Uhm Like You Know

"Uhm, like you know, and uhm, stuff like that, you know what I'm sayin'?" Verbal garbage is pandemic and getting worse. Its ugly echoes reverberate throughout our homes, houses of worship, and workplaces. Too many people cannot articulate even a single sentence without the intrusion of verbal garbage. This book addresses not only the problem of verbal garbage; it also explores and advocates why speaking well is an ethical and spiritual responsibility.

This book provides a collection of articles that reflect the current state of affairs in the blossoming field of World Englishes by bringing together several innovative synchronic and diachronic approaches. It contributes to the ongoing theoretical discussion concerning the criteria that make a low-frequency item represent an incipient change and examines the suitability of the sociolinguistics of globalisation theory for the study of non-traditional avenues for the spread of vernacular varieties of English (recent migrations, the entertainment industry, the web). It explores crucial aspects of language change and dialect evolution through the study of grammatical phenomena and the particular linguistic and socio-historical factors conditioning them. Together with theoretical questions, the volume shows a concern for methodological issues, such as sociolinguistic interviews, map-task experiments, metalinguistic comments, acceptability judgments and corpus-based methods. This volume represents the latest trends in the field and will undoubtedly set the agenda for the years ahead.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity provides a clear and comprehensive survey of the field of language and identity from an applied linguistics perspective. Forty-one chapters are organised into five sections covering: theoretical perspectives informing language and identity studies key issues for researchers doing language and identity studies categories and dimensions of identity identity in language learning contexts and among language learners future directions for language and identity studies in applied linguistics Written by specialists from around the world, each chapter will introduce a topic in language and identity studies, provide a concise and critical survey, in which the importance and relevance to applied linguists is explained and include further reading. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity is an essential purchase for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and TESOL. Advisory board: David Block (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats/ Universitat de Lleida, Spain); John Joseph (University of Edinburgh); Bonny Norton (University of British Colombia, Canada).

This book presents case studies and empirical data of a phenomenon which increasingly gains popularity in Western societies: deconversion. There is, the authors argue, no better word than deconversion to describe processes of disengagement from religious orientations because these have much in common with conversion. Termination of membership may eventually be the final step of deconversion, but it involves biographical and psychological dynamics which can and need to be reconstructed by qualitative approaches and analyzed by quantitative instruments.In the Bielefeld-based Cross-Cultural Study on Deconversion disengagement processes from a variety of religious backgrounds in the USA and in Germany were examined, ranging from well-established religious organizations to new religious and fundamentalist groups. Nearly 1,200 persons participated in thestudy and were interviewed from 2002 to 2005. In the focus of the study are 100 deconverts from the USA and from Germany who were examined with narrative interviews, faith development interviews and an extensive questionnaire. For case study elaboration, the study followed a research design with an innovative triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data. Four chapters, corresponding to four types of deconversion, present 21 case studies. The highlights of the research project are new data on spirituality – the deconverts in particular appear to prefer a »more spiritual than religious« self-identification – and in-depth analyses of a variety of deconversion narratives with special focus on personality factors, motivation, attitudes, religious development, psychological well-being and growth, religious fundamentalism and right-wing authoritarianism. The results of this project which was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft are of special relevance for counselling and pastoral care, for religious education and for people concerned with administration and management of religious groups and churches, but also for a wider audience interested in contemporary changes in the religious fields in the USA and Germany.

Written for classroom and pre-service teachers who wish to adopt a "civil rights pedagogy," Grappling with Diversity illuminates the diverse worldviews of people in our nation's history who are usually omitted, marginalized, or misrepresented in the American school curriculum. In order to prepare young people to interact in a variety of contexts with people who are different from themselves, the contributors take a serious look at teaching them to examine the origins and assumptions underlying mainstream thinking, which divides the nation into North and South, us and them, rich and poor, black and white, and to analyze alternative educational frameworks for understanding people and the planet. They also explore the concept of privilege by asking which stories are privileged in contemporary culture, what readings are available, and whose interests are served by them.

The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.

Winner of the AIA Book Prize for a research monograph in the field of English Language and Linguistics (2016) Common patterns of interactions are altered in the digital world and new patterns of communication have emerged, challenging previous notions of what communication actually is in the contemporary age. Online configurations of interaction, such as video chats, blogging, and social networking practices demand profound rethinking of the categories of linguistic analysis, given the blurring of traditional distinctions between oral and written discourse in digital texts. This volume reconsiders underlying linguistic and semiotic frameworks of analysis of spoken and written discourse in the light of the new paradigms of online communication, in keeping with a multimodal corpus linguistics theoretical framework. Typical modes of online interaction encompass speech, writing, gesture, movement, gaze, and social distance. This is nothing new, but here Sindoni asserts that all these modes are integrated in unprecedented ways, enacting new interactional patterns and new systems of interpretation among web users. These "non verbal" modes have been sidelined by mainstream linguistics, whereas accounting for the complexity of new genres and making sense of their educational impact is high on this volume’ s agenda. Sindoni analyzes other new phenomena, ranging from the intimate sphere (i.e. video chats, personal blogs or journals on social networking websites) to the public arena (i.e. global-scale transmission of information and knowledge in public blogs or media-sharing communities), shedding light on the rapidly changing global web scenario.

We live in a society in which messages associating physical attractiveness with success and happiness are pervasive. There is an epidemic of appearance concerns amongst teenagers and adults in westernised countries and body image dissatisfaction is now considered normative. Large numbers of people experience negative impacts on wellbeing and, for many adolescents, adults, and even children, appearance concerns are influential in choices about a range of health behaviours. The challenges facing them include difficulties with social encounters and the problem of having to cope with negative self perceptions. The Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Appearance is a comprehensive reference text written by experts in the field. It examines how people feel about the way they look, and why it is that some people are happy with their appearance whilst increasing numbers are troubled by the way they look - reporting that these appearance-related concerns affect many aspects of their lives including relationships, health and well-being. It considers the influence of other people and how the media affects thoughts and behaviours related to appearance. It explores the experiences of people living with a disfigurement in a society that seems to be increasingly focussed on appearance and the pursuit of an idealised image of beauty, size and weight. Exploring a topic that has been often neglected in the psychological literature, this book will be invaluable for health, clinical, and social psychologists, health professionals working with patients with visible differences, and those in the field of public health and education.