A Contrastive Corpus Analysis between Modern Art Criticism and Photography Criticism for Curriculum Development in Art ESP

The field of ESP encompasses a number of areas. In the developing area of English for Art Purposes or Art ESP, there is almost no material in publication for Art schools and other programs to use. This dissertation addresses the need for material in this field by using contrastive corpus analysis to identify suitable material for this subject and then discusses how contrastive analysis software can also be used to help create content in the form of lesson plans and curriculum material. This study focuses on the unique language features of modern art criticism and photography criticism by looking at the driving differences that characterize each genre by asking the following research questions: 1.Can the language of photography criticism in terms of indicative linguistic features be considered as a distinct genre from modern art criticism? 2.If so, which features drive these differences, and how can the identification of these features be used to create content material for use with nonnative English speakers? This study used a contrastive analysis method by utilizing a computational tool called the Gramulator to isolate and identify the characteristic features that differentiate a Photography Criticism corpus of 48 samples and a Modern Art Criticism corpus of 94 samples. The main findings were viewed in terms of one, two and three word collocations. The software tool also viewed the amount of narrative and science language used in each corpus. The results for this section of the study showed a predicted result of a high rate of scientific language with 30 out of 48 samples showing science language. The Modern Art results were more surprising with a very near split of 44 out of 94 showing science language and 50 out of 94 showing narrative. The software tool was then used to show and discuss how these results could be utilized to create different content for the area of Art ESP. The results were then concluded to support the claim that these are two separate genres of writing

Noises offscreen: could a crisis of confidence be good for media studies?

In this article, I explore a number of current difficulties of definition and practice within media studies I suggest that, collectively, these may give rise to a 'crisis of confidence' in the field After assessing the relationship between media studies and other fields, especially English studies, I comment on three particular problems in media studies' issues of analytic method, issues of history and issues of language. Work in each of these areas has been made more, rather than less, problematic, as the result of media studies' evident aim of disentangling itself from the baggage of those disciplines from which it emerged historically I do not suggest that media studies is therefore without value. Far from it: the need is overwhelming But agreeing on the existence of a need does not guarantee the suitability of existing responses to that need - hence the questions I want to ask

The localisation of advertising print media as a multimodal process

Peer reviewe

Consumed by the real: A conceptual framework of abjective consumption and its freaky vicissitudes

Purpose – This paper furnishes an inaugural reading of abjective consumption by drawing on Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of abjection within the wider terrain of consumer cultural research. It offers a conceptual framework that rests on three pillars, viz. irrationality, meaninglessness, dissolution of selfhood. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative research design that adopts a documentary ethnographic approach, by drawing on a corpus of 50 documentary episodes from the TV series “My Strange Addiction” and “Freaky Eaters”. Findings – The findings from this analysis point to different orders of mediatized discourse that are simultaneously operative in different actors’ frames (e.g. moralizing, medical), in Goffman’s terms, yet none of which attains to address the phenomenon of abjective consumption to its fullblown extent. Research limitations/implications – Although some degree of bias is bound to be inherent in the data because of their pre-recorded status, they are particularly useful not in the least because this is a “difficult sample” in qualitative methodological terms. Practical implications – The multi-order dimensionalization of abjective consumption opens up new vistas to marketers in terms of adding novel dimensions to the message structure of their communicative programs, in line with the three Lacanian orders. Social implications – The adoption of a consumer psychoanalytic perspective allows significant others to fully dimensionalize the behavior of abjective consumption subjects, by becoming sensitive to other than symbolic aspects that are endemic in consumer behavior. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the extant consumer cultural research literature by furnishing the novel conceptual framework of abjective consumption, as a further elaboration of my consumer psychoanalytic approach to jouissance consumption, as well as by contrasting this interpretive frame vis-à-vis dominant discursive regimes

Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

English academic discourse : its hegemonic status and implications for translation

Tese de doutoramento em Estudos da Cultura (Estudos de Tradução), apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa através da Faculdade de Letras, 2009Disponível no document

Trends in contemporary Italian narrative 1980-2007

The ‘new Italian narrative’ that began to be spoken about in the 1980s was not associated with a single writer or movement but with an eclectic and varied production. The eight essays that make up this volume set out to give a flavour of the breadth and range of recent trends and developments. The collection opens with two essays on crime fiction. In the first, Luca Somigli examines novels dealing with topical issues or recent history and which reveal a strong indigenous and regional tradition, while in the second, Nicoletta McGowan discusses the particular case of a noir by Claudia Salvatori. They are followed by essays on two of Italy’s best-known contemporary writers: Marina Spunta’s essay explores the representation of space, place and landscape in the work of Gianni Celati and photographer Luigi Ghirri, while Darrell O’Connell analyses the fiction of Vincenzo Consolo, and his struggle to find a means of representing an ethical stance within fiction

Critical analysis of the concept of art in contemporary art texts

This thesis investigates how art is conceptualised in writing about art and what this reveals about hegemonic ideologies underpinning the conceptualisation of art. The concept of art has been studied from many perspectives (i.e. economic, philosophical, cognitive, etc.) and the importance of texts describing, evaluating and interpreting contemporary artworks has been recognised by many authors (Carrier 1987, 2003; Danto 1981). These texts present representations and evaluations of artworks according to views or perspectives on what contemporary art is and, more importantly, what good contemporary art is. The influence of these texts in the art field depends on the cultural and symbolic capital of the writers as well as institutions or media behind them. This thesis revises the representation of the concept of art through the analysis of the notions used in the textual descriptions of the concept of art, the artistic practice and the art object. This work aims to identify key notions and conceptual relations used in the textual representation of the concept of art in contemporary art texts. This thesis employs qualitative analysis which follows the stages of identification, interpretation and explanation. The identification and interpretation of the data makes use of a number of cognitive-linguistic constructs (‘frame’, ‘image schema’) as well as constructs from Discourse Theory (‘relation of equivalence’ and ‘relation of difference’). It studies two small corpora: four English broadsheet papers and four specialised art magazines (press reportage and magazine writing). NVivo10 was used to mark-up frames and the tags applied are termed nodes. The frames identified are interpreted and grouped in terms of broader notions that help the classification of the results found. These results are the basis of the explanation which speculates about the underlying ideologies behind the presentation of art in writing about art. The most used group of frames used in the data shows the notions that have a tendency to occur and thus are considered relevant for the contemporary understanding of art and more importantly, they indicate the conceptual structures considered as producing quality in contemporary art. The findings show that positive evaluations of the concept of art are generated through the use words evoking image schematic notions of ‘motion’, ‘force’, ‘linkage’ and ‘container’. The classification of frames showed that the aspects of art that are more frequently mentioned in the representation of art are communication and cognition. The most frequent frames that emerged from the data are: Living entities, Rite and Records. Findings also show differences between representations in the two sub-corpora, particularly in the reference to commercial aspects more popular in the Press sub-corpus and the use of the frame Detachment (which evokes the image schema PART-WHOLE) in the Magazine sub-corpus. This way the thesis studies the textual constitution of the representation of the concept of art through the use of notions and conceptual relations in order to examine the hegemonic representations of art in texts from important art institutions

Determining Intent: A Quantitative and Qualitative Linguistic Analysis of Holographic and Professional Wills

My dissertation focuses on the language of wills. More specifically, I am interested in how the language of holographic wills (i.e., handwritten wills) differs from the language of professional wills.My research question is Do linguistic differences between professional wills and holographic wills have the potential to affect the interpretation of the wills, subsequently influencing the outcome of the probate process? In order to address this question, I conduct a quantitative and qualitative contrastive corpus analysis of holographic and professionally-prepared wills. My hypothesis is that the discourse of holographic wills will tend to be more narrative-like, reflecting personal experiences and emotions. By contrast, the language of professional wills is more formal and rule-driven than the language of holographic wills. By using computational analysis tools such as the Gramulator, my dissertation identifies specific language differencesbetween these two text types that support my hypothesis. These differences are assessed through a variety of statistical methods. Additionally, I perform a qualitative assessment of three case studies on individual wills using discourse analysis approaches to provide insight into why and how the meaning of the text may be determined. Although both types of discourse have their differences, their main goal is the same: to convey the testator\u27s intent. The purpose of my dissertation is to facilitate this goal by demonstrating to the legal community how non-professionals write their wills so that when a controversy over a holographic will arises, the legal community can apply the methods and techniques presented here and determine the testator\u27s intent, since by law, this is what is required

Semantic prosody in Thai

Semantic prosody is an important concept and has become a primary research interest in corpus linguistics. This thesis undertakes the groundwork of fundamental research into semantic prosody in Thai, a language which has not been subject to studies of semantic prosody before, to set out the parameters for subsequent research in this area. In particular, it addresses these three research questions: 1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the major approaches to semantic prosody proposed in the literature for describing semantic prosody in Thai? 2. What variation in semantic prosodies across genres can be identified for Thai words? 3. To what extent are the semantic prosodies of words identified as translation-equivalents in widely-used bilingual dictionaries in Thai and English similar or different? The datasets employed in the analysis are the Thai National Corpus and the British National Corpus. To address each research question, a small number of Thai words are selected for the analysis. Two primary approaches, the polarity-oriented approach and the EUM-oriented approach, are employed to identify semantic prosody. Within the polarity-oriented approach, which is founded in work by Louw, Stubbs, and Partington, semantic prosody is identified based on collocates, and is restricted to the positive vs. negative opposition. Within the EUM-oriented approach, which is based in the studies of Sinclair, semantic prosody is identified by examining concordance lines for a pragmatic function or meaning that is spread across an extended unit of meaning. The results of the analysis show that the two primary approaches to semantic prosody do operate successfully with the Thai data. A range of semantic prosodies are identified for /kreeŋcay/ ‘considerate’, /kɔ̀ ɔhâykə̀ ət/ ‘cause’, and /chɔ̂ɔp/ ‘like’, the objects under study, by the two approaches. The discussion of these semantic prosodies shows that the two approaches are useful for different purposes. The polarity-oriented approach is useful when one’s aim is to investigate a word’s tendency to co-occur with positive or negative words. Particularly, it reveals the hidden evaluative potential of words whose evaluation is not obvious from their core semantics. The EUM-oriented approach is, by contrast, suitable for the examination of an extended unit of meaning and its pragmatic function in the Sinclairian sense. They both also have some advantages and disadvantages in terms of practicality. On the issue of variation in semantic prosodies across genres, some variation is indeed found to exist. From the concordance analysis of 19 verbs, each in four different genres, namely academic writing, fiction, newspaper stories, and non-academic non-fiction, 21 different extended units of meaning are identified from 14 of the verbs. The level of variation in the use of these extended units of meaning across genres, which implies variation in semantic prosodies, is considerable with some extended units of meaning, but is limited with others. In particular, a notable contrast is identified between academic and fiction genres in terms of which extended units (and semantic prosodies) are common. Finally, the majority of the translationequivalent pairs under study (36 out of 48) show the same semantic prosody; of these, most present a neutral semantic prosody. In cases where the pairs show different semantic prosodies, there are not any cases where one word in the pair shows a positive semantic prosody, and the other shows a negative semantic prosody, and vice versa. It is thus arguable that there is a relationship between semantic prosody in Thai and English – not a genetic or areal relationship, but one that arises from a functional basis, that is, the meanings that the pairs of words under study express in both languages