Although what language users in different cultures say about their own language has long been recognized as of potential interest, its theoretical importance to the study of language has typically been thought to be no more than peripheral. Theorizing Language is the first book to place the reflexive character of language at the very centre both of its empirical study and of its theoretical explanation.

Language can only be explained as a cultural product of the reflexive application of its own creative powers to construct, regulate, and give conceptual form to objects of understanding. Language is itself, first and foremost, an object of cultural understanding. Theoretical analyses of language which have neglected its reflexive character, or simply taken its effects for granted, merely impose their own artificial structures on their analytical object.

The first part of this book discusses the consequences of neglecting this reflexive character for the technical concepts and methods which are used in analysing different types of communicational phenomena. In the second part, normativity - a crucial aspect of language's reflexive nature - is examined. The book's third and final part focuses on particular issues in the history of linguistic thought which bear witness to the rhetoric of language theorizing as a reflexive form of inquiry.

At the birth of analytic philosophy Frege created a paradigm that is centrally important to how meaning has been understood in the twentieth century. Frege invented the now familiar distinctions of sense and force, of sense and reference, of concept and object. He introduced the conception of sentence meaning as residing in truth-conditions and argued that semantics is a normative enterprise distinct from psychology. Most importantly, he created modern quantification theory, engendering the idea that the syntactic and semantic forms of modern logic underpin the meanings of natural-language sentences. Stephen Barker undertakes to overthrow Frege's paradigm, rejecting all the above-mentioned features. The framework he offers is a speech-act-based approach to meaning in which semantics is entirely subsumed by pragmatics. In this framework: meaning resides in syntax and pragmatics; sentence-meanings are not propositions but speech-act types; word-meanings are not objects, functions, or properties, but again speech-act types; pragmatic phenomena one would expect not to figure in semantics, such as pretence, enter into the logical form of sentences; a compositional semantics is provided by showing how speech-act types combine together to form complex speech-act types; the syntactic structures invoked are not those of quantifiers, open sentences, variables, variable-binding, etc., rather they are structures specific to speech-act forms, which link logical form and surface grammar very closely. According to Barker, a natural language - a system of thought - is an emergent entity that arises from the combination of simple intentional structures, and certain non-representational cognitive states. It is embedded in, and part of, a world devoid of normative facts qua extra-linguistic entities. The world, in which the system is embedded, is a totality of particular states of affairs. There is no logical complexity in re; it contains mereological complexity only. Some truths have truth-makers, but others, logically complex truths, lack them. Nevertheless, the truth-predicate is univocal in meaning. Renewing Meaning is a radical, ambitious work which offers to transform the semantics of natural language.

This volume explores the constitutive role of rhetoric in socio-cultural relations, where discursive persuasion is so important, and contains both theoretical chapters as well as fascinating examples of the ambiguities and effects of rhetoric used (un)consciously in social praxis. The elements of power, competition and political persuasion figure prominently. It is an accessible collection of studies, speaking to common issues and problems in social life, and shows the heuristic and often explanatory value of the rhetorical perspective.

This volume highlights important aspects of the complex relationship between common language and legal practice. It hosts an interdisciplinary discussion between cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of law, in which an international group of authors aims to promote, enrich and refine this new debate. Philosophers of law have always shown a keen interest in cognitive science and philosophy of language in order to find tools to solve their problems: recently this interest was reciprocated and scholars from cognitive science and philosophy of language now look to the law as a testing ground for their theses. Using the most sophisticated tools available to pragmatics, sociolinguistics, cognitive sciences and legal theory, an interdisciplinary, international group of authors address questions like: Does legal interpretation differ from ordinary understanding? Is the common pragmatic apparatus appropriate to legal practice? What can pragmatics teach about the concept of law and pervasive legal phenomena such as testimony or legal disagreements?

One of the main cultural consequences of the contacts between Islam and the West has been the borrowing of hundreds of words, mostly of Arabic but also of other important languages of the Islamic world, such as Persian, Turkish, Berber, etc. by Western languages. Such loanwords are particularly abundant and relevant in the case of the Iberian Peninsula because of the presence of Islamic states in it for many centuries; their study is very revealing when it comes to assess the impact of those states in the emergence and shaping of Western civilization. Some famous Arabic scholars, above all R. Dozy, have tackled this task in the past, followed by other attempts at increasing and improving his pioneering work; however, the progresses achieved during the last quarter of the 20th c., in such fields as Andalusi and Andalusi Romance dialectology and lexicology made it necessary to update all the available information on this topic and to offer it in English.

This monograph on indirect reports offers insights on the semantics/pragmatics interface and a refinement of the notion of explicature. The volume is written in an engaging style and guides the reader through the theoretical problems and their ramifications. The thorniest problem in the study of indirect reports is their polyphonic nature, and how the listener distinguishes between the reporter's voice and the original speaker's voice, either by contextual clues or, in the absence of such clues, by resorting to pragmatic principles. The introductory chapter discusses the main issues that will be addressed in the volume. The next chapters focus on the various aspects of indirect reports, covering both theory and practical applications.

Theodore Parker, a great orator of the mid-19th century, was a Unitarian clergyman who directed much of his oratory towards ecclesiastical and social reform. Parker challenged slavery and other social ills. As a volume in the Great American Orators series, the focus is on Parker's oratory and its effect on theology and the social structures of the mid-19th century. Biographical information pertains to those aspects of Parker's life that influenced and shaped his elocution and ideas. Parker's rhetoric and rhetorical techniques are examined. Three of Parker's important speeches are included, each with an introduction that places it in its proper context.

This study will appeal to students of rhetoric, theology, and mid-nineteenth-century American religious history. The book is divided into two sections. The first concentrates on Parker's life, his role as an abolitionist, social reformer, and public order. Part Two scrutinizes three of Parker's most famous discourses. The author establishes Parker's place among mid-19th-century preachers.

This work is a collection of the best research reports and essays gathered globally by the editors over a three-year period. World-renowned experts from the Arab region as well as the West have authored most of the chapters. Seven sections divide the text, and each investigates compelling, timely questions for today's communication professionals. Because of its focus on communications and new media, this volume may be used at colleges and universities worldwide. It will impact numerous academic disciplines and the professional world as well. A wide range of curricula may adopt the text as supplementary reading for courses in political science, speech and rhetoric, public relations, sociology, communications, journalism, diplomacy and government.

Brain, Mind and the Signifying Body is an exploration of a multimodal theory of cognitive science. Using linguistic theories first developed by Saussure and more latterly by M. A. K. Halliday, Paul Thibault analyses how social and biological systems interact to produce meaning. This fascinating study will be of interest to undergraduates and academics researching cognitive linguistics and advanced semiotics. The book engages with the current dialogue between the human and life sciences to ask questions about the relationship between the physical, biological aspects of a human being, and the sociocultural framework in which a human being exists. Paul J. Thibault argues that we need to understand both the semiotic, discursive nature of meaning making, and the physical context in which this activity takes place. The two are inseparable, and hence the only way we can understand our subjective experience of our environment and our perceptions of our inner states of mind is by giving equal weight to both frameworks. This 'ecosocial semiotic' theory engages with linguistics, semiotics, activity theory, biology and psychology.In so doing, the book produces a new way of looking at how a human being makes sense of his or her environment, but also how this environment shapes such meanings.

This book is the first comprehensive and systematic introduction to the linguistics of humor. Salvatore Attardo takes a broad approach to the topic, exploring not only theoretical linguistic analyses, but also pragmatic and semantic aspects, conversation and discourse analysis, ethnomethodology, and interactionist and variationist sociolinguistics. The volume begins with chapters that introduce the terminology and conceptual and methodological apparatus, as well as outlining the major theories in the field and examining incongruity and resolution and the semiotics of humor. The second part of the book explores humor competence, with chapters that cover semantic and pragmatic topics, the General Theory of Verbal Humor, and puns and their interpretation. The third part provides an in-depth discussion of the applied linguistics of humor, and examines social context, discourse and conversation analysis, and sociolinguistic aspects. In the final part of the book, the discussion is extended beyond the central field of linguistics, with chapters discussing humor in literature, in translation, and in the classroom. The volume brings together the multiple strands of current knowledge about humor and linguistics, both theoretical and applied; it assumes no prior background in humor studies, and will be a valuable resource for students from advanced undergraduate level upwards, particularly those coming to linguistics from related disciplines.

This volume rethinks the role of the Sino-Japanese medical classics during the early modern period in light of antiquarianism, languages, and medical philology. Philology in particular allows the authors to address the changing meaning of the same term, which often reflected well-known metaphors in the source language that were transposed to the target language. Each essay touches on the reliability of received medical texts and their modern fate.

This volume advances our understanding of how word structure in terms of affix ordering is organized in the languages of the world. A central issue in linguistic theory, affix ordering receives much attention amongst the research community, though most studies deal with only one language. By contrast, the majority of the chapters in this volume consider more than one language and provide data from typologically diverse languages, some of which are examined for the first time. Many chapters focus on cases of affix ordering that challenge linguistic theory with such phenomena as affix repetition and variable ordering, both of which are shown to be neither rare nor typical only of lesser-studied languages with unstable grammatical organization, as previously assumed. The book also offers an explicit discussion on the non-existence of phonological affix ordering, with a focus on mobile affixation, and one on the emergence of affix ordering in child language, the first of its kind in the literature. Repetitive operations, undesirable in many theories, are frequent in early child language and seem to serve as trainings for morphological decomposition and affix stacking. Thus, the volume also raises important questions regarding the general architecture of grammar and the nature and side effects of our theoretical assumptions.

The proceedings cover new perspectives in the field of lexicography, including both theoretical and practical topics, and new aspects of special and bilingual dictionaries. The volume also includes contributions dealing with morphology, word-formation, semantics, neologisms, the history of lexicography, and the techniques of computerized dictionary production.

In How Language Informs Mathematics Dirk Damsma shows how Hegel's and Marx's systematic dialectical analysis of mathematical and economic language helps us understand the structure and nature of mathematical and capitalist systems. More importantly, Damsma shows how knowledge of the latter can inform model assumptions and help improve models. His book provides a blueprint for an approach to economic model building that does away with arbitrarily chosen assumptions and is sensitive to the institutional structures of capitalism. In light of the failure of mainstream economics to understand systemic failures like the financial crisis and given the arbitrary character of most assumptions in mainstream models, such an approach is desperately needed.

The book is devoted to the analysis of promotional material of tourist activities on tourism websites, including walking, dining, and visiting natural and cultural heritage sights, as instances of multimodal texts through a case study of Croatian and Scottish tourism websites.

This book includes six studies on the acquisition of single Mesoamerican indigenous languages, (Huichol, Zapotec, and the Mayan languages Ch'ol, Tzeltal, K'iche', and Yukatek); and a crosslinguistic study of five Mayan languages (K'anjob'al, K'iche', Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Yukatek). Three topics are theoretically and methodologically discussed and empirically demonstrated: with respect to ergativity, the ergative-absolutive cross-referencing pattern on the morphological level, noun-verb distinction and the acquisition of body-part locatives in the early lexicon, and the role of semantic properties and cultural context in language acquisition and socialization. This book makes important claims regarding the methodology of cross-linguistic studies as well as the results of these studies and the comparative method used in the book (structural and discursive factors in language acquisition, cross-linguistic relationships and variation).

In this book, leading researchers in morphology, syntax, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics address central questions about the form and acquisition of analogy in grammar. What kinds of patterns do speakers select as the basis for analogical extension? What types of items are particularly susceptible or resistant to analogical pressures? At what levels do analogical processes operate and how do processes interact? What formal mechanisms are appropriate for modelling analogy? The novel synthesis of typological, theoretical, computational, and developmental paradigms in this volume brings us closer to answering these questions than ever before.

The volume Questions in Discourse - Vol. 2 Pragmatics collects original research on the role of questions in understanding text structure and discourse pragmatics. The in-depth studies discuss the effects of focus, questions and givenness in unalternative semantics, as well as the role of scalar particles, question-answer pairs and prosody from the perspective of Questions under Discussion. Two contributions compare the discourse-structuring potential of Questions under Discussion and rhetorical relations, whereas another adds a perspective from inquisitive semantics. Some contributions also look at understudied languages. Together, the contributions allow for a better understanding of question-related pragmatic and discourse-semantic phenomena, and they offer new perspectives on the structure of texts and discourses.

Young people around the world are increasingly able to access English language media online for leisure purposes and interact with other users of English. This book examines the extent of these phenomena, their effect on language acquisition and their implications for the teaching of English in the 21st century.

"Susan Crossman has created one of the most comprehensive books on writing ever written. Whether you're writing a business report, an essay or a full-length novel, Crossman offers invaluable advice on making the process move more smoothly and efficiently. She also provides insightful tips on avoiding writer's block. If you want to be a truly effective and successful writer, this is the book you need."
- Michael B. Davie, author "Winning Ways "
Solid, expert advice from a professional writer and author of several critically acclaimed books. From tips on overcoming writer's block and engaging your audience to focusing on specific markets, Susan Crossman, also author of " Shades of Teale " and "Passages to Epiphany," delivers insightful commentary that will help anyone become a more efficient, effective and successful writer. Of tremendous benefit to business writers - and to anyone crafting works of fiction and non-fiction - a must-read
- Manor House Publishing Inc.
Susan Crossman on "The Write Way": "We all recognize that writing is a creative process but we also tend to think of the physical process of writing as a mechanical skill that takes good grammar and a decent vocabulary and somehow blends them all together to create clear communication. That's not a bad start but decades of experience have taught me that writing with impact is much more complex. This book provides tips on: - How to structure your written work - How to write with style and - How to engage an audience - Avoiding and overcoming writer's block - Writing for key markets and marketing your writing in a highly effective manner I hope The Write Way will help you write with more clarity and conviction and I also hope that it will make the task of writing that much more enjoyable."

The purpose of this cutting-edge collection of essays is threefold: first, it presents the principles of data collection and interpretation or the methodological distinctions of a particular method appropriate to technical communication research. Second, it discusses the foundational principles of the methodologies given the primary discipline in which they were created and applied. Finally, it reflects upon the process of importing and employing these methodologies into the research field of technical communication, and on how technical communication research has contributed to the development and application of these methodologies.

Written by many noted scholars in the field and presenting a wide range of research methods, "Research in Technical Communication" combines theory and practice. Both technical communicators and industry researchers who want to learn more about workplace research and methodologies will find it invaluable, as will beginning and advanced scholars, who will find much that is useful in its variety of subjects.

The interface between syntax and meaning, both semantic and pragmatic, has emerged as perhaps the richest and most fascinating area of current linguistics theory. This study applies some of these ideas to hyperbaton, offering an original new theory with broad applications for our understanding of Greek syntax. Students of epic will find a fresh perspective on orality in Homer while the general classicist will discover a more precise and explicit framework for the analysis of textual meaning in literary research.

This book attempts to discuss selected but thorny issues of humor research that form the major stumbling blocks as well as challenges in humor studies at large and thus merit insightful discussion. Any discourse is action, so the text-creation process is always set in a non-verbal context, built of a social and communicative situation, and against the background of relevant culture. On the other hand, humor scholars claim that humorous discourse has its special, essential features that distinguish it from other discourses. The pragmatic solution to the issue of potential circularity of humor defined in terms of discourse and discourse in terms of humor seems only feasible, and thus there is a need to discuss the structure and mechanisms of humorous texts and humorous performances. The chapters in the present volume, contributed by leading scholars in the field of humor studies, address the issues from various theoretical perspectives, from contextual semantics through General Theory of Verbal Humor, cognitive linguistics, discourse studies, sociolinguistics, to Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor, providing an excellent overview of the field to novices and experts alike.