Les sigles sont partout. Ils ont envahi la presse écrite et audiovisuelle, les univers professionnels et administratifs. Il n'est pas d'imprimé qui n'en comporte et les annuaires en sont remplis. De surcroît, sigles et abréviations peuvent, selon les contextes, désigner des objets différents ou être constitués différemment. Qui, à cet égard, ne s'est jamais heurté à des difficultés d'interprétation? C'est en partant de ce constat que l'auteur s'est attelé à une recension aussi large que possible des sigles existants. Sans prétendre atteindre à l'exhaustivité, cet ouvrage, qui sera régulièrement réactualisé, permettra à tout un chacun de comprendre plus commodément ce qu'il lit ou entend, sans compter qu'un tel outil peut aider à l'unification des usages. Ce Dictionnaire présente aussi l'avantage d'être subdivisé en un ensemble de domaines principaux, qui intéresse tous les secteurs d'activité, les différents pays et les organismes internationaux. L'ouvrage peut être complété par le Dictionnaire des sigles médicaux et du secteur sanitaire et social conçu par le même auteur.

Latin books are among the most numerous surviving artifacts of the Late Antique, Mediaeval, and Renaissance periods in European history; written in a variety of formats and scripts, they preserve the literary, philosophical, scientific, and religious heritage of the West. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography surveys these books, with special emphasis on the variety of scripts in which they were written. Palaeography, in the strictest sense, examines how the changing styles of script and the fluctuating shapes of individual letters allow the date and the place of production of books to be determined. More broadly conceived, palaeography examines the totality of early book production, ownership, dissemination, and use. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography includes essays on major types of script (Uncial, Insular, Beneventan, Visigothic, Gothic, etc.), describing what defines these distinct script types, and outlining when and where they were used. It expands on previous handbooks of the subject by incorporating select essays on less well-studied periods and regions, in particular late mediaeval Eastern Europe. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography is also distinguished from prior handbooks by its extensive focus on codicology and on the cultural settings and contexts of mediaeval books. Essays treat of various important features, formats, styles, and genres of mediaeval books, and of representative mediaeval libraries as intellectual centers. Additional studies explore questions of orality and the written word, the book trade, glossing and glossaries, and manuscript cataloguing. The extensive plates and figures in the volume will provide readers wtih clear illustrations of the major points, and the succinct bibliographies in each essay will direct them to more detailed works in the field.

Elizabeth Martin explores the impact of globalization on the language of French advertising, showing that English and global imagery play an important role in tailoring global campaigns to the French market, with media companies undeterred by the attempts through legislation to curb language mixing in the media.

This volume is a selection of papers presented at “Linguists of Tomorrow”, the 1st Cyprus Postgraduate Conference in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, held at the University of Cyprus on 7–8 May 2010. The collection includes nine chapters by postgraduate students of linguistics as well as two illustrious keynote papers by Prof. Barbara Lust and Prof. Thomas McFadden. The topics range from theoretical linguistics (syntax, semantics, morphology, and phonology) to psycholinguistics (first and second language acquisition, language impairments, and language processing) and applied linguistics (bilingualism, dictionaries, writing, and ethnolinguistics). As such, this collection of papers by established as well as up-and-coming researchers will appeal to a wide range of scholars, students and academics alike, interested in current issues in linguistics.