Text-linguistic analysis of performed language: revisiting and re-modeling Koch and Oesterreicher

Linguistics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Werner

Abstract The present contribution starts from the general observations (i) that the study of text varieties has commonly emphasized the mode (speech vs. writing) as an essential variable and (ii) that linguistic analyses increasingly consider performed language (i.e., fictional scripted material as represented in telecinematic language and lyrics, for instance) as an object worth studying in its own right. It is recognized (i) that assessing performed language in terms of the traditional spoken-written dichotomy fails due to a number of inherent properties of relevant text varieties and their circumstances of production and reception, and (ii) that schemes applied within conventional (bottom-up) register perspectives may not be fully adequate for a text-linguistic approach toward performed language either. Koch and Oesterreicher’s communicative model (KOM), which takes account of contextual factors as well as of specific linguistic strategies and establishes a continuum between the language of distance and the language of immediacy, as well as three attempts at modifying KOM are introduced. It is argued that both KOM (as a top-down model) and its modifications have weaknesses when dealing with performed text varieties. An enhanced communicative model, including the dimensions synchronicity and authenticity, is sketched out, which could serve both as a starting point and complement for empirical investigations of textual variation whenever performed language is included.

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (12) ◽  
pp. 1935-1941 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. S. Kendler

This essay, which seeks to provide an historical framework for our efforts to develop a scientific psychiatric nosology, begins by reviewing the classificatory approaches that arose in the early history of biological taxonomy. Initial attempts at species definition used top-down approaches advocated by experts and based on a few essential features of the organism chosena priori. This approach was subsequently rejected on both conceptual and practical grounds and replaced by bottom-up approaches making use of a much wider array of features. Multiple parallels exist between the beginnings of biological taxonomy and psychiatric nosology. Like biological taxonomy, psychiatric nosology largely began with ‘expert’ classifications, typically influenced by a few essential features, articulated by one or more great 19th-century diagnosticians. Like biology, psychiatry is struggling toward more soundly based bottom-up approaches using diverse illness characteristics. The underemphasized historically contingent nature of our current psychiatric classification is illustrated by recounting the history of how ‘Schneiderian’ symptoms of schizophrenia entered into DSM-III. Given these historical contingencies, it is vital that our psychiatric nosologic enterprise be cumulative. This can be best achieved through a process of epistemic iteration. If we can develop a stable consensus in our theoretical orientation toward psychiatric illness, we can apply this approach, which has one crucial virtue. Regardless of the starting point, if each iteration (or revision) improves the performance of the nosology, the eventual success of the nosologic process, to optimally reflect the complex reality of psychiatric illness, is assured.


Author(s):  
Sacha R.B. Verjans-Janssen ◽  
Sanne M.P.L. Gerards ◽  
Anke H. Verhees ◽  
Stef P.J. Kremers ◽  
Steven B. Vos ◽  
...  

School health promotion is advocated. Implementation studies on school health promotion are less often conducted as effectiveness studies and are mainly conducted conventionally by assessing fidelity of “one size fits all” interventions. However, interventions that allow for local adaptation are more appropriate and require a different evaluation approach. We evaluated a mutual adaptation physical activity and nutrition intervention implemented in eight primary schools located in low socioeconomic neighborhoods in the Netherlands, namely the KEIGAAF intervention. A qualitative, multiple-case study design was used to evaluate implementation and contextual factors affecting implementation. We used several qualitative data collection tools and applied inductive content analysis for coding the transcribed data. Codes were linked to the domains of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. NVivo was used to support data analysis. The implementation process varied greatly across schools. This was due to the high level of bottom-up design of the intervention and differing contextual factors influencing implementation, such as differing starting situations. The mutual adaptation between top-down and bottom-up influences was a key element of the intervention. Feedback loops and the health promotion advisors played a crucial role by navigating between top-down and bottom-up. Implementing a mutual adaptation intervention is time-consuming but feasible.


Author(s):  
Takeshi Ebashi ◽  
Katsuhiko Ishiguro ◽  
Keiichiro Wakasugi ◽  
Hideki Kawamura ◽  
Irina Gaus ◽  
...  

The development of scenarios for quantitative or qualitative analysis is a key element of the assessment of the safety of geological disposal systems. As an outcome of an international workshop attended by European and the Japanese implementers, a number of features common to current methodologies could be identified, as well as trends in their evolution over time. In the late nineties, scenario development was often described as a bottom-up process, whereby scenarios were said to be developed in essence from FEP databases. Nowadays, it is recognised that, in practice, the approaches actually adopted are better described as top-down or “hybrid”, taking as their starting point an integrated (top-down) understanding of the system under consideration including uncertainties in initial state, sometimes assisted by the development of “storyboards”. A bottom-up element remains (hence the term “hybrid”) to the extent that FEP databases or FEP catalogues (including interactions) are still used, but the focus is generally on completeness checking, which occurs parallel to the main assessment process. Recent advances focus on the consistent treatment of uncertainties throughout the safety assessment and on the integration of operational safety and long term safety.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-172
Author(s):  
Ďurčo Peter ◽  
Hornáček Banášová Monika ◽  
Fraštíková Simona ◽  
Tabačeková Jana

Abstract The paper focuses on the problems of the lexicon-grammar continuum using the example of the lexical-syntagmatic combinatorics of minimal phrases. The focus is on binary preposition + noun phrases with their recurrent collocation partners and syntagmatic context patterns. Together with other (con)textual elements, they form conventionalized and lexically stabilized patterns that have flowed together through recurrent use and repeated occurrence of related linguistic structures in various contexts. The phenomenon requires an inductive bottom-up analysis process. Statistically calculated syntagmatic profiles of selected German prepositions based on linguistic corpora serve as our analytic starting point. The German preposition–noun constructions are then subjected to a corpus-based examination in the contrast language Slovak with respect to their equivalence from the following aspects: –individual language specifics and cross-language regularities of the lexical stabilization of individual phrases –nature of lexical fillers in comparable patterns –equivalence of meanings and/or functions by different contextual factors.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique Rodriguez ◽  
Robert Vann

This report discusses the importance of accounting for language contact and discourse circumstance in orthographic transcriptions of multilingual recordings of spoken language for deposit in digital language archives (DLAs). Our account provides a linguistically informed approach to the multilingual representation of spontaneous speech patterns, taking steps toward documenting ancestral and emergent codes. Our findings lead to portable lessons learned including (a) the conclusion that transcriptions can benefit from a bottom-up approach targeting particular linguistic features of sociocultural relevance to the community documented and (b) the implication (for researchers developing transcriptions for other DLAs) that the principled implementation of particular software features in tandem with systematic linguistic analysis can be helpful in finding and classifying such features, especially in multilingual recordings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-262
Author(s):  
NICK CHATER

AbstractFrijters et al. make a powerful and lucid case for a top-down approach to government, in which the maximization of wellbeing should be the ultimate goal. I argue, by contrast, for a bottom-up approach: that the variety of goals, plans, norms and rules that govern our lives should be the starting point for political discussion. From this standpoint, the goal of individual and collective decision-making of all kinds is the reconciliation of conflicting objectives and priorities on a piecemeal basis. The distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches in political decision-making parallels debates between ‘foundationalists’ and ‘coherentists’ in epistemology.


Corpora ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Frankenberg-Garcia

It is well-known that translated texts read differently from texts that have been written without the constraints imposed by source texts from another language. One of the features that can confer a distinctive feel to translations is the frequency with which certain lexical items are represented in them. Previous research has compared the frequency of specific words in translations and in texts that are not translations, and unveiled substantial differences in their distributions. Most of these studies adopt a bottom-up approach. Their starting point is a given word whose frequency in translated and non-translated texts is then compared. In this study, I adopt an explorative, top-down approach instead. I begin with a Portuguese language corpus of translated and non-translated literary texts, and attempt to identify lemmas which are markedly over- and under-represented in the translations. Our results not only appear to support existing bottom-up intuitions regarding distinctive lexical distributions, but also disclose a number of unexpected contrasts that would not have been discernible without recourse to corpora.


1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (244) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bøgh Andersen ◽  
Kim Halskov Madsen

This paper is about the design of computer systems and the professional language of its users. In the first part of the paper, we present an investigation of the professional language of the three employees at a library. The focus of our attention is the intensive use of metaphors. The investigation supports the idea of using metaphors in design since use of metaphors is one way of relating to the previous experiences of the employees. In the second part of the paper, we present a linguistic approach to design of a computer system. Our approach is related to ideas of K. Nygaard. He has suggested that a careful examination of the professional language of the users should be followed by enriching the professional language through concepts related to informatics. We suggest an approach, not of planned language change, but an approach where the professional language is taken as the starting point for design. We present a concrete way of making a linguistic analysis of the professional language and we show how the linguistic choices may be transposed into a number of design choices. As an illustration of our appraoch, we use the material from the first part of the paper that documents the physical space metaphor.


PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cole
Keyword(s):  
Top Down ◽  

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