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Encouraging readers to reflect upon language and the role metaphor plays in patterning ideas and thought, this book first offers a critical introduction to metaphor theory as it has emerged over the past thirty years in the States. The book then widens the scope of metaphor theory by investigating not only the worldview our language offers us, but also the worldviews that we adapt in our own ideological and personal interpretations of the world. The book explores new avenues in metaphor theory in the work of contemporary French, German, and Czech scholars. Detailed case studies marry metaphor theory with discourse analysis in order to investigate the ways the Czech language was reshaped by communist discourse, and the way fascism emerged in the German language. The third case study turns metaphor theory on its head: instead of looking for metaphors in language, it describes the way language systems (French and English) are understood in terms of metaphorically framed concepts evolving over time.

This book discusses diachronic change of languages in terms of restructuring of speakers’ internal grammatical knowledge: Under which circumstances does grammatical change come about? One answer in historical linguistics has been to invoke the child as principal agent of change. But efforts to construct a theory of diachronic change consistent with findings from psycholinguistics are scarce. Here, these questions are therefore addressed against the background of insights from research on monolingual and bilingual acquisition. Given that children are remarkably successful in reconstructing the grammars of their ambient languages, commonly held views need to be reconsidered according to which language change is primarily triggered by structural ambiguity in the input and in settings of language contact. In an innovative take on this matter, the authors argue that morphosyntactic change in core areas of grammar, especially where parameters of Universal Grammar are concerned, typically happens in settings involving second language acquisition. The children acting as agents of restructuring are either second language (L2) learners themselves or are continuously exposed to the speech of L2 speakers of their target languages. Based on a variety of case studies from Romance languages, this discussion sheds new light on phenomena of change which have occupied historical linguists since the XIX^th century.

This book examines mediated business interaction in Spanish. It focuses on communication between native speakers of Spanish from different Spanish-speaking countries with a view to informing our understanding of intercultural communication in a contemporary business environment. Using elements of pragmatics with tools from conversation analysis, the book examines the various activities that telephone conversationalists engage in to supply and demand a service over the phone through the mediational means of Spanish by addressing the following questions: Do speakers of Spanish display similar communicative practices as those observed in other languages when requesting and being offered a service over the phone? Do specifically located activities such as the call openings and closings display similar coordination and ritualisation as that observed in other languages? Does the language seen as a cultural tool reflect a different orientation towards such activities? What strategies do telephone agents and (prospective) clients employ to obtain a sale, and either procure the best value for money or obviate it, respectively? And, what role does intercultural communication play in the construction of these practices?

This book is a description of English as it is spoken in New Zealand. New Zealand English (NZE) is one of the youngest native-speaker varieties of English, and is the only variety of English where there is recorded evidence of its entire history. It shares some features with other Southern Hemisphere varieties of English such as Australian English and South African English, but is also clearly distinct from these. For the past two decades, extensive research has focused on the evolution and ongoing development of the variety. The book presents the results of this research in an accessible way. It includes: an account of the phonetic, phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical, and discourse features that are characteristic of the dialect; a discussion of the historical development of NZE; a description of the current social and regional variation within the variety; an indication of the areas where change is currently occurring; and sample texts and an annotated bibliography of relevant literature. There are also several associated audio files, which provide examples of many of the phenomena discussed, at http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/dialects/.

The Scots dialects of northern Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland are among the most traditional varieties of ‘English’, exhibiting features not current elsewhere for centuries. Until recently, they were spoken in communities whose traditional occupations have encouraged the equation of speech with local identity. They have all also been affected by contact with Gaelic, or Norse, or both. In recent years, however, the decline of traditional industries has been matched by the discovery of oil off their coasts, encouraging in-migration of speakers of many varieties of English and other languages. How well have these varieties maintained their traditional natures at the start of the 21st century? This book provides a description of the phonological, structural, and lexical natures of these varieties; a history of the varieties in relation to the areas in which they are spoken; examples of the language of native speakers; and an annotated bibliography that points the reader towards more specialised works.

Over the past few decades, Singapore English has been emerging as an independent variety of English with its own distinct style of pronunciation, grammar and word usage. This book provides an overview of this variety, including coverage of its pronunciation, including comparisons with the pronunciation of English in other countries in South-East Asia; its morphology and grammar; the words that are used, including instances where the meaning is distinct from other varieties of English; the discourse patterns that are found, including use of particles such as lah; and its history and current developments. All the findings presented in the book are illustrated with extensive examples from one hour of recorded conversational data from the Lim Siew Hwee Corpus of Informal Singapore Speech, as well as some extracts from the NIE Corpus of Spoken Singapore Speech and recent blogs. In addition, usage patterns found in the data are summarised, to provide a foundation for the reported occurrence of various features of the language. A full transcript of the data is included in the final chapter of the book.

This volume provides a comprehensive survey of the spelling system of Older and Modern Scots, illustrating how this orthographic system has developed partly in response to historical shifts in pronunciation, and partly as a result of social and political change. Spelling Scots acts not only as a wide-ranging reference book to the changing orthography of Scots, but also as an outline of the active interventions in the practices that have guided Scots spelling. The book shows how canonical writers of poetry and fiction in Scots from 1700 to the present day have blended convention and innovation in presenting Scots in literary texts, and it explores the influence of key writers such as Ramsay, Fergusson, Burns, Scott, Hogg and Stevenson. Introducing an innovative method of tracing the use of key spelling variants in a corpus of Scots writing, the book discusses the implication of this method for promoting wider literacy in Scots. Spelling Scots should be a standard reference volume for all institutions where literature in Scots is studied. It draws on the authors' current research project, the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing.