Ways with Words, first published in 1983, is a classic study of children learning to use language at home and at school in two communities only a few miles apart in the south-eastern United States. 'Roadville' is a white working-class community of families steeped for generations in the life of textile mills; 'Trackton' is an African-American working-class community whose older generations grew up farming the land, but whose existent members work in the mills. In tracing the children's language development the author shows the deep cultural differences between the two communities, whose ways with words differ as strikingly from each other as either does from the pattern of the townspeople, the 'mainstream' blacks and whites who hold power in the schools and workplaces of the region. Employing the combined skills of ethnographer, social historian, and teacher, the author raises fundamental questions about the nature of language development, the effects of literacy on oral language habits, and the sources of communication problems in schools and workplaces.

This book, first published in 1983, traces language patterns and cultural differences between 'Roadville' and 'Tracton'.

This is an interdisciplinary collection of articles analyzing seven classic premodern Chinese texts that are provided in translation.

This work sets out Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts for at least the last ten years of his life. Starting from an exhaustive examination of his already well-known distinction between performative utterances and statements, Austin here finally abandons that distinction, replacing it with a more general theory of 'illocutionary forces' of utterances which has important bearings on a wide variety of philosophicalproblems.

A thirty year study tracking the changes in family life and language development in 300 working-class families from 1981 onwards.

Describes sign language and other ways that people communicate without words.

Adapting the methods of the much admired and extremely successful composition anthology Ways of Reading, this brief reader offers eight substantial essays about visual culture (illustrated with evocative photographs) along with demanding and innovative apparatus that engages students in conversations about the power of images.