Speaking And Meaning

The book pursues a usage-oriented strategy of language description by infusing it with the central concept of post-structural semiotics and literary theory - that of intertextual memory. Its principal claim is that all new facts of language are grounded in the speakers' memory of previous experiences of using language. It is a "speech to speech" model: every new fact of speech is seen as emerging out of recalled fragments that are reiterated and manipulated at the same time. By the same token, the new meaning is always superscribed on something familiar and recognizable as its (more or less radical) alteration. The model offers a way to describe the meaning of language as an open-ended process, the way the meaning of literary works is described in modern literary criticism. The basic unit of the intertextual model is the Communicative Fragment (CF). A CF is a fraction of speech of any shape, meaning, and stylistic provenance, which speakers recognize and, as a consequence, treat as a whole. Its chief attributes are a prefabricated shape, an integral meaning (i.e., perceived as a whole whose scope always goes beyond the analyzable), and a specific communicative "texture" alluding at a speech genre, a tangible speech situation, and profiles of the speaker and the implied addressee. Although a CF has a recognizable shape, it is not as definitively set as that of stationary linguistic signs (words and morphemes). A CF can be tempered with, truncated or expanded, adapted to and fused with other CFs. The book describes in detail typical devices by which speakers manipulate their resources of linguistic memory, whose ever-new constellations in speech create infinite possibilities for new variations and shades of meaning. The book is of interest to linguists in such diverse fields as Cognitive Linguistics, discourse analysis, functional linguistics, language pedagogy, translation studies, semiotics, and the philosophy of language.

The Oxford English Dictionary is the internationally recognized authority on the evolution of the English language from 1150 to the present day. The Dictionary defines over 500,000 words, making it an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, pronunciation, and history of the English language. This new upgrade version of The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM offers unparalleled access to the world's most important reference work for the English language. The text of this version has been augmented with the inclusion of the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series (Volumes 1-3), published in 1993 and 1997, the Bibliography to the Second Edition, and other ancillary material. System requirements: PC with minimum 200 MHz Pentium-class processor; 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended); 16-speed CD-ROM drive (32-speed recommended); Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 200, or XP (Local administrator rights are required to install and open the OED for the first time on a PC running Windows NT 4 and to install and run the OED on Windows 2000 and XP); 1.1 GB hard disk space to run the OED from the CD-ROM and 1.7 GB to install the CD-ROM to the hard disk: SVGA monitor: 800 x 600 pixels: 16-bit (64k, high color) setting recommended. Please note: for the upgrade, installation requires the use of the OED CD-ROM v2.0.

The testing and assessment of second language learners is an essential part of the language learning process. Glenn Fulcher's Testing Second Language Speaking is a state-of-the-art volume that considers the assessment of speaking from historical, theoretical and practical perspectives. The book offers the first systematic, comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the testing of second language speaking. Written in a clear and accessible manner, it covers: Explanations of the process of test design Costing test design projects How to put the test into practice Evaluation of speaking tests Task types for testing speaking Testing learners with disabilities It also contains a wealth of examples, including task types that are commonly used in speaking tests, approaches to researching speaking tests and specific methodologies that teachers, students and test developers may use in their own projects. Successfully integrating practice and theory, this book demystifies the process of testing speaking and provides a thorough treatment of the key ethical and technical issues in speaking evaluation.

Flipping through a dictionary pages will now be having a new meaning while reading through Professional Learner’s Dictionary of Spoken English. Designed as the Encyclopaedia of Communicative English, the dictionary contains whole gamut of idioms, sayings and phrases which are used in conversations—in both formal and informal situations. The book has been conceptualised and conceived for the ESL (English As a Second Language) learners, for whom English is a foreign language, but who are eager to speak Real English like the native speakers of English. This book attempts to go beyond the traditional approaches of Spoken English, and takes a communicative approach. Besides making a user aware of the meaning of a term, this book educates skillfully how to speak effective English, what to speak and what not to speak, in order to communicate flawlessly. Conversational ability, fluency in speaking, situation-specific (such as welcome speech) and format-based speaking (such as participating in a group discussion) are some other features of the book that will help a learner pick up the language effortlessly with ease. The book will be of immense utility for the students of Engineering, Management, Communication and all those for whom expressing their thoughts in words is a barrier, and who want to learn English and succeed in Professional and Personal life.

Do you want to learn The Lost Secret of Speaking Perfect English? The Moving Mouth Dictionary technique provides a very simple approach to perfecting English speaking and pronunciation. The book takes a down-to-earth approach for speaking clear English, as it breathes some fresh air into the stuffy corridors of academic learning. It is geared to help students and business people speak impressive and naturally clear English, taking much of the guessing out of pronunciation and spelling. English will become more of a physical activity, rather than a cerebral academic subject. The key is in identifying and improving specifi c types of reverse and forward mouth movements, actions based on using simple vertical mouth movement notations that have simple associations with key phonetics sounds for specifi c letters. The technique’s forward and reverse mouth movements combined with a natural English rhythm also helps trigger and access vocabulary and verbs, while aiding in word retention, fl uency and auto correcting. The book features a dictionary of over 11,000 words, including some of the most diffi cult words in the English language, which have been broken down, putting these notations into “mouthables.” The process draws heavily on early humans’ natural ability to howl and growl, using their mouths vertically. Hence, the lost connection between our near ancestors can aid our ability to speak clear English, an ability we have lost and need to rediscover.