Prototypicity and Textual Analysis

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 31-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalice Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Analysis Methodology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Epistemological Framework ◽  
Singular Characteristics

Abstract: This paper, based on the Socio-Discursive Interactionism theoretical epistemological framework, aims at showing the importance of the notion of prototypicity to analyse texts that circulate in society. Regarding theoretical concepts, we consider, firstly, that texts are global communicative units that always interact with the social practice where they are integrated; consequently their textual linguistic materialisation depends on the language activity in which they are situated. Secondly, texts are obviously linked to a textual genre which has unique and generic aspects constantly interacting with each other. By considering these aspects, we can see how the notion of family resemblance or family airs related to that of prototypicity can give us leads to define a textual analysis methodology that takes into account the complexity of the text as our object of analysis. In order to prove the importance of the prototypicity to analyse texts we have chosen two representative texts of two textual persuasive genres: one editorial and one political poster that were circulated in Portugal in March 2002, at the time of the elections for the Portuguese Prime Minister. Our study provides evidence that a text has singular characteristics, but it also has generic ones related to genre aspects.


scholarly journals At Play in the Space: The concept of 'the social practice approach' in the Scottish adult literacies field

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aileen Ackland
Keyword(s):  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Adult Literacy ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Personal Construct ◽  
Literacy Studies ◽  
New Literacy ◽  
New Literacy Studies ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Approach

This paper focuses on Scotland’s policy response to the International Adult Literacy Survey (1994-1998) and the ‘grand experiment’ (Merrifield 2005) to implement a social practices perspective of literacies.This radical perspective, derived from the New Literacy Studies (NLS), has profound implications for pedagogy and is promoted in Scotland as ‘the social practice approach’.The paper begins with a discussion of the distinctive developments in Scottish policy in the context of the international interest in Adult Literacy. The rhetorical claims made in Scotland are then examined through a study which used a methodology drawn from Personal Construct Theory (PCT) to explore how practitioners understand ‘the social practice approach’. This research found little connection between the theoretical concepts of the New Literacy Studies and practitioners’ interpretations. Dissonances in the data highlighted power issues between policy and practice.In the latter part of the paper, Bernstein’s (2000) ideas about how theoretical knowledge is translated into pedagogical knowledge are used to explore the dissonances further.The paper concludes that there is an ideological conflict of purpose within the discourses of adult literacies in Scotland and that the critical pedagogy implied by the New Literacy Studies is also necessary within teacher education if practice is to be transformed in response to the radical social theory.

The mother’s picong: A discursive approach to gender, identity and political leadership in Trinidad and Tobago

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Esposito
Keyword(s):  
Trinidad And Tobago ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
New Era ◽  
East Indian ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Discourse Historical Approach ◽  
Political Scene

The Caribbean twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago entered a new era on 24 May 2010 by electing its first woman Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Breaking out of the country’s rigid bipolar political mold, the East Indian Persad-Bissessar won a landslide victory as the leader of the People’s Partnership, a new coalition party that comprised both East Indian and African political forces and movements. Adopting a Discourse-Historical Approach, this study sets to analyze how Persad-Bissessar discursively constructed her claim to leadership in the election speeches of the 2010 We Will Rise Campaign. Both the processes of bonding with her electorate and demontage of her opponent Patrick Manning are achieved by Persad-Bissessar with careful linguistic choices, encompassing the use of the ritual picong satire and strategic switching to Trinidadian English Creole. This article investigates complexities, struggles and contradictions of the Trinbagonian political scene by integrating a detailed analysis of political discourse and the investigation of the social and political environment within which discourse as social practice is embedded.

scholarly journals Why do corporate actors engage in pro-social behaviour? A Bourdieusian perspective on corporate social responsibility

Organization ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominik van Aaken ◽  
Violetta Splitter ◽  
David Seidl
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Corporate Social

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, this article develops a novel approach to the study of corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to this approach, pro-social activities are conceptualized as social practices that individual managers employ in their efforts to attain social power. Whether such practices are enacted or not depends on (1) the particular features of the social field; (2) the individual managers’ socially shaped dispositions and (3) their stock of different forms of capital. By combining these theoretical concepts, the Bourdieusian approach we develop highlights the interplay between the economic and non-economic motivations that underlie CSR, acknowledging influences both on the micro- and the macro-level, as well as deterministic and voluntaristic aspects of human behaviour.

Interpreting at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal

Interpreting ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kayoko Takeda
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Court Interpreting ◽  
Set Up ◽  
And Behavior

This paper gives an overview of the interpreting arrangements at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (1946–1948), focusing on some sociopolitical aspects of the interpreting phenomena, and discusses the behavior of the interpreters and monitors during the testimony of Hideki Tojo, Japan’s wartime Prime Minister. It provides a contextualized examination of court interpreting rather than a microlinguistic analysis of interpreted texts. The study demonstrates how political and social aspects of the trial and wartime world affairs affected the interpreting arrangements, especially the hierarchical set-up in which three ethnically and socially different groups of “linguists” (language specialists) performed three different functions in the interpreting process. An examination of the linguists’ behavior during Tojo’s testimony points to a link between their relative positions in the power constellation of the trial and their choices, strategies and behavior in interpreting and monitoring. These findings reinforce the view that interpreting is a social practice conditioned by the social, political and cultural contexts of the setting in which interpreters operate.

scholarly journals Methods of a Three-Component Analysis of Linguopragmatic Potential of an Internet Commentary in Political Internet Discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-89
Author(s):  
Veronika V. Katermina ◽  
Boris G. Vulfovich
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Component Analysis ◽  
Wide Field ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Continuous Sampling ◽  
Analysis Methodology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Synthesis ◽  
Internal Stimulus ◽  
Key Events

This article is devoted to the representation of the method of a three-component analysis of Internet commentary. Commentary is a special component of Internet discourse which is the reaction of representatives of society to any external or internal stimulus expressed linguistically, i.e. through the use of linguistic means. Due to insufficient coverage (for example, unlike Internet posts), commentary as a component of political Internet discourse represents a wide field for the study of linguists since, being a speech work, it can be analyzed from at least three positions, namely: the strategy and tactics used by the author, the means of stylistic expressiveness used and the type of speech act through which this commentary is put into use. A comprehensive analysis of these parameters makes it possible to establish the attitude of the audience (in this case, the electorate) to the personality of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Practical material for the study was the comments on the posts of Boris Johnson regarding Brexit (one of the key events in the political and public spheres of Great Britain’s life). The relevance of this work is due to the current anthropocentric paradigm in linguistics and the increased interest of linguists not only in humans as a participant of speech actions, but also in the interdisciplinary synthesis of scientific research methods to achieve the most voluminous, full-fledged, and complete results. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate an example of the implementation of the three-component analysis methodology for Internet commentary on the example of some of the most striking and connotatively colored linguistic materials selected by the method of continuous sampling in the social network “Twitter”.

Pro linhvistychni pokaznyky vzayemodiyi mova – kulʹtura na prykladi analizu polʹsʹko- ukrayinsʹkoho pohranychchya XV-XIXst.

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Halyna Маtsyuk
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Subject Field ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Polish Language

The article is devoted to the formation of a linguistic interpretation of the interaction of language and culture of the Polish-Ukrainian border territories. The material for the analysis includes nomic systems of Ukrainian and Polish languages, which are considered as a cultural product of interpersonal and interethnic communication and an element of the language system, as well as invariant scientific theory created in the works of Polish onomastics (according to key theoretical concepts, tradition of analysis, and continuity in linguistic knowledge). The analysis performed in the article allows us to single out the linguistic indicators of the interaction of language and culture typical for the subject field of sociolinguistics. These are connections and concepts: language-territory, language-social strata, language-gender, language-ethnicity, social functions of the Polish language, and non-standardized spelling systems. Linguistic indicators reveal the peculiar mechanisms of the border in the historical memory and collective consciousness, marking the role of languages in these areas as a factor of space and cultural marker and bringing us closer to understanding the social relations of native speakers in the fifteenth-nineteenth centuries.

Humanism in Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Schröder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Secular Humanism ◽  
Group Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Free Thought ◽  
Multiple Secularities ◽  
Secular Humanist

This chapter addresses secular humanism in Europe and the way it is “lived” by and within its major institutions and organizations. It examines how national and international secular humanist bodies founded after World War II took up, cultivated, and transformed free-religious, free-thought, ethical, atheist, and rationalist roots from nineteenth century Europe and adjusted them to changing social, cultural, and political environments. Giving examples from some selected national contexts, the development of a nonreligious Humanism in Europe exemplifies what Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt call “Multiple Secularities”: different local or national trajectories produced a variety of cultures of secularity and, thus, different understandings of secular humanism. Apart from this cultural historization, the chapter reconstructs two transnational, ideal types of secular humanism, the social practice type, and the secularist pressure group type. These types share similar worldviews and values, but have to be distinguished in terms of organizational forms, practices, and especially policy.

scholarly journals Exploring Chinese people’s attitudes towards “going through the backdoor”

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 183449092199329
Author(s):  
Tulips Yiwen Wang ◽  
Allan B. I. Bernardo
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Total N ◽  
Perceptions Of Fairness ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
Back Door ◽  
People’S Attitudes

The present investigation explored Chinese people's attitudes toward the social practice of going “through the back door” or zouhoumen. Zouhoumen is an informal approach to achieve one’s goal through personal connections (called guanxi). We propose that Chinese people distinguish between different acts of zouhoumen and propose at least two types that differ in terms of social cognitive aspects, and that the two types evoke different perceptions of fairness that shape attitudes towards zouhoumen. Two experiments (total N = 414) provided evidence for the differentiation between facilitative zouhoumen and expropriative zouhoumen and also explore the role of type of guanxi in attitudes towards the two types of zouhoumen. Both experiments indicated that facilitative zouhoumen was less unacceptable than expropriative zouhoumen, but there were no marked differences in attitudes between zouhoumen involving expressive or instrumental guanxi. The results support a more nuanced theoretical account of a pervasive social phenomenon in Chinese society that we assume is adaptive responses to features of Chinese historical socioeconomic context.

Glandy Cross: A Later Prehistoric Monumental Complex in Carmarthenshire, Wales

2000 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 257-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Kirk ◽  
George Williams ◽  
A. Caseldine ◽  
J. Crowther ◽  
I. Darke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Heritage Management ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Project Report ◽  
The Social ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
George Williams

Excavations at the Glandy Cross monumental complex during 1991 and 1992 formed part of an integrated programme of evaluation, rescue, and research by Dyfed Archaeological Trust (DAT). Enclosures, pit circles, standing stones, and cairns were excavated and their environs systematically surveyed. Radiocarbon dates show the monumental complex to have been constructed between c. 2190–1530 cal BC. However, the earliest activity at the site may date to c. 4470–4230 cal BC. A defended enclosure was constructed on the peripheries of the complex c. 830–510 cal BC.The 1991–92 excavation results are presented along with a summary of survey, salvage, and research spanning the period 1981 to 1992. This new data set is tentatively interpreted in terms of historical process and the social practice of monumental construction. A brief commentary on heritage management at Glandy Cross is also presented.A note on authorship: one of the authors (George Williams) directed the Glandy Cross excavations during 1991–92 and prepared an initial draft of the project report. Following his retirement from DAT a project editor (Trevor Kirk) was commissioned by Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments to guide the project towards publication. This paper was largely penned by the project editor, though the excavation and survey data were produced by George Williams and his fieldwork team. The excavation and survey archives are held at the offices of DAT.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document