The volume examines the discourse-based critique of coloniality. It brings together an extensive interdisciplinary dialogue that reveals what different research fields - such as sociology of language, social psychology, history and political science, among others - have to say about discourse criticism and de/coloniality. In doing so, it also invites a critique of critical thinking, acknowledging the relevance of dissonant voices that arise from this debate. The essays in this volume discuss possibilities to decolonize discursive studies without losing sight of its contradictions. The book delves into how one can, as an intellectual who enjoys the privileges of coloniality in academic environments of the Global North, deal with the limitations and paradox of a radical critique through discourse. It discusses how ideas, entrenched in privilege, can be extracted, shared and applied while ensuring the radicality of their local contextualization. These ideas then must not only make sense within themselves but also resonate with other contexts, readings and peoples, in the South, without repeating the mistakes of hermetic scholarly lexicons. A key reading on decoloniality, critical thinking, methodologies, ideas, ideologies, language and critical discourse analysis, this volume will be of immense interest to scholar and researchers of language and literature, political science, the social sciences and Global South Studies.

This book challenges the current consensus on the analysis of wh-questions and reflexives from the perspective of the syntax-semantics interface. An integrated approach incorporating analyses of the interaction between different levels of linguistic knowledge is proposed. It argues that the derivation and interpretation of wh-questions and reflexives are not purely syntactic in nature but are regulated by principles operating at the syntax-semantics interface. Two general principles underlying our knowledge of language and cognition are proposed in this work. One is the Principle of Locality, and the other is the Principle of Prominence. It shows that although wh-quantification and reflexivization belong to two different domains of study in generative grammar, their derivation and interpretation are basically constrained by the complex interaction between prominence and locality in grammar. The first part of the book discusses how wh-questions are formed and interpreted in Chinese and English and shows that the formation and interpretation of wh-questions are constrained by the interaction between prominence and locality. It is shown that in wh-interpretation prominence is used to define the set generators so as to licence other wh-words in the pair-list reading in multiple wh-questions. It also discusses wh-island effects in English and Chinese, and unlike previous claims made in the literature (cf. Huang 1982a, 1982b), it argues that the so-called wh-island effects in English are also observed in Chinese. The second part of the book investigates the role that prominence and locality play in reflexive binding. It is shown that in reflexive binding, the binding domain of the reflexive is defined by prominence. It proposes a unified account for both the noncontrastive compound reflexive and the bare reflexive in Chinese and shows that they are constrained by the same reflexive binding condition proposed in this work, though they employ different definitions of the most prominent NPs to determine their binding domains. Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Quesitons and Reflexives is an important theoretical contribution to the syntax-semantics interface studies and can serve as a valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the field of Chinese, linguistics, and cognitive science.

One prominent function of natural language is to convey information. One peculiarity is that it does not do so randomly, but in a structured way, with information structuring formally recognized to be a component of grammar. Among all information structuring notions, focus is one primitive needed to account for all phenomena. Focus Manifestation in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese: A Comparative Perspective aims to examine from a semantic perspective how syntactic structures and focus adverbs in Mandarin Chinese and semantic particles in Cantonese conspire to encode focus structures and determine focus manifestation in Chinese. With both being tonal languages, Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese manifest different morpho-syntactic configurations to mark focus. A general principle governing focus marking in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese is given in the book, which aims to give a better understanding of the underlying principles the two use to mark additive and restrictive meanings, and related focus interpretations. Particular attention is also drawn to the co-occurrence of multiple forms of restrictive and additive particles in Cantonese, including adverbs, verbal suffixes and sentence-final particles. Linearity has been shown to be an important parameter to determine how focus is structured in Cantonese. This book is aimed at advanced graduate students, researchers, and scholars working on Chinese linguistics, syntax and semantics, and comparative dialectal grammar.

This work supplies a concrete definition of Corporate Public Discourse, an idea that has always lacked true character. It explores how leading corporations use their own special language to define their cultures. The authors take this language, once considered a mere embellishment of speech, and use it to explore the inner workings of world-renowned organizations. This book bridges the gap between organizational studies and linguistics by analysing the communications of today's top companies. The book describes a weekly Saturday morning meeting at Wal-Mart, evaluates IBM's commitment to success, and looks into the social role of high-calibre CEOs. Broken into seven parts, including management, media, and analysis, the study efficiently frames the importance of corporate communication.

This book is a collection of papers by leading researchers in computational semantics. It presents a state-of-the-art overview of recent and current research in computational semantics, including descriptions of new methods for constructing and improving resources for semantic computation, such as WordNet, VerbNet, and semantically annotated corpora. It also presents new statistical methods in semantic computation, such as the application of distributional semantics in the compositional calculation of sentence meanings. Computing the meaning of sentences, texts, and spoken or texted dialogue is the ultimate challenge in natural language processing, and the key to a wide range of exciting applications. The breadth and depth of coverage of this book makes it suitable as a reference and overview of the state of the field for researchers in Computational Linguistics, Semantics, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, and Artificial Intelligence. "

This book argues that there is a common cognitive mechanism underlying all indexical thoughts, in spite of their seeming diversity. Indexical thoughts are mental representations, such as beliefs and desires. They represent items from a thinker's point of view or her cognitive perspective. We typically express them by means of sentences containing linguistic expressions such as 'this (F)' or 'that (F)', adverbs like 'here', 'now', and 'today', and the personal pronoun 'I'. While generally agreeing that representing the world from a thinker's cognitive perspective is a key feature of indexical thoughts, philosophers disagree as to whether a thinker's cognitive perspective can be captured and rationalized by semantic content and, if so, what kind of content this is. This book surveys competing views and then advances its own positive account. Ultimately, it argues that a thinker's cognitive perspective - or her indexical point of view - is to be explained in terms of the content that is believed and asserted as the only kind of content that there is which thereby serves as the bearer of cognitive significance. The Indexical Point of View will be of interest to philosophers of mind and language, linguists, and cognitive scientists.

This Handbook offers students and more advanced readers a valuable resource for understanding linguistic reference; the relation between an expression (word, phrase, sentence) and what that expression is about. The volume's forty-one original chapters, written by many of today's leading philosophers of language, are organized into ten parts: I Early Descriptive Theories II Causal Theories of Reference III Causal Theories and Cognitive Significance IV Alternate Theories V Two-Dimensional Semantics VI Natural Kind Terms and Rigidity VII The Empty Case VIII Singular (De Re) Thoughts IX Indexicals X Epistemology of Reference Contributions consider what kinds of expressions actually refer (names, general terms, indexicals, empty terms, sentences), what referring expressions refer to, what makes an expression refer to whatever it does, connections between meaning and reference, and how we know facts about reference. Many contributions also develop connections between linguistic reference and issues in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.

The primary objective of this study is to propose a comparative analysis of the political TV interview with reference to two distinct approaches: the theory of discourse (dialogue) games (Carlson 1983), an extension of game-theoretical semantics (GTS) as proposed by Jaakko Hintikka, specifically his strategic paradigm (1973, 1979, 2000), and the strategic perspective adopted by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff (1991, 2010 for business games with roots in the mathematical theory of games). Text-forming strategies utilised by the selected British and Polish political figures have been presented and the strategic repertoire of politicians have been systematised following the five master strategies of: cooperation, co-opetition, conflict/competition, manipulation and persuasion.

Provides ample evidence to show that persuasive discourse and rudimentary rhetorical techniques already existed in ancient China e.g. public speeches in Xia dynasty, oracle bone inscriptions in Shang dynasty, public debates about government policies in Han dynasty Explains how the Mandate of Heaven was inscribed at the core of Chinese rhetoric and has guided Chinese thoughts and expressions for centuries Demonstrates Chinese rhetorical wisdom by extracting many concepts and terms related to language expression, persuasive speech, morality and virtue, life and philosophy and so on from great Chinese literary works Many surprising facts are found by the author and revealed in the book

Traditional grammar instruction often focuses too much on what's right or what's wrong, hiding the true power of conventions—the creation of meaning, purpose, and effect. Instead of hammering high school students with the mistakes they should avoid, Jeff Anderson, Travis Leech, and Holly Durham suggest exploring grammar through the celebration of author's purpose and craft. In Patterns of Power: Teaching Grammar Through Reading and Writing, Grades 9–12, they invite you to create an environment in which writers thrive while studying and appreciating the beauty, effects, and meaning of grammar. Inside this book, teachers will find a comprehensive explanation of the brain-based Patterns of Power invitational process, as well as: 35 standards-aligned lesson sets built around practical, engaging, inquiry-based methods that take deeper dives into grammar and craft than any worksheet, quiz, or editing exercise ever could A variety of high-interest model texts from authentic and diverse sources, including excerpts from classic and current novels, memoirs, plays, graphic novels, poems, and media Real-life classroom examples and tips with suggestions for scaffolding new learning and ideas for how to use the lessons in AP courses Templates for extended application, easy to locate printables, and ready-to-go visuals Additional Models for Further Study for extension opportunities in every lesson set An entire chapter devoted to helping high school writers master citations in research With hundreds of teach-tomorrow resources and implementation supports such as quick-reference guides, specific applications to reading instruction, and soundtrack suggestions to infuse the joy of music into grammar instruction, Patterns of Power gives you everything you need to inspire your high school writers to move beyond limitation and into the endless possibilities of what they can do as writers. The Patterns of Power series also includes Patterns of Power: Inviting Adolescent Writers into the Conventions of Language, Grades 6-8, Patterns of Power: Inviting Young Writers into the Conventions of Language, Grades 1-5, Patterns of Wonder: Inviting Emergent Writers to Play with the Conventions of Language, PreK-1, and Patterns of Power en Español: Inviting Bilingual Writers into the Conventions of Spanish, Grades 1-5.

This edited book represents the first cohesive attempt to describe the literary genres of late-twentieth-century fiction in terms of lexico-grammatical patterns. Drawing on the PhraseoRom international project on the phraseology of contemporary novels, the contributed chapters combine literary studies with corpus linguistics to analyse fantasy, romance, crime, historical and science fiction in French and English. The authors offer new insights into long-standing debates on genre distinction and the hybridization of genres by deploying a new, interdisciplinary methodology. Sitting at the intersection of literature and linguistics, with a firm grounding in the digital humanities, this book will be of particular relevance to literary scholars, corpus stylists, contrastivists and lexicologists, as well as general readers with an interest in twentieth-century genre fiction.

This book provides a research-driven discussion of how the epistemic potential of multilingual writing strategies can be conceptualized, investigated, and leveraged in higher education. Research results are reported from an intervention study in two discipline-specific, writing-intensive HE content courses. The study triangulates survey data with think-aloud & screen-recording data and with product data in a pre/post design. Based on the research findings, the book details a multilingual teaching framework in which a translanguaging approach is enhanced with instructional practices from translation training.

'A wide-ranging, erudite and multi-faceted analyses of the fundamental problem of who gets to be counted as human' - Kate Evans Refugee Talk explores cultural responses to the ongoing refugee crisis. Looking at ethical questions and political rhetoric surrounding the refugee experience, the authors uncover the reality behind the fraught discussions taking place today. With an understanding of how to meaningfully negotiate responses through philosophy, media representations, art, activism and literature, the authors insist that a radically different approach is needed, advocating for, along with other reorientations, a new refugee vocabulary as a launching pad for interventions into polarised debates. By centring conversation as a method and ethical practice to engage in the discourses surrounding refugees, Refugee Talk is structured around dialogues with academics, activists, journalists and refugee artists and writers, creating a comprehensive humanities approach that places ethics and aesthetics at its core.

Drawing ideas from the works of George Herbert Mead, Mikhail Bakhtin, Kenneth Burke, and the American pragmaticism philosophers, Dialogues, Dramas, and Emotions: Essays in Interactionist Sociology argues that the verbal interactions of human agents are characterized by addresses and rejoinders, which Bakhtin called dialogues. These moves conform to what Burke called dramatism. Robert Perinbanayagam uses examples both from dramatic literature and everyday conversations to demonstrate how everyday interactions are inescapably dramas, conducted through the use of dialogues in order to promote mutual understanding. Along with analyzing the dialogues themselves, the author also examines what comes to play in these interactions and shows the various consequences of these emotionalities in ongoing human relationships.

A Rhetoric of Ruins contributes to an interdisciplinary conversation about the role of wrecked and abandoned places in modern life. Topics in this book stretch from retro- and post-human futures to a Jeremiadic analysis of the role of ruins in American presidential discourse. From that foundation, A Rhetoric of Ruins employs hauntology to visit a California ghost-town, psychogeography to confront Detroit ruins, heterochrony to survey Pennsylvania's once (and future) Graffiti Highway, an expanded articulation of heterotopia to explore the pleasurable contamination of Chernobyl, and an evening in Turkmenistan's Doorway to Hell that stretches across time from Homer's Iliad to Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally." Written to engage scholars and students of communication studies, cultural geography, anthropology, landscape studies, performance studies, public memory, urban studies, and tourism studies, A Rhetoric of Ruins is a conceptually rich and vividly written account of how broken and derelict places help us manage our fears in the modern era.

This book presents a novel experimental approach to investigating the mental representation of linguistic alternatives. Combining theoretical and psycholinguistic questions concerning the nature of alternative sets, it sheds new light on the theory of focus and the cognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of alternatives. In a series of language comprehension experiments, the author shows that intonational focus and focus particles such as 'only' shape the representation of alternatives in a listener's mind in a fundamental way. This book is relevant to researchers interested in semantics, pragmatics, language processing and memory.

Brian Loar (1939-2014) was an eminent and highly respected philosopher of mind and language. He was at the forefront of several different field-defining debates between the 1970s and the 2000s-from his earliest work on reducing semantics to psychology, through debates about reference, functionalism, externalism, and the nature of intentionality, to his most enduringly influential work on the explanatory gap between consciousness and neurons. Loar is widely credited with having developed the most comprehensive functionalist account of certain aspects of the mind, and his 'phenomenal content strategy' is arguably one of the most significant developments on the ancient mind/body problem. This volume of essays honours the entirety of Loar's wide-ranging philosophical career. It features sixteen original essays from influential figures in the fields of philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, including those who worked with and were taught by Loar. The essays are divided into three thematic sections covering Loar's work in philosophy of language, especially the relations between semantics and psychology (1970s-80s), on content in the philosophy of mind (1980s-90s), and on the metaphysics of intentionality and consciousness (1990s and beyond). Taken together, this book is a fitting tribute to one of the leading minds of the latter-20th century, and a timely reflection on Loar's enduring influence on the philosophy of mind and language.

This volume presents the results of the international symposium Chunks in Corpus Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics, held at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg to honour John Sinclair's contribution to the development of linguistics in the second half of the twentieth century. The main theme of the book, highlighting important aspects of Sinclair's work, is the idiomatic character of language with a focus on chunks (in the sense of prefabricated items) as extended units of meaning. To pay tribute to Sinclair's enormous impact on research in this field, the volume contains two contributions which deal explicitly with his work, including material from unpublished manuscripts. Beyond that, the articles cover different aspects of chunks ranging from more theoretically-oriented to more applied papers, in which foreign language teaching and the computational application of the insights about the nature of language provided by corpus research play an important role. The volume demonstrates the wide applicability and relevance of the notion of chunks by bringing together research from different fields of linguistics such as theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics and foreign language teaching, and thus provides an interdisciplinary view on the impact of idiomaticity in language.

Fringe Rhetorics: Conspiracy Theories and the Paranormal identifies these rhetorical similarities of conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts by delving into rhetorical, psychosocial, and political science research. Identifying something as "fringe" indicates its proximal placement within accepted norms of contemporary society. Both conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts dwell on the fringes and both use surprisingly similar persuasive techniques. Using elements of the Aristotelian canon as well as Oswald's strengthening and weakening strategies, this book establishes a pattern for the analysis of fringe rhetorics. It also applies this pattern through rhetorical analyses of several documentaries and provides suggestions for countering fringe arguments.

Among the most prolifically treated topics in grammaticalization approaches to semantic change is the development of periphrastic past constructions, particularly the 'have'-perfects in Romance and other Indo-European languages. This issue is an intriguing one for language researchers since it offers the opportunity to observe language change both as an incipient process that involves the transition of some lexical element into a more 'grammatical' role as well as a process of semantic generalization without the necessity of overt structural reorganization. This book explores the development of the periphrastic past (or preterito perfecto compuesto) in Spanish, with special attention to its cross-dialectal distribution vis-a-vis the simple perfective past (or preterito), and assumes a multi-disciplinary perspective, drawing on insights from semantic and pragmatic as well as sociolinguistic approaches to language change. The resulting proposals, developed on the basis of spoken language data from cross-dialectal samples of Spanish, address the nature of language change and the variable forces that shape it.