Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric posits rhetoric and gynecology as sister discourses. While rhetoric has been historically concerned with the regulation of the productive male body, gynecology has been concerned with the discipline of the female reproductive body. Lydia M. McDermott examines these sister discourses by tracing key narrative moments in the development of thought about sexed bodies and about rhetorical discourse, from classical myth and natural philosophy to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century decline of midwifery and the rise of scientific writing on the reproductive body. Liminal Bodies offers a metaphorical method of invention and criticism, "sonogram," that emphasizes the voices and bodies that have been left on the margins of the dominant histories of rhetoric.

This book focuses on dialog from a varied combination of fields: Linguistics, Philosophy of Language and Computation. It builds on the hypothesis that meaning in human communication arises at the discourse level rather than at the word level. The book offers a complex analytical framework and integration of the central areas of research around human communication. The content revolves around meaning but it also gives evidence of the connection among different points of view. Besides discussing issues of general interest to the field, the book triggers theoretical argumentation that is currently under scientific discussion. It examines such topics as immanent reasoning joined with Recanati's lekta and free enrichment, challenges of internet conversation, inner dialogs, cognition and language, and the relation between assertion and denial. It proposes a dialogical framework for intra-negotiation and gives a geolinguistic perspective on spoken discourse. Finally, it examines dialog and abduction and sheds light on a generation of dialog contexts by means of multimodal logic applied to speech acts.

Blogging: How Our Private Thoughts Went Public examines self-representational writing from its historical roots in personal diaries through to its current form in personal blogs. Widely available on the Internet, personal blogs are the latest form of an ever more public writing style of self-reflection. Utilizing Hannah Arendt's philosophy of public, private, and social, this book delves deeper into the question of public versus private and provides an entrance for Arendt's work into today's mediated world. Arendt's understanding of public, private, and social allows us to better understand the need for boundaries and for both public and private spaces in our lives. Several interpersonal communication theories, including Boundary Management and Parasocial Framework theory, are examined to better understand how people navigate public and private boundaries in communication. These theories help to provide a philosophical view of our over-shared and over-mediated world, and, specifically, how it affects our communication styles and practices.

In this wide-ranging and original book, John J. Clancy examines the history and current state of corporate America from a new perspective, looking at business not as a matter of economics, marketing, and management, but as a cultural artifact. The Invisible Powers examines language, imagery, values, and deeply held beliefs and the impact they all have in determining the role business plays in society. Drawing from the writings and speeches of some of the most influential business leaders of the past two hundred years Frederick Taylor, Henry Ford, Jay Gould, and Lee Iacocca, among others Clancy describes the evolution and transformation of influential metaphors and demonstrates the very real power the "invisible" forces of metaphor exercise in our world. Finding support in such diverse thinkers as Aristotle, Engels, and Darwin, Clancy then calls for a new set of images and paradigms that will enable us to deal more successfully with the economic, cultural, and environmental crises of our times."

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.

This book addresses the discursive construction of corporate identities in social media on the part of Chinese corporations, particularly highlighting how followers of corporate social media co-create corporate identities during firm-follower interactions. Toward this end, it pursues an integrated sociolinguistics approach combining e.g. thematic analysis, interactional analysis and in-depth interviews. Readers will also find extensive information on the brand-new dialogic framework of corporate identity formation. The book offers an insightful and revealing guide for both practitioners/trainers and teachers in corporate communication who are faced with the challenges of managing public relations and corporate images in the age of social media. It can also serve as a valuable case study for those readers who are fascinated by the Chinese economy and discourse analysis of the Chinese language.

This book analyses the language that ordinary people employ when discussing money, debt and financial behaviour. It documents and critiques this language from an array of disciplinary perspectives, with chapters on children's books, government infomercials, television poverty porn, the emotional experience of being indebted, and more. In doing so, it addresses common underlying questions concerning definitions of money and value, and scrutinises how people construct, negotiate and articulate meaning in these domains. This wide-ranging edited collection will be of interest to students and scholars of linguistics, sociology, communication, literature and anthropology.

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Authorship; English literature; English language; English philology; Language Arts

This book focuses on the game-theoretical semantics and epistemic logic of Jaakko Hintikka. Hintikka was a prodigious and esteemed philosopher and logician, and his death in August 2015 was a huge loss to the philosophical community. This book, whose chapters have been in preparation for several years, is dedicated to the work of Jaako Hintikka, and to his memory. This edited volume consists of 23 contributions from leading logicians and philosophers, who discuss themes that span across the entire range of Hintikka's career. Semantic Representationalism, Logical Dialogues, Knowledge and Epistemic logic are among some of the topics covered in this book's chapters. The book should appeal to students, scholars and teachers who wish to explore the philosophy of Jaako Hintikka.

Using the conceptual framework of populism as discourse, Ritchie Savage provides a comparative analysis of U.S. and Latin American speeches and articles covering Betancourt's Accion Democratica, Chavez, McCarthyism, and the Tea Party. In so doing, he reveals an essential structure to populist discourse: reference to the "opposition" as a representation of the persistence of social conflict, posed against a collective memory of the origins of democracy and struggle for equality, is present in all cases. This discursive formation of populism is carried out in comparisons of political discourse in the United States and Venezuela, two countries that are typically classified as empirically specific in their economic and political development and ideological orientation. Populist Discourse in Venezuela and the United States explores how instances of populism, once exceptional phenomena within modern forms of political rule, are becoming increasingly integrated with the structure of democratic politics.

This open access book introduces a general framework that allows natural language researchers to enhance existing competence theories with fully specified performance and processing components. Gradually developing increasingly complex and cognitively realistic competence-performance models, it provides running code for these models and shows how to fit them to real-time experimental data. This computational cognitive modeling approach opens up exciting new directions for research in formal semantics, and linguistics more generally, and offers new ways of (re)connecting semantics and the broader field of cognitive science. The approach of this book is novel in more ways than one. Assuming the mental architecture and procedural modalities of Anderson's ACT-R framework, it presents fine-grained computational models of human language processing tasks which make detailed quantitative predictions that can be checked against the results of self-paced reading and other psycho-linguistic experiments. All models are presented as computer programs that readers can run on their own computer and on inputs of their choice, thereby learning to design, program and run their own models. But even for readers who won't do all that, the book will show how such detailed, quantitatively predicting modeling of linguistic processes is possible. A methodological breakthrough and a must for anyone concerned about the future of linguistics! (Hans Kamp) This book constitutes a major step forward in linguistics and psycholinguistics. It constitutes a unique synthesis of several different research traditions: computational models of psycholinguistic processes, and formal models of semantics and discourse processing. The work also introduces a sophisticated python-based software environment for modeling linguistic processes. This book has the potential to revolutionize not only formal models of linguistics, but also models of language processing more generally. (Shravan Vasishth)

This book presents a theory of long humorous texts based on a revision and an upgrade of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH), a decade after its first proposal. The theory is informed by current research in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It is predicated on the fact that there are humorous mechanisms in long texts that have no counterpart in jokes. The book includes a number of case studies, among them Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Allais' story Han Rybeck. A ground-breaking discussion of the quantitative distribution of humor in select texts is presented.

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.

This book traces the evolutionary trajectory of language and teaching from the earliest periods of human evolution to the present day. The author argues that teaching is unique to humans and our ancestors, and that the evolution of teaching, language, and culture are the inextricably linked results of gene-culture coevolutionary processes. Drawing on related fields including archaeology, palaeontology, cultural anthropology, evolutionary psychology and linguistics, he makes the case that the need for joint attention and shared goals in complex adaptive strategies is the underlying driver for the evolution of language-like communication. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of these disciplines, as well as lay readers with an interest in human origins.

The last decades have witnessed a renewed interest in near-synonymy. In particular, recent distributional corpus-based approaches used for semantic analysis have successfully uncovered subtle distinctions in meaning between near-synonyms. However, most studies have dealt with the semantic structure of sets of near-synonyms from a synchronic perspective, while their diachronic evolution generally has been neglected. Against this backdrop, the aim of this book is to examine five adjectival near-synonyms in the history of American English from the understudied semantic domain of SMELL: fragrant, perfumed, scented, sweet-scented, and sweet-smelling. Their distribution is analyzed across a wide range of contexts, including semantic, morphosyntactic, and stylistic ones, since distributional patterns of this type serve as a proxy for semantic (dis)similarity. The data is submitted to various univariate and multivariate statistical techniques, making it possible to uncover fine-grained (dis)similarities among the near-synonyms, as well as possible changes in their prototypical structures. The book sheds valuable light on the diachronic development of lexical near-synonyms, a dimension that has up to now been relatively disregarded.

Online Teaching and Learning shows how learning through the internet depends on complex human interactions for success. The text uses sociocultural theory as its foundational stance to empirically examine the dynamics of these interactions. It seeks to understand meaning making in all of its social, linguistic and cultural complexity. Each chapter examines how it is that culturally and historically situated meanings get negotiated through social mediation in online instructional venues. It extends the ways we think and talk about online teaching and learning.

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.

Joe Bray’s careful analysis of Jane Austen’s stylistic techniques reveals that the genius of her writing is far from effortless; rather he makes the case for her as a meticulous craftswoman and a radical stylistic pioneer. Countering those who have detected in her novels a dominant, authoritative perspective, Bray begins by highlighting the complex, ever-shifting and ambiguous nature of the point of view through which her narratives are presented. This argument is then advanced through an exploration of the subtle representation of speech, thought and writing in Austen’s novels. Subsequent chapters investigate and challenge the common critical associations of Austen’s style with moral prescriptivism, ideas of balance and harmony, and literal as opposed to figurative expression. The book demonstrates that the wit and humour of her fiction is derived instead from a complex and subtle interplay between different styles. This compelling reassessment of Austen’s language will offer a valuable resource for students and scholars of stylistics, English literature and language and linguistics.

"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."

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.

This book traces the narrative strategies framing austerity policies through an illuminating analysis of policy documents and political discourses, exposing the political consequences for women, racialized minorities and disabled people. While many have critiqued the ways in which austerity has captured the contemporary political narrative, this is the first book to systematically examine how these narratives work to shift the terms within which policy debates about inequality and difference play out. Gedalof's exceptional readings of these texts pay close attention to the formal qualities of these narratives: the chronologies they impose, their articulation of crisis and resolution, the points of view they construct and the affective registers they deploy. In this manner she argues persuasively that the differences of gender, race, ethnicity and disability have been stitched into the fabric of austerity as excesses that must be disavowed, as reproductive burdens that are too great for the austere state to bear. This innovative, intersectional analysis will appeal to students and scholars of social policy, gender studies, politics and public policy.

The collection of papers addresses the perennial problem of the relation between language and meaning. It proposes various theoretical approaches to the issue ranging from a synergetic theory of meaning merging the cognitive and the socio-historical perspectives, through holistic, evolutionary models and a revision of some of the assumptions of Cognitive Metaphor Theory to the discussion of the role of pragmatic competence in meaning construction. A number of papers make recourse to corpus based studies and psycholinguistic experiments. The topics of specific linguistic investigations cover such diverse issues as idiom processing, emotion words in Chinese, valuation of abstract nouns, the preposition at and scalar adjectives. Several papers explore the application of the reflections on the nature of meaning to lexicography and translation. One, self-reflective article investigates the consequences of the unformulated assumptions about meaning for the coherence of proposed linguistic theories. The volume firmly places the study of meaning in the centre of the linguistic research by showing its significance for linguistic theory and its applications.

In this discourse history, W J Dodd analyses the 'unquiet voices' of opponents whose contemporary critiques of Nazism, from positions of territorial and inner exile, focused on the 'language of Nazism'. Individual chapters review 'precursor' discourses; Nazi public discourse from 1933 to 1945; the testimonies of 'unquiet voices' abroad, and in private and published texts in the 'Reich'; attempts to 'denazify the language' (1945-49), and the legacies of the Nazi past in a retrospective discourse of 'coming to terms' with the Nazi past. In the period from 1945, the book focuses on contestations of 'tainted language' and instrumentalizations of the Nazi past, and the persistence of linguistic taboos in contemporary German usage. Highly engaging, with English translations provided throughout, this book will provide an invaluable resource for scholars of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and German history and culture; as well as readers with a general interest in language and politics.

Anglophone postcolonial studies has been characterized by its secular nature. Yet as the first generation of scholars grapples with mortality, a yearning for spiritual meaning is emerging in many texts. This study synthesizes the sacred language used in these texts with critical theory in order to create a holistic frame for interpretive analysis.