Lesley Jeffries - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Lesley Jeffries

Springer eBooks, 2022

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 30, 2018

This chapter builds upon the basics of language structure and functions (Chapters 2–9) to demonst... more This chapter builds upon the basics of language structure and functions (Chapters 2–9) to demonstrate how texts (spoken or written, long or short) present a particular view of the world which reflects the ideological position of one (or more) of the perceived producers of the text. The chapter takes a neutral view of what ideology means, seeing it as referring to sets of values (and also, in some cases, beliefs) that are held by a group of people, often a society as a whole. You will be introduced to the framework of critical stylistics, which allows you to analyse the hidden and implicit ideologies inherent in textual construction. The basis of this framework is the ‘textual-conceptual function’ which demonstrates how the text is constructing different aspects of the world of the text by processes such as naming, negating, hypothesizing and enumerating. This approach shares with critical discourse analysis (CDA) the idea that ideology is present in all texts, but unlike CDA it is politically neutral rather than taking an explicitly socialist or Marxist stance in itself. 15.1 INTRODUCTION Although we tend to assume that there is some kind of abstract linguistic system in place, underpinning the things we say and write, linguistics has long recognized that there are also discrepancies between this ‘idealized’ system which is made up of items (phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, clause elements etc.) and the rules for how they combine into texts (the phonological rules and the grammar) – and the way in which the system is ‘realized’ when it is used. Famously, Saussure (see also Chapter 1), often seen as the founder of modern linguistics, labelled this distinction (in French) langue (language) and parole P

Routledge eBooks, Jan 10, 2023

In this chapter we use new corpus linguistic software tools to investigate the discourse(s) of la... more In this chapter we use new corpus linguistic software tools to investigate the discourse(s) of labour relations in UK House of Commons debates over the 19th and 20th centuries. Our data is from the Hansard Corpus (1803–2005), and benefits from the annotation of meaning and sense categories with the newly-developed Historical Thesaurus Semantic Tagger (Alexander et al. 2015; Piao et al. 2014). Using the bespoke corpus interface CQPweb Hansard, we carry out automated searches for words tagged with relevant semantic category codes. Our quantitative results enable us to chart the semantics of parliamentary discourse on labour relations over time, providing a detailed empirical basis which, we argue, would usefully support further qualitative analysis in linguistic and other research.

Routledge eBooks, Mar 4, 2019

Routledge eBooks, May 10, 2019

Imagine a world without public signs: no street names, airports and train stations without inform... more Imagine a world without public signs: no street names, airports and train stations without information boards, public buildings without signs directing us to different floors and services, "naked" roads and motorways, supermarkets without marked aisles and price tags. Public signage is one of the most useful features of modern life, which most of us take for granted. We live in an increasingly globalised multilingual world, which builds complicated spaces. To navigate through world cities, we rely on public signs. That is why "wayfinding", a term coined by the American urban planner Lynch (1960), has become a special professional field of wayfinding designers. It has grown exponentially since the 1960s, as businesses realised that well organised wayfinding systems can have financial benefits. The field has been expanded to include marketing and advertising, which are omnipresent in commercial signs. "Written language is an important part of these multimodal messages" (Gorter, 2012: 1) and it is not surprising that the development of wayfinding also attracted the attention of linguists interested in understanding how languages and images in public spaces can be interpreted as "maps of meaning" (Jackson, 1989) which represent our society and reflect the complex socio-cultural and political forces that create it. Their investigations extended beyond commercial public signage and included noncommercial, official and non-official signs. These are known as Linguistic Landscape studies, a rapidly developing multidisciplinary field, which is proving of interest to researchers from a variety of different backgrounds, including linguistics, sociology, anthropology, urban studies, politics, semiotics, education, and economics. The common interest of all is the understanding that LL is the scene where public space is symbolically constructed (Ben-Rafael, Shohamy, Hasan Amara, Trumper-Hecht, 2006; Shohamy, Gorter, 2009). The construction is created by the markings of objectsmaterial and immaterialwith linguistic tokens. These tokens may be analysed according to the languages used, their importance and prominence in the LL, as well as their syntactic and semantic aspects. The term "Linguistic Landscape" (LL) can be traced to an article published in 1997: "The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration" (Landry & Bourhis, 1997: 25). But the interest in languages in public spaces has a longer history. The first sociolinguistic studies, which investigated public signage appeared in the 1970s (Masai, 1972; Tulp, 1978). Masai's study focused on language choices in what were perceived as monolingual areas of Tokyo. It discovered the presence of English in addition to Japanese. Tulp's research in the officailly bilingual Brussels uncovered the predominance of French. In the 1980s and 1990s, these projects were followed by a number of idiosyncratic studies of the role of global English in multilingual settings and on language maintanance and vitality in bilingual settings. By 2005 the body of work in this area was sufficient for Gorter to say that across the world the interest in the study of LL is growing (2005). Shohamy noted that 2006, the year of publication of the special issue of the Journal of Multilingualism, edited by Gorter, became the date of the establishment of regular LL research with a focus on multilingualism (2016). This issue was later published as a book (Gorter, 2006), which became one of the first publications to set a more solid foundation for LL research. An annual international LL Workshop was organised in Tel Aviv in 2008, and since then nine have taken place around the world. The tenth was in 2018 in Bern, Switzerland. These workshops resulted in the publication of collections of LL studies, which expanded the methodological and theoretical frameworks of the field and revealed its multifaceted applications (Hélot&Barni,

Routledge eBooks, Apr 19, 2023

Springer eBooks, 2022

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 30, 2018

This chapter builds upon the basics of language structure and functions (Chapters 2–9) to demonst... more This chapter builds upon the basics of language structure and functions (Chapters 2–9) to demonstrate how texts (spoken or written, long or short) present a particular view of the world which reflects the ideological position of one (or more) of the perceived producers of the text. The chapter takes a neutral view of what ideology means, seeing it as referring to sets of values (and also, in some cases, beliefs) that are held by a group of people, often a society as a whole. You will be introduced to the framework of critical stylistics, which allows you to analyse the hidden and implicit ideologies inherent in textual construction. The basis of this framework is the ‘textual-conceptual function’ which demonstrates how the text is constructing different aspects of the world of the text by processes such as naming, negating, hypothesizing and enumerating. This approach shares with critical discourse analysis (CDA) the idea that ideology is present in all texts, but unlike CDA it is politically neutral rather than taking an explicitly socialist or Marxist stance in itself. 15.1 INTRODUCTION Although we tend to assume that there is some kind of abstract linguistic system in place, underpinning the things we say and write, linguistics has long recognized that there are also discrepancies between this ‘idealized’ system which is made up of items (phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, clause elements etc.) and the rules for how they combine into texts (the phonological rules and the grammar) – and the way in which the system is ‘realized’ when it is used. Famously, Saussure (see also Chapter 1), often seen as the founder of modern linguistics, labelled this distinction (in French) langue (language) and parole P

Routledge eBooks, Jan 10, 2023

In this chapter we use new corpus linguistic software tools to investigate the discourse(s) of la... more In this chapter we use new corpus linguistic software tools to investigate the discourse(s) of labour relations in UK House of Commons debates over the 19th and 20th centuries. Our data is from the Hansard Corpus (1803–2005), and benefits from the annotation of meaning and sense categories with the newly-developed Historical Thesaurus Semantic Tagger (Alexander et al. 2015; Piao et al. 2014). Using the bespoke corpus interface CQPweb Hansard, we carry out automated searches for words tagged with relevant semantic category codes. Our quantitative results enable us to chart the semantics of parliamentary discourse on labour relations over time, providing a detailed empirical basis which, we argue, would usefully support further qualitative analysis in linguistic and other research.

Routledge eBooks, Mar 4, 2019

Routledge eBooks, May 10, 2019

Imagine a world without public signs: no street names, airports and train stations without inform... more Imagine a world without public signs: no street names, airports and train stations without information boards, public buildings without signs directing us to different floors and services, "naked" roads and motorways, supermarkets without marked aisles and price tags. Public signage is one of the most useful features of modern life, which most of us take for granted. We live in an increasingly globalised multilingual world, which builds complicated spaces. To navigate through world cities, we rely on public signs. That is why "wayfinding", a term coined by the American urban planner Lynch (1960), has become a special professional field of wayfinding designers. It has grown exponentially since the 1960s, as businesses realised that well organised wayfinding systems can have financial benefits. The field has been expanded to include marketing and advertising, which are omnipresent in commercial signs. "Written language is an important part of these multimodal messages" (Gorter, 2012: 1) and it is not surprising that the development of wayfinding also attracted the attention of linguists interested in understanding how languages and images in public spaces can be interpreted as "maps of meaning" (Jackson, 1989) which represent our society and reflect the complex socio-cultural and political forces that create it. Their investigations extended beyond commercial public signage and included noncommercial, official and non-official signs. These are known as Linguistic Landscape studies, a rapidly developing multidisciplinary field, which is proving of interest to researchers from a variety of different backgrounds, including linguistics, sociology, anthropology, urban studies, politics, semiotics, education, and economics. The common interest of all is the understanding that LL is the scene where public space is symbolically constructed (Ben-Rafael, Shohamy, Hasan Amara, Trumper-Hecht, 2006; Shohamy, Gorter, 2009). The construction is created by the markings of objectsmaterial and immaterialwith linguistic tokens. These tokens may be analysed according to the languages used, their importance and prominence in the LL, as well as their syntactic and semantic aspects. The term "Linguistic Landscape" (LL) can be traced to an article published in 1997: "The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration" (Landry & Bourhis, 1997: 25). But the interest in languages in public spaces has a longer history. The first sociolinguistic studies, which investigated public signage appeared in the 1970s (Masai, 1972; Tulp, 1978). Masai's study focused on language choices in what were perceived as monolingual areas of Tokyo. It discovered the presence of English in addition to Japanese. Tulp's research in the officailly bilingual Brussels uncovered the predominance of French. In the 1980s and 1990s, these projects were followed by a number of idiosyncratic studies of the role of global English in multilingual settings and on language maintanance and vitality in bilingual settings. By 2005 the body of work in this area was sufficient for Gorter to say that across the world the interest in the study of LL is growing (2005). Shohamy noted that 2006, the year of publication of the special issue of the Journal of Multilingualism, edited by Gorter, became the date of the establishment of regular LL research with a focus on multilingualism (2016). This issue was later published as a book (Gorter, 2006), which became one of the first publications to set a more solid foundation for LL research. An annual international LL Workshop was organised in Tel Aviv in 2008, and since then nine have taken place around the world. The tenth was in 2018 in Bern, Switzerland. These workshops resulted in the publication of collections of LL studies, which expanded the methodological and theoretical frameworks of the field and revealed its multifaceted applications (Hélot&Barni,

Routledge eBooks, Apr 19, 2023