Automatic Detection of Proverbs and their Variants

This article presents the task of automatic detection of proverbs in Brazilian Portuguese, from the intersection of the regular syntactic structure of proverbs and their core elements. We created finite-state automata that enabled us to look for these word combinations in running texts. The rationale behind this method consists in the fact that although proverbs may have a normal sentence structure and often a very commonly used lexicon, their specific word-combinations may enables us to identify them and their variants irrespective of the syntactic or structural changes the proverb may undergo. The goal of this task is to gather the largest number of proverbs and their variants. The results showed precision 60.15%

The Role of Lexis in Scottish Newspapers

This study investigates the language of Scottish newspapers, excluding Sunday editions, during 1995. The newspapers studied are the Herald, the Scotsman, the Daily Record and the Scottish Sun, with the Times (London) and the English edition of the Sun used as controls. The research is based on a computerised corpus of newspaper texts, collected specifically for the project. The texts and the research results are contained in a Microsoft Access relational database on CD-ROM, again specially designed for this project, which has been submitted in conjunction with the thesis as an integral part of the research project. The study investigates the hypothesis that the use of peculiarly Scottish lexis plays an important part in the Scottish newspapers' construction and maintenance of a Scottish identity. It argues that this Scottish identity is important in helping these newspapers relate to their largely Scottish readership. The study investigates which items of Scottish lexis are used by the newspapers, and where they are most likely to be found. It asks to what extent the newspapers use a standardised Scots, and also whether there are identifiable differences between the broadsheet and tabloid newspapers. The immediate contexts of items of Scottish lexis are also considered, such as the language variety of the surrounding context (i.e. whether Scots or English) and whether Scots is used in direct speech or narrative contexts. The study asks what reference is made to well-known Scottish stereotypes and to what extent the construction and maintenance of this Scottish identity relies on formulaic content such as Scottish fixed expressions and idioms. The main theme of the study is therefore the linguistic construction and maintenance of Scottish identity. In addition, it investigates the extent of coverage of Scottish stories by the Scottish press, and in particular, the coverage of articles concerned with Scottish language. The observations made from the research data are considered in the context of the more general link between language, identity and social group membership, and m light of the complex linguistic situation that exists in Scotland today

Linguistic-based Patterns for Figurative Language Processing: The Case of Humor Recognition and Irony Detection

El lenguaje figurado representa una de las tareas más difíciles del procesamiento del lenguaje natural. A diferencia del lenguaje literal, el lenguaje figurado hace uso de recursos lingüísticos tales como la ironía, el humor, el sarcasmo, la metáfora, la analogía, entre otros, para comunicar significados indirectos que la mayoría de las veces no son interpretables sólo en términos de información sintáctica o semántica. Por el contrario, el lenguaje figurado refleja patrones del pensamiento que adquieren significado pleno en contextos comunicativos y sociales, lo cual hace que tanto su representación lingüística, así como su procesamiento computacional, se vuelvan tareas por demás complejas. En este contexto, en esta tesis de doctorado se aborda una problemática relacionada con el procesamiento del lenguaje figurado a partir de patrones lingüísticos. En particular, nuestros esfuerzos se centran en la creación de un sistema capaz de detectar automáticamente instancias de humor e ironía en textos extraídos de medios sociales. Nuestra hipótesis principal se basa en la premisa de que el lenguaje refleja patrones de conceptualización; es decir, al estudiar el lenguaje, estudiamos tales patrones. Por tanto, al analizar estos dos dominios del lenguaje figurado, pretendemos dar argumentos respecto a cómo la gente los concibe, y sobre todo, a cómo esa concepción hace que tanto humor como ironía sean verbalizados de una forma particular en diversos medios sociales. En este contexto, uno de nuestros mayores intereses es demostrar cómo el conocimiento que proviene del análisis de diferentes niveles de estudio lingüístico puede representar un conjunto de patrones relevantes para identificar automáticamente usos figurados del lenguaje. Cabe destacar que contrario a la mayoría de aproximaciones que se han enfocado en el estudio del lenguaje figurado, en nuestra investigación no buscamos dar argumentos basados únicamente en ejemplos prototípicos, sino en textos cuyas característicasReyes Pérez, A. (2012). Linguistic-based Patterns for Figurative Language Processing: The Case of Humor Recognition and Irony Detection [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/16692Palanci

The Rhetorical Construction of Reader-Writer Identities in Contemporary Fiction Reviews

The New York Times Book Review is a prestigious, well-known, and widely-read publication. Each Sunday, countless readers turn to the reviews published in the Times for critiques of recently released contemporary fiction. The reviews are written by individuals of experience: novelists, short-story writers, nonfiction writers, professors of Literature, and editors of literary publications. However, in recent years, many websites have begun to publish online book reviews written by everyday readers. Goodreads.com, created in December 2006, is a social networking site devoted solely to reviewing and discussing books. My project examines the identity of the reviewer who writes for The New York Times and the identity of the reviewer who writes for Goodreads. I argue that by entering the rhetorical situation of the book review, via the Times or Goodreads, and by making key rhetorical moves, the reviewer constructs a “reader-writer” identity: the Times reviewer creates a “reader-writer” identity of an expert and the Goodreads reviewer creates a “reader-writer” identity of an apprentice. This project analyzes how these identities are constructed by the bylines or profiles of the reviewers, the format of the review venues, the occurrence or lack of writing errors in the reviews, the reviewers’ voices, and the reviewers’ treatment of their audiences. These reader-writer identities, I argue, are rhetorically constructed personas that are presented to the reading public. These personas indicate that the reviewer is a respectable reader in the community he/she has joined, either the Times community or the Goodreads community

A NARRATIVE IN RELIEF The Historiography of English Modern Painting (1910-1915), from the 1910s to the 1950s

The groups of painters in England who experimented with new visual expressions of modernity between 1910 and 1915 are the subject of this historiographical research. More precisely, the accounts of Vorticism, Bloomsbury post-Impressionism and the modern art of painters associated with Sickert, (principally the Camden Town Group), have been critically examined over a forty year period in order to trace the narrative of their place in contemporary art criticism and their entry into histories of what soon became the recent past. This textually-based methodology has produced an insight into the forces acting upon the critical reception of a particular period subsequently seen by historians as a discrete phase in the evolution of British art. The readings of texts are organised chronologically so as to illustrate the formation of a historical narrative and its variants, and to show how immediate responses and retrospective evaluations connect discursively. The findings of the research have four aspects. Firstly, it has been fruitful to isolate the narrative of the years 1910-15 over forty years so as to test whether it is possible, using this longitudinal methodology, to comment productively on the integrity of this historical episode, and to establish how the narrative became a critical orthodoxy governed by a limited range of analytical perspectives. Secondly, estimations as to the quality of the art produced in these years developed a distinct, often negative, patterning in journalism and art historical writing and this is also traced in some detail over time. Dominant tropes in the critical language have been identified over this forty year period which became the default positions of historical analysis and which, I argue, impeded sophisticated or revisionist thinking. With a few notable exceptions, the analysis of early English modern art is poorly served by its commentators in this period and this weakened discursive health. Thirdly, this thesis also considers the nature and influence of, periodicals, newspapers, 'little magazines' and the genres of art-writing that were extant between 1910 and 1956 and relates this to the distinctions and similarities between art criticism and art history at this time. A fourth analytic strand concerns outside influences on the production of critical and historical texts. lt explores the impact of promotional art writing, and exposes the professional pressures on, and rivalries between, writers and considers some of the wider political circumstances through which this particular debate on recent art was refracted

A NARRATIVE IN RELIEF The Historiography of English Modern Painting (1910-1915), from the 1910s to the 1950s

The groups of painters in England who experimented with new visual expressions of modernity between 1910 and 1915 are the subject of this historiographical research. More precisely, the accounts of Vorticism, Bloomsbury post-Impressionism and the modern art of painters associated with Sickert, (principally the Camden Town Group), have been critically examined over a forty year period in order to trace the narrative of their place in contemporary art criticism and their entry into histories of what soon became the recent past. This textually-based methodology has produced an insight into the forces acting upon the critical reception of a particular period subsequently seen by historians as a discrete phase in the evolution of British art. The readings of texts are organised chronologically so as to illustrate the formation of a historical narrative and its variants, and to show how immediate responses and retrospective evaluations connect discursively. The findings of the research have four aspects. Firstly, it has been fruitful to isolate the narrative of the years 1910-15 over forty years so as to test whether it is possible, using this longitudinal methodology, to comment productively on the integrity of this historical episode, and to establish how the narrative became a critical orthodoxy governed by a limited range of analytical perspectives. Secondly, estimations as to the quality of the art produced in these years developed a distinct, often negative, patterning in journalism and art historical writing and this is also traced in some detail over time. Dominant tropes in the critical language have been identified over this forty year period which became the default positions of historical analysis and which, I argue, impeded sophisticated or revisionist thinking. With a few notable exceptions, the analysis of early English modern art is poorly served by its commentators in this period and this weakened discursive health. Thirdly, this thesis also considers the nature and influence of, periodicals, newspapers, 'little magazines' and the genres of art-writing that were extant between 1910 and 1956 and relates this to the distinctions and similarities between art criticism and art history at this time. A fourth analytic strand concerns outside influences on the production of critical and historical texts. lt explores the impact of promotional art writing, and exposes the professional pressures on, and rivalries between, writers and considers some of the wider political circumstances through which this particular debate on recent art was refracted

An experiment in literary critical appreciation, using a comparison between three nineteenth-century novels prescribed by the Cape Education Department and a random sample of Mills and Boon popular romance fiction

The novel as an art form provides writers with the opportunity of exercising their imaginative power to create a 'speaking picture' of life. Whatever form that picture may take, it is vital that it should offer relevance to real life. The literature teacher's earnest intention, therefore, should be to encourage an appreciation of literary novels among adolescent pupils in order to enrich the quality of their living and to sharpen their awareness of the human condition. Teaching adolescents to discern the essential differences between the novel of quality and the novel which exists purely to provide wish-fulfilment and sensual titillation is the aim of this dissertation. Thus a structural analysis of the literary novel is presented, asserting that certain aspects of the novel should be identified and appreciated by the developing reader. Three novels which have recently been prescribed by the Cape Education Department for pupils in standards 9 or 10 are briefly examined in order to test the itensity of their illusion of reality in conjuction with the literary skills of their creators. These novels are Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy). Each has been viewed from a different angle, but each reveals its right to be evaluated as great literature. In order to develop literary appreciation among teenage readers, and to convince them of the delights and insights to be gained, it is proposed that comparison of the 'literary' with the 'unliterary' novel should promote discernment and sound judgement. Popular romance fiction, as published by Mills & Boon, is therefore investigated. These stories enjoy immense popularity, particularly among teenage girls. Far from promoting the illusion that life has been faithfully represented, these novels are shown to reveal a world manipulated to suit both the author and the reader: life as it might have been rather than as it is. A sample of adolescent responses to this type of comparative reading is provided in the last chapter. These responses reveal that the pupils' critical faculties were engaged and literary appreciation was eviden

The Joys of teaching literature

These volumes correspond to the posts that I have been publishing, since September 2010, in my academic professional blog The Joys of Teaching Literature. Each volume covers a complete academic year. The text may show some dissimilarities with the final published posts. The differences are, however, negligibl

Developing English communicative skills : a reassessment of the role of university departments of English in meeting the needs of English second language students

Prompted by increasing demand in South Africa for the development of a focused but flexible English Second Language (ESL) curriculum at university level, this thesis contends that substantial theoretical under-pinning is needed for decisions on ESL course materials. Once the theoretical constructs are determined, a model based on a systematic approach to course design is proposed. It maximizes the individualization of experiential learning, despite the large numbers of students who take these courses, through a multi-form course structure offering four streams of study at three levels of difficulty. Entry is possible at the start of the year and at mid-year. The empirical research which forms the basis of the study is an analysis of the 1985 student group at the University of South Africa (UNISA). Several methods are used, including post-course questionnaires, diagnostic assignments and a detailed language and stylistic error count linked with a clause analysis of a sample of assignments and examination scripts. The model curriculum meets the contextually basic science requirements of a university course, within the parameters of response needed in regard to the ESL student profile determined by the needs and role analysis completed in Chapter 2. Model aims and terminal learning objectives are presented in Chapter 3 as the foundation on which the rest of the thesis is constructed, and include comprehension, applied composition, oral and aural skills, use of reference works, methods of thinking, and occupationally relevant specialist language. In Chapters 4 and 5, in-depth analyses of appropriate course content and methods emphasize the use of Afrocentric English literature in contemporary settings with appropriate readability levels, language in use in specified contexts, development of vocabulary, remedying incorrect usage, comprehension skills, composition skills, development of cognitive processes, oral and listening skills, and the purpose and place of grammar. The final chapters outline approaches to criterion-referenced assessment and evaluation, and suggest appropriate set works and criteria for their selection. The course materials aim at improving English communicative performance. The underlying principles used in developing this course design and its associated materials can be valuably extrapolated and applied at universities and other tertiary institutions.English StudiesD. Litt et Phil. (English