bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“I wol sterve”
Authors: Rudanko Juhani
Published: September 2007

This study focuses on the construction of an amorous relationship in Chaucer’s poetry. It is observed that threats are recurring speech acts in Chaucer’s wooing scenes. Such threats are conditional and coercive in nature, having a bearing on the role and exercise of free will. A speech act definition of a threat is offered in the article. The definition is based on John Searle’s analytic model and threats in wooing scenes are treated as commissives, given their conditional nature. Such threats are also often playful in varying degrees. Drawing on a number of examples from Chaucer’s major poems, the article examines the nature of playfulness and the question of how it is grounded in the content and the context of a threat. The issue of a lady’s consent is framed in the article by the larger background of the partly conflicting Germanic and Roman cultural traditions both impacting Chaucerian England.
From prepositional phrase to hesitation marker
Authors: Mosegaard Hansen Maj-Britt
Published: September 2007

The adverb enfin (lit.: ‘at last’) is pragmatically highly polyfunctional in contemporary French, and previous studies disagree on its proper semantic representation. The present paper traces enfin’s diachronic development from the earliest French texts, where only the temporal, etymological sense of the adverb is found, to the present day, where non-temporal and discourse-oriented senses abound, arguing that the adverb should be seen as polysemous and that it can profitably be described within the framework presented in Geeraerts (1997). It is concluded that present-day enfin has three distinct “core” senses, and several peripheral uses derived from these core senses, and that, overall, its evolution provides support for the general tendencies of semantic change identified in Traugott and Dasher (2002).
Things you have to leave behind
Authors: Heinrich Patrick
Published: September 2007

The paper examines the abandonment of an established style of writing called gabun ‘elegant writing’ and the emergence of a new style termed genbun itchi ‘unity of spoken and written language’ in nineteenth century Japan, focusing on a language ideological debate that occurred in 1889 in a journal called Bun. The stylistic reform of written Japanese was one of the most contested reforms during Japan’s modernisation and it is the aim of the present study to provide a close-up inspection of social struggles and redistribution of power that accompanied the Japanese modernisation and the appearance of a modern Japanese voice. The emergence of genbun itchi writing presupposed that notions of cultural capital needed to be altered and newly distributed which coincided with a redefinition of who could be seen as an expert and authority on language. Therefore the present paper focused on language ideological notions and power issues behind the debate between proponents and opponents of genbun itchi writing.
Tracing the origins of a set of discourse particles
Authors: Lindström Jan K. , Wide Camilla
Published: September 2007

This paper investigates the historical origins, both syntactic and functional, of a set of discourse particles commonly used in present-day spoken Swedish: hör du ‘(you) listen’, vet du ‘you know’, ser du ‘you see’, and förstår du ‘you understand’. From a synchronic perspective, the particles seem to be a morpho-syntactically unified phenomenon, and have been treated as such in earlier linguistic works. However, there is no diachronic account of these particles. This paper presents a number of hypotheses concerning the syntactic and functional sources of the discourse particles; we also evaluate the hypotheses against the background of historical linguistic data collected from Old Swedish, Middle Swedish, and Modern Swedish sources. The Modern Swedish period is covered by a large corpus of plays from the 1700s to the late 1900s. Comparisons are also made to Old and Modern Icelandic data. The historical data show that the particle hör du is of imperative, functionally directive origin, while the rest of the particles include a verb in present tense indicative, thus presumably originating from minimal clauses with a declarative or an interrogative function. Hence, historical formal and functional differences are hidden behind the apparent uniform present-day forms and functions of the discourse particles.
Between historical semantics and pragmatics
Authors: Ihalainen Pasi
Published: September 2007

This paper discusses the methodology of conceptual history, a branch of the study of the history of political thought which focuses on the changing meanings of political concepts over the course of time. It is suggested here that methodological disputes among historians of political thought frequently arise out of differing theories of language and meaning and that historians should be more open-minded to the idea of combining various research strategies in their work. Conceptual history, for instance, can be viewed as the combination of historical versions of semantics and pragmatics. While the study of the macro-level semantic changes in the language of politics can reveal interesting long-term trends and innovative uses of language, a contextual analysis of speech acts is also needed when the rhetorical aspects of conceptual change are traced. This interaction of semantic and pragmatic analysis in conceptual history is illustrated by examples originating from eighteenth-century political preaching.
The sullen and the talkative
Authors: Kahlas-Tarkka Leena , Rissanen Matti
Published: September 2007

The purpose of this paper is to describe the discourse strategies of the defendants of the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692. Evidence is derived from the original documents now being re-edited by an international team. A framework for the discussion is provided by politeness theory, although it cannot be applied as such to seventeenth-century courtroom circumstances. In four of the eight cases selected, the defendants followed successful discourse strategies and saved their lives; in another four, the strategies were less successful and the defendants had to die.

Cooperativeness was vital for a successful defence. This included providing the court with details and admitting what the person was accused of but denying hurting other people intentionally. The defendant did not argue with the examiner but was humble and willing to help.

Unsuccessful defendants stubbornly refused to admit their guilt, denied all involvement in witchcraft, questioned the validity of the evidence and even the intelligence of the court.
Telling tales
Authors: Doty Kathleen L.
Published: September 2007

This study examines the practices of scribes who recorded the examinations of those accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692. The data consists of 68 records of examinations held between March and October 1692 and in January 1693. Each record is coded for two features: use of contextual commentary and evaluative adjectives or adverbs which suggest attitudes and values of the scribes and reflect the pragmatic context. Records are also coded according to presentation in direct discourse or reported discourse. Records presented in direct discourse and those occurring in the early period of the trials contain the greatest number of both contextual commentary and evaluative/subjective adjectives or adverbs. The analysis reveals that the majority of the records are written by four identified scribes.
The discourses of war photography
Authors: van Leeuwen Theo , Jaworski Adam
Published: September 2007

Photography has a long history of (de-)legitimation of wars. In this paper we examine the visual rhetoric of two newspapers, the British Guardian and the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza in their representation of the Palestinian-Israeli war in October 2000. Although both newspapers have access to the same (agency) photographs, their images differ. Both papers show the Palestinians to be the main victims of the war. However, Gazeta Wyborcza depicts the Palestinians predominantly as “terrorists” and deflects any military responsibility from the Israelis by not including any photographs of the Israeli soldiers. The Guardian shows the Palestinians predominantly as romanticised, lone heroes against the Israeli military might, although the Israeli military force is vague and de-personalised. Furthermore, both newspapers differ in their representation of the war in political terms choosing different images of local and international politicians.
“My European feelings are not only based on the fact that I live in Europe”
Authors: Krzyżanowski Michał
Published: September 2007

Identity has recently become one of the most frequently theorised and explored topics within various sub-branches of social sciences. Collective identities in general, and their ancestry and construction in particular, are being perceived in different ways by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and, last but not least, discourse-analysts. This article aims at shedding a new light on the concept of European identity, which, so far, has been most frequently analysed within the context of the European Union and its political and economic impact on European space. Despite drawing theoretically on some well-grounded traditions of research on European identity, such as, e.g., analysis of its contradiction and suplementariness with national identities, or, its interconnection with such concepts as European citizenship or European integration, the analysis of European identity presented here is put in the context of globally understood identification processes. Empirically, the article draws on the analysis of TV talk show thematically bound by the topics concerning European Union’s impact on national identities.
Right/left in the context of new political frontiers
Authors: Dyrberg Torben Bech
Published: September 2007

The modern political distinction between right and left has functioned as the symbolic structuring of democratic politics. The significance of this political code lies in the institutionalisation of political discourse as relatively autonomous in relation to cultural and religious discourses in which right as a general rule has been conceived as positive and left as negative. Modern political revolutions marked the transformation of RIGHT/LEFT from a cultural and religious codex of domination/subordination to a political one of parity, which cleared a space for the legitimacy of opposition and disagreement as well as for public reason and the balancing of judgement. RIGHT/LEFT is thus associated with a political symbolic order that underpins the autonomy of democratic politics by signifying the distinction between parties of equal political status.
An actor or an undefined threat?
Authors: Stenvall Maija
Published: September 2007

The paper studies the use of the wordterroristin the dispatches of two major international news agencies, AP and Reuters. It can be assumed that the attacks on September 11, 2001, have changed the role ofterroristand affected the meaning of the word. Whileterroristshave been traditionally construed as violent actors, they are now, more and more, seen as a static threat. The paper examines three collocations —terrorist attack, terrorist threatandterrorist suspect— as grammatical metaphors (cf. Halliday 1994); the collocationterrorist networkis analysed as a conceptual metaphor (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Linguistic strategies manifested in the data form a pattern that I call “anti-terrorism discourse”. Modality and general vagueness of the language are conspicuous features in the news agency dispatches on terrorism; the reports focus on whatmay happenormay have happened.This can be argued to undermine the factuality of news agency discourse.
Political Discourse Analysis from the point of view of Translation Studies
Authors: Schäffner Christina
Published: September 2007

Political discourse very often relies on translation. Political Discourse Analysis (PDA), however, has not yet taken full account of the phenomenon of translation. This paper argues that the disciplines of Translation Studies (TS) and PDA can benefit from closer cooperation. It starts by presenting examples of authentic translations of political texts, commenting on them from the point of view of TS. These examples concern political effects caused by specific translation solutions; the processes by which information is transferred via translation to another culture; and the structure and function of equally valid texts in their respective cultures. After a brief survey of the discipline of Translation Studies, the paper concludes with outlining scope for interdisciplinary cooperation between PDA and TS. This is illustrated with reference to an awareness of product features, multilingual texts, process analysis, and the politics of translation.
Invective language in contemporary Ghanaian politics
Authors: Agyekum Kofi
Published: September 2007

This paper addresses the use of invectives in modern Ghanaian politics. Evidence is drawn from public speeches of political activists of the two leading parties of the country, namely: the National Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The paper analyses at the context as well, i.e. the participants involved, the reaction of the public, and tries to answer the question what makes a public speech or utterance an invective. It also considers some pragmatic effects of such invectives in the over all development of the country and the need for reconciliation.
War rhetoric of a little ally
Authors: van Dijk Teun A.
Published: September 2007

In this paper we examine some of the properties of the speeches by former Prime Minister José María Aznar held in Spanish parliament in 2003 legitimating his support of the USA and the threatening war against Iraq. The theoretical framework for the analysis is a multidisciplinary CDA approach relating discursive, cognitive and sociopolitical aspects of parliamentary debates. It is argued that speeches in parliament should not only be defined in terms of their textual properties, but also in terms of a contextual analysis. Besides an analysis of the usual properties of ideological and political discourse, such as positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation and other rhetoric devices, special attention is paid to political implicatures defined as inferences based on general and particular political knowledge as well as on the context models of Aznar’s speeches.
The Iraq war as curricular knowledge
Authors: Mitsikopoulou Bessie , Koutsogiannis Dimitris
Published: September 2007

The paper deals with educational discourse concerning the recent Iraq war in an attempt to explore how broader political issues, such as the Iraq war, are materialised in everyday classroom practices. It analyses lesson plans, aimed to be used by US educators of primary and secondary schools, from two Internet sites: one supporting the official position of US to go to war and the other taking a position against the war. The paper suggests that the lesson plans in the two sites constitute materialisations of two general approaches to education, the dominant and the critical, which do not simply adopt opposing views concerning the war but which, most importantly, contribute to the construction of different pedagogic subjects: in one case, there is an attempt towards ‘compulsory patriotism’, whereas in the other an attempt towards a ‘compulsory’ challenging of the war. The ideals which are in fact recontextualised here are that of nation and justice, the pedagogisation of which seems to raise much more questions than to provide answers.
Film as language: The politics of early film theory (19201960)
Authors: Rheindorf Markus
Published: September 2007

While conventional accounts of the history of film theory portray early theoretical writings as ‘naïve’, ‘unsystematic’, and ‘impressionistic’, this paper argues that, although there is a factual basis for this dismissive appraisal, such accounts thoroughly ignore the many contradictions that mark these writings.

This paper focuses on a historically specific case, the film theory of Siegfried Kracauer, and relates the major contradictions in Kracauer’s theory of film and his conception of ‘film as language’ to a changing socio-cultural context. This case study serves to illustrate the fact that theoretical discourses, especially in their formative, pre-institutionalised stages, are open to a variety of ideological and political struggles. The specifics of early film theory also throw some light on the politics of discursive strategies establishing analogies (and difference) between ‘film’ and ‘language’ decades before the ‘structuralist turn’ in film theory.
Nations without nationalism
Authors: Sandner Günther
Published: September 2007

In addition to the socialist discourse on popular education, theoretical contributions of Austro-Marxist intellectuals such as Karl Renner, Otto Bauer and Otto Neurath on multiculturalism represent an important intellectual source of leftist culturalism. Considering actual debates, the Austro-Marxist approach on nation and culture moved between the politics of recognition and the politics of difference. Their concept combined both the recognition of (a positively evaluated) difference between national cultures and the demand for political unification transcending the nation state. Beyond their contemporary context, the Austro-Marxist concept gains in importance even for today by formulating a possible combination of political and economic unity on the one hand and cultural difference (and diversity) on the other. In a way, the Austro-Marxist approach represents a political and cultural concept of ‘nations without nationalism’.
Globalization and the future of Creole languages
Authors: Faraclas Nicholas
Published: September 2007

The plantation system that gave rise to many existing creoles can be said to be the prototype upon which the current wave of corporate globalization has been modeled (Linebaugh 1992). The daily wages received by the majority of workers worldwide at the beginning of the 21st century are not even equal to half the value of the daily food rations received by plantation slaves at the beginning of the 19th in the Greater Caribbean or at the beginning of the 20th in the South Pacific (World Bank 2000; Farnsworth 1999 and Queensland 1892). Structural adjustment policies are restricting the spread of English to the few who reap some reward from corporate globalization. In contrast, the overwhelming majority are by necessity learning and reshaping existing regional koines, pidgins, and creoles, through processes of adaptation, creativity and resistance (Rickford 1983). Far from being a threat to creoles, corporate globalization is bringing about an increase in the number of speakers of these languages, which dwarfs the much proclaimed growth of English worldwide.
The discourses of food in the world system
Authors: Scollon Ron
Published: September 2007

This paper examines the role of discourse analysis in addressing the devastating consequences of the rapid restructuring of food production in the world system. I argue that although this is an issue far too large to encompass within discourse analysis, discourse analysis has much to contribute as part of an interdisciplinary and comprehensive analytical approach. Such an approach, a ‘nexus analysis’, consists of analyzing focal points or nexus which are mediated actions through which circulate cycles of discourse. The paper begins with an analysis of product labels and concludes by sketching the outlines of a constellation of three linked research projects:Prandial practiceswhich examines practices of daily food consumption,Corn, tea, and intellectual property, which examines the world-wide industrialization of food production and consumption, andMad cows, scallions, and global climate changewhich examines the consequences of this world food system for public and personal health.
Catalan on the Internet and the .ct and .cat campaigns
Authors: Atkinson David
Published: September 2007

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, divides the World Wide Web geographically, assigning country suffixes to states to be used in web addresses for sites on their territory. This paper reports on the campaign in Catalonia to have the right to use .ct as the territorial domain name for sites in Catalonia. The bid has been countered by the central government in Madrid and the argument is ongoing. In the interim, ICANN have assigned the .cat suffix. This recognises the linguistic, cultural and ethnic group as a web entity without going as far as to give them the same web standing as a sovereign state.
The European Union in Cyberspace
Authors: Wodak Ruth , Wright Scott
Published: September 2007

This article analyses the European Union’s Futurum discussion forum. The EU hoped that Futurum would help close the acknowledged gap between institutions and citizens by facilitating a virtual, multilingual, transnational public sphere. Futurum was both an interesting example of how the EU’s language policies shape the structure of deliberative experiments and of a public debate about their relative value. We combine various quantitative measures of the discussions with a critical discourse analysis of a thread which focused on language policies. We found that although the debates were predominantly in English, where a thread started in a language other than English, linguistic diversity was more prominent. The discourse analysis showed that multilingual interaction was fostered, and that the debate about language policies is politically and ideologically charged.
Language and significance — or the importance of import
Authors: Sayer Andrew
Published: September 2007

One of the main functions of discourses is to impute significance to, or interpret the significance of, things. Claims about significance are not merely expressive or evaluative but informative or descriptive, often referring to matters bearing on well-being or flourishing. It is argued that critical discourse analysis (CDA) can hardly be critical unless it acknowledges and evaluates how discourses impute and interpret significance or import and how this relates to well-being. Critical thought in contemporary social science is undermined by dualisms such as fact/value, reason/emotion, and positive/normative, which tend to position critique as ‘merely subjective’ and beyond the scope of reason or science. Although, like any critical social science, CDA uses terms like ‘oppression’, ‘racism’, ‘abuse’, ‘exploitation’ and ‘suffering’, these cannot be reduced wholly to either positive or normative matters. The paper shows how significance can be understood by challenging these dualisms.
Creolization outside Creolistics
Authors: Siegel Jeff
Published: September 2007

Looking up ‘creolization’ on any data base, or doing a search at amazon.com or simply googling the term will show that it is more widely used outside linguistics than inside – especially in anthropology, sociology, history and literary studies. Jourdan (2001: 2903) notes that the term has been borrowed from linguistics where one of its definitions is the creation of a new language out of contact between at least two different languages. Creolization in the sociocultural context usually refers to the creation of new aspects of culture as a result of contact between different cultures. In this column, I present some background information on what I'll call ‘sociocultural creolization’ and its links with linguistic creolization. Then I describe what I see as some of the differences between the sociocultural and linguistic approaches. I conclude with implications of these differences for the field of creolistics.
Systemic Transfer, Topic Prominence, and the Bare Conditional in Singapore English
Authors: Bao Zhiming , Min Lye Hui
Published: September 2007

Colloquial Singapore English has a novel conditional construction in which the conditional clause is not marked morphosyntactically, and must precede the consequent clause. We show that Singapore English, like Chinese, the main substrate language, is topic prominent, and the novel conditional construction is a direct consequence of this new typological status. We analyze the unmarked conditional clause as topic, a basic syntactic position in topic prominent languages. Our analysis shows that substrate influence is systemic: the entire cluster of properties associated with topic prominence is transferred from Chinese to Singapore English.
Early activation of category information in visual word recognition
Authors: Forster Kenneth I.
Published: September 2007

In semantic categorization, nonwords that are neighbors of exemplars (e.g., turple in an animal categorization task) cause interference, but neighbors of nonexemplars (e.g., tabric) do not. This can be explained in a cascaded activation model in which the decision process selectively monitors activation in a category-relevant semantic feature unit. However, it is shown that this is true only for some categories. With the broad category “Physical Object”, interference is produced by nonwords based on both exemplars (e.g., himmer) and nonexemplars (e.g., travity). However, no interference is produced when the category is changed to “Animal”. This shows that only some semantic feature units can be monitored. It is proposed that what is being monitored are not in fact semantic features per se, but rather links to semantic fields defined on the basis of patterns of lexical co-occurrence.
Dynamics of the auditory comprehension of prefixed words
Authors: Wurm Lee H. , Ernestus Mirjam , Schreuder Robert , Baayen R. H.
Published: September 2007

This auditory lexical decision study shows that cohort entropies, conditional root uniqueness points, and morphological family size all contribute to the dynamics of the auditory comprehension of prefixed words. Three entropy measures calculated for different positions in the stem of Dutch prefixed words revealed facilitation for higher entropies, except at the point of disambiguation, where we observed inhibition. Morphological family size was also facilitatory, but only for prefixed words in which the conditional root uniqueness point coincided with the conventional uniqueness point. For words with early conditional disambiguation, in contrast, only the morphologically related words that were onset-aligned with the target word facilitated lexical decision.
The autonomous computation of morpho-phonological structure in reading
Authors: Berent Iris , Tzelgov Joseph , Bibi Uri
Published: September 2007

Is morphological decomposition automatic? To address this question, we examine whether Hebrew readers decompose morphologically complex words when reading is not required, in the Stroop task. Morphological decomposition is assessed using two markers. One marker examines whether color-naming is modulated by morphologically complex words generated from color roots. For example, we compare words generated from the Hebrew root of “blue” displayed in either blue or an incongruent color. The second marker examines whether color-naming is sensitive to root phonotactics. Here we compare color-naming with words whose (color-unrelated) roots are either phonologically illicit (e.g., ssm) or well-formed (e.g., smm). Results suggest that morphological decomposition proceeds even when reading is discouraged, but unlike previous research with intentional reading tasks, Stroop-like conditions do not allow for a detailed representation of the root’s internal structure.
Acquisition of deverbal compounds by French-speaking preschoolers
Authors: Nicoladis Elena
Published: September 2007

Children’s creation of novel words is thought to be guided by several variables of their language(s), including the simplicity and frequency of required morphology and/or target structure (Clark, 1993). This study documents children’s acquisition of French deverbal Verb–Object compounds (e.g., lave-vaisselle ‘wash-dishes’ meaning dishwasher). Research from previous studies suggests that simple infrequent forms such as these will be acquired later (i.e., around 5 years). 34 monolingual French-speaking children between 3 and 5 years produced and indicated their understanding of novel deverbal compounds. The children’s vocabulary size was more strongly positively related to their production and comprehension of novel compounds than age. In comprehension, children often misinterpreted the Object of novel compounds as the subject of the action in the Verb. These results confirm that this simple infrequent form is acquired late.
For Then and Now: Memory and Writing
Authors: Duarte Esgalhado Barbara
Published: September 2007

In this article, I explore the relationship between memory and writing. In the service of such an exploration, I have employed several different writing forms: first-person narrative—including self-reflection, travelogue, eulogy in epistolary form, poetry, and social science prose. WARNING: This sort of work—specifically, this sort of writing—calls for a different sort of reader. Unlike many other academic articles, the goal of this article is not to systematically reiterate, review, inform, instruct, or critique. Rather, in this article, I respectively attempt to present an alternative approach to “doing psychology”—one that would allow for an account of the process of the unfolding of one particular subject in and through writing as she1engages with memory. By the same token, bearing witness to such a process necessitates a reader who can make sufficient space to accommodate the writer as she unfolds before her/him through an indefinite process. Such a reader should also be aware that the writer will not necessarily guide the reader as to what to think or feel. Rather, the reader is asked to do this for her/himself.
Occasions for Providing Resolutions (or not) in Turkish Preschool Conversational Narratives
Authors: Küntay Aylin C.
Published: September 2007

Many developmental studies of narrative isolate resolutions as a structural element, aiming to demonstrate age-related influences on the presence or absence of this component in children’s narrative productions. This study is an ethnographic study of Turkish children’s conversationally occasioned narratives investigating the conversational occasions that lead to provision or omission of a problem-resolution structure in children’s narratives. The data come from 60 hours of naturalistically collected talk of preschool children aged 3-to-6 in two different preschools. The results indicate that Turkish preschool children often provide narratives without a problem-resolution structure but also that they can provide high-point structures, depending on the speech situation. The analyses reveal that whether children organize their narratives in terms of a problem-resolution structure is dependent on the characteristics of the recounted events and conversational factors rather than merely age-related competence.
Life histories and the perspective of the present
Authors: Järvinen Margaretha
Published: September 2007

The purpose of the article is to suggest a development of the narrative life history tradition along the lines represented by George Herbert Mead and Paul Ricoeur. This theoretical approach is presented as an alternative to both subjectivist approaches, that continue the search for the solitary, true self behind the life histories, and to structuralist approaches, in which the self and its past experience disappears. In the article a theoretical framework is sketched that a) focuses on “the perspective of the present” but does not lose sight of the past, and b) emphasizes the interactionist dimensions of life histories but also pays attention to the self and its ongoing projects. The reasonings of Mead and Ricoeur are applied to a series of empirical examples, drawn from different areas of life history research. (Time, Narrative, Emplotment, Life Histories, Self, Mead, Ricoeur)
Orienting to the category “ordinary – but special” in an Australian-Italian courtship and marriage narrative
Authors: Cavallaro Johnson Greer , Paoletti Isabella
Published: September 2007

This article explores the possibilities of working ethnomethodological and conversation analysis methods into narrative analytic research, in relation to the understanding of narrative practices and identity work carried out in the course of the interview interaction. More specifically, we discuss how a storyteller (Olivia) in a research interview inserts a complaint story about her mother's intense objection to her choice of partner, into a relatively ordinary romance tale, and subsequently subverts it. Various conversational strategies, such as recipient design, topic shift and evaluation and assessment, are worked alongside the narrative dimensions of tellibility, tellership and moral stance (Ochs & Capps, 2001) to demonstrate the narrative achievement of an ordinary – but special – identity, in the retelling of events related to Olivia's courtship and the first few weeks of her marriage. (Australian-Italian Narrative Research, Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis)
Narrating singleness
Authors: Reynolds Jill , Taylor Stephanie
Published: September 2007

This paper discusses a speaker's narrative and discursive work to counter the negative associations of an identity as a single woman. An analysis of extracts from one interview exemplifies patterns found in a larger body of data. The speaker's story does rhetorical work (Billig, 1987) against the dominant ‘coupledom’ narrative of a life which progresses through stages associated with the heterosexual family, including love, marriage and parenthood. Her own life narrative is structured differently. The three structures we discuss are resources which can accommodate the unique details of a particular speaker's life as a single woman while also doing work against commonly held assumptions that singleness is a deficit identity. (Deficit identity, Single women, Narrative, Discursive, Coupledom)
Young people's stories of conflict and development in Post-war Croatia
Authors: Daiute Colette , Turniski Maja
Published: September 2007

Scholars have begun to study the participation of children in war, but there is little research on the longer term consequences among those born during or after the war. This article explains how a socio-historical discourse perspective can expand research on the psycho-social effects of war. Drawing on a study of stories of conflict by children in post-war Croatia, the authors propose the concept “trans-generational development” to account for the legacies of war on social identity and knowledge. The focus of the analysis is 59 narratives written by 10 to 17 year olds identifying as Serb and Croat in the context of their participation in community center devoted to post-war recovery and development. The analysis identified complexity in young authors' representations of social relations across generations, especially around issues of ethnicity – a major issue fueling the 1990's wars in the former Yugoslavia. For example, the young authors characterized their parents' generation as divided, bitter, and socially impotent, their own generation as collaborative, wise, and resourceful, and future townspeople as active in the face of political and economic challenges. These patterns suggest how young people express identities and knowledge of the war period, yet, with support, also reason beyond the ideological and emotional legacies of war. Such story-telling complexity underscores the need for complex conceptualizations and applications of narrative theory to research and practice in war and other troubled settings.
Improving story complexity and cohesion
Authors: McKeough Anne , Davis Lynn , Forgeron Nicole , Marini Anthony , Fung Tak
Published: September 2007

The aim of the present study was to analyze the relative effectiveness of two first grade instruction programs: a developmental program that focused on the structural and social-psychological components of stories and their cohesion and a process oriented approach. A total of 43 children participated in daily sessions over 3 months (experimental group N = 22, comparison group N = 21). Measures of conceptual language and oral narrative were obtained and participants' protocols were analyzed for plot and coherence. Statistical analyses showed that the developmental method was more effective than the process approach in advancing the complexity and cohesion of children's narratives. To explore the interactions between instruction and learning, a time series analysis was conducted with seven randomly selected experimental group participants. These results showed that gains did not follow a linear pattern and that performance was shaped by the cognitive complexity of task demands. Implications for the development of narrative thought and classroom instruction are discussed. (Narrative, Instruction, Development)
Children's narratives of sexual abuse
Authors: Mossige Svein , Jensen Tine K. , Gulbrandsen Wenke , Reichelt Sissel , Tjersland Odd Arne
Published: September 2007

Personal narratives from ten children who all claimed to have been sexually abused were analyzed and compared to narratives of stressful events the children produced in therapy sessions. The narratives were compared to each other along the following dimensions: level of elaboration, narrative structure, contextual embeddedness, and causal coherence. Each child's attempt to find purpose and resolution was also analyzed. The stressful event narratives were generally more elaborate, more structured, and more contextually embedded and coherent than the sexual abuse narratives. Very few of the sexual abuse narratives contained resolutions or causal connections that are considered important for contributing to meaning- making. It is suggested that in order to understand the difficulties children face, a narrative perspective needs to include the emotional significance of the events to be narrated, and a trauma perspective must include the cultural impact of the event. A theory that intends to understand children's narration difficulties should encompass both these perspectives. (Narratives, Child sexual abuse, Traumas)
The pragmatic marker like in English teen talk
Authors: Sharifian Farzad , Malcolm Ian G.
Published: September 2007

This study reports on the use of like in Aboriginal English teen talk. The analysis of a sub-corpus of 40 adolescent texts from a corpus of 100 narratives by speakers of Aboriginal English in Western Australia revealed that like is often employed by these speakers, and that it achieves a multitude of functions. In general it is observed that like may mark off a) a discrepancy between the intended conceptualization and the expressed concept, b) an attitude, feeling, or certain degree of commitment towards a lexical item, and c) a shift in some element of discourse. The results of this study support and extend the analysis carried out by Andersen (2000) on London teen talk.
Towards interactive robots in autism therapy
Authors: Dautenhahn Kerstin , Werry Iain
Published: September 2007

This article discusses the potential of using interactive environments in autism therapy. We specifically address issues relevant to the Aurora project, which studies the possible role of autonomous, mobile robots as therapeutic tools for children with autism. Theories of mindreading, social cognition and imitation that informed the Aurora project are discussed and their relevance to the project is outlined. Our approach is put in the broader context of socially intelligent agents and interactive environments. We summarise results from trials with a particular mobile robot. Finally, we draw some comparisons to research on interactive virtual environments in the context of autism therapy and education. We conclude by discussing future directions and open issues.
The socio-cultural concept of face in Akan communication
Authors: Agyekum Kofi
Published: September 2007

The paper examines the metaphorical expressions derived from anim ‘face’ in Akan, a major language in Ghana. It analyses and discusses face metaphoric expressions in relation with the universal concept analysed by Face Theory. The paper projects this concept onto the Akan cultural system and looks at how the concept is used in Akan communicative interaction. The sociolinguistics and pragmatics of anim are considered. In particular, it focuses on face-to-face interaction and the typical situations and discourses within the Akan speech community where the concept of face plays a role.
Formal truth and objective reference in an inferentialist setting
Authors: Stekeler-Weithofer Pirmin
Published: September 2007

The project of developing a pragmatic theory of meaning aims at an anti-metaphysical, therefore anti-repre­sen­ta­tio­nalist and anti-subjectivist, analysis of truth and reference. In order to understand this project we have to remember the turns or twists given to Frege’s and Witt­genstein’s original idea of inferential semantics (with Kant and Hegel as predecessors) in later developments like formal axiomatic theo­ries (Hilbert, Tarski, Carnap), regularist behaviorism (Quine), mental regulism and interpretationism (Chomsky, Davidson), social behaviorism (Sellars, Millikan), intentionalism (Grice), con­ventionalism (D. Lewis), justificational theories (Dummett, Lorenzen) and, finally, Brandom’s normative pragmatics.
The nature of meaning
Authors: Peregrin Jaroslav
Published: September 2007

Part of the philosophy of language of the 20th century is marked by a shift from the view of language as a tool of representing the world to its view as a means of interacting with the world. This shift is common to the later Wittgenstein, to pragmatists and neopragmatists including Brandom, and also to Chomsky and his school. The claim of the paper is that though the Chomskyans have offered an admirably elaborated theory of syntax adequate to the interactive view of language, they failed to develop a comparably adequate notion of semantics; and that it is Brandom‘s approach which, though prima facie much more speculative and much less scientific, paves the way to a semantic theory which an ‘interactivist’ should endorse.
A deflationist theory of intentionality?
Authors: Knell Sebastian
Published: September 2007

The paper presents an interpretation of Brandom’s analysis of de re specifying attitude-ascriptions. According to this interpretation, his analysis amounts to a deflationist conception of intentionality. In the first section I sketch the specific role deflationist theories of truth play within the philosophical debate on truth. Then I describe some analogies between the contemporary constellation of competing truth theories and the current confrontation of controversial theories of intentionality. The second section gives a short summary of Brandom’s analysis of attitude-ascription, focusing on his account of the grammar of de re ascriptions of belief. The third section discusses in detail those aspects of his account from which a deflationist conception of intentionality may be derived, or which at least permit such a conception. In the proposed interpretation of Brandom’s analysis, the vocabulary expressing the representational directedness of thought and talk does not describe a genuine property of mental states, but has an alternative descriptive function and in addition contains a performative and a meta­descriptive element.
Meaning, justification, and truth
Authors: Kambartel Friedrich
Published: September 2007

In order to compare two forms of radical pragmatism, inferentialism (as developed by Robert Brandom) and constructivism (as developed by Paul Lorenzen), the paper shows how we can represent states of affairs in the world by corresponding symbols in a metaphysically harmless, though seemingly non-inferential way, why not all justifications are inferential transitions, for example those that make heavy use of constructions, and why a prosentential analysis of truth is helpful but not sufficient.
Making faces with computers
Authors: Pike Graham , Brace Nicola , Turner Jim , Kynan Sally
Published: September 2007

Knowledge concerning the cognition involved in perceiving and remembering faces has informed the design of at least two generations of facial compositing technology. These systems allow a witness to work with a computer (and a police operator) in order to construct an image of a perpetrator. Research conducted with systems currently in use has suggested that basing the construction process on the witness recalling and verbally describing the face can be problematic. To overcome these problems and make better use of witness cognition, the latest systems use a combination of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) facial synthesis and an array-based interface. The present paper describes a preliminary study conducted to determine whether the use of an array-based interface really does make appropriate use of witness cognition and what issues need to be considered in the design of emerging compositing technology.
Distributed processes, distributed cognizers, and collaborative cognition
Authors: Harnad Stevan
Published: September 2007

Cognition is thinking; it feels like something to think, and only those who can feel can think. There are also things that thinkers can do. We know neither how thinkers can think nor how they are able to do what they can do. We are waiting for cognitive science to discover how. Cognitive science does this by testing hypotheses about what processes can generate what doing (“know-how”).This is called the Turing Test. It cannot test whether a process can generate feeling, hence thinking — only whether it can generate doing. The processes that generate thinking and know-how are “distributed” within the heads of thinkers, but not across thinkers’ heads. Hence there is no such thing as distributed cognition, only collaborative cognition. Email and the Web have spawned a new form of collaborative cognition that draws upon individual brains’ real-time interactive potential in ways that were not possible in oral, written or print interactions.
Information and mechanical models of intelligence
Authors: Quilici Gonzalez Maria Eunice
Published: September 2007

The impact of new advanced technology on issues that concern meaningful information and its relation to studies of intelligence constitutes the main topic of the present paper. The advantages, disadvantages and implications of the synthetic methodology developed by cognitive scientists, according to which mechanical models of the mind, such as computer simulations or self-organizing robots, may provide good explanatory tools to investigate cognition, are discussed. A difficulty with this methodology is pointed out, namely the use of meaningless information to explain intelligent behavior that incorporates meaningful information. In this context, it is inquired what are the contributions of cognitive science to contemporary studies of intelligent behavior and how technology may play a role in the analysis of the relationships established by organisms in their natural and social environments.
Illocutionary rules
Authors: Harnish Robert M. , Plunze Christian
Published: September 2007

The idea that speaking a language is a rule‑ (or convention‑)governed form of behavior goes back at least to Wittgenstein’s language-game analogy, and can be found most prominently in the work of Searle and Alston. Both theorists have a conception of illocutionary rules as putting illocutionary conditions on utterance acts. We argue that this conception of illocutionary rules is inadequate — it does not meet intuitively plausible conditions of adequacy for the description of illocutionary acts. Nor are illocutionary rules as so conceived necessary to account for the normative dimension of illocutionary acts. In light of these conclusions we address the question of what a conception of language use not as rule-governed, but still normative, might look like.