The contributions to Iconic Investigations deal with linguistic or literary aspects of language. While some studies analyze the cognitive structures of language, others pay close attention to the sounds of spoken language and the visual characteristics of written language. In addition this volume also contains studies of media types such as music and visual images that are integrated into the overall project to deepen the understanding of iconicity – the creation of meaning by way of similarity relations. Iconicity is a fundamental but relatively unexplored part of signification in language and other media types. During the last decades, the study of iconicity has emerged as a vital research area with far-reaching interdisciplinary scope and the volume should be of interest for students and researchers interested in scholarly fields such as semiotics, cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor studies, poetry, intermediality, and multimodality.

A Brookings Institution Press and Governance Institute publication Paul C. Light examines and evaluates the 100 most significant investigations of policy failures, bureaucratic mistakes, and personal misconduct undertaken by the U.S. federal government between 1945 and 2012. Launched by Congress or the president, sometimes by both at the same time, the investigations at the core of this book were driven by the search for answers about significant breakdowns in government performance. Light reveals which investigations were most effective, and why.

This book proposes a relational turn in higher education by conceptualizing knowledge and pedagogy as relational and multimodal, analyzed through three dimensions of relationality: social, technological, and environmental. The volume draws on interdisciplinary approaches that make a case for integrating these interconnected and distinct dimensions in higher education theory and practice. Its novelty lies in combining such a variety of perspectives with Peircean semiotics to explore what it means to learn and live relationally. It emphasizes the importance of critical reflection, rooted in an environmental understanding of knowledge and digital media. This approach integrates materiality, place, and space in higher education, positioning caring, critically reflective and imaginative interactions and interpretations as central for knowledge growth. The volume features practical case studies of relational pedagogy through dialogues with diverse higher education practitioners, which embrace expression and creation through more than one dominant modality of communication and being. The book envisions students and educators as relational agents, with relational awareness and responsibility, aware of their multimodal identities. It highlights how a relational multimodal paradigm can serve as a way forward for universities to address global challenges concerning social, (post)digital, and environmental futures. This innovative book will be of interest to scholars, students, teachers, and policymakers in higher education, semiotics and multimodality, as well as postdigital, sociomaterial and futures studies.

Mimetic words, also known as ‘sound-symbolic words’, ‘ideophones’ or more popularly as ‘onomatopoeia’, constitute an important subset of the Japanese lexicon; we find them as well in the lexicons of other Asian languages and sub-Saharan African languages. Mimetics play a central role in Japanese grammar and feature in children’s early utterances. However, this class of words is not considered as important in English and other European languages. This book aims to bridge the gap between the extensive research on Japanese mimetics and its availability to an international audience, and also to provide a better understanding of grammatical and structural aspects of sound-symbolic words from a Japanese perspective. Through the accounts of mimetics from the perspectives of morpho-syntax, semantics, language development and translation of mimetic words, linguists and students alike would find this book particularly valuable.

This book investigates a number of central problems in the philosophy of Charles Peirce grouped around the realism of his semiotics: the issue of how sign systems are developed and used in the investigation of reality. Thus, it deals with the precise character of Peirce's realism; with Peirce's special notion of propositions as signs which, at the same time, denote and describe the same object. It deals with diagrams as signs which depict more or less abstract states-of-affairs, facilitating reasoning about them; with assertions as public claims about the truth of propositions. It deals with iconicity in logic, the issue of self-control in reasoning, dependences between phenomena in their realist descriptions. A number of chapters deal with applied semiotics: with biosemiotic sign use among pre-human organisms: the multimedia combination of pictorial and linguistic information in human semiotic genres like cartoons, posters, poetry, monuments. All in all, the book makes a strong case for the actual relevance of Peirce's realist semiotics.

From clean drinking water, to seat belts, to immunizations, the impact of public health on every individual is undeniable. For undergraduates, an understanding of the foundations of public health is an essential step toward becoming an educated citizen. Public Health 101: Healthy People––Healthy Populations provides a big-picture, population perspective on the determinants of health and disease and the tools available to protect and promote health. It examines the full range of options for intervention including use of the healthcare system, the public health system, and society-wide systems such as laws and taxation. Through case studies, vignettes, and extensive examples, readers will come away with a clear understanding of how public health affects them in their everyday lives. They will learn and apply frameworks for thinking about the issues of public health and gain a deeper understanding about the health news they are exposed to each day. Key Features: Public Health 101 fully implements the curriculum framework, learning objectives, and “enduring understandings” of undergraduate public health education as recommended by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)* and the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR). Frameworks for thinking, checklists, and step-by-step examples provide students with hands-on practice. Case studies, vignettes, and extensive illustrations reinforce the materials and provide interactive exercises for classroom discussions, homework, and examinations. A full package of instructor resources is available online at http://publichealth.jbpub.com/essential/riegelman. * To learn more about the AAC&U initiative, The Educated Citizen and Public Health, or to download the curriculum guide, log on to: www.aacu.org/public_health. Looking for more real-life evidence? Check out Essential Case Studies in Public Health, Putting Public Health into Practice.