Browse Books

In the daily life of multilingual and multinational organizations knowledge ideas and practices are constantly crossing borders and boundaries. To make this movement happen employees of many fields beyond professional translation participate in translating across languages organizational and national cultures as well as epistemes and communities of practice. This paraprofessional translation is a longstanding phenomenon but it has not yet received much scholarly attention. This volume brings translation studies international business and organization studies scholars together to theorize conceptualize and empirically study the practices and beliefs of these actors at varying levels of organizational hierarchies who create meaning and extend knowledge and understanding across boundaries at work.

Human language in its performances is not to be considered without taking into account the environment in which it takes place i.e. its physical social or cultural setting. A description of the regularity or pattern driven character of this relationship is however still a desideratum for modern pragmatics. The contributions of the book in hand set out to show how such a conception may be achieved. In so doing they enhance the pragmatic agenda by regarding the context-based nature of utterances from a variety of perspectives in which the identification of pairs of utterance type and utterance situation as well as the interactive build-up of shared scenarios for interpretation are viewed as part of the linguistic and cultural competence of the speaker / hearer.The approaches united in this volume have in common that they all model the complex dynamic relationship between the utterance the context and common ground using patterns templates or schemas as core notions. It is assumed that such dynamic scalable models are fundamental units of human interaction and they are described in terms of forming relatively stable entities. The emergence usage and scope of these complex entities is elaborated in a variety of theoretical and analytical approaches including corpus studies on modern day communication and online communication.

This monograph presents the first book-length study to focus on formulaic humor and humorous formulae situated at the crossroads of Pragmatics Phraseology and Conversational Humor Studies. Based upon a self-compiled corpus of 34 television series (4214 episodes; 19.4 million words) it adopts a corpus-assisted exploratory mixed-method approach to analyze 13 types of humorous formulae across 146 samples. A conversation-analytical lens reveals how these formulaic patterns are systematically embedded in fictional dialogue and how they pragmatically shape scripted interaction.The study’s key contributions include a typology of humorous formulae an account of their discursive functions and new insights into their role in the stylistics of telecinematic discourse. Of special interest is its demonstration of how scripted talk employs formulaicity to generate humor efficiently and effectively. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students in Linguistics Pragmatics Humor Studies and media discourse while extending existing knowledge on formulaicity in language use.

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.

Exploring Dialogue is a collection of essays on argumentation authored or coauthored by Erik C.W. Krabbe which take a philosopher's or even a logician's point of view. For this collection Krabbe selected twenty of what in his opinion were his best philosophical essays about argumentation. Four of them were written with Jan Albert van Laar. All of these essays are in one way or another concerned with argumentative dialogue. Their focus is sometimes on particular kinds of fallacious reasoning such as non-argumentation non sequitur quasi logical argument or the fallacies described by Aristotle sometimes on theoretical problems encountered when one tries to construct a model for reasonable dialogue such as the problem of retraction the retreat to dialogues about dialogues the tension between cooperation and competition in dialogue or the responsibilities of the party that is taking a critical stance. Though these essays were written from a logical point of view only a few of them contain logical technicalities. They were also to a great extent influenced by the work of the pragma-dialecticians (the Amsterdam School) and one will find many references to their rules for Critical Discussion. Standing in between the formal and the informal there is the semiformal method of profiles of dialogue which method is often used to illustrate possible courses of dialogues. Some essays use a more rigorous formalization in order to make their point: for instance to compare ancient and contemporary dialectic or to explore the possibility of formalizing the pragma-dialectic model of Critical Discussion. Finally there are some essays about argumentation in special contexts: mathematical proof and public controversy.

Interpreting in Armed Conflict: Lessons from the field offers a comprehensive analysis of interpreting across diverse conflict settings including humanitarian missions military operations war journalism human rights missions and international fact-finding missions. Adopting a cross-contextual perspective the book examines key dimensions such as communicative constraints interpreters’ positionality and agency trust and distrust intercultural communication training ethical challenges and the emotional and psychological impact of working in these settings. The volume brings together empirical research practitioner experience and insights from a wide range of sources including testimonies memoirs institutional guidelines and fictional representations. Combining academic rigour with narrative depth it offers a holistic account of interpreting in armed conflict and serves as a key reference for scholars practitioners and organisations engaged in multilingual communication in conflict settings.

The documentarist turn i.e. the growing impact of documentary concepts and practices within general linguistics has increased awareness of the empirical foundations of our discipline accompanied by an appreciation of the value of observable linguistic behaviour. Today there exist well-annotated audiovisual data collections for many—if still far from enough—endangered or un(der)described languages across the world each striving to present a “lasting multipurpose record of a language” (Himmelmann 2006). Documentary data is increasingly supporting theory-building on a larger scale which is where the present volume steps in: What does the shift towards more diverse ecologically valid data types mean for synchronic and diachronic linguistic analyses and typological generalizations? This question is addressed by this volume’s far-ranging contributions on academic and societal affordances (Part I) interrelations between corpus design and avenues of research (Part II) as well as synchronic (Part III) and diachronic (Part IV) research questions.

How can primary school children develop real communicative ability in an additional language? How can teachers move beyond isolated vocabulary and grammar practice toward meaningful language use that aligns with children’s cognitive social and developmental needs? This volume provides the first comprehensive research-based guide to Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) specifically designed for primary education. Timpe-Laughlin and Butler bring together insights from child first language development bilingualism cognitive and affective growth curriculum design literacy development classroom implementation and assessment to show how tasks can serve as the organizing principle for effective early language education. The book guides readers step-by-step: from understanding who young language learners are and how they learn; to designing task-based curricula and materials; to implementing tasks that develop listening speaking reading and writing; to integrating formative diagnostic and large-scale task-based assessment; and to redefining the teacher’s role as planner facilitator assessor and reflective practitioner.Rich with classroom examples teacher-focused preparation sections and practical appendices—including a needs analysis guide task types literacy strategies and scoring rubrics—this book equips educators and researchers with concrete tools for applying TBLT in real primary school contexts.

This volume contains a representative sample of studies presented at the 17th meeting of the Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition conference (GASLA-17). The chapters explore new frontiers and make connections between second language acquisition bilingualism psycholinguistic methods and computational methods. The chapters ask theoretically informed questions about the underlying grammars of language learners and bilinguals use experimental methods to arrive at answers to those questions and consider the value of using ‘big data’ to address questions in generative second language acquisition. This volume is intended for scholars and students of generative second language acquisition and related fields. It builds on prior literature by addressing the acquisition of a variety of phenomena (in syntax semantics pragmatics and phonology) by a variety of populations and using a variety of data collection methods.

Practising Stylistics marks the career of Professor Paul Simpson a leading figure in the discipline of stylistics and one who embodies the practical and rigorous linguistic analysis of literary works and social discourse. A prominent figure in the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) since its earliest days and Baines Professor of English Language at the University of Liverpool Simpson has been a leading light and a steady hand on the stylistics tiller across his career. In this volume his friends colleagues co-authors and former students offer a series of essays that speak to the range and importance of Simpson’s influence.In its contribution and design this book reflects the artisanal ethos of stylistics itself. Each contribution includes a detailed illustrative example of stylistics practice with argument and method open to examination replication and constructive critical discussion. In this volume full-length stylistics essays are interspersed with shorter ‘vignettes’ that demonstrate practical applications of stylistics which are anchored by strong theoretical awareness. As such each chapter is representative of the rigorous stylistic analysis championed by Simpson.Demonstrating the value of stylistic approaches to literary criticism and discourse analysis by illustrating its workings is the most accessible way of reaffirming the discipline and so this book will likely be a key resource for scholars seeking the sort of exemplary stylistic practice inspired by Paul Simpson.