The theory of affordances

List of Figures List of Tables Foreword Introduction Robin P. Fawcett, M.A.K. Halliday, Sydney M. Lamb and Adam Makkai 1 Language as Code and Language as Behaviour: A Systemic-Functional Interpretation of the Nature and Ontogenesis of Dialogue M.A.K. Halliday 2 Metaphors of Information John Regan 3 How Universal is a Localist Hypothesis? A Linguistic Contribution to the Study of 'Semantic Styles' of Language Yoshihiko Ikegami 4 Some Speculations on Language Contact in a Wider Setting Jeffrey Ellis 5 Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning Ruqaiya Hasan Index

Language as social semiotic

but the threat they bring to artistic culture. From his opening mockery of the literary establishment’s tendency to theorize the world in terms of desire or gender to his disapproval of those who venerate art while denying its validity in the same breath, Jonathan Dollimore has created an easily understood, albeit at times too theoretical, synthesis of the literary and the experiential in Sex, Literature and Censorship. His arguments on critical theory do not necessarily reject the concept of theory; rather, he argues that critical theorists should strive to understand the contradictions within our lives and our literature and explore the daemonic power of the subjects that offend our sense of tradition.

Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication:

Karl Buhler (1879-1963) was one of the leading theoreticians of language of this century. His masterwork Sprachtheorie (1934) has been praised widely and gained considerable recognition in the fields of linguistics, semiotics, the philosophy of language and the psychology of language. The work has, however, resisted translation into English partly because of its spirited and vivid style, partly because of the depth and range of analysis, partly because of the great erudition of the author, who displays a thorough command of both the linguistic and the philosophical traditions. With this translation, Buhler's ideas on many problems that are still controversial and others only recently rediscovered, are now accessible to the English-speaking world.Contents: The work is divided into four parts. Part I discusses the four “axioms” or principles of language research, the most famous of which is the first, the “organon model”, the base of Buhler's instrumental view of language. Part II treats the role of indexicality in language and discusses deixis as one determinant of speech. Part III examines the symbolic field, dealing with context, onomatopoeia and the function of case. Part IV deals with the elements of language and their organization (syllabification, the definition of the word, metaphor, anaphora, etc).The text is accompanied by: Translator's preface; Introduction (by Achim Eschbach); Glossary of terms and Bibliography of cited works (both compiled by the translator); Index of names, Index of topics.

KARL BUHLER: THEORY OF LANGUAGE: The representational function of language

Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society

Preface: Language in Chinese Studies Part 1: The Great Wall of Chinese Language Teaching 1. Arguing Semantics with a Beijing Taxi Driver: Relating Text and Context in a Chinese Studies Program 2. Gateways to Becoming Sinophone: Traditions and Biases in Chinese Language Textbooks 3. Learning Chinese the Lee Kwan Yew Way: The Social and Political Context of Language Learning Part 2: Drawing Battlelines over Language 4. Character Fetishization: The Modus Operandi of Orientalism in Chinese Studies 5. Ideolatry vs Phonolatry?: Chinese Characters as Disciplinary Identifier 6. Keeping Chinese for the Chinese: The Paradox of Nativised Orientalism in Chinese Linguistics Part 3: Getting Over the Walls of Discourse 7. Construing 'Metrosexual' in Chinese: Social and Semiotic Change in the Era of Globalisation 8. Reconstruction vs Deconstruction: Textual Criticism, Social Semiotics, and 'New Sinology' 9. From 'Ed McDonald' to 'Ned McHorse': Negotiating Multiple Identities in a Globalised World

Learning Chinese, Turning Chinese: Challenges to Becoming Sinophone in a Globalised World

We introduce an abstract theory of the principal symbol mapping for pseudodifferential operators extending the results of Sukochev and Zanin (J Oper Theory, 2019) and providing a simple algebraic approach to the theory of pseudodifferential operators in settings important in noncommutative geometry. We provide a variant of Connes’ trace theorem which applies to certain noncommutative settings, with a minimum of technical preliminaries. Our approach allows us to consider operators with non-smooth symbols, and we demonstrate the power of our approach by extending Connes’ trace theorem to operators with non-smooth symbols in three examples: the Lie group $$\mathrm {SU}(2)$$
 , noncommutative tori and Moyal planes.

A $C^*$-algebraic approach to the principal symbol II

Social semiotic approaches to multimodality have tended to take language as the model for other modalities even when their professed aim is to move away from it. This kind of “linguistic imperialism” causes problems for theorising the relationship between the two basic semiotic planes of expression and interpretation in different modalities, and how the affordances of the expression plane relate to the meanings of the interpretation plane in each case, as well as in understanding the particular role of language in multimodal texts. The current paper brings together insights from semiotics, sociology of music and philosophy of language, as well as critiques of social semiotic approaches, in order to argue that the missing element in accounts of semiotic systems like language and music is the fundamental role played by embodiment in both these systems.

Embodiment and meaning: moving beyond linguistic imperialism in social semiotics

Debates on the nature of the Chinese writing system, particularly whether Chinese characters may or may not legitimately be called “ideographs,” continue to bedevil Chinese studies This paper considers examples of what are referred to as “discourses of character fetishization,” whereby an inordinate status is discursively created for Chinese characters in the interpretation of Chinese language, thought, and culture The author endeavors to analyze and critique the presuppositions and implications of such discourses, with the aim of defusing the passions that have been aroused by this issue, and showing the way toward a more comprehensive and grounded understanding of the nature of Chinese characters, both as a writing system and in relation to Chinese culture and thought

Getting over the Walls of Discourse: "Character Fetishization" in Chinese Studies

If music is treated as a kind of ‘language’, then it makes sense for musicology to borrow from linguistics in order to define exactly what sort of a ‘language’ music is. However, not only does this avoid the challenge of defining music on its own terms, it also brings across a whole lot of unnecessary historical baggage. Through a close analysis of selected texts, the current article critiques some recent work in musicology, showing how it is based on a far too narrow understanding of what constitutes linguistics, i.e. basically formal linguistics. It points out some of the dangers of interdisciplinary work such as Brown’s (2001) ‘musilanguage’ model, and shows how a less than careful borrowing of linguistic concepts can vitiate the usefulness of such system building. It then traces the source of much of this borrowing in Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s (1983) highly influential work drawing on generative linguistics, and shows how a framework that privileges structure over meaning, system over text, and the cognitive over the social, is unable to provide a broader understanding of music beyond pattern recognition. It
calls for a greater methodological scepticism among musicologists towards linguistics, and a greater self consciousness about borrowings across disciplines.

Edward McDonald

Papers

Learning Chinese, Turning Chinese: Challenges to Becoming Sinophone in a Globalised World

A $C^*$-algebraic approach to the principal symbol II

Embodiment and meaning: moving beyond linguistic imperialism in social semiotics

Getting over the Walls of Discourse: "Character Fetishization" in Chinese Studies

Through a glass darkly: a critique of the influence of linguistics on theories of music