Looking at discretion broadly as the exercise of controlled freedom, this edited volume introduces insights from a range of social sciences perspectives. Traditionally, discussions of discretion have drawn on legal notions of the appropriate exercise of legitimate authority specified by legislators. However, empirical and theoretical studies in the social sciences have extended our understanding of discretion, moving us beyond a narrow legal view. Contributors from a range of disciplines explore the idea of discretion and related notions of freedom and control across social and political practices and in different contexts. As this complex and important topic is discussed and examined, both total control and unconstrained freedom appear to be illusions.

While much has been written on illicit drug use, policy, and drugs' relationship to crime, this study examines the drug war as most Americans have experienced it--through mass-mediated rhetoric: presidential drug war declarations, news stories and hype, public service announcements, and the like. Such rhetoric influences public opinion about illegal drugs, drug users, presidents, and the drug war itself. And according to this author, such rhetoric is also used as a public relations campaign designed to increase the popularity of government officials and to assure quiescence regarding particular policy programs. This study demonstrates the underestimated influence of rhetoric, political uses of public relations and the powerful influence they have on public opinion and the policy process.

Computational semantics is concerned with computing the meanings of linguistic objects such as sentences, text fragments, and dialogue contributions. As such it is the interdisciplinary child of semantics, the study of meaning and its linguistic encoding, and computational linguistics, the discipline that is concerned with computations on linguistic objects.
From one parent computational semantics inherits concepts and techniques that have been developed under the banner of formal (or model-theoretic) semantics. This blend of logic and linguistics applies the methods of logic to the description of meaning. From the other parent the young discipline inherits methods and techniques for parsing sentences, for effective and efficient representation of syntactic structure and logical form, and for reasoning with semantic information. Computational semantics integrates and further develops these methods, concepts and techniques.
This book is a collection of papers written by outstanding researchers in the newly emerging field of computational semantics. It is aimed at those linguists, computer scientists, and logicians who want to know more about the algorithmic realisation of meaning in natural language and about what is happening in this field of research. There is a general introduction by the editors.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of fluency as a construct and its assessment in the context of curriculum-based measurement (CBM). Comparing perspectives from language acquisition, reading, and mathematics, the book parses the vagueness and complexities surrounding fluency concepts and their resulting impact on testing, intervention, and students' educational development. Applications of this knowledge in screening and testing, ideas for creating more targeted measures, and advanced methods for studying fluency data demonstrate the overall salience of fluency within CBM. Throughout, contributors argue for greater specificity and nuance in isolating skills to be measured and improved, and for terminology that reflects those educational benchmarks. Included in the coverage: Indicators of fluent writing in beginning writers. Fluency in language acquisition, reading, and mathematics. Foundations of fluency-based assessments in behavioral and psychometric paradigms. Using response time and accuracy data to inform the measurement of fluency. Using individual growth curves to model reading fluency. Latent class analysis for reading fluency research. The Fluency Construct: Curriculum-Based Measurement Concepts and Applications is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, and professionals in clinical child and school psychology, language and literature, applied linguistics, special education, neuropsychology, and social work.

A research-informed pedagogical approach to L2 pragmatics helps prepare teacher learners for their daily instructional practices. A multilingual approach to instructional pragmatics that reflects today's globalization and can promote linguistic/cultural inclusiveness and legitimacy of pragmatic variation. A sociocultural view of pragmatic development that helps to develop a holistic understanding of pragmatic development and second language acquisition. An interface with peace linguistics which develops an awareness of language as a catalyst for mutual respect, compassion, and dignity. A connection between pragmatics and intercultural communication that connects the two research areas and raises an awareness of the role of pragmatics in intercultural communication.

This book addresses the hasty development of modern logic, especially its introducing and embracing various kinds of artificial languages and moving from the study of natural languages to that of artificial ones. This shift seemed extremely helpful and managed to elevate logic to a new level of rigor and clarity. However, the change that logic underwent in this way was in no way insignificant, and it is also far from an insignificant matter to determine to what extent the "new logic" only engaged new and more powerful instruments to answer the questions posed by the "old" one, and to what extent it replaced these questions with new ones. Hence, this movement has generated brand new kinds of philosophical problems that have still not been dealt with systematically. Philosophy of Logical Systems addresses these new kinds of philosophical problems that are intertwined with the development of modern logic. Jaroslav Peregrin analyzes the rationale behind the introduction of the artificial languages of logic; classifies the various tools which were adopted to build such languages; gives an overview of the various kinds of languages introduced in the course of modern logic and the motifs of their employment; discusses what can actually be achieved by relocating the problems of logic from natural language into them; and reaches certain conclusions with respect to the possibilities and limitations of this "formal turn" of logic. This book is both an important scholarly contribution to the philosophy of logic and a systematic survey of the standard (and not so standard) logical systems that were established during the short history of modern logic.

Language and silence have usually been understood as opposites and assigned different values, but which one is positive and which negative? When people equate silence with suppression or repression, they argue that it is through language that we discover meaning. Yet people who perceive deep wisdom in silence believe that words falsify experience. Ranging widely across time and languages, Andrew Vogel Ettin explores the ways in which various biblical and traditional works as well as modern and contemporary texts - Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and literary - treat the nature of silence and speech and the tension between them. He situates this tension at the heart of the creative process and argues that language and silence need each other and contribute to the power and meaning of one another. Critically examining the idea of a "Judeo-Christian" culture, Ettin shows how silence is imposed by a dominant culture on another culture and how the dominated culture - in this case Judaism - becomes excluded from the historical conversation about values and ideas. He also demonstrates the broader uses of both speech and silence as cultural weapons by the vulnerable or oppressed, who have no other means of defense or witness. We generally interpret silence as a void, but Ettin shows it to be a mode of communication that carries the potential for intense variety. The loss of a public voice has implications for both the dominant and the dominated culture. The author examines these implications in the following contexts: contemporary feminist attempts, especially within Judaism, to rectify the masculine language of worship and Godhead in order to end language-generated alienation; the situationof the Yiddish writer as exemplary of a writer in exile or a language that is marginalized; the Jewish impulse toward universalism, with its corresponding danger of loss of voice; and the values of silence and speech arising from the experiences of the Holocaust. In the process, he considers the implications for multicultural societies. Speaking Silences is a broadly interdisciplinary work that will appeal to scholars and readers interested in modern and contemporary literature, Jewish studies, religion and literature, and aesthetics.

This open access book examines the complex relationship between education, media and power. Exploring the entanglement of education media and power structures, the contributions use various examples and case studies to demonstrate how subjectivation processes and digital structures interact with one another. The book asks which modes of subjectivation can be identified with current media cultures, how subjects deal with the challenges and potential of digitality, and how coping and empowerment strategies are developed. By addressing theoretical as well as empirical evidence, the chapters illuminate these connections and the subsequent significance for media education more widely.

In recent years the idea that an adequate semantics of ordinary language calls for some theory of events has sparked considerable debate among linguists and philosophers. Speaking of Events offers a vivid and up-to-date indication of this debate, with emphasis precisely on the interplay between linguistic applications and philosophical implications. Each chapter has been written expressly for this volume by leading authors in the field, including Nicholas Asher, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Johannes Brandl, Denis Delfitto, Regine Eckardt, James Higginbotham, Alessandro Lenci, Terence Parsons, Alice ter Meulen, and Henk Verkuyl.

In Context and Content Robert Stalnaker develops a philosophical picture of the nature of speech and thought and the relations between them. Two themes in particular run through these collected essays: the role that the context in which speech takes place plays in accounting for the way language is used to express thought, and the role of the external environment in determining the contents of our thoughts. Stalnaker argues against the widespread assumption of the priority of linguistic over mental representation, which he suggests has had a distorting influence on our understanding. The first part of the book develops a framework for representing contexts and the way they interact with the interpretation of what is said in them. This framework is used to help to explain a range of linguistic phenomena concerning presupposition and assertion, conditional statements, the attribution of beliefs, and the use of names, descriptions, and pronouns to refer. Stalnaker then draws out the conception of thought and its content that is implicit in this framework. He defends externalism about thought-the assumption that our thoughts have the contents they have in virtue of the way we are situated in the world-and explores the role of linguistic action and linguistic structure in determining the contents of our thoughts. Context and Content offers philosophers and cognitive scientists a summation of Stalnaker's important and influential work in this area. His new introduction to the volume gives an overview of this work and offers a convenient way in for those who are new to it. The Oxford Cognitive Science series is a new forum for the best contemporary work in this flourishing field, where various disciplines-cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computational theory-join forces in the investigation of thought, awareness, understanding, and associated workings of the mind. Each book constitutes an original contribution to its subject, but will be accessible beyond the ranks of specialists, so as to reach a broad interdisciplinary readership. The series will be carefully shaped and steered with the aim of representing the most important developments in the field and bringing together its constituent disciplines.

This open access book addresses three themes which have been central to Leydesdorff's research: (1) the dynamics of science, technology, and innovation; (2) the scientometric operationalization of these concept; and (3) the elaboration in terms of a Triple Helix of university-industry-government relations. In this study, I discuss the relations among these themes. Using Luhmann's social-systems theory for modelling meaning processing and Shannon's theory for information processing, I show that synergy can add new options to an innovation system as redundancy. The capacity to develop new options is more important for innovation than past performance. Entertaining a model of possible future states makes a knowledge-based system increasingly anticipatory. The trade-off between the incursion of future states on the historical developments can be measured using the Triple-Helix synergy indicator. This is shown, for example, for the Italian national and regional systems of innovation.

This volume focuses on work that has its origin and motivation in formal linguistics and theory-driven research on the acquisition of grammar, and on this basis tries to establish links to language pedagogy, including students' and teachers' beliefs about what 'grammar' actually is. The contributions to this volume cover a wide range of empirical linguistic domains and concern aspects of morphosyntax, including word order, inflectional morphology, article systems, pronouns, compounding patterns, as well as orthography and students' general beliefs about grammar. "There are very few volumes which include work for language education by researchers in formal linguistics. This volume does just that, looking at grammar both in terms of the teaching of grammar in general, and with treatment of specific areas of grammar. As such it is a welcome contribution to our understanding of language education, and the role of grammar in language teaching." (Melinda Whong, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong)

Contact Linguistics is a critical investigation of what happens to the grammars of languages when bilingual speakers use both their languages in the same clause. It consolidates earlier insights and presents the new theoretical and empirical work of a scholar whose ideas have had a fundamental impact on the field. It also shows that bilingual data offer a revealing window on the structure of the language faculty. Carol Myers-Scotton examines the nature of major contact phenomena, especially lexical borrowing, grammatical convergence, codeswitching, first language attrition, mixed languages, and the development of creoles. She argues forcefully that types of contact phenomena often seen as separate in fact result from the same processes and can be explained by the same principles. Her discussion centers around two new models derived from the Matrix Language Frame model, previously applied only to codeswitching. One model recognizes four types of morphemes based on their different patterns of distribution across contact phenomena; its key hyothesis is that distribution depends on differential access to the morphemes in the production process. The other analyzes three levels of abstract lexical structure whose splitting and recombination across languages in bilingual speech explains many contact outcomes. This is an important volume, of unusual relevance for theories of competence and performance and vital for all those concerned with language contact. Carol Myers-Scotton is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. She is a specialist in language contact phenomena and sociolinguistics and has a special interest in East and Southern African linguistics. In 1993, she published two volumes on codeswitching, Social Motivations for Codeswitching: Evidence from Africa, and Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching (both OUP). She has also edited a volume of essays on language and literature (OUP 1998) and published many articles in her areas of interest.

This book explores the use of discourse markers - lexical items where drawing a distinction between propositional and non-propositional, syntactically-semantically integrated and discourse-pragmatic uses is especially relevant. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, descriptive and critical (CDA) perspectives, and manual annotation and automatized analyses, the author argues that Discourse Markers (DMs) cannot be effectively studied in isolation, but must instead be contextualised with reference to other discourse-pragmatic devices and their language and genre backgrounds. This book will be of interest to students and academics working in the fields of DM research and critical discourse studies, and will also appeal to scholars working in areas such as genre studies, second language acquisition (SLA), literary analysis, contemporary cinematography, Tolkien scholarship, and Bible studies.

The null subject has always been central to linguistic theory, because it tells us a great deal about the underlying structure of language in the human brain, and about the interface between syntax and semantics. Null subjects exist in languages such as Italian, Chinese, Russian and Greek where the subject of a sentence can be tacitly implied, and is understood from the context. In this systematic overview of null subjects, Jose A. Camacho reviews the key notions of null subject analyses over the past thirty years and encompasses the most recent findings and developments. He examines a balance of data on a range of languages with null subjects and also explores how adults and children acquire the properties of null subjects. This book provides an accessible and original account of null subject phenomena, ideal for graduate students and academic researchers interested in syntax, semantics and language typology.

This edited book focuses on the role of different types of pedagogical solutions in the acquisition of the Japanese grammatical system by reviewing, assessing and measuring current theory and research. Findings from this research have implications for the way Japanese grammar is learned and taught in a classroom context. The editors and contributors address a number of questions around the role of Japanese grammar learning and teaching such as: what is the role of instruction in Japanese second language acquisition? What are the main findings of empirical research into the acquisition of Japanese grammar? Is any one particular pedagogical intervention or solution to the teaching of Japanese grammar more effective than another? What pedagogical options do we have for the teaching of Japanese grammar? This book offers a unique insight into its practical implications for Japanese language learning and teaching for applied linguists, researchers, language teaching professionals and curriculum developers alike.

Closely examining how the news media reports economic and financial matters, this book equips students with solid methodological skills for reading and interpreting the news alongside a toolkit for best practice as an economic journalist. How to Read Economic News combines theory and practice to explore the discourse surrounding economics in the mass media and how this specialised form of reporting can be improved. Beginning by introducing major concepts such as financialised economic reporting, media amnesia and loss of trust, the book goes on to help students to interpret, understand and analyse existing news discourse and to identify subtle biases in news reports stemming from hegemonic belief systems. The final section puts this analytical knowledge into practice, providing students with methods for the critical production of news and covering such skills as identifying newsworthiness, story sourcing, achieving clarity, and using complex datasets in news stories. This is a key text for students and academics in the fields of financial journalism and critical discourse analysis who wish to approach the subject with a critical eye.

Closely examining how the news media reports economic and financial matters, this book equips students with solid methodological skills for reading and interpreting the news alongside a toolkit for best practice as an economic journalist. How to Read Economic News combines theory and practice to explore the discourse surrounding economics in the mass media and how this specialised form of reporting can be improved. Beginning by introducing major concepts such as financialised economic reporting, media amnesia and loss of trust, the book goes on to help students to interpret, understand and analyse existing news discourse and to identify subtle biases in news reports stemming from hegemonic belief systems. The final section puts this analytical knowledge into practice, providing students with methods for the critical production of news and covering such skills as identifying newsworthiness, story sourcing, achieving clarity, and using complex datasets in news stories. This is a key text for students and academics in the fields of financial journalism and critical discourse analysis who wish to approach the subject with a critical eye.

The book offers a new angle on long-standing questions about the categorial status of English participles and gerunds. The book makes a major point: participles are not verb forms which behave like adjectives, but actually are adjectives, linked with verbs via derivation. It argues that observed differences between participles and adjectives, which in the past have prompted linguists to draw a category distinction between them, are in reality due to the non-prototypical semantics of participles - a feature also found in other types of adjectives, with strikingly identical effects. This analysis then accounts for the word formation of adjectives such as boring, tired, drunk, which has always been mysterious. The book investigates the consequences of this analysis for our understanding of gerunds and V-ing-N compounds. With its comprehensive study of -ing forms, the book calls into question a number of widely-held assumptions - regarding the distinction between derivation and inflection, and the role of semantics in syntactic and morphological analysis. This book is of great interest to researchers and students in linguistics interested in morphology, syntax, semantics, lexical categorisation.

Intercollegiate forensics is an extracurricular activity venerated in American higher education for producing influential thought leaders, public servants, and highly trained professionals. In spite of its sterling reputation, financial support for and student participation on intercollegiate forensics teams is in an alarming state of decline. The author argues that intercollegiate forensics coaches, in the face of enormous challenges which threaten the continued vitality of competitive speech and debate at institutions across the United States, must chart a strategic pathway forward for current and existing intercollegiate forensics teams. This book advocates for the application of empirically validated leadership frameworks to the nuances of leading speech and debate programs. The author explores the use of innovative pedagogical methods and coaching strategies rooted in modern perspectives of competitive access and inclusion to boost team participation from individuals and groups historically excluded from the activity. Through the recommendations laid out in this book, the author offers a framework for intercollegiate forensics coaches to use in navigating an uncertain future.

Empowering Women: Global Voices of Rhetorical Influence explores the topic of women’s empowerment, offers a theoretical foundation to understand empowerment, and addresses the value of applying a rhetorical analysis to understand women’s rights. In each chapter, Julia A. Spiker explores the rhetoric surrounding women’s empowerment by analyzing elite female political leaders from around the world, with each analysis incorporating a rhetorical empowerment framework to unveil key issues surrounding women’s empowerment. Spiker then links the rhetorical findings from each case to highlight similarities and differences in the challenges to women’s empowerment outlined by world leaders. The conclusion to Empowering Women synthesizes these findings to present an overarching, global picture of women’s empowerment. Scholars of gender studies, women’s studies, communication, rhetoric, international relations, and political science will find this volume especially useful.

After shaking up writing classrooms at more than 550 colleges, universities, and high schools, Understanding Rhetoric, the comic-style guide to writing, has returned for a third edition! Understanding Rhetoric encourages deep engagement with core concepts of writing and rhetoric. With brand-new coverage of fake news, sourcing the source, podcasting as publishing, and support for common writing assignments, the new edition of the one and only composition comic covers what students need to know--and does so with fun and flair.

This collection showcases the diversity and disciplinary breadth of small stories research, highlighting the growing critical mass of scholarship on small stories and its reach beyond discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. The volume both takes stock of and seeks to advance the development of small stories research by Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Michael Bamberg, as a counterpoint to conventional models in narrative studies, one which has accounted for "atypical" yet salient activities in everyday life, such as fragmentation and open-endedness, anchoring onto the present, and co-constructive dimensions in stories and identities. With data from different languages and contexts, emphasis is placed on the analytical aspects of the paradigm toward producing models for the analysis of structures, textual and interactional choices, and genres of small stories. Chapters on the role and commodification of small stories in digital environments reflect on the paradigm’s recent extension to the analysis of social media communication. This book will appeal to scholars interested in narrative inquiry and narrative analysis, in such fields as sociolinguistics, literary studies, communication studies, and biographical studies.

Wu’s book provides an innovative perspective on, and recommendations for, the major aspects of second language (L2) teaching from a Hegelian anthro-philosophical perspective. Language is social in nature and is related to the larger social milieu. Hegelian philosophy of language complements existing research and theories on L2 learning by not only equipping them with a systematic framework but also broadening their scope. In Hegelian philosophy, language not only has its individual and interpersonal dimensions but is also related to the community, society, and morality. The Hegelian perspective also suggests a number of functions of L2 which have either been neglected or rejected by L2 researchers. This book highlights these neglected elements such as intersubjectivity, mutual recognition, universalization and objectivization of inner subjectivity of individuals, as well as moral enhancement. These concepts generate insights on the teaching and learning of L2. Wu’s volume also covers how the Hegelian anthro-philosophical perspective can help to re-interpret research results on L2 learner characteristics that are related to L2 learning to date such as L2 identity and autonomy. The book offers an alternative research paradigm, teaching philosophy, pedagogical implications, and suggestions for scholars, practitioners, and students in the professional field of L2 teaching.

Using rhetorical criticism as a research method, Public Memory, Relational Dialectics, and the TV Series Outlander examines how public memory is created in the first four seasons of the popular television show Outlander. In this book, Valerie Lynn Schrader discusses the connections between documented history and the series, noting where Outlander's depiction of events aligns with documented history and where it does not, as well as how public memory is created through the use of music, language, directorial and performance choices, and mise-en-scene elements like filming location, props, and costumes. Schrader also explores the impact that Outlander has had on Scottish tourism (known as the "Outlander effect") and reflects on whether other filming locations or depicted locations may experience a similar effect as Outlander's settings move from Scotland to other areas of the world. Furthermore, Schrader suggests that the creation of public memory through the television series encourages audiences to learn about history and reflect on current issues that are brought to light through that public memory.