This original and intriguing collection explores the pressures exerted upon language in the expression of romantic and sexual desire. Simultaneously, it reveals the ways in which language itself exerts its own constraints on the subject's capacity to express desire. The contributors, while using the approaches and methods of empirical linguistics, engage directly with issues of relevance in gender studies and cultural studies. They examine and probe: * language used to mediate romantic and sexual desire * language used by the media to represent intimacy and desire * attitudes and assumptions about romantic and sexual desire embodied in English * implications for the construction of romantic and sexual identity

This collection reviews 20 years of research into Spoken Discourse by the Birmingham group, allowing, for the first time, a developmental perspective. It combines previously published but unavailable work with new research. Bringing together recent theories of discourse structure, with a new and detailed analytic framework, the book emphasises both historical context and new developments. The articles are comprehensive, ranging from the theoretical to the highly applied. Practical applications include language teaching, literary stylistics and forensic linguistics with examples taken from literature and language classrooms, telephone conversations, disputed witness statements and corpuses of spoken English.

This volume contains a detailed, precise and clear semantic formalism designed to allow non-programmers such as linguists and literary specialists to represent elements of meaning which they must deal with in their research and teaching. At the same time, by its basis in a functional programming paradigm, it retains sufficient formal precision to support computational implementation. The formalism is designed to represent meaning as found at a variety of levels, including basic semantic units and relations, word meaning, sentence-level phenomena, and text-level meaning. By drawing on fundamental principles of program design, the proposed formalism is both easy to read and modify yet sufficiently powerful to allow for the representation of complex semantic phenomena. In this monograph, the authors introduce the formalism and show its basic structure, apply it to the analysis of the semantics of a variety of linguistic phenomena in both English and French, and use it to represent the semantics of a variety of texts ranging from single sentences, to textual excepts, to a full story.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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.

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.

In this highly readable and thought-provoking book, Delia Chiaro explores the pragmatics of word play, using frameworks normally adopted in descriptive linguistics. Using examples from personally recorded conversations, she examines the structure of jokes, quips, riddles and asides. Chiaro explores degrees of conformity to and deviation from established conventions; the `tellability' of jokes, and the interpretative role of the listener; the creative use of puns, word play and discourse. The emphasis in her analysis is on sociocultural contexts for the production and reception of jokes, and she examines the extent to which jokes are both universal in their appeal, and specific to a particular culture.

This book deals with expressions like English myself, yourself, himself and so on, and German selbst from a perspective of language comparison. It is the first book-length study of intensifiers ever written. The study investigates the syntax and semantics of these expressions and provides a thorough account of a much neglected grammatical domain. Given that the approach is both descriptive and analytic, the book will be of interest to linguists, grammar writers and teachers of English and German alike.

This collection introduces and develops Lacanian thought concerning the relations among language, subjectivity, and society. Lacanian Theory of Discourse provides an account of how language both interacts with and constitutes structures of subjectivity, producing specific attitudes and behaviors as well as significant social effects.

The essays and commentaries presented here are intended to strike a balance between the disciplines to which the Bar-Hillel Colloquium (formerly the Israel Colloquium) is dedicated. The historical and sociological vantage point is addressed in Krammick's and Mali's treatment of Priestley, in Vicker's and Feldhay's studies of the Renaissance occult and in Warnke's and Barasch's work on the imagination. From a philosophical angle several concepts, all material to the methodology of science, are taken up: rule following, by Smart and Margalit; analysis, by Ackerman, explanation, by Taylor; and the role of mathematics in physics, by Levy-Leblond and Pitowsky. In addition, the volume contains the proceedings of two symposia dedicated to two towering scientific figures: one celebrates Bohr's centennial, and the other examines the "other" Newton. The book should appeal to people whose interest or research is in the fields of philosophy, sociology and history of science, technology and medicine, as well as those interested in science education.

Antonymy is the technical name used to describe 'opposites', pairs of words such as rich/poor, love/hate and male/female. Antonyms are a ubiquitous part of everyday language, and this book provides a detailed, comprehensive account of the phenomenon. This book demonstrates how traditional linguistic theory can be revisited, updated and challenged in the corpus age. It will be essential reading for scholars interested in antonymy and corpus linguistics.

This study provides an illuminating and ground-breaking account of the complex interaction of intonational phenomena, semantics and pragmatics. Based on examples from German and English, and centred on an analysis of the fall-rise intonation contour, a semantic interpretation for two different pitch accents - Focus and Topic - is developed. The cross-sentence, as well as the sentence internal semantic effects of these accents, follow from the given treatment. The account is based on Montogovian possible world semantics and Chomskian generative syntax.

The book presents a comprehensive study of Russian prepositions, with a focus on expressing spatial characteristics. It primarily deals with how metaphorical and metonymical transfers motivate the use of Russian prepositional phrases, explaining the collocations of prepositional phrases with verbs as a realisation of a conceptual metaphor or a metonymy. The author confronts a problem that is attracting growing attention within present-day linguistics: the semantics of prepositions and cases. The book seeks to clarify the conceptual motivations for the use of the combinations of Russian primary prepositional phrases, as well as to demonstrate how their spatial meanings are extended into non-spatial domains. This book incorporates an analysis of a large number of items, including 30 combinations of primary prepositions with cases. An original contribution, the book is of interest to teachers and students studying Slavic languages, and to cognitive linguists.

Over the years, pragmatics - the study of the use and meaning of utterances to their situations - has become a more and more important branch of linguistics, as the inadequacies of a purely formalist, abstract approach to the study of language have become more evident. This book presents a rhetorical model of pragmatics: that is, a model which studies linguistic communication in terms of communicative goals and principles of 'good communicative behaviour'. In this respect, Geoffrey Leech argues for a rapprochement between linguistics and the traditional discipline of rhetoric. He does not reject the Chomskvan revolution of linguistics, but rather maintains that the language system in the abstract - i.e. the 'grammar' broadly in Chomsky's sense - must be studied in relation to a fully developed theory of language use. There is therefore a division of labour between grammar and rhetoric, or (in the study of meaning) between semantics and pragmatics. The book's main focus is thus on the development of a model of pragmatics within an overall functional model of language. In this it builds on the speech avct theory of Austin and Searle, and the theory of conversational implicature of Grice, but at the same time enlarges pragmatics to include politeness, irony, phatic communion, and other social principles of linguistic behaviour.

Much contemporary metaphysics, moved by an apparent necessity to take reality to consist of given beings and properties, presents us with what appear to be deep problems requiring radical changes in the common sense conception of persons and the world. Contemporary meta-ethics ignores questions about logical form and formulates questions in ways that make the possibility of correct value judgments mysterious. In this book, Wheeler argues that given a Davidsonian understanding of truth, predication, and interpretation, and given a relativised version of Aristotelian essentialism compatible with Davidson's basic thinking, many metaphysical problems are not very deep. Likewise, many philosophers' claims that common sense needs to be modified are unfounded. He argues further that a proper consideration of questions of logical form clarifies and illuminates meta-ethical questions. Although the analyses and arguments he gives are often at odds with those at which Davidson arrived, they apply the central Davidsonian insights about semantics, understanding, and interpretation.

Saussure as a linguist and Wittgenstein as a philosopher of language are arguably the two most important figures in the development of twentieth-century linguistic thought. By pointing out what their ideas have in common, in spite of emanating from very different intellectual sources, this study breaks new ground.

Translation Studies and linguistics have been going through a love -hate relationship since the 1950s. This book assesses both sides of the relationship, tracing the very real contributions that linguists have made to translation studies and at the same time recognizing the limitations of many of their approaches. With good humour and even handedness, Fawcett describes detailed taxonomies of translation strategies and deals with traditional problems such as equivalence. Yet he also explains and assesses the more recent contributions of text linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and psycholinguistics. This work is exceptional in that it presents theories originally produced in Russian, German, French and Spanish as well as English. Its broad coverage and accessible treatment provide essential background reading for students of translation at all levels.

The Language of Politics: * examines how both politicians and commentators describe political stances * explores some of the most common linguistic features to be found in political speeches * analyses electioneering through various written texts including manifestos, posters and pamphlets * looks at how politicians answer questions both in the media and in parliament * includes examples of political discourse from Britain, America and Australia * has a comprehensive glossary of terms.

This book argues that many of the most prominent features of oral epic poetry in a number of traditions can best be understood as adaptations or stylizations of conversational language use, and advances the claim that if we can understand how conversation is structured, it will aid our understanding of oral traditions. In this study that carefully compares the "special grammar" of oral traditions to the "grammar" of everyday conversation as understood in the field of conversation analysis, Raymond Person demonstrates that traditional phraseology, including formulaic language, is an adaptation of practices in turn construction in conversation, such as sound-selection of words and prosody, and that thematic structures are adaptations of sequence organization in talk-in-interaction. From this he concludes that the "special grammar" of oral traditions can be understood as an example of institutional talk that exaggerates certain conversational practices for aesthetic purposes and that draws from cognitive resources found in everyday conversation. Person's research will be of interest to conversation analysts as well as literary scholars, especially those interested in ancient and medieval literature, the comparative study of oral traditions and folklore, and linguistic approaches to literature. This volume lays the groundwork for further interdisciplinary work bridging the fields of literature and linguistics.

This state-of-the-art account of research and theorizing brings together multimodality, learning and communication through detailed analyses of signmakers and their meaning-making in museums, hospitals, schools and the home environment. By analyzing video recordings, photographs, screenshots and print materials, Jeff Bezemer and Gunther Kress go well beyond the comfortable domains of traditional sites of (social) semiotic and multimodal research. They steer away from spurious invention and naming of ever more new and exciting domains, focusing instead on fundamentals in assembling a set of tools for current tasks: namely, describing and analyzing learning and communication in the contemporary world as one integrated field. The theory outlined in the book is grounded in the findings of the authors' wide-ranging empirical investigations. Each chapter evaluates the work that is being done and has been done, challenging accepted wisdom and standing much of it on its head. With extensive illustrations and many examples presented to show the reach and applicability of the theory, this book is essential reading for all those working in multimodality, semiotics, applied linguistics and related areas. Images from the book are also available to view online at www.routledge.com/9780415709620/

In this daring book, the author proposes that artistic and literary forms can be understood as modulations of wave forms in the physical world. By the phrase "natural syntax," he means that physical nature enters human communication literally by way of a transmitting wave frequency.
This premise addresses a central question about symbolism in this century: How are our ideas symbolically related to physical reality? The author outlines a theory of communication in which nature is not reached by reference to an object; rather, nature is part of the message known only tacitly as the wavy carrier of a sign or signal. One doesn't refer "to" nature, even though one might be aiming to; one refers "with" nature as carrier vehicle.
The author demonstrates that a natural language of transmission has an inherent physical syntax of patterned wave forms, which can also be described as certain "laws of form"--a phrase used by D'Arcy Thompson, L. L. Whyte, Noam Chomsky, and Stephen Jay Gould. He describes a syntax inherent in natural languages that derives from the rhythmic form of a propelling wave. Instead of the "laws" of a wave's form, however, the author speaks of its elements of rhythmic composition, because "rythmos" means "wave" in Greek and because "composition" describes the creative process across the arts. In pursuing a philosophy of rhythmic composition, the author draws on cognitive science and semiotics. But he chiefly employs symmetry theory to describe the forms of art, and especially the patterns of poetry, as structures built upon the natural syntax of wave forms. Natural syntax, it turns out, follows a fascinating group of symmetry transformations that derive from wave forms.

In this daring book, the author proposes that artistic and literary forms can be understood as modulations of wave forms in the physical world. By the phrase "natural syntax," he means that physical nature enters human communication literally by way of a transmitting wave frequency.
This premise addresses a central question about symbolism in this century: How are our ideas symbolically related to physical reality? The author outlines a theory of communication in which nature is not reached by reference to an object; rather, nature is part of the message known only tacitly as the wavy carrier of a sign or signal. One doesn't refer "to" nature, even though one might be aiming to; one refers "with" nature as carrier vehicle.
The author demonstrates that a natural language of transmission has an inherent physical syntax of patterned wave forms, which can also be described as certain "laws of form"--a phrase used by D'Arcy Thompson, L. L. Whyte, Noam Chomsky, and Stephen Jay Gould. He describes a syntax inherent in natural languages that derives from the rhythmic form of a propelling wave. Instead of the "laws" of a wave's form, however, the author speaks of its elements of rhythmic composition, because "rythmos" means "wave" in Greek and because "composition" describes the creative process across the arts. In pursuing a philosophy of rhythmic composition, the author draws on cognitive science and semiotics. But he chiefly employs symmetry theory to describe the forms of art, and especially the patterns of poetry, as structures built upon the natural syntax of wave forms. Natural syntax, it turns out, follows a fascinating group of symmetry transformations that derive from wave forms.

This book is a scholarly work of forensic linguistics that demonstrates how the principles of Gricean pragmatics and their recent elaboration in Information Manipulation Theory (IMT) can be of use to courts faced with deciding cases of allegedly fraudulent disclosure documents. The usual goal of legal rules for disclosure documents is not merely to prevent lying but other forms of deception as well. In particular, the goal of these rules is to force the communicator to reveal information that could cause material harm to certain receivers, harms that the communicator, for various reasons of self-interest, might prefer to keep secret or hidden. Because IMT and the Gricean framework have seldom been used in published studies to investigate legally mandated disclosure documents aimed at laypersons, this book seeks to enrich current explications of the rhetorical "workings" of deceptive disclosures within the broader Gricean tradition of pragmatics. The book questions the fundamental relationships among Grice's maxims as well as the much circulated notion that violation of some maxims is more deceptive and more immoral than violations of others. In addition, the book also attempts to show how various other theories and research in discourse linguistics and reading comprehension can be used to support IMT analyses in addressing the discourse processing issues unique to legally required disclosure texts. In this way the book contributes to the larger dual mission of the field of forensic linguistics, which is both to understand and to improve courts' impact on social justice.

Using a wide range of twentieth-century literary prose Laura Wright and Jonathan Hope provide an `interactive' introduction to the techniques of stylistic analysis. Divided up into five sections; the noun phrase, the verb phrase, the clause, text structure and vocabulary, the book also provides an introduction to the basics of descriptive grammar for beginning students. * Presumes no prior linguistic knowledge * Provides a comprehensive glossary of terms * Adaptable: designed to be used in a variety of classroom contexts * Introduces students to an enormous range of 20th century literature from James Joyce to Roddy Doyle A practical coursebook rather than a survey account of stylistics as a discipline, the book provides over forty opportunities for hands-on stylistic analysis. For each linguistic feature under discussion the reader is offered a definition, a text for analysis, exercises and tasks, in addition to a suggested solution. Stylistics: A Practical Coursebook is genuinely `student friendly' and will be an invaluable tool for all beginning undergraduates and A-level students of language and literature.