bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conscious Emotion in a Dynamic System
Authors: Newton Natika
Published: March 2014

A dynamic model of brain mechanisms of consciousness and emotion offers more comprehensive and coherent solutions than the traditional Cartesian model to many traditional puzzles in philosophy of mind. One of these is self-awareness: how is it possible for a conscious being to be reflexively aware of its own consciousness? In this chapter I discuss specific ways this question can be treated using a dynamic model. The discussion has two parts. First, I propose, in general terms, a way in which familiar aspects of conscious emotional states can be viewed as elements of a dynamical system. Second, I show how, on this model, one can be consciously aware of one’s own emotions.
Dissolving Differences
Authors: Hardcastle Valerie Gray
Published: March 2014

Quick pharmaceutical fixes are increasingly the treatment of choice for emotional problems. Depressed? Take Prozac. Anxious? Take Xanax. Fearful? Take Paxil. It’s an anti-depressant, but it also cures some phobias. Sexually inhibited? Try Wellbutrin. That sometimes works.

A friend of mine had a dog that was depressed. The doctors diagnosed the pet with a mood disorder and prescribed medication as a solution. This is how much biomedical views about emotions and how they should be controlled have infected our culture. My point here is not to knock modern pharmaceuticals, nor is it to claim that, in our hurry to find quick fixes, we over-prescribe mood altering drugs. But the fact is that popular culture now sees our emotions as simple brain twitches; to change our feelings, we just change the twitch. Depression and anxiety are analogous to headaches or heartburn; they are all simple bodily responses to various stressors.

It would belabor the obvious to point out that our emotions are much more complicated than acid indigestion. At the same time, wondering how it is we should understand human emotions is a legitimate theoretical question. Popular culture and the popular press don’t have it quite right, that is certain, but how far off are they?

This essay will try to address that question. I propose a view of emotions that pays homage to their complexity as well as to their basic neurobiological roots. In brief, my main points are these: There are currently two dominant traditions in the study of emotion, although not all approaches fit neatly into either category: the constructivists and the reductionists. The constructivists hold that human emotions are constructed out of our social interactions with others. In contrast, the reductionists believe that our complex emotions reflect common affective responses found across the animal kingdom. Here, I try to show — perhaps paradoxically — that both camps are largely right.
Men and Women, Maps and Minds
Authors: Allen Gary L.
Published: March 2014

Cognitive bases of sex-related differences in reading and interpreting maps
Describers and Explorers
Authors: Carassa Antonella , Aprigliano Alessia , Geminiani Giuliano
Published: March 2014

A method for investigating cognitive maps
Working Memory and Mental Synthesis
Authors: Pearson David G. , Logie Robert H.
Published: March 2014

A dual-task approach
Hungarian v
Authors: Bárkányi Zsuzsanna , Kiss Zoltán
Published: March 2014

The present article describes an acoustic study and a perception experiment that investigate the contrast of the fricatives f–v after sonorant consonants in word-final position in Hungarian. In earlier work (e.g. Kiss & Bárkányi 2006) we found that in this context Hungarian v is mostly realized unphonated with considerable frication noise. The present paper shows that although the voicing of v is (partially) lost, its phonological contrast with f is not completely neutralized – there are other phonetic parameters (e.g. vowel and fricative duration, center of gravity) that differentiate between f and v in this position. However, we also demonstrate that v in this position is not fully recoverable perceptually either, in other words the contrast is not robustly cued enough. The paper also argues that phonetic features (such as the duration ratio of vowels and fricative constriction) that have been thought to be “redundant” in the phonology of Hungarian f–v (and obstruents in general) before are actually crucial and perceptually beneficial for maintaining their contrast in phonetically impoverished contexts.
Overt nominative subjects in infinitival complements in Hungarian
Authors: Szabolcsi Anna
Published: March 2014

We argue that the infinitival complements of subject-control and subject-to-subject raising verbs in Hungarian can have overt nominative subjects. The infinitival subject status of these DPs is diagnosed by constituent order, binding properties, and scope interpretation. Long-distance Agree(ment) and multiple agreement are crucial to their overtness.
Letters
Authors: Bergs Alexander
Published: March 2014

This paper explores the question how far “letters” as one specific text type can be subdivided into smaller groups of texts (i.e. subtypes such as “requests”, “orders”, or “reports”) on the basis of socio-psychological and pragmatic dimensions and factors, including speech act and accommodation theory. This paper argues that this differentiation into socio-pragmatic subtypes actually can be made and that these subtypes materialize in significant systematic morphosyntactic variability. The idea is explored and illustrated on the basis of pronoun and relativizer variation in the late Middle English Paston Letters. In particular, it is shown how authors use their individual stylistic freedom to pursue specific communicative goals in different types of letters.
Text in context
Authors: Wood Johanna L.
Published: March 2014

This paper analyses lexical features in letters written to and by Margaret Paston, using Fairclough’s (1992) three-dimensional framework for discourse analysis. Historical pragmatics, as a relatively new field, is open to the development of new methodologies and the adaptation of established ones. Although Fairclough’s methodology is intended as a systematic way of approaching modern text, it is shown to be relevant and useful in historical work. The letters are analysed in context, with reference to the discursive practices (production, distribution, and consumption of text) and social practices of the fifteenth century. The analysis shows that Margaret occupies a powerful position within her family and the community.
Intertextual networks in the correspondence of Lady Katherine Paston
Authors: Tanskanen Sanna-Kaisa
Published: March 2014

In the dialogue of correspondence, letters both respond to previous letters and anticipate new ones. The intertextuality existing between letters in a chain of correspondence can be made explicit, and it is these manifest intertextual connections that are explored in this paper. More specifically, the study focuses on the use of references to other letters as intertextual links.

The analysis reveals that other letters, previous, future, and even some that were planned but never written, are explicitly present in the majority of the letters passing between Lady Katherine Paston and her fellow correspondents. Some types of references to other letters are constrained by the relationship of the correspondents and the frequency of the correspondence, while others function independently of such factors.
Collective field work
Authors: Kibrik Aleksandr E.
Published: March 2014

For forty years, linguistic fieldwork on the minority languages of Soviet and post-Soviet States has been conducted by members of the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University. The present paper describes the “Moscow approach” to team-based fieldwork, including the history, problems, advantages and disadvantages of this unique venture. The conclusion is that the advantages of collective fieldwork outweigh the disadvantages, but that there are several requirements that must be in place in order for the method to be effective. These include a clear organizational scheme, several available language consultants, and supportive attitudes on the parts of all participants. In recent years, a combination of researcher specialization and cross-training in multiple sub-disciplines has become an increasingly important component of the collective field trips.
Grammar writing for a grammar-reading audience
Authors: Noonan Michael
Published: March 2014

Thousands of languages are currently in danger of extinction without having been adequately documented by linguists. This fact represents a tragedy for communities in which endangered languages are spoken, for linguistics as a discipline and for all of humanity. One major role of the field of linguistics is to describe languages accurately and thoroughly for the benefit of all concerned. This paper presents the results of an informal survey of major users of grammatical descriptions and gives lists of dos and don’ts for those contemplating a descriptive study of one of the many endangered languages of the world. Concrete suggestions are provided that will help grammar writers produce user-friendly, thorough and useful grammatical descriptions.
A grammar as a communicative act, or what does a grammatical description really describe?
Authors: Payne Thomas E.
Published: March 2014

A descriptive grammar is a document that is intended to communicate important and complex patterns of knowledge within a speech community. Previous conceptions of linguistic grammars have emphasized a metaphor in which the internal grammar of a language is perceived as a “machine” that transforms thoughts into language structure. Written grammars were conceived as schematic representations of such machines. The present paper argues for a different metaphor. Because a grammar is primarily an act of communication, a good grammar possesses qualities known to hold of other communicative acts. The paper invokes recent work in linguistic pragmatics to help potential grammar writers conceptualize and present their work as an efficient and engaging act of communication.
The linguistic example
Authors: Weber David J.
Published: March 2014

Good language descriptions liberally illustrate their claims with examples. The author must select and order examples, and provide accompanying information. The example may include a reference number, the example in multiple forms (phonetic, phonemic, morphemic or morphophonemic, written), brackets and categories, glosses, translation, punctuation, functional annotations, grammatical judgements, subscripts, empty categories, ellipses marking, information about the author and language variety, attention-directing mechanisms, and so forth. Formatting these diverse sorts of information is a non-trivial task; suggestions are given for “best practice.” The delivery of documents on screens (rather than on paper) makes possible some dynamic enhancements such as inspecting an example’s textual context, toggling on/off various types of information, controlling highlighting and conflation.
Perceptual recalibration in sensory substitution and perceptual modification
Authors: González Juan C. , Bach-y-Rita Paul , Haase Steven J.
Published: March 2014

This paper analyzes the process of perceptual recalibration (PR) in light of two cases of technologically-mediated cognition: sensory substitution and perceptual modification. We hold that PR is a very useful concept — perhaps necessary — for explaining the adaptive capacity that natural perceptive systems display as they respond to functional demands from the environment. We also survey critically related issues, such as the role of learning, training, and nervous system plasticity in the recalibrating process. Attention is given to the interaction between technology and cognition, and the case of epistemic prostheses is presented as an illustration. Finally, we address the following theoretical issues: (1) the dynamic character of spatial perception; (2) the role of functional demands in perception; (3) the nature and interaction of sensory modalities. We aim to show that these issues may be addressed empirically and conceptually — hence, the usefulness of sensory-substitution and perceptual-modification studies in the analysis of perception, technologically-mediated cognition, and cognition in general.
Technology and the management imagination
Authors: Phillips Fred
Published: March 2014

This paper explores the evolution of the techno-management imagination (TMI). This is the process by which, in times of crisis, managers think not just out of the box, but out of the very reality in which the box resides. Tacit social consensus, also known as corporate culture, can lead to a shared, implicit, and incorrect view that certain actions are impossible. TMI transcends local culture, accessing technological solutions that are unknown and/or unimagined. Members of the organization tend to call such solutions “magic”. The paper looks at social, perceptual, and managerial aspects of magic from a practical point of view that is grounded in research. It examines the risks of TMI, and concludes with suggested perspectives and research questions for management scientists and cognitive scientists.
Is cognition plus technology an unbounded system? Technology, representation and culture
Authors: Griffith Niall J.L.
Published: March 2014

The relationship between cognition and culture is discussed in terms of technology and representation. The computational metaphor is discussed in relation to its providing an account of cognitive and technical development: the role of representation and self-modification through environmental manipulation and the development of open learning from stigmery. A rationalisation for the transformational effects of information and representation is sought in the physical and biological theories of Autokatakinetics and Autopoiesis. The conclusion drawn is that culture, rather than being an intrinsic property of our human phenotype was learned and that cultural cognition is an information transforming system that is inadequately characterised by notions of parameterised deep-structure and that it is an open and potentially unbounded informational system.
Review of Sign Language Assessment Instruments
Authors: Haug Tobias
Published: March 2014

This article reviews and discusses existing sign language assessment instruments and those that are still under development. There are three groupings of sign language assessments: (1) instruments to assess and monitor the process of sign language acquisition in deaf children, (2) assessments for educational purposes, and (3) instruments for linguistic research. These will be discussed individually with regard to a range of issues, such as target age group, linguistic content of the assessment instrument, background of the instrument and development, usability and availability, and strengths and weaknesses. The article concludes with an evaluation of the reviewed instruments.
Adult-child interaction in BSL nursery — getting their attention
Authors: Smith Sandra , Sutton-Spence Rachel
Published: March 2014

This paper reports on attention-getting strategies during adult–child interaction in a BSL-language nursery. The data come from a small study conducted at the School of Education at Leeds University, in which deaf children in a Deaf nursery run by Deaf adults were filmed. Deaf adults and deaf children both used waving and tapping to gain attention. Deaf adults used waving strategies more than the children did, while the children used more tapping strategies than the adults did. Additional ways of seeking attention and a range of different types of tapping and waving were identified, providing insights into the different uses of waving and the tapping in different situations. Findings also revealed possible developmental stages in attention-seeking.
A framework for thinking about distributed cognition
Authors: Poirier Pierre , Chicoisne Guillaume
Published: March 2014

As is often the case when scientific or engineering fields emerge, new concepts are forged or old ones are adapted. When this happens, various arguments rage over what ultimately turns out to be conceptual misunderstandings. At that critical time, there is a need for an explicit reflection on the meaning of the concepts that define the field. In this position paper, we aim to provide a reasoned framework in which to think about various issues in the field of distributed cognition. We argue that both relevant concepts, distribution and cognition, must be understood as continuous. As it is used in the context of distributed cognition, the concept of distribution is essentially fuzzy, and we will link it to the notion of emergence of system-level properties. The concept of cognition must also be seen as fuzzy, but for a different reason: due to its origin as an anthropocentric concept, no one has a clear handle on its meaning in a distributed setting. As the proposed framework forms a space, we then explore its geography and (re)visit famous landmarks.
The grounding and sharing of symbols
Authors: Cangelosi Angelo
Published: March 2014

The double function of language, as a social/communicative means, and as an individual/ cognitive capability, derives from its fundamental property that allows us to internally re-represent the world we live in. This is possible through the mechanism of symbol grounding, i.e., the ability to associate entities and states in the external and internal world with internal categorical representations. The symbol grounding mechanism, as language, has both an individual and a social component. The individual component, called the “Physical Symbol Grounding”, refers to the ability of each individual to create an intrinsic link between world entities and internal categorical representations. The social component, called “Social Symbol Grounding”, refers to the collective negotiation for the selection of shared symbols (words) and their grounded meanings. The paper discusses these two aspects of symbol grounding in relation to distributed cognition, using examples from cognitive modeling research on grounded agents and robots.
Distributed cognition, representation, and affordance
Authors: Zhang Jiajie , Patel Vimla L.
Published: March 2014

This article describes a representation-based framework of distributed cognition. This framework considers distributed cognition as a cognitive system whose structures and processes are distributed between internal and external representations, across a group of individuals, and across space and time. The major issue for distributed research, under this framework, are the distribution, transformation, and propagation of information across the components of the distributed cognitive system and how they affect the performance of the system as a whole. To demonstrate the value of this representation-based approach, the framework was used to describe and explain an important, challenging, and controversial issue — the concept of affordance.
Computer-aided translation as a distributed cognitive task
Authors: Dragsted Barbara
Published: March 2014

The present article examines the potential effects on the translation process of working interactively with a translation memory (TM) system, a tool for storing and sharing previous translations. A TM system automatically divides the source text into sentences presented to the translator one-by-one. Based on observations made in an empirical study of six professional translators and six translation students, it is argued that full sentences do not constitute a central cognitive processing category in translation, and that the sentence-by-sentence presentation inherent in TM systems therefore creates an unnaturally strong focus on the sentence, which affects the very task of translation (as well as the translation product). Particular attention is given to the impact of the use of TM systems on the informants’ revision behaviour and their tendency to change the sentence structure.
Describing the extended meanings of lexical cohesion in a corpus of SARS spoken discourse
Authors: Cheng Winnie
Published: March 2014

The study reported in this paper applies Sinclair’s (2004) descriptive model of lexical items, which consists of five categories of co-selection: two obligatory categories the core and semantic prosody, and three optional categories collocation, colligation and semantic preference. The study examines a selection of spoken discourse events collected in Hong Kong during and in the immediate aftermath of the SARS crisis in 2003. These discourse events form part of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE). The findings show that once the overlapping patterns of co-selection of the most frequently occurring lexical words in the SARS corpus have been determined, it is possible to describe the cumulative effects of the habitual co-selection in the lexical items that contribute to textual meanings and coherence within and across the texts. It is argued that patterns of co-selection provide a fuller picture of textual and intertextual coherence than concentrating solely on lexical cohesion.
Application-oriented terminography in financial forensics
Authors: Kerremans Koen , Desmeytere Isabelle , Temmerman Rita , Wille Patrick
Published: March 2014

This paper covers ongoing terminography work in the FF POIROT project, a European research project in which formal and shareable knowledge repositories (i.e. ontologies) and ontology-based applications are developed for the prevention of value added tax carousel fraud in the EU and the detection of securities fraud. We will emphasise that the knowledge requirements regarding users and applications determine what textual information should be structured at macro- and micro-levels of the FF POIROT multilingual terminology base. Furthermore, we will present our ideas concerning a multidisciplinary approach in terminography, called ‘Termontography’, for future application-oriented terminology development.
Computer games as political discourse
Authors: Machin David , van Leeuwen Theo
Published: March 2014

The paper analyses how the March 1993 American intervention in Somalia is represented in the movie Black Hawk Down and the computer game of the same name. Using a discourse historical approach, the paper combines three methods: (1) analysis of the ‘special operations discourse’ that underlies both film and game, and social actor analysis of the way the parties involved in the conflict are visually and verbally represented; (2) the political history of the conflict represented in the two entertainment products, and the history of the ‘special operations discourse’ itself; and (3) an account of the collaboration between the US military and entertainment industry in the production of both film and game.
The self and identity negotiation
Authors: Swann William B.
Published: March 2014

Identity negotiation refers to the processes through which perceivers and targets come to agreements regarding the identities that targets are to assume in the interaction. Whereas past work has focused on the contribution of perceivers to the identity negotiation process, I emphasize the contribution of targets to this process. Specifically, I examine the tendency for targets to work to bring perceivers to verify their self-views. For example, people prefer and seek self-verifying evaluations from others, including their spouses and employers — even when this means attaining evaluations that validate negative self-views. Moreover, receiving self-verification has adaptive consequences, even improving the performance of workers in diverse groups. Some boundary conditions of self-verification strivings as well as implications for making of minds are discussed.
Ostracism
Authors: Williams Kipling D. , Gerber Jonathan
Published: March 2014

This chapter explores the powerful consequences of ostracism — being ignored and excluded — at the neurophysiological, emotional, cognitive and behavioral levels. Once ostracized, individuals first recoil in pain, then perceive and respond to their social environments differently, leading them to interpret and attend to particular information that may help them cope, or often, that may perpetuate their state of exclusion. We will discuss the nature and antecedents of adaptive and maladaptive reactions to ostracism. Finally, we will report several experiments aimed at explicating the links between ostracism and pro-social or anti-social behavior.
The shaping of animals’ minds
Authors: Salwiczek Lucie H. , Wickler Wolfgang
Published: March 2014

Mind is seen as a collection of abilities to take decisions in biologically relevant situations. Mind shaping means to form habits and decision rules of how to proceed in a given situation. Problem-specific decision rules constitute a modular mind; adaptive mind-shaping is likely to be module-specific. We present examples from different behaviour ‘faculties’ throughout the animal kingdom, grouped according to important mind-shaping factors to illustrate three basically different mind-shaping processes: (I) external stimuli guide the differentiation of a nervous structure that controls a given behaviour; (II) information comes in to direct a fixed behaviour pattern to its biological goal, or to complete an inherited behaviour program; (III) specific stimuli activate or inactivate a pre-programmed behaviour. Mind-shaping phenomena found in the animal kingdom are suggested as ‘null-hypotheses’ when looking at how human minds might be shaped.
Chimpanzees are sensitive to some of the psychological states of others
Authors: Call Josep
Published: March 2014

Animals react and adjust to the behavior of their conspecifics. Much less is known about whether animals also react and adjust to the psychological states of others. Recent evidence suggests that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) follow the gaze of others around barriers, past distracters, and check back if they find nothing. Chimpanzees can gauge the motives of a human experimenter and distinguish his intentional from accidental actions. These results suggest that chimpanzees interpret the perceptions and actions of others from a psychological perspective -they seem to know what others can and cannot see and what goals others pursue. It is hypothesized that the co-operation of (1) the ability to operate on psychological states and (2) the motivation to share emotions and experiences with others are key ingredients in the making of human minds.
File Change Semantics for Preschoolers
Authors: Perner Josef , Brandl Johannes L.
Published: March 2014

We develop a new theory of the cognitive changes around 4 years of age by trying to explain why understanding of false belief and of alternative naming emerge at this age (Doherty & Perner, 1998). We make use of the notion of discourse referents (DR: Karttunen, 1976) as it is used in File Change Semantics (Heim, 2002), one of the early forms of the more widely known Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp & Reyle, 1993). The assumed cognitive change exists in how children can link DRs in their mind to external referents. The younger children check whether the conditions for a DR match the conditions of an external entity (an implicit/procedural understanding of reference). The older children, in addition, have an explicit understanding of reference in virtue of making explicit identity assertions. This involves the metarepresentational ability of representing that different DRs represent the same external referent, which — we argue — is required for alternative naming and for the false belief task.
Narrative inequality in the TRC hearings
Authors: Blommaert Jan , Bock Mary , McCormick Kay
Published: March 2014

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission victim hearings were a highly unusual discourse event in which previously silenced and powerless people were offered a prestigious public forum and speech format to tell about their experiences of human rights violations. However, despite the equal access offered to victims for the telling of their stories, pre-existing inequalities persisted and were reflected in the relative ‘hearability’ of these stories. We use the concept of ‘pretextuality’ to account for the relative hearability. The concept refers to the varying degrees of competence in language varieties, literacy and narrative skills that people bring with them to a communicative interaction, and which influence the impact of their narratives. Through detailed analysis of selected testimonies, we demonstrate ways in which the inequalities suggested above emerged in the hearings.
Critical discourse analysis as an analytic tool in considering selected, prominent features of TRC testimonies
Authors: Anthonissen Christine
Published: March 2014

This paper considers a number of salient, characterising features of the verbal mediation process that took place in the TRC hearings on gross human rights violations. This is done with reference to the methodology developed in Discourse Sociolinguistics. It considers how various participants represent a particular event, each taking the perspective from which they experienced it. It notes the differences in verbal choice, and in textual and information structure of (i.a.) a journalist who witnessed this particular instance of public police excess, of a woman involved because her home was at the scene of the confrontation between police and youngsters, of one of the commanding police officers who had been subpoenaed and thus was not a voluntary witness at the hearing, of a doctor who treated patients after the event, of a school teacher who could articulate the particular kind of protest youngsters engaged in at the time, and so on. It also highlights a particular practice of reformulating which appears to be typical of discourses that mediate past atrocities with a view to founding new and improved democratic practices.
History in the making/The making of history
Authors: Wodak Ruth
Published: March 2014

This paper considers narratives about traumatic pasts, using interviews with visitors of the two exhibitions about the war crimes of the German Wehrmacht, shown in Germany and Austria 1995 and 2002, as examples. Numerous justification and legitimization strategies are involved in public and private discourses. The study claims that official genres, such as school books or TV documentaries, still launch narratives which exculpate the German Wehrmacht as institution, although the evidence provided by historians and the exhibitions is overwhelming. The topoi used (such as ‘doing one’s duty’; ‘all wars are the same’; and so forth) are to be found in similar debates in other countries as well. Hence, this case study illustrates patterns of argumentation which occur much more generally than only in the specific national contexts studied in detail here.
Narrative research and the challenge of accumulating knowledge
Authors: Josselson Ruthellen
Published: March 2014

Narrative research has produced an array of richly-detailed expositions of life as lived, well-interpreted studies full of nuance and insight that befit the complexity of human lives. This paper inquires into the necessity and possibilities of amalgamation of knowledge obtained through narrative research. As narrative studies, with their accompanying interpretations, accumulate, how do we “add them up?” What would a meta-analysis of narrative studies look like? The challenge that confronts us is how assimilate narrative understanding at a conceptual level in a way that does not return to a modernist frame, treating the various research reports as “facts” — but rather to treat them as situated interpretations. Conversation is offered as a metaphor and context within which knowledge is to be understood.
Biographical structuring
Authors: Fischer Wolfram , Goblirsch Martina
Published: March 2014

This article argues that the self is produced, maintained and modified in interaction and discourse. As a situated practice in ongoing social interaction, relying on biographical memory, cultural and situational impacts, the self is developed as a continuous structure allowing reliable expectations. We call this process biographical structuring and suggest a method of a reconstructive analysis. Distinguishing and triangulating the reconstructive perspectives of the lived life, the experienced life, and the presented life, we present a case analysis of an adolescent migrant, thus demonstrating how this kind of analysis can be applied in helping professions.
Narrative pre-construction
Authors: Labov William
Published: March 2014

Before a narrative can be constructed, it must be pre-constructed by a cognitive process that begins with a decision that a given event is reportable. Pre-construction begins with this most reportable event and proceeds backwards in time to locate events that are linked causally each to the following one, a recursive process that ends with the location of the unreportable event — one that is not reportable in itself and needs no explanation. Comparison of such event chains with the sequence of narrative clauses actually produced will help to understand how the narrator re-organizes and transforms the events of real time in the finished narrative.
A new role for narrative in variationist sociolinguistics
Authors: Johnstone Barbara
Published: March 2014

Labov and Waletzky’s (1997[1967]) path-breaking description of “narrative syntax” arose in the context of variationist sociolinguistic research, and narrative continues to be an important source of data for variationist’ work. In most of this work, however, narrative is not the object of study. Variationist sociolinguists are interested in the structure and function of sounds, words, and phrases found in narrative data, but they have not typically asked how the structure and function of narrative itself might bear on the questions about linguistic variation and language change that define their field. Here I suggest that close attention to the structure and function of narrative can, in fact, shed light on a topic of central interest to variationists, namely vernacular norm-formation. I argue that narratives about encounters with linguistic difference help create shared orientations to particular sets of nonstandard linguistic features and link them with region, class, and other sources of identity. I further suggest that narrative functions particularly well as a vehicle for language-ideological differentiation (Gal & Irvine, 1995) of this sort.
Story formulations in talk-in-interaction
Authors: Stokoe Elizabeth , Edwards Derek
Published: March 2014

This article contrasts ‘mainstream’ narrative analysis, and the study of researcher-elicited narrative accounts, with conversation analysis and the study of naturally occurring narratives-in-interaction. Our analysis extends previous conversation analytic and discursive psychological work on storytelling (i.e., how stories get embedded in sequences of talk; the actions storytelling does), by focusing on the location and function of speakers’ story formulations and orientations to narrative (e.g. “I think we should start at the beginning”, “You want the full story, or…?”, “there’s always two sides to every story”). Rather than treating such ‘meta-formulations’ as partial expressions of a general folk theory of narrative, we examine their action-orientation and the way they are shaped for the occasions of their production; how members’ commonsense notions of stories are displayed in the interactional contexts in which they are put to use. The argument is illustrated by a range of brief examples from mundane conversation, police interrogation, and neighbour dispute mediation.
Narratives in action
Authors: Gergen Mary M. , Gergen Kenneth J.
Published: March 2014

In various professional fields today, a profusion of practices are inspired by or draw sustenance from narrative inquiry; similarly, narrative inquiry must attend to these practices as they are vital to its future. Ultimately a full fledged dialogue between scholars and practitioners is to be sought. We review three major domains in which narratives are in action: psychotherapy, organizational change, and conflict reduction. We conclude by taking up theoretical issues raised by these practices. Of particular concern are questions of why narratives are effective in social change, and what theoretical orientations are most adequate to the challenge of practice.
Thinking big with small stories in narrative and identity analysis
Authors: Georgakopoulou Alexandra
Published: March 2014

Narrative research is frequently described as a rich and diverse enterprise, yet the kinds of narrative data that it bases itself on present a striking consensus: they are autobiographical in kind (i.e., about non-shared, personal experience, single past events). In this paper, I put forth a case for under-represented narrative data which I collectively call (following Bamberg 2004a, b; also Georgakopoulou & Bamberg, 2005) “small stories” (partly literally, partly metaphorically). My aim is to flesh small stories out, to urge for the sort of systematic research that will establish connections between their interactional features and their sites of engagement and finally to consider the implications of their inclusion in narrative research for identity analysis (as the main agenda of much of narrative research). I will thus propose small stories research as a “new” narrative turn that can provide a needed meeting point for narrative analysis and narrative inquiry.
Life “on holiday”?
Authors: Freeman Mark
Published: March 2014

There has been an increasing emphasis in narrative inquiry on “small” stories (i.e., those derived from everyday social exchanges) rather than “big” stories (i.e., those derived from interviews, clinical encounters, autobiographical writing, and other such interrogative venues). The latter, it may be argued, inevitably entail a problematic distance from everyday reality and may thus be said to embody life “on holiday.” On one level, this is surely true: big stories, insofar as they entail a significant measure of reflection on either an episode, a portion of a life, or the whole of it, are a step removed from those everyday goings-on that are the focus of small stories. Far from necessarily being a liability, however, the distance that is intrinsic to big story narrative reflection creates opportunities for understanding that are largely unavailable in the immediacy of the moment. Big stories and small stories thus complement one another; taken together, they represent a promising integrative direction for narrative inquiry.
Frankie, Johnny, Oprah and Me
Authors: Sartwell Crispin
Published: March 2014

Narrative is one of many strategies for making texts or coming to understand the world. This paper attempts to restore narrative to that status: as one mode of writing or telling among others. The main example developed is the contrast between blues ballads such as “Frankie and Johnny,” which tell a story, and traditional or modular blues songs, which do not.
Rescuing narrative from qualitative research
Authors: Atkinson Paul , Delamont Sara
Published: March 2014

We review some of the recent trends that have made the collection and exploration of narratives especially prominent among the social sciences. While we acknowledge the significance of narratives in many aspects of social life, we sound a note of caution concerning the popularity of ‘narratives’, and ‘testimony’, not least among ‘qualitative’ researchers. We suggest that too many authors are complicit in the general culture of ‘the interview society’, and are too ready to celebrate narratives and biographical accounts, rather than subjecting them to systematic analysis. In the same way, we suggest that the contemporary fashion for ‘autoethnography’ too often leads to unreflective uses of personal accounts.
The self-telling body
Authors: Charon Rita
Published: March 2014

This essay will examine some of the narrative practices emerging in the health care professions — medicine, nursing, social work, and psychotherapy. We have always, of course, understood that the most fertile and clinically salient information we derive about patients comes from listening to them talking about their illnesses. Nonetheless, medicine’s recent past is marked by not so much a suspicion of as a dismissal of word in diagnosing and treating disease. Of late, medicine (and because I am a doctor, I will limit myself to thinking about medicine in the essay) has found sustenance from such fields as trauma studies, oral history, and testimony work. Finally, we are coming around to understanding that our tasks include the duty to bear witness as others tell of trauma and loss.The narrative practice of medicine — or, as I have come to say, the practice of narrative medicine — unites a host of neighboring concerns and approaches. Historically, medicine came into the narrative realms through qualitative social science, especially sociolinguistics, as a means to represent and comprehend the conversations that take place between doctors and patients. Such scholars as Elliot Mishler, Richard Frankel, Catherine Riessman, and Candice West really altered medical practice by making medical discourse amenable to inspection and then analysis. Around the same time, we also turned to literary texts and ways of thinking that help us to enter the worlds of patients, see others’ experience from their perspectives, greet the metaphorical as well as the factual power of words, and be moved by what we hear. Oddly, then, medical practice became a bridge between the qualitative social sciences and literary theory, letting us, from the inside, see how very similar are the efforts of the sociologist examining discourse and the novelist creating it.We doctors feel great good fortune in having the ultimate objective correlative — what might be captivating but ethereal theorizing becomes as practical and concrete and earthy as can be by virtue of being about somebody’s body — particularly somebody’s ailing body. What extreme pleasure that my thinking complicated thoughts and being attuned to the complex ways of language can translate into control of my patients’ blood sugar or relief of their migraines or diagnosis of their coronary artery disease. Narrative medicine becomes, in the end, a heady, brainy, compassionate, corporeal practice that can heal the patient and nourish the doctor at the same time — by virtue of the talk.
Do good stories produce good health?
Authors: Ramírez-Esparza Nairán , Pennebaker James W.
Published: March 2014

There is a culturally-held belief that good narratives are associated with good mental or physical health. Scores of studies have demonstrated that writing about emotional upheavals can have salutary health effects. Despite the writing-health relationship, there is scant evidence that expressive writing samples that are judged to be good narratives are themselves linked to health change. Across multiple studies, linguistic features of essays have been empirically linked to health changes. For example, use of positive emotions, increasing use of causal and other cognitive words, and shifts in pronoun use are correlated with fewer physician visits. These language markers, however, are not strongly related to the quality of narrative. Whereas most research has been conducted with English-speaking samples, new analytic methods suggest that many of the language findings can be exported to other languages and cultures. Implications for our understanding narrative, language, and culture within the context of new language analytic methods are discussed.
Living stories
Authors: Schank Roger C. , Berman Tammy
Published: March 2014

Knowledge is composed of stories — primarily the stories we experience, and much less the stories we are told. We have difficulty remembering what others tell us, but schools are designed to teach by telling. Story Centered Curricula place learners in stories that mirror the real life world of working professionals, enabling them to learn through experience, and to remember the stories they have lived.
Why assume UG?
Authors: Wunderlich Dieter
Published: March 2014

This paper deliberates for a number of linguistic features whether they are part of UG, i.e., specific to human language, or whether they are adapted from other cognitive capacities which were evolutionarily prior to language. Among others, it is argued that the distinction between predication and reference already belongs to the conceptual system, whereas the distinction between verb and noun (which is not identical with the former one) is one of the innovations of UG. It is furthermore argued that syntax in the sense that it deals with displacement (‘movement’) is a property of human language that lies outside of UG.

The paper then discusses whether linguistic typology can contribute to our knowledge of UG, and whether aiming at this is a reasonable goal for typological research. It stands against Newmeyer’s position (this special issue) that typological evidence is essentially irrelevant for the construction of UG, as well as against Haspelmath’s position (this special issue), who argues that typological research can do without a concept of UG.
Universals, innateness and explanation in second language acquisition
Authors: Eckman Fred
Published: March 2014

This paper considers the question of explanation in second language acquisition within the context of two approaches to universals, Universal Grammar and language typology. After briefly discussing the logic of explaining facts by including them under general laws (Hempel & Oppenheim 1948), the paper makes a case for the typological approach to explanation being the more fruitful, in that it allows more readily for the possibility of ‘explanatory ascent’, the ability to propose more general, higher order explanations by having lower-level generalizations follow from more general principles. The UG approach, on the other hand is less capable of such explanatory ascent because of the postulation that the innate, domain-specific principles of UG are not reducible in any interesting way to higher order principles of cognition (Chomsky 1982).
Words from Bononia Legal Corpus
Authors: Rossini Favretti Rema , Tamburini F. , Martelli E.
Published: March 2014

The analysis of special multilingual corpora is still in its infancy, but it may serve a particularly important role for the directions it offers both in cross-linguistic investigation and in the selection of the most typical features of text types and genres. To exemplify the information which can be obtained from corpus evidence, the paper reports on an on-going corpus-driven research project, named Bononia Legal Corpus (BOLC). The main aim of BOLC is to build multilingual machine readable law corpora. Data are at present limited to English and Italian, but an extension is envisaged to include other languages. Before the first sample, a preliminary pilot corpus was constructed to consider European legislation and create a conceptual framework to be used as a first-level experience. In the paper, Sections 2 and 3 describe the corpus design and formatting as well as the corpus access tools. Sections 4 and 5 discuss two case studies and analyse two semantic areas which can be seen as two ends of the same variational continuum. At one end, we consider the words contratto and contract, which through the extension of international transactions and circulation may be supposed to have acquired transnational traits. At the other, we focus on a semantic area which may be expected to present translation problems for the differences existing in the two socio-institutional systems. Reference is made to the English words tax and duty and to the Italian words tassa and imposta.
Hybrid approaches for automatic segmentation and annotation of a Chinese text corpus
Authors: Feng Zhiwei
Published: March 2014

This paper describes the hybrid approaches for automatic segmentation and annotation of a Chinese text corpus. Some experiment results are given. Hybrid approaches combine the rule-based method, the statistic-based method, and the automatic learning method. It is a good approach, and it can obviously improve the precision of segmentation and annotation of a Chinese text corpus.