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Benjamins Current Topics

Special issues of established journals tend to circulate within the orbit of the subscribers of those journals. For the Benjamins Current Topics series a number of special issues of various journals have been selected containing salient topics of research with the aim of finding new audiences for topically interesting material, bringing such material to a wider readership in book format.

101 - 120 of 124 results

    • The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies

      Editor(s): Claudia V. Angelelli
      Publication Date September 2014
      Increasing attention has been paid to the agency of translators and interpreters, as well as to the social factors that permeate acts of translation and interpreting. In addition, agency and social factors are discussed in more interdisciplinary terms. Currently the focus is not only on translators or interpreters – i.e., the exploration of their inter/intra-social agency and identity construction (or on their activities and the consequences thereof), but also on other phenomena, such as the displacement of texts and people and issues of access and linguicism. The displacement of texts (whether written or oral) across time and space, as well as the geographic displacement of people, has encouraged researchers in Translation and Interpreting Studies to consider issues related to translation and interpreting through the lens of the Sociology of Language, Sociolinguistics, and Historiography. Researchers have employed a myriad of theoretical and methodological lenses borrowed from other disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Therefore, the interdisciplinarity of Translation and Interpreting Studies is more evident now than ever before. This volume, originally published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies (issue 7:2, 2012), is a perfect example of such interdisciplinarity, reflecting the shift that has occurred in Translation and Interpreting Studies around the world over the last 30 years.

    • The Soft Power of War

      Editor(s): Lilie Chouliaraki
      Publication Date June 2007
      This book, which was originally published as a Special Issue of Journal of Language & Politics 4:1 (2005), takes the war in Iraq as an exemplary case through which to demonstrate the changing nature of contemporary power. The book convincingly argues that the effective study of international politics depends today upon our understanding of the interplay between hard (military, economic) and soft (symbolic) power. One might say, between the politics of territory, guns or money and the language of narrating the world in coherent and persuasive stories. Bringing together different strands of discourse analysis with social, historical and, to an extent, political analysis, all contributions seek to illustrate the ways in which a variety of public genres, from political speeches to computer games and from educational material to newspaper reports, produce influential knowledge about the war and shape the ethical and political premises upon which the legitimacy of this war and a ‘vision’ of the emergent world order rests.

    • Storytelling in the Digital World

      Editor(s): Anna De Fina and Sabina Perrino
      Publication Date June 2019
      Storytelling in the Digital World explores new, emerging narrative practices as they are enacted on digital platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Contributors’ online ethnographies investigate a wide range of themes including the nature of processes of transformation and recontextualization of offline events into digital narratives; the effects of digital anonymity and pseudonymity on narrative practices; the strategies through which virtual communities discursively work together to solidify and negotiate their sociocultural identities; the tensions between the affordances that characterize different online media and the communicative needs of users; the structures and modes in which virtual users construct and enact participatory practices in these environments; and the significance of different spatiotemporal dimensions in the encoding, sharing and appreciation of stories. More generally, the volume engages with some of the theoretical and methodological challenges that the growing presence of digital technologies and media poses to narrative analysis.



      Originally published as special issue of Narrative Inquiry 27:2 (2017)

    • Symbol Grounding

      Editor(s): Tony Belpaeme, Stephen J. Cowley and Karl F. MacDorman
      Publication Date November 2009
      When explaining cognition one must explain how representations in the mind, or symbols, become meaningful by connecting to the external world. This process of connecting symbols with sensorimotor experiences is known as symbol grounding. The classical view of symbol grounding is that it is an individual process: a person or machine interacts with the environment and associates symbols with external experiences.

      This volume contains views from different disciplines – ranging from psychology to robotics – on how this view can be extended by first extending symbol grounding to encompass semiotics and by showing how the classical view exaggerates the importance of written language: grounding does not necessarily involve written notations, but rather language is an external cognitive resource that allows us to acquire categories and concepts. Secondly, as symbol grounding relies on language to acquire and coordinate the process and language is a dynamical process rooted in both culture and biology, symbol grounding by extension is also sensitive to culture, emotion and embodiment.

      The contributions to this volume were previously published in Interaction Studies 8:1 (2007).

    • Teacher Development for Immersion and Content-Based Instruction

      Editor(s): Laurent Cammarata and T.J. Ó Ceallaigh
      Publication Date September 2020
      Teacher preparation and professional development endeavors are key drivers of successful immersion/bilingual (I/B) and content-based language education (CBLE) programs across a variety of models. However, research in this critical area is scant and has not to date received the academic attention it deserves. Aimed at a broad audience, this timely volume is essential reading for anyone interested in knowing what research has to say about teacher development in the I/B and CBLE field. Its primary aim is to inform teacher education practice and stimulate additional research in the field by showcasing ground-breaking research on teacher preparation and professional development programs from around the globe as well as teacher educators’ experience in these varied educational contexts. The contributions illustrate several points of access into classroom research and pedagogy and add insight into the complexity of teacher preparation and professional development in this dynamic and constantly evolving sector. The depth of scholarship and breadth of experience represented by the contributors promises a productive and rewarding read. Originally published as special issue of Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education 6:2 (2018).

    • Teaching and Learning Terminology

      Editor(s): Amparo Alcina
      Publication Date December 2011
      This volume, which was originally published in Terminology 15:1 (2009), presents and reflects on experiences dealing with terminology training, from a theoretical, practical and professional perspective. Terminology is part of the programmes of several (post)graduate courses, such as Translating and Interpreting, Applied Languages, Information Science and other disciplines. Especially terminology practice has changed drastically over the years and training in terminology must adapt to this new reality. Drawing on years of experience in teaching this subject at various academic levels and in diverse ways, we explore what to teach about terminology, how to teach it, how it is learned, what experiences are put into practice with what result, and how to connect the knowledge taught at universities and other institutions to the practical skills that are required from professionals in different areas, e.g. translators, information scientists, knowledge engineers, with respect to their knowledge of terminology.

    • Teaching, Learning and Scaffolding in CLIL Science Classrooms

      Editor(s): Yuen Yi Lo and Angel M.Y. Lin
      Publication Date May 2021
      This edited volume presents a collection of empirical studies examining the teaching and learning processes in science classrooms in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) contexts. It is a timely contribution to the rapidly growing body of CLIL research in response to scholars’ consistent calls for more classroom-based research on the issues in integration of content and language teaching in lessons. With the dual goal of content and language learning, students in CLIL programmes are also facing double challenges – mastery of abstract, cognitively demanding content knowledge and unfamiliar academic language. Focusing on the notion of “scaffolding”, this edited volume demonstrates how science teachers can provide appropriate and timely scaffolding for their students to overcome the challenges in CLIL science classrooms. With studies from different educational settings (Hong Kong, Mainland China, Singapore and Australia) and epistemological paradigms, and adopting a variety of research designs, this volume will provide key insights into CLIL pedagogy and teacher education. Originally published as special issue of Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education 7:2 (2019).

    • Technology Enhanced Learning and Cognition

      Editor(s): Itiel E. Dror
      Publication Date January 2011
      The use of technology in learning has increased dramatically. Training and education is now utilizing and almost integrated with the World Wide Web, podcasts, mobile and distant learning, interactive videos, serious games, and a whole range of e-learning. However, has such technology enhanced learning been effective? And how can it better serve training and education?E-learning must be 'brain friendly', so it optimizes learning to the cognitive architecture of the learners. If technology enhanced learning promotes the formation of effective mental representations and works with the human cognitive system, then the learners will not only be able to acquire information more efficiently, but they will also remember it better and use it. Technology should not be the driving force in shaping e-learning, but rather how that technology can better serve the cognitive system.

      This volume, originally published as a special issue of Pragmatics & Cognition 16:2 (2008) and partly in Pragmatics & Cognition 17:1 (2009), explores the research frontiers in cognition and learning technology. It provides important theoretical insights into these issues, as well as very practical implications of how to make e-learning more brain friendly and effective.

    • Tense and Aspect in Second Language Acquisition and Learner Corpus Research

      Editor(s): Robert Fuchs and Valentin Werner
      Publication Date June 2020
      The expression of temporal relations, notably through tense and aspect, is central in all processes of communication, but commonly perceived and described as a major hurdle for non-native speakers. While this topic has already received considerable attention in the SLA literature, it features less prominently in recent corpus-based studies of learner language. This volume intends to close this gap. It shows which additional insights into the area of tense and aspect in learner language can be gained using corpus data, addressing the following questions: In which ways do corpus-based studies complement work based on other methods?; How can a corpus-based approach inform theories on the acquisition of tense and aspect specifically, and of language acquisition in general?; Are results language-specific or can universal principles be established?; How pervasive are effects of mode/register within learner corpus data?; What role does native and non-native input play?; Which methodological challenges come to the fore when using corpus data instead of elicited data?; How can the notion of “target(-like)” performance be operationalized for corpus material?; Which implications do the findings from the learner corpora have for the teaching and learning of the target language?

      Originally published as special issue of International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 4:2 (2018)

    • Textual Choices in Discourse

      Editor(s): Barbara Dancygier, José Sanders and Lieven Vandelanotte
      Publication Date July 2012
      In recent years, research in cognitive linguistics has expanded its interests to cover a variety of texts – spoken, written, or multimodal. Analytical tools such as conceptual metaphor, frame semantics, mental spaces and grammatical constructions have been productively applied in various discourse contexts. In this volume, originally published as a special issue of English Text Construction 3:2 (2010), the contributors, a mix of established and emerging authors in the field, analyse broadcast and print journalism, argumentative scientific discourse, radio lectures on music, and the main literary genres (the poetry of Szymborska and bpNichol, the drama of Shakespeare, the modernist prose of Virginia Woolf and recent fiction by John Banville). Collectively the findings suggest a need to broaden and refine the cognitive linguistic repertoire, while also uncovering new ways to interpret textual data. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students with interests in cognitive poetics and linguistics, stylistics, pragmatics and construction grammar.

    • Thematising Multilingualism in the Media

      Editor(s): Helen Kelly-Holmes and Tommaso M. Milani
      Publication Date June 2013
      This volume analyses the complex relations between multilingualism and the media: how the media manage multilingualism; how multilingualism is presented and used as media content; and how the media are discursive sites where debates about multilingualism and other language-related issues unfold. It is precisely this inter-relatedness that we want to flag up when we talk about “thematising” multilingualism in the media. More specifically, the focus of this volume is on the empirical and theoretical opportunities and challenges posed by the thematisation of multilingualism in the media. The volume, originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Language and Politics 10:4 (2011), presents a number of case studies from a variety of linguistic, media, political, social, and economic contexts: from print-media debates on trilingual policies in Luxembourg to “new media” discussions about the “sexiness” of Irish or the “national” value of Welsh; from issues of linguistic “authority” and “authenticity” in an American television programme to Wikipedia’s multilingual policy and practice.

    • Theory and Data in Cognitive Linguistics

      Editor(s): Nikolas Gisborne and Willem B. Hollmann
      Publication Date September 2014
      Cognitive linguistics has an honourable tradition of paying respect to naturally occurring language data and there have been fruitful interactions between corpus data and aspects of linguistic structure and meaning. More recently, dialect data and sociolinguistic data collection methods/theoretical concepts have started to generate interest. There has also been an increase in several kinds of experimental work. However, not all linguistic data is simply naturally occurring or derived from experiments with statistically robust samples of speakers. Other traditions, especially the generative tradition, have fruitfully used introspection and questions about the grammaticality of different strings to uncover patterns which might otherwise have gone unnoticed. The divide between generative and cognitive approaches to language is intimately connected to the kinds of data drawn on, and the way in which generalisations are derived from these data. The papers in this volume explore these issues through the lens of synchronic linguistic analysis, the study of language change, typological investigation and experimental study. Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 36:3 (2012).

    • Translation and Interpreting Pedagogy in Dialogue with Other Disciplines

      Editor(s): Sonia Colina and Claudia V. Angelelli
      Publication Date June 2017
      This volume offers a collection of original articles on the teaching of translation and interpreting, responding to the increased interest in this area not only within translation and interpreting studies but also in related fields. It contains empirical, theoretical and state-of-the-art original pieces that address issues relevant to translation and interpreting pedagogy, such as epistemology, technology, language proficiency, and pedagogical approaches (e.g., game-based, task-based). All of the contributors are researchers and educators of either translation or interpreting – or both. The volume should be of interest to researchers and teachers of translation and interpreting, second language acquisition and language for specific purposes. An introduction by the editors – both distinguished scholars in translation & interpreting pedagogy – provides the necessary context for the contributions. Originally published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 10:1 (2015), edited by Brian James Baer and Christopher D. Mellinger.

    • Translation Practice in the Field

      Editor(s): Hanna Risku, Regina Rogl and Jelena Milosevic
      Publication Date August 2019
      This volume presents recent research that follows translators, interpreters and translation project managers into their various work contexts and environments. It extends the scope of analysis of translation research from individuals and texts to collectives in their social and material worlds. Particular attention is paid to current translation and interpreting practice, the genesis of translations, the handling and completion of translation projects in real workplaces and the factors that shape these translation/interpreting situations.

      Covering fields as diverse as technical and literary translation, transcreation and church interpreting, the chapters show just how varied translation and interpreting processes and workplaces can prove to be. They provide new insights into the effects of the increasing use of technology in the translation workplace and the manifold requirements placed on translators and interpreters in a heterogeneous and fast-changing field of practice.

      Originally published as special issue of Translation Spaces 6:1 (2017).

    • The Typology of Asian Englishes

      Editor(s): Lisa Lim and Nikolas Gisborne
      Publication Date October 2011
      When considering the structure of New Englishes which have evolved in – multilingual, mostly post-colonial – contexts of Asia (thus, Asian Englishes), the significant factors to be considered are: 1) the variety/ies of the English lexifier that entered the local context; 2) the nature of transmission of English to the local population; and 3) the local, i.e. substrate, languages of the community in which the New English emerges. This third factor is the focus of the five papers in this volume: they investigate the structure of Asian varieties of English by exploring the relationship between the typological profile of substrate languages in the specific linguistic ecology and the grammatical features of the emerging contact variety of English.The contributions to this volume were originally published in English World-Wide 30:2 (2009).

    • Typology of Writing Systems

      Editor(s): S. Borgwaldt and Terry Joyce
      Publication Date June 2013
      Typology research is extremely important in both proposing classification frameworks and in promoting the careful investigation and analysis of the core concepts inherent within the classification contrasts employed. More exemplary of the latter aspect, the present collection of papers on the typology of writing systems address a number of significant linguistic and psycholinguistic issues surrounding the classification of writing systems. The seven contributions within this volume, which originally appeared as a special issue of Written Language and Literacy 14:1 (2011), cover a wide variety of issues, ranging from an overview of writing system typology research, comparative graphematics, letter-shape similarities, the morphographic principle, tone orthography typology, measuring graphematic transparency, to unconventional spellings within online chat. Reflecting the growing interest in writing, the book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers working on writing systems, written language, and reading research.

    • Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness

      Editor(s): Marcel Bax and Dániel Z. Kádár
      Publication Date November 2012
      Exploring a largely uncharted territory of cultural history and linguistic ethnography, Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness offers in-depth analyses and perceptive interpretations of the conveyance of social-relational meaning in times (long) past and across historical cultures.

      A collection of essays from the pens of authoritative historical (pragma)-linguistics researchers, the volume examines the forms and functions of historical (im)politeness, varying from single utterances and act sequences to fully-fledged (im)polite speech encounters and genres, with a focus on their period- and culture-bound appraisal. What is more, the book sheds light on what is still very dimly seen: diachronic trends in ‘relational work’ and the cultural-societal factors behind patterns of sociopragmatic change.

      The volume reviews theoretical concepts, methods and analytical approaches to improve our present-day understanding of the historical understanding of relational practices of the distant as well as the more recent past. Since it includes newly established themes and positions and breaks new ground, this collection furthers considerably the field of historical (im)politeness research.

      This volume was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12:1/2 (2011).

    • Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units

      Editor(s): Tsuyoshi Ono, Ritva Laury and Ryoko Suzuki
      Publication Date April 2021
      The chapters in this volume focus on how we might understand the concept of ‘unit’ in human languages. It is an analytical notion that has been widely adopted by linguists of various theoretical and applied orientations but has recently been critically examined by both typologically oriented and interactional linguistics. This volume contributes to and extends this discussion by examining the nature of units in actual usage in a range of genetically and typologically unrelated languages, English, Finnish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Mandarin, engaging with fundamental theoretical issues. The chapters show that categories originally created for the description of Indo-European languages have limited usefulness if our goal is to understand the nature of human language in general. The authors thus question the status of traditionally accepted linguistic units, especially their static understanding as a priori entities, and suggest instead that an emergent and interactional view of both structure and function offers a better fit with the data from the languages examined. Originally published as special issue 43:2 (2019) of Studies in Language.

    • Visual Metaphors

      Editor(s): Réka Benczes and Veronika Szelid
      Publication Date September 2022
      Whenever we think about the world – including its concrete and abstract entities – we typically see a series of so-called mental images in front of our eyes that aid us in everyday problem solving and navigating ourselves in the world. Visual metaphors, similarly to their linguistic counterparts, largely build on such images.

      Nevertheless, the interplay of metaphorical/metonymical text and imagery is not necessarily (and not usually) straightforward and raises complex theoretical and methodological questions. The eleven chapters in this collection address a wide range of such challenges, such as what are visual metaphors in the first place; how can they be identified; what is their relationship to linguistic metaphors; what are their most common manifestations; what knowledge structures are required for their interpretation; and how do they interact with metonymies. The studies cut across linguistics, politics, philosophy, poetry, art and history – highlighting the ubiquitous role that visual metaphor plays in everyday life and conceptualizations.

      Originally published as special issue of Cognitive Linguistic Studies 7:1 (2020).
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