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This is a compendium of work by scholars and activists involved in deaf matters. The introduction chapter sets up the global context; it is followed by twelve chapters, seven of which deal with the creation, context, and form of sign languages, and five of which deal with social issues and civil rights of Deaf communities. Each chapter has a response by one, or sometimes two pre-eminent people in the field, typically viewing the issue of the chapter from a different perspective or in a different geographic context. Luminaries shed light on issues and give histories and overviews that have not been written down anyplace else. The book addresses issues of interest in linguistics, psychology, economics, public policy, public health, cognitive science, anthropology, and education. The major thesis of the book is that the interaction of activists and scholars is synergistic: activists find support in the work of scholars and scholars both have a responsibility toward the community they study and do better work when they understand activists’ concerns. Thirty-one scholars and activists (sixteen deaf, one hearing of deaf parents, and fourteen hearing) contributed to this volume with the optimistic goal that the joint work can help improve our understanding of both deaf matters and the daily lives of deaf people. The chapters deal with gestures, sign languages, deaf issues, and deaf communities in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. The picture that emerges shows a great amount of similarity and continuity in the Deaf World.

The Discourse of News Values breaks new ground in news media research in offering the first book-length treatment of the construction of newsworthiness through words and images. With an interdisciplinary and multi-methodological approach, it brings together corpus linguistics and multimodal discourse analysis in new empirical studies of the news media. The introduction and Parts I to II (chapters 2‒5) introduce readers to the theoretical and analytical underpinnings of the book, including an explanation of discursive news values analysis (DNVA) and a comprehensive description of frameworks for the systematic analysis of verbal and visual news discourse. Manifold examples are presented of authentic news discourse (language and images) from around the English-speaking world (across different cultures). This is followed in Part III by three chapters dedicated to empirical analysis of news discourse. Chapter 6 addresses researchers with an interest in the ideological nature of news through a corpus linguistic case study on representations of newsworthiness around cycling/cyclists. Chapters 7 and 8 fully engage with news discourse on social media, through two further case studies: one on how newsworthiness is constructed in images disseminated by news organizations through Facebook; and one on how newsworthiness is constructed through language and image in ‘most shared’ news items. Part IV explores applications of DNVA in diachronic and cross-cultural research and aims to inspire researchers to develop respective frameworks for other languages. This is a stimulating and unique book for all researchers in linguistics, semiotics, and media/journalism studies who are interested in discourse analytical approaches to the news media.

This volume brings together multiple emerging strands of interest in language and linguistics. First is increasing attention on pedagogical scholarship in linguistics, signaled by the 2013 addition to the flagship journal Language of a series on Teaching Linguistics (see for example Sanders 2016) and by many recent panels and workshops on pedagogy at linguistics conferences around the world. Additionally, public outreach has gained greater prominence in the field, with linguists becoming more active and engaged with the public on social media and in podcasts. There has also been an increase in broader public interest in constructed languages (conlangs) and how to build them, indicated by the popularity of conlangs in film and television (e.g. Star Trek, Avatar, and Game of Thrones) and by the success of relevant books (e.g. Okrent 2010; Rosenfelder 2010; Peterson 2014, 2015). This volume showcases a variety of methods which instructors can use to tap into this public interest in conlangs and conlanging to reach a broader student population, increase their engagement with course material, deepen their understanding of linguistics and its interdisciplinary relationships, and provide opportunities for public outreach. Using language invention as a pedagogical tool is an innovative way to capitalize on the effectiveness of many modern educational approaches, such as problem-based learning, collaborative learning, and active learning, especially for a diverse cohort of learners. The methods and materials presented in this volume help cultivate students’ understanding of language, linguistic diversity, linguistic analysis, and the power of creativity.

English is the common denominator that unites the work presented in this volume; it provides a focal point to illustrate the ways in which a political economic approach can account for a range of phenomena in diverse settings in which a “global” language has attained a special status as (an often perceived) tool for socioeconomic mobility. The findings reveal the complex ways in which government leaders and policymakers, as well as communities and individuals in those communities, make decisions within a global economy about the languages that will be taught as subjects or used as media of instruction in schools. English is often promoted by its advocates as a social “good” with unquestioned instrumental value; yet the introduction of English in the elementary school curriculum in low-income countries very often leads to limited literacy both in English and the national language. Synchronic contextual analyses of English in various countries and regions are snapshots of a moving target with fuzzy boundaries; this is even more so the case when the object of analysis is “lingua franca English,” a fluid, contextually realized “practice” that may be described in situ which is not stable and likely never will be. The degree to which English serves effectively as a lingua franca depends on who the interlocutors are, the situation, and the extent to which interlocutors’ interests and goals are mutually compatible and understood.

Words are the building blocks of human communication and provide a strong foundation for the development of skilled language production and comprehension. Learning words in a language other than one’s own requires long-term commitment and substantial engagement. This book shows how learners of additional languages acquire vocabulary in instructed foreign language contexts and in English for Academic Purposes programs in the target language environment. The book provides a comprehensive description of the processes of longitudinal development in learners’ vocabulary size and depth of word knowledge. It also builds novel connections between the fields of second language acquisition and vocabulary research. Readers can learn about how individual differences between learners can influence the processes and outcomes of vocabulary learning. The book concludes with evidence-based practical guidance to language teachers on how to enhance their students’ lexical knowledge.

Rhetorical Style promotes a renewed appreciation of the persuasive potential of the English language by demonstrating how language choices argue. It combines advice about effective style from the rhetorical tradition with insights from stylistics and discourse analysis to provide a full spectrum of methods for text analysis. Using examples from political speeches, nonfiction works, and newspaper reports, it emphasizes the continuing relevance of rhetorical principles of stylistic analysis and their usefulness in understanding effective arguments. Rhetorical Style is comprehensive in its coverage. Part I reviews the historical layers of English, its methods of word formation, its registers and varieties. Part II covers sentence basics in a brief and accessible way, noting how sentence forms serve persuasion, especially those optimal “iconic” forms that epitomize their content. The interactive dimension of texts is covered in part III in accounts of how speakers, audiences, other voices, and even situations and occasions can be selectively presented to serve an arguer's purposes. Finally, part IV goes beyond the sentence level to passage construction, explaining how a coherent string of sentences can build into a sustained argument. The final chapter explains Amplification, the tour de force rhetorical performance that draws on features from all the levels. Throughout, the explanations and the examples from actual texts provide evidence linking language choices to argument forms and persuasive purposes. Rhetorical insights into how language argues have survived for centuries. Rhetorical Style was written to give these enduring principles wider circulation.

Indeterminacy in legal texts is pervasive.At the same time, there is a widespread misunderstanding about what indeterminacy is - especially in the law. Legal texts are particularly interesting insofar as they address a heterogeneous audience, are applied in a variety of unforeseeable circumstances and must, at the same time, lay down clear and unambiguous standards.Sometimes they fail to do so, either by accident or by intention.While many have claimed that indeterminacy facilitates flexibility and can be strategically used, few have even recognized that there are more forms of indeterminacy than vagueness and ambiguity. A comprehensive account of legal indeterminacy is called for. This book is a contribution to lift the puzzle about the role of indeterminacy in in the law andaims to answer three, related, questions. First, what are the sources of indeterminacy in law? Second, what effects do the different forms of indeterminacy have? Third, how can and should they be intentionally used?Based on an examination of the advantages and disadvantages of the different forms of indeterminacy in the wording of laws, contracts, and verdicts, this book argues for the claim that semantic vagueness is less relevant than commonly supposed in the debate, while other forms of indeterminacy (in particular, polysemy and standard-relativity) are underrated or even entirely ignored. This misconception is due to a systematic confusion between semantic vagueness and these other forms of indeterminacy. Once it is resolved, the value and functions of linguistic indeterminacy in the law can be clearly shown.

This book tells the story of how families separated across borders write—and learn new ways of writing—in pursuit of both love and money. Over the past decades, global economic inequality has continued to promote the growth of labor migration. According to the UN, 244 million people currently live outside the countries of their birth. The human drama behind these numbers is that labor migration often separates parents from children, brothers from sisters, lovers from each other. Migration, undertaken in response to problems of the pocketbook, also poses problems for the heart. Based on field research and interviews with transnational families in Latin America (Brazil), Eastern Europe (Latvia), and North America (United States), Writing for Love and Money: How Migration Drives Literacy Learning in Transnational Families shows how families separated across borders turn to writing to address these problems. They are writing to sustain meaningful relationships across distance and to better their often impoverished circumstances. The book reveals that, despite policymakers’ concerns about brain drain, immigrants’ departures do not leave their homelands wholly educationally hobbled. Instead migration promotes experiences of literacy learning in transnational families as they write to reach the two life goals that globalization consistently threatens: economic solvency and familial intimacy. The book thus shows how migration itself can be a source of technologically savvy, emotionally attuned, globally conscious, and entrepreneurial literacy learning.