Customer Reviews

Discourse and Word Order (Pragmatics and Beyond Companion Series, No 6)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent book that I, apparently, have the misfortune of never being able to own, because Amazon and its private sellers think $90, minimum, is a fair price for a book from the 80s that can't possibly be in high demand (with respect to the general public).

For those who care about the stuff the book is about, it is delightful. There are so few publishing functional linguists out there that the few books that do come out become "classics" for us, and this is certainly one of them. Yokoyama's TDM (Transactional Discourse Grammar model) makes language into what it should be: Something PRODUCED by PEOPLE, who have their own conceptions of the world and pre-existing knowledge that they bring into every utterance. Basically, after discussing the "seven types of knowledge" (e.g. that x name refers to y object, i.e. referential knowledge; or that "something" fell but not "what" fell, i.e. predicational knowledge) she introduces the TDM. The TDM uses Venn diagrams (plus information about the "here," the "now," the "you" and the "i," e.g. "I am a teacher and you are my student, and we are in a formal setting, during office hours) to represent, in minute detail and multiple steps, just HOW, exactly, I transfer/communicate a bit of knowledge from me to you.

It looks a little scary/technical (diagrams, notations, etc.), but if you read it patiently, you'll see that there's nothing hard to understand about it. In fact, the examples are actually really intuitive and down to earth, and make you go "OH, yeah, that makes perfect sense; I just never had given that any thought. Cool!" I think that if any random person gave this book a go, she/he would find it interesting. As it happens, though, basically only linguists would ever come across it and, moreover, only certain kinds of linguists (the awesome kind! hehe), i.e Functionalists/cognitivists, although it also would hold appeal for anyone interested in the social or psychological aspects of communication, and perhaps even to philosophers (esp. the parts about types of knowledge, and the subjectivity of (what individuals accept or reject) as knowledge/fact.

The TDM has been adopted by followers and built upon (e.g. see Zaitseva, 1995) and continues to be built upon by the author herself. It really is a whole new way of looking at things, in step with functionalist views but at the same time a wholly unique contribution. Excitingly, it serves as a way of understanding ALL speech, so it's not just a book about one little thing, but about how you frame the object of study (language) itself.

It's sad I'll never get to own this book, since i REALLY want my own copy!!! I think Amazon is just arbitrarily setting a ridiculously high price because John Benjamins, itself, has set a ridiculously high price, but usually the ACTUAL selling price of a book is MUCH MUCH MUCH lower than the insane price set by the publishers. That's why people come to amazon in the first place! And private sellers -- do two wrongs make a right? LOWER YOUR PRICES, d*mmit!