Self-praise online and offline

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daria Dayter
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
American English ◽  
Retrieval Strategy ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Internet Communities ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Tentative Hypothesis ◽  
Temporary Suspension ◽  
Internet Environment

Abstract In contrast to the assumptions of linguistic research on face-to-face interaction, CMC studies have shown that self-promotion is acceptable and even desired in certain online contexts. However, investigations of self-praise online repeatedly refer to the specific features of internet environment or internet communities that cause a temporary suspension of the constraint against self-praise. The constraint itself is treated as somewhat of an axiom. The assumption is, therefore, that the speech act of self-praise is face-threatening and disruptive and can only occur when certain conditions prevail, for example, when a disclaimer #humblebrag is provided. In the present study, I look at self-praise in private WhatsApp chats. Until now, self-praise has been investigated in broadcasting contexts of Twitter and Instagram. On the basis of the existing description of these naturally occurring episodes of self-praise, a retrieval strategy is developed to identify self-praise in a corpus through queries for collocations of lexical markers. An analysis of the episodes of self-praise retrieved from the WhatsApp corpus and some preliminary results from the corpus of spoken American English support the tentative hypothesis that self-praise is an unmarked speech behaviour that is a part of an everyday speech act repertoire. The existing claim about its special status could be explained through a combination of intuitive assumptions carried over from the influential studies of the pre-corpus era, and the retrieval methods that targeted the modified self-praise.

The meaning of intonation in yes-no questions in American English: A corpus study

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Hedberg ◽  
Juan M. Sosa ◽  
Emrah Görgülü
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
American English ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Pitch Contour ◽  
Function Word ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Naturally Occurring

AbstractIn order to investigate the distinct nuances of meaning conveyed by the different intonational contours encountered in yes-no questions in English, we conducted a corpus study of the intonation of 410 naturally occurring spoken interrogative-form yes-no questions in American English. First we annotated the intonation of each question using ToBI and then examined the meaning of each utterance in the context. We found that the low-rise nuclear contour (e.g., L*H-H%) is the unmarked question contour and is by far the most frequently occurring. Yes-no questions with falling intonation (e.g. H*L-L%) do not occur frequently, but when they do, they can be classified in speech act terms as “non-genuine” questions, where one or more felicity conditions on genuine questions are not met. Level questions (e.g., L*H-L%) tend to be “stylized” in meaning and pattern with falling questions in being non-genuine. We also found that the pitch accent on high-rise questions (e.g., H*H-H%), where the final pitch contour starts high and ends higher, tends to mark information that is given in the discourse or a function word. These are syllables that would normally remain unaccented parts of the post-nuclear “tail” of the intonation phrase. This leads us to propose that many such accents are “post-nuclear accents” in the sense of Ladd 2008.

Stress management: Corpus-based insights into vernacular interpretations of stress

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Laurel Smith Stvan
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
American English ◽  
Physical Symptom ◽  
The Body ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Semantic Shift

Examination of the term stress in naturally occurring vernacular prose provides evidence of three separate senses being conflated. A corpus analysis of 818 instances of stress from non-academic texts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of American Discourses on Health (CADOH) shows a negative prosody for stress, which is portrayed variously as a source outside the body, a physical symptom within the body and an emotional state. The data show that contemporary speakers intermingle the three senses, making more difficult a discussion between doctors and patients of ways to ‘reduce stress’, when stress might be interpreted as a stressor, a symptom, or state of anxiety. This conflation of senses reinforces the impression that stress is pervasive and increasing. In addition, a semantic shift is also refining a new sense for stress, as post-traumatic stress develops as a specific subtype of emotional stress whose use has increased in circulation in the past 20 years.

scholarly journals Contrastive Pragmatics: Apologies & Thanks in English and Italian

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Cuneyt Demir ◽  
Mehmet Takkac
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
American English ◽  
The Status ◽  
Language Competency ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Remedial Strategies

<p>Awareness of language or language competency has greatly changed from the focus of language itself as form and structure to language use as pragmatics. Accordingly, it is widely accepted that different cultures structure discourse in different ways. Moreover, studies have shown that this holds for discourse genres traditionally considered as highly standardized in their rituals and formulas. Taking inspiration from such studies, this paper employs a corpus-based approach to examine variations of the apology and thanking strategies used in English and Italian. First the apology itself as a form of social action is closely analyzed and then thanking. This study also pays special attention on analyzing and contrasting apology and thanking strategies in American English and in Italian in terms of Marion Owen’s remedial strategies (Owen, 1983), and Olshtain &amp; Cohen’s semantic formulas in the apology speech act set (Olshtain &amp; Cohen, 1983). The purpose of the study is not only to compare apology and thanking speech acts but to also learn their contextual use. The findings suggest that the status and role of the situation affect the speakers’ choice of apology and thanking strategies, and semantic formulas are of great importance.</p>

scholarly journals International Real Estate Review

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-104
Author(s):  
Robert A. Simons ◽  
◽  
Jesse Saginor ◽  
Aly H. Karam ◽  
Hlengani Baloyi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Contingent Valuation ◽  
Probit Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Perceptions Of Risk ◽  
Bidder Behavior ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Residential Properties

This study reports the results of a contingent valuation (CV) survey that was carried out in Johannesburg, South Africa. Students at Wits University conducted more than 300 face-to-face interviews with Africans living and/or working in Soweto, an African township located on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and nearby areas. The questions they asked were designed to determine the perceptions of risk regarding airborne mine dust and radon, a naturally occurring gas, and the effect that these perceptions had on the valuation of residential properties impacted by these substances. A probit model was used to evaluate the determinants of bidder behavior, using respondent demographics and other characteristics as independent variables. Residential property discounts for potentially contaminated housing sites by marginal bidders at the top of the market varied from -24% to -50%. Research issues in developing countries were addressed. Contingent valuation results in South Africa were compared to published results in the United States.

Social face to face communication — American English attitudinal prosody

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Rilliard ◽  
Donna Erickson ◽  
Takaaki Shochi ◽  
João Antônio de Moraes
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Face To Face

The Applicability of Movies in Legal Language Teaching: Evidence from Multi-Dimensional Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 245
Author(s):  
Pierfranca Forchini
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Analysis ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Language Research ◽  
American Legal System

The aim of the paper is to examine courtroom discourse by comparing naturally-occurring trials to movie trials in order to determine whether such movies can be used in the teaching of Legal English. For the purpose, data are retrieved from the American Movie-Trial Corpus and the American Real-Trial Corpus (built for the present analysis), and are compared via corpus-driven criteria and Biber’s Multi-Dimensional Analysis. The findings show very little linguistic and textual variability in the two investigated domains and thus confirm that the linguistic similarity of movie and naturally-occurring conversation is also present at a more specialized level. Hence, the claim that it is beyond dispute that the cinematic portrayal of the American legal system is far removed from legal reality is confuted and it is, consequently, suggested that movie language could be used as a remarkable source for learning not only the general usage of face-to-face conversation, as recently documented, but also the more specialized features of courtroom discourse. The findings also add value both to the role of corpora in teaching, which is often emphasized by numerous authoritative linguists, and to their methodological value in legal language research.

Influence of American English on second generation Lao immigrant speakers

English Today ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
Vincent Chanethom
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Societal Impact ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Induced Changes ◽  
The U.S

For many centuries, the United States has opened its doors to a variety of immigrants throughout the globe, engendering situations that Fishman (2004: 406) characterizes as ‘pluralistic societal impact.’ Upon coming to America, twentieth century immigrants found themselves immersed in a context in which not only their cultures clashed with that of the U.S., but also their mother tongues interacted with American English. The language patterns resulting from such interactions between immigrants' native languages and American English has been of great interest to the linguistic research community for the past several decades. For instance, research in the field of language contact has been particularly marked by the influential work undertaken by Thomason and Kaufman (1988) in which they developed a model to predict the nature of these contact-induced changes and to examine the mechanism by which these changes emerge.

scholarly journals A FINE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF CLEAVAGE INDUCTION AND FURROWING IN THE EGGS OF ARBACIA PUNCTULATA

1969 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis G. Tilney ◽  
Douglas Marsland
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Fine Structure ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Annulate Lamellae ◽  
Cleavage Division ◽  
Arbacia Punctulata ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Tentative Hypothesis ◽  
Normal Division ◽  
Experimentally Induced

A fine structural study has been carried out on the various formed elements present before, during, and after the first cleavage division, not only in normally developing Arbacia eggs, but also in eggs which have been induced to cleave prematurely by high-pressure centrifugation. The aim has been to ascertain whether or not any of the morphologically identifiable components may be involved in initiating the furrowing process. Also, attention has been given to the fine structure of the cytoplasmic cortex, particulary in the walls of the furrow, in the hope of reaching a better understanding of the mechanics of cleavage. The annulate lamellae and the membranous envelope of the nucleus are the only formed elements which disappear shortly before cleavage, not only in eggs undergoing normal division, but also in eggs which have been induced to cleave ahead of schedule by high-pressure, high-force centrifugation. Therefore, it is suggested as a tentative hypothesis that materials liberated upon disintegration of the nuclear membrane and the annulate lamellae play an essential role in initiating and effecting the furrowing reaction, especially since the stratification of these elements in experimentally induced eggs corresponds to the position of the developing furrow. Another of the membranous elements in the egg, the Golgi complex, shows considerable modification as a result of high-pressure centrifugation, but these structures do not undergo disintegration. Rather, they become curled into rounded bodies. The vacuole population is not greatly affected by inducing treatments. During cleavage, both naturally occurring and experimentally induced, a considerable number of 50 A filaments appear in the denser cytoplasmic cortex, but only in the walls of the furrow. These filaments are similar to those which have been demonstrated in a number of contractile cells. Accordingly, it is suggested that this fibrillar system may be actively involved in the development of the cleavage force.

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