Books in the Contemporary Studies in Descriptive Linguistics series

Intertextuality in reading - namely the way in which written texts refer to other texts - has recently attracted attention in the field of linguistics and related disciplines. This book offers a unique look at the operation of intertextuality in real-world texts and the role of readers' cognitive processes in responding to intertextuality. The first part of the book presents innovative research into how intertextuality operates within a corpus of authentic texts. It then draws on that analysis to propose a comprehensive framework by means of which types of intertextual reference in texts can be classified and explained. The second part provides a rare example of an empirical research study into readers' cognitive processes as they encounter intertextuality.

Social constructionists argue that our inner selves and our actions in the world are socially produced. Meta-realists, on the other hand, say that human consciousness is stratified, and not socially shaped at all levels. How do the human acts of creativity and resistance illuminate these different perspectives on human consciousness? This book explores theories of self and agency through a critical discourse analysis of the accounts of five British artists talking about their motivations, their creative processes and their experiences of the practices and institutions of visual art. Throughout the analysis the author considers how we voice dimensions of being that are ¿beyond¿ language, and how these words impact on our sense of self and actions. The concept of self realisation is at the centre of this book and is critically examined. The analysis also explores the construction of social identities through family relations and institutional art practices and the media. It shows how they can provide solidarity for those who risk breaking social norms, but at the same time build barriers of difference.

Following two major waves of immigration after World War II, the Bangladeshi community in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets is now one of the largest in the Bangladeshi diaspora, counting some 65,000 people. This is the first in-depth study of language and language-use within this Bangladeshi community. Based on a corpus of spontaneous speech data collected within the area, it provides the reader with an overview of the linguistic characteristics of ¿Bengali-English¿ as well as patterns of language-use. This book focuses on three areas: first, following the tradition of similar studies of the language of minority groups, an analysis of Bengali-English morphosyntax provides a detailed description of its morphosyntactic properties and the different developmental stages learners pass through. Second, a sociolinguistic analysis of the influence of social and psychological factors on the language and its speakers is presented. And last, based on quantitative survey data, and supported by qualitative data obtained through ethnographic interviews, the study evaluates the issues of identity and ethnolinguistic vitality within the Bangladeshi community.

This book combines a social constructionist view of academic writing with a pedagogical orientation seeking to explore the dialogic relationship between the culture of academic discourse communities and their rhetoric, and provide a comprehensive analysis of variation across disciplines, genres and national intellectual cultures. The analysis focuses on the rhetorical organisation of research genres and the resources that convey authors¿ epistemic and attitudinal stance. The findings form the basis for the design of socio-culturally oriented learning materials for the teaching of writing in the disciplines and the development of academic literacies.

Variations in speech melody (intonation) can be used to express different meanings (e.g. question vs. statement, friendliness). Yet, intonational information is hardly used in present-day linguistic models. When intonational information is used, it is mostly based on introspection rather than on empirical investigation; almost exclusively, a one-to-one relation between accent types and semantic function is assumed. This book focuses on an empirical investigation of thematic contrast in German. Thematic contrast has received considerable attention in semantics because sentences with contrastive themes can be used to imply propositions of various kinds without saying them explicitly. In this book, first an acoustic comparison between sentences produced in contrastive and non-contrastive contexts is described. Intonational realisation is quantified in terms of the height and position of tonal targets. The perceptual reality of different productions and the relevance of different acoustic cues are tested by means of rating experiments. Finally, the data are prosodically annotated by a group of linguists to explore the validity and explanatory power of different accent categories for contrastive and non-contrastive themes in German.

Can linguistic pragmatics be developed without the need to formulate rules, criteria or maxims? The author argues that rules as they have been conceived of within pragmatics, particularly speech act theory, are limiting and out of step with the linguistic science of recent decades. Using a hermeneutic approach to pragmatics, this book seeks to bring pragmatics closer to the cognitive paradigm that has transformed the other branches of the linguistic and communication sciences, with the help of developments in certain neighbouring disciplines such as philosophy, sociology and narratology. The elements that are opened up to pragmatics in this approach include some new conceptions of intentionality, intertextuality, communicative action and literary authorship, as well as the subjectivity of interpretation, which by its very nature ceaselessly transforms all forms of communication in its historical spiral.

This corpus-based study investigates the use of nominalization in English translations of Chinese literary prose by analysing three versions of the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber. This book provides a comprehensive look at nominalization in English translations of Chinese prose and encourages further study into nominalization in translation.

Analysis of language as a combination of both a structural and a lexical component overlooks a third all-encompassing aspect: dynamics. Dynamic Linguistics approaches the description of the complex phenomenon that is human language by focusing on this important but often neglected aspect. This book charts the belated recognition of the importance of dynamic synchrony in twentieth-century linguistics and discusses two other key concepts in some detail: speech community and language structure. Because of their vital role in the development of a dynamic approach to linguistics, the three linguists William Labov, Andre Martinet and Roman Jakobson are featured, in particular Martinet in whose later writings - neglected in the English-speaking world - the fullest appreciation of the dynamics of language to date are found. A sustained attempt is also made to chronicle precursors, between the nineteenth century and the 1970s, who provided inspiration for these three scholars in the development of a dynamic approach to linguistic description and analysis. The dynamic approach to linguistics is intended to help consolidate functional structuralists, geolinguists, sociolinguists and all other empirically minded linguists within a broader theoretical framework as well as playing a part in reversing the overformalism of the simplistic structuralist framework which has dominated, and continues to dominate, present-day linguistic description.

This edited collection explores an area of linguistics referred to as 'the method of exceptions and their correlations'. Exceptions to linguistic rules are studied as clues to understanding and improving the original rule. Topics include passive, irregular verbs, morphology, phonology and more, in languages such as English, Arabic and Russian.

The general aim of this book is to contribute to a better understanding of metonymy, using the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics. The book argues for a conceptual rather than purely linguistic basis for metonymy and explores distinctions between metonymy and other figurative language.

This book offers a new perspective on current semantic theory by analysing key aspects of linguistic meaning and non-truth-conditional semantics. It applies non-truth-conditional semantics to various areas of language and critically considers earlier approaches to the study of semantic meaning, such as truth-conditional semantics, Speech Act theory and Gricean conventional implicatures. The author argues that those earlier approaches to linguistic semantics do not stand up to close scrutiny and are subject to a number of counterexamples, indicating that they are insufficient for a comprehensive and unified account of linguistic semantics. An alternative framework is then presented based on recent developments in the field, demonstrating that it is possible to provide a unified account of linguistic semantics by making two fundamental distinctions between (a) conceptual and procedural meaning and (b) explicit and implicit communication. These two distinctions, combined with the various levels of representation available in linguistic communication, allow researchers to capture the variety of linguistic meaning encountered in natural language. The study includes a discussion of a number of areas within linguistic semantics, including sentence adverbials, parentheticals, discourse/pragmatic connectives, discourse particles, interjections and mood indicators.

Global English and Arabic

Discursive Constructions around Terrorism in the People's Daily (China) and The Sun (UK) before and after 9.11

Contrasting Meaning in Languages of the East and West

Addresses language learner autonomy, both as a theoretical construct and in relation to areas of application such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the European Language Portfolio (ELP), teacher training, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), and minority language provision.

Given the increasing use of English worldwide and in intercultural communication, there is a growing interest in attitudes towards non-native speaker accents in English. Research on attitudes towards non-native English accents is therefore important because of concerns about positive and negative discrimination between people who speak with different accents. This book reveals exactly what types of accent variations trigger positive and negative attitudes towards the speaker. The author argues that certain types of variation in the pronunciation of English can have a significant effect on how listeners identify an accent and explores how this variation affects the development of certain attitudes towards the speaker. Specific sounds that are difficult for many learners to acquire (e.g. the initial sounds in 'this' or 'June') are examined in terms of attitudes towards speakers' pronunciation, including an original comparison of two different kinds of non-native accents (German and Greek). The results of the study provide a basis for further research in second language acquisition and applied linguistics as well as practical information for language instructors at all levels of English education.

Offers a view of research into interdisciplinarity, language and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by providing an overview of teaching proposals within a university context. This title address themes that are crucial to the demands of modern society.

Describes the grammatical system of modality in Japanese in terms of the form-function relationship within the scope of a framework based on the European school of modality. This title deals with the modal system and its constituents in Japanese, accommodating all the grammatical means of modariti in the Nihongo bunpou (Japanese grammar system).