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Contrasting English and Polish Emotion Clusters
Jun 2026
Book
Understanding how emotions are clustered and labelled across languages offers fascinating insights into cultural differences and universals. This book delves into this very topic analysing similarities and contrasts between Polish and English grouping and categorising emotions.The book combines a corpus-based linguistic analysis of emotion terms with empirical studies using both questionnaire-based data and online sorting tasks. It identifies several distinct clusters in both languages such as "sadness/ grief" and "joy/ happiness/love" but also highlights divergences. For instance the Polish concept of żal (often translated as regret or sorrow but with unique connotations of grievance and longing) forms a cluster without a direct English equivalent suggesting a distinct emotional nuance in Polish culture.The book builds upon existing psychological theories of emotion particularly those emphasising the role of language in shaping emotional experience (constructionist theories). It also engages with cross-cultural psychology research on emotion recognition and expression providing a linguistic lens to complement existing behavioural studies. By meticulously comparing the semantic fields of emotion words the book enriches our understanding of how language both reflects and influences our emotional worlds offering valuable contributions to psycholinguistics cultural psychology cognitive and corpus linguistics as well as to translation studies.
Consciousness : New perspectives, artificial consciousness, and the scientific progress of psychology
Jun 2026
Book
The book discusses consciousness and several theories that attempt to explain the phenomenon. So far no one has been able to explain how the brain creates consciousness mainly because no way has been discovered to measure it. The book’s main innovations are as follows:(1) A coherent treatment of two types of explanatory models relevant to consciousness. The first a mechanistic model is used in the natural sciences and has been accepted in psychology. The second a mentalistic model is based on the individual's inner world (e.g. will belief intention).(2) Description of a theoretical model which proposes that sensory stimulation is initially processed automatically and unconsciously and explains the transition from non-conscious to conscious states and vice versa.(3) Provision of new arguments that explain why highly sophisticated computers or robots have not yet developed consciousness.(4) Discussion based on the concept of consciousness that explains why psychology has not developed in a way that is similar to the sciences (e.g. physics).
Cross-linguistic Register Variation
Feb 2026
Book
A current trend in contrastive corpus linguistics is to take register variation as a point of departure for identifying similarities and differences across languages. This volume looks back at central previous contributions in this area and adds to our store of knowledge in the form of nine studies comparing English to five other languages in a wide variety of registers representing written spoken and written-to-be-spoken modes of communication. The volume starts with a semi-systematic review of previous research on corpus-based register variation comparing English with the other languages represented in the volume’s studies which are Dutch French German Norwegian and Spanish. In the subsequent nine chapters a variety of topics are explored ranging from verb and noun phrases to adverbials and other lexico-grammatical constructions. This book will be of interest to scholars experts and novices in the fields of contrastive corpus linguistics register studies and translation studies.
Crises We Live By : A transdisciplinary study of crisis and its metaphors in their cultural context
Feb 2026
Book
After an original foreword from Andreas Musolff setting the stage of the book Crises We Live By offers a series of case studies that highlight different ways of conceptualizing and speaking about crisis above all metaphorically. Its title echoes Lakoff and Johnson’s famous Metaphors We Live By (1980) and speaks to the unprecedented awareness of the theme of crisis and its conceptualization that has emerged in contemporary media and discourse. The book makes an innovative contribution to crisis studies and to Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) by extending its historical reach back to antiquity and by adopting a transdisciplinary approach that takes into account the specific cultural context and framing of each metaphor for crisis.
Constructions in Contact 3 : Constructional schemas and patterns in language contact
Oct 2025
Book
Over the last decade Construction Grammar has become increasingly popular in the study of language contact and multilingualism. Indeed constructional approaches including Diasystematic Construction Grammar not only offer a useful theoretical framework for empirical studies but also provide a fresh look at fundamental questions in contact linguistics. This volume continues the series of works on Constructions in Contact (the first two volumes were published in 2018 and 2021). It presents new research on the constructionist modelling of language contact phenomena the impact of multilingualism on argument structure constructions and the role of phonological units in language contact. The volume thus combines classical areas of constructional research with innovative ones demonstrating the broad applicability of Construction Grammar for contact linguistics.
COVID-19 : Metaphor and metonymy across languages and cultures
Oct 2025
Book
The COVID-19 pandemic set off a maelstrom of social cultural and political changes—as well as some surprising linguistic ones. This volume explores these dramatic changes through the lens of Cognitive Linguistics analysing noteworthy examples of pandemic discourse to reveal correspondences and contrasts between different cultures’ conceptions of the illness and its aftermath. The contributions examine a variety of genres including newspaper articles storefront signs artistic creations personal interviews social media comments and political speeches. They look at communication in various domains—business media politics economics art and psychiatry. And they compare past and present showing how the modern pandemic both continued and interrupted previous patterns of discourse around illness and disease. These diverse analyses show how Cognitive Linguistics on the cutting edge of quantitative sociocultural and interdisciplinary turns in linguistics can be a powerful theoretical tool in uncovering parallels and variations in how different cultures communicate in times of crisis.
Cultural Conceptualizations of the SELF in Hong Kong English
Sept 2025
Book
This monograph offers a cultural-cognitive approach to the study of identity construction at a cultural group level and how it patterns language exemplified with Hong Kong English. For this cultural values political ideology language models and reported self- and other-perception as constitutive elements of the speech community’s cultural cognition are explored for the understanding of the cultural model of the SELF. Rooted in the disciplinary synthesis of Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes and its corpus-based approach this book offers new applications and methodological extensions in the study of the acculturation processes of Englishes around the world and the cognitive substrates that inform them. The present study showcases that human experience is fundamentally cultural. Hence this book will enlighten anyone interested in the workings of cognition as connected to language and culture i.e. researchers and students working in the fields of Cultural Linguistics Cognitive Linguistics World Englishes (linguistic) anthropology critical discourse analysis social science sociolinguistics cultural studies and political science.
Cultural models of GENDER and HOMOSEXUALITY in Indian and Nigerian English
Sept 2025
Book
The study presented in this book explores the cultural models of GENDER and HOMOSEXUALITY in Indian and Nigerian English drawing on the research fields of Cultural Linguistics Cognitive Sociolinguistics and World Englishes. With the help of different methodologies and empirical data in the form of sociolinguistic interviews multimodal film material and an online survey the study scrutinises cultural conceptualisations such as culture-specific conceptual metaphors or schemas and shows how they combine to larger interconnected cultural models which provide speakers with a conceptual logic for understanding and interpreting gender and homosexuality. The book further provides visualizations of these cultural models in the form of complex network representations. This scholarly work caters to readers interested in the culturally oriented strands of Cognitive Linguistics in sociolinguistics in World Englishes research and in questions on language gender and homosexuality. It offers valuable insights into the intricate connections between language culture and cognition.
Child-centered Approaches to Applied Linguistic Research
Sept 2025
Book
In recent years child-centered research has garnered increasing attention among scholars working with children. However it remains under-explored within the field of applied linguistics. This gap is partly attributable to the conceptual complexity of the notion itself; “child-centered research” encompasses multiple interpretations and each significantly shapes research design and implementation. This edited volume offers a collection of reflective essays by leading scholars in the field of additional language learning and teaching with children. The contributors draw on their own research experiences to explore the complexities ethical dilemmas and methodological challenges they have encountered. They also propose future directions for the field emphasizing the importance of engaging more deeply with child-centered approaches. By bringing together voices from diverse research traditions this book aims to provoke critical discussion and inspire new thinking about research ethics and methodologies among researchers teacher educators and postgraduate students alike.
Corpus Linguistics for Language Learning Research
May 2025
Book
This book serves as an introduction to corpus linguistics (CL) for graduate students and researchers in Applied Linguistics especially in the domains of language learning and teaching. It provides a structured and accessible approach for those new to CL equipping readers with the foundational concepts and tools required to analyse language corpora autonomously in research related to language learning and teaching. It also contextualises CL’s development over the past four decades offering critical reflections on its practices and applications. Each chapter integrates recommended readings and highlights central concepts guiding readers in applying CL methods to their own studies. By the end of the book readers will have gained the knowledge and practical expertise needed to apply corpus linguistics methods in conducting robust and innovative research.
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery : The Atlantic world and beyond. Volume II: Slavery, memory and literature
Apr 2025
Book
The second volume of A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond explores literary memory of enslavement in post-slavery societies on four continents (North- and South America Africa and Europe). The twenty-two contributors to this volume relate the memory work of literature to central questions of cultural memory testimony and the formation of archives. ‘Literature’ here as in the other volumes of this series is understood in the broadest sense as textual visual auditory cinematic and performative genres. The volume asks: What are the central metaphors storylines and topoi of literary representations of slavery? What kind of identities and political realities are created or enabled by the texts? What are the performative effects of literary language? Post-slavery literature is caught in a double endeavor: vivifying the past making identification possible while acknowledging the moral distance and the difficulties of remembering that past. The volume is divided into six sections that take up different aspects and problems of literary memory of slavery: counter-memories/memories of resistance the body as material archive fictionality of history writing the bricolage of history authorship/authenticity and the necessity of creative approaches to a history that is troublesome and full of accumulated erasures. A previous volume Vol. 1 explored slavery and the emotions. The next volume Vol. 3 will explore authorship and literary culture in relation to slavery.
Current Perspectives on Generative SLA - Processing, Influence, and Interfaces : Selected proceedings of the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference
Dec 2024
Book
This volume comprises studies and keynote addresses presented at the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference hosted by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU in Trondheim in 2022. The selection of cutting-edge studies presented covers a wide array of topics within generative linguistics including the acquisition of grammatical features challenges of functional morphology the impact of the native language on subsequently acquired languages and interfaces between linguistic domains. Other chapters address how non-native language processing differs from native processing while the volume also highlights internal and external factors affecting bi- and multilingual development and points to important avenues for further generative research on second language acquisition.
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery : The Atlantic world and beyond. Volume I: Slavery, literature and the emotions
Dec 2024
Book
The first volume of A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery explores literary representations of enslavement with a focus on the emotions. The contributors consider how the diverse emotions generated by slavery have been represented over a historical period stretching from the 16th century to the present and across regions languages media and genres. The seventeen chapters explore different framings of emotional life in terms of ‘sentiments’ and ‘affects’ and consider how emotions intersect with literary registers and movements such as melodrama and realism. They also examine how writers including some formerly enslaved people sought to activate the feelings of readers notably in the context of abolitionism. In addition to obvious psychological responses to slavery such as fear sorrow and anger they explore minor-key affects such as shame disgust and nostalgia and address the complexity of depicting love and intimacy in situations of domination. Two forthcoming volumes explore the literary history of slavery in relation to memory and to practices of authorship.
A Construction Grammar of the English Language : CASA – a constructionist approach to syntactic analysis
Nov 2024
Book
The present book provides an introduction to the linguistic model of Construction Grammar offering a full analysis of the grammar of the English language. It covers all levels of morpho-syntactic form-meaning units: including sentence types tense and aspect argument structure phrases idioms word and morphological constructions. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>In line with its usage-based approach all constructions are discussed using authentic corpus examples. In order to illustrate how constructions can be learnt the book draws on authentic data from child language. Furthermore corpus analysis is used to show which lexical items typically occur in the slots of constructions and make up their ‘collo-profile’.<br/>A key feature of the book is that it develops a systematic method for showing how constructions combine to form actual utterances. For this purpose so-called ‘construction grids’ are developed which contain all the constructions that make up even the most complex sentences and show points of overlap between them. <br/>
A Comparative History of the Literary Draft in Europe
Nov 2024
Book
Literary drafts are a constant in literatures of all ages and linguistic areas and yet their role in writing processes in various traditions has seldom been the subject of systematic comparative scrutiny. In 38 chapters written by leading experts in many different fields this book charts a comparative history of the literary draft in Europe and beyond. It is organised according to eight categories of comparison distributed over the volume’s two parts devoted respectively to ‘Text’ (i.e. the textual aspects of creative processes) and ‘Beyond Text’ (i.e. aspects of creative processes that are not necessarily textual). Across geographical temporal linguistic generic and media boundaries to name but a few this book uncovers idiosyncrasies and parallels in the surviving traces of human creativity while drawing the reader’s attention to the materiality of literary drafts and the ephemerality of the writing process they capture.
This e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Crossing Boundaries through Corpora : Innovative corpus approaches within and beyond linguistics
Oct 2024
Book
This volume illustrates new trends in corpus linguistics and shows how corpus approaches can be used to investigate new datasets and emerging areas in linguistics and related fields. It addresses innovative research questions for example how prosodic analyses can increase the accuracy of syntactic segmentation how tolerant English language teachers are about language variation or how natural language can be translated into corpus query language. The thematic scope encompasses four types of ‘boundary crossings’. These include the incorporation of innovative scientific methods specifically new statistical techniques acoustic analysis and stylistic investigations. Additionally temporal boundaries are crossed through the use of new methods and corpora to study diachronic data. New methodologies are also explored through the analysis of prosody variety-specific approaches and teacher attitudes. Finally corpus users can cross boundaries by employing a more user-friendly corpus query language.
A Corpus Stylistics Approach to Contemporary Present-tense Narrative
Sept 2024
Book
Focusing on the growing trend of employing the present tense in storytelling this book explores present-tense narrative in contemporary fiction. Using a corpus approach speech writing and thought presentation in 21st-century present-tense narrative is compared with 20th-century past-tense narrative. An in-depth comparative analysis reveals previously undiscovered innovative features specific to how character discourse is presented in modern narratives. Notably narrative tenses have an impact on thought presentation; in present-tense narrative Free Direct Thought (FDT) emerges as frequently as Free Indirect Thought (FIT) a departure from the dominance of FIT in modern past-tense narrative. This book will be of interest to stylisticians narratologists corpus linguists and those who have found themselves absorbed in a 21st-century work of present-tense fiction.
Children’s Peer Cultures in Dialogue : Participation, hierarchy, and social identity in diverse schools
Sept 2024
Book
Contemporary schools are enlivened by a multitude of children with rather disparate linguistic cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. These children spend most of their school hours in interaction with other children engaging in multifarious activities (conflict gossip play humor task-related activities) that gradually come to constitute the local culture and social organization of their peer group. The book illustrates the multimodal and sequential organization of these mundane peer choreographies describing the resources through which children co-ordinate their social actions in the complex linguistic and socio-material landscape of diverse classrooms. Moving beyond the focus on teacher-led socialization in previous literature the analyses shed light on the relevance of everyday peer practices to the negotiation of children’s social roles and identities and to their overall developmental trajectories in the community. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary perspective and addresses scholars from different academic fields including sociology linguistics anthropology social and developmental psychology and education.
Challenges in Corpus Linguistics : Rethinking corpus compilation and analysis
Sept 2024
Book
This book contributes to the discussion of challenges faced in different areas of corpus linguistics namely the compilation annotation and analysis of linguistic corpora. In a field of growing corpus sizes and expanding possibilities of gathering data some old issues persist while at the same time new problems have emerged. As the compilation and study of language corpora gets increasingly sophisticated and complex continuous attention on ways of dealing with the data in question and challenges in text selection and interpretation is needed. The contributions to this volume address problems relating to a variety of areas in corpus linguistic study including corpus annotation data variability learner language social media texts and database utilization. The authors provide critical overviews and research-based analyses discuss the nature of some of the common pitfalls and offer solutions to existing problems.
The COLT Observation Scheme : Digital versions and updated research applications. Second revised edition
Aug 2024
Book
This volume presents the second edition of the Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) Observation Scheme. Since the book’s original publication COLT has become well established as a research instrument in L2 teaching and learning. This new edition brings COLT into the 21st century by introducing digital versions of the scheme and describing how advances in technology have made the collection coding analysis and synthesis of classroom data faster and more efficient. Enhancements include the availability of web-based platforms for the coding sharing and storage of data the application of artificial intelligence in the coding of classroom observation data numeric coding systems and ongoing work in the use of automatic speech recognition for faster transcription. The volume has a similar organizational structure to the original COLT book with the addition of a new chapter on Digital COLT (Part A) a new section on Numeric COLT (Part B) and an expanded final chapter that includes updated summaries reporting on the use of COLT for a wide range of research purposes in diverse L2 contexts. As with the first edition the material is presented in a user-friendly manner with examples illustrations and hands-on activities throughout. It is intended for both novice and experienced researchers investigating teaching and learning in L2 classrooms and in teacher education/reflective practice research.
The companion web site with interviews and a video tour can be found at: https://benjamins.com/sites/lllt.60