Shortlisted for the ESSE 2022 Book Awards Shortlisted for the 2022 SAES / AFEA Research Prize Building on an upsurge of interest in the Americanisation of British novels triggered by the Harry Potter series, this book explores the various ways that British novels, from children's fiction to travelogues and Book Prize winners, have been adapted and rewritten for the US market. Drawing on a vast corpus of over 80 works and integrating the latest research in multimodality and stylistics, Linda Pilliere analyses the modifications introduced to make British English texts more culturally acceptable and accessible to the American English reader. From paratextual differences in cover, illustrations, typeface and footnotes to dialectal changes to lexis, tense, syntax and punctuation, Pilliere explores the sociocultural and ideological pressures involved in intralingual translation and shows how the stylistic effects of such changes - including loss of meaning, voice, rhythm and word play - often result in a more muted American edition. In doing so, she reveals how homing in on numerous small adjustments can provide fascinating insights into the American publishing process and readership.

This book examines the ways in which ghosts haunt and shape cultural identities and memory, considering the manner in which the fluctuations of such identities sometimes imply the rethinking or rewriting of the past. Drawing on case studies in historical, political, literary and linguistic studies, it explores the narratives that produce imagined communities and identities and the places in which cultural identities are constructed through memory, asking how far these identities and memories disinherit or exclude otherness, and how far ghosts disturb orderly narratives, inviting multiple readings of the past. Thematically organized to consider the persistence of ghosts within present memory and identity, the creation of new identities through intertwining narratives of the past, and the reclamation of identities in postcolonial contexts, Memory and Identity: Ghosts of the past in the English-speaking world offers a multi-disciplinary examination of the concept of haunting. Memory and Identity will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and history with interests in memory and identity.

This path-breaking study of the standardisation of English goes well beyond the traditional prescriptivism versus descriptivism debate. It argues that the way norms are established and enforced is the result of a complex network of social factors and cannot be explained simply by appeals to power and hegemony. It brings together insights from leading researchers to re-centre the discussion on linguistic communities and language users. It examines the philosophy underlying the urge to standardise language, and takes a closer look at both well-known and lesser-known historical dictionaries, grammars and usage guides, demonstrating that they cannot be simply labelled as 'prescriptivist'. Drawing on rich empirical data and case studies, it shows how the norm continues to function in society, influencing and affecting language users even today.

Shortlisted for the ESSE 2022 Book Awards Shortlisted for the 2022 SAES / AFEA Research Prize Building on an upsurge of interest in the Americanisation of British novels triggered by the Harry Potter series, this book explores the various ways that British novels, from children's fiction to travelogues and Book Prize winners, have been adapted and rewritten for the US market. Drawing on a vast corpus of over 80 works and integrating the latest research in multimodality and stylistics, Linda Pilliere analyses the modifications introduced to make British English texts more culturally acceptable and accessible to the American English reader. From paratextual differences in cover, illustrations, typeface and footnotes to dialectal changes to lexis, tense, syntax and punctuation, Pilliere explores the sociocultural and ideological pressures involved in intralingual translation and shows how the stylistic effects of such changes - including loss of meaning, voice, rhythm and word play - often result in a more muted American edition. In doing so, she reveals how homing in on numerous small adjustments can provide fascinating insights into the American publishing process and readership.