This is a study into how the public discourse on migrant integration in the UK changed from 2000-2010. The book shows that the discursive construction of integration in the British public sphere shifted from one of cultural pluralism to one of neo-assimilation, informed by a wider spread of neo-liberalism that necessitates self-sufficiency and discourages state assistance. Situated within the Critical Discourse Studies tradition, the book employs a Discourse Historical approach to the data and includes innovative analysis combining 'top-down' (policy documents and media texts) and 'bottom-up' (focus groups with migrants and new citizens) sites of discourse production. In doing so, it provides a broad and detailed perspective of public discourse on integration in the UK. The book shows that understandings of 'integration' are diachronically and synchronically fluid and as such, the term plays an important role as a 'consensus concept' that different actors can support whilst construing it in different ways. Analysis of the data further reveals that integration is interdiscursively linked to other social fields, such as the economy, terrorism and public spending. The book also argues that integration policy has become directed not just at new migrants, but also long-term British citizens and that this has the potential to have considerable impact on community cohesion.

This book is a collection of papers written by outstanding researchers in the newly emerging field of computational semantics. Computational semantics is concerned with the computation of the meanings of linguistic objects such as text fragments, spoken dialogue utterances, and e-mail messages. The meaning of such an object is determined partly by linguistic information and partly by information from the context in which the object occurs. The information from these sources is combined by processes that infer which interpretation of the object applies in the given context. This applies not only to notoriously difficult aspects of interpreting linguistic objects, such as indexicals, anaphora, and metonymy, but also to establishing the precise reference of common nouns and the scopes of noun phrases. The central issue in computational semantics is how processes of finding and combining the relevant linguistic and contextual information into contextually appropriate meanings can be organised. Traditional approaches of applying context information to disambiguated natural language expressions do not work well, due to the massive ambiguity in natural language. Recent work in computational semantics suggests, alternatively, to represent linguistic semantic information in formal structures with underspecification, and to apply context information in inference processes that result in further specification of these representations. Underspecified representation and inference are therefore the key topics in this book. The book is aimed at those linguists, computer scientists, and logicians who take an interest in the computation of meaning, and who want to know what is happening in this exciting field of research.

To Advanced Proficiency and Beyond: Theory and Methods for Developing Superior Second Language Ability addresses an important issue in Second Language Acquisition - how to help learners progress from Intermediate and Advanced proficiency to Superior and beyond. Due to the pressures of globalization, American society encounters an ever-increasing demand for speakers with advanced language abilities. This volume makes available cutting edge research on working memory and cognition and empirical studies of effective teaching. In addition it can serve as a practical handbook for seasoned and pre-professional instructors alike. The bringing together of the latest in second language acquisition theory, decades of empirical research, and practical classroom application makes for an unprecedented volume examining the achievement of Superior-level foreign language proficiency.

This volume brings together ten contributions to the study of untutored (mainly) second but also first language acquisition. All chapters have been written from a functionalist perspective and take as the main theoretical framework a model of spontaneous second language acquisition centered on the "basic variety" as proposed by Klein and Perdue. The chapters in the volume are grouped around two research themes. The first theme concerns the acquisition of scope phenomena (negation, scope particles), the second one deals with referential movement (reference to person, time and space). Both parts provide insights in the structure of learner varieties at various stages of development, and are followed by a discussion chapter. Scope phenomena, such as negation and frequency adverbials present an important learning problem, as learners have to reconcile the logical structure of their utterances with the syntactic specifics of the language being learned. Their acquisition has been relatively neglected in studies up to date, however, and we even lack detailed knowledge about the interpretation of scope particles in the target languages. The chapters in this part of the volume set out to provide more knowledge about scope phenomena in general; more detailed descriptions of the particles in the languages under consideration; and a more general understanding of how scope is acquired. Strong findings resulting from the "ESF" project suggested universal trends in how untutored learners deal with acquisition in the very early stages (the basic variety). Chapters in this second part of the volume on referential movement look at acquisition at more advanced stages, including the production of near native speakers. Learners who progress beyond the basic variety increasingly grammaticalise their productions. This later development is supposedly more variable, as more specific aspects of the target languages are now being acquired. Chapters in this part allow to shed more light on the question regarding universal and language-specific influences on language acquisition.

This book provides a detailed study of Icelandic argument structure alternations within a syntactic theory of argument structure. Building on recent theorizing within the Minimalist Program and Distributed Morphology, the author proposes that much of what is traditionally attributed to syntax should be relegated to the interfaces, and adapts the late insertion theory of morphology to semantics. The resulting system forms sound-meaning pairs by generating hierarchical structures that can be translated into morphological representations, on the one hand, and semantic representations, on the other. The syntactic primitives, however, underdetermine both morphophonology and semantics. Without appealing to special stipulations, the theory derives constraints on the external argument of causative-alternation verbs, interpretive restrictions on nominative objects, and the optionally agentive interpretation of verbs denoting self-directed motion.

This book synthesises current theory and research on L2 motivation in the EFL Japanese context carried out by internationally recognized researchers and upcoming researcher-educators working in various educational contexts in Japan. Topics covered include the issues of cultural identity, demotivation, language communities, positive psychology, possible L2 selves and internationalisation within a key EFL context. The studies in the book utilise a wide variety of research methodologies aiming to narrow the gap between theory and practice and examine L2 motivation in primary, secondary and tertiary education. This volume will be of interest to research/teacher professionals who are currently engaged in active ESL/EFL practice, EFL educators, researchers, and teacher-trainers both inside and outside Japan, who are interested in research on L2 motivation in general and within the Japanese context in particular, as well as graduate and postgraduate researchers.

This book is about the doing and experiencing of diagnosis in everyday life. Diagnoses are revealed as interactive negotiations rather than as the assigning of diagnostic labels. The authors demonstrate, through detailed discourse analyses, how the diagnostic process depends on power and accountability as expressed through the talk of those engaged in the diagnostic process. The authors also show that diagnostic decisions are not only made by professional experts trained in the art and science of diagnosis, but they can also be made by anyone trying to figure out the nature of everyday problems. Finally, diagnostic reasoning is found to extend beyond typical diagnostic situations, occurring in unexpected places such as written letters of recommendation and talk about the nature of communication. Together, the chapters in this book demonstrate how diagnosis is a communication practice deeply rooted in our culture. The book is interdisciplinary and unusually broad in its focus. The authors come from different experiential scholarly backgrounds. Each of them takes a different look at the impact and nature of the diagnostic process. The diagnoses discussed include autism, Alzheimer's disease, speech and language disorders, and menopause. The focus is not only on the here and now of the diagnostic interaction, but also on how diagnoses and diagnostic processes change over time. The book can serve as an undergraduate or graduate text for courses offered in various disciplines, including communication, sociology, anthropology, communication disorders, audiology, linguistics, medicine, and disability studies.

This study advances a model for critical discourse analysis (CDA) which draws on evolutionary psychology and cognitive linguistics, applied in a critical analysis of immigration discourse. It will be of special interest to students and researchers with which to explore new perspectives in CDA.

Exploring food-related interactions in various digital and cultural contexts, this book demonstrates how food as a discursive resource can be mobilized to accomplish actions of social, cultural, and political consequence. The chapters reveal how social media users employ language, images, and videos to construct identities and ideologies that both encompass and transcend food. Drawing on various discourse analytic frameworks to digital communication, contributors examine interactions across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. From the multimodal discourse of a Korean livestreaming online eating show, to food activism in an English blogging community and discussions of a food-related controversy on Omani Twitter, this book shows how language and multimodal resources serve not only to communicate about food, but also as a means of accomplishing key aspects of everyday social life.

This book proposes a new model of phonology that integrates rules and repairs triggered by markedness constraints in a classical derivational model. In developing this theory, the book offers new solutions to many long-standing problems involving syllabic and segmental phonology with analyses of natural language data, both well-known and relatively unknown. The book also includes a new treatment of Palatalization and Affrication processes, a novel theory of feature visibility as an alternative to feature underspecification and an extensive critique of Optimality Theory.

The book elaborates one of Roman Jakobson's many brilliant ideas, i.e. his insight that the two cognitive strategies of the metaphoric and the metonymic are the end-points on a continuum of conceptualization processes. This elaboration is achieved on the background of Lakoff and Johnson's twodomain approach, i.e. the mapping of a source onto a target domain of conceptualization. Further approaches dwell on different stretches of this metaphor-metonymy continuum. Still other papers probe into the specialized conceptual division of labor associated with both modes of thought. Two new breakthroughs in the cognitive linguistics approach to metaphor and metonymy have recently been developed: one is the three-domain approach, which concentrates on the new blends that become possible after the integration or the blending of source and target domain elements; the other is the approach in terms of primary scenes and subscenes which often determine the way source and target domains interact.

This series of lectures provides an overview of the author's work on quantitative applications in cognitive linguistics by discussing a wide range of studies involving corpus-linguistic as well as experimental work. After a discussion of how corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and psycholinguistics relate to each other, the author discusses empirical and statistical studies of a wide variety of phenomena including morphophonology (morphological blends and alliteration effects), corpus-based cognitive semantics, frequency and association at the syntax-lexis interface. The book concludes with chapters exemplifying the role that bottom-up approaches can take, the role of statistical methods more generally, and the role of converging evidence from corpus and experimental data.The lectures for this book were given at The China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics in May 2013. In the e-book version all handouts have been made available at the back. All audio of the lectures as well as the handouts are available for free, in Open Access, here.

This work represents the first integrated account of how deixis operates to facilitate points of view, providing the raw material for reconciling index and object. The book offers a fresh, applied philosophical approach using original empirical evidence to show that deictic demonstratives hasten the recognition of core representational constructs. It presents a case where the comprehension of shifting points of view by means of deixis is paramount to a theory of mind and to a worldview that incorporates human components of discovering and extending spatial knowledge. The book supports Peirce's triadic sign theory as a more adequate explanatory account compared with those of Buhler and Piaget. Peirce's unitary approach underscores the artificiality of constructing a worldview driven by logical reasoning alone; it highlights the importance of self-regulation and the appreciation of otherness within a sociocultural milieu. Integral to this semiotic perspective is imagination as a primary tool for situating the self in constructed realities, thus infusing reality with new possibilities. Imagination is likewise necessary to establish postures of mind for the self and others. Within these imaginative scenarios (consisting of overt, and then covert self dialogue) children construct their own worldviews, through linguistic role-taking, as they legitimize conflicting viewpoints within imagined spatial frameworks.

"

Semantic underspecification is an essential and pervasive property of natural language. This monograph provides a comprehensive survey of the various phenomena in the field of ambiguity and vagueness. The book discusses the major theories of semantic indefiniteness, which have been proposed in linguistics, philosophy and computer science. It argues for a view of indefiniteness as the potential for further contextual specification, and proposes a unified logical treatment of indefiniteness on this basis. The inherent inconsistency of natural language induced by irreducible imprecision is investigated, and treated in terms of a dynamic extension of the proposed logic. The book is an extended edition of a German monograph and is addressed to advanced students and researchers in theoretical and computational linguistics, logic, philosophy of language, and NL- oriented AI. Although it makes extensive use of logical formalisms, it requires only some basic familiarity with standard predicate logic concepts since all technical terms are carefully explained.

Philips looks at the languages of judges in the courtroom to show that, while judges see themselves as impartial agents of the constitutional right to due process, there is actually much diversity in the way that judges interract with defendants due to their interpretations of the law, their attitudes toward courtroom control, and their own political-ideological stances regarding due process. She uses courtroom transcripts, interviews, and the written law itself to show how ideological diversity is organized in legal discourse.

This book shows that the discourse of the Labour party 1994-2007, revolving around three key concepts of identity, narrative and metaphor, not only reflected new Labour's policy and organisational changes, but that it was also an essential part of its successful strategies of renovation and of power legitimation.

This book explores second language pragmatic development with a specific focus on two areas: classroom-based pragmatic instruction in the study abroad context, and using technology for developing and assessing pragmatic competence. Teaching Pragmatics and Instructed Second Language Learning directly compares the effects of technology platforms and traditional paper-based tasks within the second language environment for developing pragmatic competence. These analyses are based on empirical research of how undergraduate Chinese learners of English receive explicit instruction in classrooms using different training materials. The book makes an original and innovative contribution to collecting oral speech act data in the form of computer-animated production tasks (CAPT) designed to enhance learner engagement and performance. Using this tool, it explores the beneficial role of technology in teaching and learning, offering practitioners and researchers practical ways to maximise second language pragmatic development in the classroom.

The six essays of Visual Identities are an important contribution to the growing field of industrial semiotics. Floch's major strength is his analysis of signs in a way which is both industrially relevant and textually precise. Until recently there have been two quite different and distinct ways of understanding commerical signs, such as logos and advertisements. Industry-based work has tended to look at questions of marketing and has often been reduced to the mass psychology of 'appeal' and audience research, whereas the textual analysis of commerical signs has tended to come from limited positions of identity politics and criticism (Marxism, feminism, etc). Floch manages to find a way between (and also outside) these traditions. In doing so he has produced a book which will interest industrial practitioners in advertising, marketing and design as well as students and academics in semiotics.

"Analysing Multimodal Documents" presents the first systematic, corpus-based, and theoretically rigorous approach to the description and analysis of multimodal documents. John Bateman introduces researchers and advanced students to a linguistically-based method of analysis that shows how different modes of expression--including language, rhetoric, images, typography, colour and space--go together to make up a document with a recognizable genre. The author draws upon both academic research and concrete experience of how designers and production teams put documents together.

Affectivity is at the core of everything we do in life. Thus, its development is also central to learning/acquisition and is important for educational contexts. The studies presented in this volume consider the different contexts of language learning and examine different types of participants in this process. Most of them look at a formal instruction context, while others look beyond the classroom and even report on the author's own affectivity and its involvement in learning experiences. Affectivity is discussed here in relation to learners but also to teachers in their own professional contexts of teaching foreign languages. In the majority of cases, affectivity is explored in the case of bilinguals, but there are also articles which focus on multilingual language users and their affectivity as an evolving factor.

This book presents a cognitive semantic model of what the whole range of functions is that English and German discourse particles can fulfil, how these functions are related, why discourse particles fulfil just these functions and not others, and what factors condition their interpretation. Methodologically, conversation analysis and various methods from lexical semantics, such as field analysis and semantic decomposition, as well as contrastive studies are combined with the statistical analyses of large corpora, simulation experiments involving supervised learning in artificial neural networks, and the representation of the results in a computational lexicon. This methodologically interdisciplinary study thus not only presents a general model of polysemy which includes structural aspects, a conceptual background frame, and the contribution of the lexeme, it also provides full coverage for the functional readings of discourse particles and a unified definition of the word class.

The book indentifies and assesses the importance of a range of influences on child language acquisition and development, paying particular attention to situational influences. Key issues are highlighted and recent research is presented. There are five sections: the deployment of speech during early development; linguistic interaction and family background - encoding the situation; multidimentional aspects of language development; and constraints on language development. There are twelve chapters on these themes.