The book explores the role of age in communication under consideration of various age groups (the elderly, middle-aged, teenagers, children), genres, cultures and languages. The social skewing of the contributions explains the book's focus on discourse-mediated social identities, with age implicated as a viable controller of how social action is strategically deployed for alignment and alienation, accommodation and divergence. The studies in the book show the particular importance of the discursive construction of age in the face of new challenges of globalization, increased human mobility...

The authors of this volume explore rhetorical and discursive strategies used to negotiate and establish legitimate knowledge and its disciplinary boundaries, to make scientific knowledge interesting outside academic settings as well, and to manage (c)overt knowledge in different social and political contexts. The volume focuses on the cultural concept of knowledge society, examining diverse linguistic means of knowledge transmission from the perspective of the complex interplay between knowledge and persuasion. The contributors discuss both sociological and philosophical issues, as well as...