Cultural Keywords in Discourse

Cultural Keywords in Discourse PDF

Author: Carsten Levisen

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-10-15

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 902726547X

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Cultural keywords are words around which whole discourses are organised. They are culturally revealing, difficult to translate and semantically diverse. They capture how speakers have paid attention to the worlds they live in and embody socially recognised ways of thinking and feeling. The book contributes to a global turn in cultural keyword studies by exploring keywords from discourse communities in Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, Melanesia, Mexico and Scandinavia. Providing new case studies, the volume showcases the diversity of ways in which cultural logics form and shape discourse. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach is used as a unifying framework for the studies. This approach offers an attractive methodology for doing explorative discourse analysis on emic and culturally-sensitive grounds. Cultural Keywords in Discourse will be of interest to researchers and students of semantics, pragmatics, cultural discourse studies, linguistic ethnography and intercultural communication.

Keyness in Texts

Keyness in Texts PDF

Author: Marina Bondi

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 9027223173

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This is corpus linguistics with a text linguistic focus. The volume concerns lexical inequality, the fact that some words and phrases share the quality of being key---and thereby reflect or promote important themes in some textual contexts, while others do not. The patterning of words which differ in their centrality to text meaning is of increasing interest to corpus linguistics. At the same time software resources are yielding increasingly more detailed ways of identifying and studying the linkages between key words and phrases in text databases. This volume brings together work from some of the leading researchers in this field. It presents thirteen studies organized in three sections, the first containing a series of studies exploring the nature of keyness itself, then a set of five studies looking at keyness in specific discourse contexts, and then three studies with an educational focus. "Edited by two central figures in the development of keyword analysis, and with contributions from leading specialists in the field, this unique collection brings together a wide range of insights into how keyword analysis can contribute both to linguistic and cultural analysis and to language education. It deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone with an interest in these areas"---Christopher Tribble, King's College, London "This is a fascinating volume addressing both methodological and theoretical questions in the study of keywords. It pushes forward the exploration of the nature of keyness and the interpretation of keywords in their textual contexts. An inspiring contribution to a central area of corpus linguistics." ---Michaela Mahlberg, University of Nottingham

Keywords in Chinese Culture

Keywords in Chinese Culture PDF

Author: Yuri Pines

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9789882378469

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Like every major culture, Chinese has its set of keywords: pivotal terms of political, ethical, literary, and philosophical discourse. Tracing the origins, development, polysemy, and usages of keywords is one of the best ways to chart cultural and historical changes. This volume analyzes some of these keywords from different disciplinary and temporal perspectives, offering a new integrative study of their semantic richness, development trajectory, and distinct usages in Chinese culture. The authors of the volume explore different keywords and focus on different periods and genres, ranging from philosophical and historical texts of the Warring States period (453-221 BCE) to late imperial (ca. 16th-18th centuries CE) literature and philosophy. They are guided by a similar set of questions: What elevates a mere word to the status of keyword? What sort of resonance and reverberations do we expect a keyword to have? How much does the semantic range of a keyword explain its significance? What kinds of arguments does it generate? What are the stories told to illustrate its meanings? What are political and intellectual implications of the keyword's reevaluation? What does it mean to translate a keyword and map its meaning against other languages? Throughout Chinese history, new ideas and new approaches often mean reinterpreting important words; rupture, continuities, and inflection points are inseparable from the linguistic history of specific terms. The premise of this book is that taking the long view and encompassing different disciplines yield new insights and unexpected connections. The authors, who come from the fields of history, philosophy, and literature, explore keywords in different genres and illuminate their multiple dimensions in various contexts. Moreover, despite their different temporal focus, they take into consideration the development of selected keywords from the Warring States to the late imperial period, sometimes adding excurses that extend to contemporary usage.

Keywords in Chinese Culture

Keywords in Chinese Culture PDF

Author: Li Wai-yee

Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

Published: 2019-12-15

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9882371191

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Like every major culture, Chinese has its set of keywords: pivotal terms of political, ethical, literary and philosophical discourse. Tracing the origins, development, polysemy, and usages of keywords is one of the best ways to chart cultural and historical changes. This volume analyzes some of these keywords from different disciplinary and temporal perspectives, offering a new integrative study of their semantic richness, development trajectory, and distinct usages in Chinese culture. The authors of the volume explore different keywords and focus on different periods and genres, ranging from philosophical and historical texts of the Warring States period (453-V221 BCE) to late imperial (ca. 6th?V18th centuries CE) literature and philosophy. They are guided by a similar set of questions: What elevates a mere word to the status of keyword? What sort of resonance and reverberations do we expect a keyword to have? How much does the semantic range of a keyword explain its significance? What kinds of arguments does it generate? What are the stories told to illustrate its meanings? What are political and intellectual implications of the keyword's reevaluation? What does it mean to translate a keyword and map its meaning against other languages? Throughout Chinese history, new ideas and new approaches often mean reinterpreting important words; rupture, continuities, and inflection points are inseparable from the linguistic history of specific terms. The premise of this book is that taking the long view and encompassing different disciplines yield new insights and unexpected connections. The authors, who come from the fields of history,

Chinese Discourse Studies

Chinese Discourse Studies PDF

Author: S. xu

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-10-08

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1137365048

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Chinese Discourse Studies presents an innovative and systematic approach to discourse and communication in contemporary China. Incorporating Chinese philosophy and theory, it offers not only a distinct cultural paradigm in the field, but also a culturally sensitive and effective tool for studying Chinese discourses.

Meaning, Life and Culture

Meaning, Life and Culture PDF

Author: Helen Bromhead

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2020-12-17

Total Pages: 534

ISBN-13: 1760463930

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This book is dedicated to Anna Wierzbicka, one of the most influential and innovative linguists of her generation. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies, as well as her home base of linguistics. She is best known for the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning—a versatile tool for exploring ‘big questions’ concerning the diversity and universals of people’s experience in the world. In this volume, Anna Wierzbicka’s former students, old and current colleagues, ‘kindred spirits’ and ‘sparring partners’ engage with her ideas and diverse body of work. These authors cover topics from the grammar of action verbs to cross-cultural pragmatics, and over 30 languages from around the world are represented. The chapters in Part 1 focus on the NSM approach and cover four themes: lexico-grammatical semantics, cultural keywords, semantics of nouns, and emotion. In Part 2, the contributors connect with a meaning-based approach from their own intellectual perspectives, including syntax, anthropology, cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics. The deep humanistic perspective, wide-ranging themes and interdisciplinary nature of Wierzbicka’s research are reflected in the contributions. The common thread running through all chapters is the primacy of meaning to the understanding of language and culture.

New Keywords

New Keywords PDF

Author: Tony Bennett

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-29

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 1118725417

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Over 25 years ago, Raymond Williams’ Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society set the standard for how we understand and use the language of culture and society. Now, three luminaries in the field of cultural studies have assembled a volume that builds on and updates Williams’ classic, reflecting the transformation in culture and society since its publication. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a state-of-the-art reference for students, teachers and culture vultures everywhere. Assembles a stellar team of internationally renowned and interdisciplinary social thinkers and theorists Showcases 142 signed entries – from art, commodity, and fundamentalism to youth, utopia, the virtual, and the West – that capture the practices, institutions, and debates of contemporary society Builds on and updates Raymond Williams’s classic Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, by reflecting the transformation in culture and society over the last 25 years Includes a bibliographic resource to guide research and cross-referencing The book is supported by a website: www.blackwellpublishing.com/newkeywords.

The Cultural Pragmatics of Danger

The Cultural Pragmatics of Danger PDF

Author: Carsten Levisen

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2024-08-15

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 9027246785

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This book addresses the problems and challenges of studying the discourse of "danger" cross-linguistically and cross-culturally, and proposes the cultural pragmatics of danger as a new field of inquiry. Detailed case studies of several linguacultures include Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, German, Japanese and Spanish. Focusing on global and local contexts surrounding “living in dangerous times”, this book showcases how the new model of cultural pragmatics can be used to illuminate cultural meanings in discourse. Unlike the universalist approaches to pragmatics, cultural pragmatics focuses on understanding the linguacultural logics of discourse, and in the case of “danger”, the multiple cultural logics around which the themes and domains of “danger” revolve. The approach makes use of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) as its principal analytical tool, and concepts such as “cultural keywords” and “cultural scripts” figure prominently as bearers of culture-specific meanings. The book will be of interest to students of pragmatics and discourse studies, researchers in cultural and cognitive semantics, anthropological linguistics, global humanities, political rhetoric and environmental studies, as well as linguists working in applied areas, such as risk and disaster studies, crisis and emergency communication.

The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics

The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics PDF

Author: Douglas Biber

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-06-25

Total Pages: 757

ISBN-13: 1316298701

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The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics (CHECL) surveys the breadth of corpus-based linguistic research on English, including chapters on collocations, phraseology, grammatical variation, historical change, and the description of registers and dialects. The most innovative aspects of the CHECL are its emphasis on critical discussion, its explicit evaluation of the state of the art in each sub-discipline, and the inclusion of empirical case studies. While each chapter includes a broad survey of previous research, the primary focus is on a detailed description of the most important corpus-based studies in this area, with discussion of what those studies found, and why they are important. Each chapter also includes a critical discussion of the corpus-based methods employed for research in this area, as well as an explicit summary of new findings and discoveries.

Discourse Across Languages and Cultures

Discourse Across Languages and Cultures PDF

Author: Carol Lynn Moder

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9789027230782

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This volume seeks to answers such questions as: how is conscious experience translated into discourse? How are foregrounding and backgrounding accomplished? What is the function of features like lexical choice and referential choice? And many more.