Over 5,000 years ago, the history of humanity radically changed direction when writing was invented in Sumer, the southern part of present-day Iraq. For the next three millennia, kings, aristocrats, and slaves all made intensive use of cuneiform script to document everything from royal archives to family records.
In engaging style, Dominique Charpin shows how hundreds of thousands of clay tablets testify to the history of an ancient society that communicated broadly through letters to gods, insightful commentary, and sales receipts. He includes a number of passages, offered in translation, that allow readers an illuminating glimpse into the lives of Babylonians. Charpin’s insightful overview discusses the methods and institutions used to teach reading and writing, the process of apprenticeship, the role of archives and libraries, and various types of literature, including epistolary exchanges and legal and religious writing.
The only book of its kind, Reading and Writing in Babylon introduces Mesopotamia as the birthplace of civilization, culture, and literature while addressing the technical side of writing and arguing for a much wider spread of literacy than is generally assumed. Charpin combines an intimate knowledge of cuneiform with a certain breadth of vision that allows this book to transcend a small circle of scholars. Though it will engage a broad general audience, this book also fills a critical academic gap and is certain to become the standard reference on the topic.
The twenty-five papers in this volume present current analyses of a variety of data and, more significantly, illustrate the various analytical tools available to linguists in the quest for deeper comprehension of the puzzles, questions, and problems they confront in natural language. The distinguished authors collected here explore interactions between linguistic structure and sound patterns across a diverse set of languages. The integrating theme of the volume is the influence of K. P. Mohanan’s philosophy of inquiry, derived not only from his rich body of diverse work but also from the fresh perspectives and intellectual vitality that he has shared with colleagues and students in a career spanning over three decades.
Originally published in 1979, this classic reference work presents definitions of grammatical and linguistic terms for spoken Egyptian Arabic in dictionary form from "active participles" through "writing system." Entries feature definitions and examples of all the grammatical features including phonology, morphology, and syntax. Aimed at the intermediate to advanced student of Egyptian Arabic, this volume presupposes a basic knowledge of Egyptian Arabic. Arabic lexical items are presented in romanized transliteration and are therefore accessible to those who are not familiar with Arabic script.
This important reissue, enhanced with an audio CD to supplement the first chapter of the text (sounds), is another addition to Georgetown's world-renowned Arabic language-learning materials and is considered to be one of the most outstanding descriptions of any Arabic dialect written for the English-speaking world. It is comprehensive in its coverage—ranging from phonology (how sounds are organized and used) to morphology (sound, syllable, and word structure), with an analysis that is insightful and original. It contains hints on how to master nuances in dialectical pronunciation, as well as the differences of meaning in their various forms.
Based on the dialect of Damascus, the language covered here is part of what has variously been called "Syrian Arabic," "Eastern Arabic," and "Levantine Arabic," encompassing the dialects of Beirut, Amman, and Jerusalem—as well as Damascus—with references made to regional variants. In a world drawn ever closer to events in the Middle East, this comprehensive grammar reference is yet another extraordinary addition to the growing library of Arabic language-learning materials published by Georgetown University Press.
An innovative approach to the refugee crisis through a focus on language use, discourse and representation
'A wide-ranging, erudite and multi-faceted analyses of the fundamental problem of who gets to be counted as human' - Kate Evans
What does it mean to be a refugee? What political questions do they raise? Through what political rhetoric is their experiences parsed? The ongoing refugee crisis has sparked all these questions and more.
Refugee Talk uses conversation as a research method and ethical practice to approach the representation of and the discourse about and by the refugee. Though refugees who cross borders are routinely registered, filed, and detained, the individual stories they carry are just as routinely overlooked or ignored. When language itself becomes another border that excludes refugees, the need for a new vocabulary that decriminalizes and re-humanizes the refugee experience asserts itself.
The authors engage theoretically with thinkers from Hannah Arendt to Paolo Freire and Kwame A. Appiah and structure the book around conversations with academics, activists, journalists, and refugee artists and writers. The result is a comprehensive humanities approach that places ethics and aesthetics at its core.
Christopher Schroeder spends almost no time disputing David Bartholomae's famous essay, but throughout ReInventing the University, he elaborates an approach to teaching composition that is at odds with the tradition that essay has come to represent.
On the other hand, his approach is also at odds with elements of the pedagogies of such theorists as Berlin, Bizzell, and Shor. Schroeder argues that, for students, postmodern instability in literacy and meaning has become a question of the legitimacy of current discourse of education. Schroeder is committed, then, to constructing literacies jointly with students and by so doing to bringing students to engage more deeply with education and society.
This investigation, based on a sufficient number and variety of modern texts, conducted on sound principles and with scrupulous care, aside from its obvious utility for shorthand and for instruction in reading, is of value to phoneticians in that it affords abundant choice material for the study of the adjustment of sound to sound in the syllable. To the linguist it furnishes also a starting point for comparison of one language with another, in respect either to acoustic effect or to the characteristic operations of the vocal organs; and it provides, in its word list, a foundation for comparative estimates of current vocabulary as an index of national civilization. To one interested in the history of speech, or the history of thought, it suggests and facilitates a series of comparisons of present and past aspects of English, whether one consider the language as an aggregate of sound-patterns or as a medium of expression. Multiple are the uses to which these tables may be put. It is to be hoped that many scholars, in many fields, will avail themselves of them.
[Note accompanying the Original Edition © 1923, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University:]
The text of this investigation is speld in accord with the recommendations of the Simplified Spelling Board. In the material investigated the conventional spelling, as found, has been adhered to strictly thruout.
The fonetist and filologist has always been among the first to recognize the immense importance of the movement for reform of English spelling, which commands the united support of the leading language scolars both of England and America. He should be willing to bear his share of the prejudice which some must endure in the course of progress toward a rational orthografy.
Simpler Spelling Association, Lake Placid Club, N.Y., wil send ful information concerning this important movement on request.
In this collection edited by Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer, scholars in communication, rhetoric and composition, and philosophy seek to “reread” Aristotle’s Rhetoric from a purely rhetorical perspective. So important do these contributors find the Rhetoric, in fact, that a core tenet in this book is that “all subsequent rhetorical theory is but a series of responses to issues raised by the central work.”
The essays reflect on questions basic to rhetoric as a humanistic discipline. Some explore the ways in which the Rhetoric explicates the nature of the art of rhetoric, noting that on this issue, the tensions within the Rhetoric often provide a direct passageway into our own conflicts.
In Reworking English in Rhetoric and Composition, editors Bruce Horner and Karen Kopelson gather leading scholars and new voices in the field of rhetoric and composition to offer a dynamic new perspective on English as it is used today. This provocative volume explores the myriad ways in which English is constantly redefined, revised, and redirected through specific, located acts of writing, rhetoric, teaching, and learning. Contributors provide insightful contributions to the study of English from both national and international perspectives, revealing the language as a fluid and constantly changing manner of expression that challenges established notions.
In part one, “Reworking Language,” writers call into question the idea of language as a static, stable entity. In part two, “Locations and Migrations: Global/Local Interrogations,” contributors explore the impact of writing and teaching English in both in the United States and abroad, from Arkansas and Oklahoma to China, Jamaica, and Lebanon. Part three, “Pedagogical/Institutional Interventions,” addresses English in institutional settings and the implications for future pedagogical work. Each essay in this revolutionary volume substantiates two key premises for the rethinking of English: first, that languages are susceptible to constant change through the very acts of writing, teaching, and learning, and second, that this reworking occurs as it moves between various temporal and spatial locations.
Throughout the volume, the variety and flexibility of English across the globe are both advocated and revealed, rejecting dominant Anglophone perspectives and instead placing language in cross-cultural contexts. Brimming with informative and thought-provoking insights, Reworking English in Rhetoric and Composition breathes new life into the field and provides direction for scholars and teachers looking to the future of English.
Changes in English studies today, particularly the rise of cultural studies, have forced reexaminations of historical genealogies. Three complex figures whose places are currently being reassessed include the Neapolitan Giambattista Vico (1668 –1744), the Frenchman Etienne de Condillac (1714 –1780), and the Scotsman James Burnet(t), Lord Monboddo (1714 –1799) in our histories of communication, linguistics, English studies, and now rhetoric.
In Rhetoric on the Margins of Modernity: Vico, Condillac, Monboddo, Catherine L. Hobbs focuses primarily on these three key figures in whose work rhetoric and linguistics intertwine as they respond to emerging attitudes and values of science and philosophy in the eighteenth century. Through her examination of works of Vico, Condillac, Monboddo and other marginal figures, Hobbs presents a different and more nuanced view of the transformation of rhetoric from classical to modern.
In order to redefine each figure’s position, Hobbs brings together the histories of linguistics, literature, rhetoric, and communication, rather than leaving them isolated in separate disciplines. She examines each figure’s theory of language origin and development as it has motivated their rhetorical theories. The result is Rhetoric on the Margins of Modernity: Vico, Condillac, Monboddo, an original and significant account of the formation of modern rhetoric.
In developed nations around the world, residential schools for deaf students are giving way to the trend of inclusion in regular classrooms. Nonetheless, deaf education continues to lag as the students struggle to communicate. In the Bua School in Thailand, however, 400 residential deaf students ranging in age from 6 to 19 have met with great success in teaching each other Thai Sign Language (TSL) and a world of knowledge once thought to be lost to them. The Rising of Lotus Flowers: Self-Education by Deaf Children in Thai Boarding Schools reveals how their institutionalization allowed them to foster a unique incubator of communication and education.
Charles B. Reilly, a teacher and community organizer in Thailand for eight years, and Nipapon Reilly, a Deaf Thai citizen, studied the students in the Bua School for 14 years, with periodic follow-ups thereafter. They found that the students learned little from their formal instructors, but that they were able to educate each other in time spent away from the classroom. Older students who had learned TSL in the dorms and on the playground successfully passed it on to six-year-olds who had virtually no language at all. The Reillys’ study uncovers an elaborate hierarchy of education among these students, with each group using games and other activities to teach and bring other classmates up to their level. Named for the much admired aquatic plant that blooms in Thailand’s bogs, the Bua School epitomizes the ideal of The Rising of Lotus Flowers, which also offers analytical evidence of the continuing value of residential schools in deaf education.
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