Pragmatics

An amusing, informative, controversial and utterly irreverent history of the world’s favourite word. F, U, C and K – four letters that can cause outrage, scandal, embarrassment or instant relief if you hit your thumb with a hammer. In this wide-ranging and frequently hilarious history of the F-word, Rufus Lodge searches out the origins of our language’s most popular obscenity, and chronicles its dramatic arrival in our everyday lives. As he discovers, the F-word can be heard among aristocrats and astronauts, rock stars and royals, poets and politicians, even in the company of Father Ted and…

The purpose of this book is to help everyone who has ever felt the need to communicate more effectively. It is a practical guide to the better use of the English language and begins with the foundations - grammar. There are quizzes and "test yourself" panels and examples of the way language is used in books, newspapers and official documents. It shows how to keep language vivid and build a wide vocabulary. It gives examples of letters for all occasions, from applying for a job to replying to a formal invitation. There are tips on how to write or set out a report, write an essay or complain…

A classic book, written by the English language expert Norman Lewis, How To Read Better And Faster was used as a guide book by several top-notch universities, the Marine Corps, and U.S. Air Force to improve the reading skills and abilities of their students and trainees. How To Read Better And Faster imparts the skills and techniques for improving one’s reading abilities so as to get the most from the written word, be it books, newspapers, texts, or magazines. The book is based on the idea that in order to read better, one must have enhanced levels of both, retention, and concentration. Eff…

Professor Franco Moretti argues heretically that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. He insists that such a move could bring new luster to a tired field, one that in some respects is among “the most backwards disciplines in the academy.” Literary study, he argues, has been random and unsystematic. For any given period scholars focus on a select group of a mere few hundred texts: the canon. As a result, they have allowed a narrow distorting slice of history to pass for the total picture.Moretti offers bar charts, maps, and tim…

Now available in paperback for the first time, this classic work presents a cognitive-semiotic framework for understanding how maps work as powerful, abstract, and synthetic spatial representations. Explored are the ways in which the many representational choices inherent in mapping interact with information processing and knowledge construction, and how the resulting insights can be used to make informed symbolization and design decisions. A new preface to the paperback edition situates the book within the context of contemporary technologies. As the nature of maps continues to evolve, Ala…