Kategoria BISAC: Reference >> Questions & Answers

As the official webmaster for Xerox, Bill McLain was surprised by the kinds of questions he was receiving, like whether people born blind can see in their dreams and why rabbits are associated with Easter. McLain began to answer each and every question--attracting national attention from MSNBC, CNN, and People--and the result, collected in Do Fish Drink...

This book provides a basic approach to the linguistic analysis of conversation, building toward a theory of the aesthetics of conversation by analyzing spontaneous talk among friends. It sheds light on such issues as pacing, turn-taking, storytelling, and humor, showing the effects on interaction when participants' conversational styles differ. Its readability makes it suitable for use as a text in discourse analysis at all levels.

This book focuses attention on a relatively neglected component of communication-silence-in order to present current research from a number of disciplines and also to stimulate further research on the subject. Silence is often viewed as an out-of-awareness phenomenon against which talk is perceived. By reversing polarities and treating silence as a figure to be examined against talk, we are given a heightened awareness of the universal aspects of human behavior while emphasizing its complex nature as a cultural phenomenon.

This study explores cultural features in communication and examines language in use by studying the talk within a prominent cultural event, the DONAHUE show. First, the study provides a detailed reading of America today, showing the importance of the individual in American society, the prominence of choice, and the role of the self as an antagonist to traditional social roles and the institutions of society more generally. Similarly, the study explores common ways of speaking such as being honest about who one is, sharing one's thoughts and feelings, and really communicating with others....

Do women really care about size?
Is there any truth to the blue balls rumor?
Could I get HIV from someone performing oral sex on me?
Why do guys like to watch porn so much?

In Sexpertise, Dr. Robin Sawyer, who teaches human sexuality at the University of Maryland, takes the most-asked questions about sex from his enormously popular course and provides scientifically accurate yet...