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Sprache und Kommunikation in digitalen Medien sind Gegenstand sowohl anhaltender öffentlicher Debatten als auch einer mittlerweile dreißigjährigen interdisziplinären Forschung. Das vorliegende Handbuch fasst Ergebnisse dieser Forschung mit sprachwissenschaftlichem Schwerpunkt zusammen. Die von ausgewiesenen Expert/-innen verfassten Beiträge bieten Einsichten in die Interdependenzen technischer Plattformen (u.a. Smartphones, Social Media) und semiotischer Ressourcen (geschriebene und gesprochene Sprache, Bildzeichen, Memes und andere digitale Textartefakte) bei der Konstituierung von Interaktion und Sozialität sowie Gesellschaft und Diskurs. Die Beiträge untersuchen diese Wechselwirkungen auf verschiedenen Beschreibungsebenen. Die Themen umfassen sprachlich-semiotische Grundstrukturen und ihren Wandel (u.a. Interpunktion, Wortschatz, Bildzeichen), Bedingungen und Prozesse digital vermittelter Interaktion, das Entstehen neuer Kommunikationspraktiken sowie die Dynamik digitaler Diskurse in Politik und Gesellschaft. Das Handbuch richtet sich an Studierende und Wissenschaftler/-innen aller Disziplinen.

With more than two thousand languages spread over its territory, multilingualism is a common reality in Africa. The main official languages of most African countries are Indo-European, in many instances Romance. As they were primarily brought to Africa in the era of colonization, the areas discussed in this volume are thirty-five states that were once ruled by Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, or Spain, and the African regions still belonging to three of them. Twenty-six states are presented in relation to French, four to Italian, six to Portuguese, and two to Spanish. They are considered in separate chapters according to their sociolinguistic situation, linguistic history, external language policy, linguistic characteristics, and internal language policy. The result is a comprehensive overview of the Romance languages in modern-day Africa. It follows a coherent structure, offers linguistic and sociolinguistic information, and illustrates language contact situations, power relations, as well as the cross-fertilization and mutual enrichment emerging from the interplay of languages and cultures in Africa.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, where violence has scarred countless lives, the interplay between religion, politics, and conflict remains a complex web. Exiting Violence looks to untangle some of these knots, showing not only how faith can ignite bloodshed, but also how it can inspire peace and build bridges. Resulting from an international collaboration between the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, RESET-Dialogues Among Civilizations, and the Berkley Center for Religion Peace and World Affairs, this collection assesses the state of scholarship and explores the differing ways in which religion can contribute to societies and communities exiting situations of violence and hatred. From Biblical hermeneutics to Buddhism, from secularism to legal systems, Exiting Violence offers a nuanced and thought-provoking exploration of the multifaceted role religion plays in the human struggle for peace and justice.

It has become a truism that we all think in the narrative mode, both in everyday life and in science. But what does this mean precisely? Scholars tend to use the term ‘narrative'in a broad sense, implying not only event-sequencing but also the representation of emotions, basic perceptual processes or complex analyses of data sets. The volume addresses this blind spot by using clear selection criteria: only non-fictional texts by experts are analysed through the lens of both classical and postclassical narratology – from Aristotle to quantum physics and from nineteenth-century psychiatry to early childhood psychology; they fall under various genres such as philosophical treatises, case histories, textbooks, medical reports, video clips, and public lectures. The articles of this volume examine the central but continuously shifting role that event-sequencing plays within scholarly and scientific communication at various points in history – and the diverse functions it serves such as eye witnessing, making an argument, inferencing or reasoning. Thus, they provide a new methodological framework for both literary scholars and historians of science and medicine.