Erving Said That the Rigor and Formal Nature of Linguistics Could Add Status to the Just-Beginning Study of Social Interaction

Dr. Deborah Schiffrin, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, wrote this memoir for the Erving Goffman Archives and approved posting the present version on the web

A discourse-based approach for Arabic question answering

The treatment of complex questions with explanatory answers involves searching for arguments in texts. Because of the prominent role that discourse relations play in reflecting text-producers’ intentions, capturing the underlying structure of text constitutes a good instructor in this issue. From our extensive review, a system for automatic discourse analysis that creates full rhetorical structures in large scale Arabic texts is currently unavailable. This is due to the high computational complexity involved in processing a large number of hypothesized relations associated with large texts. Therefore, more practical approaches should be investigated. This paper presents a new Arabic Text Parser oriented for question answering systems dealing with لماذا “why” and كيف “how to” questions. The Text Parser presented here considers the sentence as the basic unit of text and incorporates a set of heuristics to avoid computational explosion. With this approach, the developed question answering system reached a significant improvement over the baseline with a Recall of 68% and MRR of 0.62

The Uses of Stance in Media Production: Embodied Sociolinguistics and Beyond

While many conversation analysts, and scholars in related fields, have used video-recordings to study interaction, this study is one of a small but growing number that investigates video-recordings of the joint activities of media professionals working with, and on, video. It examines practices of media production that are, in their involvement with the visual and verbal qualities of video, both beyond talk and deeply shaped by talk. The article draws upon video recordings of the making of a feature-length documentary. In particular, it analyses a complex course of action where an editing team are reviewing their interview of the subject of the documentary, their footage is being intercut with existing reality TV footage of that same interviewee. The central contributions that the article makes are, firstly, to the sociolinguistics of mediatisation, through the identification of the workplace concerns of the members of the editing team, secondly showing how editing is accomplished, moment-by-moment, through the use of particular forms of embodied action and, finally, how the media themselves feature in the ordering of action. While this is professional work it sheds light on the video-mediated practices in contemporary culture, especially those found in social media where video makers carefully consider their editing of the perspective toward themselves and others

DISCOURSE MARKERS: SEMANTIC RESOURCE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF CONVERSATION

Discourse markers are utterance-initial elements which bracket units of spoken talk. Although they have multiple uses in everyday conversation which become apparent only through an analysis of the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of surrounding discourse, markers are also linguistic elements with syntactic and semantic properties of their own. The only marker with no sentential parallel is well; others are conjunctions (and, but, so), adverbs (now, like), and clauses (I mean, y\u27know). The problem examined in this dissertation concerns the connection between the linguistic characteristics of markers and their use in conversation. More specifically, is referential meaning and sentential structure a resource for the use of linguistic elements in semantic and pragmatic realms of conversational discourse? Data used to examine this question are sociolinguistic interviews with lower-middle class Jews in Philadelphia. The analysis combines methods of quantitative analysis developed in variation studies with qualitative approaches to the study of social interaction and conversation. The first section (Chapters 3-7) shows how markers help to build discourse structure, organize textual information, and construct conversation. The second section (Chapters 8, 9) focuses more narrowly on markers in narrative and argument. The restriction to markers in these two specific discourse genres shows their role first, in the sequential organization of such genres, and second, as part of more comprehensive verbal strategies through which expressive meanings and social actions are negotiated. In conclusion (Chapter 10), the study shows that markers function on referential, social, and expressive levels of discourse, demonstrating (1) discourse cohesion results from the interplay among these three levels of meaning, (2) linguistic variation at the discourse level needs to incorporate semantic and pragmatic equivalences and differences as well as referential equivalences and differences

Definiciones de discurso

Si bien el análisis del discurso es cada vez más popular y más importante como área de estudio, sigue siendo un campo vasto y, de alguna manera, vago. La meta del libro en su conjunto es clarificar las diversas teorías y métodos del análisis del discurso, de modo que pueda seguir abordando una amplia gama de problemáticas y fenómenos de interés multidisciplinario, pero de una manera más sistemática y coherente. El análisis del discurso es importante no sólo en sí mismo, sino también por lo que aporta a nuestro conocimiento de la lengua, la sociedad y la cultura. El eje del libro es la descripción, aplicación y comparación detallada de seis diferentes enfoques de discurso: la teoría de los actos de habla, la sociolingüística interaccional, la etnografía de la comunicación, la pragmática, el análisis conversacional y el análisis variacionista. Si bien estos enfoques se han originado en diferentes disciplinas, todos ellos buscan responder las mismas preguntas: ¿Cómo organizamos la lengua en unidades que rebasan el límite de la oración? ¿Cómo usamos la lengua para transmitir información sobre el mundo, sobre nosotros mismos y sobre nuestras relaciones sociales? En la primera parte del libro la autora proporciona una visión panorámica de los diferentes enfoques, esbozando, asimismo, el plan general del libro. En el capítulo que nos ocupa, discute específicamente las dificultades que surgen al definir el discurso; dificultades, por cierto, que tienen que ver con la vigencia de dos paradigmas al interior de la lingüística

Definiciones de discurso.

Although discourse analysis is an increasingly popular and important area of study, it still remains a vast and somewhat vague field. The goal of this book is to clarify the theories and methods of discourse analysis in such a way that it can continue to deal with a wide range of problems and phenomena of multidisciplinary interest, but can do so in a more systematic and coherent way. Discourse analysis is important not only on its own, but also for what can tell us about language, society, and culture. The core of the book is a detailed description, application, and comparison of six different approaches to discourse analysis: speech act theory, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversational analysis, and variation analysis. Although these approaches originated in different disciplines, they all attempt to answer some of the same questions: How do organize language into units that are larger than sentences? How do we use language to convey information about the world, ourselves, and our social relationships? In the first part of the book the author provides an overview of the different approaches, and outlines the plan of the book. The chapter we are concerned with, discusses difficulties in defining discourse; difficulties that are related to the currency of two different paradigms within linguistics.Si bien el análisis del discurso es cada vez más popular y más importante como área de estudio, sigue siendo un campo vasto y, de alguna manera, vago. La meta del libro en su conjunto es clarificar las diversas teorías y métodos del análisis del discurso, de modo que pueda seguir abordando una amplia gama de problemáticas y fenómenos de interés multidisciplinario, pero de una manera más sistemática y coherente. El análisis del discurso es importante no sólo en sí mismo, sino también por lo que aporta a nuestro conocimiento de la lengua, la sociedad y la cultura. El eje del libro es la descripción, aplicación y comparación detallada de seis diferentes enfoques de discurso: la teoría de los actos de habla, la sociolingüística interaccional, la etnografía de la comunicación, la pragmática, el análisis conversacional y el análisis variacionista. Si bien estos enfoques se han originado en diferentes disciplinas, todos ellos buscan responder las mismas preguntas: ¿Cómo organizamos la lengua en unidades que rebasan el límite de la oración? ¿Cómo usamos la lengua para transmitir información sobre el mundo, sobre nosotros mismos y sobre nuestras relaciones sociales?1 En la primera parte del libro la autora proporciona una visión panorámica de los diferentes enfoques, esbozando, asimismo, el plan general del libro. En el capítulo que nos ocupa, discute específicamente las dificultades que surgen al definir el discurso; dificultades, por cierto, que tienen que ver con la vigencia de dos paradigmas al interior de la lingüística

DISCOURSE MARKERS: SEMANTIC RESOURCE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF CONVERSATION

Discourse markers are utterance-initial elements which bracket units of spoken talk. Although they have multiple uses in everyday conversation which become apparent only through an analysis of the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of surrounding discourse, markers are also linguistic elements with syntactic and semantic properties of their own. The only marker with no sentential parallel is well; others are conjunctions (and, but, so), adverbs (now, like), and clauses (I mean, y\u27know). The problem examined in this dissertation concerns the connection between the linguistic characteristics of markers and their use in conversation. More specifically, is referential meaning and sentential structure a resource for the use of linguistic elements in semantic and pragmatic realms of conversational discourse? Data used to examine this question are sociolinguistic interviews with lower-middle class Jews in Philadelphia. The analysis combines methods of quantitative analysis developed in variation studies with qualitative approaches to the study of social interaction and conversation. The first section (Chapters 3-7) shows how markers help to build discourse structure, organize textual information, and construct conversation. The second section (Chapters 8, 9) focuses more narrowly on markers in narrative and argument. The restriction to markers in these two specific discourse genres shows their role first, in the sequential organization of such genres, and second, as part of more comprehensive verbal strategies through which expressive meanings and social actions are negotiated. In conclusion (Chapter 10), the study shows that markers function on referential, social, and expressive levels of discourse, demonstrating (1) discourse cohesion results from the interplay among these three levels of meaning, (2) linguistic variation at the discourse level needs to incorporate semantic and pragmatic equivalences and differences as well as referential equivalences and differences

DISCOURSE MARKERS: SEMANTIC RESOURCE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF CONVERSATION

Discourse markers are utterance-initial elements which bracket units of spoken talk. Although they have multiple uses in everyday conversation which become apparent only through an analysis of the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of surrounding discourse, markers are also linguistic elements with syntactic and semantic properties of their own. The only marker with no sentential parallel is well; others are conjunctions (and, but, so), adverbs (now, like), and clauses (I mean, y\u27know). The problem examined in this dissertation concerns the connection between the linguistic characteristics of markers and their use in conversation. More specifically, is referential meaning and sentential structure a resource for the use of linguistic elements in semantic and pragmatic realms of conversational discourse? Data used to examine this question are sociolinguistic interviews with lower-middle class Jews in Philadelphia. The analysis combines methods of quantitative analysis developed in variation studies with qualitative approaches to the study of social interaction and conversation. The first section (Chapters 3-7) shows how markers help to build discourse structure, organize textual information, and construct conversation. The second section (Chapters 8, 9) focuses more narrowly on markers in narrative and argument. The restriction to markers in these two specific discourse genres shows their role first, in the sequential organization of such genres, and second, as part of more comprehensive verbal strategies through which expressive meanings and social actions are negotiated. In conclusion (Chapter 10), the study shows that markers function on referential, social, and expressive levels of discourse, demonstrating (1) discourse cohesion results from the interplay among these three levels of meaning, (2) linguistic variation at the discourse level needs to incorporate semantic and pragmatic equivalences and differences as well as referential equivalences and differences

In other words : variation in reference and narrative/ Schiffrin

xvi, 373 hal.: ill.; tab.: 25 cm