The book explores the role of age in communication under consideration of various age groups (the elderly, middle-aged, teenagers, children), genres, cultures and languages. The social skewing of the contributions explains the book's focus on discourse-mediated social identities, with age implicated as a viable controller of how social action is strategically deployed for alignment and alienation, accommodation and divergence. The studies in the book show the particular importance of the discursive construction of age in the face of new challenges of globalization, increased human mobility and rising intergenerational conflicts.

Smart phones, tablets, Facebook, Twitter, and wireless Internet connections are the latest technologies to have become entrenched in our culture. Although traditionalists have argued that computer-mediated communication and cyberspace are incongruent with the study of folklore, Trevor J. Blank sees the digital world as fully capable of generating, transmitting, performing, and archiving vernacular culture. Folklore in the Digital Age documents the emergent cultural scenes and expressive folkloric communications made possible by digital “new media” technologies. New media is changing the ways in which people learn, share, participate, and engage with others as they adopt technologies to complement and supplement traditional means of vernacular expression. But behavioral and structural overlap in many folkloric forms exists between on- and offline, and emerging patterns in digital rhetoric mimic the dynamics of previously documented folkloric forms, invoking familiar social or behavior customs, linguistic inflections, and symbolic gestures. Folklore in the Digital Age provides insights and perspectives on the myriad ways in which folk culture manifests in the digital age and contributes to our greater understanding of vernacular expression in our ever-changing technological world.

The second edition of the highly successful Handbook ofDiscourse Analysis has been expanded and thoroughly updated toreflect the very latest research to have developed since theoriginal publication, including new theoretical paradigms and discourse-analytic models, in an authoritative two-volumeset. Twenty new chapters highlight emerging trends and the latestareas of research Contributions reflect the range, depth, and richness of currentresearch in the field Chapters are written by internationally-recognized leaders intheir respective fields, constituting a Who’s Who ofDiscourse Analysis A vital resource for scholars and students in discourse studiesas well as for researchers in related fields who seek authoritativeoverviews of discourse analytic issues, theories, and methods

Written by an international team of leading scholars, this groundbreaking reference work explores the nature of language change and diffusion, and paves the way for future research in this rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field. Features 35 newly-written essays from internationally acclaimed experts that reflect the growth and vitality of the burgeoning area of historical sociolinguistics Examines how sociolinguistic theoretical models, methods, findings, and expertise can be used to reconstruct a language's past in order to explain linguistic changes and developments Bridges the gap between the past and the present in linguistic studies Structured thematically into sections exploring: origins and theoretical assumptions; methods for the sociolinguistic study of the history of languages; linguistic and extra-linguistic variables; historical dialectology, language contact and diffusion; and attitudes to language

This volume brings together research on panel studies with the aim of providing a coherent empirical and theoretical knowledge-base for examining the impact of maturation and lifespan-specific effects on linguistic malleability in the post-adolescent speaker. Building on the work of Wagner and Buchstaller (2018), the present collection offers a critical examination of the theoretical implications of panel research across a range of geographic regions and time periods. The volume seeks to offer a way forward in the debates circling about the phenomenon of later-life language change, drawing on contributions from a variety of linguistic disciplines to examine critical topics such as the effect of linguistic architecture, the roles of mobility and identity construction, and the impact of frequency effects. Taken together, this edited collection both informs and pushes forward key questions on the nature of lifespan change, making this key reading for students and researchers in cognitive linguistics, historical linguistics, dialectology, and variationist sociolinguistics.

This handbook is unique in its focus on bilingual theories, issues on the teaching of bilinguals, bilingual policies abroad, and current research on bilinguals as all of this related in some way to the Spanish-speaking world. There is currently no other book like it available, despite the growing number of courses teaching Spanish Bilingualism. It is anticipated that this new handbook will be of great interest to linguists, sociolinguists, language acquisitionists, as well as teachers who deal with topics relating to bilingualism as it relates to Spanish speakers around the world. Though work has been done looking at bilingualism and multilingualism, this book provides a valuable addition that deals with an area where a comprehensive work such as this is indeed lacking.

With a synthesis of research on issues key to understanding family interaction, as well as an analysis of many theoretical and methodological choices made by researchers studying family communication, the Handbook serves to advance the field by reframing old questions and stimulating new ones. The contents are comprised of chapters covering: theoretical and methodological issues influencing current conceptions of family; research and theory centering around the family life course communication occurring in a variety of family forms individual family members and their relationships dynamic communication processes taking place in families family communication embedded in social, cultural, and physical contexts. Key changes to the second edition include: updates throughout, providing a thorough and up-to-date overview of research and theory new topics reflecting the growth of the discipline, including chapters on "singles" as family members, emerging adults, and physiology and physical health. Highlighting the work of scholars across disciplines--communication, social psychology, clinical psychology, sociology, family studies, and others--this volume captures the breadth and depth of research on family communication and family relationships. The well-known contributors approach family interaction from a variety of theoretical perspectives and focus on topics ranging from the influence of structural characteristics on family relationships to the importance of specific communication processes.