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.

This book provides a basic approach to the linguistic analysis of conversation, building toward a theory of the aesthetics of conversation by analyzing spontaneous talk among friends. It sheds light on such issues as pacing, turn-taking, storytelling, and humor, showing the effects on interaction when participants' conversational styles differ. Its readability makes it suitable for use as a text in discourse analysis at all levels.

New speakers are an increasingly important aspect of the revitalization of minority languages since, in some cases, they can make up the majority of the language community in question. This volume examines this phenomenon from the viewpoint of three minority languages: Breton, Yiddish and Lemko.

Engaged Persuasion in a Post-Truth World provides an innovative approach to inspire students' interest in persuasive communication in today's ever-evolving world. The book moves beyond theory and addresses new media, engaged citizenship, and deconstructing messages in a post-truth world to deepen students' exploration of persuasion. This multi-disciplinary, research-driven textbook highlights contemporary studies in persuasion. It covers the dynamics of persuasion, including important source, receiver, and message components while also exploring the effects of persuasive communication on receivers' attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. Students examine the application of persuasive communication concepts and theories to their lives in multiple contemporary contexts, such as campus, residence, workplace, classroom, and online communities. Unique themes explored in the book include the application of contemporary persuasion theory and research to the post-truth era, the influence of new media on persuasive communication, and how students can use persuasion to become civically engaged and advance the common good. A highly relevant and wholly original approach, Engaged Persuasion in a Post-Truth World is an exemplary text for courses in persuasive communication.

This is the third in a series of conference papers on rhetorical criticism. Held in July 1995 in London, the conference included participants from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the Republic of South Africa. Part I is concerned with the past, present and future of rhetorical analysis; Parts II, III and IV are concerned with rhetorical analysis of scriptural texts; and Part V provides a conclusion reflecting on a number of questions raised in Part I. Most of the participants would characterize themselves as advocates of rhetorical criticism; but there were others less convinced that rhetorical criticism is developing as it ought.>

In a series of cross-cultural investigations of word meaning, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka examine key expressions from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. They focus on complex and culturally important words in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay. Some are basic like men, women, and children or abstract nouns like trauma and violence; others describe qualities such as hot, hard, and rough, emotions like happiness and sadness, or feelings like pain. This fascinating book is for everyone interested in the relations between meaning, culture, ideas, and words. They ground their discussions in real examples from different cultures and draw on work ranging from Leibniz, Locke, and Bentham, to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs, and the Dalai Lama on happiness. The book opens with a review of the neglected status of lexical semantics in linguistics. The authors consider a range of analytical issues including lexical polysemy, semantic change, the relationship between lexical and grammatical semantics, and the concepts of semantic molecules and templates. Their fascinating book is for everyone interested in the relations between meaning, culture, ideas, and words.

This book presents overwhelming evidence of the positive impact of language training and filial language learning. By surveying and condensing the rich empirical findings that have been established over the last 35 years, Moerk specifies how relatively straightforward the training and learning interactions are. By surveying also the known relationship between less than optimal language training and delayed acquisition of even deficient end-products, the professional, whether in a clinical or educational setting, can also infer what interactional flaws to avoid. An extensive list of references provides detailed support for the arguments presented; support that shows that many of the fashionable denials of "the teachability" or "the learnability" of language have been disproved empirically. Lastly, the tens of thousands of children with language delay or deficiency are, though not a direct audience of the book, intended as the main beneficiaries. As professionals focusing on remedies are lead back from airy speculations of innate knowledge--and therefore pessimistic inferences is this knowledge if not shown in behavior--and are shown how language skills can be transmitted. Their clients can gain not only language skills, but could reap educational and professional success.

This new interpretation of the early history of Chinese argues that Old Chinese was typologically a 'mixed' language. It shows that, though its dominant word order was subject-verb-object, this coexisted with subject-object-verb. Professor Xu demonstrates that Old Chinese was not the analytic language it has usually been assumed to be, and that it employed morphological and lexical devices as well as syntactic means. She describes the typological changes that have taken place since the Han period and shows how Chinese evolved into a more analytic language, supporting her exposition with abundant examples. She draws where possible on archaeological findings in order to distinguish between versions of texts transmitted and sometimes modified through the hands of generations of copyists. The author focusses on syntactic issues, including word order, verbs, causative structures, resultative compounds, and negation, but also pays close attention to what she demonstrates are closely related changes in phonology and the writing system. The book will interest scholars and graduate students of Chinese linguistics, philology, classical literature as well as general linguists interested in word-order typology and language universals. It may be also be used as a text for advanced courses in Classical Chinese and Chinese diachronic syntax.

This book is about the representations - both visual and linguistic - which people give of their own places of origin. It examines the drawings of interviewees who were asked to draw their own place of origin on a white A3 sheet, using pencil or colour, according to their choice. If they were born in a place they did not remember because they moved in when they were very small, they could draw the place they did remember as the scenario of their early childhood. The drawings are examined from three different perspectives: semiotics, cognitive psychology and geography. The semiotic instruments are used to describe how each person reconstructs a complex image of his/her childhood place, and how they translate their own memories from one language to another, e.g. from drawing to verbal story, trying to approach what they want to express in the best possible way. The cognitive-psychological point of view helps clarify the emotional world of the interviewees and their motivations during the process of reconstruction and expression of their childhood experiences. The geographical conceptualizations concern a cultural level and provide insight into the cartographic models that inspire the maps people drew. One of the main findings was the influence from cultural codes as demonstrated in the fact that most of the US students interviewed drew their maps showing considerable cartographic expertise in comparison to their European counterparts.

Culture and Technology in the New Europe presents the insights of an international group of academic researchers and media practitioners who examine the impact of technology on East Central Europe, South-Eastern Europe, the Newly Independent States and the Russian Federation. Drawing from the expertise of authors from and working in the region, the book addresses concerns that the New Europe faces at the eve of the Third Millennium and a decade after the fall of communist rule. Such concerns include access to information and communication technology and the culturally-specific discourses articulated through media and technology. While the book focuses on information and communication reforms, and the development of a participatory democracy are examined. The book is distinguished by diverse studies ranging from the problems of Cyber Hate from and about the New Europe, to online activism in war-torn Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia and Yugoslavia, to how digital media art articulates new cultural and creative freedoms once silenced by the Soviet regime. Finally, the book looks to the future of media, technology and communication in the New Europe, particularly the gaps between post-socialist nations and those more technologically advantaged, and how these gaps can be narrowed or eradicated in the Third Millennium.

In Majd al-Din al-Firuzabadi (1329-1415): A Polymath on the Eve of the Early Modern Period, Vivian Strotmann provides a detailed reconstruction of the famous lexicographer's and travelling scholar's life and works. The 'author of the Qamus al-muhit' is widely known for his Arabic lexicon, which overshadows the astounding breadth of his writing. This polymathic aspect is elucidated through detailed reconstruction of al-Firuzabadi's corpus, including examination of works that were considered lost and misapprehensions concerning ascriptions of authorship. Through minute analysis of biographical sources, the book shows al-Firuzabadi's development as a scholar, his central role in the defence of Ibn al-'Arabi's teachings and thereby his importance as a powerful intellectual in Timurid times and for developments during the Early Modern Period.

This book brings together the perspectives of eminent and emerging scholars on contemporary issues relevant to the practice, pedagogy and institutionalization of the humanities in the three Chinese contexts of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China. It addresses the need to investigate how humanities discussions, often exclusively drawn from, and grounded in, western contexts, are today being played out in these three places. The humanities in contemporary Chinese contexts may have different social and pedagogical roles, and a consideration of them will enable people to moderate, and perhaps even refute, claims made in the recent (re)readings of the humanities. As Asian universities rise in the global rankings and as east-west university collaborations and partnerships become more common, it is important that the nature, practice and institutionalization of the humanities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China are explored and described for English readers. Exploring new perspectives arising from an examination of the humanities in these places, this volume aims neither to establish a position of polarity, which would pit western sites against Chinese ones, nor to argue for universal sameness. Rather, the goal is to find nuanced correspondences and differences between these various backgrounds, so that there is a greater understanding of the specificities of Chinese contexts. This will help shed light not only on the contexts in question, but also potentially on how to rearticulate the importance of the humanities in general, creating an intercultural dialogue focused on the humanities. As the global university strives to move the different traditions of learning closer together through international rankings, rubrics, and shared research agendas, it is important that we explore these locations of potential cultural exchange.

In this book, Surma develops a critical cosmopolitan orientation to public and professional writing. Combining threads from ethical, political, communication, sociological, feminist, rhetorical and discourse theories, she examines the influences and impacts of writing in a range of contexts - government, corporate, organizational and community. Case-study examples illustrate the ways in which writing may be mobilized to strengthen our connections with others, and to reflect on how writing practices might entrench or transform our positions as both citizens of the world and members of situated communities.

H.G. Liddell and R. Scott's Greek-English Lexicon (revised and augmented by H.S. Jones in 1940) has been the essential tool of advanced Greek scholars for 150 years; in order to update it a new Supplement has been published (OUP 1996) replacing that of 1968. In this provocative reconsideration both of its lexicographical principles and of individual articles, John Chadwick examines the need for further revision and expansion of the volume through a re-examination of the classical Greek vocabulary. A series of notes are presented, making important and stimulating contributions to the study of classical Greek lexicography, and offering many new interpretations of passages from familiar authors based upon a lexicographical approach. Essential reading for all scholars of classical Greek.

Is it the greatest fear of all? Numerous surveys attest to the now well-known fact--the vast majority of people are more afraid of public speaking than any other experience, even death. With its unique approach, Scared Speechless turns your fear around by providing a step-by-step guide to successful speech making. To help prepare you for your next speech, some of the topics Rebecca McDaniel explores are nervousness and fears; persuasive, informative, impromptu, and extemporaneous speaking; topic choice; and learning the library. She also covers speech preparation; supporting your thesis; introductions and conclusions; delivery techniques; visual aids; choosing a topic; and organizing, supporting, and delivering your speech. Each chapter explains the process, illustrates with examples, and provides exercises to try out your new-found skills. Whether you are a student or a professional, the logical chapter sequence and the clear guidelines provided will ease you through the process. Scared Speechless is the perfect text for beginning speech classes and the essential guide for any professional who needs to improve his or her public speaking skills. With her extensive experience as a teacher of public speaking, McDaniel leaves no area uncovered and helps you go far beyond your fear of public speaking to become an accomplished presenter.

Tense and aspect are means by which language refers to time-how an event takes place in the past, present, or future. They play a key role in understanding the grammar and structure of all languages, and interest in them reaches across linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect is a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible guide to the topics and theories that currently form the front line of research into tense, aspect, and related areas. The volume contains 36 chapters, divided into 6 sections, written by internationally known experts in theoretical linguistics.

This book examines mathematical discourse from the perspective of Michael Halliday's social semiotic theory. In this approach, mathematics is conceptualized as a multisemiotic discourse involving language, visual images and symbolism. The book discusses the evolution of the semiotics of mathematical discourse, and then, proceeds to examine the grammar of mathematical symbolism, the grammar of mathematical visual images, intersemiosis between language, visual images and symbolism and the subsequent ways in which mathematics orders reality. The focus of this investigation is written mathematical texts. The aims of the book are to understand the semantic realm of mathematics and to appreciate the metaphorical expansions and simultaneous limitations of meaning in mathematical discourse. The book is intended for linguists, semioticians, social scientists and those interested in mathematics and science education. In addition, the close study of the multisemiotic mature of mathematics has implications for other studies adopting a social semiotic approach to multimodality.

The present volume brings together papers devoted to the role of learner and teacher autonomy in the process of second and foreign language learning, which have been contributed by scholars from Poland and abroad. The book has been divided into three parts in accordance with the topics that the individual contributions touch upon. The first part includes papers dealing with different ways in which learner autonomy can be fostered and evaluated. The papers contained in Part Two are connected with the role of language learning strategies in the development of learner independence. Finally, Chapter Three focuses on developing teacher autonomy, which, in the opinion of many specialists, is indispensable if learner autonomy is to be promoted. Thanks to its wide-ranging focus, this edited collection will be of interest not only to second language learning specialists interested in the role of learner autonomy, but also to undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students working on their BA, MA and PhD theses, as well as practitioners wishing to promote learner independence in their classrooms.

As a student, and in any profession based on your studies, good oral communication skills are essential. It is therefore extremely important to develop your ability to converse, to discuss, to argue persuasively, and to speak in public. This is one reason why, whatever subject you study, you will be encouraged to discuss your work in seminars and you will have opportunities to give short talks or presentations.
Most people probably take for granted their ability to speak; not thinking much about it until the have to address an audience, or attend an important interview. However, just as your first impressions of other people are based on how they look and how they speak - so are their impressions of you. In every conversation, as well as when you give a talk or presentation, or are interviewed, you are not only conveying information about the subject being discussed but also presenting yourself.
"Speaking for Yourself" provides clear, straightforward advice that will help you:
Be a good listener
Express yourself clearly and persuasively
Contribute effectively to discussions
Prepare talks or presentations
Prepare effective visual aids
Deliver effective presentations
Perform well in interviews
In short, it will help you to express your thoughts clearly and persuasively - and so to achieve your short and medium-term goals as a student, and your career goals.

While neither Kate Chopin nor Edith Wharton can be called feminist writers, each did produce "female moral art," writings that focus relentlessly on the dialectics of social relations and the position of women therein. Mary Papke analyzes their disintegrative visions through detailed readings of virtually all of their novels and several of their shorter works. Unlike comparable writers of their time, theirs was a nonpolemical but nonetheless political art in which disruption of the rules of masculine/feminine discourse and the hegemonic world view are deeply but obviously embedded within character, plot, and theme. Papke begins with a brief examination of the ideology of true womanhood, which, she argues, permeates Chopin's and Wharton's fiction and world views. The remainder of her work offers an ideological reading of their social fiction in which their characters search for states of liminality, where they might achieve, however momentarily, autonomy. Repeatedly, Papke argues, these states of liminality are literally encoded into images of characters positioned on the edge of an abyss that then becomes a repository of multiple meanings. The author presents Chopin's and Wharton's female discourse as radical art because it dares to defy that which is both alienating and destructive. Papke's provocative analysis will be of interest not only to Wharton and Chopin scholars, but also to those working in the fields of feminist and women's studies. It will also interest scholars and students of American studies, particularly those working on late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature.

In this study, Renz argues that the book of Ezekiel functions as a single rhetorical unit designed to address a specific rhetorical situation: shaping the self-understanding of the second-generation of Judaean exiles and defining the "true Israel." This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Languages across the world differ from each other in a number of respects, and one such difference is in terms of how their lexicons are categorized. Compared to most European languages with distinct, functionally dedicated word classes in the traditional sense, quite a few languages are observed to possess lexical items that can fulfill the functions typically associated with more than one traditional word class such as 'noun' and 'verb'. According to Rijkhoff and van Lier (2013), these lexemes exhibit what is called 'flexibility'. Classical Chinese is observed to feature word-class flexibility, in the sense that there are lexemes that can be used to serve the functions of two or more traditional word classes, without the functional change being marked by any derivational means. For instance, a lexical item like xin can either function as a verb meaning 'to be trustworthy [intr.]' or 'to believe, to trust [tr.]' or serve as a noun meaning 'trust, oath of alliance'. Similarly, a human-denoting lexeme such as you FRIEND cannot only mean 'a friend' but also 'to be a friend, to behave friendly [intr.]', 'to make friends with [tr.]' or 'to consider as a friend [tr.]'; an instrument word like bian WHIP cannot only mean 'a whip' but also 'to whip'. This situation is often thought to be related to the fact that Classical Chinese does not have any kind of productive morphology in the traditional sense (e.g. Zadrapa 2011). This is reflected in the lack of markedness distinctions across Croft's (2000, 2001) conceptual space for parts of speech. This study ascribes flexibility of parts of speech in Classical Chinese to precategoriality, in line with Bisang (2008 a, b). Precategoriality can roughly be defined as the absence of the noun-verb distinction in the lexicon; instead, the linking of individual words to the syntactic position of N or V as well as their text frequency in these positions are subject to pragmatics. Precategorial lexical items are those that are not preclassified into parts of speech in the lexicon; rather, their word-class specification is ultimately determined at the syntactic level, according to their position/function in a given word-class indicating construction. From a diachronic viewpoint, this study assumes that precategoriality and categoriality of individual lexical items are not static, but that they are potentialities and tendencies that may change over time. Specifically, (full) precategoriality and (full) categoriality are assumed to constitute a continuum in the lexicon of Chinese throughout its history. In any given historical period, lexical items of the language are distributed between the two extremes on the continuum, according to the intensity of the association between their lexical meaning and the syntactic position/function of e.g. N or V. Generally, along the continuum at a given historical stage, lexemes with a strong association between meaning and function (i.e. lexemes that are normally associated only with one word-class specification for a particular syntactic role) tend to be located close to the extreme of (full) categoriality. In contrast, lexemes that are not necessarily related to one specific association between meaning and function, but can potentially occur in a variety of such associations, are assumed to be placed closer to (full) precategoriality instead. Roughly speaking, the group of lexemes that is located towards (full) precategoriality are flexible lexemes, though with varying degrees of flexibility, whose semantics licenses a syntactic variety and can thus be linked to more than one word-class specification through syntactic specification, a syntactically specified process of category assignment. Based on these considerations, this study aims to present the results of a corpus-based investigation into flexibility of parts of speech in Classical Chinese. The research focuses on two types of syntactic specifications of flexible lexemes, namely, those using action-denoting lexemes in nominal function (the V N type), and those using object-denoting lexemes in verbal function (the N V type). The two types of syntactic specifications are investigated for this study in the five Classical Chinese texts (Zuozhuan, Mengzi, Guoyu, Mozi, and Zhanguoce). Based on empirical facts, flexibility of parts of speech in Classical Chinese is addressed at three descriptive levels in this study: First, at the level of syntax, the discussion focuses on the most important syntactic configurations for the use of flexible lexemes and their relations to the basic word order of this language, with flexibility being observed in two positions of an argument structure construction: the V-position and the syntactic position of an argument. The findings of this study demonstrate that as far as the argument structure constructions formed with flexible lexemes are concerned, VO word order is much more frequent than OV. This strong preference for VO is, in connection with lexical flexibility, explained as follows: With the loss of derivational morphology in early stages of Old Chinese (e.g. Sagart 1999), word order became the most important indicator of word class and strongly supported the omission of strict verb-noun distinctions (co-existence of precategoriality and categoriality) in the lexicon of this language. Second, at the level of cognitive semantics (e.g. Lakoff 1987; Koevecses and Radden 1998; Schoenefeld 2005), the discussion concentrates on the metonymic relationships that constitute the cognitive-semantic foundation of the use of flexible lexemes in Classical Chinese. In a metonymic mapping of either the V N or the N V type, the original semantics of a lexical item (which may typically be associated with a certain syntactic role of N or V) is used as a reference point to provide mental access to the newly derived meaning of the item in another syntactic function. Given the typologically salient characteristics of Classical Chinese discussed in this book, the argument is that the flexible use of an existing word form as a metonymically related but syntactically distinct item is one of the most economic ways in this language to name a new concept or a newly construed situation in discourse. Third, at the level of argument structure constructions (Bisang 2008a, b), the discussion focuses on how the different metonymic relationships mentioned interact with a given argument structure construction (which carries its own meaning within itself), and how these are further concretized into rule-based or metaphorically motivated pragmatic implicatures. A closer examination of an argument structure construction with an object word in the V-position reveals that there are two underlying frameworks for deriving the concrete meaning of the construction. In the rule-based framework, the verbal function of a given object word can basically be derived through grammatical analysis of the whole construction. In the metaphorical framework, the composed semantics of the construction actively interacts with the outside world in our conceptual system, where metaphor (Lakoff 1987, 1993; Koevecses 2010) serves as an essential cognitive principle in establishing and (re-)interpreting relations in the construction. The two mechanisms, rule-based and metaphorical, complement each other and work together to account for flexibility in Classical Chinese. This study argues that flexibility of parts of speech in Classical Chinese can only be fully understood by integrating a wide range of aspects, both linguistic and non-linguistic. The components that are needed to account for it include constructions (form-meaning pairings), semantics (Croft's conceptual space), pragmatic implicatures, metonymies, metaphors, as well as world knowledge as reflected within a culture. In my view, it is reasonable to argue that these components need not be specific to the language investigated here; they are applicable to any language that shows flexibility in its parts-of-speech system.