Michael Newman

New York City English is one of the most recognizable of US dialects, and research on it launched modern sociolinguistics. Yet the city’s speech has never before received a comprehensive description and analysis. In this book, Michael Newman examines the differences and similarities among the ways English is spoken by the extraordinarily diverse population living in the NY dialect region. He uses data from a variety of sources including older dialectological accounts, classic and recent variationist studies, and original research on speakers from around the dialect region. All levels of language are explored including phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, and discourse along with a history of English in the region. But this book provides far more than a dialectological and historical inventory of linguistic features. The forms used by different groups of New Yorkers are discussed in terms of their complex social meanings. Furthermore, Newman illustrates the varied forms of sociolinguistic significance with examples from the personal experiences of a variety of New Yorkers and includes links to sound files on the publisher’s site and videos on YouTube. The result is a rigorous but accessible and compelling account of the English spoken in this great city.

New York City English is one of the most recognizable of US dialects, and research on it launched modern sociolinguistics. Yet the city’s speech has never before received a comprehensive description and analysis. In this book, Michael Newman examines the differences and similarities among the ways English is spoken by the extraordinarily diverse population living in the NY dialect region. He uses data from a variety of sources including older dialectological accounts, classic and recent variationist studies, and original research on speakers from around the dialect region. All levels of language are explored including phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, and discourse along with a history of English in the region. But this book provides far more than a dialectological and historical inventory of linguistic features. The forms used by different groups of New Yorkers are discussed in terms of their complex social meanings. Furthermore, Newman illustrates the varied forms of sociolinguistic significance with examples from the personal experiences of a variety of New Yorkers and includes links to sound files on the publisher’s site and videos on YouTube. The result is a rigorous but accessible and compelling account of the English spoken in this great city.

Harold Laski (1893-1950) was perhaps the best known socialist intellectual of his era, influential in the USA, India and mainland Europe as well as Britain. A controversial figure, he was attacked in the Cold War years for his continued defence of socialist principles. This biography argues that Laski has been misrepresented. It maintains that he dedicated his life to the quest for a just society, and that his thought remains highly relevant for our own times. This first paperback edition includes a new preface assessing the relevance of Laski's legacy today. Some Reviews of the hardback edition: 'In this beautifully written, minutely researched and very thoughtful book, Professor Newman has at last provided Laski with the biography that he so manifestly deserves.' Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 'Mr Newman's brilliant book is eminently worthy of his subject'. Jewish Chronicle 'Justice has now been done in Michael Newman's excellent, well-researched and eloquent biography. It has the supreme merit of bringing together Laski's roles as theorist and activist'. New Statesman and Society 'a closely argued book which offers an intelligent and spirited defence of Laski'. The Guardian

A year after Richard Prince's Untitled (cowboy) photograph set a record for the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction, a study of a work from Richard Prince's series of Untitled (couples) considers the long history of the image and Prince as a pioneer of the approproated image.In Richard Prince's 1977 work Untitled (couple), difference mixes uncannily with sameness. We can't quite tell whether the shiny couple we see is human or android; their clothing seems curiously out of date. Why do they fascinate us? What is it about their typicality that produces an impression of strangeness? Michael Newman explores Prince's work and his revival of the image through photography-rephotographed reproduced photographs-after the impasses of conceptualism. Newman examines the relation of Prince's work to images appearing in illustrated magazines, advertising, and television during the artist's formative years and argues that the vintage TV series The Twilight Zone is crucial to understanding Prince's use of images in his work. He considers Prince's strategy of rephotographing photographs and looks at the theoretical, cultural, and critical implications of that practice. Drawing on previously unpublished material from a discussion he had with Prince in the early 1980s, Newman places Untitled (couple) within the context of Prince's writings and his other work including the famous Untitled (cowboy) series (rephotographed images of the iconic Marlboro man) and its expression of the role of fantasy in advertising. During the 1960s, structuralism recast the image as text; Prince's work, Newman argues, revived the image in such a way that it is irreducible to text. Richard Prince is an artist based in New York known as a critic of and commentator on American consumer culture, including movies, advertisements, cartoons, and popular jokes.

This qualitative multi-case study of academic literacy is the first research to assume the premises of the Multiliteracies Project of the New London Group of literacy researchers. It takes a multimodal view of literacy, not limited to reading and writing, and sets about to uncover the Design (the flexible structuring of rules and principles) that students and teachers both follow and create in college courses. This Design takes the form of a game in which students channel content from sources, such as texts and lectures, to assessments of various kinds. Students are then rewarded in the form of grades to the extent that the content they display matches the criteria the professor sets up.The students in this study had to determine which content would or would not match these criteria, which of six types of information (facts, concepts, connections, processes, principles, or metainformation, e.g., rhetorical patterns) were desired and how best to supply them. To move content from source to target they used four operations. These include exposure (making themselves conscious of the information), extraction (a process of selecting information), manipulation (changing or synthesizing information), and display (showing the information). Greater awareness of this Design led to greater success. Pedagogical implications of this model include establishing a more realistic curricula for academic literacy programs and educating professors to better match grading criteria with learning goals.