The 'story' of English is continually re-told and re-written, as more and more people use the language and have a part in shaping the way it develops. Varieties of Modern English provides a critical introduction to the study of regional, social, gendered, context- and medium-related varieties of the language, and explores some of the debates concerning the role and impact of English in different parts of the world today. Beginning by outlining the main types of variation in language, the book focuses on the link between language or dialect and the construction of both group and individual identities. Issues of identity are crucial to chapters on the roots of Modern English, on gender and English, on ethnicity and English and on English as an international language. As well as looking at a range of 'users' of the language, Davies also explores many of its 'uses' and modes, including the English of literary texts, advertising, newspaper reporting and commentary, political speeches, email and text messaging. Written in a discursive, student-friendly style, the book also provides: * A rich mix of illustrative material * End-of-chapter Activities and related Comments at the end of the book * Suggestions for further reading Varieties of Modern English provides a thought-provoking overview of its subject and will be invaluable reading for students of English Language and Linguistics.
An introduction to a broad range of topics in deep learning, covering mathematical and conceptual background, deep learning techniques used in industry, and research perspectives. “Written by three experts in the field, Deep Learning is the only comprehensive book on the subject.” —Elon Musk, cochair of OpenAI; cofounder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Deep learning is a form of machine learning that enables computers to learn from experience and understand the world in terms of a hierarchy of concepts. Because the computer gathers knowledge from experience, there is no need for a human computer operator to formally specify all the knowledge that the computer needs. The hierarchy of concepts allows the computer to learn complicated concepts by building them out of simpler ones; a graph of these hierarchies would be many layers deep. This book introduces a broad range of topics in deep learning. The text offers mathematical and conceptual background, covering relevant concepts in linear algebra, probability theory and information theory, numerical computation, and machine learning. It describes deep learning techniques used by practitioners in industry, including deep feedforward networks, regularization, optimization algorithms, convolutional networks, sequence modeling, and practical methodology; and it surveys such applications as natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, online recommendation systems, bioinformatics, and videogames. Finally, the book offers research perspectives, covering such theoretical topics as linear factor models, autoencoders, representation learning, structured probabilistic models, Monte Carlo methods, the partition function, approximate inference, and deep generative models. Deep Learning can be used by undergraduate or graduate students planning careers in either industry or research, and by software engineers who want to begin using deep learning in their products or platforms. A website offers supplementary material for both readers and instructors.
In a constantly interconnected world communication takes place beyond territorial boundaries, in networks where English works as a lingua franca. The volume explores how ELF is employed in internationally-oriented personal blogs; findings show how bloggers deploy an array of resources to their expressive and interactional aims, combining global and local communicative practices. Implications of findings in ELF and ELT terms are also discussed.
Are all film stars linked to Kevin Bacon? Why do the stock markets rise and fall sharply on the strength of a vague rumour? How does gossip spread so quickly? Are we all related through six degrees of separation? There is a growing awareness of the complex networks that pervade modern society. We see them in the rapid growth of the internet, the ease of global communication, the swift spread of news and information, and in the way epidemics and financial crises develop with startling speed and intensity. This introductory book on the new science of networks takes an interdisciplinary approach, using economics, sociology, computing, information science and applied mathematics to address fundamental questions about the links that connect us, and the ways that our decisions can have consequences for others.
Today, interest in networks is growing by leaps and bounds, in both scientific discourse and popular culture. Networks are thought to be everywhere – from the architecture of our brains to global transportation systems. And networks are especially ubiquitous in the social world: they provide us with social support, account for the emergence of new trends and markets, and foster social protest, among other functions. Besides, who among us is not familiar with Facebook, Twitter, or, for that matter, World of Warcraft, among the myriad emerging forms of network-based virtual social interaction? It is common to think of networks simply in structural terms – the architecture of connections among objects, or the circuitry of a system. But social networks in particular are thoroughly interwoven with cultural things, in the form of tastes, norms, cultural products, styles of communication, and much more. What exactly flows through the circuitry of social networks? How are people's identities and cultural practices shaped by network structures? And, conversely, how do people's identities, their beliefs about the social world, and the kinds of messages they send affect the network structures they create? This book is designed to help readers think about how and when culture and social networks systematically penetrate one another, helping to shape each other in significant ways.
Social networking is now one of the ways in which anyone can set out to learn or improve their language skills. This collection brings together different sets of learning experiences and shows that success depends on the wider environment of the learner, the kind of activity the learner engages in and the type of learning priorities he or she has.
This book is related to the educational networking (EN) domain, an incipient but disrupting trend engaged in extending and improving formal and informal academic practices by means of the support given by online social networks (OSNs) and Web 2.0 technologies. With the aim of contributing to spread the knowledge and development of the arena, this volume introduces ten recent works, whose content meets the quality criteria of formal scientific labor that is worthy to be published according to following five categories: · Reviews: gather three overviews that focus on K-12 EN practice, mixed methods approaches using social network analysis for learning and education, and a broad landscape of the recent accomplished labor. · Conceptual: presents a work where a theoretical framework is proposed to overcome barriers that constrain the use of OSNs for educational purposes by means of a Platform Adoption Model. · Projects: inform a couple of initiatives, where one fosters groups and networks for teachers involved in distance education, and the other encourages students the author academic videos to improve motivation and engagement. · Approaches: offer three experiences related to: Wiki and Blog usage for assessment affairs, application of a method that encourages OSNs users to actively post and repost valuable information for the learning community, and the recreation of learning spaces in context–aware to boost EN. · Study: applies an own method to ranking Mexican universities based on maximal clique, giving as a result a series of complex visual networks that characterize the tides among diverse features that describe academic institutions practice. In resume, this volume offers a fresh reference of an emergent field that contributes to spreading and enhancing the provision of education in classrooms and online settings through social constructivism and collaboration policy. Thus, it is expected the published content encourages researchers, practitioners, professors, and postgraduate students to consider their future contribution to extent the scope and impact of EN in formal and informal teaching and learning endeavors.
Describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing. The author shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront.
This book constitutes revised selected papers from the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Analysis of Images, Social Networks and Texts, AIST 2021, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, during December 16–18, 2021. The 20 full papers and 5 short papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 118 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Invited papers; natural language processing; computer vision; data analysis and machine learning; social network analysis; and theoretical machine learning and optimization.