Books in the Linguistic Insights series

A collection of articles that covers a range of topics in English philology and history of linguistics. It offers an approach in literary and linguistic research into Anglo-Saxon England. It deals with English phonology from both historical and contemporary standpoints, and another with a theoretical discussion of etymological inquiry.

A broad strand of applied linguistic research has focused on the language of science and scholarship, stressing its role in the construction and negotiation of knowledge claims. Central to the success of such texts is the use of evaluative expressions encoding what is considered to be desirable or undesirable in a given domain. While the speech acts relevant to evaluation have been extensively researched, little is known of the underlying values they encode. This volume seeks to fill the gap by exploring the main facets of academic value in a corpus of research articles from leading journals in anthropology, biology, computer science, economics, engineering, history, mathematics, medicine, physics and sociology. The collocations and qualified entities associated with such variables in the corpus provide insights into how scholars draw on a repertoire of conventional, largely unqualified, axiological meanings instrumental to the production of new knowledge in their field.

Discourse, Identities and Roles in Specialized Communication

Discourse, Identities and Genres in Corporate Communication

Suitable for researchers, scholars and students interested in the field of pragmatics, in general, or in the fields of cross-cultural and second, and specifically for those interested in speech acts and politeness, this book provides a description of a variety of speech acts and politeness strategies in different languages and cultures.

Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise Genres and Trends

This book investigates lexical borrowing processes of our era in a sociolinguistic context. Innovatively, it seeks to examine language contact in a comprehensive way, taking into account socio- and psycholinguistic aspects as well as implications for language politics. As the sociolinguistic focus is primary, the volume also discusses how technology influences languages and to what extent it creates new conditions for language contact. As a result, it is proposed that the term language contact needs to be reevaluated, since the context of globalization has changed its very essence. As the increase in the importance of English has been the most significant global geolinguistic event in the past fifty years, the role of English as an international lingua franca in modern borrowing is analyzed in detail. Two case studies are also given, one on the role of English in the EU and another on the linguistic situation of multilingual Switzerland. The characteristic features of lexical borrowing are illustrated in a complex way on linguistic material of a total of over 5000 recent loans in English, Spanish, German and Hungarian.

Becoming Multilingual

In many parts of the world the language education scenario is increasingly dynamic, as demographic, economic and social changes powerfully influence socio-political agendas in the sphere of language education. This volume provides a useful overview of (second) language education in the world today.

This book received the Cambridge/Language Teaching Brumfit Award 2010. Drawing upon a convergence of sociocultural theory and linguistic emergentism, this book presents a longitudinal investigation of the development of ESL users' written lexicogrammatical patterning (collocations and colligations). A qualitative methodology ('Lexical Trail Analysis') was developed in order to capture a dynamic and historical view of the ways in which the participants combined words in their writing. This involved tracing single lexemes diachronically through individuals' written corpora. The writers were interviewed about the histories of particular word combinations. Selected patterns were later tested using the principles of dynamic testing. The findings of these combined data types - essays, interviews and tests - suggest that sociocognitive resources such as memory and attention and the ability to imitate and adapt linguistic resources are paramount in the massive task of internalizing the lexicogrammatical patterning of a second language. The participants were agents of change, seeking assistance and adapting patterns to suit their changing goals. Their activity is theorized in a model of language patterning from which implications for second language learning and teaching are drawn.

This volume explores discourse genres in Web-mediated communication, and in particular it deals with genre change and evolution under the pressure of technological renewal and the availability of new affordances, focusing on a variety of discursive practices including those that emerge from Web 2.0 platforms.

The book presents a text-based study of discourse practices in placement, a hybrid zone which re-contextualises academic knowledge and professional practices. Using Lave and Wenger's Communities of Practice as the overarching theoretical framework, the study investigates how novices learn to write like their professional counterparts. By collecting texts completed in various placement contexts and in-depth qualitative interviews with informants, the study features a multi-dimensional approach to the analysis of discourse practices in terms of text construction and text consumption. The issues of genre, feedback, identity and role associated with placement learning are brought into focus.

Given the consolidated position of English as the international language for communication in business and management, this book depicts a scenario in which to analyse and compare interactions between eastern/western European users of English, as well as Asian/European/North American speakers.

The volume explores Creativity and Innovation in Language Education linked with issues such as cultures and language use, language teaching, business settings, technology. It reflects on strategies for achieving language competences, while underlining the belief that creativity is a skill to identify and stimulate for the benefit of the entire society.

The Dynamic Systems Theory perspective offers new lenses to probe into long-term foreign language development. This book reports on findings of a longitudinal multiple-case study on the vocabulary development of eight university-level Chinese learners of English. Framed within the Dynamic Systems framework, the study assumes a holistic perspective towards vocabulary knowledge and aims to project a comprehensive picture of vocabulary development in a typical foreign language learning setting such as the Chinese context. To this end, a wide array of quantitative measurements and qualitative methods was employed. In-depth examination was given to both psycholinguistic and sociocultural processes involved in the complex and dynamic development of vocabulary knowledge. Efforts were also made to establish meaningful links between the learners' cognitive, mental, pedagogical and social contexts. Although the focus is on vocabulary development, what is discussed in the book is applicable to a wide range of topics in foreign language learning and development.

Current Perspectives in Second Language Vocabulary Research

Explains how and why grammatical gender disappeared from English through a detailed analysis of unhistorical gender assignment within the noun phrase in "Layamon's Brut".

Academic Identity Traits

This study deals with the frequency and use of clausal complementation in the oral production of two different Spanish learner groups (i.e. Galician/Spanish learners and Spanish learners) as compared with a further learner group (i.e. German learners) and with native speakers (British students). By using corpus and learner linguistic approaches, this research aims to find out and explain the similarities and differences regarding the use of clausal complementation structures in the oral English of several groups of non-native and native speakers. In addition, this study also depicts the process of collection of the oral corpus VICOLSE, which contains transcripts of spoken English data produced by bilingual Galician/Spanish learners. The identification of variation in the use of clausal complementation across the data sheds light on the particular characteristics of spoken learner language syntax/structuring.

This book explores the techniques and discursive strategies that are typical of the communicative interactions between professionals and laymen in a jury trial. It also investigates the complex relationship that emerges between written and oral communication in different phases of the trial. The analysis takes into account the many nuances that define these dynamics and the various possibilities that the jurors have to intervene in the process, particularly in the light of recent procedural developments. Special attention is devoted to the observation of the specific strategies adopted to illustrate legal ideas and concepts to the jurors according to the speakers' various communicative purposes. By adopting a discourse analytical perspective which combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the book highlights the hybridity of the language used in court and the combination of different styles and registers.

A collection of papers using samples of real language data (corpora) to explore variation in the use of English. It celebrates the achievements of Toshio Saito, a pioneer in corpus linguistics within Japan and founder of the Japan Association for English Corpus Studies (JAECS).

This volume investigates the changes undergone by written communication in our globalized world as English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). The latter usually functions as a language for communication purposes, but also becomes a language for identification purposes. The study takes into account different web-genres: from the replication of existing genres in other media to cybergenres, whose key evolutionary force is the progressive exploitation of the new functionalities afforded by the new medium. The variety of the contexts of use has made it possible to consider different ELF-using communities of practice, whose members adopt ELF and adapt it to express individual, national and professional identities in international interactions. The analysis focuses on lexicogrammatical innovations, which inevitably change in accordance with the different contexts of use, as well as on the communicative strategies underpinning these changes.

This book comprises a range of general discussions on tradition and innovation in the methodology used in discourse studies (Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Argumentation Theory, Rhetoric, Philosophy) and a number of empirical applications of such methodologies in the analysis of actual instances of language use in the public sphere.

With the purpose of making the process of legal translation accessible to investigation, the author resorts to the parametrization of translational reality as an inalienable component of her translational theory being proposed here for consideration. The aim is to propose a more precise theory of legilinguistic translation which compels the author to clearly distinguish primitive terms and postulates. These latter specify the image (model) of the reality in question in terms of relevant dimensions used to characterize a set of translational objects and relations. The dimensions secure a systematic examination of the translation reality and process. In order to illustrate the practical application of the parametrization in legal translation, the discussion concerning this translation approach is limited to certain selected types of legal communicative communities which is amply exemplified. The research is based on data and information gathered during an in-depth case study of translations and parallel text corpora mainly in the field of civil law including insolvency and bankruptcy law.

This book presents a comprehensive study of the subject of text and discourse coherence, integrating some of the traditional trends of discourse analysis and creating new channels of research which help to understand the notion further. Based on the work of leading theoreticians and on the actual consideration of authentic linguistic material, the book identifies the structural and cognitive aspects of standard discourse coherence and, as a variation from other mainstream approaches, it also explores the more subjective and culturally-bound conceptual aspects of coherence construction in creative modes of discourse. To achieve these aims, the study incorporates concepts and analytical practices from cognitive linguistic theories of conceptualisation; additionally, it draws from theories of communication to address the idiosyncratic and socio-cultural aspects which affect the formation of coherent discourse patterns. The intention is to broaden the perspective of the subject and to focus on its complexity, as well as to stress the need to conceive of discourse coherence as a multi-dimensional phenomenon consisting of numerous procedural components.

This book investigates several important issues revolving around the psycholinguistic modelling of language proficiency in terms of L2 linguistic knowledge, which is a topic of considerable interest and importance in SLA theories and language testing practice. Four tests including the Elicited Imitation Test, Timed Grammaticality Judgment Test, Untimed Grammaticality Judgment Test and Metalinguistic Knowledge Test are employed to examine the extent to which they provide separate measures of Chinese third-year university students' L2 lingusitic knowledge. The role of four psychological factors - language analytic ability, language learning motivation, language anxiety and learner beliefs - in learners' L2 linguistic knowledge is also explored.

This book is a collection of research-based papers on the development of Malaysian English (ME) from the immediate post-Independence period to the present. The chapters chart the chronological, linguistic as well as functional development of contemporary ME that provide new information on the variety beyond its identity as a postcolonial English.

Aiming at exemplifying the methodology of learner corpus profiling, this book describes salient features of Romanian Learner English. As a starting point, the volume offers a comprehensive presentation of the Romanian-English contrastive studies. Another innovative aspect of the book refers to the use of the first Romanian Corpus of Learner English, whose compilation is the object of a methodological discussion. In one of the main chapters, the book introduces the methodology of learner corpus profiling and compares it with existing approaches. The profiling approach is emphasised by corpus-based quantitative and qualitative investigations of Romanian Learner English. Part of the investigation is dedicated to the lexico-grammatical profiles of articles, prepositions and genitives. The frequency-based collocation analyses are integrated with error analyses and extended into error pattern samples. Furthermore, contrasting typical Romanian Learner English constructions with examples from the German and the Italian learner corpora opens the path to new contrastive interlanguage analyses.

This book addresses the issue of task equivalence, which is of fundamental importance in the areas of language testing and task-based research, where task equivalence is a prerequisite. The main study examines the two 'seemingly-equivalent' picture-based spoken narrative tasks, using a multi-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies with MFRM analysis of the ratings, the analysis of linguistic performances by Japanese candidates and native speakers of English (NS), expert judgements of the task characteristics, and perceptions of the candidates and NS. The results reveal a complex picture with a number of variables involved in ensuring task equivalence, raising relevant issues regarding the theories of task complexity and the commonly-used linguistic variables for examining learner spoken language. This book has important implications for the possible measures that can be taken to avoid selecting non-equivalent tasks for research and teaching.

This book, which is aimed at researchers in specialised varieties of English, provides an illustration of how linguists can use terms, i.e. the expression of concepts in specialised fields, as entry points to explore any specialised domain, whether academic or professional, and to get acquainted with its history, its culture, and the evolution of the ideas that have nurtured it. Choosing the field of economics as an example, the author approaches terms from a diachronic, descriptive and contextual perspective, focusing on neonyms, metaphorical, ambiguous or indeterminate terms, as well as interface terms likely to underscore the evolving character of the domain. The analysis points out the role of terms as milestones highlighting key discoveries that have shaped scientific fields; terms can also be considered as barometers of the evolution of knowledge in a specific field and of a changing social environment. Whoever thought terms were only interesting for their definitions or for translation purposes will no doubt be surprised at the insights that can be gained from considering them from a different angle and for other purposes.