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What happens when people communicate or dialogue with each other? This is the daunting question that this book proposes to address by starting from a controversial hypothesis: What if human interactants were not the only ones to be considered paraphrasing Austin (1962) as “doing things with words”? That is what if other “things” could also be granted the status of agents in a dialogical situation? Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion incarnation and ventriloquism proposes to explore this unique hypothesis by mobilizing metaphorically the notion of ventriloquism. According to this ventriloqual perspective interactions are never purely local but dislocal that is they constantly mobilize figures (collectives principles values emotions etc.) that incarnate themselves in people’s discussions. This highly original book which develops the analytical practical and ethical dimensions of such a theoretical positioning may be of interest to communication scholars linguists sociologists conversation analysts management and organizational scholars as well as philosophers interested in language action and ethics.



This book won the prestigious NCA LSI 'Old Chestnut' Award 2019!

Translation and Cognition assesses the state of the art in cognitive translation and interpreting studies by examining three important trends: methodological innovation the evolution of research design and the continuing integration of translation process research results with the core findings of the cognitive sciences. Several of the volume’s essays focus on fruitful new process research methods such as eye tracking and keystroke logging that have arisen to supplement the use of think-aloud protocols. Another set of contributions investigates how some central theories concepts and methods from our sister disciplines of psycholinguistics cognitive psychology and neuroscience can inform our understanding of translation processes and their development in novices and experts. Yet another set of essays argues that methodological innovation and integration with the cognitive sciences can lead to more robust research designs and theoretical frameworks to explain the intricacies of cognitive processing during translation and interpreting. Thus this timely volume actively demonstrates that a new theoretical and methodological consensus in cognitive translation studies is emerging promising to greatly improve the quality verifiability and generalizability of translation process research.

The title of this volume strives to capture the dynamic scope and range of the essays it contains applying insights into the workings of iconicity to texts as far removed from each other in time as the Medieval tale of a bishop-fish and the war-poems of 20^th century Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti and as thematically diverse as the Pilgrim’s Progress and the poetry of e.e. cummings. Applications reference both language and linguistics as well as literature and literary theory – and related fields such as sign language and translation; the former approached from the point of view of Japan Sign Language the latter with reference to translations of the Koran and the Sesotho Bible as well as modern German and English Bible translations. On the language side the intricate relationships between sound symbolism and etymology and between analogy and grammaticalization are examined in depth. On the literary side the iconic effects of techniques such as enjambment and metrical inversion are considered but also the ways in which an understanding of iconicity can open up meanings in complex poetry like that of the Afrikaans poet T.T. Cloete – in this particular instance three poems inspired by figures as diverse as Dante Paul Klee and the pop icon Marilyn Monroe. In view of the fact that form is able to mime meaning and meaning itself can be mimed by meaning the theoretical question is asked – on the basis of a wide range of examples from literature language music and other sign-systems – whether meaning can also mime form. An introduction to the work of H.C.T. Müller an early scholar in the field of iconicity highlights a regrettably little known South African contribution to the development of iconicity theory.

In Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse Frans H. van Eemeren brings together the dialectical and the rhetorical dimensions of argumentation by introducing the concept of strategic maneuvering. Strategic maneuvering refers to the arguer’s continual efforts to reconcile aiming for effectiveness with being reasonable. It takes place in all stages of argumentative discourse and manifests itself simultaneously in the choices that are made from the topical potential available at a particular stage in adaptation to audience demand and in the use of specific presentational devices. Strategic maneuvering derails when in the specific context in which the discourse takes place a rule for critical discussion has been violated so that a fallacy has been committed. Van Eemeren makes clear that extending the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation by taking account of strategic maneuvering leads to a richer and more precise method for analyzing and evaluating argumentative discourse.

Discourse particles discourse markers and pragmatic markers refer to phenomena that linguists have begun to probe only since the mid-1980s. Long-ignored in traditional linguistics and textbook grammars and still relegated to marginal status in South Slavic these linguistic phenomena have emerged as invaluable devices for cutting-edge theories of the semantics/pragmatics interface. This book which is a pioneering study in such linguistic phenomena in South Slavic languages is also among the first of its kind for a related group of languages. It builds on the recent findings of some of the most influential linguistically-oriented theories such as Relevance Theory Argumentation Theory and coherence-based approaches to explain the meaning and use of certain discourse/pragmatic particles/markers in Bulgarian Macedonian Serbian Bosnian Croatian and Slovene. These particles/markers are part of the contemporary and historical lexicons of the South Slavic languages varying across regions and time but also differing in origin. This book which draws from naturally occurring data written media and constructed examples aims at a wider audience including scholars working in semantics/pragmatics and Slavic languages and applied specialists interested in this area of research. The authors hope that this book will be conceived as a starting point for a structured inquiry into the flourishing field of discourse particles in South Slavic.

This volume unifies a wide breadth of interdisciplinary studies examining the expression of motion in Slavic languages. The contributors to the volume have joined in the discussion of Slavic motion talk from diachronic typological comparative cognitive and acquisitional perspectives with a particular focus on verbs of motion the nuclei of the lexicalization patterns for encoding motion. Motion verbs are notorious among Slavic linguists for their baffling idiosyncratic behavior in their lexical semantic syntactical and aspectual characteristics. The collaborative effort of this volume is aimed both at highlighting and accounting for the unique properties of Slavic verbs of motion and at situating Slavic languages within the larger framework of typological research investigating cross-linguistic encoding of the motion domain. Due to the multiplicity of approaches to the linguistic analysis the collection offers it will suitably complement courses and programs of study focusing on Slavic linguistics as well as typology diachronic and comparative linguistics semantics and second language acquisition.

Perceptual experience emerges from neural computations. Unconscious Memory Representations in Perception focuses on the role of implicit (non-conscious) memories in processing sensory information. Making sense of the wealth of information arriving at our senses requires implicit memories which represent environmental regularities contingencies of the sensory input as well as general contextual knowledge. Recent findings and theories in cognitive and computational neuroscience provided new insights into the structure and contents of implicit memory representations. The chapters of this book examine implicit memories both in relatively simple situations such as perceiving auditory and visual objects as well as in high‑level cognitive functions such as speech and music perception and aesthetic experience.

By nature implicit memories cannot be directly studied with behavioral methods. Therefore a large part of the evidence reviewed was obtained in neuroscientific studies. Readers with limited experience in neuroscience will find information about the most commonly used techniques in the appendix of this volume. (Series B)

Narrative analyses routinely investigate autobiographical and interview data. This book examines narratives-in-interaction co-constructed by participants in formal mediation sessions by asking how many of the five cases in the videotaped data display the adversarial narrative pattern pervasive within the interpersonal conflict literature and secondly what other narrative patterns may be present and how do they work? Focusing simultaneously at the utterance level and the macro-levels present within the larger dispute context this book reveals situated communicative practices by which interlocutors interactively construct resist reproduce and intertextually transform adversarial narratives to produce outcomes consonant with their underlying interests. In contrast to the dramaturgical model traditionally used in narrative research this book illuminates the emergent microgenetic character of narrative development.

The study of compounds is currently at the center of attention in many areas of both theoretical and applied linguistics. This volume brings together contributions by experts involved in a wide range of such areas based on a large number of diverse languages – spoken and signed. The fact that compound constructions are at the interface of the various components of language – morphology syntax phonology and semantics – makes them ideal testing grounds for models of grammatical architecture as seen in a number of these chapters. The breadth and depth of the coverage of topics as well as the unified bibliography make this volume a basic reference source for those interested in current theoretical as well as experimental approaches to compounding and thus to theoretical linguists as well as psycholinguists and researchers in related fields of cognitive science.

Poetry as Research develops an approach that allows poetry writing to be used as a research method for exploring questions relating to second language learners and more broadly for studies within the humanities and social sciences. The book investigates the characteristics of poetry writing and situates poetry writing as a qualitative arts-based research process. The book utilizes computational linguistics qualitative bibliographic and philosophical methods and investigates the process of writing poetry the textual and literary characteristics of second language poetry poetic identity and inquiry. The developed methodology is exemplified through a poetic inquiry of the study abroad experiences of ESL students. The book provides a comprehensive informed and innovative approach to the investigation of understandings of personal experience. This book should be of interest to the fields of applied linguistics stylistics literary studies creative writing and composition as well as anyone interested in using writing as a research method.