David Brazil

David Brazil's work melds radical politics with Christianity in interesting ways. Brazil was heavily involved in Occupy Oakland and continues to be a political activist. This book concentrates on where class struggle meets the spiritual. Brazil has been profiled and his books reviewed by some of the best contemporary poets including Dodie Bellamy, CAConrad, Tyrone Williams, and Laura Moriarty. As a community organizer and advocate for economic justice, Brazil presents important work during an era where these groups are working to make real social change happen.

The Communicative Value of Intonation in English, originally published in 1985 by the English Language Research unit in Birmingham and revised in 1992, sets out David Brazil’s description of the system of intonation in English. This model of English intonation takes a discourse-based approach and attempts to assign ‘meaning’ or a communicative value to the different aspects that make up the system of intonation. Chapters within the book descibe parts of the intonation system which vary according to speaker choice: the tone unit as a whole, prominence, key, pitch and orientation. Three chapters are devoted to tones and their communicative value. This is an important and controversial work, which has influenced scholars in the field and ELT materials writers alike. A cassette containing all the examples of intonation features in the book is available.