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Corpus Linguistics: An International Handbook (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science)
By L眉deling, Anke


  * Publisher:  Mouton de Gruyter
  * Number Of Pages:  606
  * Publication Date:  2009-03-15
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  3110207338
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9783110207330




About this Title

This handbook provides an up-to-date survey of the field of corpus linguistics, a field whose methodology has revolutionized much of the empirical work done in most fields of linguistic study over the past decade.

Corpus linguistics investigates human language by starting out from large collections of texts - spoken, written, or recorded. These language corpora, which are now regularly available in electronic form, are the basis for quantitative and qualitative research on almost any question of linguistic interest. Many techniques that are in use in corpus linguistics today are rooted in the tradition of the late 18th and 19th century, when linguistics began to make use of mathematical and empirical methods. Modern corpus linguistics has used and developed these methods in close connection with computer science and computational linguistics.

The handbook sketches the history of corpus linguistics, shows its potential, discusses its problems, and describes various methods of collecting, annotating, and searching corpora as well as processing corpus data. It also reports case studies that illustrate the wide range of linguistic research questions addressed in corpus linguistics. The over 60 articles included in the handbook are divided into five sections:
(1) the origins and history of corpus linguistics and surveys of its relationship to central fields of linguistics
(2) corpus compilation
(3) corpus types
(4) preprocessing of corpora
(5) the use and exploitation of corpora.

The final section gives an overview of the results of corpus studies obtained in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, stylometry, dialectology, and discourse analysis. It also reports on recent advances made in human and machine translation, contrastive studies, computer-assisted language learning, and automatic summarization.

The contributors to the volume are internationally known experts in their respective fields. The handbook is intended for a wide audience ranging from teachers, university students, and scholars to anyone interested in the use of computers in linguistic analyses and applications.

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Diachronic Change in the English Passive (Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change)
By Junichi Toyota


  * Publisher:  Palgrave Macmillan
  * Number Of Pages:  256
  * Publication Date:  2008-12-15
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0230553451
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780230553453



Product Description
JUNICHI TOYOTA presents a coherent historical development of the passive voice in English. Unique to this study is the use of continuum in the historical framework, and an examination of various constructions relating to the passive voice, demonstrating an intricate relationship among different constructions and functions over periods of time. Historical changes often leave some evidence of earlier constructions or functions, which can be identified in terms of gradience. This type of analysis has been neglected, and the voice continuum reveals that there are a number of cases of gradience. Furthermore detailed morphosemantic analysis reveals that not all previous work on the origin of some constructions, such as the get-passive, may be accurate, and some radical claims have been made concerning such constructions. The author explains complex details schematically, making this an accessible read for researchers and students of language history and language change.

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Talk Is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language
By John Haiman


  * Publisher:  Oxford University Press, USA
  * Number Of Pages:  232
  * Publication Date:  1998-03-26
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0195115244
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780195115246



Product Description:

Putting aside questions of truth and falsehood, the old "talk is cheap" maxim carries as much weight as ever. Indeed, perhaps more. For one need not be an expert in irony or sarcasm to realize that people don't necessarily mean what they say. Phrases such as "Yeah, right" and "I couldn't care less" are so much a part of the way we speak--and the way we live--that we are more likely to notice when they are absent (for example, Forrest Gump). From our everyday dialogues and conversations ("Thanks a lot!") to the screenplays of our popular films (Pulp Fiction and Fargo), what is said is frequently very different from what is meant. Talk is Cheap begins with this telling observation and proceeds to argue that such "unplain speaking" is fundamentally embedded in the way we now talk. Author John Haiman traces this sea-change in our use of language to the emergence of a postmodern "divided self" who is hyper-conscious that what he or she is saying has been said before; "cheap talk" thus allows us to distance ourselves from a social role with which we are uncomfortable. Haiman goes on to examine the full range of these pervasive distancing mechanisms, from cliches and quotation marks to camp and parody. Also, and importantly, this text highlights several new ways in which the English language is evolving (and has evolved) in response to our postmodern world view. In other words, this study shows us how what we are saying is gradually separating itself from how we say it. As provocative as it is timely, the book will be fascinating reading for students of linguistics, literature, communication, anthropology, philosophy, and popular culture.

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Wittgenstein on the Arbitrariness of Grammar
By Michael N. Forster


  * Publisher:  Princeton University Press
  * Number Of Pages:  264
  * Publication Date:  2005-10-17
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0691123918
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780691123912



Product Description:

What is the nature of a conceptual scheme? Are there alternative conceptual schemes? If so, are some more justifiable or correct than others? The later Wittgenstein already addresses these fundamental philosophical questions under the general rubric of "grammar" and the question of its "arbitrariness"--and does so with great subtlety. This book explores Wittgenstein's views on these questions.

Part I interprets his conception of grammar as a generalized (and otherwise modified) version of Kant's transcendental idealist solution to a puzzle about necessity. It also seeks to reconcile Wittgenstein's seemingly inconsistent answers to the question of whether or not grammar is arbitrary by showing that he believed grammar to be arbitrary in one sense and non-arbitrary in another.

Part II focuses on an especially central and contested feature of Wittgenstein's account: a thesis of the diversity of grammars. The author discusses this thesis in connection with the nature of formal logic, the limits of language, and the conditions of semantic understanding or access.

Strongly argued and cleary written, this book will appeal not only to philosophers but also to students of the human sciences, for whom Wittgenstein's work holds great relevance.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
PART ONE
GRAMMAR, ARBITRARINESS, NON-ARBITRARINESS
1. Wittgenstein’s Conception of Grammar 7
2. The Sense in Which Grammar Is Arbitrary 21
3. The Sense in Which Grammar Is Non-Arbitrary 66
4. Some Modest Criticisms 82
PART TWO
THE DIVERSITY THESIS
5. Alternative Grammars? The Case of Formal Logic 107
6. Alternative Grammars? The Limits of Language 129
7. Alternative Grammars? The Problem of Access 153
Appendix. The Philosophical Investigations 189
Notes 193
Index 241


Summary: Kantian influences
Rating: 4

If anything the book begins by giving a good collection of quotations from many different selections where Wittgenstein says the sorts of things he does on the nature of grammar. This is examined in light of Kantian views and the author points out the similarities - something I do not recall reading about before. I was under the impression that Wittgenstein was relatively unschooled philosophically. So seeing his views described as Kantian is exciting. "Wittgenstein's position can quite properly be described as idealist, in a sense closely analogous to that in which Kant's was." (P. 17) F contrasts his view (the diversity thesis) with that of Bernard Williams (may he rest in peace) and others, and in agreement with Norman Malcolm, on the interpretation of the later Wittgenstein's position on the "I" and the "We". (p. 24) So, the examples described here do not lead to the negative view that the alternatives given are unintelligible but rather that they are "either actual or possible." "In short, grammar is neither correct nor incorrect, neither true nor false, but is instead antecedent to correctness and incorrectness, truth and falsehood." (p. 48) Why does W hold this view? F says because "grammatical principles ... are rules or conventions, like those which govern games, that they have somewhat the character of commands, commandments, or categorical imperatives with which we enjoin ourselves to order our empirical or factual claims in specific ways." (p. 49) In some sense grammatical principles are non-arbitrary since they are "required to be useful." (p. 81) Chapter 4 deals with some criticisms. Part II of the book deals with the "diversity thesis."

Introduction
Recent philosophers—Donald Davidson, for example—have
been much concerned with the topic of “conceptual schemes”
and the question of whether or not there are radically different
and incommensurable “conceptual schemes.”1 Roughly
the same themes already appear in the later Wittgenstein’s
work under the rubric of “grammar” and the question of the
“arbitrariness of grammar.”
Wittgenstein’s views on these matters indeed occupy a central
place in his later philosophy. One could, I think, make a
good case that they are at least as important for the understanding
of his later thought, and at least as philosophically
interesting, as his views on such other central topics as the
nature of rule-following, the impossibility of a private language,
and the character of psychological states and processes.
And yet, in comparison with such topics, they have
been relatively neglected by the secondary literature.2
The reasons for this neglect are doubtless multiple, but neither
severally nor collectively do they constitute anything like
a justification of it: Wittgenstein’s views on grammar and the
question of its arbitrariness are not set out in any detail in the
only late work polished for publication by Wittgenstein himself,
the Philosophical Investigations.3 Their fullest statement is
instead found in such works as The Big Typescript, the Philosophical
Grammar, the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics,
Zettel, and On Certainty, which are commonly thought to
have a less official status and are less often read. Also, Wittgenstein’s
views on the question of the arbitrariness of grammar
entail, or at least seem to entail, positions which contemporary
philosophers are often prone to regard as anathema
(though usually due more to questionable philosophical instincts
than to good reasons): in particular, deep mental plu2
i n t r o d u c t i o n
ralism and a sort of relativism.4 Also, Wittgenstein’s views on
the question of the arbitrariness of grammar tend to give an
even stronger impression of unclarity and ambiguity than
other areas of his later thought—an appearance which this
essay will be concerned to minimize in certain ways, but will
by no means entirely dispel. (This essay is not intended as an
exercise in the—rather intellectually unhealthy—activity of
Wittgenstein-interpretation as bible-study.5)
This essay is devoted, then, to an examination of the later
Wittgenstein’s views concerning grammar and the question
of its arbitrariness.6 The essay is divided into two parts. Part 1
begins by providing a brief introductory characterization of
Wittgenstein’s concept(ion) of “grammar” (chapter 1), and
then goes on to pursue the first of the essay’s two main goals:
to explain Wittgenstein’s general position on the question of
the arbitrariness of grammar. One’s initial impression on
reading the texts is likely to be that he is unclear and inconsistent
on this subject, since some passages seem to say that
grammar is arbitrary (for example, PG, I, 68, 133; Z, 320,
331; PI, 497) whereas others seem to say that it is not (for
example, Z, 358; PI, 520, p. 230; WL, p. 70; LC, p. 49).7 This
impression is a superficial one, however. For his considered
position is one which he sums up succinctly in the following
remark from Zettel concerning a specific area of our grammar
(our color system): “It is akin both to what is arbitrary and to
what is non-arbitrary” (Z, 358; cf. WL, p. 70; LC, p. 49).
Accordingly, my main exegetical task in this part of the essay
will be to distinguish and explain in turn a sense in which he
supposes grammar to be arbitrary (chapter 2) and another
sense in which he supposes it to be non-arbitrary (chapter 3).
Doing this should considerably reduce the appearance of unclarity
and ambiguity in his views on the question of the arbitrariness
of grammar. I then conclude that exegetical exercise
by arguing that the position which emerges from it stands in
need of certain modest revisions, however (chapter 4).
Part 2 pursues the second main goal of the essay. This is to
focus on an especially fundamental, dramatic, and—both exegetically
and philosophically—controversial component of
i n t r o d u c t i o n 3
Wittgenstein’s claim that grammar is in a sense arbitrary,
namely a thesis to the effect that for all grammatical principles
in all areas of our grammar, alternatives are either actual
or at least possible and conceivable (for short, “the diversity
thesis”), and to consider three aspects of his later thought
which seem to stand in rather sharp tension with this thesis
(chapters 5, 6, and 7). The tendency of these chapters will thus
initially be to accentuate rather than reduce the appearance of
ambiguity and tension in his position. However, their end result
will be a certain sort of dissolution of the ambiguity and
tension in question, leaving a position that is both unified and
philosophically compelling.

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The Logic of Markedness (Hardcover)
by Edwin L. Battistella
Edwin L. Battistella (Author)

(Author) "Twentieth-century linguistic theories have developed the idea of hierarchy within language structure largely in terms of the concept of markedness, a concept that entails certain..." (more)
Key Phrases: markedness assimilation, bare apostrophe, conceptual rapport, Subset Principle, Knowledge of Language, New York (...)

Product Description
Theories of language espoused by linguists during much of this century have assumed that there is a hierarchy to the elements of language such that certain constructions, rule, and features are unmarked while others are marked; "play" for example, is unmarked or neutral, while "played" or "player" is marked. This opposition, referred to as markedness, is one of the concepts which both Chomskyan generative grammar and Jakobsonian structuralism appear to share, yet which each tradition has treated differently.
Battistella studies the historical development of the concept of markedness in the Prague School structuralism of Roman Jakobson, its importation into generative linguistics, and its subsequent development within Chomsky's "principles and parameters" framework. He traces how structuralist and generative linguistics have drawn on and expanded the notion of markedness, both as a means of characterizing linguistic constructs and as a theory of the innate language faculty.


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Product Details
Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 22, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195103947
ISBN-13: 978-0195103946
Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches

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Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events: A Microethnographic Perspective
By David Bloome, Stephanie Power Carter, Beth Morton Christian, Sheila Otto, Nora Shuart-Faris


  * Publisher:  Lawrence Erlbaum
  * Number Of Pages:  328
  * Publication Date:  2004-08
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0805848584
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780805848588



Product Description:

The authors present a social linguistic/social interactional approach to the discourse analysis of classroom language and literacy events. Building on recent theories in interactional sociolinguistics, literary theory, social anthropology, critical discourse analysis, and the New Literacy Studies, they describe a microethnographic approach to discourse analysis that provides a reflexive and recursive research process that continually questions what counts as knowledge in and of the interactions among teachers and students. The approach combines attention to how people use language and other systems of communication in constructing classroom events with attention to social, cultural, and political processes. The focus of attention is on actual people acting and reacting to each other, creating and recreating the worlds in which they live. One contribution of the microethnographic approach is to highlight the conception of people as complex, multi-dimensional actors who together use what is given by culture, language, social, and economic capital to create new meanings, social relationships and possibilities, and to recreate culture and language. The approach presented by the authors does not separate methodological, theoretical, and epistemological issues. Instead, they argue that research always involves a dialectical relationship among the object of the research, the theoretical frameworks and methodologies driving the research, and the situations within which the research is being conducted.

Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events: A Microethnographic Perspective:
*introduces key constructs and the intellectual and disciplinary foundations of the microethnographic approach;
*addresses the use of this approach to gain insight into three often discussed issues in research on classroom literacy events--classroom literacy events as cultural action, the social construction of identity, and power relations in and through classroom literacy events;
*presents transcripts of classroom literacy events to illustrate how theoretical constructs, the research issue, the research site, methods, research techniques, and previous studies of discourse analysis come together to constitute a discourse analysis; and
*discusses the complexity of locating microethnographic discourse analysis studies within the field of literacy studies and within broader intellectual movements.
This volume is of broad interest and will be widely welcomed by scholars and students in the field language and literacy studies, educational researchers focusing on analysis of classroom discourse, educational sociolinguists, and sociologists and anthropologists focusing on face-to-face interaction and language use.

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The Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Bilingual Education and Bilingualism)
By Aneta Pavlenko


  * Publisher:  Multilingual Matters
  * Number Of Pages:  240
  * Publication Date:  2009-01-15
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  1847691250
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9781847691255



Product Description:

How are words organized in the bilingual mind? How are they linked to concepts? How do bi- and multilinguals process words in their multiple languages? Contributions to this volume offer up-to-date answers to these questions and provide a detailed introduction to interdisciplinary approaches used to investigate the bilingual lexicon.

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Linguistics (Oxford Introductions to Language Study)
By H. G. Widdowson


  * Publisher:  Oxford University Press, USA
  * Number Of Pages:  152
  * Publication Date:  1996-06-06
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0194372065
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780194372060



Product Description:

This is an introduction to linguistics, the study of human language. The author provides a succinct but lucid outline of the ways in which language has been defined, described, and explored, and guides readers towards further exploration of their own.



Summary: Say what?
Rating: 2

Although Widdowson is the editor of the Oxford Introductions to Language Studies series this book does not have the same feel as others in the series. The format is the same with a selection of readings following the author's introduction. However, this book seems to have been written as an introduction for experienced linguists. It contains all of the information but with none of the details that would make it a pleasant read for novices. Ultimately, trying to squeeze everything there is to be said about linguistics into 77 pages is an impossible task and makes for an unprofitable read.

That said, the selection of readings is particularly strong and Widdowson asks some pointed questions of each author. It is at times very apparent what answer he expects because he goes on to ask questions based on what his answer would be. This would annoy those who disagree with him.

This book only rated two stars because I expected more from the series editor. Widdowson seems to have missed the second word of the series title: introductions. Only those with a graduate level reading ability in the field of linguistics would find this book enjoyable. I would recommend Jean Aitchison's book instead (0340870834). It is highly readable and geared more for the novice.


Summary: short but essential reading
Rating: 4

There are many introductions to linguistics; Henry Widdowson's book not only provides an excellent overview of the basics it does so on only 80 pages (main text). For those who want (or need) more, the author provides excepts from other books, a list of references and a glossary.

Because the book is short it is necessarily dense. However, the concepts are explained clearly and'without being overly verbose. To say that Widdowson "calls on the reader to define what the subdisciplines of linguistics should be studying" (an Amazon reviewer) is only partially true. In the main text the areas of inquiry are clearly outlined. In the extracts from other books, however, Widdowson shows that different authors draw the boundaries between the various sub-disciplines differently. Of course, this may be difficult to accept for those who demand one irrevocable academic truth.


Summary: Oxford Introductions to Language Study: Linguistics
Rating: 2

I was pretty disappointed with this book. Despite calling itself an introduction, it was a very heavy going read - even for someone like me with 6 years experience in TESOL. Widdowson's style is to define the main areas of enquiry very briefly and then call on the reader to make judgements about what each discipline should be studying. However, with these abstact definitions alone, the reader cannot even begin to make a judgement. I felt that these kind of questions would only be suited to those who already have an extensive knowledge of linguistics. I also felt that such questions were irrelevant - it doesn't matter what area of linguistics a certain type of study comes under; what's important is whether it's worth studying. I would have preferred a book that actually got down to concrete examples of what lingustics was actually studying. Nevertheless, the book is useful in that it explains the meaning of all the terminology used in linguistics. This will no doubt be useful for further reading.

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On Language and Linguistics (Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, volume 3)
By M. A. K. Halliday, Jonathan J. Webster


  * Publisher:  Continuum
  * Number Of Pages:  448
  * Publication Date:  2003-07
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0826458696
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780826458698



Product Description
For nearly half a century, Professor M. A. K. Halliday has been enriching the discipline of linguistics with his keen insights into the social semiotic phenomenon we call language. This ten-volume series presents the seminal works of Professor Halliday. This third volume includes papers that explore different aspects of language from a systemic functional perspective. The papers are organized into three sections: the place of linguistics as a discipline; linguistics and language; and language as social semiotic. In addition, there is a new work from Professor Halliday, entitled 'On the "architecture" of human language', in which he focuses on the assumptions or working hypotheses that enabled him to explore important questions about this massive semiotic power called 'language'.

About the Author
M. A. K. Halliday is Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney. As a self-styled 'generalist' he has published in many branches of linguistics, both theoretical and applied. The volumes in this series encompass these aspects of Halliday's work.

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Text, Time, and Context: Selected Papers by Carlota S. Smith (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy)
By Richard P. Meier, Helen Aristar-Dry, Emilie Destruel


  * Publisher:  Springer
  * Number Of Pages:  404
  * Publication Date:  2009-11-01
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  9048126169
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9789048126163



Product Description:

Carlota S. Smith was a key figure in linguistic research and a pioneering woman in generative linguistics. This selection of papers focuses on the research into tense, aspect, and discourse that Smith completed while Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin.

Smith’s early work in English syntax is still cited today, and her early career also yielded key research on language acquisition by young children. Starting in the mid-1970s, after her move to UT, she embarked on her most important line of research. In numerous papers—the first of which was published in 1975—and in a very important 1991 book (The Parameter of Aspect), Smith analyzed how languages encode time and how they encode the ways events and situations occur over time.

Smith’s work on the expression of time in language is notable because of its careful analyses of a number of quite different languages, including not only English and French, but also Russian, Mandarin, and Navajo. Inspired by a year in France in the early 1970s, Smith began to analyze the differing ways in which languages encode time and how they encode the ways events and situations occur over time. In doing so, she developed her signature ‘two-component’ theory of aspect. This model of temporal aspect provided an excellent framework for graduate students seeking to analyze the temporal systems of an array of languages, including under-described languages that are so much the focus of research in UT’s Linguistics Department.

Selected by Carlota Smith herself and by her longtime friends and colleagues, this book contains her 1980 piece on temporal structures in discourse, her 1986 comparison of the English and French aspectual systems, a 1996 paper on the aspect system in Navajo (an increasingly-endangered language which Smith worked to preserve), and her 1980 and 1993 papers on the child’s acquisition of tense and aspect.

Smith, who died in 2007, was a trailblazer in her field whose broad interests fed into her scholarly research. She was an avid reader who sought to bring the analytic tools of linguistics to the humanistic study of literature, by examining the syntactic and pragmatic principles which underlie literary effects. Her research on rhetorical and temporal effects in context was integrated into her last book, Modes of Discourse (2003).

The current volume of articles covers much of her most fruitful work on the way in which language is used to express time, and will be essential reading for many working and studying in linguistics generally and in semantics particularly

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A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics (Studies in Linguistic and Cultural Anthropology)
By Marcel Danesi Ph. D.


  * Publisher:  Canadian Scholars Press
  * Number Of Pages:  236
  * Publication Date:  2004-03-01
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  1551302527
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9781551302522



Product Description:

Language can be studied from several angles. The focus on the relation between language, thought and culture is known as anthropological linguistics (AL). This text constitutes a basic introduction to the subject matter and techniques of AL. Traditionally, anthropological linguists have aimed to document and study the languages of indigenous cultures, especially North American ones. Today, however, the purview of this exciting science has been extended considerably to encompass the study of language as a general cultural phenomenon, and to determine genealogical relations among languages, so as to recreate ancient cultures through them. In non-technical language, with plenty of examples related to languages across the world, this book introduces the basic notions, concepts, and techniques of AL. It also discusses the origin and evolution of language, focusing on the comparison and reconstruction of language families. Its treatment of techniques for analyzing sounds, words, sentences and meanings introduces the student to what must be understood about language and its structure in order to apply that knowledge to the study of thought and culture. The final two chapters examine how languages vary according to social factors and how languages influence cognition. To enhance the text's pedagogical utility, a set of practical activities and topics for study accompany each of its eight chapters. A glossary of technical terms is also included. The overall objective of A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics is to show how the technical methodology of linguistic analysis can help students gain a deeper understanding of language as a strategy for classifying the world. The text'sunderlying premise is that the distinction between language and knowledge is hardly ever clear-cut. Indeed, the two enter into a constant synergy--a synergy that defines the human condition.

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Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 7)
By Charles Briggs


  * Publisher:  Oxford University Press, USA
  * Number Of Pages:  256
  * Publication Date:  1996-10-24
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0195087763
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780195087765
  * Binding:  Hardcover




Product Description:

Conflict plays a crucial role in social interactions, and representations of conflict are an important aspect of language. Stories and narratives involving everything from war to playground disputes generate, sustain, mediate, and represent conflict at all levels of social organization. Still, despite the vast amount of research on conflict and narrative in a number of disciplines, no one has yet examined how these play off of each other; in fact, most studies treat narrative merely as a source of information about conflict rather then as a part of conflict's process. The contributors to this collection argue that language consists of socially and politically situated practices that are differentially distributed on the basis of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and other categories. Each of them, writing from the perspective of their own disciplines, challenges previous assumptions about narrative and social conflict as they interpret a range of disputes that emerge in a variety of settings. Taken in total, these essays substantially further our theoretical and methodological understanding of narrative and conflict and how they intersect.

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History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn
By Elizabeth A. Clark


  * Publisher:  Harvard University Press
  * Number Of Pages:  336
  * Publication Date:  2004-10-30
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0674015843
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780674015845



Product Description:

"In this work of sweeping erudition, one of our foremost historians of early Christianity considers a variety of theoretical critiques to examine the problems and opportunities posed by the ways in which history is written. Elizabeth Clark argues forcefully for a renewal of the study of premodern Western history through engagement with the kinds of critical methods that have transformed other humanities disciplines in recent decades.

History, Theory, Text provides a user-friendly survey of crucial developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century debates surrounding history, philosophy, and critical theory. Beginning with the ""noble dream"" of ""history as it really was"" in the works of Leopold von Ranke, Clark goes on to review Anglo-American philosophies of history, schools of twentieth-century historiography, structuralism, the debate over narrative history, the changing fate of the history of ideas, and the impact of interpretive anthropology and literary theory on current historical scholarship. In a concluding chapter she offers some practical case studies to illustrate how attending to theoretical considerations can illuminate the study of premodernity.

Written with energy and clarity, History, Theory, Text is a clarion call to historians for richer and more imaginative use of contemporary theory.
"


Summary: Great Book for Historians
Rating: 5

This is a great book to learn the basics of how the field of history has evolved over the decades. The field of history is a relatively new field of study, just since the 1800s.

Clark provides an easy read for those not officially trained in history to pick-up the book and take off running.

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Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 16)
By Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, Paul V. Kroskrity


  * Publisher:  Oxford University Press, USA
  * Number Of Pages:  352
  * Publication Date:  1998-05-28
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0195105613
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780195105612
  * Binding:  Hardcover




Product Description:

"Language ideologies" are cultural representations, whether explicit or implicit, of the intersection of language and human beings in a social world. Mediating between social structures and forms of talk, such ideologies are not only about language. Rather, they link language to identity, power, aesthetics, morality and epistemology. Through such linkages, language ideologies underpin not only linguistic form and use, but also significant social institutions and fundamental nottions of person and community.

The essays in this new volume examine definitions and conceptions of language in a wide range of societies around the world. Contributors focus on how such defining activity organizes language use as well as institutions such as religious ritual, gender relations, the nation-state, schooling, and law. Beginning with an introductory survey of language ideology as a field of inquiry, the volume is organized in three parts. Part I, "Scope and Force of Dominant Conceptions of Language," focuses on the propensity of cultural models of language developed in one social domain to affect linguistic and social behavior across domains. Part II, "Language Ideology in Institutions of Power," continues the examination of the force of specific language beliefs, but narrows the scope to the central role that language ideologies play in the functioning of particular institutions of power such as schooling, the law, or mass media. Part III, "Multiplicity and Contention among Ideologies," emphasizes the existence of variability, contradiction, and struggles among ideologies within any given society. This will be the first collection of work to appear in this rapidly growing field, which bridges linguistic and social theory. It will greatly interest linguistic anthropologists, social and cultural anthropologists, sociolinguists, historians, cultural studies, communications, and folklore scholars.

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to be continued......

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Ideology in the Language of Judges: How Judges Practice Law, Politics, and Courtroom Control (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics)
By Susan U. Philips


  * Publisher:  Oxford University Press, USA
  * Number Of Pages:  224
  * Publication Date:  1998-04-16
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0195113411
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780195113419



Product Description:

A study that will appeal to any reader interested in the relationship between our language and our laws, Ideology in the Language of Judges focuses on the way judges take guilty pleas from criminal defendants and on the judges' views of their own courtroom behavior. This book argues that variation in the discourse structure of the guilty pleas can best be understood as enactments of the judges' differing interpretations of due process law and the proper role of the judge in the courtroom.
Susan Philips demonstrates how legal and professional ideologies are expressed differently in interviews and socially occurring speech, and reveals how bounded written and spoken genres of legal discourse play a role in containing and ordering ideological diversity in language use. She also shows how the ideological struggles in a given courtroom are central yet largely hidden or denied. Such findings will contribute significantly to the study of how speakers create realities through their use of language.

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Apes, Language, and the Human Mind
By Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Stuart G. Shanker, Talbot J. Taylor


  * Publisher:  Oxford University Press, USA
  * Number Of Pages:  254
  * Publication Date:  1998-06-18
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0195109864
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780195109863



Product Description:

For more than 25 years, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has been studying the cognitive skills of laboratory-reared primates. Recently, her work achieved a scientific breakthrough of stunning proportions: one subject has acquired linguistic and cognitive skills equal to those of a 2-1/2-year-old human child. Apes, Language and the Human Mind skillfully combines the exciting narrative regarding this work with incisive critical analysis of the broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind.



Summary: Look Who's Talking
Rating: 3

Things were not going well at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Biologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh was attempting to train the female bonobo Matata to associate a handful of visual symbols ("lexemes") with familiar objects. But Matata was not cooperating. She just did not seem to get the point of the exercise, and furthermore she had a youngster to care for. For his part, the young bonobo Kanzi did what any child would do, alternately clinging to his mother and running wild in the room. He was constantly demanding his mother's attention, but showed little interest in the task she was struggling to learn. That is, until one day when Matata was gone and Kanzi demonstrated to the researchers that he had already mastered his mother's lessons and then some. From that point, Kanzi became the focus of Savage-Rumbaugh's research; but instead of using standard behavioral techniques, her research team taught Kanzi simply by interacting with him. Thus began the first attempt to teach language to a young bonobo in a naturalistic fashion.

Kanzi is now generally considered to be the most linguistically developed of all language-trained great apes. According to the authors, he has mastered the full complement of 256 lexemes in the artificial language Yerkish, expressly designed for ape language research. He can combine these symbols to express novel concepts, and he also uses gestures to help clarify intended meanings. But his most impressive accomplishment is that he can also understand spoken English, performing similarly to a two-and-a-half-year-old child. Kanzi cannot speak, though, because bonobos, like other great apes, lack the anatomical structures for producing speech sounds.

The book "Apes, Language and the Human Mind" consists of four chapters. The first, called "Bringing up Kanzi" and written by Savage-Rumbaugh, is an entertaining and highly readable account of how Kanzi learned to communicate with humans. Savage-Rumbaugh's approach is strongly anthropomorphic, and she attributes human-like intentions and motivations to the apes she works with. It is hard to discern to what degree this anthropomorphism is appropriate, since humans are prone to attribute intentionality to all sorts of things--cars, computers, the weather--that clearly have no mentality whatsoever. On the other hand, it is often not difficult to imagine being in Kanzi's position, as for example when Kanzi refuses to camp out in a tent with the researchers, choosing instead to return to the lab, where he can watch TV and sleep in a bed.

The second chapter, penned by Shanker, discusses the philosophical ramifications of ape language research. Anyone who is not a philosopher will find this chapter extremely tedious, but the take-home message is actually quite interesting. The view that humans are qualitatively different from all other species goes back only to Descartes, who argued that only humans (and supernatural beings such as angels and gods) have minds. Before that, the standard view was the Great Chain of Being, which saw all existence as a hierarchical structure with graded differences in mentality from mineral to plant to animal to human to divine. On that view, humans are still intellectually superior to apes, but not categorically so. Cartesian dualism is appealing to those--as for example primate researchers--who, as part of their livelihood, regularly treat apes in ways that would be considered unethical with humans. Furthermore, Cartesian dualism is likely appealing to the ordinary person because, in our modern lifestyle, we no longer interact very much with other species, and what animals we do domesticate are intentionally bred for their docility (that is, stupidity). One has to wonder, though, how many hunters, stalking their prey, view their quarry as mindless automata.

The third chapter, by Taylor, outlines the ongoing and often vitriolic debate over whether trained apes actually "have" language or not. Cases such as that of "Clever Hans," the mathematical horse, illustrate just how easy it is to unintentionally train animals to respond to subtle cues. Furthermore, humans naturally attribute mental processes to others, so it is important to test language-trained apes in an objective manner. However, skeptics of ape language research categorically reject the possibility that apes could have some linguistic ability, so there is no evidence that could ever convince them otherwise. This is a wholly unscientific stance for scientists to take. Although the null hypothesis should be that apes do not use language, the skeptic must nevertheless grant some criterion that, if observed, would be sufficiently convincing that some primates can indeed communicate intentionally with a symbolic system.

In the fourth chapter, Savage-Rumbaugh considers what the data from ape language research tells us about the nature of human language, language acquisition, and the relationship of humans to other species. If apes can learn language, this means that language is not a uniquely human instinct, as Pinker argues. But if language acquisition and processing are based on general cognitive abilities that humans share with other primates--and perhaps with many other species as well--then why do only humans have language in their natural state? Regardless of the eventual answer to that question, ethical issues are also raised by primate language research. That is, if a non-human primate truly exhibits the cognitive abilities of a two-to-three-year-old human child, does that not then imply that non-human primates deserve the same rights that we accord human children? Researchers who regularly sacrifice primates on the altar of science do not want to even acknowledge the validity of this question.

If five centuries of science have taught us anything, it is humility. We are not special. We are not at the center of the universe. Yet the scientist who accepts the heliocentric solar system, geologic time, the evolution of species and our common ancestor with the other great apes only a few million years ago nevertheless staunchly insists that humans are still special when it comes to language and cognition. Maybe, as her critics claim, Savage-Rumbaugh is over-interpreting the data. But given the trend of science toward greater humility, it is not unreasonable to think that humans are not special when it comes to language and thought either.


Summary: An excellent resource for understanding ape communication.
Rating: 4

When Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and others first began suggesting that apes (chimpanzees and bonobos) had better communication skills than language experts would credit, she and the others were soundly denounced by a scholarly community who suggested she and the others were fooled by the clever Hans phenomenon or were making up their evidence. As evidence from her research accumulated, cognition theorists, linguists, and the like continued to reject her methods and results. But eventually, the evidence that some apes have some skills comparable to human language skills became insurmountable.

This book is in three parts, written by a primatologist, philosopher, and a rhetoric and language scholar. Each takes the academic community to task at a different level. Savage-Rumbaugh presents her evidence that apes demonstrate communication (even language) skills. Stuart Shanker and Talbot Taylor examine the logic and rhetoric her arguments as compared to the arguments of her detractors, demonstrating that Savage-Rumbaugh's work is as serious and valid as that of the others', and demonstrating (at least to my satisfaction) that the arguments of her detractors are specious.

The ramifications of this book and several others like it are significant. It says a great deal about the nature of human communication and language if bonobos can use the same processes as children to come to human language.

As time passes, the value of a book may ebb. This is a 1998 book in a time when events happen quickly . . . it is for that reason, alone, that I give the book only 4 stars.


Summary: Brilliant and Original
Rating: 5

This brilliant and original book demonstrates that symbolic representation is the basic substance of language, and shows once and for all that language is not an exclusively human achievement. Savage-Rumbaugh's serendipitous discovery that the critical period for language acquisition in bonobos is in early infancy renders all earlier language experimentation with apes obsolete. Contrary to Chomsky and Pinker, grammar is a high level embellishment to language, rather than the foundation of communicative skill. The philosophical commentaries on Savage-Rumbaugh's work by Shanker and Taylor bring out the revolutionary implications of her findings, and provide a new and more sophisticated point of view on the continuities and discontinuities between ourselves and our nearest relatives. It's good to see contemporary science finally replacing the 17th century perspective of many linguists.


Summary: There's nothing 'personal' here!
Rating: 5

I wonder if the reader from Austin, Texas, read the same book as I did! I could find no trace of any personal attacks (nor personal glorifications, for that matter) in this highly original, provocative and exceptionally well-argued book. Interdisciplinary collaborations on complex themes are notoriously difficult to pull off, but this team has succeeded admirably. The philosophical analysis of the significance of the bonobo ape research for our currently dominant ways of thinking about language, communication and animal capacities is strikingly original. Certainly, these authors do not hold back from exploring the wider significance of their proposed interpretations, but there is a wealth of well-documented and rigorous argument here to support their contentions, and not a shred of evidence of -animus- against those whose views they dispute. A serious and significant book for everyone interested in animal cognition.


Summary: thought-provoking and compelling
Rating: 4

This is a rewarding book, especially in its middle two chapters. After the scene-setting of ch. 1, in which we learn just what the Bonobo ape Kanzi can do as far as communicating with a human is concerned, ch. 2 gives us a protracted survey of the Cartesian tradition of thinking about the 'mental' and hence communicative lives of animals, showing the degree to which writers like Pinker, and indeed many of us, are, largely due to an outmoded view of ourselves, caught up in a fallacy about the status of animals vis-à-vis humans which needs to be replaced with a saner outlook. In ch. 3 we are given an insight into the rhetorical strategies of those who perpetuate the Cartesian view, and shown to what extent such strategies may be motivated less by a search for truth than by the socio-politico-economic imperative of our exploitation of the animal world. The authors then proceed to show that arguments which have been used to bolster the 'existential gap' view in fact are incapable of supporting the notion that humans themselves have the exclusive and proprietary capacities which Cartesian thinkers have attributed to them. That is, (a) the evidence which such thinkers use purportedly to prove the existence of various capacities in humans is shown to be equally in evidence in at least one kind of animal, but (b) the evidence which is used purportedly to disprove these capacities in animals is shown in fact to be inadequate to prove the existence of those capacities in humans. In other words, as is further suggested in the final chapter, we have no logical or evidential basis for maintaining the Cartesian view, and the implications for our own human behavior are accordingly far-reaching.

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Language and the Cognitive Construal of the World (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs)
By John R. Taylor , Robert MacLaury


  * Publisher:  Walter de Gruyter
  * Number Of Pages:  406
  * Publication Date:  1995-07
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  3110143011
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9783110143010


Table of Contents

Preface: Linguistic and anthropological approaches to cognition

Introduction: On construing the world1
Seeing it in more than one way23
Possession and possessive constructions51
What lack needs to have: A study in the cognitive semantics of privation81
The construal of cause: The case of cause prepositions95
Conceptual grammaticalization and prediction119
Metaphors of anger in Japanese137
Looking back at anger: Cultural traditions and metaphorical patterns153
Anger: Its language, conceptualization, and physiology in the light of cross-cultural evidence181
The metaphorical conception of mind: "Mental activity is manipulation"197
Vantage theory231
The terror of Montezuma: Aztec history, vantage theory, and the category of "person"277
Selection of Japanese categories during social interaction331
Genus, species, and vantages365
On construing the world of language377
Index of names391
Subject index396
Contributors40

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Language Diversity and Education
By David Corson


  * Publisher:  Lawrence Erlbaum
  * Number Of Pages:  272
  * Publication Date:  2000-10-01
  * ISBN-10 / ASIN:  0805834494
  * ISBN-13 / EAN:  9780805834499
  * Binding:  Paperback



Product Description:

This introductory text for students of linguistics, language, and education provides background and up-to-date information and resources that beginning researchers need for studying language diversity and education.

Three framing chapters offer an update on the philosophy of social research, revealing how important language is for all the processes of learning in which humans engage, whether it is learning about the world through education, or learning about the nature of social life through research in the human sciences. These chapters also review the links between language, power, and social justice, and look at dynamic changes occurring in "language diversity and education" research.

Four central chapters give state-of-the-art, comprehensive coverage to the chief areas of language diversity that affect the practice of education: standard and non-standard varieties; different cultural discourse norms; bilingual and ESL education; and gendered discourse norms.

This book is intended for graduate students of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, the social psychology of language, anthropological linguistics, and other related disciplines; and graduate students of education, including in-service teachers taking advanced professional development courses. Special features enhance its usefulness as a text for courses in these areas:

* A clear, jargon free writing style invites careful reading.
* All ideas are well within the range that graduate students in the language disciplines or in education can relate to their work, but theoretical ideas are kept to a necessary minimum and linked with practical examples in every case.
* Extensive references guide readers to the book's up-to-date, international, and cross-cultural bibliography.
* "Discussion Starter" questions at the end of each chapter highlight key points and stimulate informed, reflective discussion.

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Translating Cultures: Perspectives on Translation and Anthropology
: Paula G. Rubel (Editor), Abraham Rosman (Editor)


By

  * Publisher:  Berg Publishers
  * Number Of Pages:  320
  * Publication Date:  2003-11-01
  * Sales Rank:  1519022
  * ISBN / ASIN:  1859737455
  * EAN:  9781859737453
  * Binding:  Paperback
  * Manufacturer:  Berg Publishers
  * Studio:  Berg Publishers
  * Average Rating:
  * Total Reviews:




Book Description:


The task of the anthropologist is to take ideas, concepts and beliefs from one culture and translate them into first another language, and then into the language of anthropology. This process is both fascinating and complex. Not only does it raise questions about the limitations of language, but it also challenges the ability of the anthropologist to communicate culture accurately. In recent years, postmodern theories have tended to call into question the legitimacy of translation altogether. This book acknowledges the problems involved, but shows definitively that 'translating cultures' can successfully be achieved.

The way we talk, write, read and interpret are all part of a translation process. Many of us are not aware of translation in our everyday lives, but for those living outside their native culture, surrounded by cultural difference, the ability to translate experiences and thoughts becomes a major issue. Drawing on case studies and theories from a wide range of disciplines -including anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, art history, folk theory, and religious studies - this book systematically interrogates the meaning, complexities and importance of translation in anthropology and answers a wide range of provocative questions, such as:

- Can we unravel the true meaning of the Christian doctrine of trinity when there have been so many translations?

- What impact do colonial and postcolonial power structures have on our understanding of other cultures?

- How can we use art as a means of transgressing the limitations of linguistic translation?

Translating Cultures: Perspectives on Translation and Anthropology is the first book fully to address translation in anthropology. It combines textual and ethnographic analysis to produce a benchmark publication that will be of great importance to anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, historians, and cultural theorists alike.