This research monograph investigates the concept of "meaning" through an analysis of the term "connotation". Part 1 traces the history of "connotation" from its first documented use by William of Ockham in the 14th century, at which time philosophy and grammar were seen to complement each other, in the belief that the nature of things was reflected in grammar. Major changes in the meaning and usage of the term, which reflect the evolution of the concepts of meaning, are highlighted. Part 2 analyses the contemporary problems connected with the concept of "connotation" in linguistics, semiotics and literary criticism. It presents a discussion of the considerations involved in the analysis of meaning in natural language and stresses the need to avoid reductions that may impoverish the study of semiosis. Possibilities for dealing with "meaning" when it extends beyond the word or sentence into the area of textual analysis are presented.

This book questions assumptions about the nature of language and how language is conceptualized. Looking at diverse contexts from sign languages in Indonesia to literacy practices in Brazil, from hip-hop in the US to education in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this book forcefully argues that a critique of common linguistic and metalinguistic suppositions is not only a conceptual but also a sociopolitical necessity. Just as many notions of language are highly suspect, so too are many related concepts premised on a notion of discrete languages, such as language rights, mother tongues, multilingualism, or code-switching. Definitions of language in language policies, education and assessment have material and often harmful consequences for people. Unless we actively engage with the history of invention of languages in order to radically change and reconstitute the ways in which languages are taught and conceptualized, language studies will not be able to improve the social welfare of language users.

First published in 1987, the Dictionary of Jargon expands on its predecessor Newspeak (Routledge Revivals, 2014) as an authoritative reference guide to specialist occupational slang, or jargon. Containing around 21, 000 entries, the dictionary encompasses a truly eclectic range of fields and includes extensive coverage of both British and U.S. jargon. Areas dealt with range from marketing to medicine, from advertising to artificial intelligence and from skiing to sociology. This is a fascinating resource for students of lexicography and professional lexicographers, as well as the general inquisitive reader.

An essential reference to contemporary discourse studies, this handbook offers a rigorous and systematic overview of the field, covering the key methods, research topics and new directions. Fully updated and revised throughout to take account of developments over the last decade, in particular the innovations in digital communication and new media, this second edition features: * New coverage of the discourse of media, multimedia, social media, politeness, ageing and English as lingua franca * Updated coverage across all chapters, including conversation analysis, spoken discourse, news discourse, intercultural communication, computer mediated communication and identity * An expanded glossary of key terms Identifying and describing the central concepts and theories associated with discourse and its main branches of study, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Discourse Analysis makes a sustained and compelling argument concerning the nature and influence of discourse and is an essential resource for anyone interested in the field.

George Orwell coined the term 'Newspeak' for his novel 1984, the purpose of which was designed to shrink vocabularies and eliminate subtlety and nuance. For this dictionary, first published to herald the year 1984, Jonathon Green compiled nearly 8, 000 entries - selected from the slangs and specific vocabularies of trades, professions and interests - covering such areas as the world of entertainment, the media, the military economics, and finance. This dictionary provides an accurate and useful linguistic guide for students of lexicography and an interesting compendium for the general inquisitive reader.

Current approaches to the drug problem are not working and almost everyone agrees that more effective solutions are needed. This comprehensive volume offers a dynamic new approach to understanding and solving the drug problem. This text applies the techniques and formulations of general semantics to investigate and make recommendations about various aspects of drug abuse. General semantics, a process problem-solving approach based on the primacy of the scientific method and importance of language as a shaper of thoughts and perceptions, has a proven record of success in problem-solving across a wide variety of disciplines and fields.

Topics examined include American drug history and policy, the legalization issue, drugs and creativity, treatment, and prevention. A chronological overview of drug-taking in human history and a resource guide are provided. One chapter offers an in-depth description of an effective drug abuse prevention model and a program using the model.

Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition Series Editors: Patricia Sullivan, Catherine Hobbs, Thomas Rickert, and Jennifer Bay Responding to a widespread belief that the field of composition studies is less unified than it was in the late twentieth century, editors Deborah Coxwell-Teague and Ronald F. Lunsford ask twelve well-known composition theorists to create detailed syllabi for a first-year composition course and then to explain their theoretical foundations. Each contributor to FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE, discusses the major goals and objectives for their course, its major assignments, their use of outside texts, the role of reading and responding to these texts, the nature of classroom discussion, their methods of responding to student writing, and their assessment methods. The contributors to FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE include Chris Anson, Suresh Canagarajah, Douglas Hesse, Asao Inoue, Paula Mathieu, Teresa Redd, Alexander Reid, Jody, Shipka, Howard Tinberg, Victor Villanueva, Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. Their twelve essays provide a window into these teachers' classrooms that will help readers, teachers, and writing program administrators appreciate the strengths of unity and diversity in rhetoric and composition as a field. The examples will empower new and experienced teachers and administrators. The editors frame the twelve essays with an introductory chapter that identifies key moments in composition's history and a concluding chapter that highlights the varied and useful ways the contributors approach the common challenges of the first-year composition course.

This book examines the various ways in which age affects the process and the product of foreign language learning in a school setting. It presents studies that cover a wide range of topics, from phonetics to learning strategies. It will be of interest to students and researchers working in SLA research, language planning and language teaching.

First published in 1989, this collection of essays brings into focus the history of a specific form of violence - that of representation. The contributors identify representations of self and other that empower a particular class, gender, nation, or race, constructing a history of the west as the history of changing modes of subjugation. The essays bring together a wide range of literary and historical work to show how writing became an increasingly important mode of domination during the modern period as ruling ideas became a form of violence in their own right. This reissue will be of particular value to literature students with an interest in the concept of violence, and the boundaries and capacity of discourse.

VIrtually all the papers in these volumes originated in presentations at the Fourth Groningen Round Table, held in July 1980. That conference, organ ized by the Institute for General linguistics of Groningen University was the fourth in an irregular series of meetings devoted to issues of topical interest to linguists. Its predecessor, the Third Round Table, was held in June 1976, and dealt with the semantics of natural language. A selection of the papers was published as Syntax and Semantics 10, Selections from the Third Groningen Round Table, ed. by F. Heny and H. Schnelle, Academic Press, 1979. This fourth meeting was more narrowly focussed. The original intention was to examine the hypothesis of Akrnajian, Steele and Wasow in their paper 'The Category AUX in Universal Grammar', Linguistic Inquiry 10, 1-64. Ultimately the topic was broadened considerably to encompass not only the syntax, semantics and morphology of auxiliaries and related elements, but to tackle the problem (implicit in the original work of Akmajian, Steele and Wasow) of justifying the selection of categories for the analysis of natural language. In the summer of 1979, a workshop and short, informal conference were held at the University of Salzburg, in preparation for the Round Table. These were organized in conjunction with the Summer Institute of the linguistic Society of America. The cooperation of the LSA and of the University of Salzburg, and in particular of the Director of that Institute, Professor Gaberell Drachman, is hereby gratefully acknowledged."

Addressing three main topics, this work begins by describing the general nature of non-literal language. Relatively obscure topics are defined, including metonymy and synesis. Secondly, the nature of metonymy and metaphor is investigated, along with related semantic phenomena, such as literalness, inconsistency, and lexical and case ambiguity. The final main topic is an approach to processing metonymy and metaphor, broken down into three parts: a model of language in which they are decomposed into simpler elements; an artificial intelligence theory called Collative Semantics (CS); and an implementation of CS in a computer program called MetaS, which recognizes metaphors, metonymies, and various nontropes in short English sentences.

This volume contains a selection of papers analyzing language transfer, a phenomenon which results from language contact in bilingual and multilingual language acquisition and learning contexts. The main focus of this volume is on the lexical aspects of language transfer.

Metaphor and Iconicity attempts to clarify the interplay of metaphor and iconicity in the creation and interpretation of spoken and written texts from a cognitive perspective. There are various degrees in which metaphor and iconicity manifest themselves, ranging from sound symbolism and parallelism in poetic discourse to word order, inflectional forms, and other grammatical structures in ordinary discourse. The book makes unique contributions to the study of the relationship of form and meaning.

Examining the overseas experience of language learners in diverse contexts through a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, studies in this volume look at the acquisition of language use, socialization processes, learner motivation, identity and learning strategies. In this way, the volume offers a privileged window into learner experiences abroad while addressing current concerns central to second language acquisition.

This collection of papers stems originally from a conference on Property Theory, Type Theory and Semantics held in Amherst on March 13-16 1986. The conference brought together logicians, philosophers, com puter scientists and linguists who had been working on these issues (of ten in isolation from one another). Our intent was to boost debate and exchange of ideas on these fundamental issues at a time of rapid change in semantics and cognitive science. The papers published in this work have evolved substantially since their original presentation at the conference. Given their scope, we thought it convenient to divide the work into two volumes. The first deals primarily with logical and philosophical foundations, the second with more empirical semantic issues. While there is a common set of issues tying the two volumes together, they are both self-contained and can be read independently of one another. Two of the papers in the present collection (van Benthem in volume 1 and Chierchia in volume II) were not actually read at the conference. They are nevertheless included here for their direct relevance to the topics of the volumes. Regrettably, some of the papers that were presented (Feferman, Klein, and Plotkin) could not be included in the present work due to timing problems. We nevertheless thank the authors for their contribu tion in terms of ideas and participation in the debate."

In this book Werner H llen examines Roget's Thesaurus in relation to linguistics, philosophy and history. He explores the influence of Roget's Thesaurus abroad (Germany and the Romance countries). He epitomizes its history and compares the various editions of the book. In lexical case studies he evaluates some entries with pertinence to their cultural and political implications. He discusses the didactic potential of thesauri in general and considers the implications of the Thesaurus for the study of scholarly linguistics and psychology. He discusses how Roget's Thesaurus prepared the way for the more recent idea of network semantics. By analyzing retrieval techniques one can show, he claims, how the words of languages were (and are) stored in the minds of those who speak them. Professor H llen concludes by considering the role of synonymy in language from a perspective of cognitive linguistics showing that it is indispensable for communication.

This book uniquely illustrates how second language acquisition (SLA) data can instigate linguistic exploration and help inform linguistic and acquisition theory in crucial ways. It also offers new perspectives toward our understanding of the relationship between first and second language acquisition, Universal Grammar (UG), and the target language input. Specifically, examination of the L2 development of pied-piping and preposition stranding in English questions and relative clauses shows that the required preposition is frequently omitted by learners who have demonstrated accurate subcategorization knowledge of verbal complements in related declarative constructions. The null-prep' data in the L2 grammar leads to an important cross-linguistic investigation of this largely ignored syntactic phenomenon in the world's languages; it also motivates exploration of the complex English input learners receive as positive evidence. An analysis of null-prep, piping and stranding is posited, including the relevant principles and parameters of UG involved. Based on this linguistic analysis, alternative explanations for the L2 phenomenon are offered, representing challenges to UG and markedness-based accounts of second language acquisition. Such challenges will be of interest to linguists as well as to students, teachers, reseachers and scholars interested in second language acquisition, particularly in its relationship to UG.

In the past two decades there has been considerable interest in the ways in which subjects are positioned in discursive practice. This interest has entailed a focus on the role of language and discourse in the processes in and through which subjects are constituted in discourse. However, questions of agency and how it relates to consciousness have received less attention. This book explores the ways in which agency and consciousness are created through transactions between self and other. The book argues that it is necessary to regard body-brain interactions in the context of the social and discursive practices which act upon human bodies. These issues of agency and individuation are explored in relation to infant semiosis, as well as in relation to children's symbolic play. Thibault looks at the importance of the self-referential moral conscience in relation to the interpersonal dimension of all acts of meaning-making. This conscience is also connected to the development of a self-referential viewpoint which the book argues is connected to the ecosocial semiotic systems of thinking about consciousness as a complex system operating on many different levels. The author discusses and evaluates the work of linguists, psychologists, biologists, semioticians, and sociologists such as Basil Bernstein, Mikhail Bakhtin, J. J. Gibson, M. A. K. Halliday, Walter Kauffman, Lakoff & Johnson, Jay Lemke, Jean Piaget and Stanley Salthe, to develop a new theory of agency and consciousness.

This book integrates the research being carried out in the field of lexical semantics in linguistics with the work on knowledge representation and lexicon design in computational linguistics. It provides a stimulating and unique discussion between the computational perspective of lexical meaning and the concerns of the linguist for the semantic description of lexical items in the context of syntactic descriptions.

Through an exploration of key women writers of the early modern period, Marion Wynne-Davies demonstrates the ways in which female authors were both enabled and constrained by the writing traditions and influences within their families. The engagement with and participation in the construction of individual familial discourses is explained via an analysis of six Renaissance families: the Mores, Lumleys, Sidneys/Herberts, Carys and Cavendishes. While the book addresses the writings of male authors from these family groups, such as Sir Thomas More, John Donne, Philip Sidney, Lucius Cary and William Cavendish, its primary focus is on Margaret More/Roper, Gertrude More, Jane Lumley, Mary Wroth, Elizabeth Cary and Jane, Elizabeth and Margaret Cavendish.

This book both defines sports discourse, and provides an account of the different discourses that are utilized and come into play when the field of sport speaks. It shows how the sports communities have been addressed over time by various speakers, across various multimodal genres. Tony Schirato looks first at how discourse can be viewed as a form of work, something that produces and naturalizes meanings, and habituates the way we see the world. Grounding this exploration is an account of the development of the field of sport as a specific discursive regime, one that is both reflected and refracted by the dominant discourses and values of the time. These discourses have become naturalized and shape activities and materialities at local and global levels. The book ends with an examination of how new technologies and the Web are changing sports discourse, in some cases radically via online commentary, Twitter and user-generated content.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.