bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
‘Wouldst thou withdraw love’s faithful vow?’
Authors: Honegger Thomas
Published: September 2007

The joint sonnet of the two lovers-to-be at the Capulet feast towards the end of the first act is rightly regarded as the dramatic and poetic climax of the first part of the play. Yet it constitutes, from an interactional point of view, merely a first move and the declarations of love proper occur only later in the orchard scene of the second act. This article explores the complex negotiations that precede the actual confessions of love and investigates how Shakespeare modified his rather simplistic source text, Arthur Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet (1562), in order to exploit the full interactional and dramatic potential of the situation.
Speech reporting and the suppression of orality in seventeenth-century Russian trial dossiers
Authors: Collins Daniel E.
Published: September 2007

In comparison with Russian trial transcripts of the fifteenth century, trial transcripts of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries show a drift toward compact, writer-based reporting styles. In an earlier study (Collins 2001), I suggested that this happened because of significant changes in legal institutions. From being primarily oral confrontations, trials became battles of documents filed in chanceries and scrutinized by bureaucrats oriented to the written word; concomitantly, the transcripts became dossiers of documents literally glued together and framed by short narrative passages, including reports of dialogue. In the present study I examine a representative sample of these trial dossiers to demonstrate the link between reporting and discourse-organization strategies and chancery practices. First, I discuss how the dossiers are arranged into episodes graphically and syntactically. Second, I investigate the methods of speech reporting utilized in the trial dossiers and the contextual motivation for the choice of one method over another.
A diachronic speech act analysis of sworn testimonies in Polish criminal trials
Authors: Kwarciński Wojciech
Published: September 2007

In this paper I employ a diachronic model of analyzing speech acts to trace the development of sworn testimonies through the history of the Polish criminal trial. The research is based on the complete collection of medieval testimonies in Old Polish that have survived to the present day and on a selection of legal texts recorded in modern criminal trials. My preliminary assumption is that a proper analysis of institutional acts such as testimonies can only be achieved when their socio-historical context is taken into account. This is due to the fact that the very existence of legal speech acts depends on a set of constitutive rules that are socially and historically variable. The study corroborates my hypothesis and offers evidence in favor of the view that the changing legal context in which testimonies occur affects not only the ways in which they are realized over time but also their performative function.
Concepts for analyzing deception in discourse intended to be persuasive
Authors: Rudanko Juhani
Published: September 2007

The article examines two episodes from Shakespeare, one from Julius Caesar and the other one from Othello, in order to shed light on the nature of a type of deception often used by a speaker in discourse meant to persuade a hearer to adopt a particular course of action. Drawing on the episodes, two conceptual distinctions are proposed, one between overt and covert intentions and the other between first-order and second-order intentions. It is argued that the distinctions make it possible to formulate a structured framework for analyzing the type of deception in question. The model proposed also draws on Gricean maxims, emphasizing the role of the maxims of Quality and Quantity, first part.
Interplay of (inter)subjectivity and social norm
Authors: Onodera Noriko O.
Published: September 2007

This paper explores the interplay of (inter)subjectivity and social norm. (Inter)subjectification is a diachronic process, strengthening the speaker’s (inter)subjective meanings. However, when language change, including (inter)subjectification, occurs, what roles do society or any other social factor play in such change? To address this question, I suggest a specific mechanism behind the speaker’s choice of linguistic forms.

As episodes exemplifying intersubjectification, the meaning shifts of Japanese “involvement markers”, na elements, are examined. Their meaning shifts include: (1) from “self-addressed” (subjective) to “other-addressed” (intersubjective) meanings; and (2) from intersubjective to more intersubjective meanings. The (inter)subjective conversational strategies with the use of na elements contribute to fulfill one Japanese social norm, “harmony (wa)” (Ide and Kataoka 2002: v; Nakane 1970: 49).

In this paper, the close connection between intersubjectivity and social norm is also shown, being supported by a classic cross-linguistic study of European T-V languages (Brown and Gilman 1960) and a cross-linguistic analysis of Korean and Japanese intersubjectification.
(Inter)subjectification and unidirectionality
Authors: Traugott Elizabeth Closs
Published: September 2007

In this paper the importance of distinguishing synchronic (inter)subjectivity and diachronic (inter)subjectification is stressed. Questions are posed concerning the robustness of hypotheses about matches between semantic function and syntactic position at the left or right periphery of the clause in Japanese, the extent to which subtypes of (inter)subjective function constrain the direction of shift over time, and the optimal unit of analysis (sentence, clause, or intonation unit).
The concept of Europe in Le Monde’s editorials
Authors: Le Elisabeth
Published: September 2007

The enlargement of the European Union places it at an important threshold in its development. Fundamental questions on its nature and functions have to be discussed and agreed upon by its members. France, as one of these members, has repeatedly shown concern about the reform of the Union’s institutions. The French elite daily,Le Monde, reflects this important debate in its news coverage, and ties in its own position, particularly through its editorials. This paper examines the concept of Europe as it is presented inLe Monde’s editorial discourse from 1999 to 2001. The study is conducted in the constructivist approach and within the methodological framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. This perspective adds to other studies on European identity by strengthening the background of their argumentation, integrating their sometimes apparently contradictory conclusions, and describing the construction of identity from a national perspective in a more detailed and nuanced manner.
Discourse and metadiscourse in parliamentary debates
Authors: Ilie Cornelia
Published: September 2007

Oral metadiscourse is envisaged in the present study as a set of rhetorically structured communicative and interactional strategies used by speakers to signal, highlight, mitigate, or cancel parts of their ongoing discourse and their varying relevance to different addressees and/or audience members. Parliamentary metadiscursive strategies are typical manifestations of MPs’ joint negotiations of the degree of directness, explicitness, appropriateness, etc., of the interlocutors’ discursive representations, interpretations and evaluations of events, processes, as well as people’s ideas and actions. One important consequence is that institutional adversariality co-occurs with interpersonal adversariality.

Metadiscourse does not simply consist of distinct fragments of discourse and discursive patterns. Some of the rhetorically most effective strategies of parliamentary metadiscourse operate simultaneously on several levels of discourse. These strategies include various manifestations of the participants’ cognitive and inter-relational acts aimed at controlling, evaluating, adjusting and negotiating the goals and the effects of their and of their interlocutors’ ongoing talk.

The metadiscursive level of parliamentary discourse helps to articulate particular aspects of speaker-interlocutor relations and/or speaker-audience relations. This involves particularly speaker role shifts, discursive scope widening/narrowing, multiple-audience targeting, re/definition of terms and concepts, minimising/maximising accountability and merit, challenging facts and statistics. Metadiscursive statements may convey simple, double or multiple messages
Conceptual and methodological questions in the study of collective identities
Authors: Triandafyllidou Anna , Wodak Ruth
Published: September 2007

Studying identity, be it ethnic, cultural, linguistic, national or regional, in the contemporary context becomes troublesome because the scholar is faced with a whole range of social and cultural forms that co-exist uncomfortably with existing definitions of social identity. Moreover, although identity has been a central concern in a number of disciplines during the past decades, there has been considerable disagreement regarding the methodological tools most suitable to study its formation and change. The aim of this Special Issue is to discuss the usefulness of the very concept as well as the main methodological tools suitable to analyse identity-related phenomena today. In this introductory chapter, we provide for a general definition of the concept and elaborate on recent theoretical and conceptual developments regarding the nature of identity in the sociological, discourse studies and social psychological literature. In the concluding section, we introduce the individual contributions presented in this issue.
Storying Self and Others
Authors: Collins Peter
Published: September 2007

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken among British Quakers this article attempts to elucidate some of the connections between the narrative quality of everyday interaction and the local construction of self. Focusing on the Quaker Meeting, we find that the social identity of individual participants is precipitated in the interplay between three modes of discourse: the prototypical or individual, the vernacular and the canonic. For individuals to participate successfully in Meeting they are required to present and then reconstruct their autobiographical selves in response to their increasing familiarisation both with well-known canonic texts and also the local expression of these texts. The tensions which characterise this process might be said to define the politics of community in this case.
Methodology versus scholarship?
Authors: Seale Clive
Published: September 2007

Distinctions between traditional scholarship and methodologically informed procedures can support unhelpful stereotypes which parallel that between qualitative and quantitative research. These can have a negative effect on the practice of social research in general, and textual analysis in particular. Drawing on a study of morally charged narratives of collective and personal identity in newspaper texts reporting cancer experiences, where gender politics are negotiated, I show how this distinction can be overcome in research practice. Quantitative analysis is shown to be useful in exploring text and generating insights, as well as strengthening generalisations from qualitative anecdotes. Automated text analysis using NVIVO and Concordance software can produce new “readings” otherwise hidden from view that can be followed up in close qualitative analysis. Thus traditional views of qualitative research as exploratory and quantitative as confirmatory can be overturned. Analysts of discourse can use automation and counting without compromising their capacity to think creatively about meaning.
Space, experience and authority
Authors: Blommaert Jan , Dewilde Anke , Stuyck Karen , Peleman Katleen , Meert Henk
Published: September 2007

This paper reports on ongoing research on attitudes towards the establishing of refugee centers in Belgium. Attitudes are here defined ethnographically as discursive and active constructs and processes often captured under statified terms such as “attitude” or “opinion”. Based on an analysis of preliminary findings from one town, Beersel, a number of insights into the connection between space and the structure, quality and distribution of such attitudes could be distilled. In particular, distance and proximity appeared as crucial factors explaining qualitative differences in attitudes, often revolving around the possibilities offered by proximity to construct authority claims about “translocal” information (e.g. media reports) and to construct a habitus of “knower” of a particular topic. We thus arrive at new, complex and dynamic concepts of community as political units organized around particular topics and discursive procedures, while such units are determined by space. These findings and concepts challenge and destabilize more widespread notions of “public opinion”.
Computer games as political discourse
Authors: Machin David , van Leeuwen Theo
Published: September 2007

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.
Spectacular ethics
Authors: Chouliaraki Lilie
Published: September 2007

This article argues that the BBC World footage of the bombardment of Baghdad, March–April 2003, manages to take sides in the controversy over the Iraq war, without violating the principle of objectivity — a principle necessary for the credibility of public service broadcasting. Making use of the ‘analytics of mediation’, I show that the semiotic choices of this footage construe the bombardment of Baghdad in a regime of pity, whereby the aesthetic quality of the spectacle effaces the presence of Iraqi people as human beings and sidelines the question of the coalition troops identity either as benefactors or bombers. This combination is instrumental in aestheticising the horror of war at the expense of raising issues around the legitimacy and effects of the war.

The taking of sides in the BBC ‘update’ occurs precisely through this aestheticised representation of warfare that denies the sufferer her humanity and relieves the bomber of his responsibility in inflicting the suffering. By rendering these identities irrelevant to the spectacle of the suffering, the footage ultimately suppresses the emotional, ethical and political issues that lie behind the bombardment of Baghdad.
Debating the European Constitution
Authors: Oberhuber Florian , Bärenreuter Christoph , Krzyżanowski Michal , Schönbauer Heinz , Wodak Ruth
Published: September 2007

In this article, we analyze the newspaper coverage of the concluding session of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) which took place in Brussels on the 12th and 13th December 2003 and which was the first attempt to reach an agreement on the “Draft Constitutional Treaty” proposed by the European Convention. Placing it in the larger context of EU ‘constitutional’ reform, the media pictured the Brussels Summit and its eventual failure as an event of high symbolic relevance. In a qualitative in-depth discourse analysis, we comparatively investigate how the Summit was represented in 15 newspapers from eight EU countries. Using analytical categories from various key theoretical approaches of Discourse Analysis, the data are analyzed according to three interrelated sets of questions: (1) Which actors are selected in the press coverage, how are they labeled, and what are their main activities? (2) What metaphors, images and topoi are applied for representing and explaining the European Union as a unique political space? (3) How is the Brussels Summit placed in the political and historical context of European integration, who is blamed for its failure and why, and what scenarios for the future are discussed or proposed?

Results are presented on two dimensions: firstly, in a case study approach, it is shown how press coverage in each country differs on the level of semantics, thematic structures, and structures of relevance and argumentation. Secondly, a systematic cross-section analysis is carried out and the repertoire of the fundamental representations of EU-rope used in the press is reconstructed.
South African Novelists and the Grand Narrative of Apartheid
Authors: Gagiano Annie
Published: September 2007

The apartheid policies and practices by means of which South Africa was formerly governed also had an ideological or mythological dimension, which functioned as its justificatory narrative. The process of replacing that narrative which needs to be undertaken in South Africa can make use, among other processes, of the re-presentations of this society by our novelists. This paper sketches something of the complex interplay between fiction, social reality, and moral-political understanding at the hand of six novels. It focuses on depictions of acts and experiences of violation as the signature of the ruthless force and after-effects of the apartheid system. It draws attention to the various, but socially meaningful workings of novelistic discourse in these texts, functioning as they do within a situation requiring profound psychic and social readjustment.
“Parlare senza dirlo” — or — “Speaking without sayingit”
Authors: Danler Paul
Published: September 2007

This article is in the first place about the syntactic variants allowing for the elimination of those complements whichdoappear in active as opposed to passive, in causative as opposed to recessive and in personal as opposed to impersonal constructions in Italian (and other Romance languages). In the second place we will have a close look at why and when these variants seem to be preferably used in political speeches. On many occasions the political orator obviously opts not to state explicitly who the agent responsible for an action is and therefore linguistically resorts to a passive, a recessive or an impersonal construction. Our theses will be supported by excerpts from speeches by Mussolini, delivered between 1938 and 1944. Mussolini’s personality must have been an extremely complex and contradictory one. It is, among other things, these diathetical variants allowing for the elimination of complements which made it possible for him to conceal from his audiences how far he was away from his original socialist ideals once he was in power.
The variability of literary dialect in Jamaican creole
Authors: Schneider Edgar W. , Wagner Christian
Published: September 2007

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Adjective ordering as the reflection of a hierarchy in the noun system
Authors: Muromatsu Keiko
Published: September 2007

Adjective ordering in English, as in other languages, is nonrandom. In English, the restrictions involve left-to-right sequence, this being a specific case of the general principle: proximity of adjectives to the noun. This article provides a syntactic analysis of such restrictions, focusing not on the adjectives themselves but rather on properties of the nouns modified by them, namely their count/mass properties. Based on the claim that count and mass are hierarchically organized  rather than dichotomous, as previously thought  adjective ordering is shown to be a reflection of the count/mass distinction. This system accounts for the universality of the ordering restriction on adjectives, the universal principle being proximity to the noun. The difference in linear ordering in English and Spanish is ascribed to the presence/absence of a functional category, this being considered as a parameter. Non-canonically ordered adjectives in English are given a syntactic account as well, thus obviating the need for a pragmatic account.
Part of speech mismatches in modular grammar
Authors: Pensalfini Robert
Published: September 2007

The Jingulu language of central-northern Australia presents some difficulties in terms of classifying certain of its lexemes into part of speech categories. Personal names, for instance, which should be nouns on notional grounds, have the phonological and morphosyntactic properties of interjections, whilst notionally verbal roots are distinctly non-verbal in their distribution. These phenomena are analysed according to the principles of autolexical syntax, wherein different levels of representation of the same linguistic item (morphem, word, phrase and so forth) need not necessarily correspond to one another exactly.
The origins of language variation
Authors: Bouchard Denis
Published: September 2007

Linguistic variation derives from properties of the physical and conceptual make-up of human beings which were adapted to produce language. This adaptative approach is contrasted with the Minimalist Program, in which properties specific to language are said to be different from anything found in the organic world (Chomsky 1995). Six basic cases are compared. Whereas the analysis in the Minimalist Program is ultimately a listing of construction-specific features, the adaptative approach relies on properties of the initial state which are logically prior to linguistic theory and provide a strong basis for causal relations that explain why languages vary, and why they vary in the particular ways they do in these six cases.
Why Japanese is different
Authors: Takano Yuji
Published: September 2007

A new theory of parametric variation is developed to explain certain differences between English and Japanese. Under a syntactic approach to derivational morphology, a fundamental hypothesis is proposed which states that Japanese is a ‘nominal language’, where all verbs are derived from nouns, and thus differs from English, where verbs and their nominal counterparts are derived from common roots in a parallel way. More specifically, it is argued that whereas in English verbs are derived by verbalization of simple roots, in Japanese they are derived by verbalization of nominalized roots. It is proposed that a parameter couched in terms of selectional relations between syntactic heads is responsible for the difference. It is shown that this parametric difference, coupled with syntactic principles, makes it follow that all Japanese nouns are non-θ-markers, which in turn explains unexpected properties related to the distribution of arguments in Japanese nominals. It is also shown that the proposed approach provides a simple account of the properties exhibited by lexical and null arguments in Japanese clauses that would otherwise remain mysterious.
Spelling-Out Scrambling
Authors: Fukui Naoki , Kasai Hironobu
Published: September 2007

This paper offers a new analysis of Japanese scrambling, under which some instances of scrambling phenomena are derived from the process of linearization. It is specifically proposed that the absence of formal agreement in Japanese enables Spell-Out to apply solely to an argument of the verb. The spelled out argument is “dislocated” at PF by the mechanisms of linearization of spelled out syntactic objects. Radical reconstruction effects, along with various other properties of Japanese scrambling such as the proper binding effects, are captured as a natural consequence of the proposed analysis, because the scrambled constituent actually does not undergo any syntactic movement but rather stays in the base-generated position. It is also argued that an analysis of scrambling ought to be eclectic in the sense that another strategy, which employs null operator movement to establish the relation between the dislocated element and the gap, is also available in Japanese, as originally proposed by Ueyama (2002). Thus, the optionality of Japanese scrambling is shifted under the proposed analysis to the optional application of Spell-Out (made possible by the absence of formal agreement) and the optional selection of a null operator in the numeration. The paper is concluded with the speculation that the availability of the latter strategy is due to the rich use of predication in Japanese.
Syntactic variation in German wh-questions
Authors: Fanselow Gisbert , Kliegl Reinhold , Schlesewsky Matthias
Published: September 2007

This paper reports three experiments concerning variation in the grammar of German wh-questions. We found much variation but no clear dialects in the acceptability ratings of sentences violating the weak crossover condition. We attribute this variation to extra-grammatical factors. With a sentence completion task, we were able to show that there is regional variation concerning the scope of wh-movement. In a training experiment, we were also able to make speakers of the restrictive dialect behave like speakers of the liberal dialect with respect to wh-movement. We argue that this suggests an extragrammatical explanation of the dialectal difference.
The role of phonology in the inflection of Italian verbs
Authors: Colombo Lucia , Stoianov Ivilin , Pasini Margherita , Zorzi Marco
Published: September 2007

We investigated the performance of two connectionist neural networks with different architectures to explore the degree of learning in generating the past participle form of Italian verbs on the basis of phonological characteristics. The networks were trained to generate the past participle form of verbs from different inflected input forms. We examined the degree of learning relative to the type of inflection given as input, the type of suffix produced, the classification of each verb according to the thematic vowel, the regularity of the stem and of the suffix. The networks were able to learn both regular and irregular forms, but the effect of regularity depended on the distributional properties of the conjugation to which a verb belongs, and on information provided by the input.
Variable effects of morphology and frequency on inflection patterns in French preschoolers
Authors: Royle Phaedra
Published: September 2007

We studied the emergence of productive verb inflection in pre-school native speakers of Quebec French using a verb elicitation task. We verified whether verb conjugation group (regular vs. irregular morphology) and frequency affect ability to produce correctly inflected passé composé forms. Special attention was paid to regularization into regular (default) and sub-regular conjugations, and on irregularization patterns. Results indicate that French-speaking children are able to productively use inflectional rules at very young ages and are sensitive to verb frequency and morphological patterns, both default or sub-regular, as evidenced by differential production patterns for regular and irregular verbs.
Figurative Positioning in Hotline Stories
Authors: Kupferberg Irit , Green David W. , Gilat Izhak
Published: September 2007

Personal stories and tropes are ubiquitous in problem talk (e.g. therapy, counseling and hotline) which focuses on problem presentation, discussion and candidate solutions. Current studies of radio problem talk between troubled callers and psychologists show that certain tropes constitute the gist of callers’ narrative versions of the problems, and facilitate the negotiation of solutions (Kupferberg & Green, 1998). Adapting Bamberg’s (1997a) broad definition of positioning to institutional hotline talk, the present study further explores to what extent troubled callers position themselves figuratively, and whether figurative positioning is related to the interactional discussion of solutions. Analysis of 26 hotline calls shows that callers positioned themselves figuratively in relation to the volunteer whose help they sought, and that tropes enhanced the interactional discussion of the problem. (Personal stories, Tropes, Figurative positioning, Hotline talk)
Narrative survey: A Methodology for studying multiple populations
Authors: Shkedi Asher
Published: September 2007

The narrative survey is a qualitative research strategy which offers a method for surveying large populations. While the research community relies on several types of qualitative approaches as alternative research responses to the quantitative types, the survey strategy has been the exclusive domain of positivistic-quantitative research. However, if we seek qualitative understandings in relation to many people, each finding expression as a unique narrative within the survey context, we need to develop a narrative-constructivist alternative to the traditional survey. Narrative survey is such a research strategy which follows the narrative-constructivist approach, uses mainly narrative methods of data collection and analysis, and produces a final narrative report. In this aritcle I describe the narrative survey, bring an example of a study project, and compare it to other research strategies of a similar nature: collective case study, case survey and meta-ethnography, and the “conventional” quantitative survey. (Narrative Survey, Data Analysis, Data Collection, Mulitple Population, Narrative-Constructivist Approach)
Autobiographical memories of early language and literacy development
Authors: Lapadat Judith C.
Published: September 2007

The aim of this study was to apply a narrative, autobiographical approach to inquiry into the acquisition of language and literacy. This article reports the results of a qualitative analysis of nine women's written recollections of their early language and literacy development, as rooted in family, cultural, school, and community experiences and contexts, and the meanings they give to these memories. In these narratives recounted by adults about their childhood experiences, the stories are weighted with their own interpretations, and the events selected for retelling are ones that, on reflection and in the light of subsequent experience, they have come to see as formative in their lives. Key themes that participants discussed relate to the centrality of the family, their self-descriptions as avid readers, their negative perceptions of school, and their perceptions about the role of culture. Two contributions of this study are that it methodologically complements traditional observational approaches to language acquisition research, and that voices from underrepresented communities are heard. (Language Development, Literacy, Adult Learning, Narrative Analysis, Autobiographical Approach, Qualitative Research)
A narrative analysis of behaviourally troubled adolescents' life stories
Authors: Sanderson Alex , McKeough Anne
Published: September 2007

The purpose of this study was to explore street youths' life histories to assess how early negative experiences (e.g., maltreatment) contributed to alternative developmental paths marked by emotional and behavioural difficulties. Ten male and female participants responded to an attachment questionnaire and told their life stories. The data were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The results showed that both groups experienced difficulties in attaining educational, employment and relational successes. However, differences were found between gender groups in views of self, with females often describing themselves as victims whereas males' views were often characterized by self-efficacy stemming from successful completion of criminal or violent acts – in other words, as victimizers. Finally, it was found that males were more able to apply developmental advanced interpretations to their life experiences.
Narratives of West Bank women settlers in “multi-problem families”
Authors: Possick Chaya
Published: September 2007

This article presents part of the findings of a qualitative study conducted from January-July 2003, of the experiences of women in “multi-problem families” who live in a “high-risk” settlement on the West Bank. The impetus for the project was a dilemma that arose among social workers who were providing services to West Bank communities during this period. The article presents a narrative analysis of three of the interviews in order to illustrate a process of corroboration and subversion of master narratives in the construction of personal narratives.
The meaning of the particle lah in Singapore English
Authors: Besemeres Mary , Wierzbicka Anna
Published: September 2007

In this paper we try to crack one of the hardest and most intriguing chestnuts in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics and to identify the meaning of the celebrated Singaporean particle lah — the hallmark of Singapore English. In pursuing this goal, we investigate the use of lah and seek to identify its meaning by trying to find a paraphrase in ordinary language which would be substitutable for lah in any context. In doing so, we try to enter the speakers’ minds, and as John Locke (1959 [1691]:99) urged in his pioneering work on particles, “observe nicely” the speakers’ “postures of the mind in discoursing”. At the same time, we offer a general model for the investigation of discourse markers and show how the methodology based on the “NSM” semantic theory allows the analyst to link pragmatics, via semantics, with the study of cognition.
From epistemic (ergotic) actions to scientific discourse
Authors: Roth Wolff-Michael
Published: September 2007

The role of gestures in communication is still debated: Some claim that gestures are merely ancillary forms of expressions, whereas others suggest a central role of gestures in the development of language. In this article, I provide data in support of the overarching hypothesis that gestures have a transitional function between ergotic/epistemic movements of hands and symbolic expressions. The context for the study of these transitions is constituted by school science laboratory activities conducted by students who are also asked to describe and explain while still within proximity of the materials of their investigations. It is hypothesized that communication is distributed across the context (verbal, gestural, material) and shifts increasingly into a verbal modality as students become familiar with the phenomena they are to learn about. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that initial temporal delays between gestures and the corresponding words decrease and finally disappear so that gestural and verbal modalities coincide. It is suggested that engaging in communication in the presence of material has an important cognitive function in that it affords a distribution of cognition across different modalities until individuals have developed the competence to express themselves effectively in the verbal modality.
The metrics of cognition and the rhythm of the unconscious
Authors: Sharon-Zisser Shirley
Published: September 2007

This article rethinks the links drawn by cognitive poetics between thought-representation and language in relation to the category of rhythm and metre as symptoms, in Plato’s Republic and in the psychoanalytic theory of Freud, Lacan, and in particular in Nicolas Abraham’s Rhythms. Utilizing Abraham’s idea of rhythmizing consciousness as a non-linear psychic unfolding coeval with the Freudian unconscious, an unfolding in constant tension and interaction with cognitive consciousness’s periodicity, linearity, and tendency to produce semblants of verifiability, I argue that cognitive poetics’ focus on conscious cognition involves a repression of unconscious processes imperative to the thinking of thought-representation. But in Jacques Lacan’s terms, repression is not foreclosure (erasure from the unconscious), but the preservative and protective putting into operation of what Lacan theorizes as the bar. Cognitive poetics’ functioning as bar with regard to metrics symptomatizing unconscious states hence creates just the comdition for the preservation (in terms of Michele Monterlay’s theorizing of repression) and hence mediation and circulation of unconscious material whereof it refuses to speak. I hence propose a “metronymic analysis” of sound, rhythm, and metre, not sense, as a way of reading which might enrich literary pragmatics, alowing it to hear, beyond patronymics, echoes of the matronymic archaic.
Cognitive characterisation of basic grammatical structures
Authors: Gamallo Otero Pablo
Published: September 2007

We describe the role of morphosyntactic categories and syntactic dependencies in the process of semantically interpreting composite expressions. Special attention will be paid to the combinatorial properties conveyed by morphosyntactic categories such as nominals and verbs, as well as by syntactic dependencies like subject, direct object, or nominal modification. The semantic characterisation of these grammatical structures is based on cognitive abilities and abstract conceptualisations. This will provide us with theoretical arguments to review and extend some basic assumptions of Cognitive Grammar and related work.
The development of complex nominals in expert and non-expert writing
Authors: Ravid Dorit , Zilberbuch Shoshana
Published: September 2007

This study examines the distribution of complex nominal constructions in Hebrew texts produced by non-expert schoolage and adult writers, compared with their distribution in expert-written encyclopedic texts. One aim of the paper was to determine young writers’ ability to distinguish text types through their usage of genre-appropriate morpho-syntactic forms. Another aim was to investigate the distribution of these constructions in expert school-related texts so as to confirm or refute the hypothesis of “resonance” between input and output texts. The study population consisted of native Hebrew-speaking gradeschoolers, adolescents and adults who each produced 2 written texts, one biographical, one expository. The same text types were analyzed in three encyclopedias, targeted for use in each of the age groups under discussion. Our analysis indicates that non-expert writers’ textual output undergoes marked developmental changes during later childhood and adolescence, but no developmental resonance was found in expert texts, which constitute part of the input that novice and non-expert writers are exposed to. Implications for the nature of the mental lexicon and its relationship with grammar are discussed.
Overhearing a sentence
Authors: Martínez-Manrique Fernando , Vicente Agustín
Published: September 2007

Many pragmaticians have distinguished three levels of meaning involved in the comprehension of utterances, and there is an ongoing debate about how to characterize the intermediate level. Recanati has called it the level of ‘what is said’ and has opposed the idea that it can be determined semantically — a position that he labels ‘pragmatic minimalism’. To this end he has offered two chief arguments: semantic underdeterminacy and the Availability Principle. This paper exposes a tension between both arguments, relating this discussion with Carruthers’s cognitive view of language, according to which some thoughts are, literally, sentences of our natural language. First we explain how this view entails minimalism, and we construct an argument based on semantic underdeterminacy that shows that natural language sentences do not have the compositional properties required to constitute thoughts. Then we analyze the example of a subject’s overhearing a sentence without an interpretive context, arguing that in the light of the Availability Principle the corresponding thought can be regarded as a natural language sentence. Thus, semantic underdeterminacy and availability pull in different directions, and we claim that there is no characterization of the latter that can relieve this tension. We contend that Recanati’s availability shares with Carruthers’s introspectivism an overreliance on intuitions about what appears consciously in one’s mind. We conclude, therefore, that the Availability Principle ought to be abandoned.
Scorekeeping in a defective language game
Authors: Scharp Kevin A.
Published: September 2007

One common criticism of deflationism is that it does not have the resources to explain defective discourse (e.g., vagueness, referential indeterminacy, confusion, etc.). This problem is especially pressing for someone like Robert Brandom, who not only endorses deflationist accounts of truth, reference, and predication, but also refuses to use representational relations to explain content and propositional attitudes. To address this problem, I suggest that Brandom should explain defective discourse in terms of what it is to treat some portion of discourse as defective. To illustrate this strategy, I present an extension of his theory of content and use it to provide an explanation of confusion. The result is a theory of confusion based on Joseph Camp’s recent treatment. The extension of Brandom’s theory of content involves additions to his account of scorekeeping that allow members of a discursive practice to accept different standards of inferential correctness.
The goals of persuasion
Authors: Poggi Isabella
Published: September 2007

This paper presents a model of persuasion in terms of goals and beliefs. Among the various ways to influence people, that is, to raise or lower the likelihood for them to pursue some goal, ranging from threat to suggestion, persuasion is viewed as a case of communicative non-coercive goal hooking. A persuader leads a persuadee to pursue some goal out of a free choice, i.e., by convincing him/her that the proposed goal is useful for some other goal that the persuadee already has. It is argued that the Aristotelian persuasive strategies of logos, ethos and pathos (rational argumentation, the speaker’s credibility and reliability, and the appeal to emotion) are always present in every persuasive discourse, and that they are exploited to raise the value of the goal proposed and to strengthen the believability of the link between it and the persuadee’s previous goals. The paper proposes an analysis of discourse in terms of a hierarchy of goals as a tool to single out these strategies within the discourse structure. By applying this model to different kinds of persuasive messages (political discourse, advertising, dialogues in the health domain), it shows how, in the fragments presented, this kind of analysis allows to clarify the relationships between the persuader’s and the persuadee’s goals and to elucidate how much and how directly the persuader appeals to logos, ethos and pathos in his/her discourse.
The Persian cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi
Authors: Sharifian Farzad
Published: September 2007

This study is as an attempt to explicate the Persian cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi ‘modesty’. The schema motivates the speakers to downplay their talents, skills, achievements, etc. while praising a similar trait in their interlocutors. The schema also encourages the speakers to reassign the compliment to the giver of the compliment, a family member, a friend, or another associate. This paper explicates the schema in an ethnographic fashion and also makes use of empirical data to further explore how the schema may be represented in Persian speakers’ replies to compliments. A Discourse Completion Test and its translated version in English were used to collect Persian and English data from two groups of Iranian and Australian participants. The Australian group mainly served as a reference group. The results revealed that speakers of Persian largely instantiated the cultural schema of shekasteh-nafsi in their responses to compliments. The data from the Australians did not reflect a similar schema but showed a certain degree of overlap with the Persian responses in downplaying the trait that was the target of the compliment. The study is hoped to increase intercultural understanding, a phenomenon that needs desperate attention and exploration, perhaps more than ever in the history of human interaction.
Perceptual recalibration in sensory substitution and perceptual modification
Authors: González Juan C. , Bach-y-Rita Paul , Haase Steven J.
Published: September 2007

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.
The cultural basis of metaphor revisited
Authors: Wee Lionel
Published: September 2007

Just how foundational metaphor is to cultural understanding has been a matter of considerable debate, manifested in the question of whether cultural models are, at bottom, based on conceptual metaphors (Gibbs 1994; Lakoff 1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Quinn 1991). This paper revisits this debate by examining a new set of metaphorical expressions involving proper names, which are widespread in Singapore society. These expressions indicate that Singaporeans tend to describe local entities in terms of American ones, thus reflecting what might be called a cultural model of modernity. The paper shows that no conceptual metaphor can be plausibly said to ground this model. It then goes on to develop the other possibility: that the model is non-metaphorical and that the expressions are chosen because of their fit with the modernity model.
Radical changes in cognitive process due to technology
Authors: Glenberg Arthur M.
Published: September 2007

A strong case can be made that the cognitive system is designed for guiding action, not, for example, symbol manipulation. I review empirical work demonstrating the link between action and cognition with special attention to the processes of language comprehension. Next, I sketch an embodied cognition framework for integrating work on language understanding with a more general approach to cognition and action. This general approach considers contributions to action of bodily states, emotions, social and cultural processes, and learning within a framework that generates a dynamic system. This framework is used to consider the notion of distributed cognition and the prospects that technology might induce substantial changes in cognition. My assessment is that such changes are unlikely.
Speech transformation solutions
Authors: Kanevsky Dimitri , Basson Sara , Faisman Alexander , Rachevsky Leonid , Zlatsin Alex , Conrod Sarah
Published: September 2007

This paper outlines the background development of “intelligent” technologies such as speech recognition. Despite significant progress in the development of these technologies, they still fall short in many areas, and rapid advances in areas such as dictation are actually stalled. In this paper we have proposed semi-automatic solutions — smart integration of human and intelligent efforts. One such technique involves improvement to the speech recognition editing interface, thereby reducing the perception of errors to the viewer. Other techniques that are described in the paper are batch enrollment, which allows the user to reduce the amount of time required for enrollment, and content spotting, which can be used for applications that have repeated content flow, such as movies or museum tours. The paper also suggests a general concept of distributive training of speech recognition systems that is based on data collection across a network.