Showing papers on "Discourse analysis published in 1994"

Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction 2. Information 3. The mental representations of discourse referents 4. Pragmatic relations: topic 5. Pragmatic relations: focus 6. Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Approaches to Discourse

Abstract: Preface and Acknowledgments. Part I: The Scope of Discourse Analysis. 1. Overview. 2. Definitions of Discourse. Part II: Approaches to Discourse Analysis. 3. Speech Act Theory. 4. Interactional Sociolinguists. 5. The Ethnography of Communication. 6. Pragmatics. 7. Conversation Analysis. 8. Variation Analysis. Part III: Conclusion. 9. Structure and Function. 10. Text and Context. 11. Discourse and Communication. 12. Conclusion: Language as Social Interaction. Appendix 1: Collecting Data. Appendix 2: Transcription Conventions. Appendix 3: Sample Data. Bibliography. Index

All hits are flukes: institutionalized decision making and the rhetoric of network prime-time program development

Abstract: Drawing upon institutionalist theory this artcle analyzes how the introduction of new cultural objects produced for a mass audience is managed through an organized discourse. Data come form annoucements of prime-time television series in development for the 1991-92 season by the four U.S. television networks. Maximumlikelihood logit analyses support the conclusion that network programmers working in a highly institutionalized context use reputation, imitation, and genre as rhetorical strategies to rationalize and legitimize their actions. This study contributes to institutionalist theory and the sociology of culture by explaining the content and consequences of business discourse in a culture industry.

Postmodern Public Administration: Toward Discourse

Abstract: PART ONE: CRITIQUE A New Approach to Democratic Governance Orthodoxy and Its Alternatives The Growing Gap between Words and Deeds Postmodern Symbolic Politics PART TWO: DISCOURSE THEORY Theoretical Underpinnings of Discourse Theory Phenomenology, Constructivism, Structuration Theory and Energy Fields Warrants for Discourse Nascent Forms of Discourse

The materiality of discourse as oxymoron: A challenge to critical rhetoric

Abstract: Recent rhetorical theory has adopted two versions—variously idealist and relativist—of the proposition that discourse is influential in or even constitutive of social and material “reality.”; This idea, which underpins much critical communication scholarship, I am calling the “materiality of discourse hypothesis.”; This essay documents and criticizes the idealism and relativism of the materiality of discourse idea in postmodernist and post‐Marxist rhetorical theories, illustrates the critique with an extended critical analysis of Persian Gulf War news coverage, and defends materialist ideology criticism as an alternative to a critical rhetoric that has become increasingly affirmative of the social order and detached from reality.

Metalanguaging and discourse markers in bilingual conversation

Abstract: This study examines the functions of the bilingual discourse strategy of language alternation in the process of marking boundaries of continuous discourse. The focus is on switched discourse markers – employed, it is argued, to metalanguage the frame of the discourse. The corpus is comprised of audio recordings of over 20 hours of Hebrew-English bilingual conversation. The strategy of language alternation at discourse markers is illustrated, and the switched discourse markers are classified according to Becker's approach to context (1988b) as a source of constraints on text. This classification is then related to the phenomenon of clustering of discourse markers at discourse unit boundaries in both bilingual and monolingual discourse. Finally, cross-linguistic differences in discourse markers are related to a theory of metalanguage. (Discourse analysis, bilingual discourse, discourse markers, languaging, metalanguage, Hebrew/English comparative discourse)

Therapeutic ways with words

Abstract: Most people know that therapists listen to people discuss their problems, and that they are paid for their services. Yet few people who have not undergone therapy know what actually goes on in these sessions, or have any idea about how talking to a stranger can be beneficial to one's mental health. What is therapeutic about therapeutic discourse? Why is the therapy hour such a powerful influence in peoples' lives if all they do is talk? Who talks, and what about? To answer some of these questions from a linguistic stand-point, Kathleen Ferrara analyses samples of psychotherapeutic discourse between several therapists and their clients. She focuses on cohesion and the joint construction of digalogue to get at her main concern of just how talk can be therapeutic, and at the same time addresses recent concerns in the study of conversation. Her thesis is that repetition and continuity are resources of language which speakers can recombine in various ways to create meaning within a given social context, and she looks at the many ways these cohesive devices are used in therapy speech. Therapeutic Ways with Words should appeal not only to linguists and people concerned with language in the professions, but to the large audience connected to psychotherapy. 'The scholarship reflected in the manuscript is not just sound, but creative; not just up-to-date, but up to the minute. Ferrara offers insightful treatments of data just begging for attention in light of recent developments in discourse analysis, and thus contributes cutting-edge results ...It represents the kind of research we need much more of in linguistics today." Neal Norrick, Professor of English-Linguistics, Northern Illinois University

Reflexive research and the grounding of analysis: Social psychology and the psy‐complex

Abstract: This paper is concerned with reflexivity in research, and the way research is grounded in the operations of the psy-complex in social psychology. A central argument is that qualitative research in general, and a focus on reflexivity in particular, requires theoretical grounding. Distinctions are drawn between ‘uncomplicated subjectivity’, ‘blank subjectivity’ and ‘complex subjectivity’; and the analytic device of the ‘discursive complex’ is described. It is argued that such theoretical grounding can usefully draw on developments in discourse analytic, deconstructionist, and psychoanalytic social research. The opposition between objectivity and subjectivity is deconstructed, and psychoanalytic conceptual reference points for an understanding of the discursive construction of complex subjectivity in the context of institutions are explored with particular reference to the location of the researcher in the psy-complex. The paper discusses the reflexive engagement of the researcher with data, and the construction of the identity of the researcher with reference to professional bodies. An analysis of a document produced by the British Psychological Society is presented to illustrate conceptual issues addressed in the first sections. This illustrative analysis is designed to show how the material is structured by a series of six discursive complexes, and that the institutional structure facilitates, and inhibits, certain forms of action and reflection.

Words in discourse: a dialectical approach to the acquisition of meaning and use.

Abstract: Word learning by young children is viewed as a problem of deriving meaning from the use of forms in discourse contexts. Uses of causal and temporal terms in private speech by a child studied longitudinally from 1;9 to 3;0 are analysed from this perspective. Evidence is presented that words are first constrained to uses in specific discourse contexts, and later used more flexibly and with greater control over the semantics of the terms. Derivation of meaning from discourse is described as a dialectical process, and as such it is claimed to be more consistent with the full range of observational data, and with theories of word learning applicable to older children and adults, than other current theories of lexical acquisition in early childhood.

The identity work of questioning in intellectual discussion

Abstract: This article examines how questioning practices in intellectual discussion do identity work. Drawing upon the discussion discourse of a Ph.D. department's weekly colloquium, as well as several other sources, three aspects of intellectual identity are identified that are routinely at stake for academic presenters in discussion periods: their knowledgeability, originality, and level of intellectual sophistication. We identify and describe questioning practices that support and challenge these desired identities. Analysis of the discussion discourse shows how use of marked and unmarked question forms implicate a question recipient's knowledgeability level, how time references and interest queries imply a person's degree of originality, and how lexical choices can problematize presenters’ intellectual frameworks, which in turn can become challenges to their intellectual sophistication. The concluding section considers how the identity—implicative discourse analysis developed and used in the paper could become...

Feminist meanings and the (de)politicization of the lexicon

Abstract: In arguing for the necessity of gender-based language reform, feminist theorists have generally assumed that language is not a neutral and transparent means of representing reality. Rather, language is assumed to codify an androcentric worldview. While sexist language clearly reflects sexist social practices, the continuing existence of such practices throws into question the possibility of successful language reform. Because linguistic meanings are, to a large extent, socially constructed and constituted, terms initially introduced to be nonsexist and neutral may lose their neutrality in the mouths of a sexist speech community and/or culture. In this article we first examine the way in which nonsexist innovations have been appropriated by a sexist speech community. More specifically, we examine uses of neutral generics such as chairperson, spokesperson; singular they; he or she; and neutral titles such as Ms.; and we demonstrate that these terms are often not used nor interpreted in their intended (neutral) way. Rather, they are used in ways that maintain sexist stereotypes and distinctions. Then we examine the use of feminist linguistic innovations as they appear in the print media. We demonstrate the extent to which such terms get redefined and depoliticized by a speech community that is not predominantly feminist and is often sexist. (Language and gender, language and race, nonsexist language, gender-based language reform, neutral generics, discourse analysis)*

The professional construction of ‘paranoia’ and the discursive use of diagnostic criteria

Abstract: This study examined the ways in which five mental health professionals talked about paranoia. A discourse analysis (Potter & Wetherell, 1987) suggested that interviewees positioned themselves, and were themselves positioned, by a number of discourses, or systematic ways of talking, in relation to this topic. These discourses appeared to serve a number of functions including the maintenance of professional legitimacy. Interviewees used a number of rhetorical strategies (including exploiting the range and ambiguity of diagnostic definitions, criteria and theories) in order to meet challenges, for example that paranoid beliefs might be true.

Communication during Prose Recall Conversations by Young and Old Dyads.

Abstract: This study focused on the cooperative processes occurring during collaborative prose recall by adult dyads differing in age (young and old) and relationship (married and unacquainted) Analyses of the content of the conversations indicate that all groups produced similar proportions of story‐related and conversation‐related productions At the beginning of the conversations, individual stimulus‐based productions were predominant The end of the conversations were characterized by increased proportions of task discussion, particularly for married couples, and an increase in sociability/support productions by older adults, particularly older unacquainted dyads Thus, all groups adopted the arguably superior strategy of beginning their recall conversations with an initial surge of individually recalled story information, and it was only at the end of the conversation that group differences in collaboration strategies were observed

Discourse and the Politics of Space in South Africa: The `Squatter Crisis':

Abstract: In this study, we analyze a body of discourse concerning the government of space in South Africa, employing the methodological framework developed by Wetherell and Potter (1992). Our data comprised...

Interactional differences in Alzheimer's discourse: An examination of AD speech across two audiences

Abstract: Assessments of the narrative abilities of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease should consider the interactions that generate the narratives. By analyzing the discourse of an AD patient in interaction with two different interlocutors, namely her husband and the author, this study calls attention to ways in which one interaction facilitates narratives and the other does not. Previous psycholinguistic research, largely focusing on the resultant narrative, has understood the AD patient's deteriorating narrative skills as a result of the progressively debilitating nature of the disease. This is undoubtedly true, but extensive and meaningful talk is nevertheless possible, partially grounded in and constructed through social interaction. (Discourse analysis, Alzheimer's disease, narrative social interaction)

So you did what you wanted then : discourse analysis, personal agency, and psychotherapy

Abstract: This paper explores issues concerning personal agency in discursive psychology and discourse analysis, with a particular emphasis on agency in terms of motivational accounts of the person. Issues are discussed in relation to the efficacy, acceptability, and accessibility of discourse analytic research for the practising psychotherapist. We suggest that such an approach may raise problems in four areas. First, we argue that without explicit theorization of the subject as language user, discourse analysis may be vulnerable to the charge of determinism. Second, theorization of the subject as language user may be required to account successfully for individual consistency and continuity of identity. Third, although claiming to critique commonsense notions of subjectivity, implicit dualist assumptions facilitate a reading of discursive psychology that is compatible with a motivational model of the person. Finally, we argue that discursive psychology itself implies a particular model of the strategically motivated language user. We conclude that, although these issues require clarification, discursive psychology and discourse analysis have much to offer psychotherapy research.

Trial language : differential discourse processing and discursive formation

Abstract: This study of Anglo-American legal discourse is the first comprehensive discourse analysis of American legal language in its prototypical setting, the trial by jury. With ethnographic data gathered in a civil jury trial, the book compares the discourse processing of the legal participants and the lay jurors in the trial.This study, examining an entire trial, finds that it is constraints at the level of a Foucauldian discursive formation that prevent lay understanding. Those constraints include the allocation of narrative speaking roles primarily to legal speakers in genres in which no sworn evidence is given, the suppression of narrative in ordinary witnesses, a set of restraints on witnesses' use of certain categories of evidentials, the legal topic originating in textual authority unknown to the lay participants, specific distribution of verb forms by legal genre, and a linguistic “burden” accompanying the legal “burden of proof” in the requirement that the lawyer of the moving party also use and explain technical legal terms to the jury at the same time as he or she presents evidence. All of these factors contribute to the incomprehensibility of legal discourse to lay auditors, resulting in the jury making their decision based on a commonsense script of the events precipitating the trial.The study concludes by arguing for a Foucauldian discourse analysis of institutional languages, a social theory powerful enough to account for the power and tenacity of these languages, where traditional linguistic explanation has failed.

The Dynamics of Family Dinner Talk: Cultural Contexts for Children's Passages to Adult Discourse.

Abstract: The Dynamics of Family Dinner Talk: Cultural Contexts for Children's Passages to Adult Discourse Shoshana Blum-Kulka To cite this article: Shoshana Blum-Kulka (1994) The Dynamics of Family Dinner Talk: Cultural Contexts for Children's Passages to Adult Discourse, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27:1, 1-50, DOI: 10.1207/s15327973rlsi2701_1 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi2701_1

An analysis of persuasive discourse: Learning how to take a stand

Abstract: The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to determine the effects of instruction on students’ persuasive writing at two grade levels (3rd and 5th), and (b) to determine the categories and types of written persuasion used by students at four grade levels (3rd, 5th, 10th, and 12th). The first objective, determining instructional effects, was accomplished by specifically instructing students in oral and written argument/persuasion. There were no significant main effects for instructional strategy or for the presence of the oral interaction component. The second purpose of this study was to categorize students’ written persuasive responses and to determine grade and gender differences, if any, in the nature of the responses given. Weiss and Sachs’ (1991) classification system was used. There was no significant main effect for gender, but there was a significant main effect for grade. Students in Grade 3 did not use Compromise at all, whereas 10.8% of the 12th‐grade students’ responses utilized Compromise. S...