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This subject is designed to further improve students' level of English to enable them to become highly sensitive users of the language. On the basis of strengthening their knowledge of syntax and semantics, the subject will cultivate students' English ability from the perspectives of stylistics and pragmatics. They will be taught the necessary aspects of the lexical-grammatical system and the cultural and stylistic features for effective communication.
This book studies the lexicology of modern English. It provides an account of the sources of modern English words and studies the development of vocabulary over time. It examines: What are words? Where do English words come from? How are words made up? How do words 'mean'? How are words used? How can words be investigated? In this new edition, chapters on dictionaries and corpus linguistics have been updated, and lists of exercises and figures, summaries of content at the beginning of each chapter, a revised list of suggestions for further reading, and a new glossary have also been added.
This book is a study of the language of literary texts. It looks at the usefulness of pragmatic theories to the interpretation of literary texts and surveys methods of analysing narrative, with special attention given to narratorial authority and character focalisation. The book includes a description of Grice's Co-operative Principle and its contribution to the interpretation of literary texts, and considers Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory, with particular stress on the valuable insights into irony and varieties of indirect discourse it offers. Bakhtin's theories are introduced, and related to the more explicitly linguistic Relevance Theory.
This book specifically focuses on the notion of style in translation studies. According to Boase-Beier, style refers to not only linguistic features, but also voices, otherness, foreignization, contextualization and culturally-bound and universal ways of conceptualizing and expressing meaning. The way in which these factors are reflected in the text and its translation is thus crucial to the study of the stylistic approaches to translation. There are 6 chapters in this book. Except for the sixth conclusion chapter, chapter 1-5 each focus on one aspect of the stylistic approach in translation, such as the style of the source text from readers’ perspectives, the style of the target text, etc.
This book provides basis for the further study of modern English vocabulary with particular reference to linguistic descriptive frameworks and educational contexts. Part One outlines some basic issues and undertakes analysis of lexis in in increasingly larger units of language. Part Two is devoted to discussion of applied linguistic issues raised by vocabulary being used in language learning and teaching contexts, in lexicography and as a component in the stylistic analysis of literature. Part Three consists of two studies in lexical stylistics which shows particular analytical procedures to be applicable to fuller and more precise description of the role of lexis in the style of literary texts.
This book specifically focuses on word use and meaning in language. Hanks offers a new theory of language, the Theory of Norms and Exploitations. While norms are the manifestation of conventional use, exploitations are the manifestation of exceptional use. According to Hanks, norms may change over time, and exploitations many become norms over time. There are 13 chapters in this book, contributing to justifying the need for a new approach to the study of word meaning, tracing the connotation of the term “word”, exhausting the question whether word meanings exist, discussing prototypes and norms, contextual dependency and lexical sets, norms change over time, three types of alternation, exploitations, intertextuality, word and pattern meaning, etc.
This book looks at the phenomenon of vocabulary creation. By surveying past winners and losers in the great game of linguistic innovation, the book devises a formula for predicting the success of new words, showing how coiners of new words can boost their chances to put words into the mouths of their fellow speakers. It shows us, for instance, why the humorist Gelett Burgess succeeded in contributing the words blurb and bromide to the language but failed to win anyone over to bleesh or diabob. Metcalf examines terms invented to describe political causes and social phenomena, terms coined in books, brand names and words derived from them.
This book is a collection of papers by John Sinclair around the 1990s, which chart some of the main contours of Sinclair’s thinking, descriptive techniques and analytical practices. After an introductory chapter, Part One outlines the major theoretical principles on which subsequent chapters are constructed. Part Two traces the development of Sinclair’s insights into the relationship between text structure and dialogue by examining a range of text-types. Part Three presents core papers on the description of vocabulary, its relationship with grammar and the role of corpus analysis in describing lexical patterns.
