This study is based on an analysis of videos and transcripts of five films Fric-frac, Circonstances attenuantes, Le Jour se leve, La Regle du jeu and Hotel du Nord. These films are examples of planned and artificial language. The book looks at the evidential value of these data and assesses the extent to which stereotyped and scripted language can contribute to an understanding of spoken Parisian usage by looking at phonetics, syntax, discourse, lexis and pragmatics. By comparing traditional research carried out by scholars in the nineteenth century and...

Variations in speech melody (intonation) can be used to express different meanings (e.g. question vs. statement, friendliness). Yet, intonational information is hardly used in present-day linguistic models. When intonational information is used, it is mostly based on introspection rather than on empirical investigation; almost exclusively, a one-to-one relation between accent types and semantic function is assumed. This book focuses on an empirical investigation of thematic contrast in German. Thematic contrast has received considerable attention in semantics because sentences with...

This book takes as its starting point the boom femenino or the explosion in publishing by women in Mexico since the 1980s. Powerful changes in women s roles in Mexico over the last three decades have resulted in women occupying a position of profound ambivalence with regard to the processes of modernisation. The boom femenino constitutes an integral part of this process of change. By incorporating a variety of critical approaches within a feminist framework, the author argues that Mexican women writers participate in a crucial project of unsettling dominant discourses as they...

On the occasion of Robert Rehder s seventieth birthday, this Festschrift pays tribute to a forceful and inspiring teacher who is both a poet himself and the author of major studies on Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens. The contributions reflect the range of Rehder s achievement with essays on Wordsworth and his contemporaries, on the American poets who have been at the centre of his teaching (Whitman, Dickinson, William Carlos Williams), and on recent figures such as Thom Gunn, and Seamus Heaney. It concludes with some appreciations of Robert Rehder s own poetry. This volume addresses all those...

What comes to people s minds when they think of security? Is there a relationship between global security threats and local, everyday events that influence our feeling of security? Drawing from telephone interviews of 1 000 Swiss citizens, this work attempts to provide a missing link between the spheres of personal and public security. Based on empirical data and using quantitative statistical methods such as correspondence analysis and logistic regression, security is conceived through the statements of common citizens. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of the different notions of...

This book analyses India and Pakistan s decision to go nuclear against the odds of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty-based nuclear order. It reflects upon the key factors that contributed to, and the process that prompted India and Pakistan s nuclear programmes to take a military orientation, which eventually culminated in the May 1998 nuclear tests. It also explains the motivation which underscored both India and Pakistan s determination to advance nuclear postures in 1998 that appeared to be inconsistent with the post-Cold War global strategic environment. Further, this book explains why...

This volume summarises the academic work accomplished at the 6th International Security Forum (ISF), convened by the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces from 4 to 6 October 2004 at the Montreux Convention Centre, Switzerland. It presents a thematic overview of 150 presentations given at the 6th ISF, either as full-length keynote speeches in the two plenary sessions or in the form of summaries of all speeches given in the six topic sessions and the 24 workshops.
The topics discussed respond to the complex new challenges of the post Cold War world with an integrated,...

This book is about patterns of development in the history of culture. Bringing together three areas of research: semiotics, cultural history, and evolutionary psychology, it attempts to bridge the gap that still separates the study of culture from the cognitive sciences.
The multidisciplinary approach chosen by the contributors derives its impetus from the deep conviction that in order to understand the logic of cultural development, one must take the building blocks of culture, that is, signs and language, as a starting point for research.
Central issues...