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.

Shares facts about the iconic rock star, including his influence on fashion, his collaborations with other artists, and his lasting legacy.

Richly illustrated with often antic images from alphabet books and primers, The Story of A relates the history of the alphabet as a genre of text for children and of alphabetization as a social practice in America, from early modern reading primers to the literature of the American Renaissance. Offering a poetics of alphabetization and explicating the alphabet's tropes and rhetorical strategies, the author demonstrates the far-reaching cultural power of such apparently neutral statements as "A is for apple." The new market for children's books in the eighteenth century established for the "republic of ABC" a cultural potency equivalent to its high-culture counterpart, the "republic of letters," while shaping its child-readers into consumers. As a central rite of socialization, alphabetization schooled children to conflicting expectations, as well as to changing models of authority, understandings of the world, and uses of literature. In the nineteenth century, literacy became a crucial aspect of American middle-class personality and subjectivity. Furnishing the readers and writers needed for a national literature, the alphabetization of America between 1800 and 1850 informed the sentimental-reform novel as well as the self-consciously aesthetic novel of the 1850s. Through readings of conduct manuals, reading primers, and a sentimental bestseller, the author shows how the alphabet became embedded in a maternal narrative, which organized the world through domestic affections. Nathaniel Hawthorne, by contrast, insisted on the artificiality of the alphabet and its practices in his antimimetic, hermetic The Scarlet Letter, with its insistent focus on the letter A. By understanding this novel as part of the network of alphabetization, The Story of A accounts for its uniquely persistent cultural role. The author concludes, in an epilogue, with a reading of postmodern alphabets and their implications for the future of literacy.

The recent past has seen an increasing interest in iconicity especially among linguists. This collection puts the interdisciplinary study of iconic dimensions (comprising what has been termed ‘imagic iconicity’, as well as ‘diagrammatic iconicity’, i.e. iconicity of a more abstract and less semiotic type) on the map, paying special attention to the use of iconicity in literary texts. The studies presented here explore iconicity from two different angles. A first group of authors brings into focus how far the primary code, the code of grammar is influenced by iconic motivation (with contributions on rules involved in discourse; rules in word formation; and phonological rules), and how originally iconic models have become conventionalized. Others go one step further in exploring how, for instance, the presence of iconicity can tell us more about the structure of human cognition, or how the “iconicist desire for symmetry” can be related to the symmetry of the human body. A second group of contributors is more interested in the presence of iconicity as part of the secondary code, i.e. in how speakers and writers remotivate or play with the primary code; how they concretise what has become conventional or how they use form to add to meaning in literary texts, commercial language and in the new electronic use of texts.

Janowitz sifts through the polemics to make sense of the daunting mosaic of religious belief and practice in Late Antiquity. Janowitz reveals how ritual practitioners held common assumptions about why their rituals worked and how to perform them. Icons of Power makes an important contribution to our understanding of society in Late Antiquity.

'Christopher Hall's book is the best new introduction to linguistics that I have seen in decades. It is engagingly written without talking down to the reader and it covers all the subparts of the field in a comprehensive and even-handed manner. I plan to use it the next time that I teach an introductory course at Washington.' Professor Frederick J. Newmeyer, University of Washington 'With apt examples from novels and newspapers, courtroom trials and telephone conversations, the lowly and the mighty, his book repeatedly startles as it casts light on language. This is a bright, humorous, and completely accessible tour of 21st-century linguistics.' Professor Edward Finegan, University of Southern California This book introduces the fundamentals of human language from a linguistic point of view, using examples drawn from everyday life to aid comprehension, and encouraging critical thinking throughout. Besides presenting the fundamental building blocks of language and explaining how these function, the book also introduces other key elements of the discipline of linguistics, including language acquisition, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics and discourse analysis. Packed full of examples, this is the ideal introduction to language for those who are interested in studying linguistics, have already started a course, or just want to study at home.

The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System provides a comprehensive account of the English writing system, both in its current iteration and highlighting the developing trends that will influence its future. Twenty-nine chapters written by specialists from around the world cover core linguistic and psychological aspects, and also include areas from other disciplines such as typography and computer-mediated communication. Divided into five parts, the volume encompasses a wide range of approaches and addresses issues in the following areas: theory and the English writing system, discussing the effects of etymology and phonology; the history of the English writing system from its earliest development, including spelling, pronunciation and typography; the acquisition and teaching of writing, with discussions of literacy issues and dyslexia; English writing in use around the world, both in the UK and America, and also across Europe and Japan; computer-mediated communication and developments in writing online and on social media. The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students working in this area.