Humanities & Social Sciences Library

Always on : language in an online and mobile world
Naomi S. Baron
Oxford [u.a.] Oxford Univ. Press 2008
Call no.: P107.B265

Joint Winner of the 2008 Duke of Edinburgh ESU English Language Book Award

This book is about how online and mobile technologies influence the way we read, write, present ourselves as well as its effect on social relationships.

The author did a study on IM lingo and also looked into the effects of gender on IM speech and writing.
Does out of sight equates to out of mind? Interestingly, the chapter on IM research mentioned that the presence of digital natives “lingers through their words”, even as they post away messages on their computers.

Why are online social networking sites like Facebook so popular? According to Cassidy, Facebook allows users to maintain friendships with minimum effort. Moreover, for many people, Facebook enable them to see and be seen.  A comparison was made between Facebook and IM, both of which can be used for presentation of self and for managing social relationships. The author also explored the reasons behind other online platforms like blogs and wikipedia. 

For more information, read the review in Times Higher Education.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Nipponia –a quarterly magazine that introduces people worldwide to timely contemporary subjects and traditional culture in Japan– has ceased publication.  However, earlier print issues of Nipponia from issue 48 (2009) are still available at the Library.  You can also access the online version in English and Japanese.

If you are going to the Land of the Rising Sun for your student exchange programme, there are many books on Japanese culture such as kabuki, origami, chanoyu and others that are available in our Library.  Here’s a short listing of our offerings.  If you need further assistance with book searches, please check with staff at the Service Desks.

Joyful origami boxes
Tomoko Fuse.�
Edition:  1st ed.�
Tokyo, Japan : Japan Publications Trading Co. ; New York : Distributors, U.S., Kodansha America through Farrar, Straus & Giroux, [1996]
Call no.: TT870.F993
Location: Lee Wee Nam Library

Kabuki heroes on the Osaka stage, 1780-1830
C. Andrew Gerstle.�
London : British Museum Press, 2005
Call no.: PN2924.5.K3G383
Location: ADM Library

Tea of the sages : the art of sencha
Patricia J. Graham.
Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, c1998.
Call no.: GT2910.G741
Location: Business Library

Japanese inn and travel : illustrated = Nihon no ryokan.
[Tokyo] : Japan Travel Bureau, 1990.
Call no.: DS821.J35 VOL.14
Location: Chinese Library

Popularity: 14% [?]

Are you raring to go to Korea for your exchange programme this semester?  Need some key language titles to brush up your Korean conversational skills so that you can  speak with the native speakers while you are on the ski slopes of Yong Pyong or shopping in Dongdaemun?  Here are this month’s recommendations!

Korean in 60 minutes [sound recording].
New York : Berlitz, p2008.
Call number: PL913.K84M

If you need to brush up your Korean listening and speaking skills in a hurry, you’d need to get your hands on this CD.  The title includes basic expressions, as well as key words and phrases to get you started on practicing your Korean.  Booklet included.

Korean : a complete course for beginners. [sound recording]
New York, N.Y. : Living Language, c2007. 
Call number: PL913.K84CC  (book)
Call number:  PL913.K84CC DISCS 1-6  (Audio CD) 

This simple and effective introduction to Korean will teach you everything you need to speak, understand, read, and write in Korean. A handy guide for beginners that has natural dialogues, clear grammar notes, vocabulary words and key expressions.  Immerse yourself in Korean culture, cuisine, history, geography, and more.

Listening Korean for beginners.
Elizabeth, NJ : Hollym, 2007.
Call number: PL913.L478K + 2 CDs

This is one of the titles in the Hollym series of Korean titles on reading, writing and speaking. The key focus of this book and CD set is to improve your listening and speaking skills in Korean. Published by the National Institute of the Korean Language and the International Korean Language Foundation.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Now available online!
Journal of Linguistics – Volume 45 – Issue 01 – March 2009
Cambridge University Press

Here are some of the articles featured:

Indeterminacy by underspecification
MARY DALRYMPLE
TRACY HOLLOWAY KING
LOUISA SADLER
Journal of Linguistics, Volume 45, Issue 01, March 2009, pp 31 – 68

Copy Control in Telugu
YOUSSEF A. HADDAD
Journal of Linguistics, Volume 45, Issue 01, March 2009, pp 69 – 109

The role of psychoacoustic similarity in Japanese puns: A corpus study
SHIGETO KAWAHARA
KAZUKO SHINOHARA
Journal of Linguistics, Volume 45, Issue 01, March 2009, pp 111 – 138

Phrase structure vs. dependency: The analysis of Welsh syntactic soft mutation
MAGGIE TALLERMAN
Journal of Linguistics, Volume 45, Issue 01, March 2009, pp 167 – 201
Full text access is available via the the Library’s A–Z ejournal title list.  You can also subscribe for alerts from the ejournal main page.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Test Subjects Who Call the Scientist Mom or Dad
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: January 18, 2009
New York Times

A select group of scientists have been using their children as subjects for their research projects.

Deb Roy, at M.I.T., fixed video cameras and microphones throughout his home, recording 70 percent of his son’s waking hours for his first three years, is amassing 250,000 hours of tape for a language development study he calls the Human Speechome Project. The Project is “an effort to observe and computationally model the longitudinal language development of a single child at an unprecedented scale”.

Little Darius Sinha has been participating in his Dad’s research since he was a baby. His attempt to say the word “water” was captured in a sound byte, and this is his contribution to his Dad’s language database . Dr. Sinha, whose son is used as his research subject for this speech recording,is expanding the project to include other children, applying the research to autism.

But doing research on their own children may affect the parent-child relationship between the two.  For full
details, read on.  Check out the NYT video as well.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Do you know that you can land up with a foreign accent due to an injury? Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) is beyond the patient’s control and can be quite distressing since an individual’s voice forms part of one’s identity.

Professor Sheila Blumstein, a linguist from Brown University, talks about her encounter with a FAS patient in this story. According to Prof Blumstein, there is a generic foreign accent which is shaped by our own language experience.  Whether we label an accent as French, Russian, Spanish and the like depends on our own encounter with such languages. The accent is in the ear of the beholder.

For more full text articles on FAS or linguistics, check out Academic Search Premier via EBSCOHost, one of our Library’s subscribed databases.

Popularity: unranked [?]

BBC’s Business Editor Robert Peston explains why the UK is in the middle of a global financial crisis via this online video.

For the latest financial news, you may wish to refer to the Financial Times available in print at the Lee Wee Nam Library loan counter or in electronic format via Factiva.

Image copyright of BBC.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Media Resource Library will cease its operations and close on 31 Dec 2008.

Media resource services will resume at the Business Library (formerly known as Library 2, Blk N2, Level B2) with effect from 2 Jan 2009. Wef 2 Jan 2009, please check with Business Library counter staff if you wish to request for audiovisual materials.

Popularity: unranked [?]

To mark its 25th volume, the editors of the journal Phonology have selected 10 of the most outstanding papers from its back volumes. Download this special collection of papers for FREE until 31 Dec 2008.

The full text of Phonology is accessible via the following platforms from the Library’s ejournal A–Z listing.
Cambridge Journals Online:  1998 to present
JSTOR Arts & Sciences Complement:  1988 – 2002

Top of the Month!

Want to find out about what articles other researchers are reading in Phonology?  You can do so by clicking on Top 10 most read articles from the right column.  Some articles for the last month include “Reduplicative template in Tonkawa” and “Perceptual similarity in loanword adaptation: English postvocalic word-final stops in Korean”.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Biting Passion
New York Times Interactive Feature, 21 Nov 2008.

This interactive clip from the New York Times gives a quick overview of the types of vampire movies that have been produced over the years. For students doing film studies who wish to do film comparisons, the Library has a selection of films such as Van Helsing, Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well as Nosferatu.  They are available either in the Media Resource Library or the ADM Library.

Need some more Dracula or vampire references? You can retrieve full-text articles from journals in JSTOR (one of the library’s databases). Click on “browse by discipline” and select “film studies” from the drop-down list.

Films

Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Culver City, Calif. : Columbia TriStar Home Video, c1997.
PR6037.T617B815

Van Helsing
Universal City, CA : Universal Studios Home Video, c2004.
G563838
(Special features in this DVD include: Explore Dracula’s castle and bloopers)

Nosferatu, the vampyre  = Nosferatu, phantom der nacht
Troy, MI : Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2002
L575598 DISCS 1-2

Nosferatu: a symphony of horror
Weisbaden, Germany : Transit Film ; [New York, NY] : Distributed by Kino International, [2002], c1922.
PN1995.9.V3N897

Reference

The changing vampire of film and television : a critical study of the growth of a genre
Kane, Tim.
Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2006.
PN1995.9.V3K16

Multimedia feature & image copyright of New York Times.

Popularity: unranked [?]