In this monograph, Caroline Laske traces the advent of consideration in English contract law, by analysing the doctrinal development, in parallel with the corresponding terminological evolution and semantic shifts between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is an innovative, interdisciplinary study, showcasing the value of taking a diachronic corpus linguistics-based approach to the study of legal change and legal development, and the semantic shifts in the corresponding terminology. The seminal application in the legal field of these analytical methodologies borrowed from pragmatic linguistics goes beyond the content approach that legal research usually practices and it has allowed for claims of semantic change to be objectified. This ground-breaking work is pitched at scholars of legal history, law & language, and linguistics.

This is the first cross-linguistic study of imperatives, and commands of other kinds, across the world's languages. It makes a significant and original contribution to the understanding of their morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics. The author discusses the role imperatives and commands play in human cognition and how they are deployed in different cultures, and in doing so offers fresh insights on patterns of human interaction and communcation.
Alexandra Aikhenvald examines the ways of framing commands, or command strategies, in languages that do not have special imperative forms. She analyses the grammatical and semantic properties of positive and negative imperatives and shows how these correlate with categories such as tense, information source, and politeness. She looks at the relation of command pragmatics to cultural practices, assessing, for example, the basis for Margaret Mead's assumption that the harsher the people the more frequently they use imperatives. Professor Aikhenvald covers a wide range of language families, including many relatively neglected examples from North America, Amazonia, and New Guinea. The book is accompanied by illustrations of some conventional command signs.
Written and presented with the author's characteristic clarity, this book will be welcomed by linguists of all theoretical persuasions. It will appeal to social and cultural anthropologists and cognitive and behavioural scientists.

The Bloomsbury Companion to M. A. K. Halliday is a comprehensive and accessible reference resource to one of the world's leading and most influential linguists. Born in 1925, Halliday is the figure most responsible for the development of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). The impact of his work extends beyond linguistics, into the study of stylistics, computation linguistics, visual narrative and multimodal communication. He is considered a founder of the field of social semiotics. Written by leading figures in the field, the volume provides readers with an authoritative overview of his early career, his most important theoretical findings and how his work has influenced linguistics as a discipline. From the publishers of his 'Collected Works' and 'The Essential Halliday', this is another must have book underlining Halliday's era-defining impact on the field of linguistics.

Pragmatic Particles sheds new light on the linguistic theory and application of Asian languages with a particular focus on the role of particles and their socio-pragmatic nature. Drawing on a range of data that spans Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Turkish and beyond, the multidimensionality of Asian languages is brought to attention. Particles are central in this discourse and their constructive, expressive and attitudinal behaviours are revealed to be neither arbitrary nor peripheral. By branching away from a predominantly Euro-centric discussion and covering the relevant formal and functional foundations of syntax and semantics, this book offers an alternative lens to the appropriate treatment of Asian languages in contemporary linguistics.

Laughter is pervasive in interaction yet often overlooked in the research. This volume presents a collection of original studies revealing the highly-ordered, complex, and important phenomenon of laughter in everyday interactions. Building on 40 years of conversation analytic research, the authors show how the design and placement of laughs contribute to unfolding sequences, social activities, identities, and relationships. In this revealing study leading experts investigate laughter in a range of different contexts and across a variety of languages. The research demonstrates that laughter is not simply a reaction to humour but is used in a fascinating array of different ways. Findings reported here include its use in clinics, employment interviews, news interviews, classrooms, the discourse of children with severe autism, and ordinary conversations. The acoustics of laughter and its relationship to movement, gaze and gesture are also explored. The volume brings together new and influential research into this phenomenon to present the state-of-the-art. It will be invaluable to anyone interested in the study of interaction, conversation analysis, humour and laughter.

"I can't even speak my own language," were the words overheard in a collage staffroom that triggered the writing of this book. Calling something 'my own' implies a personal, proprietorial relationship with it. But how can it be your own if you cannot speak it?The "Cultural Memory of Language" looks at unintended monolingualism - a lack of language fluency in a migratory cultural situation where two or more languages exist at 'home'. It explores family history and childhood language acquisition and attrition. What is the present everday experience of language use and life between two cultures? Examining interview data, Samata uncovers a sense of inauthenticity felt by people who do not fully share a parent's first language. Alongside this features a sense of concurrent anger, and a need to assign blame. Participation in the language, even to the extent of phatic or formulaic phraseology, occasions feelings of authentic linguistic and cultural inclusion. The book thus uncovers appreciable (and measurable) benefits in positive self-image and a sense of well-being. Looking at how people view "language "is essential - how they view the language they call "their own" is even more important and this book does just that in a qualified applied linguistic environment.

In this book, Monika Bednarek addresses the need for a systemic analysis of television discourse and characterization within linguistics and media studies. She presents both corpus stylistics and manual analysis of linguistic and multimodal features of fictional television. The first part focuses on communicative context, multimodality, genre, audience and scripted television dialogue while the second part focuses on televisual characterization, introducing and illustrating the novel concept of expressive character identity. Aside from the study of television dialogue, which informs it throughout, this book is a contribution to studying characterization, to narrative analysis and to corpus stylistics. With its combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, the book represents a wealth of exploratory, innovative and challenging perspectives, and is a key contribution to the analysis of television dialogue and character identity. The volume will be of interest to researchers and students in linguistics, stylistics and media/television studies, as well as to corpus linguists and communication theorists. The book will be a useful resource for lecturers teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in media discourse and related areas.

Written over the last thirty years, this collection of Professor Peter Verdonk's most important work on the stylistics of poetry clearly shows that the stylistics of poetic discourse is a diverse and valuable interdiscipline. Discussing the poetry of Auden, Heaney and Larkin amongst many others, Verdonk covers everything from intrinsic textual meaning and external context in its widest sense to the reader's cognitive and emotive response to poems. The book will appeal to all students on stylistics and literary linguistics courses, especially those focussing on poetry and poetic language.

Studies on discourse and language learning originated in the field of general education and they focused on first language learning environments. However, since 1980s research on discourse and language learning broadened the scope of investigation to respond to second and foreign language environments. Recently, the emergence of new language learning contexts such as computer mediated communication, multilingual settings or content and language integrated contexts requires further research that focuses on discourse and language learning. From this perspective, the present volume aims to broaden the scope of investigation in foreign language contexts by exploring discourse patterns in the classroom and examining the impact of factors such as gender, explicitness of feedback or L1 use on language learning through discourse. With that aim in mind, this volume will bring together research that investigates discourse in various instructional settings, namely those of primary, secondary and university L2 learning environments, content and language integrated contexts and other new language learning settings. The number and variety of languages involved both as the first language (e.g. English, Finnish, Basque, Spanish, Japanese, French, Italian, Catalan) as well as the target foreign language (e.g. English, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish) makes the volume specially attractive. Additionally, the different approaches adopted by the researchers participating in this volume, such as information processing, sociocultural theory, or conversation analysis, widen the realm of investigation on discourse and language learning. Finally, the strength of the volume also lies in the range of educational settings (primary, secondary and tertiary education) and the worldwide representation of contributors across seven different countries, namely those of Spain, France, Austria, Finland, Germany, Canada, Australia and the United States. The uniqueness of the volume is due to its eclectic and comprehensive nature in tackling instructional discourse. Worldwide outstanding researchers, like Julianne House, Carme Munoz, Ute Smit, Tarja Nikula or Roy Lyster, to quote but a few, adopt different perspectives in this joint contribution that will certainly broaden the scope of research on language learners' discourse.

This volume gathers nine contributions dealing with Aorists and Perfects. Drinka challenges the notion of Aoristic Drift in Romance languages. Walker considers two emergent uses of the Perfect in British English. Jara seeks to determine the constraints on tense choice within narrative discourse in Peruvian Spanish. Henderson argues for a theory based on Langacker's 'sequential scanning' in Chilean and Uruguayan Spanish. Delmas looks at 'Ua in Tahitian, a polysemic particle with a range of aspectual and modal meanings. Bourdin addresses the expression of anteriority with just in English. Yerastov examines the distribution of the transitive be Perfect in Canadian English. Fryd offers a panchronic study of have-less perfect constructions in English. Eide investigates counterfactual present perfects in Mainland Scandinavian dialects.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the key terms, concepts and thinkers in stylistics. Stylistics is the study of the ways in which meaning is created and shaped through language, in literature and in other types of text. "Key Terms in Stylistics" provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the field, along with sections that explain relevant terms, concepts and key thinkers, listed from A to Z. The book comprises entries on different stylistic approaches to text, including feminist, cognitive, corpus and multimodal stylistics. There is coverage of key thinkers and their work as well as on central terms and concepts. It ends with a comprehensive bibliography of Key Texts. The book is written in an accessible manner, explaining difficult concepts in an easy to understand way. It will appeal to both beginner and upper-level students working in the interface between language and linguistics. The "Key Terms" series offers undergraduate students clear, concise and accessible introductions to core topics. Each book includes a comprehensive overview of the key terms, concepts, thinkers and texts in the area covered and ends with a guide to further resources.

A generic statement is a type of generalization that is made by asserting that a "kind" has a certain property. For example we might hear that marshmallows are sweet. Here, we are talking about the "kind" marshmallow and assert that individual instances of this kind have the property of being sweet. Almost all of our common sense knowledge about the everyday world is put in terms of generic statements. What can make these generic sentences be true even when there are exceptions? A mass term is one that does not "divide its reference;" the word water is a mass term; the word dog is a count term. In a certain vicinity, one can count and identity how many dogs there are, but it doesn't make sense to do that for water--there just is water present. The philosophical literature is rife with examples concerning how a thing can be composed of a mass, such as a statue being composed of clay. Both generic statements and mass terms have led philosophers, linguists, semanticists, and logicians to search for theories to accommodate these phenomena and relationships.
The contributors to this interdisciplinary volume study the nature and use of generics and mass terms. Noted researchers in the psychology of language use material from the investigation of human performance and child-language learning to broaden the range of options open for formal semanticists in the construction of their theories, and to give credence to some of their earlier postulations--for instance, concerning different types of predications that are available for true generics and for the role of object recognitions in the development of count vs. mass terms. Relevant data also is described by investigating the ways children learn these sorts of linguistic items: children can learn how to sue generic statements correctly at an early age, and children are adept at individuating objects and distinguishing them from the stuff of which they are made also at an early age.

Language learning is one of the most rapidly changing disciplines. Along with changing perspectives in learning in the field of Second Language Acquisition, information communication technology (ICT) has also created many learning paths to assist the process of learning a second language (L2). In such an ever-evolving environment, teachers, researchers, and professionals of a diverse number of disciplines need access to the most current information about research on the field of computer-enhanced language acquisition and learning.""Handbook of Research on Computer-Enhanced Language Acquisition and Learning"" provides comprehensive coverage of successful translation of language learning designs utilizing ICT in practical learning contexts. This authoritative reference source amasses research from over XX authors from XX countries, offering researchers, scholars, students, and professionals worldwide, access to the latest knowledge related to research on computer-enhanced language acquisition and learning.

This book offers an introduction to the analysis of meaning. Our outstanding ability to communicate is a distinguishing features of our species. To communicate is to convey meaning, but what is meaning? How do words combine to give us the meanings of sentences? And what makes a statement ambiguous or nonsensical? These questions and many others are addressed in Paul Elbourne's fascinating guide. He opens by asking what kinds of things the meanings of words and sentences could be: are they, for example, abstract objects or psychological entities? He then looks at how we understand a sequence of words we have never heard before; he considers to what extent the meaning of a sentence can be derived from the words it contains and how to account for the meanings that can't be; and he examines the roles played by time, place, and the shared and unshared assumptions of speakers and hearers. He looks at how language interacts with thought and the intriguing question of whether what language we speak affects the way we see the world. Meaning, as might be expected, is far from simple. Paul Elbourne explores its complex issues in crystal clear language. He draws on approaches developed in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology - assuming a knowledge of none of them -in a manner that will appeal to everyone interested in this essential element of human psychology and culture.

In Authenticating Whiteness: Karens, Selfies, and Pop Stars, Rachel E. Dubrofsky explores the idea that popular media implicitly portrays whiteness as credible, trustworthy, familiar, and honest, and that this portrayal is normalized and ubiquitous. Whether on television, film, social media, or in the news, white people are constructed as believable and unrehearsed, from the way they talk to how they look and act. Dubrofsky argues that this way of making white people appear authentic is a strategy of whiteness, requiring attentiveness to the context of white supremacy in which the presentations unfold. The volume details how ideas about what is natural, good, and wholesome are reified in media, showing how these values are implicitly racialized. Additionally, the project details how white women are presented as particularly authentic when they seem to lose agency by expressing affect through emotional and bodily displays. The chapters examine a range of popular media-newspaper articles about Donald J. Trump, a selfie taken at Auschwitz, music videos by Miley Cyrus, the television series UnREAL, the infamous video of Amy Cooper calling the police on an innocent Black man, and the documentary Miss Americana-pinpointing patterns that cut across media to explore the implications for the larger culture in which they exist. At its heart, the book asks: Who gets to be authentic? And what are the implications?

First published in 2004, John Olsson's practical introduction to Forensic Linguistics has become required reading for courses on this new and expanding branch of applied linguistics. This second edition has been revised and updated throughout, and includes new chapters on language in the justice system, forensic transcription, and expanded information on forensic phonetics. The book includes an appendix of forensic texts for student study, exercises and suggestions for further reading.This unique, hands-on introduction to Forensic Linguistics, based on Olsson's extensive experience as a practising forensic linguist, is essential reading for students, and researchers encountering this branch of applied linguistics for the first time.

This book presents a portrait of actively engaged young people representing four linguistic minorities in Europe: the Kashubs (in Poland), the Upper Sorbs (in Germany), the Bretons (in France), and the Welsh (in the United Kingdom). In numerous statements cited in the book, drawn from interviews conducted by the author, young people speak for themselves and serve as guides to their minority cultures. They draw attention to the difficulties and challenges they encounter in their day-to-day life and activism. Based on their statements, the book examines the sociolinguistic situation of each of the minorities, the prevailing linguistic ideologies and the role of minority education; it also distinguishes different types of minority language speakers. The analysis focuses on the cultural and identity-forming practices of young people in the context of different forms of community life and their different pathways to becoming engaged representing their cultures and languages.

The volume aims to bring together original, unpublished papers on discourse structure and meaning from different frameworks or theoretical perspectives to address research questions revolving around issues instigated by Turkish. Another goal is to offer methodologically different solutions for the research gaps identified in individual chapters. The contributions are based on empirical generalizations and make use of, for example, computerized corpora as the data, examples compiled from naturally occurring discourse, or data gathered in experimental conditions. Hence, the book has a firm theoretical standing and it is empirically well-grounded. The collection is expected to be of direct interest to the community of scholars and researchers in discourse structure and semantics as well as corpus linguistics. It will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students and all interested readers, offering them a fresh view on various discourse-related phenomena from the perspective of Turkish.

This is the most comprehensive history of the Greek prepositional system ever published. It is set within a broad typological context and examines interrelated syntactic, morphological, and semantic change over three millennia. By including, for the first time, Medieval and Modern Greek, Dr Bortone is able to show how the changes in meaning of Greek prepositions follow a clear and recurring pattern of immense theoretical interest. The author opens the book by discussing the relevant background issues concerning the function, meaning, and genesis of adpositions and cases. He then traces the development of prepositions and case markers in ancient Greek (Homeric and classical, with insights from Linear B and reconstructed Indo-European); Hellenistic Greek, which he examines mainly on the basis of Biblical Greek; Medieval Greek, the least studied but most revealing phase; and Modern Greek, in which he also considers the influence of the learned tradition and neighbouring languages. Written in an accessible and non-specialist style, this book will interest classical philologists, as well as historical linguists and theoretical linguists.

Despite its centrality in mainstream linguistics, cognitive semantics has only recently begun to establish a foothold in biblical studies, largely due to the challenges inherent in applying such a methodology to ancient languages. The Semantics of Glory addresses these challenges by offering a new, practical model for a cognitive semantic approach to Classical Hebrew, demonstrated through an exploration of the Hebrew semantic domain of glory. The concept of 'glory' is one of the most significant themes in the Hebrew Bible, lying at the heart of God's self-disclosure in biblical revelation. This study provides the most comprehensive examination of the domain to date, mapping out its intricacies and providing a framework for its exegesis.

This book demonstrates how corpus-based research can advance the understanding of linguistic phenomena in a given language. By presenting a detailed analysis of collocations and idioms in a digital corpus of English and German, the contributors to this volume show how the use of collocations and idioms has changed over time, and suggests possible triggers for this change. The book not only examines what these collocations and idioms are, but also what their purpose is within languages. Idioms and Collocations is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the construction, composition and annotation of the corpus. Chapters in the second section describe the methods for querying the corpus, the generation and maintenance of the example subcorpora, and the linguistic-lexicographic analyses of the target idioms. Finally, the third section presents the results of specific investigations into the syntactic, semantic, and historical properties of collocations. This book presents original work in corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, theoretical linguistics and lexicography. It will be useful for researchers in academic and industrial settings, and lexicographers.

What is the state of that which is not spoken? This book presents empirical research related to the phenomenon of reticence in the second language classroom, connecting current knowledge and theoretical debates in language learning and acquisition. Why do language learners remain silent or exhibit reticence? In what ways can silence in the language learning classroom be justified? To what extent should learners employ or modify silence? Do quiet learners work more effectively with quiet or verbal learners? Looking at evidence from Australia, China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, the book presents research data on many internal and external forces that influence the silent mode of learning in contemporary education. This work gives the reader a chance to reflect more profoundly on cultural ways of learning languages.