L’objectiu de l’obra Catalan Sociolinguistics. State of the Art and Future Challenges és donar compte, de manera sumària, dels grans vèrtexs en què s’ha manifestat l’estudi de la relació entre llengua i societat en la comunitat lingüística catalana, la recepció que s’ha fet dels plantejaments internacionals i l’adaptació domèstica. Cada tradició sociolingüística ha interpretat la interacció esmentada amb plantejaments específics. La catalana, per exemple, ha apostat per una visió integradora de tot un seguit de treballs que arriben des d’àmbits temàtics diversos (economia, dret, ciència política, comunicació, ecologia, variació lingüística, antropologia, etc.). Així, en el llibre que el lector té a les mans, els autors dels diferents capítols, reconeguts especialistes en la matèria avaluada, ens han ofert mirades complementàries que ens permetran avançar cap a una anàlisi de conjunt, una tasca que es mostrava peremptòria en el marc d’un horitzó finalista de cohesionar internament la disciplina. The aim of the work Catalan Sociolinguistics. State of the Art and Future Challenges is to give an account, in a summary way, of the major topics dealt with by the study of the relation between language and society in the Catalan language community, and the extent to which international approaches have been received and how they have been adapted to the Catalan domain. Every tradition has interpreted this interaction with specific approaches. The Catalan tradition, for example, has opted for a vision that integrates a wide range of studies on different themes (economy, law, political science, communication, ecology, linguistic variation, anthropology, and so on). So, in the book you are holding, the authors of the various chapters, recognised specialists in their fields, have provided complementary views that will enable us to make an overall analysis, something that was urgently needed in the context of the ultimate aim of bringing internal consistency to the discipline.

This book aims to disseminate at an international level a set of innovative studies whose descriptive and applied point of reference is the Catalan language. The volume constitutes a significant contribution to the field of intercultural pragmatics and also to a broad range of grammatical and cognitive issues which have been approached from the pragmatic perspective.

Volume II of the handbook offers a unique collection of exemplary case studies. In five chapters and 99 articles it presents the state of the art on how body movements are used for communication around the world. Topics include the functions of body movements, their contexts of occurrence, their forms and meanings, their integration with speech, and how bodily motion can function as language. By including an interdisciplinary chapter on ‘embodiment’, volume II explores the body and its role in the grounding of language and communication from one of the most widely discussed current theoretical perspectives. Volume II of the handbook thus entails the following chapters: VI. Gestures across cultures, VII. Body movements: functions, contexts and interactions, VIII. Gesture and language, IX. Embodiment: the body and its role for cognition, emotion, and communication, X. Sign Language: Visible body movements as language. Authors include: Mats Andrèn, Richard Asheley, Benjamin Bergen, Ulrike Bohle, Dominique Boutet, Heather Brookes, Penelope Brown, Kensy Cooperrider, Onno Crasborn, Seana Coulson, James Essegby, Maria Graziano, Marianne Gullberg, Simon Harrison, Hermann Kappelhoff, Mardi Kidwell, Irene Kimbara, Stefan Kopp, Grigoriy Kreidlin, Dan Loehr, Irene Mittelberg, Aliyah Morgenstern, Rafael Nuñez, Isabella Poggi, David Quinto-Pozos, Monica Rector, Pio Enrico Ricci-Bitti, Göran Sonesson, Timo Sowa, Gale Stam, Eve Sweetser, Mark Tutton, Ipke Wachsmuth, Linda Waugh, Sherman Wilcox.

Volume 2 of the most up-to-date and comprehensive description of the Spanish language’s phonetic and phonological system Though there has been considerable research on Spanish phonetics and phonology, until now, there has been no in-depth and complete descriptive reference work. Fonética y fonología descriptivas de la lengua española, volumes 1 and 2, are a comprehensive reference, written in Spanish, describing the phonetics and phonology of Spanish. Edited by Juana Gil and Joaquim Llisterri and including contributions from an international group of scholars, these books provide a comprehensive overview for understanding topics across Spanish phonetics and phonology, making clear what further research is needed. Together, these volumes offer a survey of Spanish descriptive phonetics and phonology. Volume 2 focuses on the suprasegmental properties on the suprasegmental properties of speech such as word stress, intonation, speaking rate, pauses and rhythm. The topics are examined from different angles: their phonetic description, their phonological analysis, their variation, and also their function in speech. Intonation, in particular, is also studied from the point of view of pragmatics, discourse and conversation analysis. With state-of-the-art information on all topics related to the sounds of Spanish, Fonética y fonología descriptivas de la lengua española will be a valuable resource for researchers, students, and scholars of Spanish linguistics who wish to deepen their understanding of the phonetic and phonological characteristics of all the varieties of the Spanish language.

Intercultural Pragmatics is a large and diverse field encompassing a wide range of approaches, methods, and theories. This volume draws scholars together from a broad range of cognitive, philosophical, and sociopragmatic perspectives on language use in order to lay the path for a mutually informing and enriching dialogue across subfields and perceived barriers to doing pragmatics interculturally.

Volume I of the handbook presents contemporary, multidisciplinary, historical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of how body movements relate to language. It documents how leading scholars from differenct disciplinary backgrounds conceptualize and analyze this complex relationship. Five chapters and a total of 72 articles, present current and past approaches, including multidisciplinary methods of analysis. The chapters cover: I. How the body relates to language and communication: Outlining the subject matter, II. Perspectives from different disciplines, III. Historical dimensions, IV. Contemporary approaches, V. Methods. Authors include: Michael Arbib, Janet Bavelas, Marino Bonaiuto, Paul Bouissac, Judee Burgoon, Martha Davis, Susan Duncan, Konrad Ehlich, Nick Enfield, Pierre Feyereisen, Raymond W. Gibbs, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Uri Hadar, Adam Kendon, Antja Kennedy, David McNeill, Lorenza Mondada, Fernando Poyatos, Klaus Scherer, Margret Selting, Jürgen Streeck, Sherman Wilcox, Jeffrey Wollock, Jordan Zlatev.