A Discourse and Register Analysis of the Prophetic Book of Joel

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Title: A Discourse and Register Analysis of the Prophetic Book of Joel
Series Title: Studia Semitica Neerlandica

Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Brill
http://www.brill.com

Book URL: http://www.brill.com/products/book/discourse-and-register-analysis-prophetic-book-joel

Author: Colin M. Toffelmire

Electronic: ISBN:  9789004325074 Pages: 232 Price: Europe EURO 104
Hardback: ISBN:  9789004314566 Pages: 232 Price: Europe EURO 104

Abstract:

In A Discourse and Register Analysis of the Prophetic Book of Joel, Colin M.
Toffelmire presents a thorough analysis of the text of Joel from the
perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics. While traditional explorations
of Joel generally engage the book from an historical or literary perspective,
here Toffelmire examines syntactic and semantic patterning in the book, and
builds from there toward a description of the linguistic register and context
of situation that these linguistic patterns suggest. This work also showcases
the usefulness of discourse analysis grounded in Systemic Functional
Linguistics for the analysis of ancient texts.

Context in the System and Process of Language

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Title: Context in the System and Process of Language
Subtitle: Volume 4
Series Title: The Collected Works of Ruqaiya Hasan

Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd
http://www.equinoxpub.com/

Book URL: https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/context-system-process-language-collected-works-ruqaiya-hasan-vol-4/

Author: Ruqaiya Hasan
Editor: Jonathan Webster

Hardback: ISBN:  9781904768395 Pages: 512 Price: U.S. $ 100
Paperback: ISBN:  9781904768401 Pages: 512 Price: U.S. $ 40

Abstract:

The concept context of situation introduced by Malinowski some eighty years
ago has now become an essential element of the vocabulary of any linguistic
theory whose aim is to reveal the nature of language. With the abandonment of
the spurious distinction between competence and performance, the process of
language, i.e., language use, has claimed its rightful place in the study of
language. The chapters of this book focus on the relations of context and
text, conceptualising the latter as language operative in some recognizable
social context. It is argued that context is not simply a backdrop for the
occurrence of words; rather, it is an active element which on the one hand
plays a crucial role in the progression of human discourse and on the other
enters into and shapes the very nature of language as process and as system,
furnishing the foundation for functionality in language. Acting as the
interface between language and society, context analysis reveals the power of
language for creating, maintaining and changing human relationships.

World Building: Discourse in the Mind

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Title: World Building
Subtitle: Discourse in the Mind
Series Title: Advances in Stylistics

Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Book URL: http://www.bloomsbury.com/world-building-9781472586551/

Editor: Joanna Gavins
Editor: Ernestine Lahey

Electronic: ISBN:  9781472586544 Pages: 288 Price: U.K. £ 74.99 Comment: ePDF
Electronic: ISBN:  9781472586551 Pages: 288 Price: U.K. £ 74.99 Comment: ePUB
Hardback: ISBN:  9781472586537 Pages: 312 Price: U.K. £ 75.00

Abstract:

World Building represents the state-of-the-discipline in worlds-based
approaches to discourse, collected together for the first time. Over the last
forty years the ‘text-as-world’ metaphor has become one of the most prevalent
and productive means of describing the experiencing of producing and receiving
discourse. This has been the case in a range of disciplines, including
stylistics, cognitive poetics, narratology, discourse analysis and literary
theory.

The metaphor has enabled analysts to formulate a variety of frameworks for
describing and examining the textual and conceptual mechanics involved in
human communication, articulating these variously through such concepts as
‘possible worlds’, ‘text-worlds’ and ‘storyworlds’. Each of these key
approaches shares an understanding of discourse as a logically grounded,
cognitively and pragmatically complex phenomenon. Discourse in this sense is
capable of producing highly immersive and emotionally affecting conceptual
spaces in the minds of discourse participants.

The chapters examine how best to document and analyze this and this is an
essential collection for stylisticians, linguists and narrative theorists.

Critical Discourse Studies and Technology: A Multimodal Approach to Analysing Technoculture

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Title: Critical Discourse Studies and Technology
Subtitle: A Multimodal Approach to Analysing Technoculture
Series Title: Bloomsbury Advances in Critical Discourse Studies

Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Book URL: http://www.bloomsbury.com/critical-discourse-studies-and-technology-9781472569486/

Author: Ian Roderick

Electronic: ISBN:  9781472569516 Pages: 232 Price: U.K. £ 24.99 Comment: EPUB
Electronic: ISBN:  9781472569509 Pages: 232 Price: U.K. £ 24.99 Comment: ePDF
Hardback: ISBN:  9781472569493 Pages: 232 Price: U.K. £ 75.00
Paperback: ISBN:  9781472569486 Pages: 232 Price: U.K. £ 24.99

Abstract:

Making a new contribution to the developing field of multimodal critical
discourse studies, Ian Roderick’s book demonstrates how technologies that tend
to be widely represented as innovative, or as simple pragmatic solutions, are
always anchored in power relations and are therefore deeply ideological.

A series of examples analysing technologies such as robotics, smart phones or
bio-medicine, their functioning and uses, as well as their representations in
the media, show that these are embedded within discourses that tell us about
social and power relations, identities and political values. The book takes a
tour of everyday technologies and how they are represented in different
settings. A Disney theme park attraction showing how technology has improved
family life makes many assumptions about what is natural in terms of
interpersonal relations, pleasure and satisfaction. Advertisements that
represent robot workers inform us about the kinds of worker-management
relations now characterising work places. Roderick looks at the way that
technologies, while often represented as divorced from their production and
maintenance, as objects of wonder, need to be seen within a fabric of social
relations that tends to be suppressed from how we see them as part of a wider
technological fetishism.

Engaging with existing theories of technology, the book argues that we must
take a more interdisciplinary approach to avoid the pitfalls of social
constructivism and technological determinism. Our experiences of technologies
are shaped through the relationship between knowledge, practices and
institutional forms.

Multimodality in Higher Education

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Title: Multimodality in Higher Education
Series Title: Studies in Writing

Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Brill
http://www.brill.com

Book URL: http://www.brill.com/products/book/multimodality-higher-education

Editor: Arlene Archer
Editor: Esther Odilia Breuer

Electronic: ISBN:  9789004312067 Pages: 255 Price: Europe EURO 142
Hardback: ISBN:  9789004312050 Pages: 255 Price: Europe EURO 110

Abstract:

Multimodality in Higher Education theorizes writing practices and pedagogy
from a multimodal perspective. It looks at the theoretical and methodological
uptake of multimodal approaches in a range of domains in Higher Education,
including art and design, architecture, composition studies, science,
management accounting and engineering. Changes in the communication landscape
have engendered an increasing recognition of the different semiotic dimensions
of representation. Student assignments require increasingly complex multimodal
competencies and Higher Education needs to be equipped to students with these
texts. Multimodality in Higher Education explores the changing communication
landscapes in Higher Education in terms of spaces and texts, as well as new
processes of production and creativity in the new media.

Dawn: The Origins of Language and the Modern Human Mind

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Title: Dawn
Subtitle: The Origins of Language and the Modern Human Mind
Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
http://www.transactionpub.com

Book URL: http://www.transactionpub.com/title/Dawn-978-1-4128-6265-3.html?srchprod=1

Author: Rik Smits

Electronic: ISBN:  9781412862103 Pages: 230 Price: U.S. $ — Comment: EBooks are available from eBook vendors worldwide; price varies by vendor
Hardback: ISBN:  9781412862653 Pages: 230 Price: U.S. $ 29.95
Paperback: ISBN:  9781412862578 Pages: 230 Price: U.S. $ 79.95

Abstract:

In this work, originally published in Dutch, Rik Smits theorizes that language
could not have developed originally as a system of communication. It is,
instead, the result of combining separate abilities, each of which developed
independently to aid the survival of early humans. Lacking strength and speed,
man relies on wisdom for survival. Smits theorizes that human skills in
calculation and estimation continued to develop until they were sufficient to
accommodate a system as complex as grammar.

Only after our linguistic ability emerged could humans think logically and
share our reasoning with others, at which point almost everything we now call
culture began to flourish. Smits concludes that language cannot have long
predated the invention of agriculture in the Middle East, some 14,000 years
ago. The huge advance in civilization represented by language made abstract
powers of reasoning indispensable for the first time, along with highly
developed concepts of identity, past, present, and future, all of which rely
upon language.

This explanation of the origins of language throws new light on cave paintings
by Cro-Magnon man, whose masterpieces date from about 40,000 to 15,000 years
ago. Anatomically Cro-Magnons were modern humans, but they had no language in
the modern sense. Their absence of language gave them no true sense of
individual identity.

Grammatical Complexity in Academic English

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Title: Grammatical Complexity in Academic English
Subtitle: Linguistic Change in Writing
Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
http://cambridge.org

Book URL: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/history-english-language/grammatical-complexity-academic-english-linguistic-change-writing?format=HB

Author: Douglas Biber
Author: Bethany Gray

Hardback: ISBN:  9781107009264 Pages:  Price: U.S. $ 110.00
Hardback: ISBN:  9781107009264 Pages:  Price: U.K. £ 69.99

Abstract:

Grammatical Complexity in Academic English uses corpus-based analyses to
challenge a number of dominant stereotypes and assumptions within linguistics.
Biber and Gray tackle the nature of grammatical complexity, demonstrating that
embedded phrasal structures are as important as embedded dependent clauses.
The authors also overturn ingrained assumptions about linguistic change,
showing that grammatical change occurs in writing as well as speech. This work
establishes that academic writing is structurally compressed (rather than
elaborated); that it is often not explicit in the expression of meaning; and
that scientific academic writing has been the locus of some of the most
important grammatical changes in English over the past 200 years (rather than
being conservative and resistant to change). Supported throughout with textual
evidence, this work is essential reading for discourse analysts,
sociolinguists, applied linguists, as well as descriptive linguists and
historical linguists.

1. Academic writing: challenging the stereotypes; 2. Using corpora to analyze
grammatical change; 3. Phrasal versus clausal discourse styles: a synchronic
grammatical description of academic writing contrasted with other registers;
4. The historical evolution of phrasal discourse styles in academic writing;
5. The functional extension of phrasal grammatical features in academic
writing; 6. The loss of explicitness in academic research writing; 7.
Conclusion.

Variational Text Linguistics: Revisiting Register in English

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Title: Variational Text Linguistics
Subtitle: Revisiting Register in English
Series Title: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL] 90

Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
http://www.degruyter.com/mouton

Book URL: http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/462066?rskey=iIhu8C

Editor: Christoph Schubert
Editor: Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer

Electronic: ISBN:  9783110443554 Pages: 339 Price: Europe EURO 99.95
Hardback: ISBN:  9783110443103 Pages: 339 Price: Europe EURO 99.95

Abstract:

Owing to the ever-increasing possibilities of communication, especially with
the advent of modern communication technologies, register analysis offers a
constantly widening range of research opportunities. Still, research has
mainly concentrated on well-established and frequent registers such as
newspaper articles, while many descriptive and theoretical issues have not yet
been sufficiently investigated.

This volume gives a state-of-the-art insight into register studies and points
out emerging trends as well as new directions for future research.
Furthermore, it provides a forum for the description and discussion of
registers which have not received an appropriate amount of attention so far.
In particular, it deals with specialized offline and online registers,
cross-register comparison as well as regional, contrastive, and diachronic
register variation.

In parallel to the new discipline of variational pragmatics, this volume aims
to foster the discipline of ‘variational text linguistics’ and to initiate
fundamental investigations in this area. This field of research provides new
insights into the concept of register, since it covers both functional and
regional types of textual variation.

Genre in Language, Discourse and Cognition

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Title: Genre in Language, Discourse and Cognition
Series Title: Applications of Cognitive Linguistics [ACL] 33

Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
http://www.degruyter.com/mouton

Book URL: http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/468793?rskey=0Sd3TY

Editor: Ninke Stukker
Editor: Wilbert Spooren
Editor: Gerard Steen

Electronic: ISBN:  9783110469639 Pages: 429 Price: Europe EURO 99.95
Hardback: ISBN:  9783110467703 Pages: 429 Price: Europe EURO 99.95

Abstract:

The study of genre is scattered across research disciplines. This volume
offers an integrative perspective starting from the assumption that genres are
cognitive constructs, recognized, maintained and employed by members of a
given discourse community. Its central questions are: What does genre
knowledge consist of? How is it organized in cognition? How is it applied in
discourse production and interpretation? How is it reflected in language use?

Corpus Stylistics as Contextual Prosodic Theory and Subtext

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Title: Corpus Stylistics as Contextual Prosodic Theory and Subtext
Series Title: Linguistic Approaches to Literature 23

Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: John Benjamins
http://www.benjamins.com/

Book URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/lal.23

Author: Bill Louw
Author: Marija Milojkovic

Electronic: ISBN:  9789027267351 Pages:  Price: Europe EURO 99.00
Electronic: ISBN:  9789027267351 Pages:  Price: U.S. $ 149.00
Electronic: ISBN:  9789027267351 Pages:  Price: U.K. £ 83.00
Hardback: ISBN:  9789027234124 Pages:  Price: U.S. $ 149.00
Hardback: ISBN:  9789027234124 Pages:  Price: U.K. £ 83.00
Hardback: ISBN:  9789027234124 Pages:  Price: Europe EURO 104.94

Abstract:

The volume presents Louw’s Contextual Prosodic Theory from its beginnings to
its newest applications. It journeys from delexicalisation and
relexicalisation into Semantic Prosody and then to the heart of its contextual
requirements within collocation and the thinking of J.R. Firth. Once there, it
moves much of Firth’s and Malinowski’s thinking into a computational method
based upon the ability of language to govern and analyse itself using
collocation to plot its scope and limits. With the assistance of analytic
philosophy, it parts logic (grammar) from metaphysics (vocabulary) along the
lines of a non-computational formula of Bertrand Russell, and so falsifies the
major premise of the Vienna Circle using its own central tenet: the Principle
of Verification. Having arrived at corpus-derived subtext (the semantic aura
of grammar strings, as distinguished from Semantic Prosody), the second half
of the book proceeds to verify the theory on Slavic languages. The focus is on
the poet Alexander Pushkin, whose authorial intention becomes computationally
recoverable. Prose is handled on samples authored by David Lodge, where
authorial (in)sincerity (Louw 1993) is viewed on a cline of inspiration and
quality of discourse. Other applications in the volume include studies on
translation, negotiation, humour, and the reception of CPT.

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