This volume includes 36 papers by an international selection of scholars which were presented at the 5th Nordic Conference for English Studies, held in Reykjavik August 7-8, 1992. Topics covered include linguistics, English as a foreign language, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, English literature and Canadian literature.

Main headings: Introduction. - I. Representing language use. - II. Grammar and lexis in English corpora. - III. Contrastive and translation studies. - IV. English abroad. - List of Stig Johansson's publications (selection).

This volume is a collection of articles based on papers presented at the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics at Cambridge in 1987. It draws together important state-of-the-art' studies in the syntax, phonology, morphology and semantics of Old, Middle and Modern English by prominent figures in the field into a single volume. Core theoretical areas are well represented and there are also major papers in dialectology, stylistics, metrics, socio-historical linguistics and the history of English linguistics.The volume is dedicated to the memory of Professor James P. Thorne, whose last conference paper is included in the collection.

In this volume the author examines verbal constructions in prescriptive legal texts written in English. Modal auxiliaries such as shall, may and must are analysed, as well as indicative tenses such as the present simple, and also non-finite constructions such as the -ing form and -ed participles. Results are based on specially compiled corpora of prescriptive texts coming from a wide range of English-speaking countries and also international organizations such as the European Union and the UN. The author also analyses the nature, extent and impact of the calls for change in legal language coming from the Plain Language Movement. Although legal language tends to be depicted as being highly conservative and unchanging, the author shows that in certain parts of the English-speaking world a minor revolution would appear to be taking place, while in other parts there is greater resistance to change.

This book breaks new ground in translation theory and practice. The central question is: In what ways are translations affected by text types? The two main areas of investigation are: A. What are the advantages of focusing on text types when trying to understand the process of translation? How do translators tackle different text types in their daily practice? B. To what extent and in what areas are text types identical across languages and cultures? What similarities and dissimilarities can be observed in text types of original and translated texts?Part I deals with methodological aspects and offers a typology of translations both as product and as process. Part II is devoted to domain-specific texts in a cross-cultural perspective, while Part III is concerned with terminology and lexicon as well as the constraints of mode and medium involving dubbing and subtitling as translation methods. Sonnets, sagas, fairy tales, novels and feature films, sermons, political speeches, international treaties, instruction leaflets, business letters, academic lectures, academic articles, medical research articles, technical brochures and legal documents are but some of the texts under investigation.In sum, this volume provides a theoretical overview of major problems and possibilities as well as investigations into a variety of text types with practical suggestions that deserve to be weighted by anyone considering the relation between text typology and translation. The volume is indispensable for the translator in his/her efforts to become a "competent text-aware professional."

Literary studies still lack an extensive comparative analysis of different kinds of literature, including ancient and non-Western. How Literary Worlds Are Shaped. A Comparative Poetics of Literary Imagination aims to provide such a study. Literature, it claims, is based on individual and shared human imagination, which creates literary worlds that blend the real and the fantastic, mimesis and genre, often modulated by different kinds of unreliability. The main building blocks of literary worlds are their oral, visual and written modes and three themes: challenge, perception and relation. They are blended and inflected in different ways by combinations of narratives and figures, indirection, thwarted aspirations, meta-usages, hypothetical action as well as hierarchies and blends of genres and text types. Moreover, literary worlds are not only constructed by humans but also shape their lives and reinforce their sense of wonder. Finally, ten reasons are given in order to show how this comparative view can be of use in literary studies. In sum, How Literary Worlds Are Shaped is the first study to present a wide-ranging and detailed comparative account of the makings of literary worlds.

"This volume brings together a selection of the papers presented at the 8th Nordic Conference of English Studies which took place in Goteborg, May 24-27 2001. The aim of the conference was to bring together scholars from the Nordic countries with an interest in English language, literature, culture and teaching. The variety of interests is represented in the contributions to the volume which also contains contributions some of the plenary speakers at the conference. The book also includes a newly written poem by Tony Harrison. Contents include: Polysemy and ambiguity, The last colony of the British Empire: some reflections on the idea of Britain today, On the centrality of stylistics, Syntax and style in some Middle English metrical romances with special reference to the displacement of syntactic components, The suffix - wise: Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty?, `Am I really really mature or something': Really in teentalk, Repair, learning and foreign language talk-in-interaction: a conversation analytic approach. The preposition By in the English passive, Genre, gender and power: a study of address forms in seven Canterbury Tales, Clustering in verb phrases, On collocations in bllingual lexicography, The language of love and the conceptualization of power during the reign of Elizabeth I, Sustained romantic radicalism in the writings of Blake, Hays and Wollstonecraft, Uncovering ""the sacred and mysterious veil"": Mary Hays' use of monological epistolarity in Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796), ""This duty must be established into a principle, and wrought into a habit:"" Hannah More and the nineteenth-century self-improvement ethos, The sensation of narrative: strategies of representation in The Woman in White and Dracula, From the flying trunk to celestial omnibus: Hans Andersen's influence on the English Kunstmarchen, The ""invisible line"": The hidden perspective in Evelyn Waugh's Novel Brideshead Revisited, Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are not the only fruit. The quest for self, Beyond the borders of home: The subject-in-exile in the work of the two contemporary Irish women poets Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Nuala Ni Dhomhnail, ""Making sense: Mapping in Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha,"" When metaphors and `direct' sense impressions work together: a description of an approach, and a search for terminology, The ins and outs of the Mise en Abyme, Outside of things. Swedish emigrants, the English language and the Canadian prairie dream, Interactive learning in culture studies, Problems, procedures, and directions for computer assisted teaching."

The volume contains 37 papers originally presented at the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Lille, France. The papers bring historical data to bear on issues in theoretical linguistics, both descriptive and diachronic or deal with specific questions in the history of individual languages. The theoretical issues range from phonology over morphology and syntax to the lexicon, as well as questions of historical dialectology, language contact, the theory of linguistic change, and problems of comparative reconstruction. The languages discussed are Finno-Ugric and Indo-European, most of the papers dealing with Germanic and Romance languages (especially English and French), but some being devoted to Greek, Celtic, Slavic, and Hittite.