Languages and Cultures in Contrast and Comparison

This volume explores various hitherto under-researched relationships between languages and their discourse-cultural settings. The first two sections analyze the complex interplay between lexico-grammatical organization and communicative contexts. Part I focuses on structural options in syntax, deepening the analysis of information-packaging strategies. Part II turns to lexical studies, covering such matters as human perception and emotion, the psychological understanding of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’, the development of children’s emotional life and the relation between lexical choice and sexual orientation. The final chapters consider how new techniques of contrastive linguistics and pragmatics are contributing to the primary field of application for contrastive analysis, language teaching and learning. The book will be of special interest to scholars and students of linguistics, discourse analysis and cultural studies and to those entrusted with teaching European languages and cultures. The major languages covered are Akan, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish.

Gaëtanelle Gilquin, Université catholique de Louvain, in Language in Contrast Vol. 11:1 (2011):
[...] the book should make for interesting reading for a wide and diverse readership. Besides the variety of languages, themes, approaches and data represented, its assets include the extensive use of glosses to help understand non-English examples, a well-balanced structure (four articles in each part) and detailed indexes. Particularly noteworthy too is the inclusion of under-researched topics, as well as the consideration for SLA and cultural aspects [...]. More generally, the book makes a good job of showing that contrastive linguistics is opening up to new fields and new themes, and will hopefully encourage to develop these (and other) relationships even further.