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This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. From concerns about the ‘other’ and the ‘unknown’ through to anxieties about crime and the apocalyptic and monstrous, these chapters traverse a contemporary landscape of social, cultural and existential fears. How do fictional narratives in literature, film and television programmes construct and entrench fears and anxieties? What can contemporary fears and anxieties tell us about the changing nature of the world? What is perceived as a threat? How do the media shape perceptions of those threats? Gun crime, gender equality, terrorism, technology, black holes, Ebola and the return of the dead are all seen to produce fear and anxiety. Reflecting on the things we have come to fear the most and exploring their specific constructions and implications, this volume brings new dimensions to our understanding of the fears and anxieties that permeate the contemporary West.
There is undoubtedly considerable intellectual and methodological progress evident in approaches to linguistics, from systemic and formal methods, to post-Newtonian transpersonal, non-local models of meaning co-creation built within contemporary language studies. Indeed, such changes are constant – the 20th century product orientation of linguistic research is currently being complemented by ecolinguistic processes, with the linearity of scientific perception and treatment being replaced by the dynamic and multispectral approach of “ecological” theory. This book provides a richly detailed analysis of this profound shift within contemporary language and communication research. A particu...
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2015. This inter-disciplinary volume is centred upon the complex and ever-changing issues entailed by fears and anxieties in contemporary Europe and, thence, the whole world. Indeed, the fate of Europe mirrors the fate of the world itself: events are no longer localized, but, as soon as they have occurred, they have become part and parcel of our experience as a genuinely cosmopolitan species. Some of these fears and anxtieties are nurtured by real events, whilst others are rooted in imaginary phenomena. The experts who have contributed to this exciting work come from different fields of study (from history to economics and from anthropology to linguistics), yet what they have in common is a genuine commitment to the integrity of inter-disciplinary research, which teaches mutual respect and scientific curiosity.
This book examines how proverbs can carry ethnonyms and contradictory oppositions in everyday speech, and interrogates the belief that such nuances are national in nature by comparing across languages and cultures. The authors bring together linguistic terms and typologies from Slavonic, Germanic, Romance, Finno-Ugric and Somali proverbs (with their English parallels) to enrich contrastive paremiology. The book pushes the thematic boundaries of the paremiological minima of languages by drawing on fields including sociolinguistics, and it will be of interest to students and scholars of cultural linguistics, comparative cultural studies, sociolinguistics, social identity, anthropology, cognitive semiotics, and the history of words and concepts.
This interdisciplinary volume offers an attempt to question, perplex and ultimately reframe our collective understanding of punishment.
Since ancient times, explorers and adventurers have captured popular imagination with their frightening narratives of travels gone wrong. Usually, these stories heavily feature the exotic or unknown, and can transform any journey into a nightmare. Stories of such horrific happenings have a long and rich history that stretches from folktales to contemporary media narratives.This work presents eighteen essays that explore the ways in which these texts reflect and shape our fear and fascination surrounding travel, posing new questions about the "geographies of evil" and how our notions of "terrible places" and their inhabitants change over time. The volume's five thematic sections offer new insights into how power, privilege, uncanny landscapes, misbegotten quests, hellish commutes and deadly vacations can turn our travels into terror.
An innovative investigation into how zombie narratives over the past ten years have been specifically leading up to a unique intersection with the world as it exists in the 2020s, this book posits the undead as a vehicle to communicate humanity's pathway into, and out of, the ideological, health and environmental pandemics of our time. Exploring depictions of zombies across literature, poetry, comics, television, film and video games, Simon Bacon brings together this timely intervention into how zombies enable speculation about future modes of being in a changing world and represent the fluid notion of 'old' and 'new' normals. With each chapter moving beyond traditional readings of the undea...
Highly commended at the British Medical Association Book Awards 2019 Are we living in an age of unprecedented anxiety, or has this always been a problem throughout history? We only need look around us to see anxieties: in the family home, the workplace, on social media, and especially in the news. It's true that everyone feels anxious at some time in their lives, but we're told we're all feeling more anxious than we've ever been before - and for longer than we've ever done before. It's even reported that anxiety is a modern epidemic significant enough to challenge the dominance of depression as the most common mental health problem. Much of this increase has been attributed to changes in lif...
This book examines the gun-related policy responses to three school shooting incidents in the United States. Gun violence prevention activists and others involved in policy making were interviewed for the book, and news media articles and policy documents were critically assessed. As a result, interpretations of the Second Amendment are shown to affect the acceptability of certain gun restrictions. News media content and policy documents, coupled with the thoughts of activists, also give an indication of why certain policy measures passed and others failed at the time of each of the case studies. This book should be of interest to social policy, politics, criminology and sociology students and academics, as well as those with a general interest in the topic.
Volumul Litere fără obstacole de Cătălin Ghiță e ca o continuare a cărții sale din 2005, Ipostaze ale actului critic. El reunește texte axate pe teme mai puțin dezbătute în critica românească, pe care le analizează dintr-o perspectivă eminamente comparatistă. Autorul respinge șabloanele și optează pentru o metodologie exegetică suplă, racordata la instrumentele de lucru ale teoriei literare occidentale.