When Relevance saves

In this paper I wish to address one or two problems related to the treatment of natural language connectives within the framework of Relevance theory. In particular, I will address the problem of the constrainability of the theory while I will only just raise the problem of globality. I take the view that while Relevance theory may well provide an initial first order treatment of connectives it is incapable of accounting for the most interesting aspects of their meanings and functions on grounds of the maxim of Relevance alone as this would posit no independent constraints beyond the competence of the individual speaker

Exploring European Writing Cultures : Country Reports on Genres, Writing Practices and Languages Used in European Higher Education

At European universities, writing is a traditional way of learning, assessment, and independent study, but it is handled in an implicit, tradition-based way that has only recently been contrasted with and supported by a more explicit writing ped-agogy. Still, little systematic knowledge is available about the pedagogical ap-proaches to writing, writing practices, and genres across Europe and much of it is codified in the national languages without correlation to internationally accept-ed terminology and theories. This book explores the writing cultures of Europe, nation by nation, and reports the idiosyncrasies for each respective country. The reports are based on a 17-item topic list used by the authors to collect data be-fore synthesizing the results. Next to writing practices and genres, a high level of emphasis was placed on the structure of educational systems, the languages in use, and the kind of support provided for student writers. Note: This research project has been conducted within the framework of COST Action IS0703 “European Research Network on Learning to Write Effectively”, funded by the European Union. We are also thankful to Christiane Donahue, Eliza Kitis, Charles Bazerman, Helmut Gruber, and David Russell for their cooperation and support in this project.Wissenschaftliches Schreiben an europäischen Hochschulen ist eine herkömmliche Form des Lernens, Prüfens und autonomen Studierens, auch wenn es in einer impliziten, eher auf Tradition denn auf bewusster Didaktik beruhenden Weise eingesetzt wird. Wenig auf systematische Weise erhobenes vergleichendes Wissen gibt es bislang über Schreibpraktiken, Genres und schreibdidaktische Ansätze in Europa und das, was an Wissen existiert ist oft in den nationalen Sprachen verfasst, die nicht mit internationalen Terminologien und Theorien der Schreibwissenschaft verbunden sind. Der vorliegende Band untersucht Schreibkulturen in Europa Land für Land und berichtet was jeweils hervorsticht. Die Berichte basieren auf einer 17-Item Themenliste, nach der die Autorenteams Daten über ihr jeweiliges Land sammelten, bevor sie es zu einem Bericht synthetisierten. Neben Schreibpraktiken und Genres werden dabei die Struktur des jeweiligen Bildungssystems, die verwendeten Sprachen und die besondere Schreibdidaktik hervorgehoben. Anmerkung: Das Projekt wurde im Rahmen der COST Aktion IS0703 “European Research Network on Learning to Write Effectively” durchgeführt, das von der EU finanziert wird. Wir bedanken uns bei Christiane Donahue, Eliza Kitis, Charles Bazerman, Helmut Gruber und David Russell für ihre Unterstützung und Mitwirkung in diesem Projekt.At European universities, writing is a traditional way of learning, assessment, and independent study, but it is handled in an implicit, tradition-based way that has only recently been contrasted with and supported by a more explicit writing ped-agogy. Still, little systematic knowledge is available about the pedagogical ap-proaches to writing, writing practices, and genres across Europe and much of it is codified in the national languages without correlation to internationally accept-ed terminology and theories. This book explores the writing cultures of Europe, nation by nation, and reports the idiosyncrasies for each respective country. The reports are based on a 17-item topic list used by the authors to collect data be-fore synthesizing the results. Next to writing practices and genres, a high level of emphasis was placed on the structure of educational systems, the languages in use, and the kind of support provided for student writers. Note: This research project has been conducted within the framework of COST Action IS0703 “European Research Network on Learning to Write Effectively”, funded by the European Union. We are also thankful to Christiane Donahue, Eliza Kitis, Charles Bazerman, Helmut Gruber, and David Russell for their cooperation and support in this project

Reporting speech acts in EFL

The presentation will focus on problems in EFL environments generated by poor understanding of the functions of utterances or rather by not viewing sentences as utterances of functional discourse. More specifically, it will concentrate on problems in reporting discourse or what is conventionally called ʻreported speechʼ. Rather than following traditional ʻrecipesʼ of what needs to be done when confronted with such tasks, teachers need to sensitize their students to the multiple functions of utterances in discourse often forsaking their formal gram­matical features and structures. In order to equip their students in this task teach­ers themselves need to be familiar with the fundamentals of the functionality of discursive utterances on a theoretical rather than a haphazard empirical basis. This presentation aims at demonstrating the need for acquiring a ʻpragmatic slantʼ in our teaching of reporting discourse or at applying our knowledge of pragmatics to at least one area of language teaching

Van Oirsouw on «Coordinated Sentences»

Van Oirsouw (1983) proposes a syntactic criterion to assess semantic relations holding between coordinated sentences. On the basis of this criterion he distinguishes four distinct types of coordination, which he calls: (a) Identity Coordination, (b) Ordered Coordination, (c) Concomitant Coordination and (d) Coincidental Coordination. This paper demonstrates that van Oirsouw's claim to the four types is unfounded and, hence, his theory is inadequate. Instead, it is argued that his syntactic criteria might at best afford a method whereby coordinated sentences can be classified in order of decreased acceptability

A comment on the article

In an attempt to give a solution to the problem of definite descriptions, Grice treats them as a special subclass of referential expressions whose existential presuppositions can be "explained away" in terms of general­ized conversational implicatures. To this end he employs the Russellian tripartite definition of definite descriptions, claiming that the first two clauses of it are regarded by the speaker as common ground, and there­fore as not challengable. He concludes that every use of the definite ar­ticle implicates that the reference is to be taken "on trust" (my empha­sis).It is here argued that this is a reductionistic approach to the description of the use of the article because it does not address the problem in its right form as the parameters pertaining to the use of the article are, and should be, isolatable from speakers and their erratic or idiosyncratic im­plicatures and are rather affected by GENERAL principles governing their use.The main concern of this investigation, however, is to emphasize the signi­ficance of stereotypic knowledge we, as speakers and hearers, bring to bear on our use of the definite article. It is concluded that, although treating 'definiteness' within a sound framework, workers on the topic have in a large measure overlooked this point

Constructing an identity: The Significance of Sui-Referential Markers in Bradstreet's "The Flesh and the Spirit"

According to a widely accepted interpretation, Bradstreet’s poem “The Flesh and the Spirit” (see Appendix) reflects the clash of feeling and dogma in her poetry (Rosenfeld, 1983), or it constitutes the “most definite statement of Christian hope” while at the same time it is “probably her strongest assertion of doubt of the reality of the insubstantial” (Stanford, 1974: 85). In an earlier paper (Kitis and Mehler, forthcoming) we argued that this interpretation is sustained and borne out by the discourse of the poem. In that paper we offered a linguistic analysis of the poem that substantiated the literary critic’s interpretation of the poem concentrating on the context constructed by the deixis of the discourse. It was also noted there that the use of deictic sui-referential markers generating subject positions is consequential for the same level of interpretation of the poem. However, we did not take up the point in that paper as such a consideration would entail a completely different perspective. Ιn this paper, I propose to examine the logomachia between the two sisters, the two sides of a self - the Flesh and the Spirit - through the subject positions generated by the use of deictic self-referential pronouns.Σύμφωνα με επικρατούσα ερμηνεία, το ποίημα της Bradstreet "The Flesh and the Spirit" (βλ. παράρτημα) αντικατοπτρίζει τη σύγκρουση του αισθήματος και του δόγματος στην ποίηση της (Rosenfeld, 1983), ή αποτελεί την "πιο ουσιαστική δήλωση της Χριστιανικής ελπίδας," ενώ ταυτόχρονα συνιστά επιβεβαίωση της αμφιβολίας για την ύπαρξη του άϋλου κόσμου (Stanford, 1974: 85). Σε προηγούμενο άρθρο (Kitis and Mehler, υπό δημοσίευση) υποστηρίξαμε ότι αυτή η ερμηνεία βασίζεται και συγκροτείται από το κείμενο του ποιήμα­τος. Σε κείνο το άρθρο προσφέραμε μια γλωσσολογική ανάλυση του ποιήματος, που επικε­ντρωνόταν στον κόσμο που δημιουργείται από τη δείξη του όγκου και η οποία υποστήριξε την ερμηνεία του λογοτεχνικού κριτικού. Εκεί σημειώναμε ότι η χρήση των δεικτικών αυτό-αναφορικών σημείων που δημιουργούσαν θέσεις υποκειμένων συνέτεινε στο να υπο­στηρίζει το ίδιο επίπεδο ερμηνείας του ποιήματος. Σε αυτό το άρθρο εξετάζω τη λογομα­χία μεταξύ των δύο αδελφών, των δύο πλευρών ενός εαυτού - της Σάρκας και του Πνεύματος - μέσω των θέσεων του υποκειμένου που δημιουργούνται με τη χρήση των δει­κτικών αντωνυμιών

On the MG conditional connective αν or towards restoring the image of the Greek culture

There has been a claim regarding the monosemicity or un-ambiguousness of the connective av of Modern Greek (MG), as compared to its translational equivalent if in English -with the additional claim that the Greek culture is far less ambigu­ous than the English (Athanasiadou, 1997). In this paper, my aim is to restore the picture of the MG conditional connective av, on the basis of an examination of re­al data, demonstrating that, despite the existence of connectives such as ενώ, 'while', αφού, 'since', and άμα, 'if [cond.temporal], MG av can function, not only as a conditional connective, but also as a concessive and adversative one, signify­ing factuality as well, just like its English counterpart. Moreover, I will advance the thesis that both English if and MG av are used in contrastive and concessive con­texts, as well as conditional ones, as strategic devices of rhetorical structures