Politeness Markers and Psychological Complements

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masahiko Minami
Keyword(s):  
Effective Means ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Japanese Adult ◽  
General Belief ◽  
Multiple Functions ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Class Room

Frames are not only universal cognitive categories to explain the narrator's consciousness, they are also a socioculturally determined concept. Using verse/stanza analysis, which is widely accepted as an effective means of analyzing narrative structure, this study examines how narrative discourse markers and linguistic strategies contribute to the culturally specific framing of Japanese oral personal narratives. Japanese adult narrators were found to employ particular linguistic markers: (1) the formal verb-ending patterns that are often pointed out as politeness markers indicating the insider-outsider distinction, and (2) psychological complements that are generally assumed to express a greater degree of hesitation and softness. It was found, however, that in narrative contexts, these two markers are more likely to appear at the end of a stanza than in any other position. In other words, in contrast to the general belief that these markers serve as devices to show politeness, when investigated from the viewpoint of narrative discourse, they have turned out to possess multiple functions, such as a psychologically effective means for cultural and contextual framing. These findings also call for an awareness on the part of Japanese language instructors to emphasize such multiple functions in the class-room, so that they may help prevent learners from making subtle but potentially critical mistakes.

Narrative Discourse Markers in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Fludernik
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Oral Narrative ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
Morte D'arthur ◽  
Narrative Prose ◽  
Line Analysis

On the basis of the model of narrative structure proposed in Fludernik (1996b) this paper presents the results of an investigation of discourse markers in Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, with a complete line-by-line analysis of The Tale of King Arthur, Books I to III (“Merlin”; “Balin”; “Torre and Pellinor”), A Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake, and The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones (Book XIV: “Launcelot and Elaine”). The paper argues that the inflation of discourse markers in Malory is a sign of their imminent disappearance from narrative prose and that other features that indicate a dissolution of the oral narrative episode pattern are also visible in the text.

Japanese Preschool Children's and Adults' Narrative Discourse Competence and Narrative Structure

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masahiko Minami
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Narrative Development ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
High Point ◽  
Children's Narratives ◽  
Point Analysis ◽  
Discourse Competence

Abstract This study presents empirical evidence o f Japanese preschool children's (a) narrative discourse competence and narrative structure and (b) rhetorical/expressive flexibility, compared to adults. With data on oral personal narratives told by Japanese preschoolers and adults, and with verse/stanza analysis (Gee, 1985; Hymes, 1981) and high point analysis based on the Labovian approach (Labov, 1972; Peterson & McCabe, 1983), it was discovered that children's and adults' narratives are similar in terms o f structure in that they both tend to have three verses per stanza, and that children and adults tend to tell about multiple experiences. By contrast, there are some clear differences in terms o f content and delivery. Whereas children tend to tell their stories in a sequential style, adults emphasize nonsequential information. Specifically, compared to children's narratives, adults' narratives place considerably more weight on feelings and emotions. The findings of this study strongly suggest that oral personal narratives told by Japanese preschoolers do not represent the final phase o f development. Rather, they still have a long way to go. (Narrative Development; Narrative Structure)

Connecting L1 and L2 acquisition: From the perspective of macro and micro narrative structure

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Masahiko Minami
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Related Quality ◽  
L1 And L2

Abstract The studies presented in this paper connect the story-related quality and the language-related quality of narrative discourse. The term “coherence” refers to whether or not a text makes sense at a global level, whereas “cohesion” describes the linguistic relationships among clauses in a narrative, such as how the surface linguistic elements of a text are linked to one another at a local level. Using a content-based narrative analysis, a trilogy – a set of three independent but interrelated studies – introduced in this paper quantitatively analyze oral personal narratives through three lenses. As examples of devices for cohesion, the paper qualitatively examines the use of two linguistic devices, tense (past and non-past) and voice (active and passive), and tries to show how narrators deploy organizational strategies in the use of these linguistic forms. The paper (1) examines varied topics in different narrative contexts (genre, topic, oral or written), (2) reveals how both coherence and cohesion serve as the twin engines of narrative, and (3) emphasizes the significance of paying attention not only to the narrative content/structure but also to the appropriate use of linguistic devices so that we can fully grasp language-specific ways of expressing affective elements in narrative.

Prosody of Ojibwe Discourse Markers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Frazier
Keyword(s):  
Great Lakes ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Pitch Tracking ◽  
Discourse Particles ◽  
Global Coherence ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
And Linguistics

Discourse markers (DMs) are optional, sequentially dependent sentence-initial items (Schiffrin, 1987) that are used to bracket units of talk (e.g. oh, well, because, y’know, now ). This research aims to better understand Ojibwe DMs which typically occur as the first or second element of a sentence (Fairbanks, 2016). The proposed analysis seeks to understand the prosody of Ojibwe DMs broadly and specifically their use in narrative structure. The data is drawn from Gakina Dibaajimowin Gwayakwaawan ( All Teachings are Correct ) by Nancy Jones, 2013. The analysis was done by using the programs Audacity and PRAAT to identify individual sentences and their pitch prominences. Through careful listening and pitch tracking, prosodic properties of DMs were found to indicate the following: DMs attract the most prominent pitch in the sentence. DMs are used by the speaker to attract the hearer’s attention; in this sense they are interactional (Franks-Job, 2006). DMs are used by the speaker to structure the narration; as such they interact with topic changes and emphasis (Lenk, 1998) This study creates a more complex picture of Ojibwe DMs and adds to our understanding of the language. References: Fairbanks, B. 2016. Ojibwe Discourse Markers. University of Nebraska Press. Franks-Job, B. 2006. A dynamic-interactional approach to discourse markers. In Approaches to discourse particles, K. Fischer (ed.) pp. 395–413. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Lenk, U. 1998. Discourse markers and global coherence in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 30(2):246-257 Ogimaawigwaebiik [Nancy Jones] 2013. Gakina Dibaajimowin Gwayakwaawan. In Dibaajimowinaan; Anishinaabe Stories of Culture and respect ; Nigaanigiizhig [Jim Saint-Arnold] (ed.), Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission, 9-10. Raso, Tommaso. 1996. Prosodic constraints for discourse markers. Spoken Corpora and Linguistic Studies. In Spoken Corpora and Linguistics Studies , T. Raso & H. Mello (eds.) 411-467. Benjamins: Amsterdam. Schiffrin, D. 1987. Discourse Markers. doi: 10.1017/cbo9780511611841.

scholarly journals Smoothly moving through Mental Spaces: Linguistic patterns of viewpoint transfer in news narratives

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 499-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kobie van Krieken ◽  
José Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Intermediate Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
Crime News ◽  
Mental Spaces ◽  
Linguistic Structures

AbstractThis article presents a Mental Space model for analyzing linguistic patterns in news narratives. The model was applied in a corpus study categorizing various linguistic markers of viewpoint transfers between the mental spaces that readers must conceptualize while processing news narratives: a Reality Space representing the journalist and reader’s projected here-and-now viewpoint; a News Narrative Space representing the newsworthy events from a there-and-then viewpoint; and an Intermediate Space representing the information of the news actors provided from a temporal viewpoint in-between the newsworthy events and the present. Viewpoint transfers and their markers were examined in a corpus of 100 Dutch crime news narratives published over a period of fifty years. The results reveal clear patterns, which indicate that both linguistic structures and narrative-based as well as genre-based inferences play a role in the processing of news narratives. The results furthermore clarify how these narratives have been gradually crystallizing into a genre over the past decades. These findings elucidate the complex yet fluent process of conceptually moving between mental spaces, thus advancing our understanding of the relation between the linguistic and the cognitive representation of narrative discourse.

Voiceless ends: Melville’s Benito Cereno and the translator in narrative discourse

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Boyden
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Benito Cereno

The first part of this article confronts the ways in which translation scholars have drawn on insights from narratology to make sense of the translator’s involvement in narrative texts. It first considers competing metaphors for conceptualizing the translator’s involvement, arguing for a clearer differentiation between modes of framing and telling. Next, it evaluates the ways in which translation scholars have attempted to integrate the translator as a separate textual agent in governing models of narrative communication, concluding that the conceptual gains to be reaped from positing the translator as a separate enunciator or agent in narrative transactions are limited. The second part of the article analyzes two Dutch translations of Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno, by Johan Palm (1950) and Jean Schalekamp (1977) respectively. Rather than striving to isolate the translators as separate tellers or co-producers of narrative structure, the analysis reveals that their agency shows foremost in the ways the ‘voiceless’ narrative of New World slavery is perspectivized in view of changing readerly expectations.

scholarly journals Gender and expletives as discourse markers: Some uses of joder in young women’s interactions in Spanish and Galician

Feminismo/s ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Virginia Acuña Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Multiple Functions ◽  
Young Females ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Speaking Style

This paper approaches young women’s speaking style by analysing the ways in which the interjection joder is employed in interactions in Spanish and Galician among young females. The analysis identifies several uses of this form at the interactional and discursive level: reinforcement of speech acts, marker of disagreement, marker of complaints, expression of minimal emotional assessments, correcting and stalling. It is concluded that joder has developed multiple functions in interaction as a discursive marker, in contrast to arguments against the inclusion of interjections in this pragmatic category. The findings also suggest that this expletive fulfils a sociolinguistic function as a marker of ‘young femininities’, since it demonstrates how it has been integrated into young women’s speaking style, in contrast to traditional gender rules and broader descriptions of ‘women’s talk’ in Language and Gender studies.

The Nature of Therapeutic Discourse: Accounts of the Self

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Gerhardt ◽  
Charles Stinson
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Psychotherapy Research ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
The Self ◽  
Therapeutic Discourse ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Therapeutic Context ◽  
Account Giving

Abstract Due to the problems involved in trying to determine the validity of life history accounts in the psychoanalytically based encounter, the concept of narrative has proven very useful for promoting the view that the client's tellings represent different versions of the truth rather than a truth that exists prior to and independent of the storied constructions, as Freud's archeological model would have it. However, although the irreducibly narrative character of client talk is not contested, the claim developed herein is that client talk is structured around the practice of account-giving—more specifically, giving accounts of the self. Our mode of investigating this claim was to examine a client's use of a pair of linguistic markers (the discourse markers I MEAN and SO), which have been characterized as forms that function expressively to convey the speaker's attitudes and evaluative stance toward the content of the discourse. Based on this characterization, it was hypothesized that, in the therapeutic context, such forms would be used by the client as a way of carrying out the proposed agenda of providing self-accounts. (Discourse Analysis/Psychotherapy Research)

Growth Structure in Personal Narratives

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-226
Author(s):  
Jack Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Growth Structure ◽  
Psychological Maturity ◽  
Over Time

Narrative content and structure are intertwined. However, this chapter identifies the features of narrative structure that do not overlap with narrative content. Narrative content conveys the facts, themes (i.e., value orientations), and tones (i.e., value fulfillments) of a story, whereas narrative structure conveys the objectively assessed degrees of complexity and coherence (i.e., value perspectivity) by which the narrator interprets the narrative content. The transformative self tends toward a relatively complex and coherent narrative structure, which develops over time, manifesting as psychological maturity and wisdom. The value perspectivity of narrative structure is what distinguishes wisdom from goods such as happiness, love, and meaningfulness. However, wisdom blends structural perspectivity with humane themes. This chapter distinguishes narrative phenomena that sound like structure but function more proximally as content: closure, subtypes of coherence, continuity over time, and affective sequences. The chapter also explores narrative structure in dialogical positioning. The chapter concludes by summarizing Chapters 4–7.

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