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Meaning does not reside in linguistic units but is constructed in the minds of the language users. Meaning construction is an on-line mental activity whereby speech participants create meanings on the basis of underspecified linguistic units. The construction of meaning is guided by cognitive principles. The contributions collected in the volume focus on two types of cognitive principles guiding meaning construction: meaning construction by means of metonymy and metaphor and meaning construction by means of mental spaces and conceptual blending. The papers in the former group survey experiential evidence of figurative meaning construction and discuss high-level metaphor and metonymy the role of metonymy in discourse the chaining of metonymies metonymy as an alternative to coercion and metaphtonymic meanings of proper names. The papers in the latter group address the issues of meaning construction prompted by personal pronouns relative clauses inferential constructions “sort-of” expressions questions and the into-causative construction.

Discourse since September 11 2001 has constrained and shaped public discussion and debate surrounding terrorism worldwide. Social actors in the Americas Europe Asia the Middle East and elsewhere employ the language of the “war on terror” to explain react to justify and understand a broad range of political economic and social phenomena. Discourse War and Terrorism explores the discursive production of identities the shaping of ideologies and the formation of collective understandings in response to 9/11 in the United States and around the world. At issue are how enemies are defined and identified how political leaders and citizens react and how members of societies understand their position in the world in relation to terrorism. Contributors to this volume represent diverse sub-fields involved in the critical study of language including perspectives from sociocultural linguistics communication media cultural and political studies.

First published as a Special Issue of the Journal of Language and Politics 5:1 (2006) this collection of papers focuses from a number of different disciplinary perspectives on aspects of language and communication in official processes of dealing with traumatic pasts. It is a text that belongs to the genre of talking about pain about state violence about uncovering suppressed truths. Linguists and a number of other social scientists investigate discourses mostly ones generated during hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) scrutinizing them for how trauma is articulated and sometimes overcome for how confrontational discourses are publicly managed for how after gross human rights violations reconciliation can be mediated. Language is viewed as an instrument of confronting a traumatic past of negotiating conflict and of initiating processes of healing for individuals as well as in communities.

This collection presents a number of studies in the lexico-grammar of English which focus on the one hand on close reading of language in context and on the other hand on current functional theoretical concerns. The various contributions represent distinct functionalist models of language including Functional Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar Systemic-Functional Grammar Role and Reference Grammar Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar. Taken together however they typify current work being conducted from the grammatical perspective within the functionalist enterprise emphasizing on the relation between structure and usage. A fundamental goal of the enterprise is to identify linguistic structures which are constrained by specific features of use or which actually encode specific features of use as many of the contributions here show.

The alternation between the auxiliaries BE and HAVE which this collection examines is often discussed in connection with generative analyses of split intransitivity. But this book's purpose is to place the phenomenon in a broader context. Well-known facts in the Romance and Germanic language families are extended with data from lesser studied languages and dialects (Romanian Paduan) and also with experimental and historical data. Moreover the book goes beyond the usual language families in which the phenomenon has been studied with the inclusion of two chapters on Chinese and Korean. The theoretical background of the contributors is also broad ranging from current Generative approaches to Cognitive and Optimality-Theoretical frameworks. Readers interested in the structural historical developmental or experimental aspects of auxiliary selection should profit from this book's comprehensive empirical coverage and from the plurality of contemporary linguistic analyses it contains.

This outstanding volume offers the first comprehensive collection of optimality-theoretic studies in Spanish phonology. Bringing together most of the best-known researchers in the field it presents a state-of-the-art overview of research in Spanish phonology within the non-derivational framework of optimality theory. The book is structured around six major areas of phonological research: phonetics–phonology interface segmental phonology syllable structure and stress morphophonology language variation and change and language acquisition including general as well as more specialized articles. The reader is guided through the volume with the help of the introduction and a detailed index. The book will serve as core reading for advanced graduate-level phonology courses and seminars in Spanish linguistics and in general linguistics phonology courses. It will also constitute an essential reference for researchers in phonology phonological theory and Spanish and related areas such as language acquisition bilingualism education and speech and hearing science.

Based on a synthesis of classroom SLA research that has helped to shape evolving perspectives of content-based instruction since the introduction of immersion programs in Montreal more than 40 years ago this book presents an updated perspective on integrating language and content in ways that engage second language learners with language across the curriculum. A range of instructional practices observed in immersion and content-based classrooms is highlighted to set the stage for justifying a counterbalanced approach that integrates both content-based and form-focused instructional options as complementary ways of intervening to develop a learner’s interlanguage system. A counterbalanced approach is outlined as an array of opportunities for learners to process language through content by means of comprehension awareness and production mechanisms and to negotiate language through content by means of interactional strategies involving teacher scaffolding and feedback.

Insistent Images presents a number of new departures dealing with iconicity on the conceptual and the structural levels. On the level of structure the interface between different aspects of iconicity lexical meaning and grammar is discussed in reference to both spoken and signed languages. Novel approaches to aural iconicity investigate a wide range of phenomena from phonological iconicity to the role of iconic features in discourse in the nineteenth century practice of reading aloud in the almost magic incantations of fin de siècle poetry and in Tolkien’s invented languages. Several papers examine the function of iconicity in visual and avant-garde poetry where iconic features allow a reduction of means which paradoxically generates textual diversification and complexity. A discussion of iconic text strategies shows how texts are comprehended through iconic holistic transfer from complex natural and action patterns. ‘Liberature’ which integrates text image and physical space is another novel area of study as are the investigations into the iconic properties of film and of multimedia performance. Film is intrinsically iconic while at the same time being like photography indexical; in multimedia performance on the other hand iconicity functions intermedially by both integrating and reflecting processes of perception and conceptualization. These last two new fields of inquiry further enhance this truly interdisciplinary volume’s explorations of icons as ‘insistent images’.

Narrative – State of the Art which was originally published as a Special Issue of Narrative Inquiry 16:1 (2006) is edited by Michael Bamberg and contains 24 chapters (with a brief introduction by the editor) that look back and take stock of developments in narrative theorizing and empirical work with narratives. The attempt has been made to bring together researchers from different disciplines with very different concerns and have them express their conceptions of the current state of the art from their perspectives. Looking back and taking stock this volume further attempts to begin to deliver answers to the questions (i) What was it that made the original turn to narrative so successful? (ii) What has been accomplished over the last 40 years of narrative inquiry? (iii) What are the future directions for narrative inquiry? The contributions to this volume are deliberately kept short so that the readers can browse through them and get a feel about the diversity of current narrative theorizing and emerging new trends in narrative research. It is the ultimate aim of this edited volume to stir up discussions and dialogue among narrative researchers across these disciplines and to widen and open up the territory of narrative inquiry to new and innovative work.

Applicatives is concerned with the syntax of constructions that contain arguments that transcend the traditional subject-object characterization and how the syntax of such constructions yields the interpretive effects that previous research has identified. At the empirical level this volume remedies the inadequacies and limitations of previous accounts by proposing a more nuanced view of all the factors that enter into the syntax and semantics of applicatives. At the theoretical level this book offers empirical arguments for various theoretical options currently entertained in the minimalist program among which movement into theta-position multiple agree anti-locality and a very derivational view on successive cyclic movement.