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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning)
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.
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.
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.
This book offers a comprehensive view of the morphology, syntax,
and semantics of applicatives in Salish, a language family of
northwestern North America. Applicative constructions, found in
many polysynthetic languages, cast a semantically peripheral noun
phrase as direct object. Drawing upon primary and secondary data
from twenty Salish languages, the authors catalog the relationship
between the form and function of seventeen applicative suffixes.
The semantic role of the associated noun phrase and the verb class
of the base are crucial factors in differentiating applicatives.
Salish languages have two types of applicatives: relationals are
formed on intransitive bases and redirectives on transitive ones.
The historical development and discourse function of Salish
applicatives are elucidated and placed in typological perspective.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A truly original book in every sense of the word, The Dictionary of
Obscure Sorrows poetically defines emotions that we all feel but
don't have the words to express, until now-from the creator of the
popular online project of the same name. Have you ever wondered
about the lives of each person you pass on the street, realizing
that everyone is the main character in their own story, each living
a life as vivid and complex as your own? That feeling has a name:
"sonder." Or maybe you've watched a thunderstorm roll in and felt a
primal hunger for disaster, hoping it would shake up your life.
That's called "lachesism." Or you were looking through old photos
and felt a pang of nostalgia for a time you've never actually
experienced. That's "anemoia." If you've never heard of these terms
before, that's because they didn't exist until John Koenig began
his epic quest to fill the gaps in the language of emotion. Born as
a website in 2009, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has garnered
widespread critical acclaim, inspired TED talks, album titles,
cocktails, and even tattoos. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
"creates beautiful new words that we need but do not yet have,"
says John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars. By
turns poignant, funny, and mind-bending, the definitions include
whimsical etymologies drawn from languages around the world,
interspersed with otherworldly collages and lyrical essays that
explore forgotten corners of the human condition-from "astrophe,"
the longing to explore beyond the planet Earth, to "zenosyne," the
sense that time keeps getting faster. The Dictionary of Obscure
Sorrows is for anyone who enjoys a shift in perspective, pondering
the ineffable feelings that make up our lives, which have far more
in common than we think. With a gorgeous package and beautifully
illustrated throughout, this is the perfect gift for creatives,
word nerds, and people everywhere.
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 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.
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.
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?
This edited thematic collection features latest developments of
discourse analysis in translation and interpreting studies. It
investigates the process of how cultural and ideological
intervention is conducted in translation and interpreting using a
wide array of discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistic
approaches and drawing on empirical data from the Chinese context.
The book is divided into four main sections: I. uncovering
positioning and ideology in interpreting and translation, II.
linking linguistic approach with socio-cultural interpretation,
III. discourse analysis into news translation and IV. analysis of
multimodal and intersemiotic discourse in translation. The
different approaches to discourse analysis provide a much-needed
contribution to the field of translation and interpreting studies.
This combination of discourse analysis and corpus analysis
demonstrates the interconnectedness of these fields and offers a
rich source of conceptual and methodological tools. This book will
appeal to scholars and research students in translation and
interpreting studies, cross-linguistic discourse analysis and
Chinese studies.
Taste is considered one of the lowest sensory modalities, and the
most difficult to express in language. Recently, an increasing body
of research in perception language and in Food Studies has been
sparkling new interest and new perspectives on the importance of
this sense. Merging anthropology, evolutionary physiology and
philosophy, this book investigates the language of Taste in
English, and its relationship with our embodied minds. In the first
part of the book, the author explores the semantic dimensions of
Taste terms with a usage-based approach. With the application of
experimental protocols, Bagli enquires their possible organization
in a radial network and calculates the Salience index of gustatory
terms in both American and British English. The second part of the
book is an overview of the metaphorical extensions that motivate
the polysemy of Taste terms, with the aid of corpus analysis
methods and various texts. This book is the first to review
systematically and in a usage-based perspective the role of the
sensory domain of Taste in English, showing a more complicated
picture and suggesting that its under-representation and difficulty
of encoding does not correspond to lack of importance.
Mind Style and Cognitive Grammar advances our understanding of mind
style: the experience of other minds, or worldviews, through
language in literature. This book is the first to set out a
detailed, unified framework for the analysis of mind style using
the account of language and cognition set out in cognitive grammar.
Drawing on insights from cognitive linguistics, Louise Nuttall aims
to explain how character and narrator minds are created
linguistically, with a focus on the strange minds encountered in
the genre of speculative fiction. Previous analyses of mind style
are reconsidered using cognitive grammar, alongside original
analyses of four novels by Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Richard
Matheson and J.G. Ballard. Responses to the texts in online forums
and literary critical studies ground the analyses in the
experiences of readers, and support an investigation of this effect
as an embodied experience cued by the language of a text. Mind
Style and Cognitive Grammar advances both stylistics and cognitive
linguistics, whilst offering new insights for research in
speculative fiction.
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