Linguistics

This is a compendium of work by scholars and activists involved in deaf matters. The introduction chapter sets up the global context; it is followed by twelve chapters, seven of which deal with the creation, context, and form of sign languages, and five of which deal with social issues and civil rights of Deaf communities. Each chapter has a response by one, or sometimes two pre-eminent people in the field, typically viewing the issue of the chapter from a different perspective or in a different geographic context. Luminaries shed light on issues and give histories and overviews that have not been written down anyplace else. The book addresses issues of interest in linguistics, psychology, economics, public policy, public health, cognitive science, anthropology, and education. The major thesis of the book is that the interaction of activists and scholars is synergistic: activists find support in the work of scholars and scholars both have a responsibility toward the community they study and do better work when they understand activists’ concerns. Thirty-one scholars and activists (sixteen deaf, one hearing of deaf parents, and fourteen hearing) contributed to this volume with the optimistic goal that the joint work can help improve our understanding of both deaf matters and the daily lives of deaf people. The chapters deal with gestures, sign languages, deaf issues, and deaf communities in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. The picture that emerges shows a great amount of similarity and continuity in the Deaf World.

Rhetorical Style promotes a renewed appreciation of the persuasive potential of the English language by demonstrating how language choices argue. It combines advice about effective style from the rhetorical tradition with insights from stylistics and discourse analysis to provide a full spectrum of methods for text analysis. Using examples from political speeches, nonfiction works, and newspaper reports, it emphasizes the continuing relevance of rhetorical principles of stylistic analysis and their usefulness in understanding effective arguments. Rhetorical Style is comprehensive in its coverage. Part I reviews the historical layers of English, its methods of word formation, its registers and varieties. Part II covers sentence basics in a brief and accessible way, noting how sentence forms serve persuasion, especially those optimal “iconic” forms that epitomize their content. The interactive dimension of texts is covered in part III in accounts of how speakers, audiences, other voices, and even situations and occasions can be selectively presented to serve an arguer's purposes. Finally, part IV goes beyond the sentence level to passage construction, explaining how a coherent string of sentences can build into a sustained argument. The final chapter explains Amplification, the tour de force rhetorical performance that draws on features from all the levels. Throughout, the explanations and the examples from actual texts provide evidence linking language choices to argument forms and persuasive purposes. Rhetorical insights into how language argues have survived for centuries. Rhetorical Style was written to give these enduring principles wider circulation.