Rhetoric, Materiality, and Politics explores the relationship between rhetoric's materiality and the social world in the late modern political context. Taking as their point of departure a reprint of Michael Calvin McGee's 1982 call to reconceptualize rhetoric as the palpable "experience" of sociality, the authors in this volume grapple anew with the role of communication practices in contemporary collective life. Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida, these twelve original essays supplement, extend, and challenge McGee's position, collectively advocating on behalf of a shift in theoretical and critical attention from rhetorical materialism to rhetoric's materiality.

Throughout the world, the mass media are responsible for shaping the form and content of experiences. In this book, David L. Altheide examines how the mass media, including news and popular culture, have cast terrorism, propaganda and social control post 9/11. Altheide shows how fear works with terrorism to alter discourse, social meanings, and our sense of being in the world. Emphasis is placed on the different institutional interventions and how these particular stories become framed and inform the wider media narratives of terror. The author argues that post 9/11 we are witnessing the emergence of new communication formats that not only constitute counter-narratives, but also shape future communicative experience. The text is suitable for scholars and students interested in the ongoing relationship between the media and terror post 9/11.

The convergence of smartphones, GPS, the Internet, and social networks has given rise to a playful, educational, and social media known as location-based and hybrid reality games. The essays in this book investigate this new phenomenon and provide a broad overview of the emerging field of location-aware mobile games, highlighting critical, social scientific, and design approaches to these types of games, and drawing attention to the social and cultural implications of mobile technologies in contemporary society. With a comprehensive approach that includes theory, design, and education, this edited volume is one of the first scholarly works to engage the emerging area of multi-user location-based mobile games and hybrid reality games. It is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate courses covering mobile phone or gaming culture, media history and educational technology, as well as researchers and the general public.

Traditions of Writing Research reflects the different styles of work offered at the Writing Research Across Borders conference. Organized by Charles Bazerman, one of the pre-eminent scholars in writing studies, the conference facilitated an unprecedented gathering of writing researchers. Representing the best of the works presented, this collection focuses solely on writing research, in its lifespan scope bringing together writing researchers interested in early childhood through adult writing practices. It brings together differing research traditions, and offers a broad international scope, with contributor-presenters including top international researchers in the field

The volume's opening section presents writing research agendas from different regions and research groups. The next section addresses the national, political, and historical contexts that shape educational institutions and the writing initiatives developed there. The following sections represent a wide range of research approaches for investigating writing processes and practices in primary, secondary, and higher education. The volume ends with theoretical and methodological reflections.

This exemplary collection, like the conference that it grew out of, will bring new perspectives to the rich dialogue of contemporary research on writing and advance understanding of this complex and important human activity.

Argumentation in Higher Education offers professors, lecturers and researchers informative guidance for teaching effective argumentation skills to their undergraduate and graduate students. This professional guide aims to make the complex topic of argumentation open and transparent. Grounded in empirical research and theory, but with student voices heard strongly throughout, this book fills the gap of argumentation instruction for the undergraduate and graduate level.

Written to enlighten even the most experienced professor, this text contributes to a better understanding of the demands of speaking, writing, and visual argumentation in higher education, and will undoubtedly inform and enhance course design. The book argues for a more explicit treatment of argument (the product) and argumentation (the process) in higher education, so that the ground rules of the academic discipline in question are made clear. Each chapter concludes with practical exercises for staff development use.

Topics discussed include:

• The importance of argument
• The current state of argumentation in higher education
• Generic skills in argumentation
• The balance between generic and discipline specific skills
• Information communication technologies and visual argumentation

How can we best teach argumentation so that students feel fully empowered in their academic composition? Professors (new and experienced), lecturers, researchers, professional developers and writing coaches worldwide grappling with this question will find this accessible text to be an extremely valuable resource.

Richard Andrews is Professor in English at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives examines the spontaneous actions of ordinary people, caught up in extraordinary events, who felt compelled to adopt the role of a news reporter. This collection of twenty-one original, thought-provoking chapters investigates citizen journalism in the West, including the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia, as well as its development in a variety of other national contexts around the globe, including Brazil, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Palestine, South Korea, Vietnam, and even Antarctica. It engages with several of the most significant topics for this important area of inquiry from fresh, challenging perspectives. Its aim is to assess the contribution of citizen journalism to crisis reporting, and to encourage new forms of dialogue and debate about how it may be improved in future.

Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives examines the spontaneous actions of ordinary people, caught up in extraordinary events, who felt compelled to adopt the role of a news reporter. This collection of twenty-one original, thought-provoking chapters investigates citizen journalism in the West, including the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia, as well as its development in a variety of other national contexts around the globe, including Brazil, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Palestine, South Korea, Vietnam, and even Antarctica. It engages with several of the most significant topics for this important area of inquiry from fresh, challenging perspectives. Its aim is to assess the contribution of citizen journalism to crisis reporting, and to encourage new forms of dialogue and debate about how it may be improved in future.

This volume explores the relationship between shared disciplinary norms and individual traits in academic speech and writing. Despite the standardising pressure of cultural and language-related factors, academic communication remains in many ways a highly personal affair, with active participation in a disciplinary community requiring a multidimensional discourse that combines the professional, institutional, social and individual identities of its members. The first section of the volume deals with tensions involving individual/collective values and the analysis of collective vs. individual discoursal features in academic discourse. The second section comprises longitudinal investigations of the academic output of single scholars, so as to highlight the individuality in their choices and the reasons for not conforming with the commonality of conventions shared by their professional community. The third part deals with genres that are meant to impose commonality on the members of an academic community, not only in the drafting of specialized texts but also when these are reviewed or evaluated for possible publication.

With contributions from leading international researchers, Contemporary Perspectives on Reading and Spelling offers a critique of current thinking on the research literature into reading, reading comprehension and writing. Each paper in this volume provides an account of empirical research that challenges aspects of accepted models and widely accepted theories about reading and spelling.

This book develops the argument for a need to incorporate less widely cited research into popular accounts of written language development and disability, challenging the idea that the development of a universal theory of written language development is attainable. The arguments within the book are explored in three parts:

• overarching debates in reading and spelling
• reading and spelling across languages
• written language difficulties and approaches to teaching.

Opening up the existing debates, and incorporating psychological theory and the politics surrounding the teaching and learning of reading and spelling, this edited collection offers some challenging points for reflection about how the discipline of psychology as a whole approaches the study of written language skills.

Highlighting ground-breaking new perspectives, this book forms essential reading for all researchers and practitioners with a focus on the development of reading and spelling skills.

The essays assembled in this volume focus on philosophical questions regarding various aspects of communication. They are predicated on the author's conviction that communication between human beings, regardless of the many difficulties involved, is something of sufficient importance to justify a patient philosophical exploration such as that embarked upon here. Interwoven with philosophical considerations readers will find insights gained from psychoanalytical thinkers such as Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva. The essays address a wide range of themes. Sometimes they concern fundamental things, such as the question of the very possibility of communication or the indispensable function of communication in sexual relations. The communicational significance of a certain kind of architecture is scrutinized, as well as that of images in our media-saturated, postmodern world, together with the connection between the latter and the experience of identity today. Other essays concentrate on communicational phenomena such as seduction and Kristeva's notion of 'revolt', the difficulties surrounding communication in the age of 'Empire', and the reappearance of communicational sophistry as a theme in contemporary cinema.

This book attempts to analyse irony, paradox, oxymoron, overstatement, understatement, euphemism, and dysphemism from the point of view of both Cognitive Linguistics and Pragmatics. In order to do so, we have regarded each trope as a cognitive model, and observed that the various ICMs that resulted from this approach had in common an essential feature: they were all constructed around the creation of contrasts. Also, we have developed a common processing model for these ICMs, which shows that these so-called figures of speech can be fully considered conceptual mechanisms of meaning creation and derivation. Apart from determining which specific pragmatic implications these models bring about and studying their underlying cognitive operations, we have argued that they should be described in terms of the contextual effects they produce. Therefore, a new classification and definition of these tropes is provided.

Computer games are increasingly prevalent, and cause both curiosity and concern in the general public, so understanding these games and play is important. Game researchers need to work quickly to document, report, and analyse the effect on our modern society as an increasing amount of people make new and drastically different choices in how they spend their time. Perceiving Play: The Art and Study of Computer Games looks at the directions and findings of this research, and examines how game research integrates the studies of social science, ethnography, textual analysis and criticism, economy, law, and technology.

This book examines how Japanese learners of English learned about managing politeness while they were studying at language schools in New Zealand. Specifically, it investigates how they learned to produce and interpret a range of disagreement strategies during oppositional talk with native speakers of English. Employing a combined qualitative and quantitative approach to data analysis, the book discusses the initial pragmatic competence of the learners, and describes how their competence developed over a ten-week period. The book outlines some points of cultural divergence which may have influenced the direction and the extent of the learners' pragmatic development. It also sheds light on the language-acquisition strategies utilised by the learners during their tenure in the host culture. Most crucially, the book illuminates patterns of directness and indirectness in the learners' selected disagreement strategies. These patterns challenge the generally accepted theory that politeness always increases with social distance.

Making New Media offers a series of case studies from the author's work with students and teachers from the mid-90s to the present day, charting the dramatic rise of new media in schools. Work across a wide range of media is presented: computer animation, digital video and film, computer games and machinima. The author tackles the vital contemporary themes of literacy and creativity, making an innovative argument for the combination of traditions of social semiotics and cultural studies in the study of literacy and new media. This volume should be read by every undergraduate and graduate student, as well as any faculty member, involved with or interested in any aspect of new media.

Global Auteurs employs auteur theory to examine the work of three contemporary and innovative directors: Pedro Almodovar, Lars von Trier, and Michael Winterbottom. With extensive background information on the global film industry, and on auteur theory and its implications for ideological critique, this book's insightful case studies examine both ideologies the filmmakers re-circulate and ideologies that they confront in textual form. The discussion of Pedro Almodovar devotes particular attention to mass mediation, the family, and gender in the corpus of his films, while Lars von Trier's corpus is interpreted as driven by a motif that characterizes all of his films: the «failed idealist. Michael Winterbottom's body of work presents a genre-diverse, post-MTV style concerned with «outsiders and taboo, representation and truth, and human rights. Global Auteurs' sophisticated approach to decoding film is suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on film, global mass media, and contemporary Europe.

Global Auteurs employs auteur theory to examine the work of three contemporary and innovative directors: Pedro Almodovar, Lars von Trier, and Michael Winterbottom. With extensive background information on the global film industry, and on auteur theory and its implications for ideological critique, this book's insightful case studies examine both ideologies the filmmakers re-circulate and ideologies that they confront in textual form. The discussion of Pedro Almodovar devotes particular attention to mass mediation, the family, and gender in the corpus of his films, while Lars von Trier's corpus is interpreted as driven by a motif that characterizes all of his films: the «failed idealist. Michael Winterbottom's body of work presents a genre-diverse, post-MTV style concerned with «outsiders and taboo, representation and truth, and human rights. Global Auteurs' sophisticated approach to decoding film is suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on film, global mass media, and contemporary Europe.

Has the internet changed the nature of conducting controversies? This question cannot be answered easily as different forms of human interaction in an online environment exist and controversies in an online environment have not been analyzed from a linguistic point of view so far. On the other hand, there are many linguistic analyses of controversies in the Early Modern Period. First, this volume describes the communicative background of two online discussion forums dedicated to the study of historical arms and armor. Then, the volume analyzes the similarities and differences between Early Modern controversies and controversies in online internet discussion forums. Further, this book offers an accurate analysis of the strategies used in online discussion forums, analyzing two controversial threads taken from two online discussion forums and provides insights into the individual tactics and strategies applied in online controversies and highlights the similarities and differences of applied principles, norms, and rules. The book finally comments on stylistic choices used by participants in the controversies.

This volume is made up of 17 chapters which have developed out of papers and workshop sessions presented at the event entitled «Corpora: Seminar and Workshops, held at the University of Padua, March 29-31, 2007. It maintains the straightforward, practical approach which characterized that event, meant as an introduction to the use of corpora even for novices. At the same time it goes into a wide range of different applications for corpora in language teaching and language research in higher education. One of these involves the creation and use of learner corpora. Another application involves corpus-assisted research into political discourse in the media. Language for special purposes is also focussed on as a research topic, an academic discipline, and language to be translated. Multimodal corpora are also considered. Proposals are made for corpus-based research into the language of films, and into translation (and mediation) universals. A corpus-based study of text complexity in reading tests is also presented. Large-scale corpora commercially available are also discussed. An online module for translator training is presented, as is an Internet-accessible corpus of Old English poetry.

Scholars in Media Studies increasingly take the view that our understanding of the history of the discipline is deeply inadequate. It is now widely recognised that a large number of important media analysts have simply been omitted from the standard histories. This book aims to fill in some of the gaps by examining the work of eleven neglected writers, each of whom has made a seminal contribution to the analysis of the media but whose work rarely appears in student textbooks, anthologies and readers. In keeping with the interdisciplinary ambitions of contemporary Media Studies, the selected thinkers are drawn from a wide range of historical periods and intellectual backgrounds. There are chapters on sociologists, creative writers, cultural theorists, art critics, journalists and even ancient Greek philosophers. The aims of the book are by no means purely antiquarian. The contributors believe that a revival of interest in the work of their chosen writers can go a long way towards revitalising Media Studies, especially by (1) drawing attention to a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches which have yet to be adequately exploited, (2) suggesting new areas of research, and (3) transforming our understanding of the historical development of Media Studies.

Many books have been written about the press and terrorism - particularly since September 11th - but this is the first press-focused exploration of their relationship. Drawing upon the history of terrorism, mass communication research, media theory, and journalism practice, this book examines how the press reports terrorism, and how that reporting varies depending on the medium and location. Examining the differences in reporting - globally and historically within different media and government systems - Terrorism and the Press provides insights for how, in the future, we can better navigate the relationship between the press, government, and audience when terrorists attack.

How effective are election campaign posters? Providing a unique political history, this book traces the impact that these posters - as well as broadsides, banners, and billboards - have had around the world over the last two centuries. It focuses on the use of this campaign material in the United States, as well as in France, Great Britain, Germany, South Africa, Japan, Mexico, and many other countries. The book examines how posters evolved and discusses their changing role in the twentieth century and thereafter; how technology, education, legislation, artistic movements, advertising, and political systems effected changes in election posters and other campaign media, and how they were employed around the world. This comprehensive and original overview of this campaign material includes the first extensive review of the research literature on the topic. Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion will be useful to scholars and students interested in communications, politics, history, advertising and marketing, art history, and graphic design.

This book explores the cognitive and communicative processes involved in the use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) within cross-cultural specialized contexts where non-native speakers of English - i.e. Western experts and non-Western migrants - interact. The book argues that the main communicative difficulties in such contexts are due precisely to the use of ELF, since it develops from the non-native speakers' transfer of their native language structures and socio-cultural schemata into the English they speak. Transfer, in fact, allows non-native speakers to appropriate, or authenticate, those English semantic, syntactic, pragmatic and specialized-discourse structures that are linguistically and conceptually unavailable to them. It follows that there are as many ELF varieties as there are communities of non-native speakers authenticating English. The research questions justifying the ethnographic case studies detailed in this book are: What kind of cognitive frames and communicative strategies do Western experts activate in order to convey their culturally-marked knowledge of specialized discourse - by using their ELF varieties - to non-Westerners with different linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds? What kind of power asymmetries can be identified when non-Westerners try to communicate their own knowledge by using their respective ELF varieties? Is it possible to ultimately develop a mode of ELF specialized communication that can be shared by both Western experts and non-Western migrants?

The aim of this volume is to present a state-of-the-art view on corpus studies. This collection of papers, presented at the XII Susanne Hubner Seminar in November 2003 at the University of Zaragoza, comprises both quantitative and qualitative analyses and studies on both written and oral corpora. Structured in seven sections, the book covers a wide range of approaches and methodologies and reflects current linguistic research. The papers have been written by scholars from a large number of universities, mainly from Europe, but also from the USA and Asia. The volume offers contributions on diachronic studies, pragmatic analyses and cognitive linguistics, as well as on translation and English for Specific Purposes. The book includes several papers on corpus design and reports on research on oral corpora. At a more specific level, the papers analyse aspects such as politeness issues, dialectology, comparable corpora, discourse markers, the expression of evidentiality and writer stance, metaphor and metonymy, conditional sentences, evaluative adjectives, delexicalised verbs and nominalization.