Visual metaphors in a number of Mahayana sutras construct a discourse in which visual perception serves as a model for knowledge and enlightenment. In the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) and other Mahayana literature, immediate access to reality is symbolized by vision and set in opposition to language and conceptual thinking, which are construed as obscuring reality. In addition to its philosophical manifestations, the tension between vision and language also functioned as a strategy of legitimation in the struggle of the early heterodox Mahayana movement for authority and legitimacy. This emphasis on vision also served as a resource for the abundant mythical imagery in Mahayana sutras, imagery that is ritualized in Vajrayana visualization practices. McMahan brings a wide range of literature to bear on this issue, Including a rare analysis of the lavish imagery of the Gandavyuha Sutra in its Indian context. He concludes with a discussion of Indian approaches to visuality in the light of some recent discussions of "ocularcentrism" in the west, inviting scholars to expand the current discussion of vision and its roles in constructing epistemic systems and cultural practices beyond its exclusively European and American focus.

This book explores the gap that has developed between two sides in linguistics: the formal tradition and the functional tradition. It discusses fundamental issues such as tense, aspect and action by examining and comparing insights from the two traditions with a view to determining whether there are any possibilities of future bride-building between the two approaches. This study focuses on comparing the actual output of different linguistic approaches and examines their 'usefulness'. A major aim is, therefore, to evaluate and identify the most useful approach.

This book, by one of Italy's most important and original contemporary philosophers, represents a broad, general, and ambitious undertaking--nothing less than an attempt to rethink the nature of poetic language and to rearticulate relationships among theology, poetry, and philosophy in a tradition of literature initiated by Dante.
The author presents "literature" as a set of formal or linguistic genres that discuss or develop theological issues at a certain distance from the discourse of theology. This distance begins to appear in Virgil and Ovid, but it becomes decisive in Dante and in his decision to write in the vernacular. His vernacular Italian reaches back through classical allusion to the Latin that was in his day the language of theology, but it does so with a difference. It is no accident that in the "Commedia" Virgil is Dante's guide.
The book opens with a discussion of just how Dante's poem is a "comedy," and it concludes with a discussion of the "ends of poetry" in a variety of senses: enjambment at the ends of lines, the concluding lines of poems, and the end of poetry as a mode of writing this sort of literature. Of course, to have poetry "end" does not mean that people stop writing it, but that literature passes into a period in which it is concerned with its own ending, with its own bounds and limits, historical and otherwise.
Though most of the essays make specific reference to various authors of the Italian literary tradition (including Dante, Polifilo, Pascoli, Delfini, and Caproni), they transcend the confines of Italian literature and engage several other literary and philosophical authors (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Boethius, the Provencal poets, Mallarme, and Holderlin, among others).

Realms of Meaning presents an accessible introduction to semantics. It provides an understanding of the way meaning works in natural languages, against a background of how we communicate with language. Avoiding theoretical terminology and linguistic theories it concentrates instead on the analysis of meaning, and looks in depth at such subjects as opposites and negatives, modal verbs, prepositions and word meanings. Examples are chosen mainly from English to provide material for the wider discussion of the principles of the subject, but European, East Asian and other languages also provide illuminating examples.

Evidentiality and Modality in European Languages focuses on discourse-pragmatic studies on the domains of evidentiality and epistemic modality, and also includes studies on deontic modality. The book presents ground-breaking research on the functions and the discourse-pragmatic variation of evidential expressions and modals in diverse discourses and genres, applying corpus-based methodologies. It offers unique features regarding content, usage and methodology, and comparative studies. The comparative viewpoint is addressed in contributions which provide a usage-based cross-linguistic account of the expression of evidentiality and modality in various European languages (English, French, Italian, Romanian and Spanish). The contributions are representative of the work on evidentiality and modality in European languages carried out in a substantial number of countries, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Romania, Spain and Sweden.

This innovative work provides the first comprehensive account of general extenders ("or something", "and stuff", "or whatever"). Combining insights from linguistics, cognitive psychology, and interactional sociolinguistics, the author demonstrates that these small phrases are not simply vague expressions, but have a powerful role in making interpersonal communication work. The audience for this book includes linguists, scholars of English, teachers of English as a first and a second language, sociolinguists, psycholinguists, and communications researchers.

Since the modern founding of the theory of signs by the American philosopher-scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the field of semiotics has become increasingly prominent as a method of interdisciplinary research and study, bridging the humanities, the fine arts, and the natural and social sciences. It is also truly international, with faculty representation at many universities, research institutes, and scholarly societies throughout the world. These two volumes reflect the continuing appeal of Peirce's sign theory bringing together as they do a great variety of authors from all over the world whose aim is to set the stage for a productive collaboration among linguists and cognitive scientists.

Working with Spoken Discourse provides a comprehensive account of the expanding multidisciplinary field of discourse analysis. Combining theory and practice it covers a wide range of material in a lively and accessible style. It discusses current approaches, concepts and debates in the field of spoken discourse and provides a grounding in the practical techniques of discourse analysis and how to apply them to real data. Working with Spoken Discourse is divided into three sections. The first section covers general issues - the definition of "discourse" and uses of discourse analysis, the second section covers a series of approaches to discourse analysis and the final section focuses on the applications of discourse analysis in social research and designing and writing up projects.

In this book, Yael Greenberg discusses and clarifies a number of controversial issues and phenomena in the generic literature, including the existence of "episodic genericity," existential presuppositions, and contextual restrictions of generics.

Temporality surveys the ways in which languages of different types refer to past, present, and future events, through an in-depth examination of four major language types: tense-based English, tense-aspect-based Polish, aspect-based Chinese, and mood-based Kalaallisut. * Cutting-edge research on directly compositional dynamic semantics of languages with and without grammatical tense * New in-depth analysis of temporal, aspectual, modal, as well as nominal discourse reference * Presents a novel logical language for representing linguistic meaning (Update with Centering) * Develops a unified theory of tense, aspect, mood, and person as different types of grammatical centering systems

This timely volume, inspired by the work of Umberto Eco, features applications of semiotic theories and methodological frameworks to a vast array of texts, genres and practices within contemporary semiosphere. Exploring the interplay of language, image and sound, contributors discuss the structural and functional properties of signs, along with motivations behind them and implications they have for the meaning-making process, identity, ideology, and the politics of representation. The volume is an outcome of the SIVO "Signum-Idea-Verbum-Opus" project initiated by Umberto Eco's keynote address during his visit at the University of Lodz in 2015. It is also a continuation of theoretical explorations which can be found in "Current Perspectives in Semiotics: Signs, Signification, and Communication", published simultaneously by Peter Lang.

This important new study examines in detail a semantic-pragmatic pattern surrounding the basic verb 'acquire' in nearly 30 Southeast Asian languages, concentrating on Lao, Vietnamese, Khmer, Kmhmu, Hmong, and varieties of Chinese. The book makes a significant contribution to empirical work on semantic and grammatical change in a linguistic area, as well as representing theoretical advances in cognitive semantics. Gricean pragmatics, semantic change, grammaticalization, language contact, and areal linguistics. The book also examines how changes in the speech of individuals actually become changes in large-scale public convention, 'language contact' is reconsidered, and traditional distinctions such as that between 'internal' and 'external' linguistic mechanisms are challenged. This groundbreaking new book is for specialists in Southeast Asian linguistics as well as scholars of descriptive semantics and pragmatics, grammaticalisation, linguistic change and evolution, areal linguistics and language contact, history and linguistic anthropology.

Brain, Mind and the Signifying Body is an exploration of a multimodal theory of cognitive science. Using linguistic theories first developed by Saussure and more latterly by M. A. K. Halliday, Paul Thibault analyses how social and biological systems interact to produce meaning. This fascinating study will be of interest to undergraduates and academics researching cognitive linguistics and advanced semiotics. The book engages with the current dialogue between the human and life sciences to ask questions about the relationship between the physical, biological aspects of a human being, and the sociocultural framework in which a human being exists. Paul J. Thibault argues that we need to understand both the semiotic, discursive nature of meaning making, and the physical context in which this activity takes place. The two are inseparable, and hence the only way we can understand our subjective experience of our environment and our perceptions of our inner states of mind is by giving equal weight to both frameworks. This 'ecosocial semiotic' theory engages with linguistics, semiotics, activity theory, biology and psychology.In so doing, the book produces a new way of looking at how a human being makes sense of his or her environment, but also how this environment shapes such meanings.

This volume advances our understanding of how word structure in terms of affix ordering is organized in the languages of the world. A central issue in linguistic theory, affix ordering receives much attention amongst the research community, though most studies deal with only one language. By contrast, the majority of the chapters in this volume consider more than one language and provide data from typologically diverse languages, some of which are examined for the first time. Many chapters focus on cases of affix ordering that challenge linguistic theory with such phenomena as affix repetition and variable ordering, both of which are shown to be neither rare nor typical only of lesser-studied languages with unstable grammatical organization, as previously assumed. The book also offers an explicit discussion on the non-existence of phonological affix ordering, with a focus on mobile affixation, and one on the emergence of affix ordering in child language, the first of its kind in the literature. Repetitive operations, undesirable in many theories, are frequent in early child language and seem to serve as trainings for morphological decomposition and affix stacking. Thus, the volume also raises important questions regarding the general architecture of grammar and the nature and side effects of our theoretical assumptions.

This is a sophisticated and nuanced introduction to critical discourse analysis (CDA) that covers a range of topics in an accessible, engaging style. With international examples and an interdisciplinary approach, readers gain a rich understanding of the many angles into critical discourse analysis, the fundamentals of how analysis works and examples from written texts, online data and images. This new edition: expands coverage of multimodality adds two new chapters on social media and analysis of online data supports learning with a guided introduction to each chapter includes a new and extended glossary Clearly written, practical and rigorous in its approach, this book is the ideal companion when embarking on research that focuses on discourse and meaning-making.

This book is based on two ideas: first, that any language--English no less than any other-represents a universe of meaning, shaped by the history and experience of the men and women who have created it, and second, that in any language certain culture--specific words act as linchpins for whole networks of meanings, and that penetrating the meanings of those key words can therefore open our eyes to an entire cultural universe. In this book Anna Wierzbicka demonstrates that three uniquely English words--evidence, experience, and sense--are exactly such linchpins. Using a rigorous plain language approach to meaning analysis, she unpacks the dense cultural meanings of these key words, disentangles their multiple meanings, and traces their origins back to the tradition of British empiricism. In so doing she reveals much about cultural attitudes embedded not only in British and American English, but also English as a global language.
An interdisciplinary work, Experience, Evidence, and Sense will be of interest to both scholars and students in linguistics and English, as well as historians of ideas, sociologists, anthropologists, literary scholars, and scholars of communication.

In his fifth book Thomas Ogden, widely regarded as the most profound and original psychoanalytic writer of this decade, explores the frontier of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking: the experience of the analyst and patient in the dynamic interplay of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. A Jason Aronson Book

This book addresses the problems of the nature of the category of aspect, its formal expression and its relation to Action modes, to the Aorist/Imperfect and Perfect/Non-Perfect distinctions. The discussion is largely based on data from Bulgarian -- a Slavonic language where aspect as a grammatical category systematically coexists not only with verbal prefixation, but also with temporal boundedness, correlation and, in the nominal sphere, definiteness. Cross-language parallels with English and French data and the mapping of Bulgarian structures to notions drawn from the «western tradition of aspectual study result in the outline of a framework for an integrated study of the expression of aspectuality in languages belonging to different language groups. Refuting existing views of aspect as a «compensatory phenomenon for nominal definiteness, the book presents arguments in favour of a systematic relation between verbal prefixation and NP quantification in Slavonic languages and of a compositional, syntactic dimension of aspectual analysis.

Examines how people develop their reading and writing skills during adolescence and adulthood. This collection is based on the premise that four basic stances (orientations) underlie the discourse practices: social, textual, institutional, and field. These four stances form the organizing rubric for

Over the past twenty years, scholars in a wide variety of academic disciplines have been giving increasing attention to rhetoric - the study of persuasive argument. In Faithful Persuasion David S. Cunningham offers the contemporary era's first sustained account of the relationship between rhetoric and Christian theology. Cunningham argues that Christian thinkers should abandon their attempts to codify argumentation within the canons of formal logic and suggests that they should instead come to a more organic understanding of the process of persuasion. This rhetorical approach to theology can cast new light on longstanding theological controversies and establish a new agenda for the study of the methods, sources, and norms of Christian theology. Drawing chiefly upon the rhetorical insights of Aristotle, and on the reappropriation of Aristotle's views by numerous modern rhetoricians - ranging from John Henry Newman to Kenneth Burke and Chaim Perelman - Cunningham establishes a firm foundation from which to support his central assertion that "Christian theology can best be understood as a form of persuasive argument". In addition, he explores the implications of a rhetorical method for studies in doctrinal formulation, biblical exegesis, and church history. Written for theologians, clergy members, and laypeople with a strong interest in theology, this book will introduce readers to the richness of the rhetorical tradition and its important implications for the discipline of Christian theology.

In this wide-ranging and original book, John J. Clancy examines the history and current state of corporate America from a new perspective, looking at business not as a matter of economics, marketing, and management, but as a cultural artifact. The Invisible Powers examines language, imagery, values, and deeply held beliefs and the impact they all have in determining the role business plays in society. Drawing from the writings and speeches of some of the most influential business leaders of the past two hundred years Frederick Taylor, Henry Ford, Jay Gould, and Lee Iacocca, among others Clancy describes the evolution and transformation of influential metaphors and demonstrates the very real power the "invisible" forces of metaphor exercise in our world. Finding support in such diverse thinkers as Aristotle, Engels, and Darwin, Clancy then calls for a new set of images and paradigms that will enable us to deal more successfully with the economic, cultural, and environmental crises of our times."

For the first time in English, Glyn Williams draws together current debates in linguistics and social theory, and provides the first study in English of the principles and theories of French discourse analysis.