Language in Life, and a Life in Language: Jacob Mey, a Festschrift


Book Description

This is a collection of invited papers that honours Professor Jacob Mey on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Professor Mey is, and has for a long time been, at once one of the most respected, enterprising, industrious, scholarly and, now, avuncular members of the numerous linguistics communities in which he has worked. He has made, over a distinguished working life, significant contributions to all of the sub-disciplines of linguistics, from phonetics, through phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and especially pragmatics. He has sought to make connections between these sub-disciplines and broader areas of thought. These connections have resulted in ground breaking advances in, for example, Japanese sociolinguistics, pragmatics and artificial intelligence, Marxist linguistics, pragmatics and therapy, pragmatics and machine-processed information, gender and language, literary pragmatics and societal pragmatics. The collection ends with an in-depth discussion between Professor Mey and one of the editors in which Professor Mey speaks fully and frankly about his life in language and language in life.




The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor presents the first ever comprehensive, in-depth treatment of all the sub-fields of the linguistics of humor, broadly conceived as the intersection of the study of language and humor. The reader will find a thorough historical, terminological, and theoretical introduction to the field, as well as detailed treatments of the various approaches to language and humor. Deliberately comprehensive and wide-ranging, the handbook includes chapter-long treatments on the traditional topics covered by language and humor (e.g., teasing, laughter, irony, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, the major linguistic theories of humor, translation) but also cutting-edge treatments of internet humor, cognitive linguistics, relevance theoretic, and corpus-assisted models of language and humor. Some chapters, such as the variationist sociolinguistcs, stylistics, and politeness are the first-ever syntheses of that particular subfield. Clusters of related chapters, such as conversation analysis, discourse analysis and corpus-assisted analysis allow multiple perspectives on complex trans-disciplinary phenomena. This handbook is an indispensable reference work for all researchers interested in the interplay of language and humor, within linguistics, broadly conceived, but also in neighboring disciplines such as literary studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. The authors are among the most distinguished scholars in their fields.




A Pragmatic Approach to Fluency and Disfluency in Learner Language


Book Description

This monograph presents analyses of filled and unfilled pauses, cut-offs, repair, discourse markers and other phenomena often referred to as disfluencies in the context of advanced language learners' PowerPoint presentations. It adopts a multimodal perspective to demonstrate the functions of these elements in interaction. Paired with gaze shifts, pointing gestures and posture shifts, they act as facilitators of joint visual orientation, mutual understanding, and accountable actions. Therefore, this volume suggests the name cofluency to reflect their potential functionality. Cofluencies are essential elements of multimodal chunks and multimodal patterns, and these are building blocks of a multimodal turn-taking mechanism for presentations. These concepts are illustrated and discussed based on excerpts from naturally occurring classroom data.




Action and Agency in Dialogue


Book Description

What happens when people communicate or dialogue with each other? This is the daunting question that this book proposes to address by starting from a controversial hypothesis: What if human interactants were not the only ones to be considered, paraphrasing Austin (1962), as “doing things with words”? That is, what if other “things” could also be granted the status of agents in a dialogical situation? Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, incarnation, and ventriloquism proposes to explore this unique hypothesis by mobilizing metaphorically the notion of ventriloquism. According to this ventriloqual perspective, interactions are never purely local, but dislocal, that is, they constantly mobilize figures (collectives, principles, values, emotions, etc.) that incarnate themselves in people’s discussions. This highly original book, which develops the analytical, practical and ethical dimensions of such a theoretical positioning, may be of interest to communication scholars, linguists, sociologists, conversation analysts, management and organizational scholars, as well as philosophers interested in language, action and ethics.




Monosyllables


Book Description

Dieser Band versammelt zehn Aufsätze, in denen Monosyllaba in verschiedenen Sprachen Asiens, Afrikas und Europas aus unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven betrachtet werden. Einsilber sind in fast allen Sprachen der Welt vertreten. Sprachen wie das Chinesische bevorzugen bekanntermaßen diesen Silbentyp. In anderen, wie z. B. den Bantusprachen, muss ein Wort aus mindestens zwei Silben bestehen. In den europäischen Sprachen rücken Einsilber gerade erst in den Fokus linguistischen Interesses. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes beschäftigen sich sowohl mit phonetischen und phonologischen als auch mit morphologischen und funktionalen Aspekten von Einsilbern. Der Fokus richtet sich auf das Zusammenwirken von Silben- und Wortstruktur, wie auch auf die phonologischen und morphologischen Regeln der Wohlgeformtheit. Es wird sowohl die Entwicklung von Einsilbern in Sprachen, die diesen Silbentyp bevorzugen (ostasiatische Sprachen, aber auch Dänisch), als auch ihre spezielle Rolle als Ausnahmeform innerhalb des Lexikons und bei speziellen Wortformen wie z.B. den Imperativen diskutiert. Methodisch reicht die Spannweite von experimenteller Phonetik, über quantitative Linguistik und Analysen von Einzelsprachen bis hin zu großangelegten typologischen Vergleichen.




Rethinking Politeness with Henri Bergson


Book Description

In 1885, Henri Bergson addressed a class of French high school students on the subject of politeness. Bergson would go on to become one of the most influential philosophers of his time, yet although this essay set forth a striking theory of politeness and foreshadowed aspects of his later work, it remains remarkably little-known. Rethinking Politeness with Henri Bergson offers the first English translation of Discours sur la Politesse, and brings together leading linguistic anthropologists to critically engage with and expand on Bergson's ideas. At the core of Bergson's essay is a tripartite classification of politeness acts into politesse des manières (politeness of manners), politesse de l'esprit (politeness of mind/spirit), and politesse du coeur (politeness of the heart). Presented along a hierarchy of intersubjective attunement and ethical aspirations, Bergson's three types call for the progressive abandonment of habits when they get in the way of our ability to help others. They can also be read as an invitation to consider politeness as a dimension of human sociability that is relevant to social theory. Collectively, the essays in this volume untangle the ideological, socio-historical, and material conditions that shape notions of the ideal social agent, and propose a rethinking of politeness that serves as a bridge to larger issues of civility, citizenship, and democracy.




A Concise Introduction to Linguistics


Book Description

Now in its sixth edition, A Concise Introduction to Linguistics provides students with a detailed introduction to the core concepts of language as it relates to culture. The textbook includes a focus on linguistic anthropology, unpacking the main contributions of linguistics to the study of human communication and culture. Aimed at the general education student, the textbook also provides anthropology, linguistics, and English majors with the resources needed to pursue advanced courses in this area. Written in an accessible manner that does not assume previous knowledge of linguistics, this new edition contains expanded discussions on linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics (including an expanded section on trans and nonbinary language), and pragmatics. The textbook incorporates a robust set of pedagogical features, including marginal definitions, a substantial glossary, chapter summaries, and learning exercises. Brand new to this edition are a full International Phonetic Alphabet chart, new exercises with languages other than English, and new illustrations.




Words and Meanings


Book Description

This book presents cross-linguistic and cross-cultural investigations of word meaning from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. The words they consider are complex, culturally important, and basic, in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay.




Discourse Constructions in English


Book Description

This book emphasizes the advantages of examining discourse connectivity from a constructionist perspective and highlights the role of discourse configurations in the construction of meaning. The research contained advances the field of cognitive classification and categorization of discourse constructions. The text is a great improvement in the discourse analysis literature, since it uniquely clarifies the subtleties of meaning between different discourse markers that are frequently treated as equivalent by lexicographers. It is unique in being the first contribution to the creation of a Constructicon at the discourse level and it fills an important gap within cognitively oriented constructionist accounts that have mostly restricted their analyses to argument-structure and illocutionary constructions. This yearbook appeals to students and researchers working within corpus linguistics.




The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality


Book Description

Significantly expanded and updated, the second edition of The Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality brings together a team of the leading specialists in the field to create a comprehensive overview of key historical themes and issues, along with methodologies and cutting-edge research topics. Examines the dynamic ways that women and men develop and manage gendered identities through their talk, presenting data and case studies from interactions in a range of social contexts and different communities Substantially updated for the second edition, including a new introduction, 24 newly-commissioned chapters, ten updated chapters, and a comprehensive index Includes new chapters on research in non-English speaking countries – from Asia to South America – and cutting-edge topics such as language, gender, and popular culture; language and sexual identities; and language, gender, and socio-phonetics New sections focus on key themes and issues in the field, such as methodological approaches to language and gender, incorporating new chapters on conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and variation theory Provides unrivalled geographic coverage and an essential resource for a wide range of disciplines, from linguistics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology to communication and gender studies