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Narrative Absorption brings together research from the social sciences and Humanities to solve a number of mysteries: Most of us will have had those moments of being totally absorbed in a book a movie or computer game. Typically we do not have any idea about how we ended up in such a state. Nor do we fully realize how we might have changed as we return for the fictional worlds we have visited. The feeling of being absorbed is one of the most illusive and transient feelings but also one that motivates audiences to spend considerable amounts of time in narrative worlds and one that is central to our understanding of the effects of narratives on beliefs and behavior. Key specialists inform the reader of this book about the nature of the peculiar state of consciousness during episodes of absorption the perception of absorption in history the role of absorption in meaningful experiences with narratives the relation with related phenomena such as suspense and identification issues of measurement and the practical implications for instance in education-entertainment.

Various fields have worked separately on topics of absorption albeit using different terminology and methods but having reached a high level of development and complexity in understanding absorption. Now is the time to bring them together. This volume will be a point of reference for years to come.

This volume is both a state-of-the-art display of current thinking on second language development as a complex system. It is also a tribute to Diane Larsen-Freeman for her decades of intellectual leadership in the academic disciplines of applied linguistics and second language acquisition. The chapters therein range from theoretical expositions to methodological analyses pedagogical proposals and conceptual frameworks for future research. In a balanced and in-depth manner the authors provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of second language development with a wealth of insights that promise to break the status-quo of current research and take it to exciting new territory. The book will appeal to both seasoned and novice researchers in applied linguistics second language acquisition bilingualism cognitive psychology and education as well as to practitioners in second or foreign language teaching of any language.

In treating the topic of the landscapes of stylistics this book provides a series of chapters which deal not only with physical landscapes but also with social mental historical portraits of places people and society. The chapters demonstrate that all texts project a worldview even when the content appears to be only a physical description of the external world. The implication is that texts attempt to produce specific effects on the reader determined by the author’s worldview. Contents and effects (namely mental and emotional states behaviours) are thus inseparable. Identifying those effects and how they are produced is an eminently cognitive operation. The chapters analyse a variety of linguistic devices and cognitive mechanisms employed in producing the text and accounting for the effects achieved. Though the majority of the chapters have a cognitive basis a wide range of methodologies are employed including ecostylistics offering cutting-edge theoretical approaches teamed up with close reading. A further crucial feature of this collection is the selection of non-canonical texts ranging from lesser-known texts in English to significant works in languages other than English all of which are characterised by important social themes thus emphasising the importance of critical appreciation as a means of self-empowerment.

La nouvelle culture (1480-1520) vient compléter la sous-série Renaissance de l’ « Histoire comparée des littératures de langues européennes » ce qui ne nuit en rien à sa vocation unique; car les quarante années son objet englobent un extraordinaire ensemble de développements culturels répondant au passé tout en créant des visions nouvelles avec l’appui d’une multiplicité d’institutions la réutilisation savante des langues anciennes la prise en compte de pays nouvellement découverts. Dans tous les domaines de l’esprit: arts sciences visions du monde règne la soif de la découverte. Mais ce n’est pas au mépris du passé au contraire; car la nouvelle culture se nourrit des réalisations et des leçons du passé. Elle est attentive à l’appel du présent tout en reconnaissant ses liens historiques que ce soit dans le domaine politique poétique esthétique scripturaire et de la pensée religieuse. Même entre opposants tels que Luther et Érasme s’institue un « colloque continu » animé par une aspiration commune à la vérité spirituelle et à un mode de vie politique et civique au sein duquel le passé nourrit et transforme le présent. Au cours des quarante années attribuées au volume présent la Renaissance est opérante dans nombre de régions pays strates sociales arts de vivre. Cette multiplicité d’instantanés invite le lectorat à percevoir en quoi les années 1480-1520 sont au cœur même du phénomène nommé Renaissance.

The notion of voice has been used in a number of ways within Translation Studies. Against the backdrop of these different uses this book looks at the voices of translators authors publishers editors and readers both in the translations themselves and in the texts that surround these translations. The various authors go on a hunt for translational agents’ voice imprints in a variety of textual and contextual material such as literary and non-literary translations book reviews newspaper articles academic texts and e-mails. While all stick to the principle of studying text and context together the different contributions also demonstrate how specific textual and contextual circumstances require adapted methodological solutions ending up in a collection that takes steps in a joint direction but that is at the same time complex and pluralistic. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The book is intended for scholars and students of Translation Studies Comparative Literature and other disciplines within Language and Literature.<br/>

Teaching Dialogue Interpreting is one of the very few book-length contributions that cross the research-to-training boundary in dialogue interpreting. The volume is innovative in at least three ways. First it brings together experts working in areas as diverse as business interpreting court interpreting medical interpreting and interpreting for the media who represent a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches. Second it addresses instructors and course designers in higher education but may also be used for refresher courses and/or retraining of in-service interpreters and bilingual staff. Third and most important it provides a set of resources which while research driven are also readily usable in the classroom – either together or separately – depending on specific training needs and/or research interests. The collection thus makes a significant contribution in curriculum design for interpreter education.

This collection brings together current research on a range of phenomena in French Spanish Occitan and Italian that will be of interest to scholars and students of Romance and general linguistics. The volume includes 12 peer-reviewed articles first presented at the 44th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) divided into three sections on syntax-semantics morphosyntax and bilingualism and language acquisition.

Any behavior that arouses as swearing does controversy disagreement disdain shock and indignation as often as it imbues passion sincerity intimacy solidarity and jocularity should be an obvious target of in-depth scholarship. Rigorous scholarly investigation of the practice of swearing acknowledges its social and cultural significance and allows us to discover and better understand the historical psychological sociological and linguistic aspects (among others) of swearwords and swearword usage. The present volume brings together a range of themes and issues central to the existing knowledge of swearing and considers these in two key ‘new’ arenas that is in languages other than English and/or in contexts and media other than spoken interaction. Many of the chapters analysed are based on large and robust collections of data such as corpora or questionnaire responses which allow for patterns of swearing to emerge. In other chapters personally observed instances of swearing comprise the focus allowing for a close analysis of the relationship between sociolinguistic context and pragmatic function. In each chapter the cultural aspects of swearing are considered ultimately affirming the importance of the study of swearing and further establishing the legitimacy of swearing as a target of research.

This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully or univocally specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French Arabic and Hebrew the volume includes mostly understudied languages spoken in New Guinea Australia New Caledonia Amazonia Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax semantics typology) language acquisition as well as psycholinguistics cognition and anthropology.

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.