Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics Books

Book SynopsisDickens''s Idiomatic Imagination offers an original analysis of how Charles Dickens''s use of low and slangular (his neologism) language allowed him to express and develop his most sophisticated ideas. Using a hybrid of digital (distant) and analogue (close) reading methodologies, Peter J. Capuano considers Dickens''s use of bodily idiomsright-hand man, shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstoneagainst the broader lexical backdrop of the nineteenth century. Dickens was famously drawn to the vernacular language of London''s streets, but this book is the first to call attention to how he employed phrases that embody actions, ideas, and social relations for specific narrative and thematic purposes. Focusing on the mid- to late career novels Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend, Capuano demonstrates how Dickens came to relish using common idioms in uncommon ways and the

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrumpism has not only ushered in a new political regime, but also a new regime of language—one that cries out for intelligent and informed analysis. When Words Trump Politics takes insights from linguistic anthropology and related fields to decode, understand, and ultimately provide non-expert readers with easily digestible tools to resist the politics of division and hate. Adam Hodges's short essays address Trump's Twitter insults, racism and white nationalism, "truthiness" and "alternative facts," #FakeNews and conspiracy theories, Supreme Court politics and #MeToo, Islamophobia, political theater, and many other timely and controversial discussions. Hodges breaks down the specific linguistic techniques and processes that make Trump's rhetoric successful in our contemporary political landscape. He identifies the language ideologies, word choices, and recurring metaphors that underlie Trumpian rhetoric. Trumpian discourse works in tandem with media discourse—Hodges shows how Trump often induces journalists and social media agents to recycle and strengthen his spectacular and misleading claims. Those who study democracy have long emphasized the need for an informed electorate. But being informed on political issues also demands a keen understanding of the way language is used to convey, discuss, debate, and contest those issues. When Words Trump Politics analyzes the political rhetoric of today. The actionable insights in this book give journalists, politicians, and all Americans the successful tools they need to respond to the politics of hate. When Words Trump Politics is an essential resource for political resistance, for anyone who cares about freeing democracy from the spell of demagoguery.Trade Review"This is no ordinary time for language and politics, but Adam Hodges successfully marshals his considerable expertise in linguistic anthropology to bring insight into a political discourse that is often presented by journalists and pundits without this useful framework. Trumpian discourse is overrepresented and yet underanalyzed, and this book highlights the special need to attend to the subversive, anti-democratic use of language Trump has modeled."—Paul V. Kroskrity, University of California, Los Angeles"When Words Trump Politics is a thoroughly insightful account of the president's rhetorical collusion with the dark strains of American public life—its racism, hypernationalism, xenophobia—and his systematic obstructions of truth. When the histories of the political language of this era are written, Hodges' book will be a seminal point of reference."—Geoff Nunberg, University of California, Berkeley"Hodges' book brings together many valuable insights from linguistics and philosophy, offering a quick and rewarding read. Highly recommended!"—David Lanius, Journal of Language and Politics

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhen we look back from the vantage point of the 21st century and ask ourselves what the previous century was all about, what do we see? Our first inclination is to focus on historical events: the 20th century was the age of two devastating world wars, of totalitarian regimes and terrible atrocities like the Holocaust – “the age of extremes,” to use Hobsbawm’s famous phrase. But in this new book, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk argues that we will never understand the 20th century if we focus on events and ideologies. Rather, in his view, the predominant motif of the 20th century is what Badiou called a passion for the real, which manifests itself as the will to actualize the truth directly in the here and now. Drawing on his Spheres trilogy, Sloterdijk interprets the actualization of the real in the 20th century as a passion for economic and technological “antigravitation”. The rise of consumerism and the easing of the burdens of human life by the constant deployment of new technologies have killed off the kind of radicalism that was rooted in the belief that power would rise from a material base of production. If the 20th century can still inspire us today, it is because the fundamental shift that it brought about opened the way for a critique of extremist reason, a post-Marxist theory of enrichment and a general economy of energy resources based on excess and dissipation. While developing his highly original interpretation of the 20th century, Sloterdijk also addresses a series of related topics including the meaning of the Anthropocene, the domestication of humans and the significance of the sea. The volume also includes major new pieces on Derrida and on Heidegger’s politics. This work, by one of the most original thinkers today will appeal to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences, as well as anyone interested in philosophy and critical theory.Table of Contents The Anthropocene - A Stage in the Process on the Margins of the Earth's History? From the Domestication of the Human Being to the Civilizing of Cultures: Answering the Question of Whether Humanity is Capable of Taming Itself The Ocean Experiment: From Nautical Globalization to a General Ecology The Synchronized World: Philosophical Aspects of Globalization What Happened in the 20th Century? Toward a Critique of Extremist Reason The Thinker in the Haunted Castle: On Derrida's Interpretation of Dreams Deep Observation: Towards a Philosophy of the Space Station The Permanent Renaissance: The Italian Novella and News of Modernity Heidegger's Politics: Postponing the End of History Odysseus the Sophist: On the Birth of Philosophy from the Spirit of Travel Stress Almost Sacred Text: Essay on the Constitution The Other Logos, or the Reason of Cunning: On the Intellectual History of the Indirect Editorial Note Notes

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Rhetoric, Poetics, and Literary Historiography, Stefan H. Uhlig offers a new account of the emergence of literary studies. Most histories of the early years of the field search for unifying origins of literature as a discipline and object of study. Uhlig turns to the decades around 1800 in Europe to reveal that the inception of the literary field was instead defined by intellectual diversity and contestation. He draws on an array of European writers to show how three schools of literary study—rhetoric teaching, theories of poetry, and literary history—emerged and clashed during this time, offering near-contemporaneous, yet divergent, visions of how to understand literature. Rhetoric and poetics thwarted criticism, to different ends, while literary historiography proved institutionally reassuring yet less useful as a tool for textual understanding. Uhlig details how Scottish writers like Adam Smith and Hugh Blair taught rhetoric as a form self-expression, while Anglophone and German theorists of poetry like William Wordsworth, Friedrich Schlegel, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe both engaged with and resented critics. At the same time, varying opinions on the practice of literary history emerged, with Immanuel Kant and Thomas De Quincey arguing for the independence of literature from historical forces while writers like Matthew Arnold approached literature as a means of narrating cultural archives instead of drawing on close reading and analysis. Rhetoric, Poetics, and Literary Historiography traces current debates in literary studies back to this formative moment, serving as a guide to past and present controversies in the field.Trade Review"An ambitious essay in the history of ideas—one based on lots of close reading and scrupulous attention to the actual positions in the debates examined." * Paul Hamilton, Queen Mary University of London *"This book stands to be of great value to literary studies, both because of the precision it helps introduce into discussions of literary history—suddenly revealed to be an even looser, baggier monster than even far-reaching projects of distant reading have revealed—and because of the compelling microhistories it unearths within the genealogy of literary studies." * Matthew Wickman, Brigham Young University *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAuthored by renowned communication and relationship scholar Steve Duck, Rethinking Relationships Through Rhetoric: Coordinating Interpersonal Approaches invites readers to reconsider their assumptions and understanding of relationships. The second edition of the text features a fresh emphasis on rhetoric and its insights into the ways in which individuals use discourse to promote vantage points and opinions or to make arguments or representations that are intended to influence others.The book posits that everyday communication is largely argumentative, propositional, sermonic, and intentionally influential in nature. Readers learn how even mundane communication subtly pitches the views of the speaker towards the listener and invites approval or objection. The text reconsiders the implications of seeing acquaintance as an ongoing, unfinished, and largely communicatively-based activity that is not captured in laboratory snapshots, and so challenges readers to better understand how relationships are formed through series of everyday interactions and active inquiry by listeners rather than "self-disclosure" by speakers. It also explores how cultural influence, the assessment of behaviors, and moral judgements affect everyday interactions and consequently, our relationships.Providing readers with a deep examination of the ways in which individuals practice their relationships and embody them in social spaces, Rethinking Relationships Through Rhetoric is an ideal textbook for advanced courses and graduate programs in interpersonal communication and interpersonal relationships.

Read more less

Book SynopsisCritical Questions in Persuasion Research presents students with a refreshing way to study persuasion, communication theory, and human behavior. Rather than examining different types of persuasion research and reviewing each one at a time, communication scholars Franklin J. Boster and Christopher J. Carpenter explore eight key controversies, as well as research and theory related to each topic: What constitutes a strong persuasive message, and does it matter? How do we adapt persuasive messages to diverse audiences? Do persuasive messages have side effects? How can we manage the buzz? How can we maintain attitude change? Can a persuasive message be counterproductive? How can we encourage resistance to persuasion? To what extent does action follow from attitudes? By focusing on how various disciplines deal with the big controversies in the persuasion process, students gain an understanding not only of key ideas and theories, but how the ideas and theories fit together in a meaningful whole. By framing persuasion as a series of critical questions, students learn that social science is a dynamic and exciting way in which to study persuasion.Critical Questions in Persuasion Research is an ideal textbook for courses with focus on persuasion, communication, and human behavior.Trade ReviewThe Boster and Carpenter approach is very unique in that they have chosen topics and organized them in such a way that it walks the reader through the natural progression of a persuasive attempt addressing important issues along the way ... The organization and integrative approach to presenting/teaching persuasion is fantastic and a vast improvement on other persuasion textbooks ... This text presents persuasion in an entirely refreshing and new way that I think will be very attractive to students." —Michael R. Kotowski, Associate Professor, School of Communication Studies, University of Tennessee, Knoxville"The premise of the book is clever. I appreciate that the theory is clearly central to the book. What is novel is that the authors deliver theory in the context of a broader organizing framework that will make is easy for students to see connections. Rather than a laundry list of theories, students get a sense of the broader questions that theories address and how individual theories fit together in a broader framework. This is a clear strength and distinguishing feature of this text ... This text has very good potential to help students have a more meaningful and informative experience in a persuasion course." —Stephen Rains, Professor of Communication, University of Arizona"In addition to the organization around central questions, a strength of the chapters is their adherence to actual studies and the treatment of central questions as open, rather than closed debates. This is a good textbook for faculty interest in connecting theoretical conclusions more closely to the evidence. In addition, the authors have well contextualized the communicative study of persuasion in other (non-communication) perspectives." —Ryan Goei, Direct of University Honors, Associate Professor of Communication, University of Minnesota Duluth

Read more less

Book SynopsisConfronting the rifts created by our common conceptual vocabulary for North American colonial studies How can we tell colonial histories in ways that invite intercultural conversation within humanistic fields that are themselves products of colonial domination? Beginning with a famous episode of failed communication from the narrative of the freed slave Olaudah Equiano, The Silence of the Miskito Prince explores this question by looking critically at five concepts frequently used to imagine solutions to the challenges of cross-cultural communication: understanding, cosmopolitanism, piety, reciprocity, and patience. Focusing on the first two centuries of North American colonization, Matt Cohen traces how these five concepts of cross-cultural relations emerged from, and continue to evolve within, colonial dynamics. Through a series of revealing archival explorations, he argues the need for a new vocabulary for the analysis of past interactions drawn from the intellectual and spiritual domains of the colonized, and for a historiographical practice oriented less toward the illusion of complete understanding and scholarly authority and more toward the beliefs and experiences of descendant communities. The Silence of the Miskito Prince argues for new ways of framing scholarly conversations that use past interactions as a site for thinking about intercultural relations today. By investigating the colonial histories of these terms that were assumed to promote inclusion, Cohen offers both a reflection on how we got here and a model of scholarly humility that holds us to our better or worse pasts.Trade Review"I remember the bold, proud, and highfalutin terms we used to toss about in early American studies, so proud of our own ‘discoveries’ and ‘understandings.’ Because that’s the model we inherited. Because we did not know any better. But now we do—thanks to Matt Cohen’s rigorous and powerful remodulation of our scholarly language. This book points us in the direction of better scholarship, by which I mean greater care, awe, patience, and accountability. A model work of literary criticism for our chastened and tender times."—Joanna Brooks, author of Why We Left: Untold Stories and Songs of America’s First Immigrants"The Silence of the Miskito Prince is almost alchemical in its ability to draw new insights from familiar texts. Matt Cohen’s work will be a model for literary scholars, and maybe even some historians, of the power of scholarship that considers the work that words can and cannot do."—Jonathan Beecher Field, Clemson University

Read more less

Book SynopsisConfronting the rifts created by our common conceptual vocabulary for North American colonial studies How can we tell colonial histories in ways that invite intercultural conversation within humanistic fields that are themselves products of colonial domination? Beginning with a famous episode of failed communication from the narrative of the freed slave Olaudah Equiano, The Silence of the Miskito Prince explores this question by looking critically at five concepts frequently used to imagine solutions to the challenges of cross-cultural communication: understanding, cosmopolitanism, piety, reciprocity, and patience. Focusing on the first two centuries of North American colonization, Matt Cohen traces how these five concepts of cross-cultural relations emerged from, and continue to evolve within, colonial dynamics. Through a series of revealing archival explorations, he argues the need for a new vocabulary for the analysis of past interactions drawn from the intellectual and spiritual domains of the colonized, and for a historiographical practice oriented less toward the illusion of complete understanding and scholarly authority and more toward the beliefs and experiences of descendant communities. The Silence of the Miskito Prince argues for new ways of framing scholarly conversations that use past interactions as a site for thinking about intercultural relations today. By investigating the colonial histories of these terms that were assumed to promote inclusion, Cohen offers both a reflection on how we got here and a model of scholarly humility that holds us to our better or worse pasts.Trade Review"I remember the bold, proud, and highfalutin terms we used to toss about in early American studies, so proud of our own ‘discoveries’ and ‘understandings.’ Because that’s the model we inherited. Because we did not know any better. But now we do—thanks to Matt Cohen’s rigorous and powerful remodulation of our scholarly language. This book points us in the direction of better scholarship, by which I mean greater care, awe, patience, and accountability. A model work of literary criticism for our chastened and tender times."—Joanna Brooks, author of Why We Left: Untold Stories and Songs of America’s First Immigrants"The Silence of the Miskito Prince is almost alchemical in its ability to draw new insights from familiar texts. Matt Cohen’s work will be a model for literary scholars, and maybe even some historians, of the power of scholarship that considers the work that words can and cannot do."—Jonathan Beecher Field, Clemson University

Read more less

Book SynopsisRhetorics of Display is a pathbreaking volume that brings together a distinguished group of scholars to assess an increasingly pervasive form of rhetorical activity. Editor Lawrence J. Prelli notes in his introduction that twenty-first century citizens continually confront displays of information and images, from the verbal images of speeches and literature to visual images of film and photography to exhibits in museums to the arrangement of our homes to the merchandising of consumer goods. The volume provides an integrated, comprehensive study of the processes of selecting what to reveal and what to conceal that together constitute the rhetorics of display. Surveying major historical transformations in the relationship between rhetoric and display, this book also identifies the leading themes in relevant scholarship of the past three decades. Seventeen case studies canvass a representative and diverse range of displays - from body piercing to a civil rights memorial to a Titanic exhibition to imagery found in gambling casinos - and examine the ways that phenomena, persons, places, events, identities, communities, and cultures are exhibited before audiences. Collectively the contributors shed light on rhetorics that are nearly ubiquitous in contemporary communication and culture.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book looks into communicating psychiatric patient histories, from the asylum years to the clinics of today. In this engrossing study of tales of mental illness, Carol Berkenkotter examines the evolving role of case history narratives in the growth of psychiatry as a medical profession. ""Patient Tales"" follows the development of psychiatric case histories from their origins at Edinburgh Medical School and the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary in the mid - eighteenth century to the medical records of contemporary American mental health clinics. Spanning two centuries and several disciplines, Berkenkotter's investigation illustrates how discursive changes in this genre mirrored evolving assumptions and epistemological commitments among those who cared for the mentally ill.During the asylum era, case histories were a means by which practitioners organized and disseminated local knowledge through professional societies, affiliations, and journals. The way in which these histories were recorded was subsequently codified, giving rise to a genre. In her thorough reading of Sigmund Freud's ""Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria"", Berkenkotter shows how this account of Freud's famous patient 'Dora' led to technical innovation in the genre through the incorporation of literary devices. In the volume's final section, Berkenkotter carries the discussion forward to the present in her examination of the turn from psychoanalysis to a research-based and medically oriented classification system now utilized by the American Psychiatric Association. Throughout her work, Berkenkotter stresses the value of reading case histories as an interdisciplinary bridge between the humanities and sciences.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis introduction is concerned with the semantics of natural languages. The text examines what issues semantics, as a theory of meaning, should address: determining what the meanings of words of the language are and how to semantically combine elements of a language to build up complex meanings. Logical languages are then developed as formal metalanguages to natural language. Subsequent chapters address propositional logic, the syntax and semantics of (first-order) predicate logic as an extension of propositional logic, and generalized quantifier theory. Going beyond extensional theory, de Swart relativizes the interpretation of expressions to times to account for verbal tense, time adverbials, and temporal connectives, and introduces possible worlds to modal intensions, modal adverbs, and modal auxiliaries.Table of Contents1. What is meaning?; 2. Desiderata for a theory of meaning; 3. Connectives, truth, and truth conditions; 4. Predication and quantification; 5. Scope and anaphora; 6. Limits of first-order predicate logic; 7. Generalized quantifier theory; 8. Worlds and times; Appendix.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe work reported in this monograph was begun in the winter of 1967 in a graduate seminar at Berkeley. Many of the basic data were gathered by members of the seminar and the theoretical framework presented here was initially developed in the context of the seminar discussions. Much has been discovered since 1969, the date of original publication, regarding the psychophysical and neurophysical determinants of universal, cross-linguistic constraints on the shape of basic color lexicons, and something, albeit less, can now also be said with some confidence regarding the constraining effects of these language-independent processes of color perception and conceptualization on the direction of evolution of basic color term lexicons.Table of ContentsPreface; Introduction; 1. The data, hypothesis, and general findings; 2. Evolution of basic color terms; 3. The data; 4. Summary of results and some speculations; Appendix I; Appendix II; Appendix III; Appendix IV; Notes; References Cited; Bibliography; Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe thrust of this book is to provide a model of lexical relations which reconciles the lexicon's idiosyncratic and productive aspects. Building on work in Head-Driven Phrase-Structure Grammar, an organization of lexical knowledge is proposed called the Type Underspecified Hierarchical Lexicon through which partial regularities, medium-size generalization, and truly productive processes receive a unified model. Its basic thesis is that all lexical relations reduce to categorization (the membership of the two related lexemes in a common category) and that category intersection is the only mechanism needed to model lexical processes provided lexical items can be stored partially underspecified as to their category membership. Aside from the conceptual simplification that results from this move, the book demonstrates that several empirical and theoretical benefits accrue to this architecture; in particular, many salient properties of morphological processes are shown to reduce to inherent, formal properties of the organization of the lexicon.Table of Contents1. Introduction; 2. Two kinds of lexical relations; 3. On-line type construction; 4. A typed constituent structure-based morphology; 5. The and/or nature of morphological processes; 6. Conclusion; Appendix; Type declarations; Bibliography; Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book includes famous papers such as "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" and Frege on "Demonstratives and Cognitive Significance and New Theories of Reference"; papers co-authored with Mark Crimmins ("The Prince and the Phone Booth") and David Israel ("Fodor on Psychological Explanations") and related papers on situation semantics, direct reference, and the structure of belief. Perry has added afterwords that discuss responses to his work by Gareth Evans, Robert Stalnaker, Barbara Partee, Howard Wettstein and others. The word "I" is called an indexical which means who it stands for depends on who says it, not just on its meaning. Other indexicals are "you," "here" and "now." Perry discusses how these words work, and why they express important philosophical thoughts. He claims that indexicals pose a challenge to traditional assumptions about language and thought, and for that reason a number of these papers sparked lively debates.Table of ContentsIndexicals, contexts and unarticulated constituents; Reality without reference; Evading the slingshot; Broadening the mind; Myself and I; Reflexivity, indexicality and names; Rip Van Winkle and other characters; Frege on demonstratives; The problem of the essential indexical; Belief and acceptance; A problem about continued belief; Castandeda on he and I; Perception, action, and the structure of believing; From worlds to situations; Possible worlds to situations; Circumstantial attitudes and benevolent cognition; Thought without representation; Cognitive significance and new theories of reference; The prince and the phone booth; Individuals in Informational and Intentional content; Fodor and psychological explanations.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume traces the work and thinking of Charles Fillmore throughout his 30 year career. It is a collection which reflects his desire to make sense of the workings of language in a way that keeps in mind questions of language form, language use and conventions linking form, meaning and practice. Papers include: "The position and embedding of transformations in a grammar"; "Towards a modern theory of case"; "The case of case"; "Types of lexical information"; "Subjects, speakers and roles"; "Verbs of judging"; "On generativity"; "The case for case reopened"; "Topics in lexical semantics"; "On the organization of semantic information in the lexicon"; "Innocence"; "Towards a descriptive framework for spatial deixis"; "Monitoring the reading process"; "Some thoughts on the boundaries and components of linguistics"; "Frames and the semantics of understanding"; "Linguistics as a tool for discourse analysis"; "Pragmatically controlled zero anaphora"; "Grammatical construction theory and the familiar dichotomies"; "Clause connectives in Japanese and related mysteries"; "Constituency vs dependancy"; Humour in academic discourse".

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume traces the work and thinking of Charles Fillmore throughout his 30 year career. It is a collection which reflects his desire to make sense of the workings of language in a way that keeps in mind questions of language form, language use and conventions linking form, meaning and practice. Papers include: "The position and embedding of transformations in a grammar"; "Towards a modern theory of case"; "The case of case"; "Types of lexical information"; "Subjects, speakers and roles"; "Verbs of judging"; "On generativity"; "The case for case reopened"; "Topics in lexical semantics"; "On the organization of semantic information in the lexicon"; "Innocence"; "Towards a descriptive framework for spatial deixis"; "Monitoring the reading process"; "Some thoughts on the boundaries and components of linguistics"; "Frames and the semantics of understanding"; "Linguistics as a tool for discourse analysis"; "Pragmatically controlled zero anaphora"; "Grammatical construction theory and the familiar dichotomies"; "Clause connectives in Japanese and related mysteries"; "Constituency vs dependancy"; Humour in academic discourse".

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book focuses on the semantic particularities of the French language, covering five empirical themes: determiners, adverbs, tense and aspect, negation, and information structure. The specialists contributing here—including general linguists in France and French linguists in the Netherlands—take formal approaches to semantics and its interface with syntax and pragmatics, highlighting meaning in its relation to both structure and use. Their results should be of particular interest to French and Romance linguists who want to study French from a formal semantic perspective and to general linguists who are interested in cross-linguistic semantics.

Read more less

Book SynopsisLinguistic Issues in Language Technology focuses on the relationships between linguistic insights and language technology. In conjunction with machine learning and statistical techniques, more sophisticated models of language and speech are needed to make significant progress in both existing and newly emerging areas of computational language analysis. The vast quantity of electronically accessible natural language data provides unprecedented opportunities for data-intensive analysis of linguistic phenomena, which can in turn enrich computational methods. Linguistic Issues in Language Technology provides a forum for this work. In this volume, contributors offer new perspectives on semantic representations for textual inference.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhy are diagrams sometimes so useful, facilitating our understanding and thinking, while at other times they can be unhelpful and even misleading? Drawing on a comprehensive survey of modern research in philosophy, logic, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and graphic design, Semantic Properties of Diagrams and Their Cognitive Potentials reveals the systematic reasons for this dichotomy, showing that the cognitive functions of diagrams are rooted in the characteristic ways they carry information. In analyzing the logical mechanisms behind the relative efficacy of diagrammatic representation, Atsushi Shimojima provides deep insight into the crucial question: What makes a diagram a diagram?

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis lucid and wide-ranging volume constitutes a self-contained introduction to the elements and key issues of the philosophy of language.Trade Review"The best blend of technical competence, philosophical sophistication and topical coverage currently available in an introduction to the philosophy of language." Robert M. Harnish, University of Arizona "This is a first-rate introduction to the topics and philosophers it covers, from Frege through theories of truth to intentional semantics, the metaphysics of modality, translation, language in action, speech acts, and more. The book is well-written, clear, accessible, and thorough. Many students will be stimulated to explore the issues further, and will have a solid base from which to do so." John F. Post, Vanderbilt UniversityTable of Contents1. Fregean Beginnings. 2. Definite Descriptions and Other Objects of Wonder. 3. Truth and Meaning: the Tarskian Paradigm. 4. Foundations of Intentional Semantics. 5. Language and Context. 6. Language in Action.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis lucid and wide-ranging volume constitutes a self-contained introduction to the elements and key issues of the philosophy of language.Trade Review"The best blend of technical competence, philosophical sophistication and topical coverage currently available in an introduction to the philosophy of language." Robert M. Harnish, University of Arizona "This is a first-rate introduction to the topics and philosophers it covers, from Frege through theories of truth to intentional semantics, the metaphysics of modality, translation, language in action, speech acts, and more. The book is well-written, clear, accessible, and thorough. Many students will be stimulated to explore the issues further, and will have a solid base from which to do so." John F. Post, Vanderbilt UniversityTable of Contents1. Fregean Beginnings. 2. Definite Descriptions and Other Objects of Wonder. 3. Truth and Meaning: the Tarskian Paradigm. 4. Foundations of Intentional Semantics. 5. Language and Context. 6. Language in Action.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFranklin Roosevelt instinctively understood that a politician of his era who was unable to control his own body would be perceived as unable to control the body politic. He therefore took great care to hide his polio-induced lameness both visually and verbally. In FDR's Body Politics. Davis W. Houck and Amos Kiewe draw on never-before-used primary sources to analyze the silences surrounding Roosevelt's disability, the words he chose to portray himself and his policies as powerful and health-giving, and the methods he used to maximize the appearance of physical strength. They examine his broad strategies, as well as the speeches Roosevelt delivered during his political comeback after polio struck, to understand how he overcame the whispering campaign against him in 1928 and 1932. Ultimately, this is a story of triumph and courage that reveals a master politician's understanding of the body politic in the most fundamental of ways.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the nineteenth century the United States was ablaze with activism and reform: people of all races, creeds, classes, and genders engaged with diverse intellectual, social, and civic issues. This cutting-edge, revelatory book focuses on rhetoric that is overtly political and oriented to social reform. It not only contributes to our historical understanding of the period by covering a wide array of contexts-from letters, preaching, and speeches to labor organizing, protests, journalism, and theater by white and black women, indigenous people, and Chinese immigrants-but also relates conflicts over imperialism, colonialism, women's rights, temperance, and slavery to today's struggles over racial justice, sexual freedom, access to multimodal knowledge, and the unjust effects of sociopolitical hierarchies. The editors' introduction traces recent scholarship on activist rhetorics and the turn in rhetorical theory toward the work of marginalized voices calling for radical social change.Trade ReviewThis book documents what we know about rhetorical activism in the American nineteenth century better than any previous edited collection or research monograph." - Peter Mortensen, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign"Given the broad debates about the role of activism in academe and among public intellectuals, this collection is a timely contribution." - John K. Young, Marshall University

Read more less

Book SynopsisRediscovered texts for teaching composition and rhetoric.A project of recovery and reanimation, Lost Texts in Rhetoric and Composition foregrounds a broad range of publications that deserve renewed attention. Contributors to this volume reclaim these lost texts to reenvision the rhetorical tradition itself. Authors discussed include not only twentieth-century American compositionists but also a linguist, a poet, a philosopher, a painter, a Renaissance rhetorician, and a nineteenth-century pioneer of comics; the collection also features some less studied works by authors who remain well known. These texts will give rise to new conversations about current ideas in composition and rhetoric.This volume contains discussion of the following authors and titles: Judah Messer Leon, The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow, Angel DeCora, Sterling Andrus Leonard, English Composition as a Social Problem, Rodolphe Töpffer, William James, Kenneth Burke, Adrienne Rich, Ann E. Berthoff, John Mohawk, "Western Peoples, Natural Peoples," William Vande Kopple, William Irmscher, Beat Not the Poor Desk, Walter J. Ong, Geneva Smitherman, Thomas Zebroski, Linda Brodkey, Craig S. Womack, Deborah Cameron, James Slevin, Marilyn Sternglass, and William E. Coles, Jr.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMao Zedong fundamentally transformed China from a Confucian society characterized by hierarchy and harmony into a socialist state guided by communist ideologies of class struggle and radicalization. It was a transformation made possible largely by Mao’s rhetorical ability to attract, persuade, and mobilize millions of Chinese people. Xing Lu’s book, Rhetoric of Mao Zedong, analyzes Mao’s speeches and writings over a span of sixty years, tracing the sources and evolution of Mao’s discourse, analyzing his skills as a rhetor and mythmaker, and assessing his symbolic power and continuing presence in contemporary China. Lu observes that Mao’s rhetorical legacy has been commoditized, culturally consumed, and politically appropriated since his death.Applying both Western rhetorical theories and Chinese rhetorical concepts to reach a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of his rhetorical legacy, Lu shows how Mao employed a host of rhetorical appeals and strategies drawn from Chinese tradition and how he interpreted the discourse of Marxism-Leninism to serve foundational themes of his message. She traces the historical contexts in which these themes, his philosophical orientations, and his political views were formed and how they transformed China and Chinese people. Lu also examines how certain ideas are promoted, modified, and appropriated in Mao’s rhetoric. Mao’s appropriation of Marxist theory of class struggle, his campaigns of transforming common people into new communist advocates, his promotion of Chinese nationalism, and his stand on China’s foreign policy all contributed to and were responsible for reshaping Chinese thought patterns, culture, and communication behaviors.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn examination of how images can serve as communication tools to popularize science in the public eyeAs funding for basic scientific research becomes increasingly difficult to secure, public support becomes essential. Because of its promise for captivating nonexpert publics, the practice of merging art and imagery with science has been gaining traction in the scientific community. While images have been used with greater frequency in recent years, their value is often viewed as largely superficial. To the contrary, Maria E. Gigante posits in Introducing Science through Images, the value of imagery goes far beyond mere aesthetics—visual elements are powerful communication vehicles.The images examined in this volume, drawn from a wide range of historical periods, serve an introductory function—that is, they appear in a position of primacy relative to text and, like the introduction to a speech, have the potential to make audiences attentive and receptive to the forthcoming content. Gigante calls them “portal” images and explicates their utility in science communication, both to popularize and mystify science in the public eye.Gigante analyzes how science has been represented by various types of portal images: frontispieces, portraits of scientists, popular-science magazine covers, and award-winning scientific images from Internet visualization competitions. Using theories of rhetoric and visual communication, she addresses the weak connection between scientific communities and the public and explores how visual elements can best be employed to garner public support for research.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhat explains the "triumph of capitalism"? Why do people so often respond positively to discussions favoring it while shutting down arguments against it? Overwhelmingly theories regarding capitalism's resilience have focused on individual choice bolstered by careful rhetorical argumentation. In this penetrating study, however, Catherine Chaput shows that something more than choice is at work in capitalism's ability to thrive in public practice and imagination--more even than material resources (power) and cultural imperialism (ideology). That "something," she contends, is market affect. Affect, says Chaput, signifies a semi-autonomous entity circulating through individuals and groups. Physiological in nature but moving across cultural, material, and environmental boundaries, affect has three functions: it opens or closes individual receptivity; it pulls or pushes individual identification; and it raises or lowers individual energies. This novel approach begins by connecting affect to rhetorical theory and offers a method for tracking its three modalities in relation to economic markets. Each of the following chapters compares a major theorist of capitalism with one of his important critics, beginning with the juxtaposition of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, who Set the agenda not only for arguments endorsing and critiquing capitalism but also for the affective energies associated with these positions. Subsequent chapters restage this initial debate through pairs of economic theorists--John Maynard Keynes and Thorstein Veblen, Friedrich Hayek and Theodor Adorno, and Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith--who represent key historical moments. In each case, Chaput demonstrates, capitalism's critics have fallen short in their rhetorical effectiveness. Chaput concludes by exploring possibilities for escaping the straitjacket imposed by these debates. In particular she points to the biopolitical lectures of Michel Foucault as offering a framework for more persuasive anticapitalist critiques by reconstituting people's conscious understandings as well as their natural instincts.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe period between the 1960s and 1970s is easily one of the most controversial in American history. Examining the liberal movements of the era as well as those that opposed them, this volume offers analyses of the rhetoric of leaders, including those of the civil rights movement, the Chicano movement, the gay rights movement, second-wave feminism, and conservative resistance groups. It also features an introduction that summarizes much of the significant research done by communication scholars on dissent in the 1960s and 1970s.This time period is still a fertile area of study, and this book provides insights into the era that are both provocative and illuminating, making it an essential read for anyone looking to learn more about this time in America.

Read more less

Book SynopsisEnding a war, as Fred Charles IklÉewrote, poses a much greater challenge than beginning one. In addition to issues related to battle tactics, prisoners of war, diplomatic relations, and cease-fire negotiations, ending war involves domestic political calculations. Balancing the tides of public opinion versus policy needs poses a deep and enduring problem for presidents. In a first-of-its-kind study, Resowing the Seeds of War explains how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Obama managed the political, policy, and bureaucratic challenges that arise at the end of war via a series of rhetorical choices that reframe, modify, or unravel depictions of national enemies, the cause of the conflict, and the stakes for the nation and world. This end-of-war rhetoric justifies ending hostilities, rationalizes postwar national policy, argues for the construction of postwar security arrangements, and often sustains public support for massive financial investment in reconstruction. By tracking presidential manipulations of savage imagery from World War II to the War on Terror, this book concludes that even as metaphoric reframing facilitates exit from conflict, it incurs unexpected consequences that make national involvement in the next conflict more likely.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFew periods of American history have been studied more extensively or debated more intensely than the last four decades of the eighteenth century, during which the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Great Britain, won their independence on the battlefield, created the United States Constitution, and implemented a new national government. Scholars have approached these developments from a variety of perspectives—economic, social, political, religious, legal, and diplomatic, to name a few. This volume adopts a rhetorical perspective, which foregrounds the art of effective expression as a means of influencing political perceptions, values, and behaviors. It presents eleven essays by an interdisciplinary group of scholars who bring to bear a variety of methods, backgrounds, perspectives, and specializations. The essays illuminate key rhetors, works, controversies, and moments that helped shape American discourse and politics during the years 1760–1800.

Read more less

Book SynopsisCovid and . . . How To Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic is among the first edited collections to consider how rhetoric shapes Covid’s disease trajectory. Arguing that the circulation of any virus must be understood in tandem with the public communication accompanying it, this collection converses with interdisciplinary stakeholders also committed to the project of social wellness during pandemic times. With inventive ways of thinking about structural inequities in health, these essays showcase the forces that pandemic rhetoric exerts across health conditions, politics, and histories of social injustice.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhat if rhetoric and climate are intimately connected? Taking climates to be rhetorical and rhetoric to be climatic, A Reading Group offers a generative framework for making sense of rhetorical studies as they grapple with the challenges posed by antiracist, decolonial, affective, ecological, and more-than-human scholarship to a tradition with a long history of being centered around individual, usually privileged, human agents wielding language as their principal instrument. Understanding the atmospheric and ambient energies of rhetoric underscores the challenges and promises of trying to heal a harmed world from within it. A cowritten “multigraph,” which began in 2018 as a reading group, this book enacts an intimate, mutualistic spirit of shared critical inquiry and play—an exciting new way of doing, thinking, and feeling rhetorical studies by six prominent scholars in rhetoric from communication and English departments alike.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThese days, earthly coexistence often feels bad. As environmental crises amass, they cast a shadow over an imagined future and the promises of betteror at least predictabledays to come. In times of climate chaos, mass extinction, and rampant environmental injustice, it is easy to despair. But, here and there, a glimmer of joy or optimism shines forth and reminds us that it is possibleeven necessaryto love and to hope amid the ruins. The contributors to this volume grapple with a plurality of interrelated ecological feelings: care, concern, contempt, empathy, fear, grief, hope, joy, numbness, optimism, possessiveness, regret, and saudades. Informed by a rhetorical perspective, the essays collected here reveal what sets our ecological feelings into motion. Crucially, they also uncover some of the rhetorical practices through which we might collectively feel our way into a more harmonious earthly coexistence.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis eye-opening and well-researched companion to the first volume of Executing Democracy enters the death-penalty discussion during the debates of 1835 and 1843.

Read more less

Book SynopsisHistoric levels of polarization, a disaffected and frustrated electorate, and widespread distrust of government, the news media, and traditional political leadership set the stage in 2016 for an unexpected, unlikely, and unprecedented presidential contest. Donald Trump's campaign speeches and other rhetoric seemed on the surface to be simplistic, repetitive, and disorganized to many. As Demagogue for President shows, Trump's campaign strategy was anything but simple.Political communication expert Jennifer Mercieca shows how the Trump campaign expertly used the common rhetorical techniques of a demagogue, a word with two contradictory definitions - 'a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power' or 'a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times' (Merriam-Webster, 2019). These strategies, in conjunction with post-rhetorical public relations techniques, were meant to appeal to a segment of an already distrustful electorate. It was an effective tactic.Mercieca analyzes rhetorical strategies such as argument ad hominem, argument ad baculum, argument ad populum, reification, paralipsis, and more to reveal a campaign that was morally repugnant to some but to others a brilliant appeal to American exceptionalism. By all accounts, it fundamentally changed the discourse of the American public sphere.Trade Review“The question of how Donald Trump ever got elected president has stumped some of the nation’s deeper thinkers. Jennifer Mercieca has a compelling answer in Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. […] This book shows us by dissecting his demagogic language with a particularly precise scalpel. In doing so, it deserves a place alongside George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language and Harry G. Frankfurt’s On Bulls---. It’s a brilliant dissertation on Trump’s patented brand of balderdash. That makes it one of the most important political books of this perilous summer. […]She explains Trump’s demagoguery — no easy matter — by analyzing it through the classic principles of rhetoric. This could be tedious in the wrong hands, but she makes it exhilarating, methodically revealing the insidious crowd-controlling methods of an autocrat. […] This book can serve as a vaccine against a virus that threatens the survival of our democracy. Lord knows we need it.” - The Washington Post

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhat did Occupy Wall Street accomplish? While it began as a startling disruption in politics as usual, in The Democratic Ethos Freya Thimsen argues that the movement's long-term importance rests in how its commitment to radical democratic self-organization has been adopted within more conventional forms of politics. Occupy changed what counts as credible democratic coordination and how democracy is performed, as demonstrated in opposition to corporate political influence, rural antifracking activism, and political campaigns.By comparing instances of progressive politics that demonstrate the democratic ethos developed and promoted by Occupy and those that do not, Thimsen illustrates how radical and conventional rhetorical strategies can be brought together to seek democratic change. Combining insights from rhetorical studies, performance studies, political theory, and sociology, The Democratic Ethos offers a set of conceptual tools for analyzing anticorporate democracy-movement politics in the twenty-first century.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA groundbreaking rhetorical framework for the study of transnational digital activismWhat does it mean when we call a movement "global"? How can we engage with digital activism without being "slacktivists"? In Activist Literacies, Jennifer Nish responds to these questions and a larger problem in contemporary public discourse: many discussions and analyses of digital and transnational activism rely on inaccurate language and inadequate frameworks. Drawing on transnational feminist theory and rhetorical analysis, Nish formulates a robust set of tools for nuanced engagement with activist rhetorics.Nish applies her literacies of positionality, orientation, and circulation to case studies that highlight grassroots activism, well-resourced nonprofits, and a decentralized social media challenge; in so doing, she illustrates the complex power dynamics at work in each scenario and demonstrates how activist literacies can be used to understand and engage with efforts to contribute to social change. Written in an accessible, engaging style, Activist Literacies invites scholars, students, and activists to read activist rhetoric that engages with "global" concerns and circulates transnationally via social media.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA groundbreaking rhetorical framework for the study of transnational digital activismWhat does it mean when we call a movement "global"? How can we engage with digital activism without being "slacktivists"? In Activist Literacies, Jennifer Nish responds to these questions and a larger problem in contemporary public discourse: many discussions and analyses of digital and transnational activism rely on inaccurate language and inadequate frameworks. Drawing on transnational feminist theory and rhetorical analysis, Nish formulates a robust set of tools for nuanced engagement with activist rhetorics.Nish applies her literacies of positionality, orientation, and circulation to case studies that highlight grassroots activism, well-resourced nonprofits, and a decentralized social media challenge; in so doing, she illustrates the complex power dynamics at work in each scenario and demonstrates how activist literacies can be used to understand and engage with efforts to contribute to social change. Written in an accessible, engaging style, Activist Literacies invites scholars, students, and activists to read activist rhetoric that engages with "global" concerns and circulates transnationally via social media.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDrawing on original archival research in the rhetoric of civil rights, the author explores this largely underexamined rhetorical studies site In Liturgy of Change: Rhetorics of the Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Elizabeth Miller examines civil rights mass meetings as a transformative rhetorical, and religious, experience. While rhetorical scholars have analyzed other components of the civil rights movement, including sit-ins, marches, and voter registration campaigns, as well as meeting speeches delivered by well-known figures, the mass meeting itself still is a significant but underexamined site in rhetorical studies. Miller's "liturgy of change" framework brings attention to the pattern of religious genres—song, prayer, and testimony—that structured the events, and the ways these genres created rhetorical opportunities for ordinary people to speak up and develop their activism. To recover and reconstruct these patterns, Miller analyzes archival audio recordings of mass meetings held in Greenville and Hattisburg, Mississippi; Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, Alabama; Savannah, Sumter, and Albany, Georgia; St. Augustine, Florida; and Danville, Virginia.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDrawing on original archival research in the rhetoric of civil rights, the author explores this largely underexamined rhetorical studies site In Liturgy of Change: Rhetorics of the Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Elizabeth Miller examines civil rights mass meetings as a transformative rhetorical, and religious, experience. While rhetorical scholars have analyzed other components of the civil rights movement, including sit-ins, marches, and voter registration campaigns, as well as meeting speeches delivered by well-known figures, the mass meeting itself still is a significant but underexamined site in rhetorical studies. Miller's "liturgy of change" framework brings attention to the pattern of religious genres—song, prayer, and testimony—that structured the events, and the ways these genres created rhetorical opportunities for ordinary people to speak up and develop their activism. To recover and reconstruct these patterns, Miller analyzes archival audio recordings of mass meetings held in Greenville and Hattisburg, Mississippi; Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, Alabama; Savannah, Sumter, and Albany, Georgia; St. Augustine, Florida; and Danville, Virginia.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn accessible and important look at what is truly behind our digital outrageOn any given day, at any given hour, across the various platforms constituting what we call social media, someone is angry. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Reddit. 4Chan. In The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media is Making Us Angry Professor Jeff Rice addresses the increasingly critical question of why anger has become the dominant digital response on social media. He examines the theoretical and rhetorical explanations for the intense rage that prevails across social media platforms, and sheds new light on how our anger isn't merely a reaction against singular events, but generated out of subversive, aggregated beliefs and ideas. Captivating, accessible, and exceedingly important, The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media Is Making Us Angry encourages readers to have the difficult conversations about what is truly behind their anger.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn accessible and important look at what is truly behind our digital outrageOn any given day, at any given hour, across the various platforms constituting what we call social media, someone is angry. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Reddit. 4Chan. In The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media is Making Us Angry Professor Jeff Rice addresses the increasingly critical question of why anger has become the dominant digital response on social media. He examines the theoretical and rhetorical explanations for the intense rage that prevails across social media platforms, and sheds new light on how our anger isn't merely a reaction against singular events, but generated out of subversive, aggregated beliefs and ideas. Captivating, accessible, and exceedingly important, The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media Is Making Us Angry encourages readers to have the difficult conversations about what is truly behind their anger.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA new framework for understanding how algorithms influenceWeb applications offer us conclusions about science. Twitter bots generate art. Machine-learning systems satirize politicians. We live in an era where a substantial share of our private and public communication is machinic. Modern computing machines cannot yet speak for themselves—although the capacities of AI are rapidly expanding—but they generate rhetorical energies as they give advice, entertain, and proffer insight, speaking to human concerns in more-than-human ways and guiding human action. In Influential Machines Miles C. Coleman looks beyond human communication to interrogate the ways in which the machines and algorithms in our lives make meaning and the implications of their special modes of communication. Using the varied examples of an anti-vax "vaccine calculator," two Twitterbots, and the computational performances of virtual assistants, Coleman asks what machines mean to us as social agents and whether humans are the appropriate reference for designing machine communication. Coleman goes beyond the front and back ends of computing to describe the "deep end" of computing, a site of ambient rhetoric that is essential for understanding how machines move in today's digital world.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume is devoted to the syntax and semantics of various languages, studied with models based on constraints. Both French and international linguists present their work in tribute to Danièle Godard, emeritus research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France, a member of the Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle at Université Paris Diderot, and a specialist in the syntax and semantics of French and Romance languages.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the past before improving technologies allowed for the direct observation of brain activity, brain damaged patients were a prime avenue for understanding language structure and inferring back to brain function. Now with the rapid developments in neuroscience, what has been discovered about the brain can inform our view of language allowing us to build hypotheses about the role particular brain regions perform in language use. Brain damaged patients thus become populations which serve as test cases. While technologies in neuroscience have improved, so has our understanding and techniques for observing and analyzing social and communicative behavior. FTD patients have right hemisphere, frontal and temporal pole atrophy which leaves their cognitive abilities intact, but their social interactions impaired and their personalities changed. The description of FTD as a pathological change in social behavior provides the motivation in this volume to apply ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approaches to the organization of patients' interactions. These approaches do more than document the disease and its effects on loved ones by revealing phenomena that can be analyzed empirically as causing systematic changes in the patients' social interactions. This volume opens with a discussion of the frontal lobes and their expected involvement in language use and social interaction. Several chapters then use conversation analysis to examine a range of FTD social behaviors in real-world interactions both in and outside of the clinic. The remaining chapters show how the ethnomethodological approach applied throughout the book can be helpful in better understanding the neurobiology of discourse, the process of socialization, and the role of social motives and moral emotions in maintaining relationships.Trade Review'Language, Interaction and Frontotemporal Dementia represents a wonderful example of neuroanthropological research, mixing together insights from neurology, linguistics and anthropology to examine a specific problem, and doing ethnographic research that is informed by ideas about how neural functions shape language use, social interactions and this particular type of dementia. I also deeply appreciate the mix of theoretical and applied work.' Daniel Lende, Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Public Library of Science Blogs, October 14, 2010Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Social Regulation in Frontotemporal Dementia: A Case Study Salvatore Torrisi, UCLA Chapter 3: Exploring the Moral Basis of Social Action in Frontotemporal Dementia Michael Sean Smith Chapter 4: Examining Perservative Behaviors of a Frontotemporal Dementia Patient and Caregiver Responses: The Benefits of Observing Ordinary Interactions and Reflections on Caregiver Stress Lisa Mikesell Chapter 5: The Interactive Organization of 'Insight': Clinical Interviews with Frontotemporal Dementia Patients Netta Avineri, UCLA Chapter 6: Using Social Deficits in Frontotemporal Dementia to Develop a Neurobiology of Person Reference Andrea W. Mates Chapter 7: The Prefrontal Cortex: Through Maturation, Socialization and Regression Anna Dina L. Joaquin, UCLA Chapter 8: Dispassionate Heuristic Rationality Fails to Sustain Social Relationships Alan Page Fiske, UCLA Chapter 9: Brain, Language, Society: Where Frontotemporal Dementia has Led us John H. Schumann, UCLA

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe second edition of this highly regarded textbook is designed to introduce students at the tertiary level to both Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. It develops critical analytical skills by rooting analysis in SFL methodology so that students can learn to analyze a range of discourse types. Each chapter builds a methodological foundation for the development of critical discourse analytical skills. SFL provides novice analysts with a rich set of resources for CDA and equips them to better reflect on what language is doing and why. The Power of Language offers explanations along with a range of sample analyses to illustrate theory and provide applications of the methodologies introduced in each chapter. Students not only learn by studying a number of analyses but carry out their own analytical work on other samples, thus gaining experience. Each chapter also includes examples of analyses by well know researchers so that novice analysts become familiar with various approaches to analysis.This new edition has been thoroughly updated throughout and features an expanded first chapter on language and international conflict, a new second chapter focusing on language and political fear, an expanded chapter on multimodal communication and an entirely new chapter on language and social media. Other chapters have been updated with new sample analyses and activities.Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Language and International Conflict2. Language and Political Fear3. Language and Racism4. Language and Advertising5. Language and Organizations6. Language in Modern Trends7. Power in Spoken Language8. Multimodal Communication9. Language and Social Media

Read more less

Book SynopsisContemporary children's picture books provide a rich domain for developing theory and analysis of visual meaning and its relation to accompanying verbal text. This book offers new descriptions of the visual strand of meaning in picture book narratives as a way of furthering the project of 'multimodal' discourse analysis and of explaining the literacy demands and apprenticing techniques of children's earliest literature. Reading Visual Narratives uses the principles of systemic-functional theory to organise an explicit account of visual meaning in relation to three perspectives: the visual construction of the narrative events and characters (ideational meaning), the visual positioning of the reader through choices related to focalisation and appraisal (interpersonal meaning) and the discourse organization of visual meanings through choices in framing and composition (textual meaning). The descriptions throughout are illustrated with examples from highly regarded children's picture books. Reading Visual Narratives extends previous social-semiotic accounts of the 'grammar' of the image, by focussing attention on discourse level meanings and on semantic relationships created by sequences of images. At the same time, it extends current understandings of how picture books work through its explicit and systematic account of the visual meanings and their integration with verbal aspects of the texts. It will be of interest to researchers in multimodal discourse analysis, systemic-functional theory, and children's literature and literacy.Trade ReviewHighly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty, professionals, and practitioners. Choice, Vol 50.11 Overall, Reading Visual Narrativesis an important contribution to the field of social semiotics, in general, and to the study of visual-verbal narratives in children's picture books, in particular. Painter et al. have produced a work that is (almost) as fascinating as the material upon which it is based. LinguistList, June 2013Table of ContentsContents 1: Reading the Visual in Children's Picture Books 2: Enacting Social Relations 3: Construing Representations 4: Composing Visual Space 5: Intermodality - Image and Verbiage

Read more less