This volume presents articles that focus on the application of formal models in the study of language in a variety of innovative ways, and is dedicated to Jacques Moeschler, professor at University of Geneva, to mark the occasion of his 60th birthday. The contributions, by seasoned and budding linguists of all different linguistic backgrounds, reflect Jacques Moeschler's diverse and visionary research over the years. The book contains three parts. The first part shows how different formal models can be applied to the analysis of such diverse problems as the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of tense, aspect and deictic expressions, syntax and pragmatics of quantifiers and semantics and pragmatics of connectives and negation. The second part presents the application of formal models to the treatment of cognitive issues related to the use of language, and in particular, demonstrating cognitive accounts of different types of human interactions, the context in utterance interpretation (salience, inferential comprehension processes), figurative uses of language (irony pretence), the role of syntax in Theory of Mind in autism and the analysis of the aesthetics of nature. Finally, the third part addresses computational and corpus-based approaches to natural language for investigating language variation, language universals and discourse related issues. This volume will be of great interest to syntacticians, pragmaticians, computer scientists, semanticians and psycholinguists.

"Analysing Multimodal Documents" presents the first systematic, corpus-based, and theoretically rigorous approach to the description and analysis of multimodal documents. John Bateman introduces researchers and advanced students to a linguistically-based method of analysis that shows how different modes of expression--including language, rhetoric, images, typography, colour and space--go together to make up a document with a recognizable genre. The author draws upon both academic research and concrete experience of how designers and production teams put documents together.

In this book Roger Chartier and his associates explore the history of a cultural practice that has become common and widespread: the writing of letters. They begin by examining the invention of norms for writing letters in the Middle Ages, and the fixing of these norms in popular manuals of various kinds. They then analyse the letter--writing models developed in the ancien regime, showing how these models were linked to court literature, on the one hand, and to the popular books distributed by pedlars, on the other. Finally they discuss the models of letter--writing developed during the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century, they argue, was a decisive period in the history of letter writing, partly because of the rapid rise in rates of literacy and partly due to broader social and economic transformations, which increased the need for writing letters. By exploring the ways in which practices of letter writing have changed over the centuries, this path--breaking book sheds light on an everyday cultural practice which has created new ways of thinking, of feeling and of relating to others as well as to oneself.

This concise and well-organized grammar of classical Arabic, here translated from its original German into English for the first time, provides students of Arabic with a highly useful reference tool. While brief enough to be used with efficiency, the book is also rich in content and thorough in its coverage. Beginning- or advanced-level students working on classical texts and styles will find this grammar quick to use, reliable, and up-to-date. More than just a translation into English, this edition of Wolfdietrich Fischer's Grammar of Classical Arabic includes many revisions and additions provided by the author. In particular, the chapter on syntax offers numerous new text examples and other improvements. The bibliography has been updated to include significant recent contributions to the field of classical Arabic grammar and linguistics. Translated by Jonathan Rodgers with attention to both accuracy and readability, this book is an accessible reference tool that every student of classical Arabic will want to have on hand.

Mikhail Bakhtin was right. Humans could not use the languages they know without also learning the genres which govern so much of our social life. These genres frequently consist of rules prescribing the order in which we must say things and formulaic phraseology which prescribes what can and should be said. Native speakers know only a small fraction of the formulaic genres in a speech community. This relativizes the concept of a native speaker in all situations. Koenraad Kuiper illustrates these views with an array of fascinating case studies of engagement notice writers, horse race commentators, weather forecasters, pump aerobics instructors, square dance callers, cartoonists, and Red Guards.

Using data from a newspaper corpus, this book offers the first empirical study into the development of style in early mass media. The book analyses how news discourse was shaped over time by external factors, such as the historical context, news production, technological innovation and current affairs, and as such both conformed to and deviated from generic conventions. In this analysis, media style appears as a dynamic concept which is highly sensitive to innovative approaches towards making news not only informative but also entertaining to read.This cutting edge survey will be of interest to academics researching corpus linguistics, media discourse and stylistics.The editorial board includes: Frantisek Cermak (Prague), Susan Conrad (Portland), Geoffrey Leech (Lancaster), Elena Tognini-Bonelli (Lecce and TWC), Ruth Wodak (Lancaster and Vienna), and, Feng Zhiwei (Beijing)."The Corpus and Discourse" series consists of two strands. The first, "Research in Corpus and Discourse", features innovative contributions to various aspects of corpus linguistics and a wide range of applications, from language technology via the teaching of a second language to a history of mentalities. The second strand, "Studies in Corpus and Discourse", is comprised of key texts bridging the gap between social studies and linguistics. Although equally academically rigorous, this strand will be aimed at a wider audience of academics and postgraduate students working in both disciplines.

Focusing on the introductions to research articles in a variety of disciplines, the author uses appraisal theory to analyze how writers bring together multiple resources to develop their positions in the flow of discourse. It will be most useful for researchers new to appraisal, and to EAP teachers.

This book traces the study of American oratory from the ministers of Colonial New England up to the time of Woodrow Wilson. Extensive attention is given to great public debates such as those between Webster and Hayne and Lincoln and Douglas. The public speaking of religious figures, lawyers, and social reformers, as well as statesmen, is discussed.

One of the most basic themes in the philosophy of language is referential uptake, viz., the question of what counts as properly understanding' a referring act in communication. In this inquiry, the particular line pursued goes back to Strawson's work on re-identification, but the immediate influence is that of Gareth Evans. It is argued that traditional and recent proposals fail to account for success in referential communication. A novel account is developed, resembling Evans' account in combining an external success condition with a Fregean one. But, in contrast to Evans, greater emphasis is placed on the action-enabling side of communication. Further topics discussed include the role of mental states in accounting for communication, the impact of re-identification on the understanding of referring acts, and Donnellan's referential/attributive distinction. Readership: Philosophers, cognitive scientists and semanticists.

How can irregular political situations, which impact the lives of millions, become normalized? Specifically, within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how can 50 years of Israeli control over the Occupied Territories become accepted within Israeli society as a normal, possibly even banal phenomenon? Conversely, how can such a situation be estranged from daily reality, denied any relation to who "we" are? This volume explores these questions through the lens of two central discourses that dominate the Israeli debate regarding the future of the Occupied Territories: 1) Occupation Normalization Discourse, which portrays Israeli control of the territories as a "normal" part of life; 2) Occupation Estrangement Discourse, which portrays this situation as distant from Israeli reality. In addressing these discourses, the authors develop a new methodological tool, Dialectic Discourse Analysis, which examines discourse as a process of perpetual positing and synthesis of oppositions through the discursive construction, differentiation and mediation of self and other. Through this approach, the authors illustrate that these discourses are dialectically constituted in opposition to one another, feeding off one another, each enabling the other to exist. This dynamic has resulted in a fixed discourse, preventing any progress towards a synthesis of oppositions.

This book provides an in-depth view of the current issues, problems and approaches in the computation of meaning as expressed in language. Aimed at linguists, computer scientists, and logicians with an interest in the computation of meaning, this book focuses on two main topics in recent research in computational semantics. The first topic is the definition and use of underspecified semantic representations, i.e. formal structures that represent part of the meaning of a linguistic object while leaving other parts unspecified. The second topic discussed is semantic annotation. Annotated corpora have become an indispensable resource both for linguists and for developers of language and speech technology, especially when used in combination with machine learning methods. The annotation in corpora has only marginally addressed semantic information, however, since semantic annotation methodologies are still in their infancy. This book discusses the development and application of such methodologies.

Grammar and Meaning is an introduction to the study of grammar of contemporary English. It provides an impressive survey of all the main areas of English grammar, from words through to sentences and texts. It introduces and explains the linguistic terms needed to talk about the ways in which language works, from simple terms like adjective to more complex terms like non-finite clause. To meet the needs of both students and scholars, Howard Jackson has produced an innovative approach to the study of English grammar. Instead of concentrating on the formal and theoretical discussion of grammar, as many introductions do, this original analysis examines the 'meanings' we want to express when we use language. Beginning with the question, "What do we talk about?", it goes on to investigate how these meanings are structured in the grammar of English. These notions are closer to our ordinary understanding of what language is doing, and therefore the forms and structures of grammar are more easily grasped. The book is extensively illustrated with examples from real English. With analytical exercises in each chapter and a comprehensive glossary of terms, the book will prove and invaluable aid to students of English language, linguistics and English as a Foreign Language, whilst also being accessible to anyone who studies English grammar as part of their course.

The present work proposes a novel analysis of Complement Clauses in Earlier Egyptian language. Contrary to previous assumptions, the grammatical organisation of these constructions is shown to be based on differentiation between Realis and Irrealis modality. The different types of complement clauses attested in Earlier Egyptian are surveyed utilising recent linguistic research on modality and pragmatics. The discussion is based on numerous examples from the ancient texts and on comparisons with many other languages. Emerging from this investigation is a coherent and principled system for expressing Realis and Irrealis meaning in this most ancient of written languages. This book is of notable value to Egyptologists working with texts and to all those interested in modality, grammar, and cognition.

This volume provides a critical roadmap through the major historical sources of legal semiotics as we know them today. The history of legal semiotics, now at least a century old, has never been written (a non-event itself pregnant with semiotic possibility). As a consequence, its sources are seldom clearly exposed and, as word, object and meaning change, are sometimes lost. They reach from an English translation of the 1916 inaugural lecture of the first Chair in Legal Significs at the Amsterdam University, via mid 20th century studies on "property" or "contract," to equally fascinating essays on contemporary semiotic problems produced by former students of the Roberta Kevelson Semiotics Roundtable Seminar at Penn State University 2012 and 2013. Together, the materials in this book weave the fabric of semiotics and significs, two names for the unfolding of semiotics in law and legal discourse at least until the second half of the 20th century, and both of which covered a lawyer's focus on sign and meaning in law. The latter is embedded within the cultural imperatives of the civilization that gave these terms meaning and made them an effective tool for the dissection of law, its reconstitution as an instrument to be used by the lawyer to advance the interests of her clients, and for judges as a means to restructure language as a narrative of law whose power could bend behavior to its strictures. Legal semiotics has become an indispensible part of the elite lawyer's toolkit and a fundamental approach to analysis of legal texts. Two previous volumes published in 2011 and 2012 explored the conceptual, methodological and epistemological progress in the field of legal semiotics, the modern forms of semiotics study, and the mechanics of meaning making processes by lawyers. Yet the great lessons of semiotics requires a focus on the origins of the concepts and frameworks that would become contemporary legal semiotics, its origins as an object of the consciousness of meaning making-one whose roots, as lessons for the oracular conversations of law, are expanded in this volume.

Adding a new introduction and two previously unpublished papers, Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis brings together van Leeuwen's methodological work on discourse analysis of the last 15 years. Discourse, van Leeuwen argues, is a resource for representation, a knowledge about some aspect of reality which can be drawn upon when that aspect of reality has to be represented, a framework for making sense of things. And they are plural. There can be different discourses, different ways of making sense of the same aspect of reality that serve different interests and will therefore be used in different social contexts.
However abstract some discourses are, discourses ultimately always represent doings, van Leeuwen argues. Doing is the foundation of knowing, and social practices are the foundation of discourses. Studying children's books, newspaper reports, brochures and other texts, as well as photographs and children's toys, van Leeuwen investigates what can happen when practices are transformed into discourses and provides analytical tools for reconstructing discourses from texts.
Throughout the book, van Leeuwen makes connections between sociological and linguistic or semiotic concepts and methods to ensure the social and critical relevance of his analytical categories. van Leeuwen's work has already been widely used by critical discourse analysts across the world. This volume will be a welcome guide for anyone looking for a form of discourse analysis that is both explicit and methodical, and critically incisive.

The Semantics of Chinese Classifiers and Linguistic Relativity focuses on the semantic structure of Chinese classifiers under the cognitive linguistics framework, and the implications thereof on linguistic relativity and language acquisition. It examines the semantic correlation between a given classifier and its associated nouns. Nouns in Chinese, which are assigned specific classifiers according to their selected characteristics, reflect the process of human categorization. The concrete categories formed by the relationship between nouns and classifiers may serve to explain the conceptual structure of the Chinese language and certain underlying aspects of culture and human cognition. Song Jiang is Assistant Professor of Chinese for the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at university of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Smith examines the major canons of classical rhetorical theory by demonstrating their influence on Christian speakers. He begins by explaining why charisma has become a misused term. He then explores why writing about charisma has been so difficult in terms of the academic prejudice in favor of objectivity and reason. He then constructs a three- level definition of charisma to replace the current one.

After analyzing the charisma of Jesus in terms of the three personae he developed as teacher, human, and messiah, Smith argues that his power arose from this rich development of character. The textual charisma of the Gospel narrators is explored in terms of their narrative techniques, and Smith then examines the concept of "ethos," the use of emotion in persuasion, and explicates the theories of leading existential thinkers to develop advanced notions of human responsibility and transcendent spirituality. These two notions are used to refine and improve previous definitions of charisma. Smith then establishes a matrix that crosses levels of charisma with different types of identification. This work will be of particular interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with Christianity, philosophy, and persuasion.

What is the role of rhetoric in a civil society? In this thought-provoking book, James L. Kastely examines works by writers from Plato to Jane Austen and locates a line of thinking that values rhetoric but also raises questions about the viability of rhetorical practice. While dealing principally with literary theory, rhetoric, and philosophy, the author's arguments extend to practical concerns and open up the way to deeper thinking about individual responsibility for existing injustices, for inadvertently injuring others, and for silencing those without power.

Challenging the traditional claim that Plato is the chief opponent of rhetoric, Kastely contends that he was its most sophisticated theorist. Plato, Sophocles, and Euripides, the author asserts, recognized an essential paradox: while urgently believing in the need for rhetoric in a world where injustice cannot be eliminated, they nevertheless regarded the possibilities of rhetoric with skepticism. Tracing the modern recovery of a skeptical rhetorical tradition to Jane Austen, the author argues that Sartre's work displays the incoherence within modernist thought on discourse and reveals the tensions between two strains of postmodern thought -- deconstructionism and Marxism. Kastely concludes by showing how the rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke has returned to the insights of classical rhetoric in order to balance a skeptical stance toward persuasion with a commitment to act in a world with persistent injustice.

This reference is the only book-length work to analyze all of the major speeches of one of the most significant politicians of the first part of the twentieth century, Robert La Follette, Sr. His speeches offer historic snapshots into the Progressive era and of the thinking of an outstanding governor of Wisconsin, U.S. senator, and social agitator. This rhetorical biography analyzes key speeches and provides texts demonstrating how Senator La Follette used melodramatic scenarios to enlist citizens in his reform crusade against the gravest danger that he saw in this country. This reference also provides texts of his most important speeches, a chronology of his major orations, and a lengthy bibliography. This unique volume is designed for students and specialists in political communication, rhetorical criticism, and American studies. This systematical analysis of Senator La Follette's public speeches is a short and highly readable history of the Progressive era, World War I and its aftermath, and the early 1920s from the perspective of a leading political figure of the times. The analysis of La Follette's rhetorical strategy illuminates his use of confrontational tactics, such as the filibuster in Congress to educate the voter and to plead for reforms that he considered essential. This reference provides the texts of five seminal orations and the most complete bibliography of speeches available to date.

This volume offers a current reading of the Italian writer, Pirandello. The author examines the representation of gender relations in Pirandello's writing in the light of recent developments in textual analysis. She reassesses Pirandello's status as an innovative, avant-garde writer, arguing that whilst on the level of dramatic form he is certainly avant-garde, he is not so on the more covert level of gender relations. The author uses contemporary feminist theory to show how textual analysis can expose the covert reinforcement of patriarchal values. The study provides an illustration of a variety of methods which could be applied to texts other than those of Pirandello's.

"Metaphor Networks" focuses on the historical evolution of metaphor and proposes new theories on language change based on substantial empirical data. It explores how the metaphors of today are very often linked to images existing in the past and traces metaphor paths back to the Middle Ages and Antiquity. The findings reveal that regular patters of evolution emerge and the aims of the book are to find out what lies behind these patterns.

The area of research on printed word recognition has been one of the most active in the field of experimental psychology for well over a decade. However, notwithstanding the energetic research effort and despite the fact that there are many points of consensus, major controversies still exist.

This volume is particularly concerned with the putative relationship between language and reading. It explores the ways by which orthography, phonology, morphology and meaning are interrelated in the reading process. Included are theoretical discussions as well as reviews of experimental evidence by leading researchers in the area of experimental reading studies. The book takes as its primary issue the question of the degree to which basic processes in reading reflect the structural characteristics of language such as phonology and morphology. It discusses how those characteristics can shape a language's orthography and affect the process of reading from word recognition to comprehension.

Contributed by specialists, the broad-ranging mix of articles and papers not only gives a picture of current theory and data but a view of the directions in which this research area is vigorously moving.

What is the connection between what is said on TV and how it is said? Structured around four key features of the current broadcast landscape (storytelling, closeness, conflict and persuasion), "Television Discourse" examines the specific forms and structures of talk across media genres as varied as exploitative shows and political interviews.