Positioning Gender in Discourse offers a newly emerging approach to the study of spoken discourse. Feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis has particular relevance to analyzing the significance of gender in relation to the competing and intertextualized ways in which speakers construct their identities and their relationships through talk. This book gives readers a full account of the methodology through a study of teenagers' conversations in class, and a study of managers' discussions in team meetings.

The papers in this volume address central issues in the study of Plurality and Quantification from three different perspectives: * Algebraic approaches to Plurals and Quantification * Distributivity and Collectivity: Theoretical Foundations * Distributivity and Collectivity: Empirical Investigations Algebraic approaches to the semantics of natural languages were in dependently introduced for the study of generalized quantification, pred ication, intensionality, mass terms and plurality. The most prominent modern advocate for an algebraic theory of plurality (and mass terms) is certainly Godehard Link. It is indicative of the Wirkungsgeschichte of Link's work that most of the contributions in this volume take the logic of plurals proposed by Godehard Link (Link 1983, 1987) as their foundation or, at the very least, as their point of reference. Link's own paper in this volume provides a concise summary of many of the central research issues that have engaged semanticists during the last decade. Link's paper also contains an extensive bibliography that provides an excellent resource for scholars interested in the semantics of plurals. Since we can refer readers to Link's paper for an excellent survey of the subject matter of this book, we will limit our attention in this in troduction to summarizing the individual contributions in this volume. The book is organized into three main sections; within each section the papers are ordered alphabetically. However, as in much of linguistic the orizing, there is an exception: for reasons pointed out above, Godehard Link's article appears as Chapter 1.

I n order to appreciate properly what we are doing in this book it is necessary to realize that our approach to linguistic theorizing differs from the prevailing views. Our approach can be described by indicating what distinguishes it from the methodological ideas current in theoretical linguistics, which I consider seriously misguided. Linguists typically construe their task in these days as that of making exceptionless generalizations from particular examples. This explanatory strategy is wrong in several different ways. It presupposes that we can have "intuitions" about particular examples, usually examples invented by the linguist himself or herself, reliable and sharp enough to serve as a basis of sharp generalizations. It also presupposes that we cannot have equally reliable direct access to general linguistic regularities. Both assumptions appear to me extremely dubious, and the first of them has in effect been challenged by linguists like Dwight Bol inger. There is also some evidence that the degree of unanimity among linguists is fairly low when it comes to less clear cases, even in connection with such relatively simple questions as grammaticality (acceptability). For this reason we have tried to rely more on quotations from contemporary fiction, newspapers and magazines than on linguists' and philosophers' ad hoc examples. I also find it strange that some of the same linguists as believe that we all possess innate ideas about general characteristics of humanly possible grammars assume that we can have access to them only via their particular consequences.

Future Times, Future Tenses examines how the future is expressed by means of tense, aspect, and modality across a wide range of languages, among them French, Polish, Basque, Turkish, and West Greenlandic. From the present point of view, the future is not fixed: while there is arguably only one past, the future is largely open and/or indeterminate. Reference to the future has thus become one of the most hotly-debated topics in contemporary linguistics: the interactions of future tense with future time, and of future tense with the semantics of possible worlds, are crucial to any satisfactory account of temporal linguistics. This book considers and seeks a resolution to outstanding issues in the field by uniting linguistic and philosophical perspectives on future reference in natural language. Scholars from different parts of the world approach these issues from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including those of linguistic typology, formal semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. In the process they question the very validity of the traditional notion of a specific marker for future tense. The book shows the close connections between linguistic, logical, metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological issues concerning the future and reveals the value of linking linguistic considerations of tense and aspect to philosophical approaches to modality and time.

In this book, Yufang Ho compares the text style difference between the two versions of John Fowles' "The Magus," exemplifying the methodological principles and analytic practices of the corpus stylistic approach.
"The Magus "was first published in 1966 and was revised and republished by Fowles in 1977. Fowles' own comment on the second edition was that it was 'rather more than a stylistic revision.' The book explores how the revised version is linguistically different from the original, especially in terms of point of view (re) representation. The corpus stylistic approach adopted combines qualitative and quantitative comparison to confirm the overall text style difference. The analysis demonstrates that computer assisted methods can identify significant linguistic features which literary critics have not noticed and provide a more detailed descriptive basis for literary interpretation of (either edition) of the novel. This analysis of "The Magus "serves as a case study and exemplar of how corpus techniques may be used generally in the study of linguistics.

Disability and Discourse applies and explains Conversation Analysis (CA), an established methodology for studying communication, to explore what happens during the everyday encounters of people with intellectual disabilities and the other people with whom they interact. * Explores conversations and encounters from the lives of people with intellectual disabilities * Introduces the established methodology of Conversation Analysis, making it accessible and useful to a wide range of students, researchers and practitioners * Adopts a discursive approach which looks at how people with intellectual disabilities use talk in real-life situations, while showing how such talk can be supported and developed * Follows people into the meetings and discussions that take place in self-advocacy and research contexts * Offers insights into how people with learning disabilities can have a voice in their own affairs, in policy-making, and in research

What makes good language learners tick? What do they do that poor learners don't do? Could we help the poor learner by teaching them some of the good learners' tricks? The nature of second language learning is extremely complex and a great deal of research is needed to improve our understanding of it. In spite of much theorizing, very little has been done to study its processes directly and empirically. This study constitutes a beginning. It sets out to discover the strategies of good language learners. The book will be useful not only to researchers, but also to teachers and to those who make language teaching policy.

This book takes a hard look at some of the assumptions that are customarily made concerning the role of age in second language acquisition. The evidence and arguments the contributors present run counter to the notion that an early start in second language learning is of itself either absolutely sufficient or necessary for the attainment of native-like mastery of a second language. Another theme of the book is a doubt that there is a particular stage of maturity beyond which language learning is no longer fully possible. In short, the book presents a challenge to those who take it as given that second language learning is inevitably different in its essential nature from language acquisition in the childhood years and that second language knowledge acquired beyond the critical period is in all circumstances and in all respects doomed to fossilize at a non-native-like level.

"Meaning" brings together some of the most significant philosophical work on linguistic representation and understanding, presenting canonical essays on core questions in the philosophy of language.

This anthology includes classic articles by key figures such as Frege, Quine, Putnam, Kripke, and Davidson; and recent reactions to this work by philosophers including Mark Wilson, Scott Soames, James Higginbotham, and Frank Jackson. Topics discussed include analyticity; translational indeterminacy; theories of reference; meaning as use; the nature of linguistic competence; truth and meaning; and relations between semantics and metaphysics. An extensive introduction gives an overview and detailed critical evaluation of the seminal views and arguments represented in the anthology. Meaning is an ideal text for courses in philosophy of language and semantics.

Based on an earlier edition published in 1992 in Bulgarian, this book offers a specific approach to one of the most controversial problems in linguistics. According to it, aspect is the result of a subtle and complex interplay between the referents of verbs and nouns in the sentence. Special attention is paid to the role nouns and noun phrases play in the explication of aspect in English (and similar languages). The grammatical marking of aspect is shown to be a compensatory phenomenon imposed by language structure. Comparisons made using Slavic (mainly Bulgarian) data reveal that compositional aspect is a mirror image of verbal aspect. When explicated compositionally, aspect is also determined by pragmatic factors. Ultimately, it is part of man's cognitive potential.

This volume covers a broad spectrum of research into the role of events in grammar. It addresses event arguments and thematic argument structure, the role of events in verbal aspectual distinctions, events and the distinction between stage and individual level predicates, and the role of events in the analysis of plurality and scope relations. It is of interest to scholars and students of theoretical linguistics, philosophers of language, computational linguists, and computer scientists.

This book explores the relationship between conversation analysis and applied linguistics, demonstrating how the analysis of institutional talk can contribute to professional practice. With a foreword by Paul Drew, the core of the collection brings together researchers from a wide range of applied areas, dealing with topics such as language impairment and speech therapy, medical general practice, retailing, cross-cultural training, radio journalism, higher education and language teaching and learning.

The first comprehensive study of the narrative and stylistic characteristics of all of Marguerite Duras' major works. Through close textual readings with a particular focus on women's access to language, this book shows how Duras critiques and subverts dominant discourse. Duras' textual strategies are described within a discussion of narrativity which also addresses factors of race and class. Cohen demonstrates how Duras achieves the famous ritual atmosphere of her prose through precise techniques which connect to her critique of representation.

This essay constitutes yet another approach to the fields of inquiry variously known as discourse analysis, discourse grammar, text grammar, functional 1 syntax, or text linguistics. An attempt is made to develop a fairly abstract unified theoretical frame work for the description of discourse which actually helps explain concrete facts of the discourse grammar of a naturallanguage.2 This plan is reflected in the division of the study into two parts. In the first part, a semiformal framework for describing conversational discourse is developed in some detail. In the second part, this framework is applied to the functional syntax of English. The relation of the discourse grammar of Part II to the descriptive frame work of Part I can be instructively compared to the relation of Tarskian semantics to model theory. Tarski's semantics defmes a concept of truth of a sentence in a model, an independently identified construct. Analogously, my rules of discourse grammar defme a concept of appropriateness of a sentence to a given context. The task of the first Part of the essay is to characterize the relevant notion of context. Although my original statement of the problem was linguistic - how to describe the meaning, or function, of certain aspects of word order and intonation - Part I is largely an application of various methods and results of philosophical logic. The justification of the interdisciplinary approach is the simplicity and naturalness of the eventual answers to specific linguistic problems in Part II."

Rhetoric has shaped our understanding of the nature of language and the purpose of literature for over two millennia. It is of crucial importance in understanding the development of literary history as well as elements of philosophy, politics and culture. The nature and practise of rhetoric was central to Classical, Renaissance and Enlightenment cultures and its relevance continues in our own postmodern world to inspire further debate. Examining both the practice and theory of this controversial concept, Jennifer Richards explores: historical and contemporary definitions of the term 'rhetoric' uses of rhetoric in literature, by authors such as William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce classical traditions of rhetoric, as seen in the work of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero the rebirth of rhetoric in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment the current status and future of rhetoric in literary and critical theory as envisaged by critics such as Kenneth Burke, Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida. This insightful volume offers an accessible account of this contentious yet unavoidable term, making this book invaluable reading for students of literature, philosophy and cultural studies.

Drawing on ethnographic research inside and outside the classroom, Janet Maybin investigates how 10-12 year-old children use talk and literacy to construct knowledge about their social worlds and about themselves, as they negotiate the transition from childhood into adolescence. Through the analysis of examples of talk, she shows how children use collaborative verbal strategies, stories of personal experience and the reworked voices of others to investigate the moral order and forge their own identities.

Language Turned on Itself examines what happens when language becomes self-reflexive; when language is used to talk about language. Those who think, talk and write about language are compulsive users of various metalinguistic devices, but reliance on these devices begins early: kids are told, 'That's called a "rabbit"'. It's not implausible that a primitive capacity for the meta-linguistic kicks in at the beginning stages of language acquisition. But no matter when or how frequently these devices are invoked, one thing is clear: they present theorists of language with a complex data pattern. Herman Cappelen and Ernest Lepore argue that the study of these devices and patterns is not only interesting, but also carries important consequences for other parts of philosophy.
The primary goal of this book is not to promote one theory over another. Rather, it is to present a deeply puzzling set of problems and explain their significance for other areas of philosophy. Cappelen and Lepore introduce an important, but sometimes neglected, part of the philosophy of language. Part I is devoted to presenting data about various aspects of our metalinguistic practices. In part II, the authors examine and reject the four leading metalinguistic theories, and present a new account of our use of quotation in a variety of different contexts.

One of the most active areas in the field of second language acquisition, language learning motivation is a burgeoning area of research. Yet the plethora of new ideas and research directions can be confusing for newcomers to the discipline to navigate. Offering concise, bite-size overviews of key contemporary research concepts and directions, this book provides an invaluable guide to the contemporary state of the field. Making the discussion of key topics accessible to a wider audience, each chapter is written by a leading expert and reflects on cutting-edge research issues. From well-established concepts, such as engagement and learning goals, to emerging ideas, including contagion and plurilingualism, this book provides easy to understand overviews and analysis of key contemporary themes. Helping readers understand a field which can appear highly technical and overwhelming, Researching Language Learning Motivation provides valuable insights, perspectives and practical applications.

This project is aimed the 16+ age range inside or outside any kind of educational institution. It is for courses concerned with general education - either in general studies programmes or as aspects of specialist teaching. Narrative has been kept to a minimum. Instead, the books are more a collection of different items of teaching and learning materials: for example, the collection of key concepts, and the list of key questions connected withe the study. The books are compact in content and flexible in use.

This book was first published in 1974.

This volume explores the many ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into genders or classes. A noun may belong to a given class because of its logical or symbolic similarities with other nouns, because it shares a similar morphological form with other nouns, or simply through an arbitrary convention. The aim of this book is to establish which functional or lexical categories are responsible for this type of classification, especially along the nominal syntactic spine. The book's contributors draw on data from a wide range of languages, including Amharic, French, Gitksan, Haro, Lithuanian, Japanese, Mi'kmaw, Persian, and Shona. Chapters examine where in the nominal structure gender is able to function as a classifying device, and how in the absence of gender, other functional elements in the nominal spine come to fill that gap. Other chapters focus on how gender participates in grammatical concord and agreement phenomena. The volume also discusses semantic agreement: hybrid agreement sometimes arises due to a distinction that grammars encode between natural gender on the one hand and grammatical gender on the other. The findings in the volume have significant implications for syntactic theory and theories of interpretation, and contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay between inflection and derivation. The volume will be of interest to theoretical linguists and typologists from advanced undergraduate level upwards.

Linguistic signs do not coincide with intended or interpreted meanings. For relevance theory, this theoretical commonplace merely demonstrates the inferential nature of language. For Paul de Man, on the contrary, it suggested that language is unstable, random, arbitrary, mechanical, ironic and inhuman. This book seeks to show that relevance theory is a more plausible account of communication, cognition and literary interpretation than the deconstructionist theory de Man elaborated from readings of Rousseau, Hegel, and Nietzsche.

The Extent of the Literal develops a strikingly new approach to metaphor and polysemy in their relation to the conceptual structure. In a straightforward narrative style, the author argues for a reconsideration of standard assumptions concerning the notion of literal meaning and its relation to conceptual structure. She draws on neurophysiological and psychological experimental data in support of a view in which polysemy belongs to the level of words but not to the level of concepts, and thus challenges some seminal work on metaphor and polysemy within cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics and analytical philosophy.

The only modern collection of speeches by southerners on the themes that have shaped the history and culture of the region, this anthology, which spans eighty tumultuous years of southern history, reflects the strategies of southern orators as they attempted to defend the indefensible, as well as those few who advocated a more compassionate South. Southern leaders were judged largely by their oratorical ability and their skills in defending the southern way of life. Accordingly, they placed much emphasis on developing consummate rhetorical skills. Thus, one can read the history of the region in the speeches of its politicians, ministers, and other public figures. Beginning in 1820 with the debates over the admission of Missouri to the Union, many southerners took a defensive posture against those forces from outside the region which they saw as threats to their culture. While the rhetoric of most southern leaders was clearly defensive, one must remember that they were dealing with the difficult issues of slavery; the relationship of federal and state government; their vision of the ideal society; the coming civil war and its aftermath; and living in a defeated, desolate, war-torn region. As demagogic, defensive, and archaic as they may seem today, these speakers developed and expanded patterns of thought and rhetorical strategy that echoed throughout the region. The collective memory that they created would shape their contemporaries and affect the lives of generations to follow.