Dialogue in Spanish


Book Description

"Dialogue in Spanish" provides a strong theoretical and empirical foundation for the study of dialogue. This edited collection of twelve original studies contributes to a broad comprehension of dialogue in two general contexts: personal interactions among friends and family; and public speech, such as political debates, medical interviews, court translations and service encounters. The studies, written by authors from Canada, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, the United States and Venezuela, present an in-depth look at issues and elements of dialogue such as irony, narrativity, discourse markers, coherence, conflict and expectations. Background research on dialogue grounds the articles in such areas as discourse analysis, pragmatics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and linguistics. The book will prove useful to those who study conversational interaction, pragmatics, and discourse analysis as applied to various functions and contexts, and it will be of particular interest to researchers and students of linguistics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, communications and education.




Irony and Humor


Book Description

Irony and Humor: From pragmatics to discourse is a complete updated panorama of linguistic research on irony and humor, based on a variety of perspectives, corpora and theories. The book collects the most recent contributions from such diverse approaches as Relevance Theory, Cognitive Linguistics, General Theory of Verbal Humor, Neo-Gricean Pragmatics or Argumentation. The volume is organized in three parts referring to pragmatic perspectives, mediated discourse, and conversational interaction. This book will be highly relevant for anyone interested in pragmatics, discourse analysis as well as social sciences.




Political Discourse in Emergent, Fragile, and Failed Democracies


Book Description

Any system of government is comprised of several dimensions of functionality, which must all work in congruence. When any part of the system is dysfunctional, the government’s stability becomes fractured and societal problems can arise. Political Discourse in Emergent, Fragile, and Failed Democracies examines the effects of unstable democratic systems of government in modern society, providing an imperative analysis on political communications from such nations. Highlighting real-world examples on the constraints seen in malfunctioning or emerging governments, this book is a pivotal reference source for policy makers, researchers, academicians, and upper-level students interested in politics and governance.




The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics is a comprehensive critical survey of the field of L2 pragmatics, collecting a number of chapters that highlight the key theories, methods, pedagogies, and research findings throughout its development over the last four decades. Demonstrating the ways in which pragmatics has long served as a lens through which to examine patterns of L2 development, the volume is divided into six parts which reflect the field’s structure and evolution: • Constructs and units of analysis • Theoretical approaches • Methodological approaches • Pedagogical approaches • Contexts and individual considerations • L2 pragmatics in the global era The handbook has a particular focus on covering not only traditional topics in the field, such as constructs of pragmatic competence (e.g., speech acts, implicature), teaching and assessment, and pragmatics learning in a study abroad program, but also emerging areas of study, including interactional pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, usage-based approaches, corpus linguistics, and psycholinguistic experimentation. Each chapter introduces the topic and follows with a description of its theoretical underpinnings, an overview of existing literature, appraisal of current practice, concluding with a discussion of future directions for research and key readings. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics is an essential resource for those with an interest in second language acquisition, pragmatics, and language teaching.










Rhetoric and Irony


Book Description

This pathbreaking study integrates the histories of rhetoric, literacy, and literary aesthetics up to the time of Augustine, focusing on Western concepts of rhetoric as dissembling and of language as deceptive that Swearingen argues have received curiously prominent emphasis in Western aesthetics and language theory. Swearingen reverses the traditional focus on rhetoric as an oral agonistic genre and examines it instead as a paradigm for literate discourse. She proposes that rhetoric and literacy have in the West disseminated the interrelated notions that through learning rhetoric individuals can learn to manipulate language and others; that language is an unreliable, manipulable, and contingent vehicle of thought, meaning, and communication; and that literature is a body of pretty lies and beguiling fictions. In a bold concluding chapter Swearingen aligns her thesis concerning early Western literacy and rhetoric with contemporary critical and rhetorical theory; with feminist studies in language, psychology, and culture; and with studies of literacy in multi- and cross-cultural settings.