Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, Suzanne Romaine's main concern is to show how language and discourse play key roles in understanding and communicating gender and culture. In addition to linguistics--which provides the starting point and central focus of the book--she draws on the fields of anthropology, biology, communication, education, economics, history, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The text covers the "core" areas in the study of language and gender, including how and where gender is indexed in language, how men and women speak, how children acquire gender differentiated language, and sexism in language and language reform. Although most of the examples are drawn primarily from English, other European languages and non-European languages, such as Japanese are considered. The text is written in an accessible way so that no prior knowledge of linguistics is necessary to understand the chapters containing linguistic analysis. Each chapter is followed by exercises and discussion questions to facilitate the book's use as a classroom text.
The author reviews scholarly treatments of gender, and then uses her own data material from the corpora of spoken and written English usage. Special features include an examination of contemporary media sources such as newspapers, advertising, and television; a discussion of women's speculative fiction; a study of gender and advertising, with special attention paid to the role played by language in these domains; and a review of French feminist thought, particularly as it relates to the issue of language reform.

Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, Suzanne Romaine's main concern is to show how language and discourse play key roles in understanding and communicating gender and culture. In addition to linguistics--which provides the starting point and central focus of the book--she draws on the fields of anthropology, biology, communication, education, economics, history, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The text covers the "core" areas in the study of language and gender, including how and where gender is indexed in language, how men and women speak, how children acquire gender differentiated language, and sexism in language and language reform. Although most of the examples are drawn primarily from English, other European languages and non-European languages, such as Japanese are considered. The text is written in an accessible way so that no prior knowledge of linguistics is necessary to understand the chapters containing linguistic analysis. Each chapter is followed by exercises and discussion questions to facilitate the book's use as a classroom text.
The author reviews scholarly treatments of gender, and then uses her own data material from the corpora of spoken and written English usage. Special features include an examination of contemporary media sources such as newspapers, advertising, and television; a discussion of women's speculative fiction; a study of gender and advertising, with special attention paid to the role played by language in these domains; and a review of French feminist thought, particularly as it relates to the issue of language reform.

Anaphora is the study of referential relationships in language. Given the great flowering of the study of this topic in the last decade, it is time for a book that reports on the major results of recent research and sets the stage for further inquiry.

The authors represented in "Anaphora: A Reference Guide" are among the world's leading researchers on anaphora and are ideally suited to meet this goal. Their work draws on theoretical principles and methodologies in linguistics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy, as well as the integrated, broad perspective of cognitive science.

These stimulating reports of cutting-edge research will be useful to both undergraduate and graduate students and will find a large audience among professional researchers of anaphora and scholars who want to catch up on what is new and exciting in the area.

The thirteen chapters in this book are derived from the First International Conference on Jewish Humor held at Tel-Aviv University. The authors are scientists from the areas of literature, linguistics, sociology, psychology, history, communications, the theater, and Jewish studies. They all try to understand different aspects of Jewish humor, and they evoke associations, of a local-logical nature, with Jewish tradition. This compilation reflects the first interdisciplinary approach to Jewish humor.

The chapters are arranged in four parts. The first section relates to humor as a way of coping with Jewish identity. Joseph Dorinson's chapter underscores the dilemma facing Jewish comedians in the United States. These comics try to assimilate into American culture, but without giving up their Jewish identity. The second section of the book deals with a central function of humor--aggression. Christie Davies makes a clear distinction between jokes that present the Jew as a victim of anti-Semitic attacks and those in which the approach is not aggressive. The third part focuses on humor in the Jewish tradition. Lawrence E. Mintz writes about jokes involving Jewish and Christian clergymen. The last part of the book deals with humor in Israel. David Alexander talks about the development of satire in Israel.

Other chapters and contributors include: "Psycho-Social Aspects of Jewish Humor in Israel and in the Diaspora" by Avner Ziv; "Humor and Sexism: The Case of the Jewish Joke" by Esther Fuchs; "Halachic Issues as Satirical Elements in Nineteenth Century Hebrew Literature" by Yehuda Friedlander; "Do Jews in Israel still laugh at themselves?" by O. Nevo; and "Political Caricature as a Reflection of Israel's Development" by Kariel Gardosh. Each chapter in this volume paves the way for understanding the many facets of Jewish humor. This book will be immensely enjoyable and informative for sociologists, psychologists, and scholars of Judaic studies.

How is language used? This book sheds light on the different ways language can be used for different outcomes. Machin and Mayr examine how discourses signify ideas, values and identities through implicit and complex semiotic choices. With a focus on a multimodal approach - Images, tables and case studies - the book guides students to an understanding of how subtle plays of co-operation, negotiation and deception are played out in everyday media texts. The book is approachable and accessible for social science and linguistic students, with a focus on using material to design projects and help answers your specific questions. Alongside this, the diverse range of methodological approaches such as Appraisal Theory and Conversation Analysis will allow you to gain a wider understanding into Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and understand the relationship between language and social practices. Addressing communication in our post-modern society, the book has a unique and compelling point of view of contemporary examples of CDA - but never oversimplifies it. David Machin is a lecturer at Cardiff University. Andrea Mayr is an Assistant Professor at Zayed University, UAE.

This is a book about comparison in linguistics in general, rather than "contrastive analysis" as a distinct branch of linguistics. It addresses the question "Does the analytical apparatus used by linguists allow comparisons to be made across languages?" Four major domains are considered in turn: derivational morphology, syntax, semantics & pragmatics, and discourse. Contributions cover a broad spectrum of linguistic disciplines, ranging from contrastive linguistics and linguistic typology to translation studies and historical linguistics.

This work describes the way in which conversations between drug users vary and change according to context and circumstances in ways that suggest that there is no single "truth" about the state we call "addicted". The central thesis of the book is that the explanations that drug users give for their drug use make sense not so much as a source of facts, but as primarily functional statements shaped by a climate of moral and legal censure. Consequently, the signficance of drug conversations lies not in their literal semantics but in the purposes such conversation serve. The argument raises a number of fundamental issues about the performative rather than the informative nature of language, about the nature of the "scientific facts" concerning drug use, and about the very nature of science itself. Starting with a general overview of the problems arising from a mechanistic and deterministic view, the book identifies a need for a new approach to the understanding of verbal behaviour. Secondly, it gives an account of a new form of analysis, based on over 500 conversations carried out with drug users in Scotland and the north of England. In a final data section, evidence is presented link

This book focuses on the relationship between syntax and meaning. Terje Lohndal's core claim is that it is possible to create a transparent mapping from syntax to logical form such that each syntactic Spell-Out domain directly corresponds to a conjunct at logical form. The argument focuses on two domains of grammar - phrase structure and argument structure - and brings together two independently established but seemingly unconnected hypotheses: that verbs do not require arguments, and that specifiers are not required by the grammar. Following the introduction, the second chapter looks in detail at the separation of the verb from its thematic arguments, and presents data from argument structure, reciprocals, and adjectival passives, while the third examines the claim that specifiers do not play a role as the target of various grammatical operations. Chapter 4 then brings these arguments together and proposes a syntax that maps transparently onto logical forms where all thematic arguments are severed from the verb. Moreover, the broader consequences of this approach are outlined in terms of Spell-Out, movement, linearization, thematic uniqueness, and agreement. The book closes with an examination of the relationship between grammatical and conceptual meaning, and a detailed discussion of the nature of compositionality.

This volume is intended for students who desire a practical introduction to the use of language in daily and professional life. It may be used either as part of a course or as an aid to independent study. Readers will find that concepts relating to language and discourse are highlighted in the text, explained clearly, illuminated through examples and practice exercises, and defined in the "Glossary/Index" at the back of the book.
Divided into two parts, this text presents an introduction to the elements and practice of discourse analysis in general, as well as an introduction to the actual kinds of discourse crucial to personal and professional life. In Part I, examples and practice exercises are used which make use of a variety of genres common in daily and professional life. Genres included are advertising, biography, travel guide, news clipping, prose fiction, students' writing, telephone conversation, poetry, police-suspect interview, face-to-face conversation, war cry, political speech, medical text, legislation, textbook, discourse of the mentally disturbed, and detective fiction among others. Wherever feasible, authentic examples are used. Part II of the book applies the principles and techniques of Part I to an investigation of discourse in daily use. Chapters include discourse in education, medicine, law, the media, and literature. Not only will these be of particular interest to students planning to enter any of these professions, but will also be of general interest, since all of us encounter them in daily life. As a result, this is a very practical book.

This book is a collection of eleven chapters which together represent an original contribution to the field of (multimodal) spoken dialogue systems. The chapters include highly relevant topics, such as dialogue modeling in research systems versus industrial systems, evaluation, miscommunication and error handling, grounding, statistical and corpus-based approaches to discourse and dialogue modeling, data analysis, and corpus annotation and annotation tools. The book contains several detailed application studies, including, e.g., speech-controlled MP3 players in a car environment, negotiation training with a virtual human in a military context, application of spoken dialogue to question-answering systems, and cognitive aspects in tutoring systems. The chapters vary considerably with respect to the level of expertise required in advance to benefit from them. However, most chapters start with a state-of-the-art description from which all readers from the spoken dialogue community may benefit. Overview chapters and state-of-the-art descriptions may also be of interest to people from the human-computer interaction community.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

This book provides descriptions and illustrations of cutting-edge text analysis methods for communication and marketing research; cultural, historical-comparative, and event analysis; curriculum evaluation; psychological diagnosis; language development research; and for any research in which statistical inferences are drawn from samples of texts. Although the book is accessible to readers having no experience with content analysis, the text analysis expert will find substantial new material in its pages. In particular, this collection describes developments in semantic and network text analysis methodologies that heretofore have been accessible only among a smattering of methodology journals.
The book's international and cross-disciplinary content illustrates the breadth of quantitative text analysis applications. These applications demonstrate the methods' utility for international research, as well as for practitioners from the fields of sociology, political science, journalism/communication, computer science, marketing, education, and English. This is an "ecumenical" collection that contains applications not only of the most recent semantic and network text analysis methods, but also of the more traditional thematic method of text analysis. In fact, it is originally with this volume that these two "relational" approaches to text analysis are defined and contrasted with more traditional "thematic" text analysis methods. The emphasis here is on "application." The book's chapters provide guidance regarding the sorts of inferences that each method affords, and up-to-date descriptions of the human and technological resources required to apply the methods. Its purpose is as a resource for making quantitative text analysis methods more accessible to social science researchers.

The volume combines a historical and philosophical study of Russell's theory of descriptions. It defends, develops and extends the theory as a contribution to natural language semantics while also arguing for a reassessment of the important of linguistic inquiry to Russell's philosophical project.

This book deals with the narrative discourse--specifically lifestories--of 16 patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD). It attempts to understand the discourse of these patients in contextual terms. Thus far, the dominant explanation for "incoherence" in AD speech has been largely provided by research in psycholinguistics, much of which has understood AD speech in terms of the progressively deteriorating nature of the disease. This study provides a complementary view by examining ways in which some social factors--audiences, setting, and time--influence the extensiveness and meaningfulness of AD talk.
By offering both an examination of interactions across the data as well as analyzing particular cases in detail, this unusual study attempts to juxtapose some general insights regarding AD discourse with case-specific ones. Sociolinguistic analyses of the data demonstrate how certain audiences and particular settings set in motion discourse activities that either facilitate the patients' ability to recall their pasts or impede it. This analysis also includes a critical look at the researcher's contribution in negotiating and reinforcing these activities. Ethnographic details about the social worlds of some of these patients shed light on how larger social contexts at least indirectly contribute to exacerbating the patients' conditions or stabilizing them. The analyses of both context and language provides a more global understanding of the Alzheimer experience. This study also discusses some interactional strategies by which professionals can begin to engage AD patients in meaningful talk as well as ways by which they can better "hear" AD patients' cues at narrating. Throughout, this book underscores the need to factor in social factors when making assessments regarding AD patients' communicative abilities.

In Signs, Language and Communication readers familiar with the arguments of Professor Harris' previous work, including Signs of Writing, will find those ideas developed here to cover not just writing, but aspects of art, design and manufacture.
Roy Harris proposes a new theory of communication. He begins with the premise that the mental life of an individual should be conceived as a continuous attempt to integrate the present with the past and future. He concludes by arguing that communication should be viewed as both a product and a resource of this constant act of integration.

The grandmother granddaughter conversation examined in this book makes explicit what the detailed study of interaction reveals about two social problems--"bulimia" and "grandparent caregiving." For the first time, systematic attention is given to interactional activities through which family members display ordinary yet contradictory concerns about health and illness:
* a grandmother's (who is also a registered nurse) attempts to initiate, confront, and remedy her granddaughter's lack of responsibility in admitting bulimic "problems" and committing to professional medical assistance;
* a granddaughter's methods for avoiding ownership of the alleged bulimic problems by discounting the legitimacy of her grandmother's expressed concerns.
Through analysis of a single audio-recorded and transcribed conversation, Wayne Beach reveals the altogether pervasive and often troubled talk surrounding family medical predicaments. From a careful review of extant theories that seek to explain eating disorders and grandparent caregiving, it becomes clear that an overreliance on self-report data has promoted underspecified understandings of "social contexts" -- conceptualizations void of real time practices and interactional consequences mirroring how families manage their daily affairs and understandings regarding health and illness. In contrast, this volume draws attention to family members' embodied interactional activities. Here it is seen, for example, how methods for expressing concern and caring by "individuals" may nevertheless eventuate in interactional troubles and problems "between" family members. The analysis reveals that, while displays of basic concerns for others' health and well being are routine occurrences between family members in home environments -- and of course, across friendship and various support networks -- even the delicate and well-intended management of such occasions guarantees neither agreement on the nature of the alleged "problems" nor, consequently, a commitment to seek professional help as a means of remedying a medical condition. In such cases, the very existence of an illness is itself a matter of some contention to be interactionally worked out. And it is perhaps both predictable and symptomatic that those explicitly denying (or as with the granddaughter, indirectly failing to admit) that problematic health behaviors exist, also somehow let it be made known that far too much attention is being given to possibilities and consequences of illness in the first instance.
Implications of this investigation extend well beyond "bulimia" and "grandparent caregiving" to a vast array of casual and institutional involvements between family members, friends, and bureaucratic representatives such as those involved in long-term caregiving, dealing with cancer and Alzheimer's disease, or conducting psychiatric interviews and HIV/AIDS counseling sessions. Findings regarding the interactionally organized nature of talk about bulimia, as well as the problematic nature of caregiving, will be of value to researchers focusing on language and social interaction, health practitioners, and families alike.
This volume includes the full transcript of the conversation in the case study. A copy of the audio-recording is available for classroom adoption and/or personal purchase by contacting: Wayne A. Beach, School of Communication, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-4516.

Conversational analysis is an interdisciplinary field that draws on cognitive science, social psychology, sociology, pragmatics, and the ethnography of communication. These various disciplines provide both qualitative and quantitative foundations for conversational analysis. The ultimate goal of this study is to investigate what communication is: what its goals are, why people talk, and how conversational goals are achieved. The primary concerns of this study are to investigate the interactions among cognition, emotion, and social norms, using the floor model proposed by Edelsky (1981) and Schultz, Florio, and Erickson (1982), and to further develop their model for the analysis of conversational interaction.

The book contributes to a fuller description and a uniformed analysis of Mandarin cleft constructions. The book provides the first Mandarin empirical data towards some heated theoretical debates. The book yields a good combination of theoretical formal semantics, semantic-pragmatic interface studies, corpus analyses, and the newly emerging experimental semantics. Typologically speaking, Mandarin shi...(de) presents some characteristics of the that are rarely found with its counterparts in other languages.

• Thoroughly integrates the treatment of semantics and pragmatics, providing a more accessible, realistic, coherent and contemporary account of linguistic meaning than can be achieved by treating the two topics separately • Betty Birner’s lively and student-friendly writing style engages even students new to the study of linguistics with this fascinating subject • Includes chapters on topical and cutting-edge subjects such as meaning, machines and artificial intelligence.

The volume explores key convergences between cognitive and discourse approaches to language and language learning, both first and second. The emphasis is on the role of language as it is used in everyday interaction and as it reflects everyday cognition. The contributors share a usage-based perspective on language - whether they are examining grammar or metaphor or interactional dynamics - which situates language as part of a broader range of systems which underlie the organization of social life and human thought. While sharing fundamental assumptions about language, the particulars of the areas of inquiry and emphases of those engaged in discourse analysis versus cognitive linguistics are diverse enough that, historically, many have tended to remain unaware of the interrelations among these approaches. Thus, researchers have also largely overlooked the possibilities of how work from each perspective can challenge, inform, and enrich the other. The papers in the volume make a unique contribution by more consciously searching for connections between the two broad approaches. The results are a set of dynamic, thought-provoking analyses that add considerably to our understanding of language and language learning. The papers represent a rich range of frameworks within a usage-based approach to language. Cognitive Grammar, Mental Space and Blending Theory, Construction Grammar, ethnomethodology, and interactional sociolinguistics are just some of the frameworks used by the researchers in this volume. The particular subjects of inquiry are also quite varied and include first and second language learning, signed language, syntactic phenomena, interactional regulation and dynamics, discourse markers, metaphor theory, polysemy, language processing and humor. The volume is of interests to researchers in cognitive linguistics, discourse and conversational analysis, and first and second language learning, as well as signed languages.

How do Holocaust survivors find words and voice for their memories of terror and loss? This landmark book presents striking new insights into the process of recounting the Holocaust. While other studies have been based, typically, on single interviews with survivors, this work summarizes twenty years of the author's interviews and reinterviews with the same core group. In this book, therefore, survivors' recounting is approached--not as one-time testimony--but as an ongoing, deepening conversation.

Listening to survivors so intensively, we hear much that we have not heard before. We learn, for example, how survivors perceive us, their listeners, and the impact of listeners on what survivors do, in fact, retell. We meet the survivors themselves as distinct individuals, each with his or her specific style and voice. As we directly follow their efforts to recount, we see how Holocaust memories challenge their words even now--burdening survivors' speech, distorting it, and sometimes fully consuming it. It is "not" a story, insisted one survivor about his memories. It has to be "made" a story. "On Listening to Holocaust Survivors" shows us both the ways survivors can make stories for the not-story they remember and--just as important--the ways they are not able to do so.

What is the basis of our ability to assign meanings to words or to objects? Such questions have, until recently, been regarded as lying within the province of philosophy and linguistics rather than psychology. However, recent advances in psychology and neuropsychology have led to the development of a scientific approach to analysing the cognitive bases of semantic knowledge and semantic representations. Indeed, theory and data on the organisation and structure of semantic knowledge have now become central and hotly debated topics in contemporary psychology.
This special issue of Memory brings together a series of papers from established laboratories that are at the forefront of semantic memory research. The collection includes papers presenting theoretical overviews of the field as well as papers containing new experimental findings. A variety of approaches to the problems of analysing semantic knowledge and semantic representations are included in this volume. For example, experimental studies of normal subjects are included together with neuropsychological investigations of patients with impaired semantic memory and computational models of the representation of knowledge in normality and disease. This collection will therefore be essential reading for researchers and others who are interested in memory function. It will also be of interest to cognitive scientists, linguists, philosophers and others who have puzzled over the many complex and central questions that probe the roots of our ability to understand meaning.