The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politicsprovides a comprehensive overview of this core and dynamic area of study and research. Language is indispensable to initiating, justifying, legitimatising and coordinating action as well as negotiating conflict and, as such, is intrinsically linked to the area of politics.

It has now been almost fifty years since linguistic experts began studying Black English as a legitimate speech variety, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound “black.” In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history, while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect.

This is a succinct introduction to the burgeoning field of pragmatics, the study of language from the point of view of its users, of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction, and the effects their use of language has on other participants in an act of communication. Pragmatics reviews the work of Austin, Grice, Searle, Sacks and others and examines the implicit meaning of the irregularities of everyday conversation; and the social importance and the societal determination of even the least consciously proffered "act of language".

With her theory of 'Language as Dialogue', Edda Weigand has opened up a new and promising perspective in linguistic research and its neighbouring disciplines. Her model of 'competence-in-performance' solved the problem of how to bridge the gap between competence and performance and thus substantially shaped the way in which people look at language today.
This book traces Weigand's linguistic career from its beginning to today and comprises a selection of articles which take the reader on a vivid and fascinating journey through the most important stages of her theorizing.

This new edition builds on the foundation established in the previous three editions. The reader will find the writing style of this edition easy to follow, with special focus given to ensuring that each page is user friendly and accessible to all levels of learning. As educators, we wanted to be sure that students found the content manageable, interesting, and understandable.