Drawing on vast amounts of new data from live, unscripted radio and TV broadcasts, and the internet, this is a brilliant and original analysis of colloquial English, revealing unusual and largely unreported types of clause structure. Andrew Radford debunks the myth that colloquial English has a substandard, simplified grammar, and shows that it has a coherent and complex structure of its own. The book develops a theoretically sophisticated account of structure and variation in colloquial English
Mixing metaphors in speech, writing, and even gesture, is traditionally viewed as a sign of inconsistency in thought and language. Despite the prominence of mixed metaphors, there have been surprisingly few attempts to comprehensively explain why people mix their metaphors so frequently and in the particular ways they do. This volume brings together a distinguished group of linguists, psychologists and computer scientists, who tackle the issue of how and why mixed metaphors arise and what communicative purposes they may serve.
''Much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to: in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.'' Porter, Macbeth, II i. Why would Elizabethan audiences find Shakespeare''s Porter in Macbeth so funny? And what exactly is meant by the name the ''Weird'' Sisters? Jonathan Hope, in a comprehensive and fascinating study, looks at how the concept of words meant something entirely different to Elizabethan audi.
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science.
