Discourse Across Languages And Cultures

This volume brings together for the first time research by linguists working in cross-linguistic discourse analysis and by second language researchers working in the contrastive rhetoric tradition. The collection of articles by prominent authors and younger scholars encompasses a variety of research approaches and treats numerous naturally-occurring spoken and written genres, including conversations, narratives, academic expository writing, journalism, advertising, and professional promotional texts. Languages examined include English, Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Urdu, Dutch, Turkish and Serbo-Croatian. Taken individually and collectively, the articles in this collection draw important conclusions concerning the roles of cognition, multilingualism, communities of practice, and linguistic typology in shaping discourse within and across cultures.

This volume seeks to answers such questions as: how is conscious experience translated into discourse? How are foregrounding and backgrounding accomplished? What is the function of features like lexical choice and referential choice? And many more.

A look at the various cognitive, social, and linguistic aspects of how social identities are constructed, forgrounded and redefined in interaction. Concepts and methodologies are taken from studies in language variation and change, multilingualism, conversation analysis, genre analysis, sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, as well as translation studies and applied linguistics.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview, as well as breaking new ground, in a versatile and fast growing field. It contains four sections: Contrastive, Cross-cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics, Interlanguage Pragmatics, Teaching and Testing of Second/Foreign Language Pragmatics, and Pragmatics in Corporate Culture Communication, covering a wide range of topics, from speech acts and politeness issues to Lingua Franca and Corporate Crises Communication. The approach is theoretical, methodological as well as applied, with a focus on authentic, interactional data. All articles are written by renowned leading specialists, who provide in-depth, up-to-date overviews, and view new directions and visions for future research.

The chapters constituting this volume focus on legal language seen from cross-cultural perspectives, a topic which brings together two areas of research that have burgeoned in recent years, i.e. legal linguistics and intercultural studies, reflecting the rapidly changing, multifaceted world in which legal institutions and cultural/national identities interact. Within the broad thematic leitmotif of this volume, it has been possible to identify two major strands: legal discourse across languages on the one hand, and legal discourse across cultures on the other. Of course, labels of this kind are adopted partly as a matter of convenience, and it could be argued that any paper dealing with legal discourse across languages inevitably has to do with legal discourse across cultures. But a closer inspection of the papers comprising each of these two strands reveals that there is a coherent logic behind the choice of labels. All seven chapters in the first section are concerned with legal topics where more than one language is at stake, whereas all seven chapters in the second section are concerned with legal topics where cultural differences are brought to the fore.

Academic discourse has recently become a blooming field of research for linguists interested in genre and discourse analysis, as well as pragmatics. The methodology and conventions employed in academic discourse, however, vary across cultures to a certain degree, and often represent obstacles for publishing in international journals for authors whose native language is not English, as top journals tend to centre on the Anglo-Saxon academic writing norms. This is one of the major reasons why national academic discourses need to be linguistically profiled and studied and contrastively compared against these norms. This volume contributes to this very objective by shedding light on academic discourse as effectuated in various, mostly Balkan countries, and contrasts it against the corresponding western, English discourse. Furthermore, academic discourse is studied through a variety of genres it can assume, such as research articles, conference proceedings, and university lectures. Through exploring the cultural differences in academic discourse and the standards of international academic writing, this volume offers readers a chance to become better equipped in publishing abroad. Opening with a chapter focusing on the general structure of research articles and national writing habits as a potential hindrance to publishing abroad, the book goes on to study the rhetorical structure of the abstracts, introductions and conclusions of research articles in linguistics, economics and civil engineering. The second part of the book deals with hedging, contrastively studied in international and national journals, with the following chapters studying cohesion as accomplished in academic writing. Part three deals with the syntactic and semantic features of academic discourse. This book will be of particular interest to linguists interested in genre and discourse analysis in general and academic discourse, and will also appeal to scholars from other research backgrounds wishing to familiarise themselves with international and national academic conventions, and thus overcome the hurdles relating to academic writing conventions when publishing abroad.

In this interdisciplinary book, Juliane House breaks new ground by situating translation within Applied Linguistics. In thirteen chapters, she examines translation as a means of communication across different languages and cultures, provides a critical overview of different approaches to translation, of the link between culture and translation, and between views of context and text in translation. Featuring an account of translation from a linguistic-cognitive perspective, House covers problematic issues such as the existence of universals of translation, cases of untranslatability and ways and means of assessing the quality of a translation. Recent methodological and research avenues such as the role of corpora in translation and the effects of globalization processes on translation are presented in a neutral, non-biased manner. The book concludes with a thorough, historical account of the role of translation in foreign language learning and teaching and a discussion of new challenges and problems of the professional practice of translation in our world today. Written by a highly experienced teacher and researcher in the field, Translation as Communication across Languages and Cultures is an essential resource for students and researchers of Translation Studies, Applied Linguistics and Communication Studies.

Translated texts are often either uncritically consumed by readers, teacher, and scholars or seen to represent an ineluctable loss, a diminishing of original texts. Translation, however, is a cultural practice, influenced also by social and political imperatives, which can open more doors than it closes. The essays in this book show how the act of translation, when vigilantly and critically attended to, becomes a means for active interrogation.

Speech Acts and Politeness are among the main areas of interest in pragmatics. These communicative phenomena can be considered universal and at the same time language and culture-specific. It is this latter dimension that has been at the centre of recent developments in pragmatics, and it is also the focus of this book. The aim of this book is to reflect this development, providing evidence from four main areas crucial to pragmatics across languages and cultures: a description of a variety of speech acts and politeness strategies in different languages and cultures, a cross-cultural comparison of several speech acts and patterns of politeness, an in-depth analysis of issues concerning the learning and teaching of speech acts and politeness in second/foreign languages, as well as some methodological resources in pragmatics. This book is intended for researchers, scholars and students interested in the field of pragmatics, in general, or in the fields of cross-cultural and second/foreign language pragmatics, and specifically for those interested in speech acts and politeness. It will also be useful to any scholar interested in how communication and culture are related.

The goal of this volume is to examine academic discourse (AD) from cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives. The adjective "Cross-cultural" in the volume title is not just limited to national contexts but also includes a cross-disciplinary perspective. Twelve scientific fields are under scrutiny in the articles. One of the unique aspects of the volume is the inclusion of a variety of foreign languages (English (as a lingua franca), Spanish, French, Swedish, Russian, German, Italian, and Norwegian). Besides, in several articles dealing with oral AD, comparisons and parallels are also established with written AD. The research methodologies used in the studies are varied and they offer an overview of the diversity and richness of approaches to AD. All in all, it is hoped that the volume appeals not only to young researchers but also to confirmed scholars interested in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural aspects of AD. It will also be of interest to language teachers or teachers who are involved with e.g. international students and academic mobility.