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Computable bodies : instrumented life and the human somatic niche
\"Data. Suddenly it is everywhere, and more and more of it is about us. The computing revolution has transformed our understanding of nature. Now it is transforming human behaviour. For some, pervasive computing offers a powerful vehicle of introspection and self-improvement. For others it signals the arrival of a dangerous 'control society' in which surveillance is no longer the prerogative of discrete institutions but a simple fact of life. In Computable Bodies, anthropologist Josh Berson asks how the data revolution is changing what it means to be human. Drawing on fieldwork in the Quantified Self and polyphasic sleeping communities and integrating perspectives from interaction design, the history and philosophy of science, and medical and linguistic anthropology, he probes a world where everyday life is mediated by a proliferating array of sensor montages, where we adjust our social signals to make them legible to algorithms, and where old rubrics for gauging which features of the world are animate no longer hold. Computable Bodies offers a vision of an anthropology for an age in which our capacity to generate data and share it over great distances is reconfiguring the body-world interface in ways scarcely imaginable a generation ago\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Ethnopragmatics
The studies in this volume show how speech practices can be understood from a culture-internal perspective, in terms of values, norms and beliefs of the speech communities concerned. Focusing on examples from many different cultural locations, the contributing authors ask not only: 'What is distinctive about these particular ways of speaking?', but also: 'Why - from their own point of view - do the people concerned speak in these particular ways? What sense does it make to them?'.
The ethnopragmatic approach stands in opposition to the culture-external universalist pragmatics represented by neo-Gricean pragmatics and politeness theory. Using \"cultural scripts\" and semantic explications - techniques developed over 20 years work in cross-cultural semantics by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues - the authors examine a wide range of phenomena, including: speech acts, terms of address, phraseological patterns, jocular irony, facial expressions, interactional routines, discourse particles, expressive derivation, and emotionality. The authors and languages are: Anna Wierzbicka (English), Cliff Goddard (Australian English), Jock Wong (Singapore English), Zhengdao Ye (Chinese), Catherine Travis (Colombian Spanish), Rie Hasada (Japanese) and Felix Ameka (Ewe). Taken together, these studies demonstrate both the profound \"cultural shaping\" of speech practices, and the power and subtlety of new methods and techniques of a semantically grounded ethnopragmatics.
The book will appeal not only to linguists and anthropologists, but to all scholars and students with an interest in language, communication and culture.
eBook
To be a machine : adventures among cyborgs, utopians, hackers, and the futurists solving the modest problem of death
\"A globe-spanning investigation into the Transhumanist movement, considering the tech billionaires, scientific luminaries, and DIY body-hackers attempting to prolong, improve, and ultimately transcend the limits of human life\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Street Sex Workers' Discourse
Incorporating the voices and insights of street sex workers through personal interviews, this monograph argues that the material conditions of many street workers - the physical environments they live in and their effects on the workers' bodies, identities, and spirits - are represented, reproduced, and entrenched in the language surrounding their work. As an ethnographic case study of a local system that can be extrapolated to other subcultures and the construction of identities, this book disrupts some of the more prevalent academic and lay understandings about street prostitution by providing a thorough analysis of the material conditions surrounding street work and their connection to discourse. McCracken offers an explanation of how constructions can be made differently in order to achieve representations that are generated by the marginalized populations themselves, while placing responsibility for this marginalization on the society in which these people live.
eBook
Thinking machines : the quest for artificial intelligence--and where it's taking us next
\"A fascinating look at Artificial Intelligence, from its humble Cold War beginnings to the dazzling future that is just around the corner. When most of us think about Artificial Intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that Artificial Intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways, the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate. In Thinking Machines, technology journalist Luke Dormehl takes you through the history of AI and how it makes up the foundations of the machines that think for us today. Furthermore, Dormehl speculates on the incredible--and possibly terrifying--future that's much closer than many would imagine. This remarkable book will invite you to marvel at what now seems commonplace and to dream about a future in which the scope of humanity may need to widen to include intelligent machines\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Street sex workers' discourse
Incorporating the voices and insights of street sex workers through personal interviews, this monograph argues that the material conditions of many street workers - the physical environments they live in and their effects on the workers' bodies, identities, and spirits - are represented, reproduced, and entrenched in the language surrounding their work. As an ethnographic case study of a local system that can be extrapolated to other subcultures and the construction of identities, this book disrupts some of the more prevalent academic and lay understandings about street prostitution by providing a thorough analysis of the material conditions surrounding street work and their connection to discourse. McCracken offers an explanation of how constructions can be made differently in order to achieve representations that are generated by the marginalized populations themselves, while placing responsibility for this marginalization on the society in which these people live.
eBook
Discourse, grammar and ideology : functional and cognitive perspectives
\"Researchers in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) have often pointed to grammar as a locus of ideology in discourse. This book illustrates the role that grammars as models of language (and image) can play in revealing ideological properties of texts and discourse in social and political contexts. The book takes the reader through three distinct grammatical frameworks - functional grammar, multimodal grammar and cognitive grammar. Using examples taken from a range of discourses relating to globalisation, including discourses of immigration, war, corporate practice and political protests, the book demonstrates the individual utility and the interconnectedness of these models inside CDA. A key argument advanced is that the cognitive processes necessarily involved in making sense of language are based in visual experience. This position offers new ways of understanding the ideological effects of grammatical choices in texts and suggests a reassessment of the relationship between linguistic and multimodal grammars in CDA. The book will appeal to students and researchers interested in CDA and the relationship between discourse, cognition and social action\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Political metaphor analysis : discourse and scenarios
This book explores the cognitively-oriented approach tometaphor studies, comparing it critically to other contemporary paradigms ofmetaphor in meaning. It incorporates cutting edge empirical data.In both semantics and cognitive linguistics, metaphor has gained central statusover the past decades, chiefly on account of Lakoff and Johnson's 1980 book Metaphors We Live By, which has become astandard point of reference.Rather than advocating a 'pick and mix' combination of cognitive attitudes withtheory and data from other paradigms, the book argues for the methodologicallyreflective comparison of theory traditions and acknowledgement of theirstrengths and weaknesses. This criticalreflection on metaphor is an essential read for students of metaphor at anadvanced undergraduate or postgraduate level. Each chapter outlines areas for further reading and research, and thebook is built around data drawn from a multilingual research corpus ofmetaphors compiled from existing research, other corpora and internet data.
eBook
Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China
After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life in China. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated significantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by the political elites. Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for the authority to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society. Written by an international team of leading scholars, this volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society through a systematic account, analysis and assessment of its salient discourses and their production, circulation, negotiation, and consequences. In particular, the volume focuses on the interplay of politics and media. The book’s intended readership is academics and students of Chinese studies, language and discourse, and media and communication studies.
eBook