Search Results

The Linguistic Construction of Social and Medical Categories in the Work of the English General Register Office, 1837–1950

Edward Higgs

in Categories and Contexts: Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical Demography

Examines the classification systems and nosologies that were developed by the General Register Office in London in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in terms of modern linguistic analysis. ... More

Examines the classification systems and nosologies that were developed by the General Register Office in London in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in terms of modern linguistic analysis. The Office was responsible for administering civil registration and the censuses in England and Wales, and used the data collected by these processes to create demographic, medical, and occupational statistics. Such statistics have meaning within the terms of the particular linguistic conventions employed.Less

Linguistic Analysis

Susan Hockey

in Electronic Texts in the Humanities: Principles and Practice

This chapter addresses linguistic analysis, including word-class tagging. It looks at some possibilities for analysing text beyond the level of the graphic word or sequence of characters, focusing on ... More

This chapter addresses linguistic analysis, including word-class tagging. It looks at some possibilities for analysing text beyond the level of the graphic word or sequence of characters, focusing on what can be done with simple concordance tools. The use of concordances and other computer-based tools for linguistic analysis developed rapidly in the 1990s and is now generally known as corpus linguistics. Word-class tagging and other forms of annotation can enhance these corpora, offering more sophisticated analyses. Most of the applications discussed in this chapter are based on language corpora, but they are just as relevant for specific literary or other humanities texts. New tools developed in corpus linguistics are gradually beginning to feed into better techniques for literary analysis.Less

Issues of Linguistic Typology in the Study of Sign Language Development of Deaf Children

Dan I. Slobin

in Advances in the Sign-Language Development of Deaf Children

This chapter has two goals: first, to consider some lessons which have been learned from the cross-linguistic study of hearing children and their acquisition of a range of spoken languages; and ... More

This chapter has two goals: first, to consider some lessons which have been learned from the cross-linguistic study of hearing children and their acquisition of a range of spoken languages; and second, to situate the study of sign languages in a typological framework. The focus is thus on issues of linguistic analysis, with special attention to typology. It presents some case studies to demonstrate how child language research over the past decades has been forced to move away from the impulse to take a familiar language — generally English — as representing the child’s initial assumptions about the nature of language.Less

Toxic Shock Syndrome from Tampons: Krystal H. Rinehart v. International Playtex

Roger W. Shuy

in Fighting over Words: Language and Civil Law Cases

This case focused entirely on the warning label on the package insert of a tampons product used by a young woman who subsequently suffered from toxic shock syndrome (TSS). One side of the tightly ... More

This case focused entirely on the warning label on the package insert of a tampons product used by a young woman who subsequently suffered from toxic shock syndrome (TSS). One side of the tightly folded insert contained instructions about how to use the product. The other side was labeled “Important Information About Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS).” The “Important Information” side was compared with the Federal Drug Administration's guidelines for wording on tampon packages and inserts, focusing on the speech acts of warning and on the discourse requirements of prominence and legibility. Linguistic analysis was made concerning the semantics of “association,” “attention,” “alert,” and “warning”; the discourse analysis of topic; topic sequencing; the application of Grice's maxims of quantity, relation, and manner; and the importance of directness rather than indirectness in communications of this type, including an analysis of the lack of prominence and effective document design.Less

Methodology in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy

Scott Soames

in Analytic Philosophy in America: And Other Historical and Contemporary Essays

This chapter discusses the methodology that guided logico-linguistic analysis from Gottlob Frege’s 1879 Begriffsschrift to Rudolf Carnap’s 1934 The Logical Syntax of Language. In the first four ... More

This chapter discusses the methodology that guided logico-linguistic analysis from Gottlob Frege’s 1879 Begriffsschrift to Rudolf Carnap’s 1934 The Logical Syntax of Language. In the first four decades of this period, culminating with Bertrand Russell’s 1918–19 lectures on The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, analysis was viewed as an increasingly powerful tool employed in the service of solving traditional philosophical problems. The logicist reduction of arithmetic to what was taken to be logic was the driving force, providing the exemplar of philosophical analysis and the model for extending it beyond the philosophy of mathematics. The methodology is indicated by the role played by A2 in answering Frege’s guiding philosophical questions Q1 and Q2.Less

Discourse Ambiguity in a Contract Fraud Case: US v. David Smith

Roger W. Shuy

in Creating Language Crimes: How Law Enforcement Uses (and Misuses) Language

Government contracts can be very complex, as illustrated by this 1997 case involving a Texas-based manufacturer of helicopters. It was made even more complicated by the fact that the company was a ... More

Government contracts can be very complex, as illustrated by this 1997 case involving a Texas-based manufacturer of helicopters. It was made even more complicated by the fact that the company was a subsidiary of a French corporation that could legitimately make sales to other countries without the Texas company’s involvement or knowledge. The contract in question was eligible for the US Foreign Military Financing Program (FMF), created to promote the interests of domestic American businesses by providing funds to eligible allies to support their costs. Smith, president of the US company, was the target of a federal investigation concerning his knowledge of possible misuse of FMF funding. Over a two-year period, one of Smith’s employees secretly tape-recorded conversations with Smith that the government believed showed his complicity in contract fraud. Linguistic analysis of the ambiguity of the words and expressions used in these conversations, among other things, showed that Smith was not guilty.Less

Concluding Remarks

Arie Verhagen

in Constructions of Intersubjectivity: Discourse, Syntax, and Cognition

This chapter concludes that not everything is intersubjectivity, though intersubjectivity is widespread. There is a strong dialectics between specific, sometimes minute problems of linguistic ... More

This chapter concludes that not everything is intersubjectivity, though intersubjectivity is widespread. There is a strong dialectics between specific, sometimes minute problems of linguistic analysis and very general views of the function and structure of language. The chapter claims that the grammatical phenomena discussed in the previous chapters require a view of language according to which it is completely normal that the function of grammatical elements and constructions relates to the dimension of intersubjective coordination. The chapter also mentions that grammar provides systematic instruments for mutual management of a special kind.Less

Law in the Perspective of Philosophy: Causation in the Law, The Concept of Law

Nicola Lacey

in A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream

This chapter focuses on the publication of Causation in the Law and The Concept of Law. Causation in the Law represents a thoroughgoing application of the linguistic philosophical analysis to law. It ... More

This chapter focuses on the publication of Causation in the Law and The Concept of Law. Causation in the Law represents a thoroughgoing application of the linguistic philosophical analysis to law. It presents a spirited defence of the idea that causation in law is indeed a distinctive ground for the attribution of liability, and a persuasive critique of the causal minimalist position as collapsing questions of the ground of liability (causation) into questions about its scope or extent (policy factors affecting the extent of damages or the scope of the rule), and, in doing so, as blurring what is argued to be the proper division of labour between judge and jury, between law and fact. In The Concept of Law Hart claimed to set out a general, descriptive theory of law: a theory of law as it is, and not an ideal theory of what law ought to be. This would be at once a contribution to ‘analytical jurisprudence’ and to ‘descriptive sociology’. In other words, Hart sought to elucidate a concept of law which would be relevant to all forms of law, wherever or whenever they arose.Less

The Effectiveness of Linguistic Analysis in Fraud Cases

Roger W. Shuy

in The Language of Fraud Cases

This chapter examines the usefulness of linguistic analysis for the retaining lawyers in the eight fraud cases described earlier. None of the lawyers used their retained linguist as an expert witness ... More

This chapter examines the usefulness of linguistic analysis for the retaining lawyers in the eight fraud cases described earlier. None of the lawyers used their retained linguist as an expert witness but they used the analysis during the legal proceedings in various ways. Admittedly, eight cases is a very small sample, but the case results can give some indication of linguistic usefulness. Since two of the defendants were clearly guilty, linguistic analysis couldn’t help their lawyers very much. In three of the cases the lawyers used the linguistic analysis to negotiate favorable plea bargains to some of the charges. The remaining three cases resulted in not guilty verdicts for the defendants. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the advantages of using the inverted pyramid approach to analysis of language evidence and the virtues of using linguists as expert consultants versus the difficulties involved in using them as expert witnesses.Less

Even senators can get in trouble

Roger W. Shuy

in The Language of Sexual Misconduct Cases

This chapter discusses the sexual misconduct case that involved U.S. Senator Robert Packwood, who is known for his support of legalized abortion. Packwood was first accused of having made unwanted ... More

This chapter discusses the sexual misconduct case that involved U.S. Senator Robert Packwood, who is known for his support of legalized abortion. Packwood was first accused of having made unwanted sexual advances towards ten female staff members in November 1992, which he attributed to his drinking problems. Packwood revealed that he had kept several diaries, and insisted that these documents would prove his innocence. He further claimed that the women were the aggressors during these brief encounters. This chapter examines the Senate's investigation and the concerns surrounding Packwood's evidence. It determines that legal issues can be overcome by the political process and demonstrates the linguistic analysis of several diary entries. It also considers the general characteristics of diaries, the accuracy of both Packwood's diary entries and the written transcripts, and the conclusion of the ethics issue.Less

Deriving linguistic variation from learnability conditions: The Chunking Procedure

Adriana Fasanella and Jordi Fortuny

in Rethinking Parameters

This chapter stresses that the central problem of parametric theory is Plato’s problem (how do humans learn a language?), whereas what we may call Greenberg’s problem (what is the shape and degree of ... More

This chapter stresses that the central problem of parametric theory is Plato’s problem (how do humans learn a language?), whereas what we may call Greenberg’s problem (what is the shape and degree of linguistic variability?) is derivative. The chapter reviews several macro- and microparameters and shows that they do not satisfy certain learnability conditions, whereby they are not plausible learning paths or plausible elements of UG. It explores a parametric approach, which conjoins a mechanism of data analysis parametrically defined (the Chunking Procedure), arguably used by the LAD to attain a morphological analysis of its PLD, and bootstrapping mechanisms that use the attained morphological analysis to specify more abstract syntactic properties of the target language, the clustering properties which standard parameters range over.Less

Hart as a Political Philosopher

John Finnis

in Philosophy of Law: Collected Essays Volume IV

After a brief appreciation of Hart's life and virtues, this chapter contrasts his legal-theoretical work with conceptions of method and political philosophy dominant between 1945 and 1960. Hart's ... More

After a brief appreciation of Hart's life and virtues, this chapter contrasts his legal-theoretical work with conceptions of method and political philosophy dominant between 1945 and 1960. Hart's attention to law's functions, decisive for The Concept of Law, transcends the merely linguistic or conceptual. Hart failed to follow through resolutely, but his work like Rawls's rejoined the enterprise launched by Plato and Aristotle and derided by Hobbes. The chapter's second half is a root and branch critique of Hart's normative political philosophy, especially Law, Liberty and Morality, which failed to see the irrelevance of Devlin's focus on positive morality, and thus cut itself off from the main political philosophical tradition and from reason. A special failing was Hart's claim that sex ethics cannot be rational, and his neglect of the question whether and how political culture and community have preconditions bearing on procreation and family.Less

Introduction: to write a grammar

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

in The Art of Grammar: A Practical Guide

This chapter introduces the concept of a reference grammar, and its importance (with a brief overview of further possible types of grammars). A reference grammar is a piece of scientific analysis. ... More

This chapter introduces the concept of a reference grammar, and its importance (with a brief overview of further possible types of grammars). A reference grammar is a piece of scientific analysis. The way in which a grammar writer discloses what the language is like, and the way in which they present their discoveries, and analyse them, are not the same. This chapter offers guidance on linguistic analysis and argumentation, and discusses the issues around how to structure a reference grammar. It addresses the importance of linguistic diversity, and the role of the linguist in preserving it. An Excursus outlines the basic principles of linguistic fieldwork, focusing on immersion fieldwork and participant-observation as major techniques (with minimal, and judicial, elicitation). The sequence of chapters does not offer a recipe for how to organize a grammar; the exact strategy, and order, of presentation depends on the language itself.Less

Introduction: Translating Law and Social Science

William K. Ford and Elizabeth Mertz

in Translating the Social World for Law: Linguistic Tools for a New Legal Realism

In their introductory essay, Ford and Mertz survey the articles in the volume and summarize some overarching themes that emerge from the group as a whole. To begin with, the authors of these articles ... More

In their introductory essay, Ford and Mertz survey the articles in the volume and summarize some overarching themes that emerge from the group as a whole. To begin with, the authors of these articles do not view interdisciplinary communication as transparent or easy; the process itself is not to be taken for granted. They also pay close attention to details of language and linguistic contexts. Some articles demonstrate the linguistic structure of legal misunderstandings, others examine the language in which courts translate social science and science, while the final chapters in the volume explicitly examine barriers to translation between law and other disciplines.Less

Twentieth-Century Philosophy

James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo (eds)

in Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook

This section provides an overview of twentieth-century philosophy in Japan. The fall from grace of the Kyoto School after the death of Nishida Kitarō and allegations of wartime complicity in its ... More

This section provides an overview of twentieth-century philosophy in Japan. The fall from grace of the Kyoto School after the death of Nishida Kitarō and allegations of wartime complicity in its ranks marked a turning point in the diversification of Japanese philosophy. On the one hand, there was a return to the early Greek and Socratic ideals. Others sought to fill the gap by turning to logical positivism and linguistic analysis. Popularist philosophies like the post-structuralism of Nakamura Yūjurō and the cosmopolitanism of Imamichi Tomonobu are typical of those who sought to bring the results of academic philosophy from around the world to a wider audience. This section presents translations of a variety of texts by Japanese philosophers associated with twentieth-century philosophy, including Hatano Seiichi, Tosaka Jun, Ichikawa Hakugen, Imanishi Kinji, Takizawa Katsumi, Izutsu Toshihiko, Maruyama Masao, Yuasa Yasuo, Kimura Bin, Hiromatsu Wataru, Sakabe Megumi, and Fujita Masakatsu.Less

Foucault, Cavaillès, and Husserl on the Historical Epistemology of the Sciences

David Hyder

in Science and the Life-World: Essays on Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences

This chapter discusses the relations between Husserl and later French authors such as Jean Cavailles and Michel Foucault, who transform Husserl's transcendental project into a form of linguistic ... More

This chapter discusses the relations between Husserl and later French authors such as Jean Cavailles and Michel Foucault, who transform Husserl's transcendental project into a form of linguistic analysis. It argues that, in the hands of these French critics, the overall form of Husserl's account of sedimentation is preserved, but the history of science is explicitly denied. The result is that while the sedimentation of scientific ontologies is an essential part of these French critics' approach, Foucault in particular insists that the structures in question are linguistic as opposed to mental.Less

Sprachkritik: The Crisis of Perception

in Aesthetics of Renewal: Martin Buber's Early Representation of Hasidism as Kulturkritik

Buber considered the experience of the unity of being to be ineffable. Yet he also appropriated the teachings of the Hasidic masters to address not only central problems attendant to the ... More

Buber considered the experience of the unity of being to be ineffable. Yet he also appropriated the teachings of the Hasidic masters to address not only central problems attendant to the representation of ecstatic mysticism, but also issues pertaining to the Sprachkritik. In his early writings, Buber refracted the relation between language, speech, and mystical experience through the mystical teachings of the Hasidic masters. With Fritz Mauthner, Gustav Landauer, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal as his principal interlocutors, he situated himself firmly in the contemporary discourse on the critique of language. Buber's approach to language resonates with features of the new mode of linguistic analysis introduced by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure at the beginning of the twentieth century.Less