Language in Use: a Reader
Language in Use: a Reader is an outstanding resource for university-level introductions to linguistics, English language, language studies and communication. It will be useful to any students coming to the material for the first time, whether undergraduates or postgraduates; for applied linguistics and TESOL programmes; for trainee EFL teachers; and as interestingly relevant English study material for advanced ESL and EFL students.
The Reader is compact and versatile, offering helpfully guided access to an expansive selection of readings, making it very accessible to students coming to this subject area for the first time. Click here to see the Contents list.
Already have Language in Use: a Reader? You might find it interesting to look at this challenging list of suggestions for essays, assignments and projects based round the reader.
Pre-tested by students and benefiting from the editors' (Aileen Bloomer, Patrick Griffiths and Andrew John Merrison) wide teaching experience, every one of the readings has its own concise introduction for newcomers. To extend and consolidate understanding, each reading ends with points to ponder or act on (headed ‘Now, Think, Do!’), plus recommendations for further reading and a list of references. The editors have also added footnotes and bracketed insertions within the readings to offer clarifications just where they are likely to be needed. (Click for a sample reading) Invaluable for students doing project work and for tutors planning reading assignments are five ‘bookmaps’ bound into the Reader that indicate the existence of interconnections among the readings. All of these supports are in addition to an overview of the book and orientating introductions to the Reader's four parts.
The 29 readings are a selection of significant articles and non-trivial excerpts. They are organised into four parts, with seven or eight readings each:
- Language and Interaction (conversation analysis and pragmatics)
- Language Systems (descriptive linguistics)
- Language and Society (sociolinguistics and discourse)
- Language and Mind (psycholinguistic processing, acquisition and disorders)
The types of paper selected include:
- classics e.g. Sacks (1973) on agreement in conversation
- applied work e.g. Butters (2004) on semiotics and pragmatics in a legal dispute over the wording of a lottery game card; Grainger (1998) on linguistic interactions between nurses and elderly people in their care
- pure research e.g. dissection of a Singapore English text by Hadfield, Hadfield and Gupta (2007); an experiment by Nicholls et al. (2004) investigating visual cues readable from the mouth in speech perception
- surveys e.g. Mills (2005) on impoliteness; Hughes et al. (2005) on British regional accents
- conceptual discussions e.g. Turner (2006) on reasons for protecting heritage sign languages; Diessel (2004) on learning versus growth in first language acquisition
Not confined to any one of the four parts of the Reader are strands, each represented by between four and ten readings, to support course components in (or second-level courses in): English language, semiotics, standard versus non-standard usage, construal, identity, conversation analysis, power and politeness, and child language acquisition.
The Reader is free-standing and could be the sole purchase for students on a course. It may also be supplemented by a coursebook. One such is the editing team's lively, accessible, interactive and student-friendly Introducing Language in Use: a Coursebook. Extensive cross-referencing from the reader makes for easy use of these two books as a complementary pair, although each of them can be used entirely independently. Click here for sample bookmaps in the Reader that show connections across from the readings to the units in the coursebook Introducing Language in Use.
“Anybody who enjoyed reading Introducing Language in Use will find this Reader an invaluable addition to be used in combination with it or indeed as an independent resource for students in self-study.”Dr Miriam Locher, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Basel, Switzerland
“This exciting new textbook covers a wide range of key reading material brought together in a single volume. It will enhance many study programmes in the fields of English language and linguistics, allowing students to ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’ and explore the backgrounds to their studies at a number of levels. A wonderful resource indeed!”Dr Catherine Watts, Principal Lecturer, School of Language, Linguistics and Communication, University of Brighton, UK
“I can safely anticipate that students will pick this up and end up reading more than they intended to. The authors have put together about 30 original papers in key areas of language study, grouping them thematically. Each has a short introduction and is followed by suggestions about how its key concepts might be applied to a situation within the students' own experience. Signposts in the text refer the reader to explanations of key concepts in the authors' Introducing Language in Use. Not so much a resource book, more the horse's mouth.”Tim Parke, Principal Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Hertfordshire, UK