The Social Life of Words

The Social Life of Words PDF Author: Laura Wright
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111988103X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
A new approach to sociolinguistics, introducing the study of the social meaning of English words over time, and offering an engaging and entertaining demonstration of lexical sociolinguistic analysis The Social Life of Words: A Historical Approach explores the rise and fall of the social properties of words, charting ways in which they take on new social connotations. Written in an engaging narrative style, this entertaining text matches up sociolinguistic theory with social history and biography to discover which kind of people used what kind of word, where and when. Social factors such as class, age, race, region, gender, occupation, religion and criminality are discussed in British and American English. From familiar words such as popcorn, porridge, café, to less common words like burgoo, califont, etna, and phrases like kiss me quick, monkey parade, slap-bang shop, The Social Life of Words demonstrates some of the many ways a new word or phrase can develop social affiliations. Detailed yet accessible chapters cover key areas of historical sociolinguistics, including concepts such as social networks, communities of practice, indexicality and enregisterment, prototypes and stereotypes, polysemy, onomasiology, language regard, lexical appropriation, and more. The first book to take a focused look at lexis as a topic for sociolinguistic analysis, The Social Life of Words: Introduces sociolinguistic theories and shows how they can be applied to the lexicon Demonstrates how readers can apply sociolinguistic theory to their own analyses of words in English and other languages Provides an engaging and amusing new look at many familiar words, inviting students to explore the sociolinguistic properties of words over time for themselves Part of Wiley Blackwell’s acclaimed Language in Society series, The Social Life of Words is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and linguists working in sociolinguistics, lexical semantics, English lexicology, and the history and development of modern English.

The Social Life of Words

The Social Life of Words PDF Author: Laura Wright
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111988103X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
A new approach to sociolinguistics, introducing the study of the social meaning of English words over time, and offering an engaging and entertaining demonstration of lexical sociolinguistic analysis The Social Life of Words: A Historical Approach explores the rise and fall of the social properties of words, charting ways in which they take on new social connotations. Written in an engaging narrative style, this entertaining text matches up sociolinguistic theory with social history and biography to discover which kind of people used what kind of word, where and when. Social factors such as class, age, race, region, gender, occupation, religion and criminality are discussed in British and American English. From familiar words such as popcorn, porridge, café, to less common words like burgoo, califont, etna, and phrases like kiss me quick, monkey parade, slap-bang shop, The Social Life of Words demonstrates some of the many ways a new word or phrase can develop social affiliations. Detailed yet accessible chapters cover key areas of historical sociolinguistics, including concepts such as social networks, communities of practice, indexicality and enregisterment, prototypes and stereotypes, polysemy, onomasiology, language regard, lexical appropriation, and more. The first book to take a focused look at lexis as a topic for sociolinguistic analysis, The Social Life of Words: Introduces sociolinguistic theories and shows how they can be applied to the lexicon Demonstrates how readers can apply sociolinguistic theory to their own analyses of words in English and other languages Provides an engaging and amusing new look at many familiar words, inviting students to explore the sociolinguistic properties of words over time for themselves Part of Wiley Blackwell’s acclaimed Language in Society series, The Social Life of Words is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and linguists working in sociolinguistics, lexical semantics, English lexicology, and the history and development of modern English.

The Secret Life of Words

The Secret Life of Words PDF Author: Henry Hitchings
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 142994157X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Words are essential to our everyday lives. An average person spends his or her day enveloped in conversations, e-mails, phone calls, text messages, directions, headlines, and more. But how often do we stop to think about the origins of the words we use? Have you ever thought about which words in English have been borrowed from Arabic, Dutch, or Portuguese? Try admiral, landscape, and marmalade, just for starters. The Secret Life of Words is a wide-ranging account not only of the history of English language and vocabulary, but also of how words witness history, reflect social change, and remind us of our past. Henry Hitchings delves into the insatiable, ever-changing English language and reveals how and why it has absorbed words from more than 350 other languages—many originating from the most unlikely of places, such as shampoo from Hindi and kiosk from Turkish. From the Norman Conquest to the present day, Hitchings narrates the story of English as a living archive of our human experience. He uncovers the secrets behind everyday words and explores the surprising origins of our most commonplace expressions. The Secret Life of Words is a rich, lively celebration of the language and vocabulary that we too often take for granted.

Words Matter

Words Matter PDF Author: Sally McConnell-Ginet
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108427219
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Featuring current and historical concrete examples and minimising technical vocabulary, Words Matter is for all interested in examining ideas about language and its connections to social conflict and change. Accessible to general readers, the book will also be useful in linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, or other classes featuring language.

The Social Life of Language

The Social Life of Language PDF Author: Gillian Sankoff
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512809586
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Challenges in the Social Life of Language

Challenges in the Social Life of Language PDF Author: John Edwards
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230302203
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The first book to highlight the most pressing sociology-of-language themes of our times. All of which have to do with the twin issues of power and identity . Important evidence and illustrations bearing upon these matters are provided and supplemented by an extensive bibliography.

The Secret Life of Pronouns

The Secret Life of Pronouns PDF Author: James W. Pennebaker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608194965
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The author of Opening Up draws on groundbreaking research in computational linguistics to explain what our language choices reveal about feelings, self-concept and social intelligence, in a lighthearted treatise that also explores the language personalities of famous individuals. 40,000 first printing.

The Social Life of Language

The Social Life of Language PDF Author: Gillian Sankoff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Word by Word

Word by Word PDF Author: Kory Stamper
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 110197026X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
“We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets.” With wit and irreverence, lexicographer Kory Stamper cracks open the obsessive world of dictionary writing, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it to the knotty questions of ever-changing word usage. Filled with fun facts—for example, the first documented usage of “OMG” was in a letter to Winston Churchill—and Stamper’s own stories from the linguistic front lines (including how she became America’s foremost “irregardless” apologist, despite loathing the word), Word by Word is an endlessly entertaining look at the wonderful complexities and eccentricities of the English language.

Ways with Words

Ways with Words PDF Author: Shirley Brice Heath
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107263557
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
Ways with Words, first published in 1983, is a classic study of children learning to use language at home and at school in two communities only a few miles apart in the south-eastern United States. 'Roadville' is a white working-class community of families steeped for generations in the life of textile mills; 'Trackton' is an African-American working-class community whose older generations grew up farming the land, but whose existent members work in the mills. In tracing the children's language development the author shows the deep cultural differences between the two communities, whose ways with words differ as strikingly from each other as either does from the pattern of the townspeople, the 'mainstream' blacks and whites who hold power in the schools and workplaces of the region. Employing the combined skills of ethnographer, social historian, and teacher, the author raises fundamental questions about the nature of language development, the effects of literacy on oral language habits, and the sources of communication problems in schools and workplaces.

The Life of Words

The Life of Words PDF Author: David-Antoine Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198812477
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
For centuries, investigations into the origins of words were entwined with investigations into the origins of humanity and the cosmos. With the development of modern etymological practice in the nineteenth century, however, many cherished etymologies were shown to be impossible, and the very idea of original 'true meaning' asserted in the etymology of 'etymology' declared a fallacy. Structural linguistics later held that the relationship between sound and meaning in language was 'arbitrary', or 'unmotivated', a truth that has survived with small modification until today. On the other hand, the relationship between sound and meaning has been a prime motivator of poems, at all times throughout history. The Life of Words studies a selection of poets inhabiting our 'Age of the Arbitrary', whose auditory-semantic sensibilities have additionally been motivated by a historical sense of the language, troubled as it may be by claims and counterclaims of 'fallacy' or 'true meaning'. Arguing that etymology activates peculiar kinds of epistemology in the modern poem, the book pays extended attention to poems by G. M. Hopkins, Anne Waldman, Ciaran Carson, and Anne Carson, and to the collected works of Geoffrey Hill, Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, R. F. Langley, and J. H. Prynne.