This volume aims to overcome sub-disciplinary boundaries in the study of linguistic variation - be it language-internal or cross-linguistic. Even though dialectologists, register analysts, typologists, and quantitative linguists all deal with linguistic variation, there is astonishingly little interaction across these fields. But the fourteen contributions in this volume show that these subdisciplines actually share many interests and methodological concerns in common. The chapters specifically converge in the following ways: First, they all seek to explore linguistic variation, within or...

Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East is the first book to approach conspiracy theorizing from a decidedly comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. Whereas previous studies have engaged with conspiracy theories within national frameworks only, this collection of essays draws attention to the fact that conspiracist visions are transnational narratives that travel between and connect different cultures. It focuses on the United States and the Middle East because these two regions of the world are entangled in manifold ways and conspiracy theories are...

This volume examines the connection between catastrophe and memory, using examples from German-language, French, Italian, English, North American, Spanish-language and Hungarian literature. The essays seek to explore the theoretical roots of this interrelationship and to illustrate it through exemplary case presentations.

This book brings together three perspectives on language and space that are quite well-researched within themselves, but which so far are lacking productive interconnections. Specifically, the book aims to interconnect the following research areas:

• Language, space, and geography
• Grammar, space, and cognition
• Language and interactional spaces
  

The contributions in this book cover geographical language variation within and across languages, language use in stationary and mobile interactional spaces, computer-mediated communication, and...

'Realism' is a pervasive term in discussions of contemporary developments in the cultural sphere. By drawing on different theories of realism, the authors explore how the term may be used as a helpful concept in order to analyse and evaluate current trends in cultural production and, in turn, how cultural production changes our understanding of what counts as 'realism'. The contributions deal with realism in narrative fiction, drama and audiovisual media (film, television news) within the context of national traditions: examples drawn on in the case studies range from Africa, Britain,...

Counterfactuality is currently a hotly debated topic. While for some disciplines such as linguistics, cognitive science, or psychology counterfactual scenarios have been an important object of study for quite a while, counterfactual thinking has in recent years emerged as a method of study for other disciplines, most notably the social sciences. This volume provides an overview of the current definitions and uses of the concept of counterfactuality in philosophy, historiography, political sciences, psychology, linguistics, physics, and literary studies. The individual contributions not...

This anthology examines the relationship between mathematics and the fine arts from medieval to contemporary times, and uses important historical paradigms to investigate the impact of mathematically structuring knowledge, and quantification, formalization and abstraction processes on creativity in music, visual arts and poetry. The focus is on two main issues: thematic reflections of mathematics in art and literature, and the mathematical structuring principles of formal aesthetic design processes.

Der Sammelband leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Forschungsgebiet 'Literatur und Wissen' und knupft an die aktuelle narratologische Diskussion zu literarischen Figuren an. Die leitende Fragestellung gilt den Funktionen des Wissens bei der Produktion und Rezeption literarischer Texte. Die literaturwissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen zu Werken aus verschiedenen Nationalliteraturen und Epochen werden erganzt durch aufschlussreiche Beitrage aus Geschichtswissenschaft, Linguistik und Philosophie, wodurch die Diskussion erstmals aus vielschichtiger Perspektive beleuchtet wird.

Linguistic complexity is one of the currently most hotly debated notions in linguistics. The essays in this volume reflect the intricacies of thinking about the complexity of languages and language varieties (here: of English) in three major contact-related fields of (and schools in) linguistics: creolistics, indigenization and nativization studies (i.e. in the realm of English linguistics, the "World Englishes" community), and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research: How can we adequately assess linguistic complexity? Should we be interested in absolute complexity or rather relative...

Comics retain close links with literature which are analysed in detail in this volume with reference to examples. Its main focus is upon adaptations of literary texts by comic-strip artists. It presents examples of such adaptations taken from the international body of literary comic art and includes theoretical reflections upon them. This monograph will be a standard work for research on comics and intermediality will serve as an important source of inspiration.