Search

Is there a specifically ‘Taiwanese'or ‘Polish'humor? Do people from Taiwan and Poland share the same sense of humor? How is humor related to politics, religion and the LGBT community? These questions represent the starting point of investigation of this book. Some of the central issues explored here include: (1) how Taiwanese and Polish friends use various discourse strategies to construct humor; and (2) how different types of humor are employed on television variety shows to attract laughter. This book also provides an explanation of the prevalence of wúlítóu ‘nonsense'in the Taiwanese society and how Polish ‘directness'is reflected in humor. To understand how humor is culturally shaped and how it contributes to a talk-in-interaction, the three methodological approaches of conversation analysis, multimodal discourse analysis and interactional linguistics are adopted and combined here. This book will be of interest to both linguists and non-linguists who are interested in the social and cultural construction of humor.

The chapters in this book consist of selected papers which investigate the theme of ‘Myths Today', paying homage to the notion of myth as defined by Roland Barthes in the late 1950's which provided a theoretical framework under which daily habits, as well as consumer practices, can be examined as socially constructed signs, idealized through verbal narratives. While ‘myth is a type of speech', it is also a type of image; typeface, cinema, photography, sports, online networks, politics, TV shows, sound, and fashion can all serve as groundwork for mythical discourses. Under this framework, the book explores myths today, in the context of global networks, globalisation, visuals and mass communication. The interdisciplinary nature of the book provides a platform for discussion and research, broadens the scope of semiotic and visual communication thinking, and challenges the boundaries of various disciplines.

This open access volume offers valuable new perspectives on the question of how mobility, locatedness and immersion in the physical world can enhance second language teaching and learning. It does so through a diverse array of empirical studies of language, literacy, and culture learning in the linguistic landscape of visible and audible public discourse. Written from conceptually rich and disciplinarily varied perspectives, its ten chapters address methodological and practical problems of relating language learning to the lived and rapidly changing places of the late modern world. Whether it is within the four walls of a school, in a nearby multilingual neighborhood, in a virtual telecollaborative space, or in any other location where languages may be learned, this volume highlights different configurations of learning spaces, the leveraging of real-world places for critical learning, and ways to productively ‘dislocate'language learners from preconceived notions and standardized experiences. Together, these elements create conditions for a language and literacy pedagogy that can be said to be robustly spatialized: linguistically and culturally complex, geographically situated, historically informed, dialogically realized, and socially engaged.

The diffusion of English and the increasing mediatization of our globalized world have significant impacts on our perceptions of language and culture. Beginning with an overview of how the conceptualization of language is currently debated in sociolinguistics and related fields, this book highlights the need for a new perspective on language mobility. Through examining the use of English on German radio morning shows, the book explores the dynamics of language use in times of accelerated globalization and provides insights into how the media operate within the global flows of messages and linguistic resources that characterize our mediatized societies. In doing so, it demonstrates how combining the different perspectives of a sociolinguistics of mobility and contact linguistics allows for a thorough investigation of language practices in society, and advances the theoretical and practical approaches to the study of language mobility as a result.

Denne boka gir læreren i det flerspråklige klasserommet en didaktisk håndsrekning i form av forskningsbasert kunnskap, inspirasjon og praktiske forslag. Denne vitenskapelige antologien gir læreren i det flerspråklige klasserommet en didaktisk håndsrekning i form av forskningsbasert kunnskap og metodiske forslag. Fokus er på norskfaget samt på digital kommunikasjon. Forfatterne viser blant annet hvordan arbeid med grammatikk og med skjønnlitteratur samt brukt av digitale verktøy kan øke læring i elevgrupper med språklig mangfold. Forfatterne har lang erfaring fra arbeid i lærerutdanning og solid bakgrunn fra utviklingsarbeid og forskning på flerspråklighet og interkulturelle relasjoner.

Das Passiv gilt in der Schule als herausfordernd, obwohl Kinder und Jugendliche diese Konstruktion aus dem Alltag kennen. Mit einer Korpusanalyse weist Sarah Olthoff nach, dass das Passiv in Schulbüchern allerdings ähnlich häufig auftritt wie in wissenschaftlichen Texten. Form und Funktion des Passivs unterscheiden sich zudem fach- und kontextspezifisch. In einer Befragung von Schülerinnen und Schülern ergründet die Autorin weiterführend, dass diese divergierenden Gebrauchsformen als unterschiedlich schwierig empfunden werden. Sprachliche Herausforderungen ergeben sich folglich aus dem Wechselspiel von Form und Funktion. Olthoff erarbeitet demnach wichtige Grundlagen für didaktisch-methodische Aspekte im Rahmen einer sprachsensiblen Gestaltung schulischer Lehr- und Lernprozesse.

Metaphor is a fascinating and, at the same time, complex phenomenon. It can be approached from a multitude of perspectives, and the linguistic realizations of metaphors vary not only across languages, but also across text genres, cultures, and time. This book reflects such complexity and variability by gathering a collection of studies that adopt different theoretical views and explore the actual uses of metaphors in different text types (literary, folkloric, journalistic, and scientific) and languages (Hungarian, Chinese, French, English, Italian, Latin, and Ancient Greek).By providing the reader with a view of metaphor and current metaphor research which is both diversified and coherent, this volume will provide insights for cognitive linguists, scholars involved in metaphor studies, and more generally readers interested in linguistic variation.

The volume focuses on the interaction between figurative language, embodiment, and society and culture from various theoretical and applied perspectives and methodologies. It bears wit-ness to the vibrancy of research into figurative language and the role of embodiment, with conceptualization motivated not just by our physical interaction with the external world, but also by social and cultural phenomena. The topics explored here include the impact of figura-tion on all levels of linguistic analysis, including grammar, discourse, and the relationship be-tween language and emotions.

In this book, language is seen as embedded in the infant's universe of emotion. Thus, language is seen as innate and is understood as representing prototype emotions implemented at birth, and connected to a brain-wired attachment-need. The overarching power-theme of it all—including primacy of emotion with respect to language, along with the importance of attachment-need—is identified and defined in detail, especially as it concerns the organizational power of a person's basic-wish. This is where the center, the core of the interaction between emotion, attachment, and language-origin, is revealed—that is, with respect to the relative success-index of the person's basic-wish. Such a basic-wish is what gives shape and meaning to the person's entire personality. Thus, the psycho/biological underpinning of The Origin of Language is that of an evolutionary view of the entire arena of the origin of language and its suffusion in the primary emotions and primary behavioral prototypes found at all phylogenetic levels.

This book is the result of research which was begun over twenty years ago and which spanned two countries, as well as two decades. It developed out of the author's work in speech therapy, but took on the in-depth theoretical investigation of the work of Bernstein, Vygotsky, Luria, and Hallidayan linguistics in an investigation of ways of thinking and the use of language, and particularly the relationship between group processes and individual learning. The small sample analysed in the book, taken from classroom data gathered in a small town in Tuscany and a small group of adolescents, and put under the microscope of quantitative and qualitative analysis involving multiple tests regarding various linguistic and socio-cultural elements, is testament to the complexity of such a setting and the nature of classroom interaction. The complex interactions between theory and practice, and between individual consciousness and socially organised experience are laid out in detail throughout the book, which offers both wide ranging and in-depth theoretical analysis of the relevant literature and insights into the careful sampling procedures used in the classroom all brought together to provide up-to-date and detailed information for teachers and to highlight aspects of diversity in the appropriation of cultural tools.The book can be read in two different ways, each one of them informative in itself. For those interested in socio-culturally informed theories of language, this book will serve as a guide to the relationships between three possible approaches: namely, the sociological approach of Basil Bernstein, the cultural-historical approach of Lev Vygotsky, and the linguistic approach of Michael Halliday. For those interested in empirical analysis of discourses produced by adolescents from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, the book provides rich material about language use by Italian and immigrant youth.

Our ability to acquire a language – one of the most complex semiotic systems – is stunning. However, to describe and explain even a small fraction of this system and of this ability is a great challenge.This book brings together modified papers of seventeen university scholars from Belarus, Germany, Russia and Lithuania originally presented at an international conference held in Minsk, Belarus, in 2017, on different hidden and implicit aspects of language and the ways of disclosing and explicating them. Language is understood by them differently as a cognitive ability, a specific semiotic structure interwoven with culture, and a discourse. This book will be of great interest to a wide range of linguist-theoreticians, specialists in applied linguistics, and the general reader with an interest in understanding what exactly language is.

Au sommaire : Présentation : ce que l'étude de la diversité sociolinguistique apporte à l'étude de l'éducation aux langues, en langues et par les langues (Philippe BLANCHET) / La diversité linguistique à l'école. Éveil aux langues ou pédagogie'critique'du plurilinguisme? (Christine HÉLOT) / Le poids des représentations dans l'utilisation des langues par des enfants bilingues (Estela KLETT).

Sharing certain assumptions but differing in theory and practice, both Columbia School linguistics (CS) and Cognitive Grammar (CG) have increasingly supported their analyses with quantitative evidence. Citation of individual sentences, in isolation or in context, has been supplemented with counts of linguistic forms in texts, informant questionnaires, and perception tests. The present volume, continuing a dialogue between CS and CG, offers six such qualitative-quantitative studies, one on Afrikaans and five on Dutch. Topics include (a) demonstratives, (b) pragmatic particles and imperatives, (c) a puzzling “dismissive” idiom, (d) progressive aspect, and (e) indirect objects. While CS is better suited for analyzing relatively closed systems (e.g. tense, pronouns), CG provides more insight into the vagaries of the amorphous lexicon. The author also offers personal remarks on “linguistics as a path” and discusses how in one case a wrong prediction reflects his dual role as both linguist and student of Dutch as a foreign language.

'This book provides educators with valuable insight into methods and opportunities for using technology to teach students learning a foreign language, offering theoretical and pragmatic cases-illustrate teaching strategies and methodologies, hardware and software development, administrative concerns, and cross-cultural considerations with respect to effective educational technologies'--

Key Concepts in Phonetics and Phonology is a comprehensive and up-to-date A to Z of the core areas of phonetics and phonology. If you are new to these fields, this book will be an invaluable resource for quickly familiarizing yourself with the jargon and specialist terms. Each of the 136 entries starts with a brief definition of a key concept and, where appropriate, more detail is given, along with an illustrative example. All entries are also cross-referenced to help you easily locate definitions for unfamiliar jargon. This book contains fully referenced descriptions of the key terms in phonetics, particularly articulatory phonetics, and presents the main schools of theoretical phonology. If you want to know more, the extensive bibliography included at the back of the book will suggest where you can look for information to deepen your knowledge.

Kommunikation ist ohne Kontextualisierung nicht realisierbar, Texte sind ohne Kontexte nicht denkbar. Die moderne kognitive Textlinguistik und die linguistische Diskursanalyse Setzen diese Erkenntnis häufig in ihren Arbeiten voraus. Dabei bleibt aber der Kontextbegriff theoretisch fast stets marginal, und das, was er bezeichnet, vage und/oder arbiträr. Dies hat sicherlich damit zu tun, dass Kontext keine unabhängig spezifizierbaren Sachverhalte oder Klassen von Sachverhalten bezeichnet. Der Begriff benennt vielmehr ein Verhältnis: Fast beliebige Sachverhalte können zu Kontexten dadurch werden, dass sie mit einem im Fokus stehenden kommunikativen (Teil)Ereignis in Verbindung stehen oder geSetzt werden, und erst diese Verbindung ermöglicht es, das fokussierte Element zu verstehen (oder zumindest es besser zu verstehen). Der vorliegende Sammelband versucht, diesen Mangel an begrifflicher Fundierung anzusprechen und ihm in Form theoretischer und text-analytischer Beiträge z.B. zu literalen Praktiken in verschiedenen sozio-kulturellen, medialen und literarischen Kontexten entgegenzutreten. Dabei soll die Macht der Kontexte, wie sie sich in den Texten manifestiert sowie - in umgekehrter Perspektive - die Kontextualisierungspotenz und -notwendigkeit von Texten und damit ihre Macht über die Kontexte herausgestellt werden.

Written specifically for K–12 educators, this accessible book explains the processes involved in second-language acquisition and provides a wealth of practical strategies for helping English language learners (ELLs) succeed at reading. The authors integrate knowledge from two fields that often remain disconnected—linguistics and literacy—with a focus on what works in the classroom. Teachers learn effective practices for supporting students as they build core competencies not just for reading in English, but also for listening, speaking, and writing. Engaging vignettes and examples illustrate ways to promote ELLs'communicative skills across the content areas and in formal and informal settings.

Learning to Teach Modern Foreign Languages in the Secondary School has established itself as the leading textbook for student teachers of modern foreign languages in the UK. The practical focus of the book is underpinned by a theoretical perspective, and students are encouraged to develop a personal approach to modern foreign language teaching. An account is also taken of relevant statutory frameworks. This fully revised, third edition has been thoroughly updated to take account of recent policy and curriculum changes. And, with the recent increased emphasis on teachers as researchers, and the alignment of many PGCE courses, with Masters Level criteria, reference to important concepts and theoretical positions have been strengthened with strong reference to their relevance in the context of professional practice and a new chapter discussing the findings of research on Second Language Acquisition and Foreign Language Learning has been added. Other chapters cover a wide range of relevant topics, including: teaching methods and learning strategies teaching in the target language and developing cultural awareness the teaching of grammar differentiation and assessment the use of ICT in modern foreign language teaching.