This book focuses on the dynamic relationships among individual difference (ID) variables (i.e., willingness to communicate, motivation, language anxiety and boredom) in learning English as a foreign language in the virtual world Second Life. The theoretical part provides an overview of selected issues related to the four ID factors in question (e.g., definitions, models, sources, types, empirical investigations). The empirical part reports the findings of a research project which aimed to examine the changing nature of WTC, motivation, boredom and language anxiety experienced by six English majors during their visits to the said virtual world, the main contributors to the changes in the levels of the constructs under investigation, as well as their relationships. The book closes with the discussion of directions for further research as well as pedagogical implications.

This edited book examines how teacher education utilises international immersion and field teaching (or service-learning) experience to develop teachers' global, multilingual and intercultural competencies, in preparation for entering today's culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Through a series of theory-based case studies, the authors demonstrate how teachers' awareness of social inequities and responsive actions, the ability to bridge one's own and others' perspectives, and understanding of key principles of second language learning are pedagogical concepts and skills that become ever more essential across all mainstream K-12 educational contexts. The chapters bring together the voices of teacher educators, intercultural learning theorists and pre- and in-service teachers to identify threads of practice and theory that can be applied within teacher education more broadly. This book will be of interest to academics, instructors and graduate students in the fields of teacher education, language learning, intercultural communication and social justice education.

The book continues the work of Widespread Idioms in Europe and Beyond (2012) and also brings new insights into the similarities of the European languages. Using comprehensive data from 78 European and some non-European languages, another 280 "widespread idioms" have been analyzed in terms of their distribution and origins. They are arranged according to their source domains (for example, performing arts, sports, history, war, technology, money, folk belief, medical skills, gestures, and nature). Among them are very modern layers of a common figurative lexicon, including quotes of personalities of recent times. Thorough research on the sources of these idioms goes beyond the entries in relevant reference works and brings new and unpredictable results. All of the data in this book adds new knowledge to the fields of language and culture. We now know which Europe-wide common idioms actually constitute a "Lexicon of Common Figurative Units" and which chronological and cultural layers they may be assigned to. The question about the causes of the wide spread of idioms across many languages now can partly be answered.

The content of the following Storyline project conceived around the topic 'Indians' respectively Native Americans2 is aimed to introduce children into Native American culture. In the context of regional studies the children are acquainted with various interesting aspects of Indian lives, of their habits and living conditions. Although in primary English a detailed discussion and reflection on the dramatic historical and contemporary Native American problems (the conflict with the 'White Man', the life in reservations, the danger of 'cultural extinction' etc.) is hardly possible, the occupation with more 'positive' aspects of the topic may provide a more realistic image of Native American culture than offered by commercial media thus making a first decisive step to counter the arising of rigid, prejudiced, stereotype-based attitudes that even a majority of adults have today.The widespread stereotypical image of 'Indians' in movies (e.g. Winnetou), books or comics is an exaggerated portrayal of the so called Prairie and Plains Indians. However, there were other cultures and over 500 different tribes living together on the huge continent. The focus of this project is on three major Indian cultures: The Prairie and Plains Indians, the Forest Indians, and the Pueblo Indians.

Discourses of Southeast Asia presents the latest Southeast Asian research in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). SFL provides a sophisticated social semiotic architecture for exploring meaning in languages and texts in the context of Southeast Asia. This edited volume examines the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions in the domains of education, media, translation and language typology. It applies SFL in text analysis so as to be relevant to theory, research and professional practice. This book brings together 12 original chapters by both seasoned and emerging scholars. Their chapters study the 'native' languages of Southeast Asia: Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese, and relatively newer languages in Southeast Asia: English and Mandarin. The chapters analyze a variety of texts, namely advertisements, classroom interactions, corporate reports, dramas, interviews, media reports, narratives, novels, textbooks and video clips. This volume captures the exciting and productive state of the art of SFL in Southeast Asia. It will be of particular interest to scholars trying to understand the application of SFL in this region.

Based on 55 semi-structured in-depth interviews, this book investigates 15 high-tech engineering co-op professionals' writing experience in the workplace. It shows how the digital age has had a marked impact on the engineers' methods of communication at work, and how on-the -job writing has affected engineers' technical competence, shaped their professional identities, challenged their views on Chinese and English writing, and hindered their success in the workplace. The book identifies three aspects of writing practice: engineers' linguistic and literacy challenges, the reasons behind these challenges, and coping strategies, which suggest that engineers are underprepared and lack necessary support in the workplace. Lastly, the study shows that engineers need to engage in technical literacy through on-the-job writing so that they can fully deal with workplace discourse and socialize with diverse professional groups. Since the sample group interviewed in this book is engineers who studied at universities in the United States and have a foot in the world of school and work as well as knowledge of both Eastern and Western cultures, the book appeals to teachers, students, engineers and scientists who are interested in scientific and technological writing. It is also valuable for educators who prepare scientists, engineers, and technical communicators for professional roles, as well as for communication practitioners who work with engineers.

This book, adopting the perspective of cross-cultural communication, theoretically justifies and addresses human variational translation practice for the first time in the area of translation studies, focusing on the adaptation techniques and variational translation methods, as well as general features and laws of the variational translation process. It classifies and summarizes seven main adaptation techniques and eleven translation methods applicable to all variational translation activities. These techniques and methods, quite different from those used in complete translation or full translation, are systematically studied together with examples, allowing readers to not only understand their interrelations and differences within the context of variational translation methods, but also to master them in order to improve their translation efficacy and efficiency. Readers will gain a better understanding of how variational translation is produced, and of its important role in advancing cross-cultural communication and in reconstructing human knowledge and culture. This book is intended for translation scholars, translation practitioners, students, and others whose work involves the theory and practice of translation and who want to enhance their translation proficiency in cross-cultural communication for the Information Age.

This volume examines how the displacement property of language is characterized in formal terms under the Minimalist Program and to what extent this proposed characterization of it can explain relevant displacement properties. The birth of the Principles and Parameters Approach makes it possible to simplify transformational rules so radically as to be reduced to the single rule Move. The author proposes that Move, as conceived as a special case of Merge, named internal Merge, under the Minimalist Program requires two prerequisite operations: one is to "dig" into a structure to find a target of Merge, called Search, and the other is to make this target reach the top of the structure, called Float. The author argues that these two different operations are constrained by "minimal computation." Due to the nature of how they apply, these operations are constrained by this economy condition in such a way that Search must be minimal and Float obeys Minimize chain links, which requires that this operation cannot skip possible landing sites. The author demonstrates that this mechanism of minimal Search and Float deals with a variety of phenomena that involve quantifier raising, such as rigidity effects of scope interaction, the availability of cumulative readings of plural relation sentences and pair-list readings of multiple wh-questions. Also demonstrated in this volume is that the same mechanism properly captures the locality effects of topicalization, focus movement, and ellipsis with contrastive focus.

This handbook offers an authoritative, one-stop reference work for the dynamic and expanding field of language learning motivation. The 32 chapters have been specially commissioned from the field's most influential researchers and writers. Together they present a compelling picture of the motivations people have for learning languages, the diverse ways we can research motivation, and the implications for promoting and sustaining learners' motivation. The first section outlines the main theoretical approaches to language learning motivation; the next section presents ways in which motivation theory has been applied in practice; the third section showcases examples of motivation research in particular contexts and with particular types of language learners; and the final section describes the exciting directions that contemporary research is taking, promising important new insights for academics and practitioners alike.

This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach to try to answer the question of how do we, as human beings, go from the socially neutral linguistic act of discriminating external stimuli to the socially loaded act of promoting social discrimination though language? This contributed volume brings together works presented at the international event "From Discriminating to Discrimination - The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity". This was an online event hosted and organized by the Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU), Germany, in partnership with Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil, that brought together lecturers from different universities around the world. During the event, linguists, psychologists, language teachers, social workers and pedagogues got together to discuss how discriminating can be recognized as a natural and important ability of the human being in the early stages of life and, after that, how to avoid discriminatory acts against others. The debates held online took into account the important and necessary dialogue between linguistics and other social sciences to discuss the role played by language as a form of building subjectivity and teaching practices that can contribute to minimize discrimination and promote integration and acceptance in a broad sense, understanding the preponderant role of language in recognizing what is different (discriminating), without diminishing or excluding it (discrimination). From Discriminating to Discrimination: The Influence of Language on Identity and Subjectivity will help linguists, psychologists, educators, social workers and a broad range of social scientists working with cognitive, linguistic and educational studies understand the path taken by differentiation, from the beginning of the child's language development - when discrimination (of sounds, gestures, etc.) is essential for the acquisition of language to occur -, until the moment when differentiation, discrimination, ceases to be an essential factor and becomes a means of social segregation.

Czech: An Essential Grammar is a practical reference guide to the core structures and features of modern Czech. Presenting a fresh and accessible description of the language, this engaging grammar uses clear, jargon-free explanations and sets out the complexities of Czech in short, readable sections. This new revised edition has been thoroughly updated with examples of current usage, additional morphological explanations and an historical overview of Czech as to why two levels - written and spoken Czech - exist till this day. Suitable for either independent study or for students in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types, key features include: focus on the morphology and syntax of the language clear explanations of grammatical terms full use of authentic examples use of basic twenty-first-century English borrowings detailed contents list and index for easy access to information. With an emphasis on the Czech that native speakers use today, Czech: An Essential Grammar will help students to read, speak and write the language with greater confidence.

This volume is a textbook for aspiring translators of Japanese into English, as well as a reference work for professional Japanese-English translators and for translator educators. Underpinned by sound theoretical principles, it provides a solid foundation in the practice of Japanese-English translation, then extends this to more advanced levels. Features include: 13 thematic chapters, with subsections that explore common pitfalls and challenges facing Japanese-English translators and the pros and cons of different procedures exercises after many of these subsections abundant examples drawn from a variety of text types and genres and translated by many different translators This is an essential resource for postgraduate students of Japanese-English translation and Japanese language, professional Japanese-English translators and translator educators. It will also be of use and interest to advanced undergraduates studying Japanese.

This book provides a detailed example of an eye-tracking method for comparing the reading experience of a literary source text readers with readers of a translation at stylistically marked points. Drawing on principles, methods and inspiration from fields including translation studies, cognitive psychology, and language and literary studies, the author proposes an empirical method to investigate the notion of stylistic foregrounding, with 'style' understood as the distinctive manner of expression in a particular text. The book employs Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le metro (1959) and its English translation Zazie in the Metro (1960) as a case study to demonstrate the proposed methods. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of translation studies, as well as those interested in literary reception, stylistics and related fields.

This book presents a journey into how language is put together for speaking and understanding and how it can come apart when there is injury to the brain. The goal is to provide a window into language and the brain through the lens of aphasia, a speech and language disorder resulting from brain injury in adults. This book answers the question of how the brain analyzes the pieces of language, its sounds, words, meaning, and ultimately puts them together into a unitary whole. While its major focus is on clinical, experimental, and theoretical approaches to language deficits in aphasia, it integrates this work with recent technological advances in neuroimaging to provide a state-of-the-art portrayal of language and brain function. It also shows how current computational models that share properties with those of neurons allow for a common framework to explain how the brain processes language and its parts and how it breaks down according to these principles. Consideration will also be given to whether language can recover after brain injury or when areas of the brain recruited for speaking, understanding, or reading are deprived of input, as seen with people who are deaf or blind. No prior knowledge of linguistics, psychology, computer science, or neuroscience is assumed. The informal style of this book makes it accessible to anyone with an interest in the complexity and beauty of language and who wants to understand how it is put together, how it comes apart, and how language maps on to the brain.

This book brings together contributions on learner autonomy from a myriad of contexts to advance our understanding of what autonomous language learning looks like with digital tools, and how this understanding is shaped by and can shape different socio-institutional, curricular, and instructional support. To this end, the individual contributions in the book highlight practice-oriented, empirically-based research on technology-mediated learner autonomy and its pedagogical implications. They address how technology can support learner autonomy as process by leveraging the affordances available in social media, virtual exchange, self-access, or learning in the wild (Hutchins, 1995). The rapid evolution and adoption of technology in all aspects of our lives has pushed issues related to learner and teacher autonomy centre stage in the language education landscape. This book tackles emergent challenges from different perspectives and diverse learning ecologies with a focus on social and educational (in)equality. Specifically, to this effect, the chapters consider digital affordances of virtual exchange, gaming, and apps in technology-mediated language learning and teaching ranging from instructed and semi-instructed to self-instructed contexts. The volume foregrounds the concepts of critical digital literacy and social justice in relation to language learner and teacher autonomy and illustrates how this approach may contribute to institutional objectives for equality, diversity and inclusion in higher education around the world and will be useful for researchers and teachers alike.

If you're logofascinated, you are literally spellbound by language.; This surprising compendium of 1,000 facts about words, language and etymology is here to inspire your curiosity and delight in discovery. In Word Drops, you can delve into a smattering of unexpected connections and weird juxtapositions, stumble upon a new or remarkable word, or learn of many a bizarre etymological quirk or tall tale.; - Did you know that the bowl made by cupping your hands together is called a gowpen?; - And speaking of bowls, the earliest known reference to bowling in English dates from 1555, when bowling alleys were banned by an Act of Parliament.; - And that ties in nicely with the fact that the English called the Germans 'Alleymen' during the First World War.; - But in Navajo, Germany is called Beesh Bich'ahii Bikeyah-or 'metal cap-wearer land'.; Word Drops is a language fact book unlike any other, its linguistic tidbits all falling together into one long interconnected chain just like the example above with each fact neatly 'dropping' into place beside the next.; What's more, throughout, footnotes are used to give some informative and intriguing background to some of the most bizarre facts, covering everything from traditional Inuit games to the origin of the Bellini cocktail, from the precise length of one 'jiffy' to what the Romans thought hoopoe birds ate, and from what to expect on a night out with Dr Johnson to Samuel Pepys's cure for a hangover. Want to know the longest palindrome in Morse code, or who The Great Masticator was? Curious to know what Norwegian steam is, or what a jaaaar is? The answers are all here.; For all of the logofascinated among us, this is an immensely pleasurable and unpredictable collection that is guaranteed to raise eyebrows (the literal meaning, incidentally, of supercilious).

This edited volume gathers corpus-based studies on topics including English grammar and discourses on media and health, mainly from a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) perspective, in order to reveal the potential of SFL, which has been emphasized by Halliday. Various other perspectives, such as philosophy, statistics, genre studies, etc. are also included to promote SFL's potential interaction with other theories. Though they employ a diverse range of theoretical perspectives, all the chapters focus on exploring language in use with the corpus method. The studies collected here are all original, unpublished research articles that address significant questions, deepen readers' understanding of SFL, and promote its potential interaction with other theories. In addition, they demonstrate the great potential that SFL holds for solving language-related questions in a variety of discourses.

First published in 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is one of the most influential-and one of the most obscure-philosophical works of the twentieth century. Duncan Richter's new translation of and commentary on the Tractatus help the reader understand the text and directs the reader to relevant secondary literature. To avoid imposing any particular interpretation on the text, this translation is as literal as possible while honoring Wittgenstein's wishes about how his words should be rendered in English. For similar reasons, Richter more often quotes than paraphrases the selected secondary sources, which represent a variety of opinions on what Wittgenstein meant. This book also includes an introduction by Richter and a bibliography. Like the Tractatus itself, this is not a textbook but a version of the text designed for those who want to read and understand it for themselves.

Specialised translation has received very little attention from academic researchers, but in fact accounts for the bulk of professional translation on a global scale and is taught in a growing number of university-level translation programmes. This book aims to provide three things. Firstly, it offers a description of what makes the approach to specialised translation distinctive from wider-ranging approaches to Translation Studies adopted by translation scholars and applied linguists. Secondly, unlike the traditional approach to specialised translation, this book explores a perspective on specialised translation that is much less focused on terminology and more on the function and reception of specialised (translated) texts. Finally, the author outlines a professionally-oriented hands-on approach to the teaching of specialised translation resulting from many years of teaching it to MA students. The book will be of interest to Translation Studies students and scholars, as well as professional translators who are interested in the theory on which their activity is based.

The Stuttering Son: A Literary Study of Boys and Their Fathers examines stuttering, a condition which overwhelmingly affects boys, in terms of the complex relationships a number of male authors have had with their fathers. Most of these writers, from Cotton Mather to John Updike, were themselves stutterers; for two others, Melville and Kafka, the focus shifts to how similar family tensions contributed to their interest in the related condition of anorexia. A final section looks at the patricidal impulse lurking behind much of this analysis, as evident in Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Nietzsche. By focusing on the issue of a boy's emotional development, this book attempts to re-establish the value of a broadly psychological approach to understanding stuttering.

This book offers a cognitive-semantic insight into the roots of the human decisionmaking process, using the metaphor of CHOICE as CUBE. The areas of key interest are language, culture, and education as forms of social organization. This book addresses issues relevant to a number of fields, including social epistemology, cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology, philosophy, culture and education studies, and will be of interest to readers in these and related disciplines.

Colloquial Albanian: The Complete Course for Beginners has been carefully developed by an experienced teacher to provide a step-by-step course to Albanian as it is written and spoken today. Combining a clear, practical and accessible style with a methodical and thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Albanian in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Colloquial Albanian is exceptional; each unit presents a wealth of grammatical points that are reinforced with a wide range of exercises for regular practice. A full answer key, a grammar summary, bilingual glossaries and English translations of dialogues can be found at the back as well as useful vocabulary lists throughout. Key features include: A clear, user-friendly format designed to help learners progressively build up their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills Jargon-free, succinct and clearly structured explanations of grammar An extensive range of focused and dynamic supportive exercises Realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of narrative situations Helpful cultural points explaining the customs and features of life in Albania An overview of the sounds and alphabet of Albanian Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Albanian is an indispensable resource both for independent learners and students taking courses in Albanian. Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

Colloquial Tibetan provides a step-by-step course in Central Tibetan as it is spoken by native speakers. Combining a thorough treatment of the language as it is used in everyday situations with an accurate written representation of this spoken form, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Tibetan in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Key features include: progressive coverage of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills phonetic transliteration of the Tibetan script throughout the course to aid pronunciation and understanding of the writing system structured, jargon-free explanations of grammar an extensive range of focused and stimulating exercises realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of scenarios useful vocabulary lists throughout the text additional resources available at the back of the book, including a full answer key, a grammar section, bilingual glossaries and English translations of dialogues. Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Tibetan will be an indispensable resource both for independent learners and for students taking courses in Tibetan. Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills. By the end of this course, you will be at Level B2 of the Common European Framework for Languages and at the Intermediate-High on the ACTFL proficiency scales.