scholarly journals Networked Hospitality and Placemaking in the Sharing Economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 516-538
Author(s):  
Lénia Marques ◽  
Nigel Williams

This article investigates the similarities and differences for tangible and intangible elements (factors and language use) contributing to placemaking in Airbnb English language reviews in Paris (59,057 reviews), Barcelona (19,291 reviews) and London (30,403 reviews). This paper contributes to provide new insights on the narrative construction of reputational capital which is connected to placemaking strategies. A combined quantitative approach using large scale text analysis enabled the analysis of review content and style. Patterns in the words usage were identified. Findings suggest that tangible and intangible elements work together in the discourse, contributing to the place-narrative built on the host’s reputational capital. The host-guest interaction is the main aspect of the reviews, followed by the importance of transport and local amenities. Cities have different profiles in the composition of the word clusters which indicates differences in the guests’ perceived experience.

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Biber

Abstract Douglas Biber, Regents’ Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University, authors this article exploring the connections between register and a text-linguistic approach to language variation. He has spent the last 30 years pursuing a research program that explores the inherent link between register and language use, including at the phraseological, grammatical, and lexico-grammatical levels. His seminal book Variation across Speech and Writing (1988, Cambridge University Press) launched multi-dimensional (MD) analysis, a comprehensive framework and methodology for the large-scale study of register variation. This approach was innovative in taking a text-linguistic approach to characterize language use across situations of use through the quantitative and functional analysis of linguistic co-occurrence patterns and underlying dimensions of language use. MD analysis is now used widely to study register variation over time, in general and specialized registers, in learner language, and across a range of languages. In 1999, the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al.) became the first comprehensive descriptive reference book to systematically consider register variation in describing the grammatical and lexico-grammatical patterns of use in English. Douglas Biber’s quantitative linguistic research has consistently demonstrated the importance of register as a predictor of language variation. In his own words, “register always matters” (Gray 2013: 360, Interview with Douglas Biber, English Language & Linguistics).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitja Nikolaus ◽  
Eliot Maes ◽  
Jeremy Auguste ◽  
Laurent Prévot ◽  
Abdellah Fourtassi

Studies of children's language use in the wild (e.g., in the context of child-caregiver social interaction) have been slowed by the time- and resource- consuming task of hand annotating utterances for communicative intents/speech acts. Existing studies have typically focused on investigating rather small samples of children, raising the question of how their findings generalize both to larger and more representative populations and to a richer set of interaction contexts. Here we propose a simple automatic model for speech act labeling in early childhood based on the INCA-A coding scheme (Ninio, Snow, Pan, & Rollins, 1994). After validating the model against ground truth labels, we automatically annotated the entire English-language data from the CHILDES corpus. The major theoretical result was that earlier findings generalize quite well at a large scale. Further, we introduced two complementary measures for the age of acquisition of speech acts which allows us to rank different speech acts according to their order of emergence in production and comprehension.Our model will be shared with the community so that researchers can use it with their data to investigate various question related to language use both in typical and atypical populations of children.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitja Nikolaus ◽  
Juliette Maes ◽  
Jeremy Auguste ◽  
Laurent Prévot ◽  
Abdellah Fourtassi

Studies of children's language use in the wild (e.g., in the context of child-caregiver social interaction) have been slowed by the time- and resource- consuming task of hand annotating utterances for communicative intents/speech acts. Existing studies have typically focused on investigating rather small samples of children, raising the question of how their findings generalize both to larger and more representative populations and to a richer set of interaction contexts. Here we propose a simple automatic model for speech act labeling in early childhood based on the INCA-A coding scheme (Ninio et al., 1994). After validating the model against ground truth labels, we automatically annotated the entire English-language data from the CHILDES corpus. The major theoretical result was that earlier findings generalize quite well at a large scale. Our model will be shared with the community so that researchers can use it with their data to investigate various questions related to language use development.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Serap Atasever Belli

This study was designed to investigate whether contemporary corpus-informed grammar textbooks written for English language learners and teachers presented the progressive use of stative verbs and if yes, which stative verbs were presented to occur with the progressive aspect and for which functions they took this aspect. A corpus of six electronic copies of corpus-informed textbooks was compiled and analyzed via AntConc. 3.2.4 text analysis program to identify types and functions of stative verbs and calculate their occurrences. Overall, textbooks differed in their treatment of the progressive use of stative verbs and inclusion of the variety and numbers of types and functions. One remarkable finding was that the stative verbs taking the progressive aspect in all textbooks were found to be associated with emotions (i.e. love) whereas those not allowing progressive use were related to cognition (i.e. know). Another remarkable finding was that the textbooks which presented the highest numbers of stative verb types provided the most diverse functions whereas the textbooks which included the least numbers of stative verbs provided one or no function. Findings are hoped to raise awareness among textbook writers in making use of both the communicative messages motivated by the progressive use of stative verbs and the frequency and saliency information based on the corpus of present-day English to help learners grasp the changes in the language use.


Corpora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-349
Author(s):  
Craig Frayne

This study uses the two largest available American English language corpora, Google Books and the Corpus of Historical American English (coha), to investigate relations between ecology and language. The paper introduces ecolinguistics as a promising theme for corpus research. While some previous ecolinguistic research has used corpus approaches, there is a case to be made for quantitative methods that draw on larger datasets. Building on other corpus studies that have made connections between language use and environmental change, this paper investigates whether linguistic references to other species have changed in the past two centuries and, if so, how. The methodology consists of two main parts: an examination of the frequency of common names of species followed by aspect-level sentiment analysis of concordance lines. Results point to both opportunities and challenges associated with applying corpus methods to ecolinguistc research.


Author(s):  
Olga V. Khavanova ◽  

The second half of the eighteenth century in the lands under the sceptre of the House of Austria was a period of development of a language policy addressing the ethno-linguistic diversity of the monarchy’s subjects. On the one hand, the sphere of use of the German language was becoming wider, embracing more and more segments of administration, education, and culture. On the other hand, the authorities were perfectly aware of the fact that communication in the languages and vernaculars of the nationalities living in the Austrian Monarchy was one of the principal instruments of spreading decrees and announcements from the central and local authorities to the less-educated strata of the population. Consequently, a large-scale reform of primary education was launched, aimed at making the whole population literate, regardless of social status, nationality (mother tongue), or confession. In parallel with the centrally coordinated state policy of education and language-use, subjects-both language experts and amateur polyglots-joined the process of writing grammar books, which were intended to ease communication between the different nationalities of the Habsburg lands. This article considers some examples of such editions with primary attention given to the correlation between private initiative and governmental policies, mechanisms of verifying the textbooks to be published, their content, and their potential readers. This paper demonstrates that for grammar-book authors, it was very important to be integrated into the patronage networks at the court and in administrative bodies and stresses that the Vienna court controlled the process of selection and financing of grammar books to be published depending on their quality and ability to satisfy the aims and goals of state policy.


Author(s):  
Mikhail Tarasov

The article deals with the narrative text construction. The study thoroughly analyzes cognitive models that can become the basis of this process. Firstly, the author is studying the theory of rhetoricalcommonplaces. The article shows that this theory is suitable for constructing a rhetorical text, but not a narrative one. The second model discussed is the concept model. The article argues that this model is most convenient for text analysis, but not for its formation. Marvin Minsky's frame theory is analyzed in detail. It is stated that the theory of frames and individual narrative concepts, in particular those formulated by R. Barth, have much in common. It is concluded that the theory of frames can be perceived as the ontological basis of the narrative scientific description. In addition, the article briefly discusses the cognitive model by R. Quillian and R. Langacker. Their essence is to highlight the main and secondary content in the text. The possibility of using these models in the text analysis and its synthesis is proved by their conceptual similarity with G.Y. Solganik’s analysis of the novel by L. Tolstoy. Special attention is paid to the theory of R. Abelson. It is argued that the proposed hierarchy of cognitive structures has a generalizing character and is adequate to the text. The article gives an example based on a local narrative figure analysis undertaken by V.V. Vinogradov. The paper indicates the possibility to describe this figure within Abelson's theory. As a result of different cognitive models and narrative conceptscomparison, the article formulates the sequence of stages in the analysis and synthesis of text units found at different levels. The first stage of this sequence is the narrative figures analysis. The second one is the analysis of episodes, which are narrative figures associations. The third one is the analysis of the text plot structures. It is proposed to consider text units as realizations of cognitive structures. It is argued that the cognitive approach to the narrative provides its holistic and detailed adequate description.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1158
Author(s):  
Cecilia M. Onyango ◽  
Justine M. Nyaga ◽  
Johanna Wetterlind ◽  
Mats Söderström ◽  
Kristin Piikki

Opportunities exist for adoption of precision agriculture technologies in all parts of the world. The form of precision agriculture may vary from region to region depending on technologies available, knowledge levels and mindsets. The current review examined research articles in the English language on precision agriculture practices for increased productivity among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 7715 articles were retrieved and after screening 128 were reviewed. The results indicate that a number of precision agriculture technologies have been tested under SSA conditions and show promising results. The most promising precision agriculture technologies identified were the use of soil and plant sensors for nutrient and water management, as well as use of satellite imagery, GIS and crop-soil simulation models for site-specific management. These technologies have been shown to be crucial in attainment of appropriate management strategies in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of resource use in SSA. These technologies are important in supporting sustainable agricultural development. Most of these technologies are, however, at the experimental stage, with only South Africa having applied them mainly in large-scale commercial farms. It is concluded that increased precision in input and management practices among SSA smallholder farmers can significantly improve productivity even without extra use of inputs.


Glottotheory ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Doris Höhmann

AbstractThis paper investigates the use of the German am-superlative in colloquial utterances such as am besten, du gehst jetzt. In a first approximation, this construction can be described as elliptically used am-superlative occurring on the left sentence periphery within an Operator-Skopus-Struktur (Barden/Elstermann/Fiehler 2001). As will be shown in the empirical core part of the study, a qualitative-quantitative analysis, the pattern appears to be characterized by different overlapping and interplaying tendencies in language use (e.g. the selection and frequency of pronouns and sentence mood). The data used for the qualitative-quantitative analysis is taken mainly from a large-scale web corpus (deTenTen13).


Multilingua ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jette G. Hansen Edwards

AbstractThe study employs a case study approach to examine the impact of educational backgrounds on nine Hong Kong tertiary students’ English and Cantonese language practices and identifications as native speakers of English and Cantonese. The study employed both survey and interview data to probe the participants’ English and Cantonese language use at home, school, and with peers/friends. Leung, Harris, and Rampton’s (1997, The idealized native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities.TESOL Quarterly 31(3). 543–560) framework of language affiliation, language expertise, and inheritance was used to examine the construction of a native language identity in a multilingual setting. The study found that educational background – and particularly international school experience in contrast to local government school education – had an impact on the participants’ English language usage at home and with peers, and also affected their language expertise in Cantonese. English language use at school also impacted their identifications as native speakers of both Cantonese and English, with Cantonese being viewed largely as native language based on inheritance while English was being defined as native based on their language expertise, affiliation and use, particularly in contrast to their expertise in, affiliation with, and use of Cantonese.


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