Meaning, Discourse and Society
Published on 25. March 2010
Book
Hardback
300 pages
978-0-521-88565-2 (ISBN)
Description
Meaning, Discourse and Society investigates the construction of reality within discourse. When people talk about things such as language, the mind, globalisation or weeds, they are less discussing the outside world than objects they have created collaboratively by talking about them. Wolfgang Teubert shows that meaning cannot be found in mental concepts or neural activity, as implied by the cognitive sciences. He argues instead that meaning is negotiated and knowledge is created by symbolic interaction, thus taking language as a social, rather than a mental, phenomenon. Discourses, Teubert contends, can be viewed as collective minds, enabling the members of discourse communities to make sense of themselves and of the world around them. By taking an active stance in constructing the reality they share, people thus can take part in moulding the world in accordance with their perceived needs.
Reviews / Votes
'The power of this exciting new book lies simultaneously within the detailed, continental traditions of scholarship that it brings to many readers for the first time; and the internal skepticism that it impliedly expresses towards the empirical instrumentation available to corpus linguists ... Teubert offers us an erudite and convincing reason for deep reflection before we contemplate discarding even the bath-water of hermeneutics. This book is a unique product of a tradition that combines philosophy, philology and hermeneutics on the one hand with an understanding of the power of corpora as a potential substitute for the experiences of a community during its lifetime ... a compelling read right up to its last paragraph and has my warm recommendation.' Bill Louw, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics '... provides a refreshingly original and long overdue theoretical rationale for the effectiveness and value of corpus linguistics.' Geoff Thompson, Languages in Contrast 'The book is well-organized, inspiring and clear. It will be of great interest to those who view language as social interaction and are therefore concerned with the social contexts in which discourse is embedded.' Jing Chen, Discourse StudiesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
640 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-88565-2 (9780521885652)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Wolfgang Teubert
Meaning, Discourse and Society
Book
04/2014
Cambridge University Press
€55.80
Shipment within 15-20 days
Wolfgang Teubert
Meaning, Discourse and Society
E-Book
06/2010
1st Edition
Cambridge University Press
€38.49
Available for download
Wolfgang Teubert
Meaning, Discourse and Society
E-Book
03/2010
1st Edition
Cambridge University Press
€32.99
Available for download
Person
Wolfgang Teubert is Professor of Corpus Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. His previous book publications include Corpus Linguistics: A Short Introduction (2007, with Anna Cermakova), Text, Discourse and Corpura (2007, with Michael Hoey, Michael Stubbs and Michaela Mahlberg) and he was co-editor of Corpus Linguistics: Critical Concepts in Linguistics: A Reader (2007) and Text Corpora and Multilingual Lexicography (2007).
Content
Introduction; Part I. Meaning, the Mind and the Brain: 1. The cognitive turn; 2. The long history of mind linguistics; 3. What do we know about mental concepts?; 4. Morphing theoretical semes into 'real' concepts; 5. From mental representations to conceptual ontologies; 6. What is meaning?; 7. Where should we look for meaning?; Part II. Discourse and Society: 8. Language as discourse; 9. Society presupposes language, and language presupposes society; 10. A closer look at oral societies; 11. Differences between oral and literate societies; 12. Empirical linguistics deals only with recorded language; 13. Meaning, knowledge and the construction of reality; 14. The language of the scientific experimental report; 15. Diachronicity, intertextuality and hermeneutics; 16. Meaning and the interpretation of a haiku; Conclusion.