Showing papers in "Discourse Processes in 2003"
TL;DR: The authors used event-history analysis to investigate discourse processes quantitatively, recasting understanding of discourse in terms of antecedents and consequences of discourse participant "moves" as they affect the inertia of the discourse and accordingly structure unfolding discourse processes.
Abstract: In the 1st-ever use of event-history analysis to investigate discourse processes quantitatively, this study recasts understanding of discourse in terms of the (a) antecedents and (b) consequences of discourse participant "moves" as they (c) affect the inertia of the discourse and accordingly structure unfolding discourse processes. The method is used to compute the probabilities of the effects of particular discourse moves on subsequent discourse patterns and to measure and systematically contrast static (macrosocial) and dynamic (microsocial) conditions prompting and sustaining dialogic discourse. Theoretically, the authors draw on Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin's epistemological distinctions between monologic and dialogic discourse to identify pedagogically rich sequences of teacher-student interaction as dialogic spells and discussion, which the authors' previous work has shown to contribute to achievement. Empirically, the authors examine data collected in hundreds of observations of more than 200 8t...
610 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the results of this research support a direct access model of figurative language processing, and also support Colston's (2002) theory of contrast and assimilation in verbal irony.
Abstract: In this research we investigated the role of context in interpretation (Experiments 1 and 2) and relative processing (Experiment 3) of literal and ironic statements. As such, we manipulated degree of situational negativity (using strongly negative, weakly negative, and neutral contexts) and found that, in strongly negative situations, reading times for ironic statements were slower than for literal statements, whereas in weakly negative situations reading times for ironic statements were faster than or equivalent to reading times for literal statements. When these reading time data were related to interpretation data, we found that differences in processing time could be predicted by certain aspects of interpretation. We argue that these results support a direct access model of figurative language processing (e.g., Gibbs, 1994), and also support Colston's (2002) theory of contrast and assimilation in verbal irony.
160 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that children detected the use of irony, their aggression ratings provided support for the Tinge Hypothesis, but their humor ratings indicated that the humor function was not recognized.
Abstract: Verbal irony can serve many social functions: Speakers can mute the aggression conveyed by criticism or temper the praise conveyed by a compliment (the Tinge Hypothesis; Dews, Kaplan, & Winner, 1995), and speakers can also bring humor to a situation. A full understanding of ironic language requires one to make complex inferences about speaker intent, a task that can be challenging for children. This study was devised as a developmental test of the Tinge Hypothesis. Two experiments assessed 5- to 6- and 7- to 8-year-old children's abilities to detect and interpret the aggressive and humorous intent of speakers who made ironic criticisms, literal criticisms, ironic compliments, and literal compliments depicted in puppet shows. When children detected the use of irony, their aggression ratings provided support for the Tinge Hypothesis but their humor ratings indicated that the humor function was not recognized.
126 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that discourse markers are important in language use because they operate at different levels of the dialog and proposed a taxonomy of between-turn coherence relations in dialog, based on this theory.
Abstract: Discourse markers are verbal and nonverbal devices that mark transition points in communication. They presumably facilitate the construction of a mental representation of the events described by the discourse. A taxonomy of these relational markers is one important beginning in investigations of language use. Although several taxonomies of coherence relations have been proposed for monolog, only a few have been proposed for dialog. This article argues that discourse markers are important in language use because they operate at different levels of the dialog. What these levels are and how markers function is discussed by amalgamating 2 leading theories of language use. Based on this theory, a taxonomy of between-turn coherence relations in dialog is presented and several issues that arise out of constructing such a taxonomy are discussed. By sampling a large number of discourse markers from a corpus and substituting each marker for all other markers, this extensive substitution test could determine whether...
112 citations
TL;DR: This article used a logistic regression model to investigate how intonation, syntax, and pause in natural conversation assesses how these variables are combined and manipulated to achieve turn-taking goals.
Abstract: This statistical investigation of intonation, syntax, and pause in natural conversation assesses how these variables are combined and manipulated to achieve turn-taking goals. In general, the findings of our logistic regression model confirm much of the past qualitative work in Conversation Analysis, shedding light on floor-keeping strategies. In many cases, the intonation signaled turn continuation despite a syntactic boundary and certain combinations of intonation and syntax virtually assured a speaker's right to the floor. Pause duration was positively correlated with the probability of turn shift, except for an optimal pause duration range during which the same speaker was more likely to keep the floor. We suggest that these quantitative results form a baseline from which qualitative work may continue and that our choice of a more complex, six-way model of intonation boundaries is appropriate in the analysis of conversation, allowing for finer-grained distinctions than have traditionally been made.
83 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the importance of conversational processes for understanding collaborative cognitive performance by examining the interactions of married couples that facilitate performance on two everyday cognitive tasks and found that interactions characterized by high affiliation were associated with greater use of information and the use of feature based search strategies on the decision-making task and shorter routes on the errand-running task.
Abstract: The study explores the importance of conversational processes for understanding collaborative cognitive performance by examining the interactions of married couples that facilitate performance on 2 everyday cognitive tasks. Twenty-four adults, 6 young (M age = 29.7 years) and 6 older (M = 70.8 years) married couples, completed a vacation decision-making task and an errand-running task. Couples were asked to talk as they performed the tasks and speech acts were coded as to whether they involved high-affiliation exchanges (between-partner sequences of cooperative and obliging speech acts) or low-affiliation exchanges (between-partner sequences of controlling and withdrawing speech acts). Interactions characterized by high affiliation were associated with greater use of information and the use of feature based search strategies on the decision-making task and shorter routes on the errand-running task. Open-ended interviews revealed the importance of division of labor and delegation when collaborating in dail...
67 citations
TL;DR: The results of the experiments indicate that causal bridging inferences can be computed from scientific text when all the necessary information is available and accessible.
Abstract: In these experiments, we examine inferences from simple scientific passages that provided all inference-relevant information for the reader. In Experiment 1, we use a contradiction paradigm to test whether readers compute causal bridging inferences from scientific text. In Experiments 2 and 3, we use the same methodology but vary the availability of the critical information by manipulating the distance between critical pieces of information. The results of the experiments indicate that causal bridging inferences can be computed from scientific text when all the necessary information is available and accessible.
56 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the role of reading ability in the activation and encoding of predictive inferences and found that only high-skill readers showed evidence of automatic activation, but all readers, regardless of skill, showed evidence for inference encoding.
Abstract: The focus of this research was to explore the role of reading ability in the activation and encoding of predictive inferences. Predictive inferences pertain to highly predictable text events, such as inferring break after reading "The angry husband threw the fragile vase against the wall." In two experiments, high-, moderate-, and low-skill readers read texts that were designed to elicit a predictive inference or was a matched control. Automatic inference activation was measured with a word-naming task (Experiment 1). Inference encoding was investigated by measuring reading time on a sentence that contradicted the inference (Experiment 2) and via a cued-recall task after reading the passages (Experiment 1). The results showed that only high-skill readers showed evidence of automatic activation, but all readers, regardless of skill, showed evidence of inference encoding. Specifically, all readers slowed down when reading a line that contradicted the inference and were likely to include the targeted inferen...
39 citations
TL;DR: This article examined how explicit markers or "introductory formulae" which are used for signaling that statements should be interpreted literally or nonliterally, influence the online processing of proverbs and found that each form of marker had a unique effect on the reading of different regions of the proverbial statements, and that they have a stronger effect in reducing ambiguity associated with the meanings of unfamiliar proverbs than with familiar proverbs.
Abstract: We examined how explicit markers or "introductory formulae," which are used for signaling that statements should be interpreted literally or nonliterally, influence the online processing of proverbs. Familiar or unfamiliar proverbial statements were presented in contexts that were biased toward either their literal and nonliteral meanings, and were always preceded immediately by either proverbially speaking, in a manner of speaking, literally speaking, or no marker. The main hypothesis was that the markers, in combination with the contexts, should act as strong constraints on whether people interpret the statements literally or nonliterally. The results demonstrated that each form of marker had a unique effect on the reading of different regions of the proverbial statements, and that they have a stronger in.uence in reducing ambiguity associated with the meanings of unfamiliar proverbs than with familiar proverbs. This research is the .rst to systematically examine the role of explicit markers in the mome...
34 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that people take longer to interpret statements where what speakers imply differs from what they say than it does to comprehend what speakers say when those meanings are similar to what they imply.
Abstract: This article reports the findings of 2 experiments examining how people process what speakers say and implicate. Speakers often literally say things that underdetermine what they intended to imply or communicate in context. Many scholars now argue that people analyze what speakers pragmatically say as part of their inferring what speakers pragmatically imply. Our studies examined this idea. We found that people take longer to interpret statements where what speakers imply differs from what they say than it does to comprehend what speakers say when those meanings are similar to what they imply. Listeners report that they indeed analyzed what speakers pragmatically, but not literally, said when interpreting speakers' intended messages. Our revised theory suggests that different kinds of pragmatic knowledge influence people's understandings of what speakers pragmatically say and what they pragmatically imply in context.
30 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the relationship between discourse structure, grounding, and prosody in interactive discourse through an empirical analysis of task-oriented dialogue (the Australian Map Task Task corpus) and found that responses belonging to different types of common ground units have different prosodic profiles.
Abstract: This article explores the relationship between discourse structure, grounding, and prosody in interactive discourse through an empirical analysis of task-oriented dialogue (the Australian Map Task corpus). Our focus is on the role that prosody plays in the process of grounding—the attainment and acknowledgment of mutual knowledge by discourse participants (Clark, 1996). We investigate how patterns of prosodic boundary strengths, pitch contour, pausing, and overlap relate to the structuring of “common ground units” (Nakatani & Traum, 1999), collaborative units that capture the points in the discourse at which common ground is established. We also examine the distribution of dialogue acts (Jurafsky, Shriberg, & Biasca, 1997) within common ground units to add to the emerging model of dialogue structure that takes into account the “joint action” feature of interactive discourse. Our results show that responses belonging to different types of common ground units have different prosodic profiles. These results have implications for computational and psychological modeling of dialogue structure as well as our understanding of the functions of prosody in interaction.
TL;DR: It is concluded that predictive inferences are more prevalent than has been assumed previously, but they may be minimally encoded when conditions are not optimal.
Abstract: In three experiments, we investigate the likelihood that predictive inferences are drawn when there is more than one consequence of the predictive context. Whereas a previous set of studies (Klin, Guzman, & Levine, 1999) showed no facilitation of a naming probe (e.g., break) 500 ms after the predictive context (e.g., Steven threw the delicate vase), in Experiment 1 there was evidence of an inference 1500 ms after the predictive context. However, in Experiment 2, there was no evidence of an inference when the 1500-ms inter-stimulus interval contained additional text. To reduce task demands, the probe task was eliminated in Experiment 3. Readers slowed down on a line that contradicted the targeted inference, suggesting that they drew a predictive inference. We conclude that predictive inferences are more prevalent than has been assumed previously, but they may be minimally encoded when conditions are not optimal.
TL;DR: In this paper, a range of verbal behaviors surrounding remembering, forgetfulness, and uncertainty in the oral performance of personal narratives are investigated, and a description of remembering for personal conversational narrative is sketched in terms of cognitive models with potential gaps.
Abstract: This article investigates a range of verbal behaviors surrounding remembering, forgetfulness,and uncertainty in the oral performance of personal narratives. Tellers construct remembering differently in oral narrative performance than in other sorts of discourse, in order to follow the conventions of narrative and keep the story progressing while they hold the floor. A description of remembering for personal conversational narrative is sketched in terms of cognitive models with potential gaps. As tellers retrieve information, they get back in touch with scenes from the past, and they comment on the clarity of the images recalled. This clarity is recognized as a special feeling of rightness; the conditions on its occurrence and particular forms are described. Storytellers display uncertainty in several ways; speci.c language units provide ready resources for expressing uncertainty and eliciting help from listeners. Paradoxically, when tellers register uncertainty in personal stories, it tends to authenticat...
TL;DR: It is suggested that a discourse analytic approach can inform the ethnographic question of how literacy functions in context and, conversely, that analyses of literacy events can illuminate the discourse analysis concern with how spoken and written language are related.
Abstract: This article considers the linguistic interface of spoken and written language in a context of their co-occurrence, a classroom literacy event. In doing so it extends the discourse analytic concern with the speech-writing relationship to a context of situated literacy, typically the focus of ethnographic research. Through close analysis of oral data with corresponding text segments, the study identifies 3 primary speech-writing connections: spoken reference to a written text or segment, spoken repetition or paraphrase of written language, and text as a determiner of the topics of talk. Together they result in a complex network of linguistic relations between speech and writing that seem to contribute to instances of interactional trouble. The article also proposes that literacy event participation may be problematic because of multiple language demands that can require rapid processing and production of both spoken and written language as well as the tracking of links between the two modes. It further sug...
TL;DR: The authors examine how the choice of verbal or nominal interpretation is influenced by changes in discourse structure, and in doing so, illustrate those processes that guide discourse comprehension more generally, and argue that readers take cues from the amount of overlapping discourse structure in an antecedent and anaphor clause, and from a consideration of how events in a discourse can be causally related.
Abstract: In sentences such as Sam borrowed a jigsaw puzzle, and he did it while everyone else was out, the Ado it@ expression can take its meaning from the entire preceding verb phrase (= borrowed the jigsaw puzzle) or from just the noun phrase (= did the jigsaw puzzle). We examine how the choice of verbal or nominal interpretation is influenced by changes in discourse structure, and in doing so, illustrate those processes that guide discourse comprehension more generally. With 3 manipulations, we show how Ado it@ interpretation is influenced by the nature of the following subordinating conjunct (while vs. because), the preceding coordinating connective (full stop vs. and), and the presence or absence of a pronominal agent. With these results, we argue that readers take cues from the amount of overlapping discourse structure in an antecedent and anaphor clause, and from a consideration of how events in a discourse can be causally related.
TL;DR: A characterization of Japanese e-mail is given, and reference resolution processes operating in that medium in terms that will make them tractable for automatic language processing, and a computationally tractable description for each type of reference is suggested.
Abstract: We examine a corpus of naturally occurring data (Japanese e-mail texts) in order to explore the nature of referent resolution in such a corpus Specifically, our aims are to give a characterization of Japanese e-mail, and to describe reference resolution processes operating in that medium in terms that will make them tractable for automatic language processing Because the centering approach to modeling discourse phenomena is well defined computationally, we use that as a starting point for our analysis We begin by describing the nature of Japanese e-mail, characterizing it both quantitatively and qualitatively We then examine each instance of anaphora in the corpus to determine the process by which its reference can be resolved Finally, we suggest a computationally tractable description for each type of reference and estimate how successful the application of each description would be Our analysis gives a specific and empirically validated account of the possibility of processing reference automatica