Expectation Biases and Context Management with Negative Polar Questions

This paper examines distinctive discourse properties of preposed negative 'yes/no' questions (NPQs), such as 'Isn’t Jane coming too?'. Unlike with other 'yes/no' questions, using an NPQ '∼p?' invariably conveys a bias toward a particular answer, where the polarity of the bias is opposite of the polarity of the question: using the negative question '∼p?' invariably expresses that the speaker previously expected the positive answer p to be correct. A prominent approach—what I call the context-management approach, developed most extensively by Romero and Han (2004)—attempts to capture speaker expectation biases by treating NPQs fundamentally as epistemic questions about the proper discourse status of a proposition. I raise challenges for existing context-managing accounts to provide more adequate formalizations of the posited context-managing content, its implementation in the compositional semantics and discourse dynamics, and its role in generating the observed biases. New data regarding discourse differences between NPQs and associated epistemic modal questions are introduced. I argue that we can capture the roles of NPQs in expressing speakers’ states of mind and managing the discourse common ground without positing special context-managing operators or treating NPQs as questions directly about the context. I suggest that we treat the operator introduced with preposed negation as having an ordinary semantics of epistemic necessity, though lexically associated with a general kind of endorsing use observed with modal expressions. The expressive and context-managing roles of NPQs are explained in terms of a general kind of discourse-oriented use of context-sensitive language. The distinctive expectation biases and discourse properties observed with NPQs are derived from the proposed semantics and a general principle of Discourse Relevance

USE OF COHESIVE FEATURES IN ESL STUDENTS’ E-MAIL AND WORD-PROCESSED TEXTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

As the computer is rapidly finding its way into classrooms around the world at all levels of education,teachers are trying to find effective ways to integrate this technology into their curriculum. While the effectiveness of using word processing in the teaching of writing is acknowledged, there is still no general consensus on how to use, or even whether to use, asynchronous electronic mail, leaving a number of questions unanswered. For example, when given comparable academic tasks, do students produce similar texts in the two media or do they write differently according to the medium used? In order to determine whether the medium has an effect on the language that the students produce, a discourse analysis of comparable word processed and e-mail writing assignments was carried out, focusing on twelve cohesive features and on text length. The students involved in the study were enrolled in a higher-intermediate English as a Foreign Language course at a university in the United States. The results indicate that two of the cohesive features, as well as text length, differentiated e-mail and word-processed writing. It was also found that, while they tended to write shorter texts in both media, Arab students tended to use more of some of the cohesive features than Asian students

Clause-Type, Force, and Normative Judgment in the Semantics of Imperatives

I argue that imperatives express contents that are both cognitively and semantically related to, but nevertheless distinct from, modal propositions. Imperatives, on this analysis, semantically encode features of planning that are modally specified. Uttering an imperative amounts to tokening this feature in discourse, and thereby proffering it for adoption by the audience. This analysis deals smoothly with the problems afflicting Portner's Dynamic Pragmatic account and Kaufmann's Modal account. It also suggests an appealing reorientation of clause-type theorizing, in which the cognitive act of updating on a typed sentence plays a central role in theorizing about both its semantics and role in discourse

The modal particle ma 嘛: theoretical frames, analysis and interpretive perspectives

This article sets out to provide a semantic and pragmatic account of the modal particle ma 嘛, endeavouring to put into light new aspects in its function which, at present, remain widely unexplored in the literature. It presents an analysis of the particle ma by interrogating a written and a spoken corpus, showing how the semantic and the pragmatic levels are tightly interweaved in the functioning of ma: the results supported my hypothesis that the particle is plausibly a marker of interpersonal evidentiality (IE), a category set up by Tantucci (2013), used to signal a socially acknowledged piece of information, playing a fundamental role in the expression of politeness by safeguarding the interlocutors’ face; consequently, ma is always used with information that has an active or accessible status in the interlocutors’ mind and that is always pragmatically salient, independently of its position (at the end or inside the sentence), marking a Topic or a Focus. The particle performs pragmatic functions close to the ones of discourse markers since it increases the relevance of the marked information to the context, therefore also playing a contributing role in the coherence of discourse

POLITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MEGAWATI'S SPEECH IN THE OPENING OF THE FOURTH CONGRESS OF THE PDIP

The study is about a critical analysis of a political discourse. Using Megawati’s opening speech in the Fourth Congress of the PDIP, I want to find out the ideological model context used by the text producer and the social structure influencing the speech. Using the critical discourse analysis approach of van Dijk, the finding shows that Megawati uses ideological values of Soekarno’s leadership concept to indoctrinate the audience. The concept is also used to tease the current President Joko Widodo

ANALYZING LANGUAGE STYLE OF VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL ACCREDITATION ‘SUGGESTION AND RECOMMENDATION’ TEXT

Accreditation of schools/madrasah is the process of comprehensive assessment of the feasibility of a unit or educational program, the results realized in the form of recognition and ranking worthiness issued by an institution and independent professionals. One of the final stages of the accreditation process is the drafting suggestions and recommendations formulated by the team drafting suggestions and recommendations based on school level. Formulation of suggestions and recommendations includes eight national education standards, all of which were written using Indonesian. The method used is the study of the text. Text was used as the main data is the result of the analysis and recommendations for the level of Vocational High School (SMK) at DIY in the period of 2014. The study of the text is based on several important parameters in the language style, such as: 1) the structure and types of Indonesian sentences used in the text of suggestion and recommendation, 2) coherence and cohesive in paragraphs, and 3) the punctuation used in text. From the analysis conducted on the text suggestion and recommendation on accreditation results for the level of Vocational High School in 2014, it is found some form of language style as follows: 1) The inconsistency of the structural integrity of the sentence, 2) The process of removal the subject in a few sentences, 3) The use of variations in sentences, and 4) The use of punctuation as a liaison sentence

Third Person References: Forms and Functions in Two Spoken Genres of Spanish

This volume, a case study on the grammar of third person references in two genres of spoken Ecuadorian Spanish, examines from a discourse-analytic perspective how genre affects linguistic patterns and how researchers can look for and interpret genre effects. This marks a timely contribution to corpus linguistics, as many linguists are choosing to work with empirical data. Corpus based approaches have many advantages and are useful in the comparison of different languages as well as varieties of the same language, but what is often overlooked in such comparisons is the genre of language under examination. As this case study shows, genre is an important factor in interpreting patterns and distributions of forms. The book also contributes toward theories of anaphora, referentiality and Preferred Argument Structure. It is relevant for scholars who work with referentiality, genre differences, third person references, and interactional linguistics, as well as those interested in Spanish morphosyntax. [From the Publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1096/thumbnail.jp

MEDIA EFFECTS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES’ “THE WOMEN’S MARCH IN WASHINGTON” VIDEO NEWS COVERAGE ON FACEBOOK

The reliance towards Facebook in regard to obtaining information becomes a news habit among the society. Considerable number of news coverage from media is accessible to Facebook which creates effects on the audience on account of the media exposure. The study is conducted for the purposes of analyzing news elements which are embedded in The New York Times' “The Women's March in Wahsington”video news coverage on Facebook and discovering the effects of the coverage towards media audience. This study is constructed as a library research which utilizes textual and user-response analysis research methodology. The theory utilizes to support the study is Pan &Kosicki's Framing Analysis, and McComb& Shaw's Agenda-Setting theory is also applied in this study to support the framing analysis. The results of the study indicate that three salient elements of the coverage set public agenda to which the salient elements become prominent issues of the Women's March on Washington