Lexical Priming proposes a radical new theory of the lexicon, which amounts to a completely new theory of language based on how words are used in the real world. Here they are not confined to the definitions given to them in dictionaries but instead interact with other words in common patterns of use.

Using concrete statistical evidence from a corpus of newspaper English, but also referring to travel writing and literary text, the author argues that words are 'primed' for use through our experience with them, so that everything we know about a word is a product of our encounters with it. This knowledge explains how speakers of a language succeed in being fluent, creative and natural.

Silence takes on meaning based on the contexts of its occurrence. This is especially true in social interactions: consider the difference between silence after "lemme think," and silence after "will you marry me?" This book examines a particular form of silence, the conversational lapse. These regularly appear in conversations when all interactants pass up the opportunity to speak, and are moments when talk seems to falter or give way to matters extraneous to the conversation. What are these silences for the participants who, by virtue of not speaking, allowed them to develop? Elliott M. Hoey here offers the first in-depth analysis of lapses in conversation. Using methods from Conversation Analysis, the author explores hundreds of lapses in naturally occurring social occasions with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of how participants produce and locate order in lapses. Particular emphasis is given to how lapses emerge, what people do during the silence, and how they restart conversation afterwards. This research uncovers participants' methods for organizing lapses in their everyday affairs such that those silences are rendered as understandable periods of non-talk. By articulating participants' understandings of when and where talk is relevant, necessary, or appropriate, the research brings into focus the borderlines between talk-in-interaction and other realms of social life. This book shows lapses to be a particular and fascinating kind of silence with unique relevancies for the social situations of which they are a part.

Gabriel Smith is a black man in a dress. Always in full makeup, he ridicules, inspires, and entertains; he is both mother and father, pageant and relief.

Tortured by his zealous father, Gabriel moves to Cleveland, Ohio, to start a new life. Soon, he learns that his presence, despite giving order to those closest to him, incites fear and hatred. As past and present collide, Gabriel becomes the mirror that reflects the lives of the people surrounding him, the spectacle that isn't as bad as the histories they want to escape completely.

Set against the backdrop of a city recovering from one of the worst race riots in history, The Butterfly Lady is filled with pain encased in the blues. This stunning first novel wrestles with the horrors of love and the consequences of being black, gay, and male.

Advance praise for The Butterfly Lady:

In The Butterfly Lady, Hoey, clearly driven by love for his characters and a passion to understand their lives, weaves a cocoon of community. Fearless, in the tradition of Morrison, he looks under beds and throws open closet doors to present truth drawing the reader in to the place where lives crash.
- Anton Nimblett, author of Sections of an Orange

The Butterfly Lady riffs from the page in bursts and twists, conflagrating image, sound, language and character in a literary mimicry of jazz ... Danny Hoey's confident prose takes the reader into the heart of Cleveland's inner-city where its inhabitants face sometimes unanswerable questions of sexuality, identity, and race.
- Britta Coleman, author of Potter Springs, winner of the Lone Star Scribe Award

Danny M. Hoey, Jr.'s The Butterfly Lady presents haunting characters that ask - demand - a great deal: Understand and embrace the complications and nuances of African-American identity. Arm yourself with these revelations. This is a terrific novel; devastating and hopeful because Hoey so unflinchingly educates the reader. He writes with the fierceness and truth of James Baldwin and has given us a story that lingers and informs long after the last sentence.
- Dana Johnson, author of Elsewhere, California and Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O Connor Award