This book approaches the topic of false friends from a theoretical perspective, arguing that false friends carry out a positive role as a cognitive device, mainly in literature and jokes, and suggesting some pragmatic strategies in order to restore the original sense of a text/utterance when a given translator (or a foreign speaker) falls victim to false friends. This theoretical account is successively verified by appealing to texts from the fields of literature, science, philosophy, journalism, and everyday speech.

This edited collection addresses the link between second language pragmatics (including interlanguage and intercultural) research and English language education. The chapters use different contemporary research methods and theoretical frameworks such as conversation analysis, language-learners-as-ethnographers, discourse and interactional approaches and data in contexts (either in the region or overseas). The content explores and discusses the significance of learning and teaching of second language (L2) pragmatics in language education for learners who use English as a lingua franca for academic and intercultural communication purposes with native and non-native speakers of English, focusing on pragmatic actions, social behaviours, perceptions and awareness levels in three regions in East Asia - China, Japan and South Korea. It is an important contribution to the area of second language pragmatics in language education for East Asian learners. It recommends research-informed pedagogies for the learning and teaching of interlanguage or intercultural pragmatics in regions and places where similar cultural beliefs or practices are found. This is an essential read for researchers, language educators, classroom teachers, readers who are interested in second language pragmatics research and those interested in second language acquisition and English language education in the East Asian context.

This volume brings together two series of papers: one began with Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore's 1997 paper 'On an Alleged Connection Between the Theory of Meaning and Indirect Speech'. The other series started with their 1997 paper 'Varieties of Quotation'. The central theme throughout is that only when communicative content is liberated from semantic content will we make progress in understanding language, communication, contexts, and their interconnection. These are the papers in which Cappelen and Lepore introduced speech act pluralism and semantic minimalism, and they provide the foundation for one of the most powerful attacks on contextualism in contemporary philosophy.

This book is the first English monograph to systematically explore Chinese Multiword expressions (MWEs) by applying corpus-driven and corpus-based approaches. It reveals the unique characteristics of Chinese MWEs by examining their core attributes, identification and classification, and knowledge framework. It also assesses, for the first time, the distribution and density of Chinese MWEs in textbooks. By doing so, the book provides important insights into Chinese language learning, with implications for natural language processing, lexicography, and psychology. Moreover, it offers a framework for linguists, language teachers and learners, computer scientists, lexicographers, and psychologists to explore their own areas of interest.

Many languages include constructions which are sensitive to the expression of polarity: that is, negative polarity items, which cannot occur in affirmative clauses, and positive polarity items, which cannot occur in negatives. The phenomenon of polarity sensitivity has been an important source of evidence for theories about the mental architecture of grammar over the last fifty years, and to many the oddly dysfunctional sensitivities of polarity items have seemed to support a view of grammar as an encapsulated mental module fundamentally unrelated to other aspects of human cognition or communicative behavior. This book draws on insights from cognitive/functional linguistics and formal semantics to argue that, on the contrary, the grammar of sensitivity is grounded in a very general human cognitive ability to form categories and draw inferences based on scalar alternatives, and in the ways this ability is deployed for rhetorical effects in ordinary interpersonal communication.

Imperative sentences usually occur in speech acts such as orders, requests, and pleas. However, they are also used to give advice, and to grant permission, and are sometimes found in advertisements, good wishes and conditional constructions. Yet, the relationship between the form of imperatives, and the wide range of speech acts in which they occur, remains unclear, as do the ways in which semantic theory should handle imperatives. This book is the first to look systematically at both the data and the theory. The first part discusses data from a large set of languages, including many outside the Indo-European family, and analyses in detail the range of uses to which imperatives are put, paying particular attention to controversial cases. This provides the empirical background for the second part, where the authors offer an accessible, comprehensive and in-depth discussion of the major theoretical accounts of imperative semantics and pragmatics.

This volume discusses methodological issues in conducting elicitation on semantic topics in a fieldwork situation. In twelve chapters discussing 11 language families from four continents, authors draw on their own fieldwork experience, pairing explicit methodological proposals with concrete examples of their use in the field. Several chapters cover issues specific to semantic topics such as modality, comparison, tense and aspect, and definiteness, while others focus on elicitation techniques more generally, addressing methodological issues such as the creation of elicitation plans, the choice of language in which to conduct elicitation, and the status of translation tasks. Together, the chapters of this volume demonstrate that elicitation on semantic topics, when conducted following sound methodologies, can and does produce reliable results. Given the high number of languages currently classified as endangered, conducting one-on-one fieldwork with native speaker consultants is critical for gathering new empirical findings that bear on linguistic theory.

Rooted in multimodal conversation analysis and based on video recordings of naturally occurring social interactions, this book presents a novel analytical perspective for the study of touch. The authors focus on how different forms of touch are interactionally organized in everyday, institutional, and professional practices, showing how touch is multimodally achieved in social interaction, how it acquires its significance, how it is embedded in the current activity and in its social context, and how it is systematically intertwined with talk, facial expressions, and body posture. Including work by a wide range of renowned researchers, this volume provides rich visual illustrations of situations featuring touch as a social and intersubjective practice. The studies make a compelling contribution to the field by clearly examining and demonstrating the social meaning of touch for the participants in social interaction in a broad range of contexts. Presenting a new methodology for the study of touch, this is key reading for all researchers and scholars working in conversation analysis, multimodality, and related areas.

This collection of original research highlights the legacy of Michael Toolan's pioneering contributions to the field of stylistics and in so doing provides a critical overview of the ways in which language, text, and context are analyzed in the field and its related disciplines. Featuring work from an international range of contributors, the book illustrates how the field of stylistics has evolved in the 25 years since the publication of Toolan's seminal Language, Text and Context, which laid the foundation for the analysis of the language and style in literary texts. The volume demonstrates how technological innovations and the development of new interdisciplinary methodologies, including those from corpus, cognitive, and multimodal stylistics, point to the greater degree of interplay between language, text, and context exemplified in current research and how this dynamic relationship can be understood by featuring examples from a variety of texts and media. Underscoring the significance of Michael Toolan's extensive work in the field in the evolution of literary linguistic research, this volume is key reading for students and researchers in stylistics, discourse studies, corpus linguistics, and interdisciplinary literary studies.

Centring on "words" which connect vocabulary and semantic morphemes, this book makes a systemic and in-depth analysis on the study of modern Chinese lexicology. Firstly, it clarifies the definitions and properties of vocabulary, words and semantic morphemes in Chinese. Then the structure forms of Chinese words are examined. It is worth noting that this research is one of the first to distinguish word formation and lexical morphology. It observes that word formation studies how neologisms are coined, while lexical morphology refers to the ways in which semantic morphemes are combined with each other. On word meaning and its clustering, it discusses the relationship between word meaning and concept, as well as the criteria and principles of the clustering. Specifically, it studies monosemes, polysemes, synonyms, near-synonyms, antonyms, etc., including their characteristics and types. Lastly, it explores the evolution of word meaning and its laws, as well as the dynamic form of vocabulary. This book will be a valuable reference for scholars and students in linguistics, especially in Chinese lexical studies.

Featuring contributions from an international team of leading and up-and-coming scholars, this innovative volume provides a comprehensive sociolinguistic picture of current spoken British English based on the Spoken BNC2014, a brand new corpus of British speech. The book begins with short introductions highlighting the state-of-the-art in three major areas of corpus-based sociolinguistics, while the remaining chapters feature rigorous analysis of the research outcomes of the project grounded in Spoken BNC2014 data samples, highlighting English used in everyday situations in the UK, with brief summaries reflecting on the sociolinguistic implications of this research included at the end of each chapter. This unique and robust dataset allows this team of researchers the unique opportunity to focus on speaker characteristics such as gender, age, dialect and socio-economic status, to examine a range of sociolinguistic dimensions, including grammar, pragmatics, and discourse, and to reflect on the major changes that have occurred in British society since the last corpus was compiled in the 1990s. This dynamic new contribution to the burgeoning field of corpus-based sociolinguistics is key reading for students and scholars in sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, pragmatics, grammar, and British English.

This volume offers a comprehensive examination of mitigation in speech in English and Spanish, exploring how it is defined and theorized and the various linguistic features employed to soften or downgrade the impact of a particular message across a range of settings. Building on the body of work done on mitigation in English, the book begins by discussing how it has been conceptualized in the literature, drawing on politeness theory among other perspectives from pragmatics, and highlighting increasing research on these topics in native and bilingual Spanish speakers and learners of Spanish. The volume explores examples from a variety of discursive contexts, including institutions, courts, and classrooms, to unpack mitigation as it occurs in spontaneous speech through different lenses, looking both at the actual units of discourse but also taking a broader view by examining differences across dialects as well. The book also looks at the ways in which conclusions drawn from this research might be applied pedagogically in language learning classrooms. This volume will serve as a jumping-off point for broader discussion in the field of mitigation and will be of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis, in addition to learners and pre-service teachers of Spanish.

The Routledge Handbook of Semantics provides a broad and state-of-the-art survey of this field, covering semantic research at both word and sentence level. It presents a synoptic view of the most important areas of semantic investigation, including contemporary methodologies and debates, and indicating possible future directions in the field. Written by experts from around the world, the 29 chapters cover key issues and approaches within the following areas: meaning and conceptualisation; meaning and context; lexical semantics; semantics of specific phenomena; development, change and variation. The Routledge Handbook of Semantics is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students working in this area.

This book offers a critical reflection on interpersonal positioning across both large- and small-scale contexts and highlights the multi-faceted nature of intercultural communication in today's global world. The volume establishes positioning primarily as the negotiation of interpersonal relationships, and draws on concepts from across disciplines by way of reappraisal before applying them to two specific domains: MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) and private ELF couple interaction. While acknowledging and showcasing the unique features of positioning in these two contexts, Kloetzl and Swoboda point to their commonalities by looking at how language and specifically English is used as a communicative resource in lingua franca situations. The book also identifies new directions for future methodological innovations in that it demonstrates how the same interaction can be looked at in methodologically-different ways and how the authors' own positions projected on to such interaction create an integrated tri-partite perspective on the two domains. Shedding light on interpersonal positioning in different contexts and in turn on global communication more generally, this book will be of particular interest to students and researchers in discourse analysis, pragmatics, computer-mediated communication, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics.

Australian English is perhaps best known for its colourful slang, but the variety is much richer than slang alone. This collection provides a detailed account of Australian English by bringing together leading scholars of this English variety. These scholars provide a comprehensive overview of Australian English's distinctive features and outline cutting-edge research into the variation and change of English in Australia. Organised thematically, this volume explores the ways in which Australian English differs from other varieties of English, as well as examining regional, social and stylistic variation within the variety. The volume first explores particular structural features where Australian English differentiates itself from other English varieties. There are chapters on phonetics and phonology, socio-phonetics, lexicon and discourse-pragmatics as these elements are core to understanding any variety of English, especially within the World Englishes paradigm. It then considers what are arguably the most salient aspects of variation within Australian English and finally focuses on historical, attitudinal and planning aspects of Australian English. This volume provides a thorough account of Australian English and its users as complex, diverse and worthy of study. Perhaps more importantly, this volume's scholars provide a reimagining of Australian English and the paradigm through which future scholars may proceed.

This book explores and analyzes the ways fat acceptance activists have advocated through language and tactical action. Using Anthony Giddens' concept of Structuration in the make-up of ideology, the book identifies how fat acceptance activists use signification, domination, and legitimation to strengthen their cause. Thus, their actions are both rhetorical and tactical. Fat-considered a descriptor and not a negative label among activists-is highly stigmatized for arbitrary reasons in various areas of life ranging from the fashion industry to health care. This books shows how fat acceptance activists work to remedy this situation.

This book implements a new approach to the study of manipulative tactics in selected Congressional debates in the early history of the United States, highlighting the ways in which language can be used to manipulate an audience. The identification and analysis of different informal fallacies is central in the approach adopted by the authors, and they privilege the role of covert intentions as a frequent ingredient of manipulation. They also show how different speakers can use different subtypes of the same fallacy in a debate, and investigate the tension between the policy preferences and goals of politicians, and existing laws. The book has been written without jargon, all concepts and terminology from the field of linguistic pragmatics are clearly defined, and it is accessible to the interested layperson wishing to become familiar with manipulative techniques in political rhetoric.

Up until the mid-1980s most pragmatic analysis had been done on spoken language use, considerably less on written use, and very little at all on literary activity. This has now radically changed. 'Pragmatics' could be informally defined as the study of relationships between language and its users. This volume, first published in 1991, seeks to reposition literary activity at the centre of that study. The internationally renowned contributors draw together two main streams. On the one hand, there are concerns which are close to the syntax and semantics of mainstream linguistics, and on the other, there are concerns ranging towards anthropological linguistics, socio- and psycholinguistics. Literary Pragmatics represents an antidote to the fragmenting specialization so characteristic of the humanities in the twentieth century. This book will be of lasting value to students of linguistics, literature and society.

This book presents the essential background for understanding semantic theories of mood. Mood as a category is widely used in the description of languages and the formal analysis of their grammatical properties. It typically refers to the features of a sentence-individual morphemes or grammatical patterns-that reflect how the sentence contributes to the modal meaning of a larger phrase, or that indicate the type of fundamental pragmatic function that it has in conversation. In this volume, Paul Portner discusses the most significant semantic theories relating to the two main subtypes of mood: verbal mood, including the categories of indicative and subjunctive subordinate clauses, and sentence mood, encompassing declaratives, interrogatives, and imperatives. He evaluates those theories, compares them, and draws connections between seemingly disparate approaches, and he formalizes some of the literature's most important ideas in new ways in order to draw out their most significant insights. Ultimately, this work shows that there are crucial connections between verbal mood and sentence mood which point the way towards a more general understanding of how mood works and its relation to other topics in linguistics; it also outlines the type of semantic and pragmatic theory which will make it possible to explain these relations. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers and students from advanced undergraduate level upwards in the fields of semantics and pragmatics, philosophy, computer science, and psychology.

Pragmatic Variation in Service Encounter Interactions across the Spanish-Speaking World expands the study of service encounter interactions into new face-to-face and digital contexts and new (sub)varieties of Spanish. The chapters examine pragmatic variation in a range of contexts, representing ten countries and twelve (sub)varieties of Spanish. Part I explores macrosocial factors such as region, gender, age, and social class, while Part II focuses on microsocial and situational factors. Part III concludes the volume with theoretical and methodological contributions to the field. This volume will be of particular interest to advanced students and researchers of Spanish and Linguistics.

This volume presents an innovative approach to understanding the language socialization process of second language learners in study abroad programs, focusing on the case of study abroad programs in Japan. Study abroad experiences are so diverse that both macro and micro viewpoints are needed to capture such complexity. This book looks for a way forward by adopting a novel approach which integrates social network analysis and conversation nalysis and allows for a fuller, more nuanced understanding of varying experiences of study abroad participants. Chapters draw on data from a wide range of sources, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, social network surveys, and audio and visual recordings, to demonstrate the ways in which broader social forces, environmental factors, and individuals' dispositions interact in myriad social contexts within the study abroad experience. Taken together, the volume offers readers a comprehensive portrait of social processes in study abroad programs and their implications for language development, making this key reading for students and scholars in second language acquisition, pragmatics, and applied linguistics.

This book presents an in-depth fieldwork-based study of the Greek language spoken by immigrants in Cairns, Far North Queensland, Australia. The study analyzes language contact-induced changes and code switching patterns, by integrating perspectives from contact linguistics and interactional approaches to language use and code switching. Lexical and pragmatic borrowing, code mixing, discourse-related and participant-related code switching, and factors promoting language maintenance are among the topics covered in the book. The study brings to light original data from a speech community that has received no attention in the literature and sheds light on the variation of Greek spoken in diaspora. It will appeal across disciplines to scholars and students in linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and migration studies.

This volume is the most comprehensive reference work to date on Lexical Functional Grammar. The authors provide detailed and extensive coverage of the analysis of syntax, semantics, morphology, prosody, and information structure, and how these aspects of linguistic structure interact in the nontransformational framework of LFG. The book is divided into three parts. The first part examines the syntactic theory and formal architecture of LFG, with detailed explanations and comprehensive illustration, providing an unparalleled introduction to the fundamentals of the theory. Part two explores non-syntactic levels of linguistic structure, including the syntax-semantics interface and semantic representation, argument structure, information structure, prosodic structure, and morphological structure, and how these are related in the projection architecture of LFG. Chapters in the third part illustrate the theory more explicitly by presenting explorations of the syntax and semantics of a range of representative linguistic phenomena: modification, anaphora, control, coordination, and long-distance dependencies. The final chapter discusses LFG-based work not covered elsewhere in the book, as well as new developments in the theory. The volume will be an invaluable reference for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and researchers in a wide range of linguistic sub-fields, including syntax, morphology, semantics, information structure, and prosody, as well as those working in language documentation and description.

This collection of original research highlights the legacy of Michael Toolan's pioneering contributions to the field of stylistics and in so doing provides a critical overview of the ways in which language, text, and context are analyzed in the field and its related disciplines. Featuring work from an international range of contributors, the book illustrates how the field of stylistics has evolved in the 25 years since the publication of Toolan's seminal Language, Text and Context, which laid the foundation for the analysis of the language and style in literary texts. The volume demonstrates how technological innovations and the development of new interdisciplinary methodologies, including those from corpus, cognitive, and multimodal stylistics, point to the greater degree of interplay between language, text, and context exemplified in current research and how this dynamic relationship can be understood by featuring examples from a variety of texts and media. Underscoring the significance of Michael Toolan's extensive work in the field in the evolution of literary linguistic research, this volume is key reading for students and researchers in stylistics, discourse studies, corpus linguistics, and interdisciplinary literary studies.

This edited book presents contemporary empirical research investigating the use of language in professional settings, drawing on the contributions of a set of internationally-renowned authors. The book takes a critical approach to understanding professional communication in a range of fields and global contexts. Split into three parts, covering Business and Organisations, Healthcare, and Politics and Institutions, the contributors explore how and why academics engage in workplace research which takes the form of 'consultancy', 'advocacy' and 'activism'. In light of an ever-changing, ever-demanding global landscape, this volume offers new theoretical and methodological ways of conducting professional communication research with real-world impact. It will be of interest to linguistics and communication researchers and practitioners, particularly those working in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, business communication, health communication, political communication, language and the law and organisational studies.