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Aimed at A-Level and beginning undergraduate students, Language and Gender:

• explores the relationship between language and our ideas about men and women
• challenges commonly expressed views on the subject of language and gender
• highlights the individual's role in the expression of gender stereotyping
• includes a range of text types as diverse as personal ads, wildlife documentary, literary fiction and classical music programmes
• includes a comprehensive glossary of terms.

The new edition has been updated and revised and key features include: an additional chapter on Gender, discourse and identities; integration of focus on gender, sexualization, and sexuality; inclusion of international examples, texts and images.

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A comprehensive history of a small, but important, comic book publisher, this work reflects the reading tastes of tens of millions of Americans during the Golden and Silver ages of comics (1934-1970). The earlier Sangor "Shop" reinvented itself as the American Comics Group and by 1967 had published over one thousand issues. ACG was a microcosm of the larger industry, publishing magazines in every major comic book genre. Best known titles include "Herbie" and "Forbidden Worlds." It was ACG's "Adventures into the Unknown" that sparked a new genre--horror--which led to the Comics Code Authority, and industry-wide "self" censorship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

also available
The magazine "Alter Ego" reprinted this entire book in issue #61 a few years back. Since this book is out of print and extremely expensive, that is a much better option for most folks who just want the information. The magazine version also has the benefit of being illustrated.The publisher is Twomorrows Publishing at Twomorrows.com- they also have digital versions of their publications at a reduced price. Not kindle, but pdf.This is a very well written and informative text - it deserves to be shared as widely as possible.

A great book about a little comic book company
Michael Vance has written a fascinating book about ACG, a relatively obscure little comic book company that put out some great stuff, as well as lots of duds. Vance doesn't regurgitate stuff from other 'history' books...he actually interviewed people who were there during ACG'sexistence, starting in the 1940's through 1967. The result is awell-written history of ACG, with lots of great anecdotes and insideinformation. My only complaint is that there are no illustrations.A bookabout comic books really needs at least a few! However, the writing stillmakes this book a must for 40's-60's comic book fans. ... Read more

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Offering unique insight into the conversation andlanguage of today's youth, this book focuses on the various uses of language to construct selves and identities, and characterize relationships between individuals, groups, subcultures, and society. Provides an empirical examination of the accounts of members of different subcultures, such as punks androckers, and the ways that identity and self are constructed. For sociologists and social psychologists. ... Read more

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This book identifies the many facets of culture that influence second language learners and teachers. It addresses the impact of culture on learning to interact, speak, construct meaning, and write in a second language and within the sociocultural paradigms specific to a particular language and its speakers. By providing a comprehensive introduction to research from other disciplines on the interaction between language and culture, this volume offers an important contribution to the field of second language acquisition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Useful Resource but Dated to Some Degree
As another reader indicated, this is a useful resource for the L2 educator. However, bear in mind that the chapter by Cortazzi and Jin is quite dated. Many of the generalizations they make about the mainland Chinese culture of learning are no longer accurate, a fact which they must have realized to some extent when revising their assessment of that socio-cultural context in their research article from 2006. In the decade since the publication of this chapter, much has changed, some for the better (in terms of the improvement in EFL textbooks and curricula in general) and much has worsened (in terms of student attitudes toward foreign teachers, diligence in study, and general motivation to learn English).

Language Education and Culture
If you're looking for a resource on the effects of culture on learning second languages, this is an excellent book to read.The three main areas covered in this book are how culture influences classroom interaction, how culture influences second-language writing, and how materials can be used to cross cultural barriers.This is useful book to have if you're studying in the field of ESL/EFL. ... Read more

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With applications throughout the social sciences, culture and psychology is a rapidly growing field that has experienced a boom in publication over the last decade. From this proliferation of books, chapters, and journal articles, exciting developments have emerged in the relationship of culture to cognitive processes, human development, psychopathology, social behavior, organizational behavior, neuroscience, language, marketing, and other topics. In recognition of this exponential growth, Advances in Culture and Psychology is the first annual series to offer state-of-the-art reviews of scholarly research in the growing field of culture and psychology.

The goals for Advances in Culture and Psychology are simple:

*Develop an intellectual home for culture and psychology research programs
*Foster bridges and connections among cultural scholars from across the discipline
*Create a highly-cited volume and a premier outlet for culture and psychology research
* Publish articles that reflect the theoretical, methodological, and epistemological diversity in the study of culture and psychology
*Enhance the collective identity of the culture and psychology field

Comprising chapters from internationally renowned culture scholars and representing diversity in the theory and study of culture within psychology, Advances in Culture and Psychology is an ideal resource for research programs and academics throughout the psychology community. ... Read more

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Reading Culture is the original cultural studies-based reader. Now in its fourth edition, this widely used text continues to challenge students with provocative readings, images, writing assignments, and fieldwork projects. In addition to an updated case study of talk television, this edition of Reading Culture includes a second case study which draws on both print and internet resources to examine debates on the meaning and the consequences of the Columbine High School shootings. As with previous editions, Reading Culture continues to include instruction for reading and evaluating visual messages, for conducting micro-ethnographies, and for writing about the culture of everyday life. ... Read more

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An analysis of each of the major mass media. Newspapers, books and magazines, radio, television and cinema are each analyzed in a separate chapter to show the satisfactions they provide, the way they structure content, and thus the ways in which they structure the way audiences view the world. Appendices show how media affect our concept of the self, and how advertisers use this power to link self image to the products they sell. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

an excellent reader defining the ethnic experience in WMASP America
Because of recent dialogs I have been having with other Amazon reviewers concerning the immigrant experience, how the American establishment has treated and still treats immigrants and its own ethnic-defined citizens, I dug out this reader that will bring illumination to the topic at hand. WMASP? White Male Anglo-Saxon Protestant, the establishment yesterday and today.

Chapter 1 of "Common Reader" lists the cultures represented in the book: ethnic, racial, generational, regional, economic, sexual, educational, professional. Regional? I was recently told by a New Yorker that Southerners seem less intelligent because of their accent. Generational? Look in your own families. How much patience is accorded Grandma because she walks and talks slower now? And we all know that rich people are better than poor people. And so on.

"[T]he various ethnic,racial, cultural, and special interest groups that make up the United States are engaged in a constant process of definition, redefinition, and negotiation....[T]hey also challenge the status quo" (2). "[K]eep in mind that in a multicultural society each group has an effect on every other group"(2).

Two questions posed in Chapter 1:
1. Are we, as some suggest, moving toward cultural compromises that will allow us to live--despite our differences--as a single nation? or
2. Are we, as others suggest, moving toward two nations: one mostly white, middle class, and affluent, and another composed mainly of people of color, mostly alienated, poor, and marginalized?

The first essay is by Elizabeth Wong, who fought with her parents against going to language school to learn Chinese. She felt more American. She ends with a poignant remark of regret for rejecting her culture.

Audre Lorde, whose parents immigrated from Grenada in the Caribbean, recounts a time when the family went to Washington, D.C. for the 4th of July as a graduation present. When they entered an ice cream store for vanilla ice cream, they were told they couldn't be served. All dressed up and no ice cream in sight. She had "white" memories of that trip: the white light on her weak eyes, white counter and floor, white waitress, and white ice cream that never was.

Ishmael Reed's essay, "My Neighborhood" is set in first Los Angeles, then Oakland, where he and his wife lived in several mixed, middle class white, affluent white, and black neighborhoods. After he recounts his experiences in each, the reader understands why he called his last neighborhood "a human" one.

One of the most heartbreaking essays is by Mary Mebane, "Shades of Black." According to Mebane, who was very dark-skinned, blacks are judged by blacks by their skin color, light, of course, the best. During the 1960's a paradigm shift occurred with black black taking the top position. Black is beautiful. Black Power.

The last I will summarize is "The Fear of Losing a Culture" by Richard Rodriguez. It wafts an aroma of passion, change, betrayal, loss, and synthesis. Harking to the concept of magic realism, Rodriguez says: "In culture as in blood, Latin America was formed by a rape that became a marriage....Latin America was formed by a medieval Catholic dream of one world--a meltdown conversion--the United States was built up from Protestant individualism" (402).

There are many more fine essays that define the ethnic experience for good or bad. We read these experiences of others and dialog what there is yet to do, to change, to convert, to ameliorate, to understand, to educate. Pick a word for the betterment of communication between and amongst races, religions, cultures, and all the things that divide us. Let us make amends.

Dedicated to GHB

I HAVE A DREAM has been altered in this text!
This text includes Martin Luther King, Jrs I HAVE A DREAM--and it has been changed!Words, phrases, whole sentences have been omitted!Some words and phrases have been rewritten, changed!These changes alter the meaningof many aspects of the text!My students and I just discovered this whilereading the speech and watching the video.I am HORRIFIED!And mystudents and I are contacting the publisher, the NAACP, the Kingfamily--and anyone else we can think of.What kind of academics is THIS?! Talk about appropriating history!

Depressing but overall okay
This book was okay. However lots of the short stories seemed to depressing and lacked the uplifting spirt, that one would expect with a multi-culture reader such as this one.It is the text book I use for English Comp. incollege. Some of the stories are good. My favorite essay in the books wasIshmael Reed's entitled "My Neighborhood" ... Read more

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Excellent Intermediate Reader
This is a great book if you are a Spanish teacher.It works well with just about any curriculum.Mayan Safari teaches culture while reinforcing reading skills in the target language. It also contains extra activities for students to do. ... Read more

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Are "deviant" and "criminal" behaviors inherently wrong or evil? Taking an innovative cross-cultural approach, Deviance Across Cultures spans the globe to give instructors an invaluable new resource for investigating the social construction of deviance. From studies on prostitution and drugs to examinations of religion and corporate deviance, this anthology--a collection of both classic and contemporary articles--responds to the growing need for interdisciplinary and global learning in deviance studies.

To create a strong framework for inquiry, editor Robert Heiner has written a comprehensive introduction to each article that emphasizes the topic's relationship to theory and to ongoing trends affecting the United States and other countries. Throughout, careful attention to distant cultures will encourage students to understand deviance from an academic--and less emotional--perspective.

Ideal as either a main text or a supplementary reader, this collection builds on classic deviance theory and basic sociological concepts to introduce students to this complex subject. With its rich global perspective, Deviance Across Cultures will challenge and expand students' assumptions about social deviance--both at home and abroad. ... Read more

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Deviance Across Cultures
Excellent text for sociology of deviance undergraduate level course. Does a good job of combining theories with cultural applications. ... Read more

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In Lockhart, Texas, a rural working-class town just south of Austin, country music is a way of life. Conversation slips easily into song, and the songs are full of conversation. Anthropologist and musician Aaron A. Fox spent years in Lockhart making research notes, music, and friends. In Real Country, he provides an intimate, in-depth ethnography of the community and its music. Showing that country music is deeply embedded in the textures of working-class life, Fox argues that it is the cultural and intellectual property of working-class people and not only of the Nashville-based music industry or the stars whose lives figure so prominently in popular and scholarly writing about the genre.

Fox has spent hundreds of hours observing, recording, and participating in talk and music-making in beer joints, garage jam sessions, and trailer homes. He renders the everyday life of Lockhart’s working-class community in detail, right down to the ice cold beer, the battered guitars, and the technical skills of such local musical legends as Randy Meyer and Larry "Hoppy" Hopkins. Throughout, Fox focuses on the human voice. His analyses of conversations, interviews, songs, and vocal techniques show how feeling and experience are expressed, and how local understandings of place, memory, musical aesthetics, working-class social history, race, and gender are shared. In Real Country, working-class Texans re-imagine their past and give voice to the struggles and satisfactions of their lives in the present through music. ... Read more

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Buy this book!
If you read one book about country music, this is the one you should read. Fox's brilliant analysis sidesteps the whole Nashville-Dollywood-Branson commericial thing to explore how working class people in rural Texas and Illinois use country music to express their senses of self and their aesthetic and cultural values. The way he writes about the singing voice and the way he incorporates the character of the people he studied with into his presentation is about the best I've seen. Why only four stars, you ask? Well.....It can get a little dense sometimes - he has a theoretical point to make about music and culture, and he is after all a scholar (teaches in the music department at Columbia University). But bear with that and you'll be very happy you did. If you love country music, read this book. ... Read more

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Language, Bureaucracy and Social Control explores the varying inter-relationships between language, forms of bureaucratic organisation and social control. The text provides a detailed examination of the discursive dimensions of some of the key techniques of modern power: the 'productive' surveillance practices of administrative and public service institutions. Special attention is paid to recent developments within the state domain and the private economy such as the introduction of consumerism and promotional practices in welfare institutions, and the spread of bureaucratisation in contexts such as banking and education. ... Read more

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This is a series about language in the real world, and about the relationships between language, society and social change. Books in the series will draw on natural language data from a wide range of social contexts and will take a critical approach to each subject, challenging current orthodoxies and dealing with familiar topics in new ways. The pronunciation of English shows wide regional differences, although the extent of variation in spoken English grammar is less widely appreciated. This book provides accurate and up-to-date information on regional variation in the use of grammatical constructions of English and directs readers to resources where further information on the subject is available. A pioneer effort in the field of spoken English grammar, containing contributions from many experts in the field. Uses case studies to illustrate the differences in grammar between Scottish, Irish, Northumbrian and South-Eastern spoken English. Drawing on current research, it discusses in detail the extent of variation in grammar and the implications of this in the educational process. ... Read more

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Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets), have often been used in deaf education, and have subsequently been adopted as a distinct part of a number of sign languages around the world. Historically, manual alphabets have had a number of additional applications ? including use as ciphers, as mnemonics, and in silent religious settings. ... Read more

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Major problems exist of differently diagnosing language-minority children who are in the process of learning English as a second language, and even sometimes show low levels of language proficiency. These children are often over-represented in special education classes when, in fact, they are normal children or even superior in the process of learning English as a second language. These children are also under-represented in gifted classes due to inappropriate tests and models used, as well as negative attitudes and lack of knowledge on the part of the teachers and evaluators.This edited volume seeks to increase the availability of research-derived knowledge and educational applications in the field of second-language learning.Virginia Gonzalez offers a rare and highly creative approach to second language acquisition research by applying contemporary cognitive psychology theory as a framework for investigating bilingual issues.The book offers a coherent and unified philosophy and context, presenting original research studies that provide a multidimensional socioeducational view to second-language learning and instruction in children and adults.Gonzalez and her colleagues assume the identity of the "Ethnic-Researcher," thereby emphasizing the need to include cultural and linguistic factors when studying, assessing, and instructing second-language learners.School psychologists, therapists, social workers. ... Read more

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Second Language Learning
This book gives great reviews of theories and how they look in practice. The book focuses more on Spanish/English speaking students, but provides invaluable insight into what is happening with language acquisition.Thechapters on assessment are priceless.Non bias assessment is veryimportant and this book gives definitions and ideas for assessment.Achapter is also included regarding special education and minority students.Once again, she offers a statement of the problem, assessment modes, andmethods.This book provides what teachers need to know in order to educatelanguage minority children in thier classroom.It is easy to read and abook that is hard to put down.There is so much fantastic information isthis book that it is a definate keeper! ... Read more

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New Edition. ... Read more

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What communicative experiences are particular to African Americans? How do many African Americans define themselves culturally? How do they perceive intracultural and intercultural communication? These questions are answered in this second edition of African American Communication: Exploring Identity and Culture. Informing multiple audiences interested in African American culture, from cultural researchers and practitioners to educators, policymakers, and community leaders, this innovative and invaluable resource examines the richness and depth of African American communication norms and patterns, as well as African American identities. Positive and healthy African American identities are centrally positioned throughout the book.

Applying the cultural contracts theory and the communication theory of identity, authors Michael L. Hecht, Ronald L. Jackson II, and Sidney A. Ribeau explore relationships among African Americans, as well as between African Americans and European Americans, while highlighting the need for sensitivity to issues of power when discussing race, ethnicity, and culture. This wide-ranging volume provides an extensive review of the relevant literature and offers recommendations designed to encourage understanding of African American communication in a context extending beyond Eurocentric paradigms.

Considering African American identity with a communicative, linguistic, and relational focus, this volume:
*Defines African American identities by describing related terms, such as self, self-concept, personhood and identity;
*Explores Afrocentricity and African American discourse;
*Examines the status of African Americans in the United States using census statistics and national studies from other research agencies;
*Considers identity negotiation and competence; and
*Features a full chapter on African American relationships, including gendered, familial, intimate, adolescent and adult, homosexual, friendship, communal, and workplace relationships.

African American Communication: Exploring Identity and Culture begins an important dialogue in the communication discipline, intercultural studies, African American studies and other fields concerned with the centrality of culture and communication as it relates to human behavior. It is intended for advanced students and scholars in intercultural communication, interpersonal communication, communication theory, African American/Black studies, social psychology, sociolinguistics, education, and family studies.
... Read more