Acknowledgements

Books involve an enormous amount of work, and edited collections with such a broad range of themes, methods, genres and languages particularly so. In this specific case, the method of working was highly cooperative, inasmuch as authors exchanged and revised each other’s chapters. Katie Wales and Mick Short went even further, for they planned their articles together. Andrew Goatly also cooperated with one of the editors, Elisabetta Zurru, in the designing of their chapters. The first acknowledgement thus goes to the authors for their cooperation in the project. In particular, Mick Short was his usual vigorous, active self, giving the editors much welcome professional and human advice on a wide variety of matters throughout the production of the book, including reading a number of the chapters with his proverbial critical eye. Cathy Emmott went through the Introduction with a fine-tooth comb, helping to identify weaknesses.

The second round of thanks goes to the external reviewers, who provided invaluable feedback which helped improve the volume: Szilvia Csábi, Monika Fludernik, Craig Hamilton, Jeremy Scott, Peter Stockwell, Peter Verdonk. On a more personal note, our heartfelt thanks go to Pina (Giuseppina) Cortese, long-time friend and eminent colleague, not only for having reviewed and revised several of the chapters in great critical depth and provided invaluable editorial assistance, but also for having been always extremely supportive and instantly willing to help.

Our grateful thanks go to Professor Giacomo Deferrari, the Rector of the University of Genoa in 2010, who provided funding for the PALA and IALS Conferences, which took place that year and which constituted the fruitful launching pad of this book.

We are also thankful to the students who assisted us in running the three conferences which preceded the planning and writing of this book.

Last, but definitely not least, thanks go to Sonia Zyngier and Joanna Gavins for accepting to publish this book in their Linguistic Approaches to Literature Series, to Kees Vaes for his constant and invaluable support, and to John Benjamins Publishing Company.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to each and every one of these people: this volume was brought to completion thanks to their efforts as much as to ours.