Bridges and Barriers in Metalinguistic Discourse

Linguistics has found itself in the middle of a lively debate about its disciplinary integrity, its future and role in modern societies. The ongoing discussions thrive on impulses coming from within the field and from other disciplines that either inform linguistic expertise or are themselves informed by it. They are also encouraged by a growing language awareness of individuals and entire social groups. This collection of papers covers a wide range of linguistic topics, exposing and exploring the plurilingualism of today's meta-linguistic reflection. The topics in analytical focus include the apparent integrity and the fragmentation of linguistics, starting with the early conceptions of autonomy and modularity, and ending with their elaboration in terms of interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and, more recently, postdisciplinarity of modern scholarship. The methodological pluralism of modern linguistics is shown to depend on what were and what are today the privileged modes of communication. The role of folk and expert knowledge is emphasized in the construction of metalinguistic theories and their social legitimization. Speaking up from a variety of perspectives, the contributions in this volume show that the ventriloquation of today's metalinguistic writings is best interpretable in terms of bridges and barriers in how the metalinguistic dialogue is pursued, whether on an internal or a cross-disciplinary basis.

Autorentext

The Editors: Anna Duszak is Professor of Linguistics at Institute of Applied Linguistics, Warsaw University. She has published in the area of discourse analysis, pragmatics, crosscultural communication and critical discourse analysis. Recently she co-edited with Guiseppina Cortese a volume on Identity, community, discourse: English in intercultural settings (Peter Lang, 2005).
Urszula Okulska is Assistant Professor at Institute of Applied Linguistics, Warsaw University. She has published on language change, English specialized genres, political discourse and linguistic corpora. She is the author of Gender and the formation of Modern Standard English. A socio-historical corpus study with Early Modern English in focus (Peter Lang, 2006).
Anna Duszak and Urszula Okulska co-edited the volume Speaking from the margin. Global English from a European perspective (2004), published in the same series of Polish Studies in English Language and Literature, by Peter Lang.

Inhalt
Contents: Anna Duszak/Urszula Okulska: Vices of metalinguistic communication: Problems and perspectives Heinz Vater: Autonomy and interdisciplinarity in different areas of linguistics Zdzisaw Wsik: Understanding the existence modes of language and the division of linguistic labor Anna Siewierska: Linguistic typology: Where functionalism and formalism almost meet Anatolij Dorodnych: Newer is better? Language monopoly as a metalinguistic problem Jan Piotrowski: Building methodological bridges: On the empiricity of linguistic theories Maria Kasperkiewicz: Interdisciplinarity in historical linguistics. A panchronic generative analysis of language change Robert de Beaugrande: Metalinguistic discourse and the dilemma of writing versus speech Stephen Cowley/Nigel Love: Language and cognition, or, How to avoid the conduit metaphor Przemysaw ywiczyski: Linguistic axiology and ethology of speaking: A case for methodological eclecticism Magorzata Sokó: Genre analysis and digital communication: New approaches to genre theory Urszula Okulska: Diachronic corpus research: Towards a holistic reconstruction of the spoken modality of English Tomasz Krzeszowski: Barriers in communication Maurizio Gotti: Metalinguistic considerations in 17th-century specialized discourse Anna Duszak: 'Metalanguageing' and styling in academic communication Tomasz Fojt: Figurative language analysis: A case for interdisciplinarity Irina Sklema-Litwin: Impressionistic labelling in voice quality studies Mirosawa Podhajecka: Language contact: Problems of metalinguistic description Norman Fairclough: Building bridges and overcoming barriers? Discourse analysis as transdisciplinary research Piotr Cap: Extending the boundaries of (persuasive) discourse analysis: A Cognitive Grammar contribution Daniela Wawra: Language and peacock tails: The evolution of language by sexual selection Dilek Kantar/Yeim Aksan: A linguistic cross between form and content in fiction Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska: Bridging an uncommon past with a common future? Reconciling literary and linguistic critical analyses of poetic texts on the example of Allen Ginsberg's «Howl».