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Considering Pragma-Dialectics
by Peter Houtlosser Agnès Van ReesConsidering Pragma-Dialectics honors the monumental contributions of one of the foremost international figures in current argumentation scholarship: Frans van Eemeren. The volume presents the research efforts of his colleagues and addresses how their work relates to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation with which van Eemeren’s name is so intimately connected. This tribute serves to highlight the varied approaches to the study of argumentation and is destined to inspire researchers to advance scholarship in the field far into the future. Replete with contributions from highly-esteemed academics in argumentation study, chapters in this volume address such topics as:*Pragma-dialectic versus epistemic theories of arguing and arguments;*Pragma-dialectics and self-advocacy in physician-patient interactions;*The pragma-dialectical analysis of the ad hominem family;*Rhetoric, dialectic, and the functions of argument; and*The semantics of reasonableness. As an exceptional volume and a fitting tribute, this work will be of interest to all argumentation scholars considering the astute insights and scholarly legacy of Frans van Eemeren.
Consolation in Medieval Narrative: Augustinian Authority and Open Form (The New Middle Ages)
by C. SchrockMedieval writers such as Chaucer, Abelard, and Langland often overlaid personal story and sacred history to produce a distinct narrative form. The first of its kind, this study traces this widely used narrative tradition to Augustine's two great histories: Confessions and City of God .
The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy (Oxford Early Christian Studies)
by Stephen BlackwoodThroughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, literature was read with the ear as much as with the eye: silent reading was the exception; audible reading, the norm. This highly original book shows that Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy - one of the most widely-read texts in Western history-aims to affect the listener through the designs of its rhythmic sound. Stephen Blackwood argues that the Consolation's metres are arranged in patterns that have a therapeutic and liturgical purpose: as a bodily mediation of the text's consolation, these rhythmic patterns enable the listener to discern the eternal in the motion of time. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy vividly explores how in this acoustic encounter with the text philosophy becomes a lived reality, and reading a kind of prayer.
The Consolation of Philosophy: Revised Edition
by Ancius BoethiusBoethius was an eminent public figure under the Gothic emperor Theodoric, and an exceptional Greek scholar. When he became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, it was to the Greek philosophers that he turned. THE CONSOLATION was written in the period leading up to his brutal execution. It is a dialogue of alternating prose and verse between the ailing prisoner and his 'nurse' Philosophy. Her instruction on the nature of fortune and happiness, good and evil, fate and free will, restore his health and bring him to enlightenment. THE CONSOLATION was extremely popular throughout medieval Europe and his ideas were influential on the thought of Chaucer and Dante.
The Consolation of Philosophy
by Anicius Manlius BoethiusIn this highly praised new translation of Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, David R. Slavitt presents a graceful, accessible, and modern version for both longtime admirers of one of the great masterpieces of philosophical literature and those encountering it for the first time. Slavitt preserves the distinction between the alternating verse and prose sections in the Latin original, allowing us to appreciate the Menippian parallels between the discourses of literary and logical inquiry. His prose translations are lively and colloquial, conveying the argumentative, occasionally bantering tone of the original, while his verse translations restore the beauty and power of Boethius’s poetry. The result is a major contribution to the art of translation. Those less familiar with Consolation may remember it was written under a death sentence. Boethius (c. 480–524), an Imperial official under Theodoric, Ostrogoth ruler of Rome, found himself, in a time of political paranoia, denounced, arrested, and then executed two years later without a trial. Composed while its author was imprisoned, cut off from family and friends, it remains one of Western literature’s most eloquent meditations on the transitory nature of earthly belongings, and the superiority of things of the mind. In an artful combination of verse and prose, Slavitt captures the energy and passion of the original. And in an introduction intended for the general reader, Seth Lerer places Boethius’s life and achievement in context.
The Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays
by Elliott OringThe Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays unfolds as a series of questions, commentaries, and criticisms of the analysis, interpretation, and explanation of folklore. Can we confidently regard jokes as the catharsis of sexual and aggressive impulses? What is the basis for characterizing a joke as Jewish or Scottish or Japanese? What do we really know about “dirty jokes”? How is a text or behavior constructed so that it is perceived as humorous? Can we get a computer to reliably recognize jokes? What is the relevance of memetics and a Darwinian paradigm to understanding folklore change over time? Can we identify laws operating in the realm of folklore? How can the marginalization, extinction, or continuity of traditions be explained? In the course of addressing these questions, Elliott Oring identifies some fundamental problems, brings new evidence and observations to the discussion, and proffers some original and startling insights. While recognizing the study of jokes and other forms of folklore as a humanistic endeavor, Oring believes in the relevance of a scientific perspective to the enterprise. He values clear definitions, tests of hypotheses and theories, empirical evidence, experiment, and the search for laws. Written in a sophisticated yet accessible style, The Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays stimulates both scholars and students alike and contributes to the creation of a more robust folkloristics in the twenty-first century.
The Consolations of Writing: Literary Strategies of Resistance from Boethius to Primo Levi
by Rivkah ZimBoethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy as a prisoner condemned to death for treason, circumstances that are reflected in the themes and concerns of its evocative poetry and dialogue between the prisoner and his mentor, Lady Philosophy. This classic philosophical statement of late antiquity has had an enduring influence on Western thought. It is also the earliest example of what Rivkah Zim identifies as a distinctive and vitally important medium of literary resistance: writing in captivity by prisoners of conscience and persecuted minorities.The Consolations of Writing reveals why the great contributors to this tradition of prison writing are among the most crucial figures in Western literature. Zim pairs writers from different periods and cultural settings, carefully examining the rhetorical strategies they used in captivity, often under the threat of death. She looks at Boethius and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as philosophers and theologians writing in defense of their ideas, and Thomas More and Antonio Gramsci as politicians in dialogue with established concepts of church and state. Different ideas of grace and disgrace occupied John Bunyan and Oscar Wilde in prison; Madame Roland and Anne Frank wrote themselves into history in various forms of memoir; and Jean Cassou and Irina Ratushinskaya voiced their resistance to totalitarianism through lyric poetry that saved their lives and inspired others. Finally, Primo Levi's writing after his release from Auschwitz recalls and decodes the obscenity of systematic genocide and its aftermath.A moving and powerful testament, The Consolations of Writing speaks to some of the most profound questions about life, enriching our understanding of what it is to be human.
The Consolations of Writing: Literary Strategies of Resistance from Boethius to Primo Levi
by Rivkah ZimBoethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy as a prisoner condemned to death for treason, circumstances that are reflected in the themes and concerns of its evocative poetry and dialogue between the prisoner and his mentor, Lady Philosophy. This classic philosophical statement of late antiquity has had an enduring influence on Western thought. It is also the earliest example of what Rivkah Zim identifies as a distinctive and vitally important medium of literary resistance: writing in captivity by prisoners of conscience and persecuted minorities.The Consolations of Writing reveals why the great contributors to this tradition of prison writing are among the most crucial figures in Western literature. Zim pairs writers from different periods and cultural settings, carefully examining the rhetorical strategies they used in captivity, often under the threat of death. She looks at Boethius and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as philosophers and theologians writing in defense of their ideas, and Thomas More and Antonio Gramsci as politicians in dialogue with established concepts of church and state. Different ideas of grace and disgrace occupied John Bunyan and Oscar Wilde in prison; Madame Roland and Anne Frank wrote themselves into history in various forms of memoir; and Jean Cassou and Irina Ratushinskaya voiced their resistance to totalitarianism through lyric poetry that saved their lives and inspired others. Finally, Primo Levi's writing after his release from Auschwitz recalls and decodes the obscenity of systematic genocide and its aftermath.A moving and powerful testament, The Consolations of Writing speaks to some of the most profound questions about life, enriching our understanding of what it is to be human.
Consonant Change in English Worldwide: Synchrony Meets Diachrony (Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change)
by D. SchreierApplying insights from variationist linguistics to historical change mechanisms that have affected the consonantal system of English, Daniel Schreier reports findings from a historical corpus-based study on the reduction of particular consonant clusters and compares them with similar processes in synchronic varieties, thus defining consonantal change as a phenomenon involving psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, phonological theory and contact linguistics. Moreover, he weighs the impact of external and internal effects on causation, examining data from a total of 15 varieties with different time depths and social histories.
Conspicuous Silences: Implicature and Fictionality in the Victorian Novel (Oxford English Monographs)
by Ruth RosalerHow are a reader's perceptions of a plot impacted by its presentation through textual clues rather than explicit narration, and why would an author choose this comparatively indirect mode of narration? Conspicuous Silences answers these questions by examining Victorian novels in which pivotal events are left inexplicit for hundreds of pages at a time, but are nonetheless evident to the reader. The clarity with which readers understand these inexplicit plot lines is evidenced by their ability to follow the progression of narratives that rely heavily on the inexplicit content being detected; without this reader comprehension, these narratives would be deemed incoherent. In linguistics, communications that depend on a hearer's or reader's inference, rather on their 'decoding' the explicit content of an utterance, are termed 'implicatures'. Conspicuous Silences explores the impact that central, sustained implicatures have on a reader's experience of a novel. It also discusses how authors may generate those implicatures by exploiting the reader's assumption of narratorial omniscience, and the correlated reader assumption of a narrative's fictionality. Reliance on such sustained, fictionality-related implicatures is fairly ubiquitous: Conspicuous Silences concentrates on texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and M. E. Braddon. It examines the use of implicature in communicating impolite topics, communicating character psychology, and in fashioning a playful narrative tone. This work contributes to Victorian literary scholarship, narratological discussions about narratorial omniscience and fictionality, and pragmatic stylistic debates about fictionality and the use of implicature.
Conspicuous Silences: Implicature and Fictionality in the Victorian Novel (Oxford English Monographs)
by Ruth RosalerHow are a reader's perceptions of a plot impacted by its presentation through textual clues rather than explicit narration, and why would an author choose this comparatively indirect mode of narration? Conspicuous Silences answers these questions by examining Victorian novels in which pivotal events are left inexplicit for hundreds of pages at a time, but are nonetheless evident to the reader. The clarity with which readers understand these inexplicit plot lines is evidenced by their ability to follow the progression of narratives that rely heavily on the inexplicit content being detected; without this reader comprehension, these narratives would be deemed incoherent. In linguistics, communications that depend on a hearer's or reader's inference, rather on their 'decoding' the explicit content of an utterance, are termed 'implicatures'. Conspicuous Silences explores the impact that central, sustained implicatures have on a reader's experience of a novel. It also discusses how authors may generate those implicatures by exploiting the reader's assumption of narratorial omniscience, and the correlated reader assumption of a narrative's fictionality. Reliance on such sustained, fictionality-related implicatures is fairly ubiquitous: Conspicuous Silences concentrates on texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and M. E. Braddon. It examines the use of implicature in communicating impolite topics, communicating character psychology, and in fashioning a playful narrative tone. This work contributes to Victorian literary scholarship, narratological discussions about narratorial omniscience and fictionality, and pragmatic stylistic debates about fictionality and the use of implicature.
Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy: Historiography and Princely Ideology (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs)
by Marta CelatiConspiracy has been a political phenomenon throughout history, relevant to any form of power from antiquity to the post-modern era. This means of resistance against power was prevalent during the Renaissance, and the Italian fifteenth century, in particular, can be regarded as an 'age of plots'. This book offers the first full-length investigation of Italian Renaissance literature on the topic of conspiracy. This literature covered a range of different genres and it enjoyed widespread diffusion during the second half of the fifteenth century, when the development of this literary production was connected with the affirmation of centralized political thought and princely ideology in Italian states. The centrality of conspiracies also emerges in the sixteenth century in Machiavelli's work, where the topic is closely interlaced with problems of building political consensus and management of power. This volume presents case studies of the most significant humanist texts (representative of different states, literary genres, and of prominent authors—Alberti, Poliziano, Pontano—and minor, yet important, literati), and it also investigates Machiavelli's political and historical works. Through interdisciplinary analysis, this study traces the evolution of literature on plots in early Renaissance Italy. It points out the key function of the classical tradition and the recurring narrative approaches, the historiographical techniques, and the ideological angles that characterize the literary transfiguration of the topic. This volume also offers a reconsideration of the complex facets of humanist political literature that played a crucial role in the development of a new theory of statecraft.
Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy: Historiography and Princely Ideology (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs)
by Marta CelatiConspiracy has been a political phenomenon throughout history, relevant to any form of power from antiquity to the post-modern era. This means of resistance against power was prevalent during the Renaissance, and the Italian fifteenth century, in particular, can be regarded as an 'age of plots'. This book offers the first full-length investigation of Italian Renaissance literature on the topic of conspiracy. This literature covered a range of different genres and it enjoyed widespread diffusion during the second half of the fifteenth century, when the development of this literary production was connected with the affirmation of centralized political thought and princely ideology in Italian states. The centrality of conspiracies also emerges in the sixteenth century in Machiavelli's work, where the topic is closely interlaced with problems of building political consensus and management of power. This volume presents case studies of the most significant humanist texts (representative of different states, literary genres, and of prominent authors—Alberti, Poliziano, Pontano—and minor, yet important, literati), and it also investigates Machiavelli's political and historical works. Through interdisciplinary analysis, this study traces the evolution of literature on plots in early Renaissance Italy. It points out the key function of the classical tradition and the recurring narrative approaches, the historiographical techniques, and the ideological angles that characterize the literary transfiguration of the topic. This volume also offers a reconsideration of the complex facets of humanist political literature that played a crucial role in the development of a new theory of statecraft.
The Conspiracy of the Text: The Place of Narrative in the Development of Thought (Routledge Library Editions: Literary Theory)
by Jeff AdamsIn The Conspiracy of the Text, first published in 1986, Jeff Adams looks at an early stage in childhood to examine the ways in which children create social organisation and moral order. Adams shows how certain narratives, such as fairy tales, serve as a foundation for this system, and does this through a fascinating linguistic analysis of a young girl’s reading of her favourite fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. This title will be of interest to students of literary theory and linguistics.
The Conspiracy of the Text: The Place of Narrative in the Development of Thought (Routledge Library Editions: Literary Theory)
by Jeff AdamsIn The Conspiracy of the Text, first published in 1986, Jeff Adams looks at an early stage in childhood to examine the ways in which children create social organisation and moral order. Adams shows how certain narratives, such as fairy tales, serve as a foundation for this system, and does this through a fascinating linguistic analysis of a young girl’s reading of her favourite fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. This title will be of interest to students of literary theory and linguistics.
Constance of France: Womanhood and Agency in Twelfth-Century Europe (The New Middle Ages)
by Myra Miranda BomConstance of France: Womanhood and Agency in Twelfth-Century Europe is a biography of Constance of France, sister of King Louis VII of France. Myra Bom recovers Constance’s life story and puts it in its medieval context by examining the historical evidence of chronicles, charters, seal imprints and letters. The countess’s long and interesting life makes for women’s history with a large geographical scope, including France, England, Toulouse and the Latin East. It touches on many aspects of life during the Middle Ages such as birth, marriage and divorce, gender roles, experience of time, and expectation for the afterlife. Bom demonstrates how and to what extent medieval women could, and did, take control of their own lives. This book is an account of the interplay of historical context and agency.
Constantine, Divine Emperor Of The Christian Golden Age: (pdf)
by Jonathan BardillConstantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age offers a radical reassessment of Constantine as an emperor, a pagan and a Christian. The book examines in detail a wide variety of evidence, including literature, secular and religious architectural monuments, coins, sculpture and other works of art. Setting the emperor in the context of the kings and emperors who preceded him, Jonathan Bardill shows how Constantine's propagandists exploited the traditional themes and imagery of rulership to portray him as having been elected by the supreme solar God to save his people and inaugurate a brilliant golden age. The author argues that the cultivation of this image made it possible for Constantine to reconcile the long-standing tradition of imperial divinity with his monotheistic faith by assimilating himself to Christ.
Constellations: A Play
by Nick PayneOne relationship. Infinite possibilities.'Let's go for a drink. I don't know what I'm doing here anyway. One drink. And if you never want to see me again you never have to see me again.'Nick Payne's Constellations is a play about free will and friendship; it's about quantum multiverse theory, love and honey.Constellations premiered at the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in January 2012.
Constituent Questions: The Syntax and Semantics of Questions with Special Reference to Swedish (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy #27)
by E. Engdahl
The Constitution of English Literature: The State, the Nation and the Canon (The WISH List)
by Michael GardinerIn this extended essay, Michael Gardiner examines the ideology of the discipline of English Literature in the light of the serious redefining work on England and Englishness that has been conductedin Political Studiesin the last decade. He argues that English Literature emerges from the development of the state and that consequently it has suppressed the idea of the nation. His claim is that English Literature has lost its form since its methodology and canonicity depended so heavily on a constitutional form which can no longer be defended. He calls upon those working in English Literature to recognise that they are not really participating in the same discipline, defined by the Burkean constitutional settlement, even if they think of themselves as writing 'within the canon'. His view is that a lack of appreciation of 'hard-edged' political factors have led to a 'continuant' and regressive form of English Literature which tends to hang on to stifling methodologies. In its place, he appeals for the creation of a more open-ended, inclusive, internationalist, and comparative 'literature of England'.
Constitutions of Self in Contemporary Irish Poetry: ‘Into the Light’ (New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature)
by Wit PietrzakConstitutions of Self in Contemporary Irish Poetry explores the figure of the lyrical self in the work of six contemporary Irish poets: Paul Muldoon, Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitríona O’Reilly, Alan Gillis and Nick Laird. By focusing on the self, this study offers the first sustained exploration of what is arguably one of the most distinctive features of Irish poetry. Readings utilise the latest theories of the lyric filtered through the work of such philosophers as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben and Zygmunt Bauman, and connect an interdisciplinary approach with attention to the operations of the poetic text to bring out aspects of the self in Irish writing that have been given only cursory critical attention so far.
Constraints on Language: Aging, Grammar, And Memory
by Susan KemperSusan Kemper A debate about the role of working memory in language processing has become center-most in psycholinguistics (Caplan & Waters, in press; Just & Carpenter, 1992; Just, Carpenter, & Keller, 1996; Waters & Caplan, 1996). This debate concerns which aspects of language processing are vulnerable to working memory limitations, how working memory is best measured, and whether compensatory processes can offset working memory limitations. Age-comparative studies are particularly relevant to this debate for several reasons: difficulties with language and communication are frequently mentioned by older adults and signal the onset of Alzheimer's dementia and other pathologies associated with age; older adults commonly experience working memory limitations that affect their ability to perform everyday activities; the rapid aging of the United States population has forced psychologists and gerontologists to examine the effects of aging on cognition, drawing many investigators to the study of cognitive aging. Older adults constitute ideal population for studying how working memory limitations affect cognitive performance, particularly language and communication. Age-comparative studies of cognitive processes have advanced our understanding of the temporal dynamics of cognition as well as the working memory demands of many types of tasks (Kliegl, Mayr, & Krampe, 1994; Mayr & Kliegl, 1993). The research findings reviewed in this volume have clear implications - for addressing the practical problems of older adults as consumers of leisure ti- reading, radio and television broadcasts, as targets of medical, legal, and financial documents, and as participants in a web of service agencies and volunteer activities.
Constraints on Language Acquisition: Studies of Atypical Children
by Helen Tager-FlusbergAfter decades of research most scholars generally agree that language acquisition is a complex and multifaceted process that involves the interaction of innate biologically-based mechanisms devoted to language, other non-linguistic cognitive and social mechanisms, linguistic input, and information about the social and physical world. Theoretical work in the field of language acquisition now needs to focus in greater depth and detail on some specific aspects of this general model, which is the main goal of this book. The chapters in this volume provide some new insights into one of the most remarkable accomplishments achieved by almost all children. The particular questions that are raised by contributors include: * What kinds of constraints operate on the process of language development? * Which aspects of the acquisition process depend on language-specific mechanisms? * Are there critical brain structures necessary for the acquisition of language? * What role do cognitive and social mechanisms play in language development? * How critical is perceptual input about the physical and social world? * What is the specific role played by linguistic input in the child's construction of a linguistic system? Questions are addressed from the perspective of children who come to the task of acquiring language with many hurdles to overcome, including deafness and blindness, mental retardation, autism, and prenatal or perinatal brain damage involving the left hemisphere. Each section contributes some insight on how an innate language-specific biological substrate interacts with cognitive and social factors, as well as external information, to support the child's construction of a linguistic system. Studies of atypical children offer a singular contribution to this enterprise by allowing us to see the specific influences of each component, and in turn, they shed new light on how all children are able to acquire language so effortlessly and during such a brief period of development.
Constraints on Language Acquisition: Studies of Atypical Children
by Helen Tager-FlusbergAfter decades of research most scholars generally agree that language acquisition is a complex and multifaceted process that involves the interaction of innate biologically-based mechanisms devoted to language, other non-linguistic cognitive and social mechanisms, linguistic input, and information about the social and physical world. Theoretical work in the field of language acquisition now needs to focus in greater depth and detail on some specific aspects of this general model, which is the main goal of this book. The chapters in this volume provide some new insights into one of the most remarkable accomplishments achieved by almost all children. The particular questions that are raised by contributors include: * What kinds of constraints operate on the process of language development? * Which aspects of the acquisition process depend on language-specific mechanisms? * Are there critical brain structures necessary for the acquisition of language? * What role do cognitive and social mechanisms play in language development? * How critical is perceptual input about the physical and social world? * What is the specific role played by linguistic input in the child's construction of a linguistic system? Questions are addressed from the perspective of children who come to the task of acquiring language with many hurdles to overcome, including deafness and blindness, mental retardation, autism, and prenatal or perinatal brain damage involving the left hemisphere. Each section contributes some insight on how an innate language-specific biological substrate interacts with cognitive and social factors, as well as external information, to support the child's construction of a linguistic system. Studies of atypical children offer a singular contribution to this enterprise by allowing us to see the specific influences of each component, and in turn, they shed new light on how all children are able to acquire language so effortlessly and during such a brief period of development.
Constraints on Numerical Expressions (Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics #5)
by Chris CumminsThis book considers how expressions involving number are used by speakers and understood by hearers. A speaker's choice of expression can be a complex problem even in relatively simple-looking domains. In the case of numerical expressions, there are often many choices that would be semantically acceptable: for instance, if 'more than 200' is true, then so is 'more than 199', 'more than 150', and 'more than 100', among others. A speaker does not choose between these options arbitrarily but also does not consistently follow any simple rule. The hearer is interested not just in what has been said but also in any further inferences that can be drawn. Chris Cummins offers a set of criteria that individually influence the speaker's choice of expression. The process of choosing what to say is then treated as a problem of multiple constraint satisfaction. This approach enables multiple different considerations, drawn from principles of semantics, philosophy, psycholinguistics and the psychology of number, simultaneously to be integrated within a single coherent account. This constraint-based model offers novel predictions about usage and interpretation that are borne out experimentally and in corpus research. It also explains problematic data in numerical quantification that have previously been handled by more stipulative means, and offers a potential line of attack for addressing the problem of the speaker's choice in more general linguistic environments.