This is an essential read for anyone interested in the way language is used in the world of politics. Based on Aristotle's premise that we are all political animals, able to use language to pursue our own ends, the book uses the theoretical framework of linguistics to explore the ways in which we think and behave politically. Contemporary and high profile case studies of politicians and other speakers are used, including an examination of the dangerous influence of a politician's words on the defendants in the Stephen Lawrence murder trial.
International in its perspective, Analysing...

China s opening up to the West, its extraordinary economic rise, and the subsequent internal and global issues, are an object of huge interest and concern. "Discourse and Socio-political Transformations in Contemporary China" focuses on one aspect of the contemporary Chinese phenomenon, one that is so obvious that it is generally ignored in the mainstream academic departments that politics, society and transformation are the product of myriad collective linguistic interchanges, some stabilized, some competing, some agonistic, some new and emerging.As an outcome of dialogue between Chinese and...

The idea that spatial cognition provides the foundation of linguistic meanings, even highly abstract meanings, has been put forward by a number of linguists in recent years. This book takes this proposal into new dimensions and develops a theoretical framework based on simple geometric principles. All speakers are conceptualisers who have a point of view both in a literal and in an abstract sense, choosing their perspective in space, time and the real world. The book examines the conceptualising properties of verbs, including tense, aspect, modality and transitivity, as well as the conceptual...

After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life in China. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated significantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by the political elites. Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for the authority to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society. Written by an international team of leading scholars, this volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society...