scholarly journals Old Is the New New: The Rhetoric of Anchoring Innovation

2021 ◽  
pp. 243-260
Author(s):  
Ineke Sluiter
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Motor Systems ◽  
New Information ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Anchoring Effects ◽  
The Common ◽  
At Home

AbstractIn life, language, and argument, we need to feel at home. “Anchoring” connects whatever seems “new” to what is considered familiar. This paper studies the argumentative use of “anchoring” in the wider context of its role in language use. “Anchoring” provides a unifying perspective in analyzing linguistic and rhetorical elements identified by different schools of thought (Sect. 2). Several features of language, elsewhere studied in the context of “discourse linguistics”, direct the addressee on how to anchor new information to the common ground. Categorizing, labeling and naming (topics from philosophy and psychology) can be considered anchoring functions. And formal linguistic iconicity anchors linguistic representations in evolutionarily older senso-motor systems. Section 3 discusses the anchoring effects of some specific discourse types: genealogy, mythology, aetiology, and etymology. All of these frequently take the form of narrative and are used in affective, “engaged” argumentation. Finally, the rhetorical and argumentative implications of the terminology of “new” and “old” itself are discussed, and one specific “anchoring trope” is analyzed, which sets up an anchor as a reference point for something new: the phrase “X is the new Y” (Sect. 4).

Linguistic influences on gesture’s form

Gesture ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Gerwing ◽  
Janet Bavelas
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Communicative Function ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Original Action ◽  
New Information ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Given ◽  
Linguistic Influences

Hand gestures in face-to-face dialogue are symbolic acts, integrated with speech. Little is known about the factors that determine the physical form of these gestures. When the gesture depicts a previous nonsymbolic action, it obviously resembles this action; however, such gestures are not only noticeably different from the original action but, when they occur in a series, are different from each other. This paper presents an experiment with two separate analyses (one quantitative, one qualitative) testing the hypothesis that the immediate communicative function is a determinant of the symbolic form of the gesture. First, we manipulated whether the speaker was describing the previous action to an addressee who had done the same actions and therefore shared common ground or to one who had done different actions and therefore did not share common ground. The common ground gestures were judged to be significantly less complex, precise, or informative than the latter, a finding similar to the effects of common ground on words. In the qualitative analysis, we used the given versus new principle to analyze a series of gestures about the same actions by the same speaker. The speaker emphasized the new information in each gesture by making it larger, clearer, etc. When this information became given, a gesture for the same action became smaller or less precise, which is similar to findings for given versus new information in words. Thus the immediate communicative function (e.g., to convey information that is common ground or that is new) played a major role in determining the physical form of the gestures.

Circles, Trees, and Bears: Symbols of Power of the Weenuche Ute

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-130
Author(s):  
Robert McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Cultural Survival ◽  
Ghost Dance ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Common

The Ute community of White Mesa, comprised of approximately 315 people, sits in the corner of southeastern Utah, eleven miles outside of Blanding. The residents, primarily of Weenuche Ute and Paiute ancestry, enjoy a cultural heritage that embraces elements from plains, mountain, and desert/Great Basin Indian culture. Among their religious practices are the Worship Dance, Ghost Dance, Sun Dance, and Bear Dance. Although each ceremony is unique, and performed for a variety of reasons, the common ground among them cannot be missed. Healing the sick, renewing necessities for survival, connecting spiritually with ancestors, communicating with the Land Beyond, establishing patterns for life, and sharing symbols that unify religious expression—such as the circle, tree, and bear—are elements that characterize the faith of these people as expressed in these ceremonies. Their origin sheds light on the relevance of these practices as they blend traditions from the past with contemporary usage. As symbols imbued with religious relevance, they make the intangible visible while continuing to teach and protect that which is important in Ute cultural survival. This article looks at these shared elements while offering new information about the origin and symbolism of the Ghost Dance as practiced in the Worship Dance. Circles, trees, bears, and other emblems provide not only themes from past teaching but empower the Ute universe today.

scholarly journals Daniil Kharms in His Father’s Diaries: Selected Passages

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-165
Author(s):  
A. B. Ustinov
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Gradual Increase ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Common ◽  
Daniil Kharms ◽  
At Home

This publication presents selected passages from the diaries of Ivan Pavlovich Yuvachev (1860‒1940), which are directly related to his son, Daniil Kharms. These selections are presented in accordance with Vol. 9 of Yuvachev’s “Collected Diaries,” published by the “Galeev-Gallery” in 2020. They cover the diary entries made from October 7, 1922 through March 29, 1931. That volume of “Collected Diaries” reflects the beginning of Kharms’ literary activities and their gradual increase until his arrest in the “Case of the Children’s Literature Sector of the Gosizdat” on December 10, 1931. Yuvachev’s diaries depict Kharms at home in an everyday environment and demonstrate uneasy relationship with his father and the rest of the family. Yuvachev does not approve of his son’s creative pursuits, but sincerely worries about him and is constantly looking for the common ground. Therefore, his diary entries at least partially touch upon Kharms’ literary work, including the performances of the Collective of Real Art (OBERIU). Also, they mention his creative collaborators – Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Boris (Doyvber) Levin, Leonid Lipavsky, Samuil Marshak. The publication is accompanied by an introductory article and a necessary commentary, intended to reconstruct episodes of Kharms’ literary biography against the background of the Leningrad culture of the 1920s and early 1930s.

The Semantics of Evidentials

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Common ◽  
Issue Content

This book gives a compositional, truth‐conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentials set in a theory of the semantics for sentential mood. Central to this semantics is a proposal about a distinction between what propositional content is at‐issue, roughly primary or proffered, and what content is not‐at‐issue. Evidentials contribute not‐at‐issue content, more specifically what I will call a not‐at‐issue restriction. In addition, evidentials can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. Building on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related phenomena, the proposed semantics does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, I argue that all sentences make three contributions: at‐issue content, not‐at‐issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At‐issue content is presented, made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground. Not‐at‐issue content directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary relation uses the at‐issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type (e.g., declarative, interrogative), can trigger further updates. Empirical support for this proposal comes from Cheyenne (Algonquian, primary data from the author’s fieldwork), English, and a wide variety of languages that have been discussed in the literature on evidentials.

Can Groups Assert That P?

2019 ◽  
pp. 326-344
Author(s):  
Deborah Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Constitutive Rule ◽  
The Past ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Declarative Statement ◽  
John Macfarlane

When a group or institution issues a declarative statement, what sort of speech act is this? Is it the assertion of a single individual (perhaps the group’s spokesperson or leader) or the assertion of all or most of the group members? Or is there a sense in which the group itself asserts that p? If assertion is a speech act, then who is the actor in the case of group assertion? These are the questions this chapter aims to address. Whether groups themselves can make assertions or whether a group of individuals can jointly assert that p depends, in part, on what sort of speech act assertion is. The literature on assertion has burgeoned over the past few years, and there is a great deal of debate regarding the nature of assertion. John MacFarlane has helpfully identified four theories of assertion. Following Sandy Goldberg, we can call these the attitudinal account, the constitutive rule account, the common-ground account, and the commitment account. I shall consider what group assertion might look like under each of these accounts and doing so will help us to examine some of the accounts of group assertion (often presented as theories of group testimony) on offer. I shall argue that, of the four accounts, the commitment account can best be extended to make sense of group assertion in all its various forms.

scholarly journals Variables in Globular Clusters, the Common and the Rare

1973 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
Helen Sawyer Hogg
Keyword(s):  
Globular Clusters ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common

The title of this talk is really just a different phrasing from one I have used at several IAU meetings on the subject of numbers and kinds of variables in globular clusters. To furnish this material, I have finished the Third Catalogue of Variables in Globular Clusters. Since many of you are coming to this Colloquium with new information, the Catalogue is in draft form with a request that corrections and additions be given me by October 2, after which the draft will go to the printer.The First Catalogue of Variables in Globular Clusters was published at this observatory in 1939 and the Second Catalogue in 1955. In 1966 appeared the excellent Catalogue of Variables South of Declination—29° by Fourcade, Laborde and Albarracin, with splendid large prints of identification charts.

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