Chiasmic Rhetoric: Alan Turing Between Bodies and Words

This Dissertation analyzes the life and writing of inventor and scientist Alan Turing in order to identify and theorize chiasmic relations between bodies and texts. Chiasmic rhetoric, as I develop throughout the Dissertation, is the dynamic processes between materials and discourses that interact to construct powerful rhetorical effect, shape bodies, and also compose new knowledges. My research here extends our knowledge of the rhetoric of science by demonstrating the ways that Alan Turing\u27s embodied experiences shape his rhetoric. Turing is an unusual figure for research on bodily rhetoric and embodied knowledge. He is often associated with disembodied knowledge and as his inventions are said to move intelligence towards greater abstraction and away from human bodies. However, this Dissertation exposes the many ways that bodies are active in shaping and producing knowledge even within Turing\u27s scientific and technical writing. I identify how, in every text that Turing produces, chiasmic interactions between bodies and texts actively compose Turing\u27s scientific knowledge and technical innovations towards digital computation and artificial intelligence. His knowledge, thus, is not composed out of abstract logic, or neutral technological advances. Rather, his knowledge and invention are composed and in through discourses and embodied experiences. Given that bodies and discourses are also composed within social and political power dynamics, then the political, social, and personal embodied experiences that compose Turing\u27s life and his embodiment also compose his texts, rhetoric, inventions, and science. Throughout the Dissertation, I develop chiasmic rhetoric as it develops in the rhetorical figure of chiasmus, as intersecting bodies and discourse, dynamic and productive, and potentially destabilizing. I conclude by proposing a pedagogy of care and disorientation that are attuned to the complex embodiment of students interacting with texts in our technical writing and composition classrooms

Syntax and Semantics of Italian Poetry in the First Half of the 20th Century

In this paper we study, analyse and comment rhetorical figures present in some of most interesting poetry of the first half of the twentieth century. These figures are at first traced back to some famous poet of the past and then compared to classical Latin prose. Linguistic theory is then called in to show how they can be represented in syntactic structures and classified as noncanonical structures, by positioning discontinuous or displaced linguistic elements in Spec XP projections at various levels of constituency. Then we introduce LFG (Lexical Functional Grammar) as the theory that allows us to connect syntactic noncanonical structures with informational structure and psycholinguistic theories for complexity evaluation. We end up with two computational linguistics experiments and then evaluate the results. The first one uses best online parsers of Italian to parse poetic structures; the second one uses Getarun, the system created at Ca Foscari Computational Linguistics Laboratory. As will be shown, the first approach is unable to cope with these structures due to the use of only statistical probabilistic information. On the contrary, the second one, being a symbolic rule based system, is by far superior and allows also to complete both semantic an pragmatic analysis.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of AIUCD 2016 (revised version as of March 19, 2018

The Rhetoric of Video Games

Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning Bogost's chapter offers an introduction to rhetoric in games. First he looks at the way games and their rules embody cultural values, following the work of Brian Sutton-Smith and looking in particular at a few examples from international sports. Then he discusses the relationship between games and ideology, showing how game play can unpack and expose deeply engrained social, cultural, and political assumptions. Finally he discusses the ways videogames make arguments. Drawing on the history of rhetoric, Bogost introduces a notion he calls "procedural rhetoric," the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions

On the Topological Characterization of Near Force-Free Magnetic Fields, and the work of late-onset visually-impaired Topologists

The Giroux correspondence and the notion of a near force-free magnetic field are used to topologically characterize near force-free magnetic fields which describe a variety of physical processes, including plasma equilibrium. As a byproduct, the topological characterization of force-free magnetic fields associated with current-carrying links, as conjectured by Crager and Kotiuga, is shown to be necessary and conditions for sufficiency are given. Along the way a paradox is exposed: The seemingly unintuitive mathematical tools, often associated to higher dimensional topology, have their origins in three dimensional contexts but in the hands of late-onset visually impaired topologists. This paradox was previously exposed in the context of algorithms for the visualization of three-dimensional magnetic fields. For this reason, the paper concludes by developing connections between mathematics and cognitive science in this specific context.Comment: 20 pages, no figures, a paper which was presented at a conference in honor of the 60th birthdays of Alberto Valli and Paolo Secci. The current preprint is from December 2014; it has been submitted to an AIMS journa

Синтаксическая языковая игра в американском юмористическом дискурсе (на материале ситкома “Клиника”)

The article is devoted to the study of syntactic language play techniques in humorous discourse, since the phenomenon of language play is closely connected with this type of discourse. The notions of  humorous discourse and language play are considered. Humorous discourse is based on the principle of transmission of a humorous message from the addresser to the addressee. The purpose of this message is to get away from a serious conversation, reduce the social distance between the conversation participants and form friendly interrelationship. Communicative intension and humorous tonality are key components of humorous discourse. Language play means intentional violation of the rules of the language in order to achieve a humorous effect. Language play exists at all levels of language structure: phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic. The article is based on the material of a popular American sitcom “Scrubs” dedicated to the everyday life of doctors. Сases of usage syntactic language play in the speech of six characters of the sitcom (John Dorian, Percival Cox, Christofer Turk, Elliot Rid, Carla Espinoza and Jordan Sullivan) are considered. In their jokes, characters in the majority of cases use lexical language play techniques, but syntactic language play is also quite common. The most frequently used syntactic means (repetition, parcellation, rhetorical questions, tautology, zeugma) are determined. Specific cases of usage language game techniques at the syntactic level are presented.У статті досліджено найпопулярніші прийоми синтаксичної мовної гри в гумористичному дискурсі. Репрезентовано особливості її використання в мовленні шести персонажів американського ситкому “Клініка” (Джона Доріна, Перрі Кокса, Кріса Терка, Еліот Рід, Карли Еспіноза і Джордан Салліван). Витлумачено поняття “мовна гра” й “гумористичний дискурс”. Визначено конкретні прийоми мовної гри, до яких найчастіше вдаються названі персонажі, зокрема повтор, парцеляції, риторичне питання, тавтологія, зевгма.В статье исследуются самые популярные приемы синтаксической языковой игры в юмористическом дискурсе. Рассматриваются особенности ее использования в речи шести персонажей популярного американского ситкома “Клиника” (Джона Дориана, Перри Кокса, Криса Терка, Эллиот Рид, Карлы Эспиноза и Джордан Салливан). Истолковываются понятия “языковая игра” и “юмористический дискурс”. Определяются наиболее часто используемые персонажами конкретные приемы языковой игры на синтаксическом уровне, в частности повтор, парцелляции, риторический вопрос, тавтология, зевгма

Anaphora and Discourse Structure

We argue in this paper that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to signal a discourse relation between syntactically connected units within discourse structure, instead work anaphorically to contribute relational meaning, with only indirect dependence on discourse structure. This allows a simpler discourse structure to provide scaffolding for compositional semantics, and reveals multiple ways in which the relational meaning conveyed by adverbial connectives can interact with that associated with discourse structure. We conclude by sketching out a lexicalised grammar for discourse that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution and inference.Comment: 45 pages, 17 figures. Revised resubmission to Computational Linguistic