Emphatic Repetition in Spoken Arabic

This paper identifies and explains Arabic emphatic repetition in ethnographic interviews against the general backdrop of an understanding of non-pragmatically motivated repetition in Spoken Arabic. It also considers the basic linguistic resources for expressing intensity in the lexicon and syntax and the significance of repetition as one of these resources. The latter part of the paper explains how these resources are drawn on in interaction and what other types of spontaneous immediate emphatic repetition occur. This approach allows for a nuanced interpretation of the salience of emphatic repetition in this spoken Arabic genre. The discussion contributes to our general understanding of the essence of repetition that allows it to be used as a productive interactive resource

Acoustic correlates of encoded prosody in written conversation

This thesis presents an analysis of certain punctuation devices such as parenthesis, italics and emphatic spellings with respect to their acoustic correlates in read speech. The class of punctuation devices under investigation are referred to as prosodic markers. The thesis therefore presents an analysis of features of the spoken language which are represented symbolically in text. Hence it is a characterization of aspects of the spoken language which have been transcribed or symbolized in the written medium and then translated back into a spoken form by a reader. The thesis focuses in particular on the analysis of parenthesis, the examination of encoded prominence and emphasis, and also addresses the use of paralinguistic markers which signal attitude or emotion.In an effort to avoid the use of self constructed or artificial material containing arbitrary symbolic or prosodic encodings, all material used for empirical analysis was taken from examples of electronic written exchanges on the Internet, such as from electronic mail messages and from articles posted on electronic newsgroups and news bulletins. This medium of language, which is referred to here as written conversation, provides a rich source of material containing encoded prosodic markers. These occur in the form of 'smiley faces' expressing attitudes or feelings, words highlighted by a number of means such as capitalization, italics, underscore characters, or asterisks, and in the form of dashes or parentheses, which provide suggestions on how the information in a text or sentence may be structured with regard to its informational content.Chapter 2 investigates in detail the genre of written conversation with respect to its place in an emerging continuum between written and spoken language, concentrating on transcriptional devices and their function as indicators of prosody. The implications these symbolic representations bear on the task of reading, by humans as well as machines, are then examined.Chapters 3 and 4 turn to the acoustic analysis of parentheticals and emphasis markers respectively. The experimental work in this thesis is based on readings of a corpus of selected materials from written conversation with the acoustic analysis concentrating on the differences between readings of texts with prosodic markers and readings of the same texts from which prosodic markers have been removed. Finally, the effect of prosodic markers is tested in perception experiments involving both human and resynthesized utterances

Information Structure, Grammar and Strategy in Discourse

This dissertation examines two information-structural phenomena, Givenness and Focus, from the perspective of both syntax and pragmatics. Evidence from English, German and other languages suggests a split analysis of information structure--the notions of Focus and Givenness, often thought to be closely related, exist independently at two different levels of linguistic representation. Givenness is encoded as a syntactic feature which presupposes salience in prior discourse and either (1) prevents prosodic prominence (in languages like English and German), or (2) drives syntactic movement (in languages like Italian). On the other hand, Focus, which introduces strong prosodic prominence and a contrastive interpretation, exhibits none of the expected properties of a syntactic feature, and is therefore analyzed quite differently. I argue that Focus is the result of purely pragmatic principles which determine utterance choice in the face of grammatical optionality. The syntactic and phonological systems often generate multiple possible formulations of an utterance, and communicative principles can be invoked to explain the correspondences between certain kinds of discourse contexts and certain patterns of linguistic form. The application of communicative principles to problems of utterance choice is modeled mathematically using the tools of game-theoretic pragmatics. From this perspective, utterances are taken to be strategically chosen in order to maximize communicative effectiveness. Ultimately, the strong differences between Focus and Givenness emphasize a methodological point: both syntactic and pragmatic perspectives are necessary to fully determine the space of possibilities in natural language. Neither perspective should be ignored

Typeface effects in written language: functions of typeface change for signalling meaning within text

Typeface change is one of the resources of written language which, in combination with other paralinguistic signs available to that system (use of space, punctuation, syntax manipulation are examples), can facilitate the author's intended interpretation. The thirteen studies undertaken for this research project explored the effects of typeface manipulations upon subjects' interpretations of brief texts, testing the efficiency of two conventional forms of emphasis, capital letters and italic print. Studies one to four specifically addressed issues of distinction between the two typefaces. It was found that both forms of typeface could function to intensify certain adjectives on a simple measurement scale, with capital letters providing quantifiably `more' to a referent than italics, as italics did over plain case. Both typefaces were tested for their ability to provide modulatory or contrastive emphasis for a word, where it was found that effects differed between the typefaces, suggesting divergent functions. Subjects' responses to a direct request to describe differences between capital and italic print, supported these findings. Studies five to nine examined the effects of typeface change and sentence sequence upon texts, by asking subjects to rank versions where these variables were manipulated. Strong concordances were found to be linked to information structure within the texts. Study ten took the same set of texts and presented versions individually to subjects in a story continuation task. The effects of emphasis and information sequence which were found suggest again the importance of content, which cooperated or conflicted with other paralinguistic signals in a text. The `foregrounding' effect of typeface emphasis on secondary information increased its availability for the production of continuation content. Studies eleven to thirteen looked at typeface change as a facility for signalling theme maintenance or enhancement, operating to disambiguate texts by reinforcing their `default' or natural readings, as well as its efficiency in signalling theme shift by contrastive emphasis. Different strategies of typeface emphasis were found to function for each of these requirements. Throughout all the studies, both forms of typeface emphasis were tested, either in contrast or in combination. Evidence accumulated to suggest that capital letters functioned best for providing modulatory emphasis, italic print for contrastive. Outside this issue of individual differences, typeface change itself was found to be an efficient strategy for indicating the author's intended interpretation to the reader

Tablet Applications for the Elderly: Specific Usability Guidelines

While the world population is aging, the technological progress is steadily increasing. Smartphones and tablets belong to a growing market and even more people aged 65 and above are using such touch devices. However, with advancing age normal cognitive, sensory, perceptual and motor changes influence psychological and physical capabilities and therefore the way the elderly are able to use tablet-applications. When designing tablet-applications for the elderly developers have to be supported in understanding these capabilities. Therefore, this thesis provides a comprehensive compilation of usability guidelines in order to develop user-friendly tablet-applications for older people. The development and testing of an exemplary tablet-application within this thesis shows how these guidelines can be brought into practice and how this realization is evaluated by test persons in this age group

Learning from psychotherapy for postgraduate supervision

This paper explores some of the ways in which our insights into the pedagogy of postgraduate supervision may benefit from understanding some of the attributes of psychotherapy. It proposes that psychotherapy involves teaching and learning processes that can be fruitfully compared with the idealised pedagogical model of the dialectic. It develops insights into postgraduate supervision as pedagogy by interrogating the intersection of teaching and learning with some aspects of psychotherapy. In doing so, it shows how those pedagogical aspects of psychotherapy can enable a deeper understanding and richer practising of postgraduate supervision. This paper works within a model postulated by Gregory Ulmer. In his development of an idea that there is in academic writing the self and the researched, the conscious intellectual semiotic and that arising from storytelling, Gregory Ulmer surveys the idea of ‘mystories’. This word encompasses the self, the story and the mystery of this. I propose my own version of this as the ‘subjective academic narrative’

Widening the context for interdisciplinary social research : SFL as a method for sociology, anthropology, and communication research

In this paper, I show clear links between the theoretical underpinnings of SFL and those of specific sociological, anthropological, and communication research traditions. My purpose in doing so is to argue that SFL is an excellent interdisciplinary research method for the social sciences, especially considering the emergent form of political economy being touted by new media enthusiasts: the so called knowledge (or information) economy. To demonstrate the flexibility and salience of SFL in diverse traditions of social research, and as evidence of its ability to be deployed as a flexible research method across formerly impermeable disciplinary and social boundaries, I use analyses from my doctoral research, relating these - theoretically speaking - to specific research traditions in sociology, communication, and anthropology