DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Power of Words

Unveiling the Speaker and Writer's Hidden Craft

Jeff Collins author David S Kaufer author Brian S Butler author Suguru Ishizaki author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Inc

Published:1st Dec '03

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

The Power of Words cover

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 differences in wording produce large reader effects, the authors of The Power of Words argue that these examples are random glimpses of a hidden systematic knowledge that governs how we, as writers or speakers, learn to shape experience for other human beings.

Over the past several years, David Kaufer and his colleagues have developed a software program for analyzing writing called DocuScope. This book illustrates the concepts and rhetorical theory behind the software analysis, examining patterns in writing and showing writers how their writing works in different categories to accomplish varying objectives. Reflecting the range and variety of audience experience that contiguous words of surface English can prime, the authors present a theory of language as an instrument of rhetorically priming audiences and a catalog of English strings to implement the theory. The project creates a comprehensive map of the speaker and writer's implicit knowledge about predisposing audience experience at the point of utterance.

The book begins with an explanation of why studying language from the standpoint of priming--not just meaning--is vital to non-question begging theories of close reading and to language education in general. The remaining chapters in Part I detail the steps taken to prepare a catalog study of English strings for their properties as priming instruments. Part II describes in detail the catalog of priming categories, including enough examples to help readers see how individual words and strings of English fit into the catalog. The final part describes how the authors have applied the catalog of English strings as priming tools to conduct textual research.

"The Power of Words is a profoundly original masterpiece that completely changes our understanding of language from its very foundations. There are perhaps only a handful of books that have altered our entire formulation of language itself, and this book is one of them. In a very clear sense, it opens up a new science of language. From the first page, one enters an extraordinarily original world of concepts and analytic tools, that are used to reveal language as a more powerful means of action than has been previously grasped. One can literally say that, in the hands of David Kaufer and his colleagues, language becomes a new phenomenon. In summary: This is a monumental contribution-one of the few revolutions in our understanding of language-and will become not only a classic masterpiece in the humanities, but a major source for the expansion of scientific research into language, leading to substantial improvement in the linguistic capacities of computers." --Professor Michael Leyton Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey"

ISBN: 9780805847833

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 660g

272 pages