Despite the fact that they are often crucial to our understanding, the vague, ineffable elements of language use and communication have received much less attention from linguists than the more concrete, effable ones. This has left a range of important questions unanswered. How might we account for the communication of non-propositional phenomena such as moods, emotions and impressions? What type of cognitive response do these phenomena trigger, if not conceptual or propositional? Do creative metaphors and unknown words in second languages and other ‘pointers’ to ‘conceptual regions’ communicate concepts learned from language alone? How might the descriptive ineffability of interjections, free indirect speech etc. be accommodated within a theory of communication? What of those working on the aesthetics of artworks, music and literature? What can evolution tell us about ineffability? The papers in this volume address these fascinating questions head-on. They represent a range of different attempts to answer them and, in so doing, allow us to pose exciting new questions. The aim, to bring the ineffable firmly within the grasp of theoretical pragmatics.

Beyond Description brings anthropologists and other social scientists together to examine the problem of explanation. What is "an explanation?" What can it add? What makes it authoritative, clarifying, or misleading? Whom does it serve and how is it produced? These questions lie at the heart of recent public crises of confidence in expertise, political representation, and classic liberal visions of whom we can rely on for true and trustworthy accounts. In a world beset by events and processes that seem to defy expert predictions of their impossibility, and in which post-hoc accounts can often feel more like rationalizations than explanations, competing voices vie for public presence and seek to silence one another. Anthropology and the social sciences face such questions too, making contemporary explanatory practice both an empirical and a reflexive challenge. By combining ethnographic studies of practices of explanation in a range of contemporary political, medical, artistic, religious, and bureaucratic settings, the essays in Beyond Description offer critical examinations of changing norms and forms of explanation in the world and within anthropology itself.

Natural languages – idioms such as English and Cantonese, Zulu and Amharic, Basque and Nicaraguan Sign Language – allow their speakers to convey meaning and transmit meaning to one another. But what is meaning exactly? What is this thing that words convey and speakers communicate? Few questions are as elusive as this. Yet, few features are as essential to who we are and what we do as human beings as the capacity to convey meaning through language. In this book, Gaetano Fiorin and Denis Delfitto disclose a notion of linguistic meaning that is structured around three distinct, yet interconnected dimensions: a linguistic dimension, relating meaning to the linguistic forms that convey it; a material dimension, relating meaning to the material and social conditions of its environment; and a psychological dimension, relating meaning to the cognitive lives of its users. By paying special attention to the puzzle surrounding first-person reference – the way speakers exploit language to refer to themselves – and by capitalizing on a number of recent findings in the cognitive sciences, Fiorin and Delfitto develop the original hypothesis that meaningful language shares the same underlying logical and metaphysical structure of sense perception, effectively acting as a system of classification and discrimination at the interface between cognitive agents and their ecologies.

This book was written for every parent who has ever struggled with that uneasy, anxious, apprehensive gut feeling. You are convinced something is wrong or perhaps different with your child but you just cant put your finger on it. You talk to teachers, administrators, anyone who will listen. They suggest this or tell you to do that. You know deep down inside that it probably isnt the solution, but you are not the expert, so you do what you are told. Slowly, the school year goes by, then the next and the next and nothing changes. Sometimes you start to feel like you are going crazy, that you are obsessing. This book is for any parent, who has lost hope, to know that you are not alone. It is for the parent who needs to ask questions, but does not know where to find answers. Most of all, I hope, through our story, some parents will feel empowered enough to fight for their child, no matter what it takes, without fear of retribution, from their school system. You are your childs best advocate. You need to speak up! Whatever issues you might be having with your child, there is something in our story for everyone. Included are actual emails, transcripts and more. I want to share the pain, the fear, the joy, the uncertainty, some direction and hopefully some insight. You must look beyond the report cards but prepare yourself. You might uncover your own incredible, mind-boggling, unbelievable stories that may seem absurdly unREAL!

This volume brings together a selection of the major articles of David Mills (1938-2013), which along with similar volumes by Alexandra F. Johnston, Peter Meredith and Meg Twycross makes up a set of "Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies". Mills was one of these four key scholars whose work has changed what is known about English medieval drama and theatre. He made major contributions to understanding English medieval theatre in the widest sense but more specifically to the nature and development of medieval plays and their performance at Chester. The scope of his work from manuscript to performance has created new knowledge and insights brought about by his remarkable technical skill as an editor and researcher. His texts of the Chester Cycle of Mystery Plays have become the standard works. In the light of this outstanding research the volume is comprised of four sections: 1. Editors and Editing; 2. Cultural Contexts; 3. Staging and Performance; 4. Criticism and Evaluation. An editorial introduction opens the work.

Treated from a range of disciplinary perspectives, this book addresses and challenges issues of space, historicity, architecture and textuality by focusing on Singapore's singular position in the region and as a global city.