Presupposed evaluation in environmental argumentative discourse

Expressions of evaluation in discourse have been studied from a number of different perspectives, all highlighting the fact that evaluation may be expressed cumulatively, through a combination of different linguistic means, and pragmatically, at various levels of implicitness, which often defy precise categorization. This paper argues that, in argumentative discourse, the pragmatics of evaluation includes not only implied but also presupposed aspects. A case study centred on the environmental debate over the contested practice of fracking is used to identify the evaluative premises that lie behind the main stances or claims on the issue, as expressed by different stakeholders. It is argued that this wider approach to the analysis of evaluation may be particularly suited to uncover the evaluative premises that lie at the core of different and often contradictory environmental positions and policies

Evidently epistential adverbs are argumentative indicators: A corpus-based study

Argumentative indicators of discourse relations constitute crucial cues for the mining of arguments. However, a comprehensive lexicon of these linguistic devices is so far lacking due to the scarcity of corpora argumentatively annotated and the absence of an empirically validated analytic methodology. Recent studies have shown that modals, that express that things might be otherwise, and evidentials, that point to the presence of information sources, are good candidates to work as argumentative indicators. On these grounds, we propose a systematic, non-language specific corpus-based procedure to identify indicators of argumentative discourse relations. We test the design of a multi-level annotation through the analysis of the English and Italian epistential adverbs evidently and evidentemente in comparable corpora of newspaper articles. We show that the annotation guidelines achieve consistent analytical results with expert annotators. Data analysis reveals that the two adverbs work as argumentative indicator both at the structural and at the inferential level: besides pointing to the presence of premises-conclusion relations, they recurrently pattern with causal argument schemes from the effect to the cause. The Italian adverb evidentemente is less polysemous and more frequent, thus working as a more reliable indicator

Attitude and Graduation: Appraisal Resources in a Decision of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights

Court Judgments are classified within the legal genre of case-law, which is intended to be objective and impartial. However, despite efforts to conceal speakers’ presence and subjectivity in this context, stance must be taken in pronouncing judgment. This study seeks to understand how linguistic attitude and graduation resources are expressed in legal texts and to examine the mechanisms used for this purpose. The text chosen for analysis is a 2017 judgment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) titled: the “African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights V. Republic of Kenya”. The applicant, in respect of the Ogiek community of the Greater Mau Forest in the Republic of Kenya, submits to the ACHPR, denouncing violation of Articles 1, 2, 4, and 17 (2) and (3) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights by the Republic of Kenya. In order to determine the semantic nature of the linguistic elements set up in this judgement, the Attitude and Graduation systems of the Appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005) in Systemic Functional Linguistics, as well as some conceptual instruments of Raccah’s (2005) Semantic Structure of Points of View (SSPV) are applied to the selected corpus. Keywords: Attitude system, Graduation system, Appraisal framework, points of view, ACHPR, Court judgement DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/77-04 Publication date:March 31st 202

Floating constraints in lexical choice

Lexical choice is a computationally complex task, requiring a generation system to consider a potentially large number of mappings between concepts and words. Constraints that aid in determining which word is best come from a wide variety of sources, including syntax, semantics, pragmatics, the lexicon, and the underlying domain. Furthermore, in some situations, different constraints come into play early on, while in others, they apply much later. This makes it difficult to determine a systematic ordering in which to apply constraints. In this paper, we present a general approach to lexical choice that can handle multiple, interacting constraints. We focus on the problem of floating constraints, semantic or pragmatic constraints that float, appearing at a variety of different syntactic ranks, often merged with other semantic constraints. This means that multiple content units can be realized by a single surface element, and conversely, that a single content unit can be realized by a variety of surface elements. Our approach uses the Functional Unification Formalism (FUF) to represent a generation lexicon, allowing for declarative and compositional representation of individual constraints

Languaging critical thinking as a process of meaning making in student argumentative writing

This thesis provides a linguistic theorisation of critical thinking manifested in student argumentative writing. Literature has indicated that much of the work on critical thinking focuses on concepts from the critical thinking movement. These concepts draw on philosophical, cognitive psychological and educational theoretical foundations, which are largely hypothetical and are often contested. The literature, however, has also fundamentally conceived argumentation as an underlying principle of critical thinking, which involves skills in constructing a coherent line of reasoning, evaluating and examining differing perspectives on an issue, and establishing a stance with regard to these perspectives. Such conception becomes a basis for a linguistic focus in this study to provide a comprehensive account of how these aspects of critical thinking skills implicate the use of language in writing. The theorisation of the important aspects of critical thinking was substantiated through a detailed, multi-layered linguistic analysis of the patternings of meanings students enacted in constructing an argument in discussion texts. These texts were produced before and during a course of an intervention program that implemented a genre-based pedagogy in a regular Writing IV subject in two iterations. The pedagogic intervention equipped the students with the necessary knowledge about language to manage the demands of the texts. Eighteen texts representative of three high and three low achieving students were analysed with tools from a social semiotic theory of language as meaning, Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL), to show the students’ developing meaning potential, or ontogenesis for constructing the argument. The development indicating particular choices of meaning that were made and more valued from the overall meaning potential of language signified the emergence of the students’ skills in thinking critically. Two main aspects within the SFL theory constituted the core theoretical foundation for the linguistic analysis of the students’ texts – genre theory as a theorisation of meaning making at the level of context, and the APPRAISAL systems as a theorisation of meaning making at the level of discourse semantics

Amelioration vs. Perversion

Words change meaning, usually in unpredictable ways. But some words’ meanings are revised intentionally. Revisionary projects are normally put forward in the service of some purpose – some serve specific goals of inquiry, and others serve ethical, political or social aims. Revisionist projects can ameliorate meanings, but they can also pervert. In this paper, I want to draw attention to the dangers of meaning perversions, and argue that the self-declared goodness of a revisionist project doesn’t suffice to avoid meaning perversions. The road to Hell, or to horrors on Earth, is paved with good intentions. Finally and more importantly, I want to demarcate what meaning perversions are. This, I hope, can help us assess the moral and political legitimacy of revisionary projects

A defence of Hart's semantics as nonambitious conceptual analysis

Two methodological claims in Hart's The Concept of Law have produced perplexity: that it is a book on “analytic jurisprudence” 1 and that it may also be regarded as an essay in “descriptive sociology.” 2 Are these two ideas reconcilable? We know that mere analysis of our legal concepts cannot tell us much about their properties, that is, about the empirical aspect of law. We have learned this from philosophical criticisms of conceptual analysis; yet Hart informs us that analytic jurisprudence can be reconciled with descriptive sociology. The answer to this puzzle lies in the notion of nonambitious conceptual analysis. The theorist analyzes concepts but accepts the limitations of conceptual analysis and therefore uses empirical knowledge and substantive arguments to explain, refine, or perhaps refute initial insights provided by intuitions. This is the conclusion that this paper arrives at as an argumentative strategy to defend Hart's legal theory from the criticisms of Stavropoulos and Dworkin. The latter argues that Hart's legal theory cannot explain theoretical disagreements in law because he relies on a shared criterial semantics. Stavropoulos aims to show that Hart's semantics is committed to ambitious conceptual analysis and relies on the usage of our words as a standard of correctness. Both attacks aim to show that the semantic sting stings Hart's legal theory. This essay refines both challenges and concludes that not even in the light of the most charitable interpretation of these criticisms is Hart's legal theory stung by the semantic sting. This study defends the view that Hart's methodological claims were modest and that he was aware of the limits of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method. He was, this study claims, far ahead of his time. 1 H.L.A Hart, THE CONCEPT OF LAW (1994). 2 Id

Stance-taking and social status on an online bulletin board: A qualitative and quantitative approach

In this study, I demonstrate that social hierarchy and power are important aspects for understanding the use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs in computer-mediated communication. The data for the study come from an online bulletin board about rhythmic gymnastics, where the construction of social roles is believed to play a role in the expression of stance. The members of the community are divided into three hierarchically distinct social ranks based on status and activity on the board. I investigate whether members of a higher rank use epistemic and evidential stance verbs in a more authoritative manner than members of lower ranks using two methodological frameworks. In the qualitative part of the study, I adopt the dialogical discourse analysis to argue that epistemic and evidential stance is a dialogically constructed phenomenon that locally emerges between conversational co-participants. The quantitative part of the study employs the multifactorial usage-feature analysis, where two stance verbs think and seem are coded for a range of formal, semantic and extra-linguistic factors, which are believed to contribute to the differentiation of authoritative and tentative stance. The results show that bulletin board users of a higher rank exhibit a more authoritative and even aggressive use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs than users of lower ranks