Nov 03
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook publication
Title: A Beginner’s Guide to Discourse Analysis
Publication Year: 2015
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
http://www.palgrave.com
Book URL: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/?k=9781137402882&loc=uk
Author: Sean Sutherland
Paperback: ISBN: 9781137402882 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 20.99
Abstract:
This practical textbook introduces the tools and techniques that explain how language is used in different situations, and it will be an indispensable resource that students will return to again and again during their course.
Author Sean Sutherland has years of experience in teaching the topic to his own undergraduate and graduate students, and the book is packed with colourful examples from novels, songs, newspaper articles and more that enrich students’ understanding and develop their confidence.
A Beginner’s Guide to Discourse Analysis:
• Assumes no prior knowledge of the subject
• Is filled with exercises and answers throughout, along with answers and commentary
• Contains supporting explanations of relevant grammar points
This is an indispensable resource for anybody doing discourse analysis as part of their studies.
Oct 22
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook publication
Title: Talking with the President
Subtitle: The Pragmatics of Presidential Language
Publication Year: 2015
Publisher: Oxford University Press
http://www.oup.com/us
Book URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/talking-with-the-president-9780199858798
Author: John Wilson
Paperback: ISBN: 9780199858798 Pages: 288 Price: U.S. $ 35.00
Abstract:
This book provides a pragmatic analysis of presidential language. Pragmatics is concerned with “meaning in context,” or the relationship between what we say and what we mean. John Wilson explores the various ways in which U.S. Presidents have used language within specific social contexts to achieve specific objectives. This includes obfuscation, misdirection, the use of metaphor or ambiguity, or in some cases simply lying. He focuses on six presidents: John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald W. Reagan, William F. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack H. Obama. These presidents cover most of the last half of the twentieth century, and the first decade of the twenty first century, and each has been associated with a specific linguistic quality. John F. Kennedy was famed for his quality of oratory, Nixon for his manipulative use of language, Reagan for his gift of telling stories, Clinton for his ability to engage the public and to linguistically turn arguments and descriptions in particular directions. Bush, on the other hand, was famed for his inability to use language appropriately, and Obama returns us to the rhetorical flourishes of early Kennedy. In the case of each president, a range of specific examples are explored in order to highlight the ways in which a pragmatic analysis may provide an insight into presidential language. In many cases, what the president says is not necessarily what the president means.
Oct 20
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhannouncements, mode and modalities
The Shepherd School of Music and Rice University are preparing to host their 3rd International Conference on Music and the Mind. The goal of the Conference is to promote collaboration between musicians and scientists and spur research, as well as increase public interest in this exciting discipline.
We are now accepting applications from musicians and scientists for the four-day program that will take place from June 6-10, 2016. All Conference costs are covered, including registration fees, housing and meals; fellows are only required to pay for their travel to campus. Please see the attached flyer and Conference website for full details:
www.rice.edu/mindandmusic <http://www.rice.edu/mindandmusic>
The mornings feature inter-disciplinary seminars: the science fellows will study music theory and history while the music fellows will learn about brain morphology, music perception and experimental design. The afternoons and evening sessions include presentations by distinguished visiting faculty including Ian Cross, Elizabeth Margulis, Isabelle Peretz, David Temperley, Michael Thaut, and Lawrence Zbikowski.
The fellows will also have a chance to share their work with their peers and the public in short, “TED”-style presentations. Many events are free and open to the public; seating will be on first-come, first-served basis. The morning seminars may be audited by members of the Rice and Baylor communities. Please consult our schedule for full Conference details.
Musicians and scientists at any stage in their careers are encouraged to apply. Fifteen musician and fifteen scientist applicants will be selected based on their demonstrated interest and accomplishment in the field. Applications are due November 1st, 2015 and applicants will be notified by January 15th, 2016. Please share this information with anyone whom you think might be interested.
With thanks and best wishes,
Anthony Brandt and Xaq Pitkow, Conference Directors
Shane Monds, Conference Coordinator
Lucy Lai and Zoe Tao, Assistant Conference Coordinators
Oct 03
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook publication
Title: Body Talk and Cultural Identity in the African World
Publication Year: 2015
Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd
http://www.equinoxpub.com/
Book URL: https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/body-talk-cultural-identity-african-world-augustine-agwuele/
Editor: Augustine Agwuele
Hardback: ISBN: 9781781791851 Pages: 214 Price: U.S. $ 100 Comment: £60
Paperback: ISBN: 9781781791868 Pages: 214 Price: U.S. $ 29.95 Comment: £19.99
Abstract:
The body is a site bearing multiple signs of cultural inscriptions. People’s postures, use of space, dress codes, speech particularities, facial expressions, tone qualities, gaze, and gestures are codes that send messages to observers. These messages differ across cultures and times. Some of these non-verbal messages are taken to be conscious or subconscious projection of a sense of personal or collective identity. The various forms of “body talk” may flag personal distinction, style, uniqueness or politics, in which case, the body and its presentations become stances of the self. Body talk may also exhibit a society’s or culture’s standardized norms.
The subject of this anthology is non-verbal communication signals from societies and cultures of Africa and African Diaspora. The goals are to document popular gestures, explore their meanings, and understand how they frame interactions and colour perception. The anthology is also aimed at offering interdisciplinary perspectives on the problematics of non-verbal communication by making sense of the various ways that different cultures speak without “voice”, and to examine how people and groups make their presence felt as social, cultural and political actors.
Contributions include case studies, descriptive codification, theoretical analyses and performative studies. The issues highlighted range from film and literature studies, gender studies, history, religion, popular cultural, and extends to the virtual space. Other studies provide a linguistic treatment of non-verbal communication and use it as means of explicating perception and stereotyping.
Sep 06
eldonannouncements spam
to all you faithful readers out there who are only subscribers – very sorry, but you’re all being deleted. there are over 42, 000 subscribers at the moment with zero posts who are being deleted by your faithful admin at this time.
otoh, if i actually _know_ you, then you will have already been given ‘author’ status and thus will not be deleted. no probs. and if you happen to want to subscribe after this, and join in the heaps of fun here on interstratal tension, then you will need to email me and make a personal request – since i’ve also disabled the subscribe function.
thank you spammers of the world for giving me so much head shaking to do in response to your ridiculous techniques for getting even a sliver of notice. but in opening more than one tab at once, my deleting activities can go on in the background of my other amusements.
Sep 03
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhgeneral observations
Scientific studies about how people act or think can rarely be replicated by outside experts, according to a new study that raises questions about the seriousness of psychology research.
A team of 270 scientists tried reproducing 100 psychology and social science studies that had been published in three top peer-reviewed US journals in 2008.
Just 39 per cent came out with same results as the initial reports, according an international team of researchers known as The Open Science Collaboration.
Their findings are reported in the journal Science .
The topics of studies reviewed ranged from people’s social lives and interactions with others to research involving perception, attention and memory.
No medical therapies were called into question as a result of the study, although a separate effort is underway to evaluate cancer biology studies.
“It’s important to note that this somewhat disappointing outcome does not speak directly to the validity or the falsity of the theories,” says Gilbert Chin, a psychologist and senior editor at the journal Science.
“What it does say is that we should be less confident about many of the original experimental results,” says Chin, who was not involved in the study.
Study co-author Brian Nosek from the University of Virginia says the research shows the need for scientists to continually question themselves.
“A scientific claim doesn’t become believable because of the status or authority of the person that generated it,” says Nosek.
“Credibility of the claim depends in part on the repeatability of its supporting evidence.”
Skewed picture
Problems can arise when scientists cherry-pick their data to include only what is deemed “significant,” or when study sizes are so small that false negatives or false positives arise.
Nosek says scientists are also under pressure to publish their research regularly and in top journals, and the process can lead to a skewed picture.
“Not everything we do gets published. Novel, positive and tidy results are more likely to survive peer review and this can lead to publication biases that leave out negative results and studies that do not fit the story that we have,” he says.
“If this occurs on a broad scale, then the published literature may become more beautiful than the reality.”
Some experts said the problem may be even worse that the current study suggests.
John Ioannidis, a biologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, told Science magazine he suspects about 25 per cent of psychology papers would hold up under scrutiny, about the same “as what we see in many biomedical disciplines.”
Key caution
One study author who participated in the project as both a reviewer and reviewee was E J Masicampo, assistant professor at Wake Forest College in North Carolina.
He was part of a team that was able to replicate a study that found people who are faced with a confrontational task, like having to play a violent video game, prefer to listen to angry music and think about negative experiences beforehand.
But when outside researchers tried to replicate Masicampo’s study — which hypothesised that a sugary drink can help college students do better at making a complicated decision — they were not successful.
Masicampo chalks up the differences to geographical factors, stressing that the experiment showed how complicated it can be to do a high-quality replication of a study.
“As an original author whose work was being replicated, I felt like my research was being treated in the best way possible,” he says.
There are ways to fix the process so that findings are more likely to hold up under scrutiny, says Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford.
“I see this study as illustrating that we have a problem, one that could be tackled,” says Bishop, who was not involved in research.
She urged mandatory registration of research methods beforehand to prevent scientists from picking only the most favourable data for analysis, as well as requiring adequate sample sizes and wider reporting of studies that show null result, or in other words, those that do not support the hypothesis initially put forward.
Scientists could also publish their methods and data in detail so that others could try to replicate their experiments more easily.
These are “simply ways of ensuring that we are doing science as well as we can,” says Bishop.
Sep 03
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook publication
Title: The Dynamics of Political Discourse
Subtitle: Forms and functions of follow-ups
Series Title: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 259
Publication Year: 2015
Publisher: John Benjamins
http://www.benjamins.com/
Book URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/pbns.259
Editor: Anita Fetzer
Editor: Elda Weizman
Editor: Lawrence N. Berlin
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027268242 Pages: Price: Europe EURO 95.00
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027268242 Pages: Price: U.S. $ 143.00
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027268242 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 80.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027256645 Pages: Price: U.S. $ 143.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027256645 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 80.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027256645 Pages: Price: Europe EURO 100.70
Abstract:
Rethinking Sinclair and Coulthard’s sequentiality-based notion of the follow-up, this volume explores its forms and communicative functions in traditional and contemporary modes of communication (parliamentary sessions, interviews, debates, speeches, op-eds, discussion forums and Twitter) wherein political actors address challenges to their political agenda and to their political face. In so doing, the volume achieves two major advances. First, its contributions expand the understanding of follow-ups beyond the traditional focus on structural sequentiality, considering communicative function as a defining feature of a follow-up. Second, it broadens the understanding of what constitutes political discourse, as not being limited to a single discourse, but also being able to span multiple discourses of different forms and speech events over time.
Aug 22
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhUncategorized
If words are ranked according to how often they are used, then a clear mathematical relationship arises. The third most common word occurs one-third as frequently as the most common. Similarly the tenth most common word occurs one-tenth as frequently as the most common. This observation was popularised by the American linguist George Zipf who tried to explain it. Curiously, the relationship is also found elsewhere in nature; in the sounds made by dolphins and humpback whales, and even in the chemicals some plants produce as signals for insects.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/zipfe28099s-law3a-the-curious-aspect-of-human-language-and-/6714874
Aug 18
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook publication
Title: Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde
Series Title: Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 5
Publication Year: 2015
Publisher: John Benjamins
http://www.benjamins.com/
Book URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/clcc.5
Editor: Elina Druker
Editor: Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027268389 Pages: Price: Europe EURO 99.00
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027268389 Pages: Price: U.S. $ 149.00
Electronic: ISBN: 9789027268389 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 83.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027201591 Pages: Price: U.S. $ 149.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027201591 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 83.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9789027201591 Pages: Price: Europe EURO 104.94
Abstract:
Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde is the first study that investigates the intricate influence of the avant-garde movements on children’s literature in different countries from the beginning of the 20th century until the present. Examining a wide range of children’s books from Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the USA, the individual chapters explore the historical as well as the cultural and political aspects that determine the exceptional character of avant-garde children’s books. Drawing on studies in children’s literature research, art history, and cultural studies, this volume provides comprehensive insights into the close relationships between avant-garde children’s literature, images of childhood, and contemporary ideas of education. Addressing topics such as the impact of exhibitions, the significance of the Bauhaus, and the influence of poster art and graphic design, the book illustrates the broad range of issues associated with avant-garde children’s books. More than 60 full-color illustrations demonstrate the impressive variety of design in avant-garde picturebooks and children’s books.
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