Showing papers on "Discourse analysis published in 1985"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify causal relations between all pairs of events in six folktales, using context-dependent, logical criteria of necessity, and counterfactual tests of the form: If event A had not occurred, then, in the circumstances of the story, event B would not have occurred.
620 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that the orderliness of interactions depends in part upon such naturalized ideologies, and that denaturalization involves showing how social structures determine properties of discourse, and how discourse in turn determines social structures.
377 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors formulate and discuss two types of knowledge: justified true belief and intelligent performance, and raise the question of the relation between knowledge and discourse formats, focusing on the elicitationresponse-feedback format and its contribution to instruction.
Abstract: The question "What goes on in classrooms?" is an abiding concern to social scientists, educators, politicians, parents, and, of course, students. In advanced industrial or postindustrial societies, this question touches almost everyone. One answer to it comes from the English ethnographic tradition, identified in the early seventies as the new sociology of education.' That answer, by and large, has it that knowledge transmission is what goes on in classrooms. Passing along knowledge is the apparent point of running any lesson. Our efforts begin in part I as an elaboration and critique of the knowledge transmission answer. To redress what we regard to be a misleading picture of lessons and classroom life, we formulate and discuss two types of knowledge: justified true belief and intelligent performance. Addressing a lacuna in the transmissionist account, we raise the question of the relation between knowledge and discourse formats, focusing on the elicitationresponse-feedback format and its contribution to instruction. The term "point" is introduced to designate the valued function necessarily served by a discourse format. The question then asked is whether knowledge transmission is always and everywhere the point of classroom discourse. Preliminary attention is given to the vocabulary and recitation phases of
181 citations
TL;DR: The authors show that the problem is not one of a single construction potentially occupying two different positions, but rather one of two quite different constructions, an initial purpose clause and a final purpose clause, which share the same morphology, but behave in radically different ways in the organization of the discourse.
Abstract: Purpose clauses, like most adverbial clauses in English, can occur either before or after the main clause with which they are associated. To the researcher interested in the relationship between discourse and grammer, an obvious research question to which this alternation gives rise might be: given two positions, initial and final, for a purpose clause in written English, what are the discourse factors determining which position it will take? Such aformulation assumes that the problem can be thought of in terms of a 'choice' between these two positions. However, closer examination reveals that the problem, rather than beingone ofasingle 'construction* potentially occupying two different positions, is actually much more appropriately viewed äs one of two quite different constructions, an initial purpose clause and a final purpose clause, which share the same morphology, but behave in radically different ways in the organization of the discourse: the initial purpose clause functions to state a 'problem' within the context of expectations raised by the preceding discourse, to which the following material (often many clauses) provides a solution, while the final purpose clause plays the much more local role of stating the purpose for which the action named in the immediately preceding clause is performed.
146 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the point focal d'un tel essai devrait se concentrer sur la communication intermodale emotive, i.e., confidence, femotion positive, negative, and tinteret ou participation.
Abstract: Un essai ayant pour base Tinaäequation dans Tetude de la politesse a longtemps manque en linguistique. Le point focal d'un tel essai, nous suggerons, devrait se concentrer sur la communication intermodale emotive. Trois dimensions emotives des rapports dans la conversation sont importantes en ce qui concerne la politesse: la confidence, Femotion positive—negative, et Tinteret ou la participation. Dans la conversation face-ä-face ces dimensions sont indiquees par des signes verbaux, vocaux et kinesiques. La täche emotive principale d'un interlocuteur qui souhaite eviter des incomprehensions interpersonnelles, nous maintenons, ne doit pas etre poli dans le sens traditionnel, mais doit etre supportif. Cela se .fait par Signalement d'acceptation intermodale du besoin d'autonomie personnelle et d'approbation interpersonnelle de son partenaire.
112 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the interaction of teacher and learners in their various activities along a continuum that extends from instructional to natural discourse and is determined by the way participants present themselves to one another and negotiate turns-at-talk, topics, and repairs.
Abstract: This article takes a social-theoretical view of the reality created by a foreign language in the classroom. It examines the interaction of teacher and learners in their various activities along a continuum that extends from instructional to natural discourse and is determined by the way participants present themselves to one another and negotiate turns-at-talk, topics, and repairs. Suggestions are made for broadening and diversifying the discourse options in the classroom to enrich the social context of the language learning experience.
77 citations
71 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, argument as emergence, rhetoric as love, and argumentation as emergence are discussed in the context of Rhetoric Review: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 16-32.
Abstract: (1985). Argument as emergence, rhetoric as love. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 16-32.
63 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a case study of two occasions of teacher response, shaping, and evaluation of students' texts is presented, in one case the text is oral, a sharing time contribution by a first grader.
Abstract: This paper is a case study of two occasions of teacher response, shaping, and evaluation of students' texts. In one case, the text is oral — a “sharing time” contribution by a first grader. In the ...
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TL;DR: In this article, a quantitative analysis of causal sequences is presented, where multiple constraints on discourse options are considered and a quantitative approach is proposed to analyze causal sequences in discourse processes. But the analysis is limited to a single discourse process.
Abstract: (1985). Multiple constraints on discourse options: A quantitative analysis of causal sequences. Discourse Processes: Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 281-303.
TL;DR: Five essential properties and four derivative properties of the phenomenon of information are identified and this concept of information is contrasted with several proposed concepts in the literature of information theory, communication theory, and Information Science.
Abstract: The concept of information as it is actually used in ordinary discourse is elucidated, using philosophical methods of conceptual analysis. Five essential properties and four derivative properties of the phenomenon of information are identified. This concept of information is contrasted with several proposed concepts in the literature of information theory, communication theory, and Information Science.
TL;DR: This paper proposed a sociolinguistic model that relates spoken and written language and found that it relates well with the sociological model of the spoken language and the written language in the context of comparative studies.
Abstract: This paper challenges both the theoretical assumptions and the quantitative method underlying comparative studies of spoken and written language and proposes a sociolinguistic model that relates li...
TL;DR: In this article, the problem of handling textual issues within the process framework is addressed, and a more comprehensive theory of discourse by integrating text and process at all levels of analysis is proposed.
Abstract: In Philosophy in a New Key Susanne Langer writes of the great generative ideas that periodically arise to transform our intellectual enterprises by changing the very terms in which we frame our questions and conceive our purposes. When one of these concepts bursts into consciousness, we cannot at first view it critically, because it is the nature of a key change to possess us with its compelling new vision of the world. For some time afterwards we are absorbed in exploiting the energizing, fertilizing power of the new idea, which seems limitless in its implications and applications. Only later, as a paradigm matures, can we begin to refine and correct its key concept and to achieve the critical distance necessary to recognize its bounds. We are approaching this moment in composition, which has taken process as its generative theme for over a decade. By keying composition studies to writers' thought processes and the relations between cognition and language, this theme has restored to the field what was lost with the decline of rhetoric: a genuinely rich, humanly significant, and inexhaustible object of inquiry. In the next stage of our development as a discipline, we need to take up a more critical attitude toward process theory, to probe its limits and to articulate and address some of the conceptual problems it leaves unresolved. I would like to make a contribution to that work in this essay. My starting point is the difficulty of handling textual issues-for example, matters of style or discourse form-within the process framework. That framework has no principled way to account for the role of texts in discourse events because it was constituted initially by a contrastive opposition between composing (dynamic process) and texts (inert product). Texts were therefore rejected as proper objects of inquiry in composition. I suggest we might resolve this problem and work toward a more comprehensive theory of discourse by developing concepts on the principle of integrating text and process at all levels of analysis.
TL;DR: This paper explored the nature of the cognitive processing involved in foreign language learning and argued that the simultaneous activation of several such frames is central to the business of understanding language, and to language learning.
Abstract: The paper begins to explore the nature of the cognitive processing involved in foreign language learning. The notion of a “discourse world” as a set of elements against the background of which a unit of talk makes sense is introduced, and the claim is made that several such “discourse worlds” may be seen to coexist in classroom discourse, in part because of participants' “awareness” (on some level) of why they are there. The notion of a discourse world is then given a psychological interpretation in terms of frame-theory, and the view is argued that the simultaneous activation of several such frames is central to the business of understanding language, and to language learning. The classroom, it is argued, offers rich opportunities for the training of such multi-level perception of foreign language input, with consequent gains in learning. From this perspective Krashen's Monitor Theory is found implausible.
TL;DR: The authors examined judges' strategies in clarifying their verbal explanations of constitutional rights to criminal defendants and identified six clarification strategies, and compared these strategies with other studies of clarification processes and with the properties of simplified registers, particularly speech addressed to first and second language learners.
Abstract: The present study examines judges’ strategies in clarifying their verbal explanations of constitutional rights to criminal defendants. Nine Superior Court judges of Pima County, Arizona were observed and tape recorded as they presided over taking of guilty pleas, and they were interviewed about their reasons for speaking as they did. Six clarification strategies are identified, and these strategies are compared with other studies of clarification processes and with the properties of simplified registers, particularly speech addressed to first and second language learners.
TL;DR: The performance on a communicative task of school learners of English as a foreign language and of comparable native speakers of English, and its evaluation by native and non-native teachers are analysed.
TL;DR: This paper described discourse development in sign language of 24 profoundly deaf children between the ages of 3 years, 10 months, and 11 years, 5 months, who were videotaped during dyadic dyadic communication.
Abstract: This study described discourse development in sign language of 24 profoundly deaf children between the ages of 3 years, 10 months, and 11 years, 5 months. The children were videotaped during dyadic...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that, like scientific communities, organizational communities are rational enterprises, and they draw on the work of contemporary theorists (Polanyi, Popper, Kuhn, Toulmin, Perelman, and others) to support the notion of rational enterprises.
Abstract: Commentary: It is easier to articulate the issues addressed in this piece today than it was when Written Communication first published it in 1985; we now have the familiar idioms of postmodernism, cultural studies, and reception theory to help illuminate the paradigm that we were arguing governs everyday communication behavior in organizations. In particular, while terms such as contingency, intersubjectivity, shared understandings, social construction of meaning, and discourse communities were familiar enough at the time in the fields of philosophy and critical theory, they had not yet influenced textbooks in organizational communication. Instead, these textbooks were dominated by the human resource and social systems models of the organization at work and by prescriptive approaches to writing.We drew on the work of contemporary theorists (Polanyi, Popper, Kuhn, Toulmin, Perelman, and others) to support the notion that, like scientific communities, organizational communities are “rational enterprises” th...
TL;DR: In this article, 45 experienced primary teachers in North Rhine, Westphalia, West Germany, were trained to ask higher cognitive questions using a specially adapted mini-learning system.
Abstract: The study reported here involved 45 experienced primary teachers in North Rhine, Westphalia, West Germany. Of these, 29 were trained to ask higher cognitive questions using a specially adapted mini...
TL;DR: The authors argue that the primary strategy that mitigates against good communication is systematic negation and propose three propositions that would defuse the power of this strategy and lead to a new communication consciousness.
Abstract: This essay argues that the first step away from idealistic, self‐fulfilling, and divisive communication is to learn to identify and avoid symbolic forms that rationalize or otherwise negate puzzling fits between concepts and data. The primary strategy that mitigates against good communication is systematic “negation.” Three propositions are explored that would defuse the power of this strategy and lead to a new communication consciousness.
TL;DR: The authors traces a parallel but much less investigated line of argumentation discourse from classical to modern times, and proposes a theory of argumentative discourse as it developed from classical-to-modern times.
Abstract: Most rhetorical history has concerned itself with the theory of argumentation discourse as it developed from classical to modern times. This article traces a parallel but much less investigated str...