Through an analysis of the discourse practices of populist Far Right groups in France, Italy and Belgian Flanders, this book makes a ground-breaking contribution to our understanding of the ways in which homophobic discourse functions. It proposes an innovative heuristic for the conceiving of the interplay of language, context and culture: discourse ecology. The author brings linguistic theories, methods and ways of understanding and thinking about language to a study of the overt and covert homophobic discourses of three non-Anglophone populist movements, and grounds the interpretation of such practices in observable data. In doing so the book encourages us all to reconsider the power we give language in our activism and scholarship, as well as in our private lives.

This book investigates specific syntactic means of event elaboration across seven Indo-European languages (English, German, Norwegian, French, Russian, Latin and Ancient Greek): bare and comitative small clauses ("absolutes"), participle constructions and related clause-like but non-finite adjuncts that increase descriptive granularity with respect to constitutive parts of the matrix event (elaboration in the narrowest sense), or describe eventualities that are co-located and connected with but not part of the matrix event. The book falls in two parts. Part I addresses central theoretical issues: How is the co-eventive interpretation of such adjuncts achieved? What is the internal syntax of participial and converb constructions? How do these constructions function at the discourse level, as compared to various finite structures that are available for co-eventive elaboration? Part II takes an empirical cross-linguistic perspective. It consists of five self-contained chapters that are based on parallel corpora and study either the use of a specific construction across at least two of the seven object languages, or how a specific construction is rendered in other languages.

The pervasive use of dislocations (as in Le chocolat, c'est bon) is a key characteristic of spoken French. This book offers various new and well-motivated insights, based on tests conducted by the author, on the syntactic analysis, prosody, and the interpretation of dislocation in spoken French. It also considers important aspects of the acquisition of dislocation by monolingual children learning different French dialects.
The author argues that spoken French is a discourse-configurational language, in which topics are obligatorily dislocated. She develops a syntactically parsimonious account, which maximizes the import of interfaces involved with discourse and prosody. She proposes clear diagnostics, following a reexamination of the status of subject clitics and a reevaluation of the characteristic prosody of dislocated constituents. The theoretical arguments throughout the book rest on data that comes from corpora of spontaneous production and from various elitication experiments.
This book throws new light on French syntax and prosody and makes an important and original contribution to the study of linguistic interfaces. Clearly expressed and tightly argued it will interest scholars and advanced students of French and of its acquisition as a first language as well as linguistic theorists interested in the interfaces between syntax, discourse, and phonology.

This book analyses the public discourse of Elizabeth Dole. It explores the way in which this trail-blazing public figure navigated the double binds that confront women who obtain and exercise political power. The text argues that Dole crafted a conservative, feminine persona in which she depicted herself as a selfless public servant. This sense of servant was defined through Dole's appeal to the transcendent moral purposes of Christianity. She used this image to great effect in her most noteworthy public addresses, especially her 1996 Republican National Convention speech in support of her husband's presidential campaign. In her 2008 unsuccessful North Carolina U.S. Senate reelection campaign Elizabeth Dole's political style unraveled in the face of a series of effective attacks by her opponent, Kay Hagan, and her own desperate rhetorical appeals to stave off defeat.

Educators strive to create "assessment cultures" in which they integrate evaluation into teaching and learning and match assessment methods with best instructional practice. But how do teachers and administrators discover and negotiate the values that underlie their evaluations? Bob Broad's 2003 volume, "What We Really Value, " introduced dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) as a method for eliciting locally-informed, context-sensitive criteria for writing assessments. The impact of DCM on assessment practice is beginning to emerge as more and more writing departments and programs adopt, adapt, or experiment with DCM approaches.
For the authors of "Organic Writing Assessment, " the DCM experience provided not only an authentic assessment of their own programs, but a nuanced language through which they can converse in the always vexing, potentially divisive realm of assessment theory and practice. Of equal interest are the adaptations these writers invented for Broad's original process, to make DCM even more responsive to local needs and exigencies.
"Organic Writing Assessment" represents an important step in the evolution of writing assessment in higher education. This volume documents the second generation of an assessment model that is regarded as scrupulously consistent with current theory; it shows DCM's flexibility, and presents an informed discussion of its limits and its potentials.

This is an engaging study of the mental lexicon - the way in which the form and meaning of words is stored by speakers of specific languages. Fortescue attempts to narrow the gap between the results of experimental neurology and the concerns of theoretical linguistics in the area of lexical semantics. The prime goal as regards linguistic theory is to show how matters of lexical organization can be analysed and discussed within a neurologically informed framework that is both adaptable and constrained. It combines the perspectives of distributed network modelling and linguistic semantics, and draws upon the accruing evidence from neuroimaging studies as regards the cortical regions involved. It engages with a number of controversial current issues in both disciplines. This text is intended as a tool for linguists interested in psychological adequacy and the latest advances in Cognitive Science. It provides a principled means of distinguishing those semantic features required by a mental lexicon that have a direct bearing on grammar from those that do not. "A Neural Network Model of Lexical Organisation" is essential reading for researchers in neurolinguistics and lexical semantics. "Continuum Studies in Theoretical Linguistics" publishes work at the forefront of present-day developments in the field. The series is open to studies from all branches of theoretical linguistics and to the full range of theoretical frameworks. Titles in the series present original research that makes a new and significant contribution and are aimed primarily at scholars in the field, but are clear and accessible, making them useful also to students, to new researchers and to scholars in related disciplines.

Since 1970-ties in the theory of syntax of natural language quite a number of competing, incommensurable theoretic frameworks have emerged. Today the lack of a leading paradigm and kaleidoscope of perspectives deprives our general understanding of syntax and its relation to semantics and pragmatics. The present book is an attempt to reestablish the most fundamental ideas and intuitions of syntactic well-formedness within a new general account. The account is not supposed to compete with any of today 's syntactic frameworks, but to provide a deeper understanding of why these frameworks succeed or fail when they do and to show a new way for cooperation between logicians and linguists which may lead in future to a unified, yet more specific account.

This book describes the development of the scientific article from its modest beginnings to the global phenomenon that it has become today. The authors focus on changes in the style, organization, and argumentative structure of scientific communication over time. This outstanding resource is the definitive study on the rhetoric of science.

"Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics "(COPE)2e is an authoritative single-volume reference resource comprehensively describing the discipline of pragmatics, an important branch of natural language study dealing with the study of language in it's entire user-related theoretical and practical complexity.
As a derivative volume from "Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics" 2e, it comprises contributions from the foremost scholars of semantics in their various specializations and draws on 20+ years of development in the parent work in a compact and affordable format. Principally intended for tertiary level inquiry and research, this will be invaluable as a reference work for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics inquiring into the study of meaning and meaning relations within languages. As pragmatics is a centrally important and inherently cross-cutting area within linguistics, it will therefore be relevant not just for meaning specialists, but for most linguistic audiences.
* Edited by Jacob Mey, a leading pragmatics specialist, and authored by experts
* The latest trends in the field authoritatively reviewed and interpreted in context of related disciplines
* Drawn from the richest, most authoritative, comprehensive and internationally acclaimed reference resource in the linguistics area
* Compact and affordable single volume reference format"

Top researchers in prosody and psycholinguistics present their research and their views on the role of prosody in processing speech and also its role in reading. The volume characterizes the state of the art in an important area of psycholinguistics. How are general constraints on prosody ('timing') and intonation ('melody') used to constrain the parsing and interpretation of spoken language? How are they used to assign a default prosody/intonation in silent reading, and more generally what is the role of phonology in reading? Prosody and intonation interact with phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics and thus are at the very core of language processes.

A provoking new approach to how we understand metaphors thoroughly comparing and contrasting the claims made by relevance theorists and cognitive linguists. The resulting hybrid theory shows the complementarity of many positions as well as the need and possibility of achieving a broader and more realistic theory of our understanding.

This volume explores the relationship between 'study abroad' and the acquisition of 'sociolinguistic competence' - the ability to communicate in socially appropriate ways. The volume looks at language development and use during study abroad in France by examining patterns of variation in the speech of advanced L2 speakers. Within a variationist paradigm, fine-grained empirical analyses of speech illuminate choices the L2 speaker makes in relation to their new identity, gender patterns, closeness or distance maintained in the social context in which they find themselves. Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, four variable features of contemporary spoken French are analysed in a large population of advanced Irish-English speakers of French. This close-up picture provides empirical evidence by which to evaluate the wide-spread assumption that Study Abroad is highly beneficial for second language learning.

New Perspectives on Language and Sexual Identity is a contribution to the growing field of language and sexuality. The authors present new and exciting data from lesbian and gay conversations, narratives, representations of lesbians in film and erotic fiction, and representations of prominent gay men in newspaper reports to exemplify some of the ways in which lesbians and gay men construct identity from among the symbolic resources available within lesbian and gay communities.

Past research on the Sabellian languages has been devoted mainly to the phonetic and morphological features of these languages as elements for the reconstruction of the prehistoric stages of Latin. The present book aims at analysing the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic features of a subset of grammatical terms, the demonstratives. It contains a thorough description of their synchronic behaviour, which permits both a comparison to the Latin data with new hypotheses on the epigraphic genres in Republican Italy and a reconstruction of the Italic origins of these terms based on typological principles. Neither the grammar of Sabellian nor the pragmatic scope of the Sabellian inscriptions should be considered a priori identical to their Latin comparanda.

The acquisition of Mandarin Chinese, one of the most important and widely spoken languages in the world today, is the focus of this innovative study. It describes the rise of Chinese as a global language and the many challenges and opportunities associated with learning it. The collaborative, multiple-case study and cross-case analysis is presented from three distinct but complementary theoretical and analytic perspectives: linguistic, sociocultural, and narrative. The book reveals fascinating dimensions of Chinese language learning based on vivid first-person accounts (with autobiographical narratives included in the book) of adults negotiating not only their own and others' language and literacy learning, but also their identities, communities, and trajectories as users of Chinese.

This collection of essays grew out of the workshop 'Existence: Semantics and Syntax', which was held at the University of Nancy 2 in September 2002. The workshop, organized by Ileana Comorovski and Claire Gardent, was supported by a grant from the Reseau de Sciences Cognitives du Grand Est ('Cognitive Science Network of the Greater East'), which is gratefully acknowledged. The ?rst e- tor wishes to thank Claire Gardent, Fred Landman, and Georges Rebuschi for encouraging her to pursue the publication of a volume based on papers presented at the workshop. Among those who participated in the workshop was Klaus von Heusinger, who joined Ileana Comorovski in editing this volume. Besides papers that developed out of presentations at the workshop, the volume contains invited contributions. We are grateful to Wayles Browne, Fred Landman, Paul Portner, and Georges Rebuschi for their help with reviewing some of the papers. Our thanks go also to a Springer reviewer for the careful reading of the book manuscript. We wish to thank all the participants in the workshop, not only those whose contributions appear in this volume, for making the workshop an int- active and constructive event. Ileana Comorovski Klaus von Heusinger vii ILEANA COMOROVSKI AND KLAUS VON HEUSINGER INTRODUCTION The notion of 'existence', which we take to have solid intuitive grounding, plays a central role in the interpretation of at least three types of linguistic constructions: copular clauses, existential sentences, and (in)de?nite noun phrases."

The common aim of the contributions to this volume is to shed light on the communication of conceptual structures. The papers investigate how speakers rely on the same cognitive dispositions in three different areas of transfer: in the lexicalization of metonymies and metaphors; in intercultural communication; and in expert-lay communication.

A book-length exploration of the role of online chat in supporting the teaching and learning of foreign languages is well overdue. Tudini's new book takes a Conversation Analysis approach, which isnew to online Second Language Acquisition. It provides observable, previously undocumented insights into hownative speakersand learners pursue the learning of foreign language and culture during online text chat. It looks at dyadic chat between native speakers and learners, with examplesdrawn froma corpus featuring 133 learners and 584 native speakers of Italian. This unique book contributes to our understanding of how conversation in a foreign language unfolds between native speakers and learners in an online social environment, rather than in the classroom. It will be of interest to researchers in second language acquisition and conversation analysis, as well as language teachers.

Wenshan Jia demonstrates that a true liberation of Chinese civic discourse can start with a focus on indigenous cultural practices, such as face practices--the understanding that every human face offers a distinct cultural grammar for acting, speaking, and feeling. Chinese character and identity, the author argues, are primarily functions of communication, and as such, these practices are of enormous consequence to the necessary reconstruction of Chinese identity in the changing socioeconomic context of the 21st century. In this way, Jia finds a middle ground between the advocacy of complete Westernization and radical Chinese nationalism: as a pragmatic alternative, communication is key. Never before has facework research been approached so systematically from the standpoint of its relationship to character and identity. Jia's work substantially advances the literature on Chinese communication and presents a unique perspective on its relationship to social transformation. This new paradigm of facework--including analytical methods such as Circular Questioning in addition to major case studies--challenges traditional views while pointing the way toward a new and valuable social-constructionist view.

Increasingly, children grow up hearing two languages from birth. This comprehensive textbook explains how children learn to understand and speak those languages. It brings together both established knowledge and the latest findings about different areas of bilingual language development. It also includes new analyses of previously published materials. The book describes how bilingually raised children learn to understand and use sounds, words and sentences in two languages. A recurrent theme is the large degree of variation between bilingual children. This variation in how children develop bilingually reflects the variation in their language learning environments. Positive attitudes from the people in bilingual children's language learning environments and their recognition that child bilingualism is not monolingualism-times-two are the main ingredients ensuring that children grow up to be happy and expert speakers of two languages.

Grounded primarily in the ethnography of communication and aligned with the multidisciplinarity of discourse analysis, the book examines the use of proverbs in the daily life of a social network of Mexican-origin transnational families in Chicago and Michoacan, Mexico. Various and detailed analyses of actual proverb use reveal that proverbs in this particular population function as a highly contextualized communicative strategy that serves four discrete social functions: to argue, to advise, to establish rapport, and to entertain. Proposing that the social and cognitive aspects of language use must be combined for a complete understanding of how such genres of language are actually used by regular people in daily life, the author shows how ordinary people use sophisticated cognitive processes to interpret the socially-relevant meanings of proverbs in everyday conversation. The book provides an unusual mix of contextualized discourse analysis that is ethnographic, linguistic, and cognitive, yielding much needed insight into a segment of the Mexican-origin population of the Midwestern U.S., a population whose increasing importance and size is often mentioned, but about which precious few linguistic studies have been conducted. The volume not only helps to fill this void but it is also one of the few studies that focuses on the impact of transnationalism on linguistic practices, regardless of cultural group. Departing from the conventional approach of ignoring the role of everyday-language use in order to focus exclusively on culture, economics, or migrant patterns, the book makes linguistic practice the central issue, and thus affirms that it is language that weaves together the two distant sites of transnational communities, providing a fertile area for understanding the perspectives of the transmigrants themselves.

Due to its theoretical and educational significance within the language learning process, the study of L2 motivation has been an important area of second language acquisition research for several decades. Over the last few years L2 motivation research has taken an exciting new turn by focusing increasingly on the language learner's situated identity and various self-perceptions. As a result, the concept of L2 motivation is currently in the process of being radically reconceptualised and re-theorised in the context of contemporary notions of self and identity. With contributions by leading European, North American and Asian scholars, this volume brings together the first comprehensive anthology of key conceptual and empirical papers that mark this important paradigmatic shift.

This book introduces key issues and historical contexts in critical discursive research in psychology. It sets out methodological steps for critical readings of texts, arguments that can be made for qualitative research in academic settings, and arguments that could be made against it by critical psychologists.

This book explores the motivations of adult second language (L2) learners to learn Italian in continuing education settings in Australia. It focuses on their motivational drives, learning trajectories and related dynamics of identity development triggered by the learning process. Central to the study are adult L2 learners, who are still a largely under-researched and growing group of learners, and readers will gain a better understanding of the learning process of this specific group of learners and ideas for sustaining L2 adult learning motivation in continuing education settings. Furthermore, the book discusses the role played by the Italian migrant community in Australia in making Italian a sought-after language to learn. It explores how a migrant community may influence motivation, and highlights and expands on the notion of L2 learning contexts, showing the existence of sociocultural environments where second language learning trajectories are affected by the presence of migrant groups.

The relationship of language to cognition, especially in development, is an issue that has occupied philosophers, psychologists, and linguists for centuries. In recent years, the scientific study of sign languages and deaf individuals has greatly enhanced our understanding of deafness, language, and cognition. This Counterpoints volume considers the extent to which the use of sign language might affect the course and character of cognitive development, and presents a variety of viewpoints in this debate.
This volume brings the language-thought discussion into a clearer focus, both theoretically and practically, by placing it in the context of children growing up deaf and the influences of having sign language as their primary form of communication. The discussion is also sharpened by having internationally recognized contributors, such as Patricia Siple, Diane Lillo-Martin, and Ruth Campbell, with specialties in varied areas, all converging on a common interest in which each has conducted empirical research. These contributors clarify and challenge the theoretical assumptions that have driven arguments in the language-thought debate for centuries. An introduction by the editors provides a historical overview of the issues as well as a review of empirical findings that have been offered in response to questions about language-thought relations in deaf children. The final chapters are structured in the form of "live" debate, in which each contributor is given the opportunity to respond to the other perspectives presented in this volume.