This book provides a lively introduction to the study of language for students without prior experience in linguistics. It addresses the core areas of language study answering questions such as: * Where does language come from? * Why don't we all talk the same? * Who needs grammar? This is an excellent textbook for basic introductory courses and for students who are non-majors. It will be accessible and enjoyable for a variety of students.

At long last-a book-length biography celebrates Toni Cade Bambara, a seminal literary, cultural, and political figure who was among the most widely read and frequently reviewed of the well-regarded black women writers to emerge in the 1970s. A Joyous Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist is the first-ever, full-length biography of a trailblazing artist who championed black women in her fiction as well as in her life. This incisive study provides a comprehensive treatment of Bambara's published and unpublished works, and it also documents her emerging vision of her role as an agent of change. The biography allows readers into the personal life of Bambara, offering personal insights into a woman with a strong public persona and friendships with other celebrated artists of her era. Perhaps most important for those seeking to understand and appreciate Bambara's legacy, it connects her oeuvre to the context of her experience and places all of her wide-ranging creative work in the context of her singular vision. Interviews with established writers, activists, and film makers worldwide Exclusive access to personal documents previously unavailable for public review or research

Written by a leading authority, researcher and teacher in the field and with content that reflects the latest research, this book is cutting-edge and accessible - the perfect introduction for students. Aimed at introductory sociolinguistics modules and incorporating enticing illustrations and practical exercises and supported by an interactive companion website with a wealth of audio and video materials, this book reinforces and supports learning as the reader progresses through key topics. Features the author's own research, images, cartoons, and texts from around the world that will engage the reader.

Written by a leading authority, researcher and teacher in the field and with content that reflects the latest research, this book is cutting-edge and accessible - the perfect introduction for students. Aimed at introductory sociolinguistics modules and incorporating enticing illustrations and practical exercises and supported by an interactive companion website with a wealth of audio and video materials, this book reinforces and supports learning as the reader progresses through key topics. Features the author's own research, images, cartoons, and texts from around the world that will engage the reader.

Women, Men and Politeness focuses on the specific issue of the ways in which women and men express politeness verbally. Using a range of evidence and a corpus of data collected largely from New Zealand, Janet Holmes examines the distribution and functions of a range of specific verbal politeness strategies in women's and men's speech and discusses the possible reasons for gender differences in this area. Data provided on interactional strategies, 'hedges and boosters', compliments and apologies, demonstrates ways in which women's politeness patterns differ from men's, with the implications of these different patterns explored, for women in particular, in the areas of education and professional careers.

Power and Politeness in the Workplace has become established as a seminal text for courses in language and professional communication. Co-authored by bestselling author Janet Holmes, this text provides insights into the way we all talk at work, including a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people "do" power and politeness in the workplace, and examines the discourse strategies involved in balancing the competing demands of meeting workplace objectives and getting things done on time with maintaining good collegial workplace relationships. Drawing on a large and very varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. Attention is also paid to the important contribution of less obviously relevant types of workplace talk such as humour and small talk, to the construction of effective workplace relationships. In the final chapter some of the practical implications of the analyses are identified. This Routledge Linguistics Classic is here reissued with a new preface from the authors, covering the methods of analysis, an update on the Language in the Workplace project and a look at the work in the context of recent research. Power and Politeness in the Workplace continues to be a vital read for researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics and communication studies.

Using a range of evidence Janet Holmes examines the distribution and functions of a range of specific verbal politeness strategies in women's and men's speech and discusses the possible reasons for gender differences in this area.

Power and Politeness in the Workplace has become established as a seminal text for courses in language and professional communication. Co-authored by bestselling author Janet Holmes, this text provides insights into the way we all talk at work, including a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people "do" power and politeness in the workplace, and examines the discourse strategies involved in balancing the competing demands of meeting workplace objectives and getting things done on time with maintaining good collegial workplace relationships. Drawing on a large and very varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. Attention is also paid to the important contribution of less obviously relevant types of workplace talk such as humour and small talk, to the construction of effective workplace relationships. In the final chapter some of the practical implications of the analyses are identified. This Routledge Linguistics Classic is here reissued with a new preface from the authors, covering the methods of analysis, an update on the Language in the Workplace project and a look at the work in the context of recent research. Power and Politeness in the Workplace continues to be a vital read for researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics and communication studies.

This is the first book in the field of workplace discourse to examine the relationships among leadership, ethnicity, and language use. Taking a social constructionist approach to the ways in which leadership is enacted through discourse, Leadership, Discourse, and Ethnicity problematizes the concept of ethnicity and demonstrates the importance of context-particularly the community of practice-in determining what counts as relevant in the analysis of ethnicity. The authors analyze everyday workplace interactions supplemented by interview data to examine the ways in which workplace leaders use language to achieve their transactional and relational goals in contrasting "ethnicized" contexts, two of which are Maori and two European/Pakeha. Their analysis pays special attention to the roles of ethnic values, beliefs and orientations in talk.

This is the first book in the field of workplace discourse to examine the relationships among leadership, ethnicity, and language use. Taking a social constructionist approach to the ways in which leadership is enacted through discourse, Leadership, Discourse, and Ethnicity problematizes the concept of ethnicity and demonstrates the importance of context-particularly the community of practice-in determining what counts as relevant in the analysis of ethnicity. The authors analyse everyday workplace interactions supplemented by interview data to examine the ways in which workplace leaders use language to achieve their transactional and relational goals in contrasting "ethnicized" contexts, two of which are Maori and two European/Pakeha. Their analysis pays special attention to the roles of ethnic values, beliefs and orientations in talk.

Moving between linguistic, professional and national boundaries is part of the daily reality of modern workplaces, where the concept of a job for life is now outdated. Employees move between jobs, countries and even professions during their working lives, but the multilayered process of redefining personal, social and professional identities is not reflected in current workplace research. This volume brings together a range of scholars from different disciplinary areas in the field, examining the challenges of transition into a (new) workplace, team or community, as well as transitions within different professional communities. By analyzing the strategies individuals adopt to navigate the boundaries they face (in languages, workplaces or countries), this book demonstrates that transitions are not linear but are negotiated and constructed in the situated'here and now'of workplace interaction, at the same time as they are positioned in the wider socioeconomic order.

Moving between linguistic, professional and national boundaries is part of the daily reality of modern workplaces, where the concept of a 'job for life' is now outdated. Employees move between jobs, countries and even professions during their working lives, but the multilayered process of redefining personal, social and professional identities is not reflected in current workplace research. This volume brings together a range of scholars from different disciplinary areas in the field, examining the challenges of transition into a (new) workplace, team or community, as well as transitions within different professional communities. By analyzing the strategies individuals adopt to navigate the boundaries they face (in languages, workplaces or countries), this book demonstrates that transitions are not linear but are negotiated and constructed in the situated 'here and now' of workplace interaction, at the same time as they are positioned in the wider socioeconomic order.

If you write out "The Poems of Emily Dickinson" and erase some of the letters very neatly and precisely, you can get to The ms of m y kin - the manuscript of my kin, as it were; the manuscript of my family. It might also be said to be the manuscript of my kind. The practice of erasure was most famously accomplished (and perhaps invented) by the British artist Tom Phillips in his book A Humument (an erasure of a Victorian novel titled A Human Document) and later, by the American poet Ronald Johnson, who erased Milton's Paradise Lost into a book called Radi os. In Phillips's books-he did more than one version of A Humument-the artist created paintings over each page of the novel, reserving only certain words that told a different story than did the original work. (A new character, called "Toge," emerged from the word "together," for example.) Johnson, a poet, simply removed the words he did not wish to use as if whiting them out-the remaining words stood in the same relationship to each other as they did in the original poem. (Janet Holmes)

Give control back to God and get back to what you enjoy most–loving your teen. Parenting teenagers isn’t easy. No matter how much we love our kids and want to protect them, we cannot control them or their circumstances. But God is in control, and– particularly when we trust him–he can take care of our kids far better than we ever could.

So what else can we do? We can pray. In fact, prayer should be our first response–because prayer is the most powerful tool at a parent’s disposal. That is what this book is about: releasing our teens to God’s control, learning to pray specifically and with confidence for their every need, and recovering the sense of humor that will help us face the situations that now cause us so much stress. This book includes:

• lighthearted stories designed to help take the edge off of parenting your teenager
• valuable insights on more than twenty areas of conflict you are likely to experience with your teen–from language, grades, and clothing to drugs, drinking, and smoking
• specific prayer strategies to help you make a difference in your teen’s life
• perspectives on the “hot” issues, from real teens
• what the Bible has to say on each subject
• tips from parenting experts
• specific prayers to get you started
• discussion starters to help open up dialogue with your teen

Whether parents have never prayed for their teens, have prayed sporadically, or have prayed every day, now is the time to pray even more and in whole new ways–and Prayer Changes Teens will show them how.

Challenge your body. Feed your spirit. Change the world.
Ask any Christian woman about her most recent New Year’s resolutions, and you’ll likely find that “exercise regularly” and “pray more” were at the top of her list. We all long to look and feel our best, to live actively and healthfully. More than that, we desire to connect intimately with our God. Yet physical health and spiritual growth often take a backseat to the urgent demands of grocery shopping and bill paying, time with family and friends, and long hours at the office.

It’s Time to Exercise Your Prayer Life.
Three years ago, author Janet Holm McHenry suffered from depression, weight gain, and exhaustion. Then she began a prayerwalk routine that not only transformed her life but also profoundly impacted the lives of those around her.
Learn how you, too, can set out on a journey to increased energy, better health, and greater joy–and experience a rich, full prayer ministry that will have a lasting impact on your loved ones and community–in PrayerWalk.

“Prayerwalking makes so much sense, you’ll wonder why you haven’t been doing it all your life!” –Heather and David Kopp, coauthors of the Praying the Bible series

“Honest, humorous, and insightful, PrayerWalk will encourage your heart.”
–Linda Dillow, author of Intimate Issues

Janet Holmes's second book of poems explores and interrogates the quotidian life of the late twentieth century for what exists behind its often seductive appearance. In these poems we see beneath acceptable, sleek surfaces into the turbulence they often conceal, as the splendid green tuxedo of the title may disguise a heart that harbors racism, fear, and violence. Holmes exhorts us to look beyond the face value of what presents itself, to resist literal interpretations, and to plumb the many depths afforded by each encounter with the world outside ourselves. In the second half of The Green Tuxedo, Holmes draws on recently discovered diaries kept by her journalist father nearly fifty years before her birth. Sifting through evidence and memory, she entwines actual diary entries (such as a seventy-seven-name list of "Wild Women I Have Known") with speculation and invention to generate a portrait that discovers him- re-invents him-as a young man. This sequence, searching and elegiac, affords closure to a book whose questionings suggest less a need for absolute answers than a declaration of the need to explore. Holmes leads us through a world of appearances, celebrating the necessary examination of what is concealed.

f2f: Shorthand for "face-to-face," as in meeting someone in real life, flesh-to-flesh, as opposed to in the electronic world of cyberspace. Used in chat rooms and while instant messaging on the Internet. At the core of this challenging new collection from Janet Holmes is the conceit of the sense of sight and the complex role it plays in women's self-identities and relationships. Emily Dickinson is introduced as the iconic female writer who, unread in her time, is frequently misinterpreted and unheard. Holmes relates Dickinson's self-isolation to the writer's isolation from the reader and the intimacy of the act of reading. Echo, Eurydice, and Eros—other "E" figures, these mythological, their stories relying on seeing and being seen—are related by Holmes to twentieth-century counterparts manifesting as an anorexic, a flamboyant dresser, and a love god, respectively. Holmes intersperses her meditation with the language of online text-messaging, employing it as a vehicle for probing the dual limitations and liberties afforded on-line correspondents. Through her correspondents' postings, we chart their relationship evolving without benefit of ever meeting or exchanging photographs, the participants deeply affected by the absence of the sense of sight. By turns provocative and timid, lyrical and terse, the voices in f2f exhibit myriad human reactions to how seeing each other influences how we behave.

The poetry in Humanophone, the third volume from award-winning poet Janet Holmes, celebrates composers and creators such as Harry Partch, Raymond Scott, Leon Theremin, and George Ives, who had to invent new instruments to capture the music heard in their "mind's ear." Taking its title from a George Ives invention -- an instrument made from a group of humans, each of whom sings a single note, arrayed like a xylophone -- Humanophone appears on its surface to be about music. But its real subject is the artist's creative dilemma -- how to deliver a new idea, whether it be a song or a poem, through existing media.

Holmes works language into a variety of forms both familiar -- syllabics, couplets, villanelles, sonnets -- and engagingly new. With everything from kumquats to abandoned wedding pictures, Clara Bow to Bill Robinson, Keats's belle dame to Dante's Francesca, feng shui to a recipe for octopus, Humanophone celebrates how the body shapes art from the world it is given.

In Humanophone, Holmes not only chronicles events such as Harry Partch's transformation of glass chemical containers from the Berkeley Radition Lab into the melodious and beautiful Cloud-Chamber Bowls, but also traces a playful path through the familiar, as a trombone's upwards glissando becomes "a backwards pratfall/in brass." Engaging a broad array of subjects, Holmes's poetry is as delightful as it is thoughtful, as simple as it is complex.

The nineteenth century opened in the flicker of tallow candles and closed in the glare of Edison's electric lamp. Between those two events inventors and manufacturers developed a wonderful assortment of progressively more efficient lighting devices, burning a variety of fuels. Loris Russell records with scientific attention to detail – backed up by more than 200 illustrations – how these lamps were made and used. His text is interspersed with accounts of his own experiments with the fuels and mechanisms of earlier generations. Russell drew on his own large collection of lighting devices and on the collections of museums and of other individuals for his study, and documented his research with Canadian and United States patent papers, trade catalogues, newspapers, magazines, memoirs, and books. This is the first detailed story of that technological revolution in North America, and while told in the setting of the Canadian home, the developing technology of lighting was common to both sides of the border. A Heritage of Light is of equal importance to collectors and historians in the United States and Canada. This newly reprinted edition of Russell's classic 1968 study has a new introduction by Janet Holmes.

The nineteenth century opened in the flicker of tallow candles and closed in the glare of Edison's electric lamp. Between those two events inventors and manufacturers developed a wonderful assortment of progressively more efficient lighting devices, burning a variety of fuels. Loris Russell records with scientific attention to detail - backed up by more than 200 illustrations - how these lamps were made and used. His text is interspersed with accounts of his own experiments with the fuels and mechanisms of earlier generations.

Russell drew on his own large collection of lighting devices and on the collections of museums and of other individuals for his study, and documented his research with Canadian and United States patent papers, trade catalogues, newspapers, magazines, memoirs, and books. This is the first detailed story of that technological revolution in North America, and while told in the setting of the Canadian home, the developing technology of lighting was common to both sides of the border. "A Heritage of Light" is of equal importance to collectors and historians in the United States and Canada. This newly reprinted edition of Russell's classic 1968 study has a new introduction by Janet Holmes.

The poetry in Humanophone, the third volume from award-winning poet Janet Holmes, celebrates composers and creators such as Harry Partch, Raymond Scott, Leon Theremin, and George Ives, who had to invent new instruments to capture the music heard in their "mind's ear." Taking its title from a George Ives invention -- an instrument made from a group of humans, each of whom sings a single note, arrayed like a xylophone -- Humanophone appears on its surface to be about music. But its real subject is the artist's creative dilemma -- how to deliver a new idea, whether it be a song or a poem, through existing media.

Holmes works language into a variety of forms both familiar -- syllabics, couplets, villanelles, sonnets -- and engagingly new. With everything from kumquats to abandoned wedding pictures, Clara Bow to Bill Robinson, Keats's belle dame to Dante's Francesca, feng shui to a recipe for octopus, Humanophone celebrates how the body shapes art from the world it is given.

In Humanophone, Holmes not only chronicles events such as Harry Partch's transformation of glass chemical containers from the Berkeley Radition Lab into the melodious and beautiful Cloud-Chamber Bowls, but also traces a playful path through the familiar, as a trombone's upwards glissando becomes "a backwards pratfall/in brass." Engaging a broad array of subjects, Holmes's poetry is as delightful as it is thoughtful, as simple as it is complex.

The chapters in this book illustrate a range of cutting edge research in language and gender studies, with contributions from a number of internationally recognised experts. The three themes, femininity, feminism and gendered discourse are central to research in language and gender, and the book thus makes a valuable contribution to a number of current debates.Femininity comprises a central aspect of gender performance and the process of "gendering" individuals is on-going and unavoidable. For many people, the word "femininity" has associations with "frilly pink party dresses," with demureness, deference, and lack of power and influence. The first section of this book demonstrates some alternative conceptions of femininity, and a range of ways in which femininity is performed in different contexts and cultures. The analyses illustrate that we are all continually performing aspects of femininity (and masculinity) in flexible, dynamic, ambiguous, predictable and unpredictable ways.Language and gender research has a long tradition of engagement with the political, and specifically with feminism and feminist goals. The chapters in the second section of this book demonstrate the value of identifying gendered patterns in order to challenge their potentially repressive effects in social interaction in a range of spheres. The researchers analyse contemporary international evidence of sexism in language use, including material from Japanese spam emails expressing sexual desire, and from media reporting on male and female candidates in the 2007 French elections.The final section of this book focuses on the different ways in which we negotiate our gender through discourse. Gender is just one of many facets of our intrinsically hybridized social identities. Nevertheless, it is a very significant facet, a salient dimension in everyday life, with a pervasive social influence on everything we do and say. Interaction is typically viewed through "gendered" spectacles much of the time. The chapters in the third section focus in detail on diverse ways in which gender is constructed through discourse, examining the interaction between individual agency and the larger constraining social structures, including socio-cultural norms, within which that agency is enacted.Finally, the different contributions in this book represent research from a multiplicity of geographic and cultural backgrounds, supporting efforts to internationalise language and gender research, and to raise awareness of empirical studies undertaken in a wide range of linguistic and cultural contexts.