This book offers unique insights into the use of Facebook after the 2016 US presidential election, interrogating how users in private groups draw on individual experiences in movement building and identity construction while also critically reflecting on ethnographic practices around social media. The volume draws on the author’s own involvement in a specific Facebook group focused around activism and community organizing in Texas following the 2016 US presidential election. Chapters draw on the frameworks of "small stories" and "stance" to unpack the ways in which group members use parts of their individual stories to signal beliefs to others, present themselves in relation to the group, and signal virtues of moral authority on various pressing political issues. Building on these analyses, Zentz goes on to address ways in which the scales of politics are being navigated and modified at the grassroots level in our highly networked world. This book contributes to ongoing conversations about the realities of internet use within linguistic anthropology and new media studies, and how researchers might seek to account for social media use and access to this data as these technologies develop further. This book is key reading for students and scholars in linguistic anthropology, media studies, and activism and social movement studies.

Against the background of language and nation formation in Indonesia, this book demonstrates how language planning is inseparable from the broader actions of the state, and how postcolonial nationalism and globalization have had profound implications for language use and state actions to control it. Using language planners’ texts, national and regional policy statements and the discussions of university English majors, it explores the borders of what can be defined as Indonesian, Javanese and English languages, and how this is informed by ideologies of language and nationalism in contemporary Indonesia. The tensions played out in the book between the ideologically perceived languages around which policies are built and the realities of linguistic performance and the resources of the individual are echoed across the globe, making this book crucial reading for anyone interested in the interplay of language planning and language use.

A bold vision of liberal humanism for navigating today’s complex world of growing identity politics and rising nationalism Collective identities such as race, nationality, religion, gender, and sexuality clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. To what extent do they constrain our freedom, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? Is diversity of value in itself? Has the rhetoric of human rights been overstretched? Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions, developing an account of ethics that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances and that takes aim at clichés and received ideas about identity. This classic book takes seriously both the claims of individuality—the task of making a life—and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves.

In this classic text, the first full-scale application of cognitive science to politics, George Lakoff analyzes the unconscious and rhetorical worldviews of liberals and conservatives, discovering radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. For this new edition, Lakoff adds a preface and an afterword extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the impeachment of Bill Clinton to the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath.

Time is at the forefront of contemporary scholarly inquiry across the natural sciences and the humanities. Yet the social sciences have remained substantially isolated from time-related concerns. This book argues that time should be a key part of social theory and focuses concern upon issues which have emerged as central to an understanding of today's social world. Through her analysis of time Barbara Adam shows that our contemporary social theories are firmly embedded in Newtonian science and classical dualistic philosophy. She exposes these classical frameworks of thought as inadequate to the task of conceptualizing our contemporary world of standardized time, computers, nuclear power and global telecommunications.

In communities across the US, people wrestle with which languages to use, and who gets to decide. Despite more than 67 million US residents using a language other than English at home, over half of the states in the US have successfully passed English-only policies. Drawing on archives and interviews, this book tells the origin story of the English-only movement, as well as the stories of contemporary language policy campaigns in four Maryland county governments, giving a rare glimpse into what motivates the people who most directly shape language policy in the US. It demonstrates that English-only policies grow from more local levels, rather than from nationalist ideologies, where they are downplayed as harmless community initiatives, but result in monolingual approaches to language remaining increasingly pervasive. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

This concise and highly accessible textbook outlines the principles and techniques of storytelling. It is intended as a high-school and college-level introduction to the central concepts of narrative theory – concepts that will aid students in developing their competence not only in analysing and interpreting short stories and novels, but also in writing them. This textbook prioritises clarity over intricacy of theory, equipping its readers with the necessary tools to embark on further study of literature, literary theory and creative writing. Building on a ‘semiotic model of narrative,’ it is structured around the key elements of narratological theory, with chapters on plot, setting, characterisation, and narration, as well as on language and theme – elements which are underrepresented in existing textbooks on narrative theory. The chapter on language constitutes essential reading for those students unfamiliar with rhetoric, while the chapter on theme draws together significant perspectives from contemporary critical theory (including feminism and postcolonialism). This textbook is engaging and easily navigable, with key concepts highlighted and clearly explained, both in the text and in a full glossary located at the end of the book. Throughout the textbook the reader is aided by diagrams, images, quotes from prominent theorists, and instructive examples from classical and popular short stories and novels (such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis,’ J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, or Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, amongst many others). Prose Fiction: An Introduction to the Semiotics of Narrative can either be incorporated as the main textbook into a wider syllabus on narrative theory and creative writing, or it can be used as a supplementary reference book for readers interested in narrative fiction. The textbook is a must-read for beginning students of narratology, especially those with no or limited prior experience in this area. It is of especial relevance to English and Humanities major students in Asia, for whom it was conceived and written.

This collection showcases the diversity and disciplinary breadth of small stories research, highlighting the growing critical mass of scholarship on small stories and its reach beyond discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. The volume both takes stock of and seeks to advance the development of small stories research by Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Michael Bamberg, as a counterpoint to conventional models in narrative studies, one which has accounted for "atypical" yet salient activities in everyday life, such as fragmentation and open-endedness, anchoring onto the present, and co-constructive dimensions in stories and identities. With data from different languages and contexts, emphasis is placed on the analytical aspects of the paradigm toward producing models for the analysis of structures, textual and interactional choices, and genres of small stories. Chapters on the role and commodification of small stories in digital environments reflect on the paradigm’s recent extension to the analysis of social media communication. This book will appeal to scholars interested in narrative inquiry and narrative analysis, in such fields as sociolinguistics, literary studies, communication studies, and biographical studies.

Rainer Forst develops a critical theory capable of deciphering the deficits and potentials inherent in contemporary political reality. This calls for a perspective which is immanent to social and political practices and at the same time transcends them. Forst regards society as a whole as an ‘order of justification’ comprising complexes of different norms referring to institutions and corresponding practices of justification. The task of a ‘critique of relations of justification’, therefore, is to analyse such legitimations with regard to their validity and genesis and to explore the social and political asymmetries leading to inequalities in the ‘justification power’ which enables persons or groups to contest given justifications and to create new ones. Starting from the concept of justification as a basic social practice, Forst develops a theory of political and social justice, human rights and democracy, as well as of power and of critique itself. In so doing, he engages in a critique of a number of contemporary approaches in political philosophy and critical theory. Finally, he also addresses the question of the utopian horizon of social criticism.