front cover of Understanding Language Structure, Interaction, and Variation, Third Ed.
Understanding Language Structure, Interaction, and Variation, Third Ed.
An Introduction to Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics for Nonspecialists
Steven Brown, Salvatore Attardo, and Cynthia Vigliotti
University of Michigan Press, 2014

Understanding Language Structure, Interaction, and Variation is an introduction to the study of language and applied linguistics for students who have had a minimum of exposure to the discipline of linguistics. Using clear, easy-to-understand explanations and examples, this text avoids the in-depth theoretical coverage found in texts written for those who specialize in linguistics or SLA. As a result, this book is perfect for students whose chosen fields require them to be acquainted with the ways language works--such as future teachers, psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists--but who do not intend to become linguists. The text is also suitable for English or ESL/EFL teachers who need a reference volume about various aspects of language, particularly as it applies to teaching. Each chapter includes research projects and further readings. 

The third edition of Understanding Language Structure, Interaction, and Variation features a new design and reorganization. All content has been significantly revised and updated. Each chapter also debunks a common language myth and now incorporates exercises that, for prior editions, appeared in a supplementary workbook. Extra practice for students is available online, as is additional materials for teachers. (There is no workbook for the third edition.)  

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Unshadowed Thought
Representation in Thought and Language
Charles Travis
Harvard University Press, 2000

This book mounts a sustained attack on ideas that are dear to many practitioners of analytic philosophy. Charles Travis targets the seductive illusion that—in Wittgenstein’s terms—“if anyone utters a sentence and means or understands it, he is operating a calculus according to definite rules.” This book rejects the idea that thoughts are essentially representational items whose content is independent of context. In doing so, it undermines the foundations of much contemporary philosophy of mind.

Travis’s main argument in Unshadowed Thought is that linguistic expressions and forms are occasion-sensitive; they cannot be abstracted out of a concrete context. With compelling examples and a thoroughgoing scrutiny of opposing positions, his book systematically works out the implications of the work of J. L. Austin, Hilary Putnam, and John McDowell. Eloquently insisting that there is no particular way one must structure what one relates to, no one way one must represent it, Unshadowed Thought identifies and resists a certain strain of semantic Platonism that permeates current philosophy—a strain that has had profoundly troubling consequences for our ideas about attitudes and beliefs and for our views about what language might be.

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The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism
Lourdes Ortega, Andrea E. Tyler, Hae In Park, and Mariko Uno, Editors
Georgetown University Press

When humans learn languages, are they also learning how to create shared meaning? In The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism, a cadre of international experts say yes and offer cutting-edge research in usage-based linguistics to explore how language acquisition, in particular multilingual language acquisition, works.

Each chapter presents an original study that supports the view that language learning is initiated through local and meaningful communication with others. Over an accumulated history of such usage, people gradually create more abstract, interactive schematic representations, or a mental grammar. This process of acquiring language is the same for infants and adults and across varied contexts, such as the family, the classroom, the laboratory, a hospital, or a public encounter. Employing diverse methodologies to study this process, the contributors here work with target languages, including Cantonese, English, French, French Sign Language, German, Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Spanish, and Swedish, and offer a much-needed exploration of this growing area of linguistic research.

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The Use of Language
Prashant Parikh
CSLI, 2001
Building on the work of J. L. Austin and Paul Grice, The Use of Language develops an original and systematic game-theoretic account of communication, speaker meaning, and addressee interpretation, extending this analysis to conversational implicature and the Gricean maxims, illocutionary force, miscommunication, visual representation and visual implicature, and aspects of discourse.
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