The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar

This handbook presents a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry. This volume is divided into five sections. The first section highlights the fundamental assumptions shared by all constructionist approaches; the second describes the particular frameworks in which the notion of constructions plays a central role; the third illustrates how constructionist approaches can be used for the analysis of all types of (morpho)syntactic phenomena from the lexicon?syntax cline; the fourth discusses the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic underpinnings of Construction Grammar; and the final section considers the relation of Construction Grammar to language variation and change. The handbook also traces the history of Construction Grammar and explains its distinction from Chomskyan Mainstream Generative Grammar.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.


Author(s):  
Philipp Zehmisch

This chapter considers the history of Andaman migration from the institutionalization of a penal colony in 1858 to the present. It unpicks the dynamic relationship between the state and the population by investigating genealogies of power and knowledge. Apart from elaborating on subaltern domination, the chapter also reconstructs subaltern agency in historical processes by re-reading scholarly literature, administrative publications, and media reports as well as by interpreting fieldwork data and oral history accounts. The first part of the chapter defines migration and shows how it applies to the Andamans. The second part concentrates on colonial policies of subaltern population transfer to the islands and on the effects of social engineering processes. The third part analyses the institutionalization of the postcolonial regime in the islands and elaborates on the various types of migration since Indian Independence. The final section considers contemporary political negotiations of migration in the islands.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
MIMI HADDON

Abstract This article uses Joan Baez's impersonations of Bob Dylan from the mid-1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century as performances where multiple fields of complementary discourse converge. The article is organized in three parts. The first part addresses the musical details of Baez's acts of mimicry and their uncanny ability to summon Dylan's predecessors. The second considers mimicry in the context of identity, specifically race and asymmetrical power relations in the history of American popular music. The third and final section analyses her imitations in the context of gender and reproductive labour, focusing on the way various media have shaped her persona and her relationship to Dylan. The article engages critical theoretical work informed by psychoanalysis, post-colonial theory, and Marxist feminism.


2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Wright

This study reconstructs the connected history of socio-economic and intellectual practices related to property in seventeenth-century Bengal. From the perspective of socio-economic practices, this study is concerned with the legal transfer of immovable property between individuals. From the perspective of intellectual practice, this study is concerned with how property was understood as an analytical category that stood in a particular relation to an individual. Their connected history is examined by analysing socio-economic practices exemplified in a number of documents detailing the sale and donation of land and then situating these practices within the scholarly analysis of property undertaken by authors within the discipline of nyāya—the Sanskrit discipline dealing primarily with ontology and epistemology. In the first section of the essay, I undertake a detailed examination of available land documents in order to highlight particular conceptions of property. In the second section of the essay, I draw out theoretical issues examined in nyāya texts that relate directly to the concepts expressed in the land documents. In the third and final section of the essay, I discuss the shared language and shared concepts between the documents and nyāya texts. This last section also addresses how the nyāya analysis of property facilitates a better understanding of claims in the documents and what nyāya authors may have been doing in writing about property.


2019 ◽  

Since prehistoric times, the Baltic Sea has functioned as a northern mare nostrum — a crucial nexus that has shaped the languages, folklore, religions, literature, technology, and identities of the Germanic, Finnic, Sámi, Baltic, and Slavic peoples. This anthology explores the networks among those peoples. The contributions to Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea Region: Austmarr as a Northern mare nostrum, ca. 500-1500 ad address different aspects of cultural contacts around and across the Baltic from the perspectives of history, archaeology, linguistics, literary studies, religious studies, and folklore. The introduction offers a general overview of crosscultural contacts in the Baltic Sea region as a framework for contextualizing the volume’s twelve chapters, organized in four sections. The first section concerns geographical conceptions as revealed in Old Norse and in classical texts through place names, terms of direction, and geographical descriptions. The second section discusses the movement of cultural goods and persons in connection with elite mobility, the slave trade, and rune-carving practice. The third section turns to the history of language contacts and influences, using examples of Finnic names in runic inscriptions and Low German loanwords in Finnish. The final section analyzes intercultural connections related to mythology and religion spanning Baltic, Finnic, Germanic, and Sámi cultures. Together these diverse articles present a dynamic picture of this distinctive part of the world.


2009 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 189-210
Author(s):  
John R Spencer

Abstract This chapter examines the efforts in Europe and and the UK to deal with the problem of people-trafficking. As readers will see, it is in five Sections. The first sets the scene by explaining what ‘people-trafficking’ is, and outlining the history of international attempts to repress it and to relieve its human consequences. The second describes the recent legislative attempts to deal with it in Europe, and in particular, the EU Framework Decision of 2002. The third examines the UK legislation enacted with the aim—not entirely accurate, as we shall see—of implementing it. The fourth looks at the way the UK legislation is working. And the final section concludes with two general reflections. It is based on a study carried out in 2007 for ECLAN, the European Criminal Law Academic Network. Any reader who reaches the end with a thirst for further knowledge will find further refreshment in the book that resulted from the ECLAN study, which was published earlier this year.


The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics contains forty chapters dealing with a great variety of topics in the study of language and society. It presents the major theoretical approaches in particular bilingual and multilingual contexts, and both spoken and signed languages. The volume not only offers an up-to-date guide to the diverse areas of the study of language in society, but also numerous guideposts to where the field is headed. The first section examines the contributions of the various disciplines that have contributed to the sociolinguistic enterprise. The second section deals with methods, a central concern of a discipline that bases its conclusions on evidence drawn from the real world of social interaction. The third section deals directly with a number of issues in multilingualism and language contact. The fourth section focuses on a core area of sociolinguistics: the study of language variation and change. The fifth section focuses on macrosociolinguistics and explores language policy, ideology, and attitudes in a wide range of contexts. The final section of the volume discusses sociolinguistics in a number of different domains including law, medicine, sign-language interpretation, language awareness, language revitalization, and social activism.


Author(s):  
Jon L. Berquist

The third and final section of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Writings, is a crucial part of the biblical canon and a key turning point in the history of Israelite religion. The Writings were written and shaped during the time of Persian imperial rule as well as Hellenistic influence, perhaps 450–300 bce. The city of Jerusalem and the province of Yehud existed as a part of the continent-spanning Persian Empire, in which increased scribalism and communications supported the long-term purposes of imperial order, but which also accepted a higher level of pluralism than earlier empires and monarchies. The Writings of this time, expressed in diverse genres and with great variations of affect and theology, formed nascent Judaism in ways that would maximize its relevance to a new imperial, multicultural, and pluralistic world situation as well as enhance the opportunities for Judaism to survive and thrive in future centuries.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Elena Di Giovanni

Sujit Mukherjee passed away in 2003, having been an outstanding intellectual figure in India and beyond. A writer himself, but most of all a translator, Mukherjee contributed greatly to stirring the debate and reflection on translation in India. Although he quite humbly declared, on several occasions, that India never had such a thing as a theory of translation, his books and articles have traced the history of this activity and given shape to a metadiscourse on translation which is far from the abstractions of theories and full of the strength of the enlightened practitioner’s point of view. Mukherjee’s approach to the observation of translation practices is permeated by his modesty, his brisk simplicity and, above all, his relentless positivity. In his words, translation becomes a dynamic, pervasive and constructive practice, far from the subordinate and derivative essence so often ascribed to it by Western scholars. This paper brings to the fore the non-theories of Sujit Mukerjee and proceeds by discussing them along a chronological axis. Organized in three sections, the paper first analyses Mukherjee’s viewpoint on translation in India before the British, to then move onto translation and the role of English during and after colonization. The third and final section offers a comparison between Mukherjee’s ideas and reflections and those by three outstanding Western translation scholars.


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