12 research outputs found
Formulaic language
Get PDFThe notion of formulaicity has received increasing attention in disciplines and areas as diverse as linguistics, literary studies, art theory and art history. In recent years, linguistic studies of formulaicity have been flourishing and the very notion of formulaicity has been approached from various methodological and theoretical perspectives and with various purposes in mind. The linguistic approach to formulaicity is still in a state of rapid development and the objective of the current volume is to present the current explorations in the field. Papers collected in the volume make numerous suggestions for further development of the field and they are arranged into three complementary parts. The first part, with three chapters, presents new theoretical and methodological insights as well as their practical application in the development of custom-designed software tools for identification and exploration of formulaic language in texts. Two papers in the second part explore formulaic language in the context of language learning. Finally, the third part, with three chapters, showcases descriptive research on formulaic language conducted primarily from the perspectives of corpus linguistics and translation studies. The volume will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of formulaic language either from a theoretical or a practical perspective
Theories and methods
Get PDFThe notion of formulaicity has received increasing attention in disciplines and areas as diverse as linguistics, literary studies, art theory and art history. In recent years, linguistic studies of formulaicity have been flourishing and the very notion of formulaicity has been approached from various methodological and theoretical perspectives and with various purposes in mind. The linguistic approach to formulaicity is still in a state of rapid development and the objective of the current volume is to present the current explorations in the field. Papers collected in the volume make numerous suggestions for further development of the field and they are arranged into three complementary parts. The first part, with three chapters, presents new theoretical and methodological insights as well as their practical application in the development of custom-designed software tools for identification and exploration of formulaic language in texts. Two papers in the second part explore formulaic language in the context of language learning. Finally, the third part, with three chapters, showcases descriptive research on formulaic language conducted primarily from the perspectives of corpus linguistics and translation studies. The volume will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of formulaic language either from a theoretical or a practical perspective
A History of the Welsh English Dialect in Fiction
Get PDFThe systematic study of language varieties in fictional texts have primarily focused upon written material. Recently, linguists have also added audio-visual genres to the analytic framework of literary dialect studies. Studies have traditionally examined writersâ lexical, phonological, and grammatical output; contemporarily, research has begun examining metalinguistic commentaries and linguistic indexing of character stereotypes to this repertoire (Hodson, 2014).Except for minor analysis of early texts (German, 2009), there has been no large-scale investigation of any Welsh English dialect in fiction. This thesis addresses this gap, asking the fundamental question: throughout history, how has Welsh English been represented in fiction? The thesis surveys a large chronological scope covering material from the 12th century until the present day across four narrative-genres: early writings and theatrical writing, novels, films, and, new to literary dialect studies, videogames. In doing so, a historical discussion forms that covers Welsh Englishâs fictolinguistic output, cross-referencing its linguistic forms with recorded data, identifying forms hitherto unknown to dialectological surveys, and addressing metalinguistic and attitudinal stereotypes in fiction.Key findings include that phonology was an early representational linguistic domain in the literary dialect, whilst lexical and grammatical domains became common from 19th century literature onwards. The commonest phonological and lexical features were glottal fricative drops and tapped /r/; and the endearment terms âbach/fachâ and âmamâ respectively. Grammatically, âFocus Frontingâ and âDemonstrative Thereâ regularly occurred. Regarding linguistic evidence, several authors and filmmakers were prolific lay surveyors of the variety, adding to the historical dialectological record. Concerning dialectal attitudes, Elizabethan playwrights used linguistic stereotyping to create character stereotypes of Welsh people as âcomicalâ. By the 19th century, fictive Welsh English representation was the dominion of native-users in literature, film, and videogames; however today, the Comic stereotype, and an emerging stereotype of Welsh English users being Fantastical, appears embedded within the dialectâs representation
