Books

Where is Adaptation? Mapping cultures, texts, and contexts explores the vast terrain of contemporary adaptation studies and offers a wide variety of answers to the title question in 24 chapters by 29 international practitioners and scholars of adaptation, both eminent and emerging. From insightful self-analyses by practitioners (a novelist, a film director, a comics artist) to analyses of adaptations of place, culture, and identity, the authors brought together in this collection represent a broad cross-section of current work in adaptation studies. From the development of technologies impacting film festivals, to the symbiotic potential of interweaving disability and adaptation studies, censorship, exploring the “glocal,” and an examination of the Association for Adaptation Studies at its 10th anniversary, the original contributions in this volume aim to trace the leading edges of this evolving field.

At last — a comprehensive account of the ideas of Benjamin Lee Whorf which not only explains the nature and logic of the linguistic relativity principle but also situates it within a larger ‘theory complex’ delineated in fascinating detail. Whorf’s almost unknown unpublished writings (as well as his published papers) are drawn on to show how twelve elements of theory interweave in a sophisticated account of relations between language, mind, and experience. The role of language in cognition is revealed as a central concern, some of his insights having interesting affinity with modern connectionism. Whorf’s gestaltic ‘isolates’ of experience and meaning, crucial to understanding his reasoning about linguistic relativity, are explained. A little known report written for the Yale anthropology department is used extensively and published for the first time as an appendix. With the Whorf centenary in 1997, this book provides a timely challenge to those who take pleasure in debunking his ideas without bothering to explore their subtlety or even reading them in their original form.

"For the colonized person, objectivity is always directed against him" (Frantz Fanon). Colonized persons do not live on what we call (or used to call) the "colonies" alone. In general, objective reality, or the "facts of life", are very different depending on the kind of life you can afford. This goes for language as well; and it explains both the title of this book, and gives it its "raison d'être". It deals with power in language, and asks: Who is really in command when we use "our" language? And why does it make sense to talk about a language of power (or lack of it)? The powerful are the colonizers, the colonized are the powerless, in language as in geopolitics. Colonizers and colonized alike, however, are subject to the social and economic conditions prevailing in society and therefore, a thorough analysis of these conditions is a must for any socially-oriented theory of language use.

Whether Translation Studies really matters is an important and challenging question which practitioners of translation and interpreting raise repeatedly. TS scholars, many of whom are translators and interpreters themselves, are not indifferent to it either. The twenty papers of this thematic volume, contributed by authors from various parts of Europe, from Brazil and from Israel, address it in a positive spirit. Some do so through direct critical reflection and analysis, arguing in particular that the engagement of TS with society should be strengthened so that the latter could benefit more from the former. Others illustrate the relevance and contribution of TS to society and to other disciplines from various angles. Topics broached include the cultural mediation role of translators, issues in literary translation, knowledge as intellectual capital, globalization through English and risks associated with it, bridging languages, mass media, corpora, training, the use of modern technology, interdisciplinarity with psycholinguistics and neurophysiology.

This book brings together the work of scholars from around the world – UK, Pakistan, US, South Africa, Hungary, Korea, Mexico – to illustrate and celebrate the many ways in which Roz Ivanič has advanced the academic study of writing. Focusing on writing in different formal contexts of education, from primary through to further and higher education in a range of national contexts, the twenty one original contributions in the book critically engage with theoretical and empirical issues raised in Ivanič’s influential body of work. In their exploration of writers’ struggles with the demands of dominant literacy the authors significantly extend understandings of writing practices in formal institutions. Organized around three themes central to Ivanič’s work – creativity and identity; pedagogy; and research methodologies – the twelve chapters and nine personal and scholarly reflections reveal the powerful ways in which Ivanič’s work has influenced thinking in the field of writing and continues to open up avenues for future questioning and research.

William Bathe, S.J. (1564-1614) was a pioneer in linguistics. The present book deals with Bathe's family background, his life and service as a courtier, diplomat and, finally, Jesuit educator, and, in particular, his contribution to the study of language and his most important publication, Ianua Linguarum (1611).

This analysis of the relation between virtue and knowledge focuses on the following aspects: i) Virtue and Happiness can be objects of knowledge; ii) Virtue is knowledge; iii) The search for knowledge is aiming at – and justified by – the human to be happy. Plato therefore defines philosophy not as theory but as the search for wisdom in order to live well. Accordingly Plato does not distinguish different or independent branches of philosophy.

These conclusions are reached by an investigation, which traces the continuity and the development of the relation between virtue and knowledge throughout the different phases in Plato’s philosophy. The leading thesis of this book is unitarian, but in order to corroborate it the methodology is used of those scholars who think that Plato’s philosophy has changed significantly through the dialogic phase. This way, it can be shown that Plato kept developing new justifications for the same relation between virtue and knowledge.Diese Untersuchung der Beziehung von Tugend und Wissen konzentriert sich auf folgende Aspekte: i) Sowohl Tugend als auch Wissen können erkannt werden; ii) Tugend ist Wissen; iii) Die Wissenssuche wird durch das Glücksstreben finalisiert. Daher bestimmt Platon Philosophie nicht als Theorie, sondern als Suche nach der Weisheit, um glücklich zu leben. Entsprechend unterscheidet Platon keine Teilbereiche der Philosophie, die unabhängige Ziele verfolgen.

Diese Schlussfolgerungen werden erreicht durch eine Untersuchung, die die Kontinuität und Entwicklung der Beziehung von Tugend und Wissen durch die verschiedenen Phasen in der Platonischen Philosophie verfolgt. Die leitende These ist unitarisch, aber um sie zu bestätigen wird die Methode derjenigen verwandt, die annehmen, die Platonische Philosophie hätte sich in durch die Dialogphasen wesentlich entwickelt. So kann gezeigt werden, dass Platon immer neue Begründungen für dieselbe Beziehung von Tugend und Wissen entwickelt hat.

The general objective of this volume is to present and discuss different modes of existence in women’s texts and feminist identity in political and poetic discourse on the one hand, and to analyze the factors which determine differing relationships between women and society, and which result in specific forms of identity on the other. The essays in this volume explore language, gender, mass media, sexuality, class and social change, women’s identity as Blacks and in the Third World as well as the nature of domination, feminine criticism and female creativity. The volume opens with a challenging question by the feminist poet Adrienne Rich, ‘Who is We?’

This volume focuses on word formation processes in smaller and so far underrepresented indigenous languages of South America. The data for the analyses have been mainly collected in the field by the authors. The several language families described here, among them Arawakan, Takanan, and Guaycuruan, as well as language isolates, such as Yurakaré, Kalapalo and Cholón, reflect the linguistic diversity of South America. Equally diverse are the topics addressed, relating to word formation processes like reduplication, nominal and verbal compounding, clitic compounding, and incorporation. The traditional notions of the processes are discussed critically with respect to their implementation in minor indigenous languages. The book is therefore not only of interest to readers with an Amerindian background but also to typologists and historical linguists, and it is a supplement to more theory-driven approaches to language and linguistics.

The case studies in this volume offer new insights into word order change. As is now becoming increasingly clear, word order variation rarely attracts social values in the way that phonological variants do. Instead, speakers tend to attach discourse or information-structural functions to any word order variation they encounter in their input, either in the process of first language acquisition or in situations of language or dialect contact. In second language acquisition, fine-tuning information-structural constraints appears to be the last hurdle that has to be overcome by advanced learners. The papers in this volume focus on word order phenomena in the history of English, as well as in related languages like Norwegian and Dutch-based creoles, and in Romance.