Language demonstrates structure while also showing considerable variation at all levels: languages differ from one another while still being shaped by the same principles; utterances within a language differ from one another while exhibiting the same structural patterns; languages change over time, but in fairly regular ways. This book focuses on the dynamic processes that create languages and give them their structure and variance.
Meaning, Discourse and Society investigates the construction of reality within discourse. When people talk about things such as language, the mind, globalisation or weeds, they are less discussing the outside world than objects they have created collaboratively by talking about them. Wolfgang Teubert shows that meaning cannot be found in mental concepts or neural activity, as implied by the cognitive sciences.
This book introduces readers to the sounds of spoken English, covering phonetic representation and showing that different forms of representation supply different perspectives on data. The volume also provides an overview of the vocal tract and works through the consonant and vowel sounds of English.
Since English can assume a diverse range of forms, this book gives readers a general phonetic framework to apply to this variety, with illustrations taken from English-speakers across the world.
Approaches to Phonological ComplexityComplexity approaches, developed in physics and biology for almost two decades, show today a huge potential for investigating challenging issues in Humanities and Cognitive Sciences and obviously in the study of language(s). Theoretical approaches that integrate self-organization, emergence, non linearity, adaptive systems, information theory, etc., have already been developed to provide a unifying framework that sheds new light on the duality between linguistic diversity on the one hand and unique cognitive capacity of language processing on the other hand.
This book is about planning lessons and courses for students of English as a foreign language. It is the only book on the market totally devoted to this. It does not take the view that "planning" equals writing pages and pages of notes by an assessor or observer. Rather it takes the everyday reality of the working teacher as they design short and long instructional units. Each chapter is based on a real life question, such as: Who are the students? When is the lesson? What can go in to a lesson or course? How do people learn? How can I teach? What materials can I choose? How can I get started on planning?
