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This volume pays homage to the legacy of William D. Keel and the significant impact of his research on German in contact settings from myriad perspectives and traditions. It includes structural and sociolinguistic studies focusing on varieties of German spoken throughout the world including Midwestern varieties of Low German Pennsylvania Dutch Texas German Zarzer German in Slove-nia and the use of different varieties of Standard German in the second language classroom. The contributions span multiple domains of linguistic inquiry such as phonology morphosyntax syntax and second language acquisition. Collectively they contribute to ongoing research on contact varie-ties of Germanic language and how they impact sociolinguistic and generative/theoretical theory as well as pedagogical choices involving varieties of German in instructed second language acquisition. The contributions thus are a fitting tribute to William D. Keel’s far-reaching legacy in research on bilingualism and in particular German-Sprachinseln throughout the world.

The book presents an integrated model of vagueness as an implicit and persuasive strategy pervasive in everyday language use and public discourse. It considers three macro-dimensions of the phenomenon: linguistic-theoretical psychological and social-discursive.

It shows how vagueness can be strategically employed to elude recipients’ critical evaluation of intended contents to deresponsibilize the source and make their arguments unchallengeable.

It explores the semiotic semantic pragmatic and psycholinguistic nature of vagueness and looks at its use in contemporary public (with a focus on Italian) discourse.

It also delves into under-explored aspects of the phenomenon such as: the continuum of intentionality in the use of vague expressions; the evolutionary significance of vagueness; its implicitating and persuasive functions; the phenomenon of vagueness by implicature; the interaction between vague expressions and context precisation; the cognitive functioning of vague expressions; the use of vagueness in contemporary persuasive vs. non-persuasive text types; gender-based differences in the use of vagueness in public discourse.

This book provides a comprehensive description of the situational and linguistic characteristics of undergraduate student writing considering both assignment type and discipline. Drawing on a corpus of more than 900 undergraduate student assignments from four disciplinary groups (Arts and Humanities Social Sciences Physical Sciences and Life Sciences) the book combines corpus-based analyses of linguistic features with analyses of communicative purposes and text characteristics. Variation in University Writing takes a new approach to register variation by grouping assignments by their communicative purpose (to argue to explain to compare to describe to narrate a personal event to give a procedural recount to give personal advice and to propose) rather than register categories. A multidimensional analysis provides a detailed description of the linguistic patterns of undergraduate writing. The findings presented in this book will be of interest to teachers of writing instructors of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and researchers of university writing.

This book addresses an under-researched area within populism studies: the discourse of supporters of populist parties. Taking the 2019 European elections as their case study the authors analyse how supporters in eleven different countries construct identities and voting motivations on social media. The individual chapters comprise a range of methods to investigate data from different social media platforms defining populism as a political strategy and/or practice realised in discourse that is based on a dichotomy between “the people” who are unified by their will and an out-group whose actions are not in the interest of the people with a leader safeguarding the interests of the people against the out-group. The book identifies what motivates people to vote for populist parties what role national identities and values play in those motivations and how the social media postings of populist parties are recontextualised in supporters’ comments to serve as a voting motivation.

Whenever we think about the world – including its concrete and abstract entities – we typically see a series of so-called mental images in front of our eyes that aid us in everyday problem solving and navigating ourselves in the world. Visual metaphors similarly to their linguistic counterparts largely build on such images.

Nevertheless the interplay of metaphorical/metonymical text and imagery is not necessarily (and not usually) straightforward and raises complex theoretical and methodological questions. The eleven chapters in this collection address a wide range of such challenges such as what are visual metaphors in the first place; how can they be identified; what is their relationship to linguistic metaphors; what are their most common manifestations; what knowledge structures are required for their interpretation; and how do they interact with metonymies. The studies cut across linguistics politics philosophy poetry art and history – highlighting the ubiquitous role that visual metaphor plays in everyday life and conceptualizations.

Originally published as special issue of Cognitive Linguistic Studies 7:1 (2020).

Variation Rolls the Dice: A worldwide collage in honour of Salikoko S. Mufwene aims to celebrate Mufwene’s ground-breaking contribution to linguistics in the past four decades. The title also encapsulates his approach to language as both systemic and socio-cultural practices and the role of variation in determining particular evolutionary trajectories in specific linguistic ecologies. The book therefore focuses on variation within and across languages within and across speakers and how this fundamental aspect of human behavior can affect language structure in time and space. Mufwene has been instrumental in putting creole languages on the map of General Linguistics and connecting their analysis to issues of language acquisition multilingualism language contact language evolution and language typology. Thanks to the diversity of topics and the wide-ranging theoretical persuasions of the contributors this volume aims at a large readership including both scholars and advanced students interested in cutting-edge research in the aforementioned domains.

This book is a collection of original studies analyzing how different internal and external factors affect Spanish language variation and evolution across a number of (socio)linguistic scenarios. Its primary goal is to expand our understanding of how native and non-native varieties of Spanish co-exist with other languages and dialects under the influence of several linguistic and extra-linguistic forces. While some papers analyze the linguistic dynamics affecting Spanish grammars from a cross-dialectal perspective others focus more closely on the relations established between Spanish and other languages with which it is in contact. In particular some of these studies show how power and prestige may support (or not) the use of Spanish in different social contexts and educational realities given that the attitudes toward this language vary greatly across the Spanish-speaking world. On the one hand in some regions Spanish represents the variety spoken by the majority of the population typically related to prestige and power (Spain and Latin America). On the other hand in other contexts the same language is conceived as a minority variety which may or may not be associated with stigmatized immigrant groups (i.e. in the US).

The objective of this book is to understand variation in political metaphor. Political metaphors are distinctive and important because they are used to achieve political goals: to persuade to shape expectations to realize specific objectives and actions. The analyses in the book go beyond the mere identification of conceptual metaphors in discourse to show how political metaphors function in the real world. It starts from the finding that the same conceptual domains are used to characterize politics political entities and political issues. Yet the specific metaphors used to describe these conceptual domains often change. This book explores some of the reasons for this variation including features of political leaders (e.g. their age and gender) countries and other sociopolitical circumstances. This perspective yields a better understanding of the role(s) of metaphors in political discourse.

This book offers the most comprehensive up-to-date multidisciplinary approach to the work of Galician jongleur Martin Codax and the Vindel Parchment. This medieval manuscript with the texts of seven cantigas de amigo by Martin Codax and the music score of six of them is a philological gem that underwent numerous vicissitudes. The current volume comprises eighteen chapters dealing in depth with Codax’s work and the Vindel Parchment from five basic perspectives: literature; linguistics codicology and ecdotics; music; history and reception of the Vindel Parchment; and the historical background of medieval Vigo (at the time still a small town where Codax’s cantigas de amigo are set). Specialists from different disciplines and countries joined forces in a effort to improve our understanding of Martin Codax and his lyric poetry. The research included here tries to go beyond received knowledge in the field by using new approaches and perspectives delving deeper into areas that had not been sufficiently studied or by venturing into unexplored territories. Many hypotheses are put forward contributing to raising interest in a fascinating enigmatic author in his extraordinary cantigas and in a medieval parchment that is becoming less and less mysterious. The volume contains contributions in English Spanish Italian Portuguese and Galician each accompanied by a summary in English.

This volume surveys a variety of verb valency change phenomena among diverse languages and from diverse theoretical viewpoints. It offers typological studies comparing languages in topics like applicative polysemy complex predicate formation and locative alternation but also works describing the different valency-changing operations in specific languages including West Circassian Huasteca Nahuatl Tlachichilco Tepehua and Seri and works dealing with specific valency change constructions such as tla- constructions in Nahuatl resultatives in Yaqui antipassives in Mocoví and labile verbs in Arabic. This book aims to put this variety of backdrops in perspective and to clarify the notion and mechanisms of verb valency change. Both scholars and expert readers will get in these works a better understanding of the different verb valency changing operations and of the typological aspects involved in this phenomenon together with a better grasp of how argument realization and verb morphology are connected in some languages.