This volume of papers from the 13th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, held at the University of Leeds in 2008, collects together current research and recent methodological developments in the study of dialects by new and established scholars. It is organised into themed sections reporting on historical dialectology, dialect literature, the production of dialect maps and atlases, and the collection and organisation of material for dialect dictionaries and corpora. Perceptual dialectology and dialect intelligibility are also featured, and there are linguistic analyses of...

Cognitive Linguistics offers an enticing possibility to approach time-honored linguistic problems from a new standpoint and view them in a new dimension. Proving this theory, all contributions in this volume are Slavic-oriented and thoroughly grounded in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. The volume is composed of three thematic sections grammar, semantics and discourse analysis with applied linguistics representing fields of interest and simultaneously corresponding to levels of linguistic organization. The book offers studies on completability as an important parameter in the...

All human activity takes place in space and time in one way or another, which is consequently reflected in our language. We not only talk about space and time but also cannot but ground our linguistic activity in space and time. Furthermore, space and time are closely, although asymmetrically, related in our experience and we often think and talk about one in terms of the other. Specifically, time is conceived in terms of space far more frequently than vice versa. The volume contains a selection of essays that are revised versions of papers presented at the 23rd annual conference of the...

This is a study of black masculinities produced in two distinct bodies of 1960s and 1970s texts: ethnographic accounts of black urban families and black men s self-narratives. Those seemingly incompatible genres of writing are treated on a par, as narrative spaces within which social identities are forged and negotiated. Part I of this book offers a critical analysis of social science literature since the mid- to late 1960s. It includes the controversial Moynihan Report, which has been center stage of debates about -black matriarchy-, race relations, and social policy, as well as...

The target of this project is to consider cross-border mobility of economic, cultural and historical happenings from a long-term historical perspective. And moreover to deal with humanitarian issues such as peace, integration, immigration and peacefully living together as well as providing long-term perspectives for changes and promotion of peaceful change in society. The study breaks down the barriers and leads the readers to go beyond the borders. The components of the project are all focused on the sociological issues like immigration, isolation and integration. The method, which has been...

This volume presents texts written by Austrian and Chinese experts in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The issue the authors worked on is the basic problem how to make a different system of medical thinking plausible for the Western world, especially for Western medicine. This issue is considered from different viewpoints from the viewpoint of Western medicine that is familiar with Chinese medicine and contrariwise from the viewpoint of Chinese Medicine that is familiar with its Western counterpart and from a philosophical viewpoint. In this way both differences in the theoretical...

The livelihood of the world s population depends mostly on natural resources: land, forest, water and the air we breath. The continual degradation and diminution of these resources due to the cultivation of land threatens the economic and social security of individuals, communities and countries as well as the intricate web of ecological, social, economic and cultural relations that bind the global community together. To be productive, our resources must be managed properly, enriched and harvested responsibly."

The main focus of this volume is on urbanity as a discursive way of human life in the city. Discourse is specified here in terms of semiotic codes and processes that link city dwellers as communicating selves into interpersonal and intersubjective collectivities when they create and interpret similar meanings embodied in material bearers. Accordingly, the unfolding of the semiotic web is understood, firstly, as detecting and evaluating the growth and manifestation of the sphere of meaning-bearers or a sequence of meaning-bearing events, and secondly, as identifying and explaining the...

This book compares the systems of judicial independence in China and Germany, with the aim of drawing lessons from the German experience to improve the judicial system in China. The review of the German system not only discusses the system of judicial independence itself but also analyses its corresponding social and constitutional set-up in order to identify the social and constitutional and/or governmental foundations necessitated. On this basis, the author discusses which experiences by the German system of judicial independence the Chinese system could draw on, which aspects would have to...

Leading Virtue explores the use of Alasdair MacIntyre s tradition based model of ethics as a heuristic tool in analysing the contextualisation of Christian ethics. Ethical contextualisation is understood as the interaction and synthesis of particular Christian moral traditions with the moral traditions encountered in the different cultures where the Christian faith was established. This study argues that morality in African cultures may be better understood as discrete traditions. This claim is substantiated by historical and empirical studies of the Fante (Akan) and Methodist moral...