English Words

An introduction to the study of English words from a theoretically informed linguistic perspective, aimed at students with no background in linguistics. It introduces relevant theoretical areas: phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, historical and psycholinguistic.

Using English Words examines the impact that the life histories of people can have on their vocabulary. The book shows how discursive relations outside education position people through their vocabularies. Some are prepared for easy entry into life-long prospects of privilege and educational success, while others are denied entry. It argues that education fails to take account of the fact that many children's discursive relations, before and outside schools, are inconsistent with the kinds of lexicosemantic demands that present-day schools and their high-status culture of literacy place upon them: often unnecessarily. Partly as a result of this, many students - both native speakers and those whose second language is English - are almost guaranteed to fail in the middle levels of contemporary education before they have a chance to show that they can succeed. The book draws on theory and research from discursive psychology and the sociology of language, but this rigorous interdisciplinary study also integrates a wide range of international work from linguistics, psycholinguistics, foreign language studies, history, philosophy, anthropology, classics, first language education, and ESL/EFL education.

This book is a cultural-historical (rather than purely linguistic) introduction to American English. The first part consists of a general account of variation in American English. It offers concise but comprehensive coverage of such topics as the history of American English; regional, social and ethnic variation; variation in style (including slang); and British and American differences. The second part of the book puts forward an account of how American English has developed into a dominant variety of the English language. It focuses on the ways in which intellectual traditions such as puritanism and republicanism, in shaping the American world view, have also contributed to the distinctiveness of American English.

This book is the second edition of a highly successful introduction to the study of word-formation, that is, the ways in which new words are built on the bases of other words (e.g. happy - happy-ness), focusing on English. The book's didactic aim is to enable students with little or no prior linguistic knowledge to do their own practical analyses of complex words. Readers are familiarized with the necessary methodological tools to obtain and analyze relevant data and are shown how to relate their findings to theoretical problems and debates. The second edition incorporates new developments in morphology at both the methodological and the theoretical level. It introduces to the use of new corpora and data bases, acquaints the reader with state-of-the-art computational algorithms modeling morphology, and brings in current debates and theories.

English as a Lingua Franca: Theorizing and Teaching English examines the English used among non-native speakers around the world today and its relation to English as a native language, as well as the implications for English language teaching. Challenging and incisive, this book analyses positive and negative accounts of English as a lingua franca, and its linguistic features, within the context of: native and World Englishes multilingualism and intercultural communication sociolinguistic issues including accent and identity classroom teaching and learning English as a Lingua Franca is a useful guide for teachers and trainee teachers, and will be essential reading for advanced students and linguists concerned with multilingualism, language contact, language learning, language change, and the place of English in the world today.

Since the publication of Kennedy's monumental Bibliography of Writings on the English Language, no bibliography has systematically surveyed the Old and Middle English scholarship accumulated over the past 60 years. Tajima's work aims to meet the need for an updated bibliography of Old and Middle English language studies; it lists books, monographs, dissertations, articles, notes, and reviews on Old and Middle English language. The items have been listed into fourteen fairly broad categories: (1) Bibliographies, (2) Dictionaries, glossaries and concordances, (3) Histories of the English language, (4) Grammars (historical, Old English and Middle English), (5) General and miscellaneous studies, (6) Language of individual authors or works, (7) Orthography and punctuation, (8) Phonology and phonetics, (9) Morphology, (10) Syntax, (11) Lexicology, lexicography and word-formation, (12) Onomastics, (13) Dialectology, (14) Stylistics.