Linguistic polyphony is an utterance act theory (la linguistique de l’énonciation) and is a French specialty. It deals with the numerous points of view that are likely to be communicated through an utterance. The book introduces utterance act theory and polyphony as such, but most especially focuses on the Scandinavian variant of polyphony, ScaPoLine. ScaPoLine is a formal linguistic theory whose main purpose is to specify the instructions conveyed through linguistic form for the creation of polyphonic meaning. The theoretical introduction is followed by polyphonic analyses of linguistic phenomena such as negation, mood, modality and connectors, and of textual phenomena such as represented discourse and irony. The book suggests how ScaPoLine could offer new insights within cross-linguistic and interdisciplinary studies.

The goal of this volume is to examine academic discourse (AD) from cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives. The adjective "Cross-cultural" in the volume title is not just limited to national contexts but also includes a cross-disciplinary perspective. Twelve scientific fields are under scrutiny in the articles. One of the unique aspects of the volume is the inclusion of a variety of foreign languages (English (as a lingua franca), Spanish, French, Swedish, Russian, German, Italian, and Norwegian). Besides, in several articles dealing with oral AD, comparisons and parallels are also established with written AD. The research methodologies used in the studies are varied and they offer an overview of the diversity and richness of approaches to AD. All in all, it is hoped that the volume appeals not only to young researchers but also to confirmed scholars interested in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural aspects of AD. It will also be of interest to language teachers or teachers who are involved with e.g. international students and academic mobility.

Spaces of Polyphony covers a lot of ground. It echoes the voices of researchers and their informants from many different places and backgrounds. Among the variety of languages under study and methodological approaches there is also a common ground and narrative thread underpinning the polyphonic chorus of the contributors. From a shared starting point of discourse analysis and inspiration from Bakhtin, the various authors span from East to West, from Moscow to Texas, from Romania and Czech Republic to Mexico. They look into all ages, starting from early childhood, and many walks of life, ranging from casual chatting among relatives to parliamentary speeches and TV shows, including formal education, literary inner monologue and translation. Irony, humour and self-awareness are recurrent themes. The array of voices and dialogism studied in this book is such that it even includes the silent (silenced) voices of people forced to express their heritage by weaving their discourse.

Negation is one of the most discussed phenomena within linguistics, on all language levels though it never seems to be exhausted. This operator establishes complex sentence structures and constantly challenges – from a cognitive, syntactical, semantic and morphologic viewpoint – presuppositions on language internal relations as rational and logic. It therefore arouses interest through all fields within language sciences. From a pragmatic perspective, where negation is conceived a marked structure, using negation often produces meanings beyond the one of a reversed affirmation "it is not the case that X”. This book explores the various uses and pragmatic meanings of negation in authentic communication, in different text types and in different languages, predominately romance languages. The multilingual composition marries a macro-micro perspective where aspects of genre, sociocultural context, memory, rhetoric and argumentation interplay with the negative morpheme’s nature and embedded instructions. This broad approach makes this book a unique contribution to negation studies and to pragmatics in general. The book is important and enriching reading for scholars in all linguistic domains, but particularly for researchers in semantics, pragmatics, argumentation and, discourse analysis.

This book represents the physical outcome of the symposium “Academic Voices in Contrast”, organised at the University of Bergen, Norway, in May 2006. The symposium, focusing on recent research within the field of academic discourse, was initiated and organised by the KIAP project (Cultural Identity in Academic Prose; see www.uib.no/kiap/). In this project, a special focus has been put on the study of the voice(s) of the academic author, in the doubly contrastive perspective of language and discipline. A narrow selection of distinguished scholars were invited to participate at the symposium. They were asked to address issues related to “traditional” linguistic versus contextual approaches or to interlingual and interdisciplinary similarities and differences in academic discourse. By the papers of the following, the symposium and the present book constitute a clear advancement of the research on academic discourse: M. A. A. Ariza, L. Berge, M. Bondi, S. V. Bonn, S. Carter-Thomas, T. Dahl, K. Fløttum, A. M. Gjesdal, F. Grossmann, K. Hyland, T. Kinn, L. Lundquist, A. Mauranen, M. Pabón, E. Rowley-Jolivet, F. Salager-Meyer, P. Shaw, J. M. Swales, J.L. Tønnesson, E. T. Vold, F. Wirth.

This book brings together academics and practitioners from a range of disciplines from more than twenty countries to reflect on the growing importance of transparency, power and control in our international community and how these concerns and ideas have been examined, used and interpreted in a range of national and international contexts. Contributors explore these issues from a range of overlapping concerns and perspectives, such as semiotic, sociolinguistic, psychological, philosophical, and visual in diverse socio-political, administrative, institutional, as well as legal contexts. The collection examines the ways in which 'actors' in our society - legislators, politicians, activists, and artists - have provoked public discourses to confront these issues.

This volume takes a distinctive look at the climate change debate, already widely studied across a number of disciplines, by exploring the myriad linguistic and discursive perspectives and approaches at play in the climate change debate as represented in a variety of genres. The book focuses on key linguistic themes, including linguistic polyphony, lexical choices, metaphors, narration, and framing, and uses examples from diverse forms of media, including scientific documents, policy reports, op-eds, and blogs, to shed light on how information and knowledge on climate change can be represented, disseminated, and interpreted and in turn, how they can inform further discussion and debate. Featuring contributions from a global team of researchers and drawing on a broad array of linguistic approaches, this collection offers an extensive overview of the role of language in the climate change debate for graduate students, researchers, and scholars in applied linguistics, environmental communication, discourse analysis, political science, climatology, and media studies.