This book explores the role of identity in adolescent foreign language learning to provide evidence that an identity-focused approach can make a difference to achievement in education. It uses both in-depth exploratory interviews with language learners and a cross-sectional survey to provide a unique glimpse into the identity dynamics that learners need to manage in their interaction with contradictory relational contexts (e.g. teacher vs. classmates; parents vs. friends), and that appear to impair their perceived competence and declared achievement in language learning. Furthermore, this work presents a new model of identity which incorporates several educational psychology theories (e.g. self-discrepancy, self-presentation, impression management), developmental theories of adolescence and principles of foreign language teaching and learning. This book gives rise to potentially policy-changing insights and will be of importance to those interested in the relationship between self, identity and language teaching and learning.

This four-volume Major Work mines the extensive research of the past few decades into textual analysis. The set’s esteemed team of editorshave collated seminal papers which consider the key difference between content analysis and textual analysis, the conceptual starting point and the logic and the attitude of the research process, as well as exploring the tension between reading a text and using a text, amongst other key issues.

With experienced and respected figures in the field at the helm, the carefully selected papers in this collection are put into context and analysed in a newly-written introductory chapter which charts the developments and looks to the future of the field.

Volume One: Basic philosophical considerations
Volume Two: Modalities of textual work
Volume Three: Reading Text
Volume Four: Using Text
 

This volume offers a definitive source for understanding social influences in L2 pronunciation, demonstrating the importance of empirical findings from a number of research perspectives, and outlining the directions that future work can take. The aim is to present a coherent argument for the significance of social factors and how they contribute to phonological acquisition.

This volume offers a representative selection of the papers presented at the Third ELC International Postgraduate Conference on Language and Cognition (ELC3), held in Santiago de Compostela, 21–22 September 2012. The book is structured into four parts. Part I comprises syntactic studies on the auxiliary verb get in Indian English, the grammar of verbs capable of occurring with or without an object in Contemporary English, and isolated if-clauses. Part II includes two papers dealing with word formation patterns and with crosslinguistic influences on motion expression in English and Spanish. The studies in Part III discuss topics related to second language acquisition, such as the difficulties encountered by Spanish speakers in learning English pronunciation, verbal morphology production by Japanese learners of English, and the effects of elicitation on students’ production of English past tense forms. The papers in Part IV revolve around discourse analysis and psycholinguistics, addressing topics such as automatic sentiment detection, perspectival construal patterns in language and cognition, and the effect of emotional valence on disambiguation processes.

• links the evolution of the brain to the origins and nature of language
• • provides the basis for a new theory of syntax
• • offers insights into language learnability
• • written in non-technical language for the wide readership interested in the subject
This book looks at how the human brain got the capacity for language and how language then evolved. Its four parts are concerned with different views on the emergence of language, with what language is, how it evolved in the human brain, and finally how this process led to the properties of language. Part I considers the main approaches to the subject and how far language evolved culturally or genetically. Part II argues that language is a system of signs and considers how these elements first came together in the brain. Part III examines the evidence for brain mechanisms to allow the formation of signs. Part IV shows how the book's explanation of language origins and evolution is not only consistent with the complex properties of languages but provides the basis for a theory of syntax that offers insights into the learnability of language and to the nature of constructions that have defied decades of linguistic analysis, including including subject-verb inversion in questions, existential constructions, and long-distance dependencies.
Denis Bouchard's outstandingly original account will interest linguists of all persuasions as well as cognitive scientists and others interested in the evolution of language.
Readership: Linguists of all persuasions and their advanced students as well as cognitive scientists, human biologists, primatologists and others interested in the evolution of language
 

• Clear, concise, and accessible approach
• Draws upon a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, neuroscience, genetics, and animal behaviour
• Resolves the puzzling tension between human uniqueness and continuous evolution from apes
Origins of Language: A Slim Guide offers a concise and accessible overview of what is known about the evolution of the human capacity for language. Non-human animals communicate in simple ways: they may be able to form simple concepts, to feel some limited empathy for others, to cooperate to some extent, and to engage in mind-reading. Human language, however, is characterized by its ability to efficiently express a wide range of subtle and complex meanings. After the first simple beginnings, human language underwent an explosion of complexity, leading to the very complicated systems of grammar and pronunciation found in modern languages.

Jim Hurford looks at the very varied aspects of this evolution, covering human prehistory; the relation between instinct and learning; biology and culture; trust, altruism, and cooperation; animal thought; human and non-human vocal anatomy; the meanings and forms of the first words; and the growth of complex systems of grammar and pronunciation. Written by an internationally recognized expert in the field, it draws on a number of disciplines besides linguistics, including philosophy, neuroscience, genetics, and animal behaviour, and will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in language origins and evolution.
Readership: Students of language origins and evolution from beginners' level upward, as well as those working in related disciplines. The book will also appeal to interested general readers.
 

• The first book-length work on intercultural pragmatics
• Analyzes how language systems are used in social encounters between speakers who have different first languages and cultures, yet communicate in a common language
• Boldly combines the pragmatic view of cooperation with the cognitive view of egocentrism in order to incorporate emerging features of communication.
 

Saber hablar en público y en situaciones formales es una competencia crucial en la formación lingüística y comunicativa de las personas. Es básico tanto para desenvolverse en el ámbito académico como en la futura vida social y profesional del alumnado, pero es una de las capacidades más desatendidas en la enseñanza. ¿Por qué es tan importante saber hablar en público? ¿Y cómo es posible que se enseñe tan poco? De hecho, ¿se puede enseñar? Y, en caso afirmativo, ¿cómo hacerlo? El libro ofrece reflexiones, propuestas y recursos didácticos concretos para el docente y presenta una estructura clara que ayuda a la comprensión de cada una de las ideas que se proponen.

Language Policy provides a detailed overview of the theories, concepts, research methods, and findings in one accessible source. The author reviews the latest developments in research methods, and proposes new methodological, theoretical, and conceptual directions. This book provides guidance for doing language policy research and specific research projects are proposed. A major focus of the book is how language policies impact educational and community practices and how language policy researchers make connections between macro level language policy texts and discourses and micro level language practices in schools and communities.