American Legends: The Life of Ernest Hemingway


Charles River Editors - 2013
    The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing." – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (from Amazon)

China and the Chinese


Herbert Allen Giles - 1902
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech


Edward Sapir - 1921
    This little book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of language rather than to assemble facts about it. It has little to say of the ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what I conceive language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are its relations to other fundamental human interests-the problem of thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art. Contents: Language Define; The Elements of Speech; The Sounds of Language; Form in Language; Grammatical Processes; Form in Language; Grammatical Concepts; Types of Linguistic Structure; Language as a Historical Product: Drift; Language as a Historical Product: Phonetic Law; How Languages Influence Each Other; Language, Race and Culture; and Language and Literature.

The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism


Fredric Jameson - 1972
    He lays bare the presuppositions of the two movements, clarifying the relationship between the synchronic methods of Saussurean linguistics and the realities of time and history.

Applied Linguistics


Guy Cook - 2003
    As such it has the difficult task of mediating between academic expertise and lived experience, attempting to reconcile opposed interests and perspectives. This clearly written introduction provides a concise but comprehensive overview of the most pressing and controversial issues surrounding contemporary language use today, including intercultural communication, political persuasion, new technologies, the growth of English, language in education, and foreign language teaching and learning.

Syntactic Structures


Noam Chomsky - 1957
    It is not a mere reorganization of the data into a new kind of library catalogue, nor another specualtive philosophy about the nature of man and language, but rather a rigorus explication of our intuitions about our language in terms of an overt axiom system, the theorems derivable from it, explicit results which may be compared with new data and other intuitions, all based plainly on an overt theory of the internal structure of languages; and it may well provide an opportunity for the application of explicity measures of simplicity to decide preference of one form over another form of grammar.

Language and Linguistics


John Lyons - 1981
    Introduces the sub-fields of linguistics: the sounds of language, grammar, semantics, language change, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, language and culture.

The Subject of Semiotics


Kaja Silverman - 1983
    This provocative book undertakes a new and challenging reading of recent semiotic and structuralist theory, arguing that films, novels, and poems cannot be studied in isolation from their viewers and readers.

Introducing Semiotics


Paul Cobley - 1993
    An animal's cry, poetry, the medical symptom, media messages, language disorders, architecture, marketing, body language - all these, and more, fall within the sphere of semiotics.Introducing Semiotics outlines the development of sign study from its classical precursors to contemporary post-structuralism. Through Paul Cobley's incisive text and Litza Jansz's brilliant illustrations, it identifies the key semioticians and their work and explains the simple concepts behind difficult terms. For anybody who wishes to know why signs are crucial to human existence and how we can begin to study systems of signification, this book is the place to start. It is the perfect companion volume to Introducing Barthes

How to Do Things with Words


J.L. Austin - 1955
    Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words.For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin's work.

Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature


Jonathan D. Culler - 1975
    It was during the writing of this book that Culler developed his now famous and remarkably complex theory of poetics and narrative, and while never a populariser he nonetheless makes it crystal clear within these pages.

The Heretic's Handbook (Kindle Single)


Jonathan Black - 2017
    An acclaimed author and public speaker, Black shows how this body of knowledge has been declared ‘heretical’ both by the established church and by today’s atheistic intellectual elite.Finally, he outlines in the clearest terms possible the supernatural laws that govern our universe, and describes rules for living that take us beyond consensual thought, rules that may at first seem crazy, even dangerous, but which contain the secrets for achieving success, happiness and a higher state of being.

Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language


Umberto Eco - 1984
    . . this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." —Times Literary Supplement

Structuralism and Semiotics


Terence Hawkes - 1977
    A growing awareness of this situation in the last decades of the twentieth century brought a monumental change in perspecive on the very nature of reality. It forced us to recognise the possibility that reality inheres not in things themselves, but in the relationships we perceive between things; not in items but in structures. In exploring and seeking to further these ideas, critics turned to the methods of analysis loosely termed 'structuralism' and 'semiotics'. Their work gave rise to a revolution in critical theory. This classic guide discusses the nature and development of structuralism and semiotics, calling for a new critical awareness of the ways in which we communicate and drawing attention to their implications for our society. Published in 1977 as the first volume in the new Accents series, Structuralism and Semiotics made crucial debates in critical theory accessible to those with no prior knowledge of the field, tus enhancing its own small revolution. Since then a generation of readers has used the book as an entry not only into structuralism and semiotics, but into the wide range of cultural and critical theories

Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging


Judith Butler - 2007
    Together, they explore the past, present and future of the state in a time of globalization.What is contained in a state has become ever more plural whilst the boundaries of a state have become ever more fluid. No longer does a state naturally come with a nation. In a world of migration and shifting allegiances - caused by cultural, economic, military and climatic change - the state is a more provisional place and its inhabitants more stateless.This spirited and engaging conversation ranges widely across Palestine, what Enlightenment and key contemporary philosophers have to say about the state, who exercises power in today´s world, whether we can have a right to rights, and even what the singing of the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish says about the complex world we live in today.