The style of academic e-mails and conventional letters: contrastive analysis of four conversational routines

This paper presents the results of a corpus-based study which investigates the genre of academic email and more specifically its pragmatic dimension. Four conversational routines (thank yous, apologies, requests, offers) are analysed and compared in two channels: academic e-mails and conventional print letters. In addition, data from both native and non-native speakers of English is considered, which sheds light on some of the differences found in the academic e-mail writing of learners of English. The findings indicate that academic e-mail is a relatively formal type of correspondence which is still largely influenced, as is to be expected, by the genre of the academic letter, and that as a genre, academic e-mail is in the process of formation or semi-formation. Finally, native speakers of English are found to be more informal than non-native speakers of English in academic e-mails

Public acts of contrition as apologies in the British and French press: Focus on evaluation and ideology

This thesis examines the press uptakes (news reports) of public apologies in Britain and France. Apology, as used here, includes unequivocal apologies, equivocal apologies and refusals to apologise. The approach adopted in this study is primarily data-driven and relies on a comprehensive bilingual (English and French) data set including 268 news texts. The two corpora are compared to reveal any cross-cultural variations pertaining to the speech act of public apology. The main goal of the research is to provide a new account of public apologies by combining methodologies from pragmatics, critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. The research presented has four main aims: - to further develop and re-interpret the four basic components of apologies, namely apologiser, apologisee, offence and remedy, in terms of their relation to public apology processes. This is achieved by emphasising the different ways used by public figures to apologise, the identity of apologisers and apologisees, and the types of offences involved in the corpora of media texts examined. - to describe the evaluative stancetaking in news texts in order to determine the degree of variation in the evaluative strategies identified in the immediate framing of verbatim apologies, and in the explicitly and implicitly evaluative metapragmatic comments found in the press uptakes. - to explore cross-cultural variations in the perception of public apologies, with the particular aim of gauging any differences in representations of these apologies in newspapers in Britain and in France. This perspective considers the extent to which press uptakes in each country are indicative of the ways in which discourse meanings are verbally and situationally bound. - to determine the ways in which ideology permeates press uptakes of public apologies. This is achieved by considering how evaluative stancetaking is used in the corpora, thereby accessing aspects of ideological positioning as represented in the media texts under scrutiny

Inter-religious relations in Yorubaland, Nigeria::corpus methods and anthropological survey data

This paper uses corpus methods to support the analysis of data collected as part of a large-scale ethnographic project that focusses on inter-religious relations in south-west Nigeria. Our corpus consists of answers to the open questions asked in a survey. The paper explores how people in the Yoruba-speaking south-west region of Nigeria, particularly Muslims and Christians, manage their religious differences. Through this analysis of inter-religious relations, we demonstrate how corpus linguistics can assist analyses of text-based data gathered in anthropological research. Meanwhile, our study also highlights the necessity of using anthropological methods and knowledge to interpret corpus outputs adequately.We carry out three types of analyses: keyness analysis, collocation analysis and concordance analysis. These analyses allow us to determine the ‘aboutness’ of our corpus. Four themes emerge from our analyses: (1) religion; (2) co-operation, tolerance and shared communal values such as ‘Yoruba-ness’; (3) social identities and hierarchies; and (4) the expression of boundaries and personal dislike of other religious practices.</jats:p

Using linguistic methods in clinical communication education

Analysis and reflection are important components of clinical communication learning in undergraduate medical education. Current medical consultation models do not provide an effective means to analyze interaction during consultations, compromising a conversational approach to consultations. This paper introduces a conversational analytic framework: The Clin-Com Tool (CCT), drawing on interactional linguistics. Methods: 17 medical students and six communication tutors took part in an educational intervention. A mixed-methods evaluation was conducted to compare 1) participants’ abilities to analyze consultations pre- and post-intervention, and 2) elicit their perspectives of learning and using the CCT. Results: The findings showed an improvement in participants’ analytic skills in the post-intervention test (p<0.044, 95% Confidence Interval). Participants felt that the CCT heightened awareness of interactional features and socio-cultural effects on communication, and provided a systematic approach to analysis using a set of common language. Conclusion: The CCT emphasizes the development of students’ critical ability to judge and act upon the constantly changing interactional communicative situations. It transforms intuitive feelings into systematic and evidence-based analysis of interaction, enabling the development of more strategic and conversational communication with patients. The Tool can become a useful addition to other communication and consultation models used in undergraduate medial education

Discourse and religion in educational practice

Despite the existence of long-held binaries between secular and sacred, private and public spaces, school and religious literacies in many contemporary societies, the significance of religion and its relationship to education and society more broadly has become increasingly topical. Yet, it is only recently that the investigation of the nexus of discourse and religion in educational practice has started to receive some scholarly attention. In this chapter, religion is understood as a cultural practice, historically situated and embedded in specific local and global contexts. This view of religion stresses the social alongside the subjective or experiential dimensions. It explores how through active participation and apprenticeship in culturally appropriate practices and behaviors often mediated intergenerationally and the mobilisation of linguistic and other semiotic resources but also affective, social and material resources, membership in religious communities is constructed and affirmed. The chapter reviews research strands that have explored different aspects of discourse and religion in educational practice as a growing interdisciplinary field. Research strands have examined the place and purpose of religion in general and evangelical Christianity in particular in English Language Teaching (ELT) programmes and the interplay of religion and teaching and learning in a wide range of religious and increasingly secular educational contexts. They provide useful insights for scholars of discourse studies to issues of identity, socialisation, pedagogy and language policy

The style of academic e-mails and conventional letters: contrastive analysis of four conversational routines

This paper presents the results of a corpus-based study which investigates the genre of academic email and more specifically its pragmatic dimension. Four conversational routines (thank yous, apologies, requests, offers) are analysed and compared in two channels: academic e-mails and conventional print letters. In addition, data from both native and non-native speakers of English is considered, which sheds light on some of the differences found in the academic e-mail writing of learners of English. The findings indicate that academic e-mail is a relatively formal type of correspondence which is still largely influenced, as is to be expected, by the genre of the academic letter, and that as a genre, academic e-mail is in the process of formation or semi-formation. Finally, native speakers of English are found to be more informal than non-native speakers of English in academic e-mailsEn este artículo se presenta un estudio de corpus que analiza el género del correo electrónico académico y, más específicamente, su dimensión pragmática. Se estudian cuatro modelos conversacionales (agradecimientos, disculpas, peticiones y ofrecimientos) a través de dos canales: correos electrónicos académicos y cartas convencionales. Asimismo, se toman en consideración datos procedentes de hablantes de inglés, tanto nativos como no nativos, para determinar diferencias en los correos electrónicos académicos que han sido escritos por estudiantes de inglés. Los resultados indican que el correo electrónico académico es un tipo formal de correspondencia influido por el género de la carta académica y que, como género, el correo electrónico académico se halla en un proceso de formación o de semiformación. Finalmente, el estudio demuestra que los hablantes nativos parecen ser menos formales en el uso del inglés que los hablantes no nativos en la producción de correos electrónicos académico