You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book explores the semantics and pragmatics of honorifics, expressions that indicate the degree of formality that a speaker feels is required in interacting with another person. The analysis is applied to a variety of empirical examples, particularly from Japanese and Thai, and explores a wide range of related philosophical issues.
This book considers how observations about the past influence future behaviour, as expressed in language. Focusing on information gathered from speech and other evidence sources, the author offers a model of how judgements about reliability can be made, and how such judgements factor into how people treat information they acquire via those sources
This collection highlights a range of perspectives on the emerging body of research on evolutionary pragmatics, expanding the borders of language evolution research and indicating exciting new directions for the future of the field. The volume adopts a broad view of pragmatics, providing a counterpoint to classical models of language evolution by exploring the ways in which the origins of language can be traced through the emergence of language structures from use in context. The book synthesizes different lines of inquiry, ranging from evolutionary linguistics to cognitive linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive pragmatics, among other fields, which foreground the impact of the environment o...
This collection reflects on developments in the field of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as embodied in the work of Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, highlighting his diverse contributions to the field from theoretical and applied perspectives. The book surveys Matthiessen’s academic career and illustrates the myriad ways in which his work has reverberated through to current innovations in SFL research. The book also exhibits his theoretical contributions to major linguistic topics and his influence on the development of SFL. Written by some of the world’s foremost scholars in the field, chapters cover such topics as theories of SFL and its applications in different domains as well as the developmental trajectories of SFL in major geographic areas. Addressing the key issues in SFL through the lens of Matthiessen’s career, this book is an accessible resource for students and scholars in systemic functional linguistics, as well as those interested in the systemic functional approach in related areas within linguistics.
This book unpacks coordination in the context of the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT), offering a new proposal for addressing this longstanding puzzle within research on Generative Grammar. The volume’s foundations are rooted in the SMT, which builds on the idea that laws of nature, such as simplicity, symmetry, and computational efficiency, shape the laws of language to their simplest form, as units of computation combined with a recursive structure-building device. The book explores the two main ways in which Generative Grammar research has been undertaken to deal with the issue of coordination within SMT as examined in such linguistic expressions as conjuncts, which combine in an unstructured way, but which run counter to a strictly minimalist approach. Bode proposes an alternative account of coordination based on simplest set-formation without resorting to additional mechanisms, rooting it more squarely within SMT theory and encouraging further discussion on new directions for SMT-related research. This volume will be of interest to scholars in syntax and linguistic theory, particularly those interested in minimalist theory.
This book presents the joint post-proceedings of five international workshops organized by the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, during the 19th Annual Conference JSAI 2005. The volume includes 5 award winning papers of the main conference, along with 40 revised full workshop papers, covering such topics as logic and engineering of natural language semantics, learning with logics, agent network dynamics and intelligence, conversational informatics and risk management systems with intelligent data analysis.
This concise volume, using examples of psychotherapy talk, showcases the potential applications of data analytics for advancing discourse research and other related disciplines. The book provides a brief primer on data analytics, defined as the science of analyzing raw data to reveal new insights and support decision making. Currently underutilized in discourse research, Tay draws on the case of psychotherapy talk, in which clients’ concerns are worked through via verbal interaction with therapists, to demonstrate how data analytics can address both practical and theoretical concerns. Each chapter follows a consistent structure, offering a streamlined walkthrough of a key technique, an exa...
Pinpoints how "dogwhistles" and "figleaves," two kinds of linguistic trick, distort political discourse and normalize racism It is widely accepted that political discourse in recent years has become more openly racist and more accepting of wildly implausible conspiracy theories. Dogwhistles and Figleaves explores ways in which such changes—both of which defied previously settled norms of political speech—have been brought about. Jennifer Saul shows that two linguistic devices, dogwhistles and figleaves, have played a crucial role. Some dogwhistles (such as "88", used by Nazis online to mean "Heil Hitler") serve to disguise messages that would otherwise be rejected as unacceptable, allowi...
Exciting parallel developments have been made in sociolinguistics and formal semantics, yet these two subfields have had very little contact in the past. This pioneering book bridges this gap, bringing together research and methodologies from both areas of study into a new framework for studying the relation between language, ideologies and the social world. It demonstrates how tools from semantics can be used to formalize theories from sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and gender studies, and also shows how tools from epistemic game theory can be used to bring those theories in closer line with empirical studies of sociolinguistic variation and identity construction through language. Engaging and accessible, it highlights how a cross-pollination of ideas in sociolinguistics and semantics can open up a completely new empirical domain of research. It is essential reading for sociolinguists interested in meaning, and semanticists and philosophers interested in language in its social context.