"An excellent book presenting many of the major issues of ordinary language philosophy--very readable."--Mark Hamilton, Ashland University"The clarity, the wit, and the patience of the writing are liable to deceive the reader on only one point, namely the amount of hard work that lies behind these thoughts....This book is the one to put into the hands of those who have been over-impressed by Austin's critics....[Warnock's] brilliant editing puts everybody who is concerned with philosophical problems in his debt."--The Guardian

    Now, with over 10,000 entries, this edition features the latest in expletives, sexual obscenities and lavatorial euphemisms.

    Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the never-before-told story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.

    V. Quine gives us his latest word on issues to which he has devoted many years. As he says in the preface: "In these pages I have undertaken to update, sum up, and clarify my variously intersecting views on cognitive meaning, objective reference, and the grounds of knowledge?'The pursuit of truth is a quest that links observation, theory, and the world. Various faulty efforts to forge such links have led to much intellectual confusion. Quine's efforts to get beyond the confusion begin by rejecting the very idea of binding together word and thing, rejecting the focus on the isolated word. For him, observation sentences and theoretical sentences are the alpha and omega ofthe scientific enterprise. Notions like "idea" and "meaning" are vague, but a sentence-now there's something you can sink your teeth into.Starting thus with sentences, Quine sketches an epistemological setting for the pursuit of truth. He proceeds to show how reification and reference contribute to the elaborate structure that can indeed relate science to its sensory evidence.In this book Quine both summarizes and moves ahead. Rich, lively chapters dissect his major concerns-evidence, reference, meaning, intension, and truth. "Some points;' he writes, "have become clearer in my mind in the eight years since Theories and Things. Some that were already clear in my mind have become clearer on paper. And there are some that have meanwhile undergone substantive change for the better." This is a key book for understanding the effort that a major philosopher has made a large part of his life's work: to naturalize epistemology in the twentieth century. The book is concise and elegantly written, as one would expect, and does not assume the reader's previous acquaintance with Quine's writings. Throughout, it is marked by Quine's wit and economy of style.

    Users will be inspired by the breadth and sweep of Meyerhoff's treatment.' William Labov, University of Pennsylvania, USA'Miriam Meyerhoff s entertaining volume revels in the diversity that is the cornerstone of sociolinguistics she takes us to every continent to provide contemporary, refreshing and engaging examples of the key concepts of the discipline, and does so in a well-paced and readable style. The book is authoritative yet open-minded, innovative yet touches all the bases that need to be touched. Most of all, it embodies a passion for sociolinguistics that I hope many readers will embrace.' David Britain, University of Essex, UKThis key text provides a solid, up-to-date appreciation of the interdisciplinary nature of the field. It covers foundation issues, recent advances and current debates presenting familiar or classic data in new ways, and supplementing the familiar with fresh examples from a wide range of languages and social settings. It clearly explains the patterns and systems that underlie language variation in use, as well as the ways in which alternations between different language varieties index personal style, social power and national identity.Individual chapters cover:social dialects and individual style language attitudes politeness multilingualism and language choice real time and apparent time change in language social class, social networks and communities of practice gender language and dialect contact.Each chapter includes exercises that enable readers to engage critically with the text, break out boxes making connections between sociolinguistics and linguistic or social theory, and brief, lively add-ons guaranteed to make the book a memorable and enjoyable read. With a full glossary of terms and suggestions for further reading, this text gives students all the tools they need for an excellent command of sociolinguistics."

    Each title includes a photocopiable 'Task File' of training and reflection activities to reinforce the theories and practical ideas presented.

    We’re each trying to describe what we know about life, to create a collective sense of “safety in numbers.” When we reach the end of our traditional descriptive powers, it’s time to weave collective meaning from poetry, painting, writing, dancing, photographing, filmmaking, storytelling, singing, animating, designing, performing, carving, sculpting, and a million other ways we daily create Order out of the Chaos and share it with each other for comfort.On this journey we need a creative philosophy which will help us find our voice, discover our message, deal with the responses to our work, maintain inspiration, and stay mentally healthy and motivated creators as we strive to find “the meaning in the making.”

    Peter Bowler will teach you the practical riches of saying it well with good words, neglected words, and precise words for vocabular exultation!

    It offers readers who work through it one possible outline for a grammatical description, with many questions designed to help them address the key topics. Appendices offer guidance on text and elicited data, and on sample reference grammars that readers might wish to consult. This will be a valuable resource to anyone engaged in linguistic fieldwork.

    In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science. . . . Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal."—David E. Leary, American Scientist

    Contemplation of time and the discoveries of modern science lead to the assertion that the mind is paramount and limitless.

    This book provides a brief yet comprehensive introduction to the field. It explores how sociolinguistics is linked to other disciplines such as history, politics and gender studies.

    But nothing prepared her for the surprises of learning Mandarin, China's most common language, or the intensity of living in Shanghai and Beijing. Over time, she realized that her struggles and triumphs in studying the language of her adopted home provided small clues to deciphering the behavior and habits of its people,and its culture's conundrums. As her skill with Mandarin increased, bits of the language—a word, a phrase, an oddity of grammar—became windows into understanding romance, humor, protocol, relationships, and the overflowing humanity of modern China. Fallows learned, for example, that the abrupt, blunt way of speaking that Chinese people sometimes use isn't rudeness, but is, in fact, a way to acknowledge and honor the closeness between two friends. She learned that English speakers' trouble with hearing or saying tones—the variations in inflection that can change a word's meaning—is matched by Chinese speakers' inability not to hear tones, or to even take a guess at understanding what might have been meant when foreigners misuse them. In sharing what she discovered about Mandarin, and how those discoveries helped her understand a culture that had at first seemed impenetrable, Deborah Fallows's Dreaming in Chinese opens up China to Westerners more completely, perhaps, than it has ever been before.

    and this creature's home is the inarticulate as well as the articulate.’ John Berger's work has revolutionized the way we understand visual language. In this new book he writes about language itself, and how it relates to thought, art, song, storytelling and political discourse today. Also containing Berger's own drawings, notes, memories and reflections on everything from Albert Camus to global capitalism, Confabulations takes us to what is ‘true, essential and urgent’.

    GET D!RTYNext time you’re traveling or just chattin’ in Italian with your friends, drop the textbook formality and bust out with expressions they never teach you in school, including: Cool slang Funny insults Explicit sex terms Raw swear words Dirty Italian teaches the casual expressions heard every day on the streets of Italy:What's up?Come va?He's a real hottie.Lui è proprio un figo.This pizza's awesome!Questa pizza è buonissima!I'm totally wasted.Soo sbronzo.I gotta piss.Devo pisciare.Hey ref, you're an asshole!Arbitro cornuto!Wanna do it doggy-style?Lo facciamo alla pecorina?