|
|
Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning) > General
In Relevance in Argumentation, author Douglas Walton presents a new
method for critically evaluating arguments for relevance. This
method enables a critic to judge whether a move can be said to be
relevant or irrelevant, and is based on case studies of
argumentation in which an argument, or part of an argument, has
been criticized as irrelevant. Walton's method is based on a new
theory of relevance that incorporates techniques of argumentation
theory, logic, and artificial intelligence. The work uses a
case-study approach with numerous examples of controversial
arguments, strategies of attack in argumentation, and fallacies.
Walton reviews ordinary cases of irrelevance in argumentation, and
uses them as a basis to advance and develop his new theory of
irrelevance and relevance. The volume also presents a clear account
of the technical problems in the previous attempts to define
relevance, including an analysis of formal systems of relevance
logic and an explanation of the Grecian notion of conversational
relevance. This volume is intended for graduate and advanced
undergraduate courses in those fields using argumentation
theory--especially philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science and
communication studies, in addition to argumentation. The work also
has practical use, as it applies theory directly to familiar
examples of argumentation in daily and professional life. With a
clear and comprehensive method for determining relevance and
irrelevance, it can be convincingly applied to highly significant
practical problems about relevance, including those in legal and
political argumentation.
A coherent and integrated account of the leading UML 2 semantics
work and the practical applications of UML semantics development
With contributions from leading experts in the field, the book
begins with an introduction to UML and goes on to offer in-depth
and up-to-date coverage of:
The role of semantics
Considerations and rationale for a UML system model
Definition of the UML system model
UML descriptive semantics
Axiomatic semantics of UML class diagrams
The object constraint language
Axiomatic semantics of state machines
A coalgebraic semantic framework for reasoning about interaction
designs
Semantics of activity diagrams
Verification of UML models
State invariants
Model transformation specification and verification
Additionally, readers are provided with expert guidance on how
to resolve semantic problems and a section on applications of UML
semantics with model analysis. "UML 2 Semantics and Applications"
is an ideal resource for researchers and tool-builders working in
UML, among others. It is also an excellent textbook for
postgraduate teaching and research.
The Japanese history textbook debate is one that keeps making the news, particularly with reference to claims that Japan has never 'apologised properly' for its actions between 1931 and 1945, and that it is one of the few liberal, democratic countries in which textbooks are controlled and authorised by the central government. There are frequent protests, both from within Japan and from overseas, that a biased, nationalistic history is taught in Japanese schools. This is the first time that all the authorised textbooks currently in use have been analysed using a critical discourse that is anchored firmly in the theory of 'language within society', elucidating the meanings and associated ideologies created by the language of the textbooks.
No, that diminutive but independent vocable, begins its great role
early in human life and never loses it. For not only can it head a
negative sentence, announcing its judgement, or answer a question,
implying its negated content, it can, and mostly does, in the
beginning of speech, express an assertion of the resistant will
sometimes just that and nothing more. The adult antiphony to the
toddler's incessant no is another no, that of preventive command,
and the great commandments of later life continue to be
prohibitions: Nine of the Ten Commandments are in the negative. Eva
Brann explores nothingness in the third book of her trilogy, which
has treated imagination, time and now naysaying. If we want to
understand something of imagination, memory and time, she argues,
we must mount an inquiry into what it means to say something is not
what it claims to be or is not there or is nonexistent or is
affected by Nonbeing.
Drawing on examples from contemporary life, Woodward explores
rhetorical conditions that create powerful moments of
identification. Illustrated with interesting examples drawn from
politics and art, The Idea of Identification draws on classical
social and rhetorical theories to establish a systematic framework
for understanding the varieties and forms of identification.
Woodward references a variety of contexts in contemporary life to
explore the rhetorical conditions that create powerful and
captivating moments. By invoking the influential ideas of Kenneth
Burke, George Herbert Mead, Joshua Meyrowitz and others, he shows
how the rhetorical process of identification is separate from
psychological theories of identity construction. Woodward concludes
with an argument that film theory has perhaps offered the most
vivid descriptive categories for understanding the bonds of
identification.
This classic guide discusses the nature and development of structuralism and semiotics. It calls for a new critical awareness of the ways in which we communicate and draw attention to their implications for our society. Published in 1977 as the first volume in the New Accents series, Structuralism and Semiotics made crucial debates in critical theory accessible to those with no prior knowledge of the field. Since then a generation of readers has used the book as an entry not only into structuralism and semiotics, but into the wide range of cultural and critical theories underpinned by these approaches. Structuralism and Semiotics remains the clearest introduction to some of the most important topics in modern critical theory. An afterword and fresh suggestions for further reading ensure this new edition will become, like its predecessor, the essential starting point for anyone new to the field. eBook available with sample pages: 0203130022
Narrative Gravity explores the anti-foundationalist, anti-essentialist idea that our stories make us up, rather than we make up our stories. The cognitive scientist Daniel C. Dennett has suggested that human beings tell stories as compulsively as beavers build dams or birds nests. Our basic identities are conferred on us by the myriad takes we hear and narrate throughout our lifetimes. All 'selves' are 'centres of narrative gravity'. But even if it is true that we are born to weave stories, why is it that we are so 'programmed'? Narrative Gravity attempts to answer this question by carrying the important but embryonic notion that stories are obsessive self-constructions, to its logical conclusion. The book argues that narrative - a universal form found in every known human culture - functions as a 'species of natural theory'. This is a foundational text for students of linguistics, philosophy and literary theory.
This book investigates the operation of two linguistic mechanisms, ellipsis and wa-marking, in a corpus of colloquial Japanese speech. Its data set is the CallHome Japanese (CHJ) corpus, a collection of transcripts and digitized speech data for 120 telephone conversations between native speakers of Japanese. To make the CHJ data useful for linguistic research, John Fry annotates the original transcripts with a comprehensive set of acoustic, phonetic, syntactic and semantic tags. John Fry demonstrates that Japanese conversation obeys certain principles of argument ellipsis that appear to be language universal: namely, the tendency to omit transitive and human subjects and the tendency to express no more than one argument per clause. Analyzing the CHJ data further, Fry investigates the use and function of the topic-marking particle wa.
Discourses in Place is essential reading for anyone with an interest in language and the way we communicate. Written by leaders in the field, this text argues that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from signs in the Chinese mountains to urban centres in Austria, Italy, North America and Hong Kong, this textbook equips students with the methodology and models they need to undertake their own research in 'geosemiotics', the key interface between semiotics and the physical world. Discourses in Place is highly illustrated, containing real examples of language in the material world, including a 'how to use this book' section, group and individual activities and a glossary of key terms.
Analysing Discourse is an accessible introductory textbook to discourse analysis for all students and researchers working with real language data. Students across disciplines rely on texts, conversations or interviews in their research. This book provides a step-by-step guide to using and investigating real language data, helping students and reasearchers to get the most out of their resources. Drawing on a range of social theorists from Bourdieu to Habermas, as well as his own research, Norman Fairclough's book presents a form of language analysis with a consistently social perspective. His approach is illustrated by and investigated through a range of real texts, from written texts, to a TV debate about the monarchy and a radio broadcast about the Lockerbie bombing. The student-friendly book also offers accessible summaries, an appendix of example textsand a glossary of terms and key theorists.
Cognitive poetics is a new way of thinking about literature, involving the application of cognitive linguistics and psychology to literary texts. This student-friendly book provides a set of case studies to help students understand the theory and master the practice of cognitive poetics in analysis. In each chapter, contributors present a practical application of the methods and techniques of cognitive poetics, to a range of texts, from Wilfred Owen, to Roald Dahl. This book is critical reading for students on courses in cognitive poetics, stylistics and literary linguistics.
Discourses in Place is essential reading for anyone with an interest in language and the way we communicate. Written by leaders in the field, this text argues that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road signs, notices and brand logos by considering the social and physical world that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from signs in the Chinese mountains to urban centres in Austria, Italy, North America and Hong Kong, this textbook equips students with the methodology and models they need to undertake their own research in 'geosemiotics', the key interface between semiotics and the physical world. Discourses in Place is highly illustrated, containing real examples of language in the material world, including a 'how to use this book' section, group and individual activities and a glossary of key terms.
Cognitive poetics is a new way of thinking about literature, involving the application of cognitive linguistics and psychology to literary texts. This student-friendly book provides a set of case studies to help students understand the theory and master the practice of cognitive poetics in analysis. In each chapter, contributors present a practical application of the methods and techniques of cognitive poetics, to a range of texts, from Wilfred Owen, to Roald Dahl. This book is critical reading for students on courses in cognitive poetics, stylistics and literary linguistics. eBook available with sample pages: 0203417739
Over the last two decades, the study of discourse in film and
television has become one of the most promising research avenues in
stylistics and pragmatics due to the dazzling variety of source
material and the huge pragmatic range within it. Meanwhile, with
the advent of streaming and the box set, film and television
themselves are becoming separated by an increasingly blurred line.
This volume closes a long-standing gap in stylistics research,
bringing together a book-level pragmastylistic showcase. It
presents current developments from the field from two complementary
perspectives, looking stylistically at the discourse in film and
the discourse of and around film. This latter phrase comes to mean
the approaches which try to account for the pragmatic effects
induced by cinematography. This might be the camera work or the
lighting, or the mise en scene or montage. The volume takes a
multimodal approach, looking at word, movement and gesture, in
keeping with modern stylistics. The volume shows how pragmatic
themes and methods are adapted and applied to films, including
speech acts, (im)politeness, implicature and context. In this way,
it provides systematic insights into how meanings are displayed,
enhanced, suppressed and negotiated in both film and televisual
arts.
This volume provides a variety of theoretical and analytical perspectives on misunderstanding within different types of spoken interaction/discourse - such as in news media interviews, legal and medical situations, communication by second language learners and between different cultural and social groups, and mistakes in everyday conversation.
Face-to-face conversation between two or more people is a universal form, and perhaps the basic form, of social interaction. It is the primary site of social interaction in all cultures and the place where social and cultural meaning takes shape. Face-to-face conversation between children and parents can also be an important context for social and cognitive development. Given the universality, frequency and importance of conversation in social life, a psychological model of conversation is required for an understanding of the central issues in social and developmental psychology. This book provides such a model. Language in Action presents a critical examination of four models of conversation: the Code model based on Chomsky's linguistic views; the Speech Act model of Austin and Searle; the Inferential model of Grice, and the Conversation Analytic model of Sacks and Schegloff. It also considers the Brown and Levinson model of politeness in conversation. Using many examples from natural talk and drawing on the positive aspects of the reviewed models, Turnbull proposes a new Social Pragmatic model of conversation as social interaction. He also describes the research paradigm of Social Pragmatics that experimental psychologists can use to study conversation. This book will be invaluable for advanced students in psychology, sociology, language and linguistics and communication. It will also make fascinating and lively reading for anyone wanting a greater understanding of this fundamental form of social interaction.
Related link: Free Email Alerting
This book examines the relationship between the White House, in the person of its press secretary, and the press corps through a linguistic analysis of the language used by both sides. A corpus was compiled of around fifty press briefings from the late Clinton years. A wide range of topics are discussed from the Kosovo crisis to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. This work is highly original in demonstrating how concordance technology and the detailed linguistic evidence available in corpora can be used to study discourse features of text and the communicative strategies of speakers. It will be of vital interest to all linguists interested in corpus-based linguistics and pragmatics, as well as sociolinguists and students and scholars of communications, politics and the media. eBook available with sample pages: 0203218256
"Understanding Storytelling Among African American Children: A
Journey From Africa to America" reports research on narrative
production among African American children for the purpose of
extending previous inquiry and discussion of narrative structure.
Some researchers have focused on the influence of culture on the
narrative structures employed by African American children; some
have suggested that their narrative structures are strongly
influenced by home culture; others posit that African American
children, like children in general, produce narrative structures
typically found in school settings. Dr. Champion contributes to
previous research by suggesting that African American children do
not produce one structure of narratives exclusively, but rather a
repertoire of structures, some linked to African and African
American, and others to European American narrative structures.
Detailed analyses of narratives using both psychological text
analysis and qualitative analysis are presented.
An informative introduction provides background for the study,
including a history of storytelling within the African American
community. Part I offers a framework for understanding narrative
structures among African American children. In Part II, evidence is
presented that African American children produce a repertoire of
narrative structures that are complex in nature. Part III connects
the research findings to implications for educating African
American children. Researchers, students, and professionals in the
fields of literacy education, language development, African
American studies, and communication sciences and disorders will
find this book particularly relevant and useful.
Face-to-face conversation between two or more people is a universal form, and perhaps the basic form, of social interaction. It is the primary site of social interaction in all cultures and the place where social and cultural meaning takes shape. Face-to-face conversation between children and parents can also be an important context for social and cognitive development. Given the universality, frequency and importance of conversation in social life, a psychological model of conversation is required for an understanding of the central issues in social and developmental psychology. This book provides such a model. Language in Action presents a critical examination of four models of conversation: the Code model based on Chomsky's linguistic views; the Speech Act model of Austin and Searle; the Inferential model of Grice, and the Conversation Analytic model of Sacks and Schegloff. It also considers the Brown and Levinson model of politeness in conversation. Using many examples from natural talk and drawing on the positive aspects of the reviewed models, Turnbull proposes a new Social Pragmatic model of conversation as social interaction. He also describes the research paradigm of Social Pragmatics that experimental psychologists can use to study conversation. This book will be invaluable for advanced students in psychology, sociology, language and linguistics and communication. It will also make fascinating and lively reading for anyone wanting a greater understanding of this fundamental form of social interaction.
Related link: Free Email Alerting
Christian Language and its Mutations explores how Christian
language alters in various social, cultural, historical and
religious contexts. Having delineated the core language of
Christianity, David Martin analyses how it mutates in different
historical and social contexts, notably: peace and war; the arts -
particularly painting and music; the sacred space (the city) and
the sacred text (the liturgy); education; and the global situation
of Christianity and contemporary secular society - evangelicalism,
rational religion, Pentecostalism and Base Communities. Presenting
a unique perspective to show how and why Christianity alters
according to context, this book will prove insightful and
accessible to students, clergy and general readers alike. David
Martin is Honorary Professor in the Department of Religious
Studies, Lancaster University, and Emeritus Professor of Sociology
at the London School of Economics, UK. He is the author of some two
dozen books, including many landmark titles in the sociology of
religion.
This textbook is the first comprehensive guide to Latin verse
composition to be published in over one hundred years. It combines
a detailed analysis of the Roman poets' metrical practices with a
series of graduated exercises designed to train the student in the
composition of original Latin verse. Beginning with the dactylic
hexameter and working through elegiac, lyric and dramatic meters,
the exercises in this volume accomplish more than simply teaching
the basic rules of prosody and versification. They also help
cultivate an ear for rhythm, build vocabulary, sharpen grammatical
skills and develop attentiveness to the nuances of poetic style and
diction. A Guide to Latin Meter and Verse Composition therefore
represents an invaluable resource for students and teachers at all
levels, not only for verse composition but also for a fuller
understanding and appreciation of the metrical artistry of Latin
poetry.
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, grammaticalisation, 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.
Analyzing the semantic and pragmatic constraints on the Japanese particle mo, roughly equivalent to the English too, this book shows how the complex mechanism of the constraints accounts for its discourse function - that is, how it enables the hearer to process the sentence to achieve more effectively the speaker's intended discourse function are related to each other. The author provides a model to explain how the presupposition of a linguistic form and its discourse function are related to each other. In doing so, the notion of 'contextual relevance', the relation between a proposition and the context, is introduced and provides grounds for modeling this concept in the case of mo - incorporating the requirement that the proposition of a mo sentence and the context have a common entailment with contextual relevance. The monosemous account of mo also explains how the particle sometimes generates the meaning of even when the context involves scalar expectation.
|
|