SUMMARY Janet McIntosh’s Kill Talk: Language and Military Necropolitics explores how language sustains the moral, psychological, and political structures of modern warfare. Written primarily for scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, military studies, and discourse analysis, the book’s accessible prose also extends its reach to veterans and general readers concerned with the ethical dimensions of military life. McIntosh tested portions of the manuscript with veterans, ensuring

SUMMARY This book began as a contribution to the excellent online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It has since been considerably expanded, but remains quite a short book. (It is printed in an unusually narrow page format, perhaps in order to swell the page-count to a respectable figure for a standalone book.) Despite its brevity, the book covers a remarkable amount of ground. Its central focus, as might be expected, is on what is standardly called the “Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis” or just the

Multilingualism is the normal condition for contemporary as well as historical human societies. However, European nation-state building has led to a strong “monolingual habitus” that constructs a community of monolingual speakers as bearers of a nation. This erases or exoticises multilinguistic practices and excludes multilingual speakers. The effects of this exclusion are visible in the public discourse on multilingual speakers, where we find a widespread “Othering” of multilingual speakers, un

This volume contains a selection of papers that were originally presented at a workshop "Cross-disciplinary approaches to Information Structure in African languages", held in Porto-Novo, Benin in 2022. Eight papers explore information structure in Niger-Congo languages from different linguistic angles: phonetics, phonology, syntax and semantics. The papers address a range of topics in different Niger- Congo languages from both junior and senior scholars in the field of linguistics, reflecting bo

Humans are confronted everyday with an influx of sounds coming from several sources. In a given auditory environment, some of the sound events might be unexpected, rare, or new. Our cognitive system has the ability to detect such sounds, and consequently activate an attention orienting response. This book provides an in-depth investigation of the interplay between prosody and attention orienting during online speech processing by using two complementary experimental methods, electrophysiology

Locative and existential predications are fundamental linguistic constructions that exhibit significant formal overlap while serving distinct communicative functions. Locative clauses typically anchor a definite referent to a spatial context, whereas existential clauses introduce new, often indefinite, referents into discourse. Despite their central role in syntactic and typological research, the cross-linguistic diversity of these predications remains largely underexplored. This collective volu

With the exception of English and its varieties, all Present-Day Germanic languages display some kind of verb-second (V2) rule, according to which the finite verbal form has to be put in the second position of the clause in declarative utterances. But even within the Germanic domain, the exact contours of the V2 rule vary strongly in time and space. Above all, the so-called bottleneck demanding that one and only one constituent be placed before the finite verb is not equally respected in all Ger

Storytelling is a means of fostering a sense of identity, belonging, and continuity. Through stories, Indigenous peoples understand and interpret the world, and learn how to survive in spite of external forces such as colonialism. Storytelling has been studied by many scholars across myriad disciplines; however, its importance in dealing with trauma and in shaping identity demand further study. This volume contributes to an understanding of the importance of storytelling in shaping identity and

This book comprehends a unique collection of articles on the rhetorical tools, with special reference to both discursive and verbo-visual metaphor. It focuses on monomodal and multimodal figurative representations in wine discourse, in political discourse, and in the sports media. Moreover, it encompasses a discussion of the questionable role played by metaphor in scientific discourse concerning climate issues. The art and cognition, and multimodality issues are empowered in this volume through

This volume brings together research on Italian and Italo-Romance varieties spoken as heritage languages across the world, with contributions from different fields of linguistics and from diverse regions (the Americas, Australia, Europe). It offers a timely update on the state of the art, combining studies on relatively well-documented communities with investigations of lesser-known groups and linguistic phenomena. A distinctive feature of the book is its search for a shared framework for studyi

The next talk in our 2025-2026 McGill Linguistics Colloquium Series will be given by Simon Charlow (Yale University) on Friday, October 24th at 3:30pm at Leacock 232. The details of the talk are given below. Title: Effect-oriented interpreters for natural language Abstract: Computer programs are often factored into ‘pure’ components — simple, total functions from inputs to outputs — and components that […]

The Syntax-Semantics Group will be meeting on Tuesday, October 21, at 3-4pm in Room 117 of the McGill linguistics department. Online participants can join with this link: https://mcgill.zoom.us/meeting/register/bQ4IXlJxTTShVcMHOosNtQ Varya Tiutiunnikova (McGill) will be presenting “Bare NPs are choice functions in Uralic languages.” Here is the abstract: Chierchia (1998) and Dayal (2004) proposed a unified approach to […]

The International Workshop on Empirical and Psycholinguistic Studies on Balkan Languages aims to bring together researchers working on psycholinguistic and other empirical, experimental, and data-driven approaches to Balkan languages. The workshop will focus on research addressing Balkan languages, their contact within the Balkan language area or their contact with other languages, their acquisition and processing. We particularly welcome submissions that involve empirical data-driven research,

This conference invites scholars to critically examine how sustainability and climate issues are communicated, contested, and enacted through discourse in diverse social, institutional, and technological contexts. We seek to explore how discourse contributes to constructing environmental problems, mobilising collective action, and framing pedagogical approaches to sustainability education. Contributions that interrogate how discursive practices may reinforce inequities, marginalise certain voice

The International Workshop on Empirical and Psycholinguistic Studies on Balkan Languages aims to bring together researchers working on psycholinguistic and other empirical, experimental, and data-driven approaches to Balkan languages. The workshop will focus on research addressing Balkan languages, their contact within the Balkan language area or their contact with other languages, their acquisition and processing. We particularly welcome submissions that involve empirical data-driven research,

Description: We are seeking to hire a highly motivated, driven, and talented post-doctoral researcher to participate in the project “Memory access in language (MEMLANG): how we store and retrieve linguistic information” led by Jakub Dotlacil. The job is offered for the duration of 2 years and will be carried out at the Institute for Language Sciences (ILS) at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. The ideal candidate should have a strong background in computational research on language, whet

This conference invites scholars to critically examine how sustainability and climate issues are communicated, contested, and enacted through discourse in diverse social, institutional, and technological contexts. We seek to explore how discourse contributes to constructing environmental problems, mobilising collective action, and framing pedagogical approaches to sustainability education. Contributions that interrogate how discursive practices may reinforce inequities, marginalise certain voice

This 3rd DIELE conference, to be held at Stellenbosch University in South Africa in 2026, follows the two successful conferences in Bangkok (2022) and Tokyo (2024). The 3rd conference is being organised by scholars from the University of York, UK, Monash University, Australia, and Stellenbosch University, South Africa. The Conference Committee cordially invites presenters from the previous conferences and new delegates to join the vibrant and welcoming DIELE community at the 2026 event. Inclu

This 3rd DIELE conference, to be held at Stellenbosch University in South Africa in 2026, follows the two successful conferences in Bangkok (2022) and Tokyo (2024). The 3rd conference is being organised by scholars from the University of York, UK, Monash University, Australia, and Stellenbosch University, South Africa. The Conference Committee cordially invites presenters from the previous conferences and new delegates to join the vibrant and welcoming DIELE community at the 2026 event. Inclu

We are conducting a study on how native English speakers perceive and evaluate English sentences. Your participation would be greatly appreciated. You will see 24 English sentences, presented one by one. After reading each sentence, please judge how grammatical and natural it sounds in English, using a 5-point scale. The task should take less than 10 minutes to complete. Here is the link to the survey: https://york.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dau89vLrXjjXOzc Thank you very much for you