1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910823347003321

Titolo

The power of words : unveiling the speaker and writer's hidden craft / / David Kaufer ... [et al.] ; foreword by Todd Oakley

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Mahwah, N.J., : Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004

ISBN

1-4106-0974-X

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (273 p.)

Altri autori (Persone)

KauferDavid S

Disciplina

401/.43

Soggetti

English language - Semantics

English language - Spoken English

English language - Written English

Written communication

Oral communication

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-242) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Book Cover; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Table of Contents; Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Words and their Potency for Priming Audiences; I: Preliminaries; 1 Priming Audience and Practices of Literacy; 2 Cataloging English Strings for Their Priming Potencies: A Report of a Research Study; 3 Methods for Selecting and Cataloging Strings; 4 The Catalog Hierarchy; 5 The Hierarchy in Relation to Previous Scholarship; II: Results; 6 Cluster 1: Internal Perspectives; 7 Cluster 2: Relational Perspectives, Part I; 8 Cluster 2: Relational Perspectives, Part II

9 Cluster 3: External PerspectivesIII: Implications and Applications of Rhetorical Priming Theory; 10 Using Priming Strings to Analyze Corpora of Texts; References; Author Index; Subject Index

Sommario/riassunto

In 1888, Mark Twain reflected on the writer's special feel for words to his correspondent, George Bainton, noting that ""the difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter."" We recognize differences between a politician who is ""willful"" and one who is ""willing"" even though the difference does not cross word-stems or parts of speech. We recognize that being ""held up"" evokes different experiences depending upon whether its direct object



is a meeting, a bank, or an example. Although we can notice hundreds of examples in the language where small differe