Interviews are ubiquitous in modern society, and they play a crucial role in social scientific research. But, as Charles Briggs convincingly argues in this book, received interviewing techniques rest on fundamental misapprehensions about the nature both of the interview as a communicative event, and of the nature of the data that it produces. Furthermore, interviewers rarely examine the compatibility of interviews as a means of acquiring information to one another.

These oversights often blin...

Risks and uncertainties play a role in virtually all of our decisions. Quantitative models have so far been either too unrealistic or too complex. This graduate textbook presents modern models that are both realistic and tractable. All mathematical tools are related to real-life processes, ensuring accessibility to a wide audience.

Optimality Theory's central idea is that surface forms of language reflect resolutions of conflicts between competing constraints. Exercises with chapters 1-7 and sections on further reading. For linguists with a knowledge of derivational Generative Phonology.

The fully revised edition of this 'classic' helps teachers give their learners the tools they need to express themselves through a range of stimulating drama contexts. This completely revised edition of the classic title Drama Techniques provides: *150 ideas for interesting and productive fluency practice *a large selection of drama-based techniques which focus learners' attention on communicative tasks or activities *techniques suitable for all levels *clear instructions for the teacher *adv...

The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism surveys the full spectrum of postmodern culture - high and low, avant-garde and popular, famous and obscure - across a range of fields, from architecture and visual art to fiction, poetry, and drama. It deftly maps postmodernism's successive historical phases, from its emergence in the 1960s to its waning in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Weaving together multiple strands of postmodernism - people and places from Andy Warhol, Jeffers...

Bundu was an anomaly among the precolonial Muslim states of West Africa. Founded during the jihads which swept the savannah in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it developed a pragmatic policy, unique in the midst of fundamentalist, theocratic Muslim states. Located in the Upper Senegal and with access to the Upper Gambia, Bundu played a critical role in regional commerce and production and reacted quickly to the stimulus of European trade.

Drawing upon a wide range of sources both ora...

Just about everyone seems to have views about language. Language attitudes and language ideologies permeate our daily lives. Our competence, intelligence, friendliness, trustworthiness, social status, group memberships, and so on, are often judged from the way we communicate.

Even the speed at which we speak can evoke reactions. And we often try to anticipate such judgements as we communicate. In this lively introduction, Peter Garrett draws upon research carried out over recent decades in or...

Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to so...

A Student Grammar of Turkish is a concise introduction to Turkish grammar, designed specifically for English-speaking students and professionals. Written with the needs of the learner very much in mind, it sets out the grammar of the language in a clear and jargon-free style.

Becoming a Reader argues that, whatever our individual differences of personality and background, there is a regular sequence of attitudes we go through as we mature, which affect how we experience fiction, from the five-year-old child absorbed in the world of fantasy play, through the seventeen year old critical seeker of the truth, to the middle-aged reader recognizing their own experiences in fictional characters. Becoming a Reader argues that this sequence of responses can be worked out a...