Total Speech Total Speech
Post-Contemporary Interventions

Total Speech

An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language

    • $29.99
    • $29.99

Publisher Description

Units, rules, codes, systems: this is how most linguists study language. Integrationalists such as Michael Toolan, however, focus instead on how language functions in seamless tandem with the rest of human activity. In Total Speech, Toolan provides a clear and comprehensive account of integrationalism, a major new theory of language that declines to accept that text and context, language and world, are distinct and stable categories. At the same time, Toolan extends the integrationalist argument and calls for a radical change in contemporary theorizing about language and communication.
In every foundational area of linguistics—from literal meaning and metaphor to the nature of repetition to the status of linguistic rules—Toolan advances fascinating and provocative criticisms of received linguistic assumptions. Drawing inspiration from the writings of language theorist Roy Harris, Toolan brings the integrationalist perspective to bear on legal cases, the reception of Salman Rushdie, poetry, and the language of children. Toolan demonstrates that the embeddedness of language and the situation-sensitive mutability of meaning reveal language as a tool for re-fashioning and renewal.
Total Speech breaks free of standard linguistics’ fascinated attraction with “cognitive blueprints” and quasi-algorithmic processing to characterize language anew. Toolan’s reflections on the essence of language, including his important discussion of intention, have strong implications for students and scholars of discourse analysis, literature, the law, anthropology, philosophy of language, communication theory, and cognitive science, as well as linguistics.

  • GENRE
    Professional & Technical
    RELEASED
    1996
    June 12
    LANGUAGE
    EN
    English
    LENGTH
    352
    Pages
    PUBLISHER
    Duke University Press
    SELLER
    Duke University Press
    SIZE
    1.3
    MB

    More Books by Michael Toolan

    The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality The Discursive Construction of Economic Inequality
    2020
    The Language of Inequality in the News The Language of Inequality in the News
    2018
    Language, Text and Context Language, Text and Context
    2016
    Making Sense of Narrative Text Making Sense of Narrative Text
    2016
    Language in Literature Language in Literature
    2014
    Language Teaching Language Teaching
    2009

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    Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
    2013
    Inside the Mouse Inside the Mouse
    1995
    The Rhetoric of Empire The Rhetoric of Empire
    1993
    The Repeating Island The Repeating Island
    1997
    Our America Our America
    1995
    Tarrying with the Negative Tarrying with the Negative
    1993