The Iconicity in Language and Literature series has long been dedicated to the recognition and understanding of the pervasiveness of iconicity in language in its many forms and functions. The present volume, divided into four sections, brings together and unifies different perspectives on iconicity. Chapters in the first section (Iconicity in language) provide linguistic analyses of systems of iconic forms in different languages, across both space (areally) and time (diachronically). The second section (Iconicity in literature) is concerned with stylistic analyses of iconicity in literature, in both poetry and prose and across a range of devices and genres. The third section (Iconicity in visual media) highlights the use and effects of iconicity in pictorial, photographic and cinematic media. The final section (Iconicity in semiotic analysis) offers a theoretical perspective, targeting an operationalisation of iconicity with respect to the relationship between types and subtypes of Peircean signs.

This volume investigates iconicity as to both comprehension and production of meaning in language, gesture, pictures, art and literature. It highlights iconic processes in meaning-making and interpretation across different semiotic systems at structurally, historically and pragmatically different levels of iconicity, with special focus on Cognitive Semiotics. Exploring the ubiquity of iconicity in verbal, visual and gestural communication, these contributions discuss it from the point of view of human meaning-making, examined as a phenomenon that is experienced, embodied and often polysemiotic in nature.

This volume brings together fifteen articles exploring the linguistic and literary foundations of lexicography and lexicology. Topics explored here include a discussion of the relationships between lexicography and ideology in China; Frisian legal language and the Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch; the history and lexicography of Faroese; Wortgeschichte digital and its relation to Grimmian tradition; the linguistic history of phonetically imitative words; and studies of Croatian, Czech, English, Greek, and Turkish historical dictionaries. The book also presents a digital and textual study on the status of eponyms across the history of the Royal Society, as well as a study of German paronym dictionaries, a modern history of bilingual Russian-Tajik terminological dictionaries, and a historical overview of the lexicography of Frisian. The research findings and close readings by expert practitioners and historians of dictionaries and word studies found in the pages of this volume continue to broaden critical perspectives upon the study of manuscripts and print artifacts; dictionaries and standard varieties; biographies; bibliography and text analyses; dictionary production; and corpus and digital analyses.

Linguistic complexity is one of the currently most hotly debated notions in linguistics. The essays in this volume reflect the intricacies of thinking about the complexity of languages and language varieties (here: of English) in three major contact-related fields of (and schools in) linguistics: creolistics, indigenization and nativization studies (i.e. in the realm of English linguistics, the “World Englishes” community), and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research: How can we adequately assess linguistic complexity? Should we be interested in absolute complexity or rather relative complexity? What is the extent to which language contact and/or (adult) language learning might lead to morphosyntactic simplification? The authors in this volume are all leading linguists in different areas of specialization, and they were asked to elaborate on those facets of linguistic complexity which are most relevant in their area of specialization, and/or which strike them as being most intriguing. The result is a collection of papers that is unique in bringing together leading representatives of three often disjunct fields of linguistic scholarship in which linguistic complexity is seen as a dynamic and inherently variable parameter.

Bloomsbury Semiotics offers a state-of-the-art overview of the entire field of semiotics by revealing its influence on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. With four volumes spanning theory, method and practice across the disciplines, this definitive reference work emphasizes and strengthens common bonds shared across intellectual cultures, and facilitates the discovery and recovery of meaning across fields. It comprises: Volume 1: History and Semiosis Volume 2: Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences Volume 3: Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences Volume 4: Semiotic Movements Written by leading international experts, the chapters provide comprehensive overviews of the history and status of semiotic inquiry across a diverse range of traditions and disciplines. Together, they highlight key contemporary developments and debates along with ongoing research priorities. Providing the most comprehensive and united overview of the field, Bloomsbury Semiotics enables anyone, from students to seasoned practitioners, to better understand and benefit from semiotic insight and how it relates to their own area of study or research. Volume 3: Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences presents the state-of-the art in semiotic approaches to disciplines ranging from philosophy and anthropology to history and archaeology, from sociology and religious studies to music, dance, rhetoric, literature, and structural linguistics. Each chapter goes casts a vision for future research priorities, unanswered questions, and fresh openings for semiotic participation in these and related fields.

Zusammenfassung: This book examines the names by which we refer to the letters of the English alphabet, arguing that these letter names provide unrivalled insights into the phonological structure of English, present and past, as well as the many peculiarities of English pronunciation and spelling. Classified either as contronyms, ambinyms or tautonyms, the modern phonological profiles of our ancient Semitic letter names reveal what is unique to English, what is fundamental to language and how letter names emerge as the semiotic product of interchanging languages combined with intralanguage change. This volume promises a much more extensive and deeper linguistic treatment of English letter names than has previously been attempted. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of historical linguistics, phonology and orthography, the history of English, semiotics, and language and literacy teaching.