First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The broad aim of this lively and engaging book is to examine relationships between the linguistic patterns, the stylistic functions, and the social and cultural contexts of humour. The material used in illustration is of corresponding breadth: schoolyard jokes, graffiti, aphorisms, advertisements, arguments, anecdotes, puns, parodies, passages of comic fiction, all come under Dr Nash's scrutiny.
A Revolution in Tropes is a groundbreaking study of rhetoric and tropes. Theorizing new ways of seeing rhetoric and its relationship with democratic deliberation, Jane Sutton and Mari Lee Mifsud explore and display alloiosis as a trope of difference, exception, and radical otherness. Their argument centers on Aristotle's theory of rhetoric through particular tropes of similarity that sustained a vision of civic discourse but at the same time underutilized tropes of difference. When this vision is revolutionized, democratic deliberation can perform and advance its ends of equality, justice, and freedom. Marie-Odile N. Hobeika and Michele Kennerly join Sutton and Mifsud in pushing the limits of rhetoric by engaging rhetoric alloiostrophically. Their collective efforts work to display the possibilities of what rhetoric can be. A Revolution in Tropes will appeal to scholars of rhetoric, philosophy, and communication
Applicative Arguments: A Syntactic and Semantic Investigation of German and English presents formal semantic and syntactic analyses of German and English applicative arguments. These arguments are nominal elements that are not obligatory parts of a sentence. Both German and English have several types of applicative arguments, including so-called benefactive and malefactive constructions. More specifically, the research relies on tests to differentiate the different types of applicative arguments based on this contribution to meaning: Some applicatives contribute only not-at-issue meaning, whereas others contribute only at-issue meaning, and still others contribute both types of meaning. These tests are applied to both German and English to uniquely identify the applicative arguments in each language. Formal analyses of the identified type of applicative arguments are presented that provide an account for each type of applicative identified for each language, explaining the applicatives' differences and similarities.
The papers in this book address the most fundamental, currently investigated problems in cognitive linguistics in a wide spectrum of perspectives. Apart from some traditional descriptions of particular metaphors and metonymies, there are analyses of spatio-temporal relations, motion and stillness, iconicity, force dynamics, as well as subjectivity and objectivity in language. The analyses are based on a number of languages: English, Polish, Russian, German, Lithuanian, Italian and Danish. The essays represent case studies, theoretical analyses as well as practical applications. |
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