Books

The volume deals with the relationship between language, dialogue, human nature and culture by focusing on an approach that considers culture to be a crucial component of dialogic interaction. Part I refers to the so-called ‘language instinct debate’ between nativists and empiricists and introduces a mediating position that regards language and dialogue as determined by both human nature and culture. This sets the framework for the contributions of Part II which propose varying theoretical positions on how to address the ways in which culture influences dialogue. Part III presents more empirically oriented studies which demonstrate the interaction of components in the ‘mixed game’ and focus, in particular, on specific action games, politeness and selected verbal means of communication.

This book explores the meanings of educational interactions which aim to promote peace and positive relationships. This analysis is based on theories of communication and active participation in education systems, in particular in intercultural settings. The book investigates the cultural presuppositions of dialogues which can empower participants’ expressions in interactions through the management of discussions and conflicts. These presuppositions are observed in the use of language in participants’ narratives and interactions. The book draws on the fine-grained analysis of a large corpus of questionnaires, interviews and videotaped interactions collected in 12 camps promoted by CISV (Children’s International Summer Villages), an international organisation which is active in 70 countries. The analysis encompasses both organisational meetings and educational activities involving adults, children and adolescents of several nationalities, and shows the importance of the different ways in which the adults who coordinate these meetings and activities act and use language. These different ways of acting in interactions can promote both empowering dialogues and disempowering monologues, with important consequences for the fulfilment of educational purposes. For its contents, theoretical framework and methodology, the book may be of interest for educators, teachers, experts in mediation, scholars and students in cultural sociology, sociolinguistics, communication studies, discourse studies and dialogue studies.

The volume considers politics as cooperative group action and takes the position that forms of government can be posited on a continuum with endpoints where governance is shared, and where hegemony dictates, ranging from politics as interaction to politics as imposition. Similarly, dialogue and dialogic action can be superimposed on the same continuum lying between truly collaborative where co-participants exchange ideas in a cooperative manner and dominated by an absolute position where dialogue proceeds along prescribed paths. The chapters address the continuum between these endpoints and present illuminating and persuasive analyses of dialogue in politics, covering motions of support, the relationship between politics and the press, interviews, debates, discussion forums and multimodal media analyses across different discourse domains and different cultural contexts from Africa to the Middle East, and from the United States to Europe.

The ‘Mixed Game Model’ represents a holistic theory of dialogue which starts from human beings’ competence-in-performance and describes how language is integrated in a general theory of human action and behaviour. Human beings are able to adapt to changing conditions and to pursue their interests by the integrated use of various communicative means, mainly verbal, perceptual and cognitive. The core unit is the dialogic action game or ‘the mixed game’ with human beings at the centre acting and reacting in cultural surroundings. The key to opening up the complex whole is human beings’ nature. The Mixed Game Model demonstrates how the different disciplines of the natural and social sciences and the humanities are mutually interconnected. After a detailed overview of the state of the art, the fundamentals of the theory are laid down. They include a typology of action games which ranges from minimal games to complex institutional games. The description is illustrated by analyses of authentic games.

As of July 2024, this e-book is available as Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND license.

Eighteenth-century English grammarians plead eloquently for purity, precision and perspicuity, but their method of teaching largely amounts to citing examples of impurity, imprecision and lack of clarity from contemporary writings. This book is the first of its kind to provide a detailed systematic account of such 'errors'. Apart from source and page references, the Dictionary gives the context of the error (I have not wept this forty years), the correct or 'target' form ('these forty years'), the name of the authors quoted by the grammarians ('Addison', 'Swift'), and the labels which sum up their assessment of the error ('absurd', 'solecism'). It operates with error categories such as ambiguity, ellipsis and government (fourteen in all), which are subdivided into grammatically described main entries, subentries, and so on. The Introduction includes a guide to the use of the Dictionary, the grammatical code, and a discussion of grammatical concepts, error typologies, problems of identifying literary sources, attitudes to correctness, grammatical figures, and other topics. A Bibliography and an Index of lexical items and technical terms round off the volume. The way the Dictionary is organized should make it possible to find in it the answer to a wide variety of questions pertaining to grammar, style and linguistic historiography.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of what happens when intermediate level learners of a foreign language use a bilingual dictionary when writing. Dictionaries are frequently promoted to people learning a foreign language. Nevertheless, teachers often talk about their students’ inability to use dictionaries properly, especially when they write, and this can be problematic. This book paints a comprehensive picture of the differences a dictionary makes and brings out the implications for language learning, teaching, and testing practices. It draws on research in which participants in three studies took writing tests in two test conditions – with and without a dictionary. They were also asked what they thought about the two test types. Their performances and opinions were analyzed in a variety of ways. Conclusions from the data highlight some of the practical issues to be kept in mind if we want to help foreign language learners to use bilingual dictionaries effectively when writing.

While complementing other volumes in the BTL series in its exploration of the state of the art of translator training, this collection of essays is solely focused on audiovisual translation, one of the most complex and dynamic areas of the translation discipline. The book offers an easily accessible yet comprehensive introduction to the fascinating subject of translating films, video games and other audiovisual material. Offering a balance between theory and practice, the main aim of this volume is to provide a wealth of teaching and learning ideas in areas such as subtitling, dubbing, and voice-over without forgetting the newer fields of subtitling for the deaf and audio description for the blind. The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation offers exercises and more on a companion website, highlighting its fundamentally interactive approach, and the activities proposed can be adapted to different learning environments and used with different language combinations: https://benjamins.com/sites/btl.77

The essays in this volume represent the most recent thinking collected on the problematics of feminism and critical theory, engaging the question of the relationship between these terms and the differences within each in terms of the other. As a whole, this piece of an extended conversation within feminism suggests both the illusory comfort of generic demarcations and the discomforting power of the play of difference. The articles are theoretically wide-ranging and provocative, offering discussion of works by such authors as Nella Larsen, Frances Harper, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker.

Differential marking as applied to direct objects has long been discussed as one of the characterizing traits of many Romance languages. There is, however, wide consensus that a detailed investigation into the nature of this phenomenon raises numerous challenges both at the empirical and theoretical level. Many questions are still being raised regarding which precise morpho-syntactic strategies count as differential object marking, whether the data can be unified, and, subsequently, how they are to be unified formally and theoretically. Additionally, a thorough investigation of this phenomenon is still needed for many Romance languages and especially at the micro-variation level. This volume brings together original papers addressing various aspects of differential object marking in Romance languages, focusing on micro-variation, from both a descriptive and formal perspective, touching on diachrony, language contact, synchrony, and using a large set of methodologies.