Metalinguistic Discourses

This book was born from the desire to conduct an inquiry into the heterogeneity and variety of linguistic theories in order to assess their descriptive and explanatory power. The first part of the volume brings together contributions addressing formal and theoretical issues. It focuses on the specific questions of metalinguistic discourses, representations and formal symbols, and considers the case of representations pertaining to different metalinguistic levels and their possible translation from one level to another. The essays compiled in this section also examine how generative semantics paved the way for current trends in cognitive linguistics, and provide an analysis of the historical and epistemological context of the notion of metafunction found in Systemic Functional Grammar. The contributions gathered in the second part of the book evaluate the results of a certain number of linguistic studies, putting various theories to the test. They specifically discuss the notion of intersective gradience, analyse modality and the question of irony within two different theoretical frameworks, and deal with parenthetical verbs in the light of an utterer-centred approach. This book will appeal to all linguists with an interest in linguistic theories, to advanced students in linguistics, as well as to scholars in cognate fields such as epistemology, philosophy of language, psychology and neurosciences.

In The Everyday Language of White Racism, Jane H. Hill provides an incisive analysis of everyday language to reveal the underlying racist stereotypes that continue to circulate in American culture. provides a detailed background on the theory of race and racism reveals how racializing discourse—talk and text that produces and reproduces ideas about races and assigns people to them—facilitates a victim-blaming logic integrates a broad and interdisciplinary range of literature from sociology, social psychology, justice studies, critical legal studies, philosophy, literature, and other disciplines that have studied racism, as well as material from anthropology and sociolinguistics Part of the Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture Series

Language Turned on Itself examines what happens when language becomes self-reflexive; when language is used to talk about language. Those who think, talk, and write about language are habitual users of various metalinguistic devices, but reliance on these devices begins early: kids are told, 'That's called a "rabbit"'. It's not implausible that a primitive capacity for the meta-linguistic kicks in at the beginning stages of language acquisition. But no matter when or how frequently these devices are invoked, one thing is clear: they present theorists of language with a complex data pattern. Herman Cappelen and Ernest Lepore show that the study of these devices and patterns not only represents an interesting and neglected project in the philosophy of language, but also carries important consequences for other parts of philosophy. Part I is devoted to presenting data about various aspects of our metalinguistic practices. In Part II, the authors examine and reject the four leading metalinguistic theories, and offer a new account of our use of quotation in a variety of different contexts. But the primary goal of this book is not to promote one theory over another. Rather, it is to present a deeply puzzling set of problems and explain their significance

Do languages cause borders or do borders cause languages? This volume in the Current Issues in Language and Society series attempts to situate the debate on language policies in Southeastern Europe within the larger debate in social sciences and humanities on the issues of borders and the formation of national identities.

By the co-author of Language Online, this book builds on the earlier work while focusing on multilingualism in the digital world. Drawing on a range of digital media – from email to chatrooms and social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube – Lee demonstrates how online multilingualism is closely linked to people's offline literacy practices and identities, and examines the ways in which people draw on multilingual resources in their internet participation. Bringing together central concepts in sociolinguistics and internet linguistics, the eight chapters cover key issues such as: language choice code-switching identities language ideologies minority languages online translation. Examples in the book are drawn from both all the major languages and many lesser-written ones such as Chinese dialects, Egyptian Arabic, Irish, and Welsh. A chapter on methodology provides practical information for students and researchers interested in researching online multilingualism from a mixed methods and practice-based approach. Multilingualism Online is key reading for all students and researchers in the area of multilingualism and new media, as well as those who want to know more about languages in the digital world.

Second-language Discourse in the Digital World illustrates a new, practice-driven approach to technology in second-language (L2) learning that begins with what L2 users do when they connect with others online. With its rich set of examples from a number of different languages and a variety of digital platforms, in and beyond the classroom, this book provides a structured account of L2 computer-mediated discourse. The book is divided into four sections. Section I considers how new media have changed language learning. Section II is about L2 participation in digital forms and practices in online communities. Sections III centers around L2 linguistic and other semiotic practices, including the use of multimodal and multilingual resources while section IV analyzes social practices to explore how networked L2 users build, maintain and challenge relationships. Written in accessible style, the volume will be an important read to anyone interested in L2 use and learning in Web 2.0.Finalist for the AAAL 2019 book award.

The book examines women’s language as an ideological construct historically created by discourse. The aim is to demonstrate, by delineating a genealogy of Japanese women’s language, that, to deconstruct and denaturalize the relationships between gender and any language, and to account for why and how they are related as they are, we must consider history, discourse and ideology. The book analyzes multiple discourse examples spanning the premodern period of the thirteenth century to the immediate post-WWII years, mostly translated into English for the first time, locating them in political, social and academic developments and describing each historical period in a manner easily accessible for those readers not familiar with Japanese history. This is the first book that describes a comprehensive development of Japanese women’s language and will greatly interest students of Japanese language, gender and language studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and history, as well as women’s studies and sexuality studies.

Our everyday lives are increasingly being lived through electronic media, which are changing our interactions and our communications in ways that we are only beginning to understand. In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, editors Deborah Tannen and Anna Marie Trester team up with top scholars in the field to shed light on the ways language is being used in, and shaped by, these new media contexts. Topics explored include: how Web 2.0 can be conceptualized and theorized; the role of English on the worldwide web; how use of social media such as Facebook and texting shape communication with family and friends; electronic discourse and assessment in educational and other settings; multimodality and the "participatory spectacle" in Web 2.0; asynchronicity and turn-taking; ways that we engage with technology including reading on-screen and on paper; and how all of these processes interplay with meaning-making. Students, professionals, and individuals will discover that Discourse 2.0 offers a rich source of insight into these new forms of discourse that are pervasive in our lives.