Product Description: Applied Linguistics in Action: A Reader presents students with an applied linguistics framework for the analysis of real-world problems in which language is a central issue. The reader allows students to develop both the theoretical and empirical skills crucial to the practicalities of language teaching and other language-related professional practices...read more

Product Description: Routledge English Language Introductions cover core areas of language study and are one-stop resources for students. Assuming no prior knowledge, books in the series offer an accessible overview of the subject, with activities, study questions, sample analyses, commentaries and key readings - all in the same volume...read more

Product Description: Advertising is one of the most prominent, powerful, and ubiquitous contemporary uses of language. Its seductive and controversial quality has attracted consistent and intense attention across a range of academic disciplines including linguistics, media studies, politics, semiotics, and sociology...read more

The GM debate is as much a war of words as of facts. Food and farming are being changed forever - yet whether for good or bad is the subject of an increasingly bitter argument. Those promoting GM have mounted an intense campaign, characterising their opponents as terrorists and Luddites, governed by ignorance, irrationality and hysteria. Yet public opinion remains unconvinced and antagonistic. As the argument intensifies and the voices on all sides get louder, Genetically Modified Language cuts through the confusion and controversy to the issues and ideology at the heart of the disagreement.Guy Cook subjects the language of the case for GM to a careful and detailed examination. He looks in turn at the persuasive strategies used by politicians, scientists, the media, biotechnology corporations, and supermarkets, showing how their arguments mix together scientific, commercial, ethical and political criteria, and are seldom as factual and straightforward as they claim. Through analyses of recurrent words and phrases, and of the constant comparisons made with other international issues, he shows how the GM debate has become inseparable from the wider political conflicts of our time. In a final chapter he turns to public reactions to all of the arguments. Throughout this analysis, the campaign for GM is seen as exemplifying disturbing trends in the contemporary use of language for public information. Language which purports to seek clarity and neutrality, and to be a vehicle for informed democratic debate, is in fact achieving the opposite effects: obscuring the issues and manipulating opinion. Written in a clear, accessible style and drawing on illustrative examples, Genetically Modified Language is an insightful look at how language shapes our opinions.

This comprehensive introduction to advertising discourse examines the language of contemporary advertising, not as an isolated object, but in complex interaction with the texts around it. Clearly explaining relevant theories of linguistics and poetics, each chapter ends with a series of stimulating exercises, and theoretical discussion is accompanied by examples from literary and sub-literary texts and recent advertisements. Putting forward the controversial view that adverts answer a need for play and display in contemporary society, Guy Cook explores the social function of advertising, moving from the uses of sound and sight, through creativity and word play to the poetic intricacies of the text to assess the effect of these on the people who receive adverts everyday, and whose identity is partly constructed by them. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This book demonstrates the extent and importance of language play in human life and draws out the implications for applied linguistics and language teaching. It stresses how language play is central to human thought and culture, learning, creativity, and intellectual development...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)