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

scholarly journals OH + OKAY in informing sequences: On fuzzy boundaries in a particle combination

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 816-836
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Third ◽  
Weak Boundaries ◽  
Compound Particle

Abstract This study explores fuzzy boundaries, or weak cesuras, in the particle combination OH + OKAY as used in informing sequences in ordinary English talk-in-interaction. The focus is on the third position in such sequences, where OH + OKAY responds to information that has been solicited by the speaker in a prior turn. Based on a collection of approximately 45 instances of OH + OKAY in recent American English telephone and face-to-face interactions, this study adopts the methodology of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics to examine the prosody and phonetics of OH + OKAY as a feature of turn design. It asks: (i) when does the speaker use a combination of OH and OKAY in the third position rather than a simple OH or OKAY? and (ii) to what extent does the prosodic–phonetic delivery of OH + OKAY contribute to an interpretation of what the turn is doing? The study finds that (i) OH + OKAY is used when responding to a solicited informing that not only supplies information but also accomplishes another action with consequences for the recipient and (ii) if OH + OKAY is delivered with a strong cesura between its parts, its actions are distributed in separate turn-constructional units, creating a multi-unit turn that proposes sequence closure. If the cesura in OH + OKAY is weak, the component parts are fused into a compound particle that can preface more talk by the same speaker. Weak boundaries between OH and OKAY can be exploited by participants for the purposes of turn construction and epistemic positioning.

scholarly journals Features of orality in the language of fiction: A corpus-based investigation

2021 ◽  
pp. 096394702110477
Author(s):  
Andreas H. Jucker
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
American English ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Small Range ◽  
Soap Operas ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Status

This paper explores the pervasiveness of features of orality in the language of performed fiction. Features of orality are typical of spontaneous spoken conversations where they are the result of the ongoing planning process and the interaction between the interlocutors, but they also occur in the context of performed fiction (movies and plays) and in narrative fiction (e.g. novels). In these contexts, they are not the result of the spontaneous planning process but are generally produced to imitate such processes. In this paper, I explore a small range of such features (contractions, interjections, discourse markers, response forms and hesitators) in four corpora of performed fiction that have recently become available ( Corpus of American Soap Operas, TV Corpus, Movies Corpus and Sydney Corpus of Television Dialogue) and compare their frequency patterns with spontaneous face-to-face conversations in the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English and with narrative fiction and academic writing in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The results confirm that the selected features of orality are used regularly in performed fiction but less frequently than in spontaneous face-to-face interactions while they are rare in narrative fiction and almost entirely absent in academic writing. The results also show that the status of the transcriptions contained in these corpora needs to be assessed very carefully if they are to be used for a study of pragmatic features.

I'm the illest fucka

English Today ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Shinhee Lee
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Tv Commercials

ABSTRACTAn analysis of African American English in South Korean hip hop. English is rarely used in face-to-face terms in South Korea, but the use of English in commerce and entertainment is not such a rarity. The presence of English expressions in advertising and pop lyrics is no longer considered extraordinary. Lee (2006) reports that 83.75% of 720 South Korean TV commercials use some type of English, and only 16.25% of advertisements rely exclusively on Korean. Pop music is another discourse space in which English is fairly frequently used, occurring in more than 50% of pop song titles. A detailed analysis of the frequency of English in South Korean pop music (SK-pop) is reproduced.

scholarly journals Is smiling during humor so obvious? A cross-cultural comparison of smiling behavior in humorous sequences in American English and French interactions

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Béatrice Priego-Valverde ◽  
Brigitte Bigi ◽  
Salvatore Attardo ◽  
Lucy Pickering ◽  
Elisa Gironzetti
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Cross Cultural Comparison ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
Smiling Behaviors

AbstractThe present article is part of a larger cross-cultural research project on speaker-hearer smiling behavior in humorous and non-humorous conversations in American English and French. The American corpus consists of eight computer-mediated interactions between English native speakers, and the French one consists of four face-to-face interactions between French native speakers. The goal of the study is twofold: first, we analyze the link between smiling and humor, focusing on the degree of synchronicity of smiling and the intensity of smiling during humorous and non-humorous segments; second, we investigate the various targets mobilized in conversational humor. The results obtained comparing the two data-sets show a correlation between the presence of humor, an increased smiling intensity, and an increase in the synchronized smiling behaviors displayed by participants. However, the two corpora also differ in terms of the displayed smiling behaviors: French participants display more non-synchronic smiling when humor is absent and more synchronic smiling when humor is present. Regarding the various targets of humor (Speaker, Recipient, Other person, Situation, Speaker+Recipient), while their distribution is different – it is more evenly distributed in the French data – the way in which these are mobilized in order to become humorous is quite similar.

Have went– an American usage problem

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-312
Author(s):  
INGRID TIEKEN-BOON VAN OSTADE ◽  
VIKTORIJA KOSTADINOVA
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Standard Form ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Status ◽  
British English ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Close Analysis

Have wentmay seem a straightforward non-standard grammatical form today, but it evidently has a different status in British and American English. While in British English it developed into a non-standard form after the codification of the strong verb system by the eighteenth-century normative grammarians, in American English it became a usage problem. This we concluded from its appearance primarily in usage guides published in the United States over the years. The current status of the variant in the region was confirmed by evidence we encountered both in anonymous surveys and in face-to-face interviews with native speakers of American English. Our findings for the differences in status ofhave wentin the course of its history were supported by corpus-based analyses of historical and modern text corpora for British and American English, while a close analysis of selected modern instances ofhave wentandhave goneshowed a different distribution between the two that appears to warrant a perceived difference in meaning noted by some of the American informants.

Do we X, Should/Shall we X, Let’s X

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-361
Author(s):  
Robin Sokol
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Collaborative Interactions ◽  
Do So

Abstract This article studies the formats Do we X, Should/Shall we X, and Let’s X in order to deepen our understanding of face-to-face collaborative interactions at the computer. We use 6 hours of data of university students collaborating in British and American English, and our methodology is Conversation Analysis. We demonstrate that the participants display and orient to the immediacy/remoteness of the task, as well as their entitlement to carry out the proposed task, when they put forward a proposed action. To do so, they use specific formats, specific verbs, and display specific tasks depending on their needs, emerging from the unfolding of the collaboration. We argue that collaboration is not only a matter of organising the accomplishment of a set of tasks, but also of displaying what kind of task is being proposed, and to what extent the speaker is entitled to the proposed task.

Linguistic Dimensions of Accentedness, Comprehensibility and Intelligibility: Exploring Listener Effects in American, Moroccan, Turkmen and Chinese Varieties of English

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 520-542
Author(s):  
Mei Wei
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Linguistic Variables ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
International Experiences ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Vocal Intensity ◽  
The One

Abstract The present study examines accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of American English, Moroccan English, Turkmen English, and Chinese English, from the perspectives of three groups of listeners: native speakers of English and Chinese speakers of English with or without international experiences. Of the 145 listeners, 38 had face-to-face interviews. These listener groups were asked to listen to the recordings of the four English varieties and fill in a cloze test. Results indicated that the three listener groups differed significantly in rating comprehensibility of American English, Moroccan English and Chinese English but they did not give Turkmen English statistically different ratings; there were no significant differences in accentedness ratings except for Chinese English; and there were significant differences in the intelligibility scores of the four English varieties. In addition, with respect to seven linguistic variables—speed, clarity, intonation, smoothness and fluency, vocal intensity, pause, vocabulary and grammar, there were significant differences in three listener groups’ rating of six variables in American English except the one of “speed”. By contrast, Chinese English received significantly different ratings only in “proper speed”. No differences were found in the ratings for Moroccan English and Turkmen English. Finally, unlike Chinese listeners without international experiences, native listeners and Chinese listeners with international experiences shared some similarities in correlations between the ratings of accentedness and comprehensibility and those of linguistic variables on Moroccan English, Turkmen English, and Chinese English. However, the results for American English from Chinese listeners without international experiences and native listeners seemed to be more alike. Linguistic variables correlating with accentedness and comprehensibility of American English showed a mixed profile. Qualitative data provided more variant elaborations on the pronunciations and language uses of the speakers.

The multimodal marking of aspect: The case of five periphrastic auxiliary constructions in North American English

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hinnell
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
North American ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
American English ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Multiple Modalities ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Quit Smoking ◽  
Movement Type

AbstractCognitive linguistics (CL) has, in recent years, seen an increase in appeals to include multiple modalities in language analyses. While individual studies have incorporated gesture, gaze, facial expression, and prosody, among other modalities, CL has yet to completely embrace the systematic analysis of face-to-face interaction. Here, I present an investigation of five aspect-marking periphrastic constructions in North American English. Using naturalistic interactional data (n=250) from the Red Hen archive, this study establishes a multimodal profile for auxiliary constructions headed by one of five highly aspectualized verbs: continue, keep, start, stop, and quit, as in The jackpot continued to grow and He quit smoking. Results show that gesture timing, the structure of the gesture stroke, and gesture movement type, are variables that iconically and differentially represent distinctive aspectual conceptualizations. This study enhances our understanding of aspectual representation in co-speech gesture and informs the ongoing debate within CL and construction grammar circles of what constitutes conventionalization, or what constitutes a construction (mono- or multimodal).

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.

scholarly journals Of absent mothers, strong sisters and peculiar daughters: the constructional network of English NPN constructions

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotte Sommerer ◽  
Andreas Baumann
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Theoretical Modeling ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Acquisition Process ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
General Schema ◽  
Skin To Skin ◽  
Absent Mothers ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Cognitive Plausibility

Abstract This paper analyzes symmetric NPN constructions (e.g., day to day, face to face, step by step) qualitatively and quantitatively by examining data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, Mark. 2008–. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 570 million words, 1990–present. http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/). The constructions’ frequency and productivity, as well as their semantics and extension potential (i.e., modification, complementation) is investigated (e.g., by conducting collostructional analysis). In terms of theoretical modeling, the paper takes a Usage-based, Cognitive Construction Grammar approach (UCCxG) and sketches the constructional network of this constructional family, postulating various constructional templates on different levels of specificity – among others – the existence of the following subtypes [CNsg,time i after CNsg,time i]Cx (e.g., day after day, night after night), [CNsg,measurement i by CNsg,measurement i]Cx (e.g., inch by inch, step by step) or [CNsg,bodypart i to CNsg,bodypart i]Cx (e.g., skin to skin, shoulder to shoulder). We show how these templates are vertically and horizontally connected to each other. Ultimately, we argue that in a usage-based model which strives for cognitive plausibility it is not always feasible to postulate the entrenchment of an abstract overarching schema (i.e., a ‘mothernode’) like [CNi P CNi]Cx or even [N P N]Cx high up in the network. It is unlikely that speakers abstract such a general schema in a bottom-up acquisition process for this family. Rather, the NPN group is a constructional family characterized by many sister ties and by the absence of mother nodes from which information can be inherited.

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