scholarly journals “Like, Pasta, Pizza and Stuff” – New Trends in Online Food Discourse

Author(s):  
Stefan Diemer ◽  
Marie-Louise Brunner ◽  
Selina Schmidt

This paper examines two examples of online food discourse to illustrate how the medium changes parameters established in print recipes: food blogs for written and Skype talks for oral computer-mediated discourse about food. The language of food blogs will be analysed with the help of examples from the Food Blog Corpus (Diemer and Frobenius 2011),i compiled at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. This corpus includes 100 blog posts in total from The Times Online. Skype conversations about food between non-native speakers of English are taken from CASE, the Corpus of Academic Spoken English (Diemer et al. forthcoming),ii also compiled at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. For the purpose of this analysis, a subcorpus of food-related conversations was extracted, containing seven conversations (5.5h) between 14 German and Italian participants in total. The two corpora were examined in terms of contextualisation (reference to place, time, and personal background), register (audience, and linguistic features), as well as personal opinions and lifestyle comments. The paper suggests that both discourse types make use of the multimodal online environment and add evaluative content, for example integrating positively connoted terms to describe food-related issues. The paper also illustrates possible trends towards an increasing inclusion of non-expert language features, such as vagueness and a reduction of presuppositions, and of cultural and personal references, integrating individual background information.

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 380-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoyuki Takagi ◽  
Virginia Mann

AbstractTo evaluate the effect of extended adult exposure to authentic spoken English on the perceptual mastery of English /r/ and /l/, we tested 12 native speakers of English (A), 12 experienced Japanese (EJ) who had spent 12 or more years in the United States, and 12 less experienced Japanese (LJ) who had spent less than one year in the United States. The tests included the forced-choice identification of naturally produced /r/s and /1/s and the labeling of word-initial synthetic tokens that varied F2 and F3 to form an /r/-/l/-/w/ continuum. The F.Js’ mean performance in both tasks was closer to that of the As than the LJs, but nonetheless fell short. Extended exposure may improve /r/-/l/ identification accuracy; it does not ensure perfect perceptual mastery.


MANUSYA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Amara Prasithrathsint

Hedging means mitigating words so as to lessen the impact of an utterance. It may cause uncertainty in language but is regarded as an important feature in English academic writing. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the style of academic writing in English with particular reference to the significant role of hedging and the linguistic features that mark it. The data was taken from academic articles in the humanities written by native speakers of English, Filipino speakers of English, and Thai speakers of English. It is hypothesized that speakers of English as a foreign language use fewer and different hedging devices than native speakers of English. The result of the analysis shows that the prominent linguistic markers of hedging are the auxiliaries may, might, could, the verbs suggest, appear, seem, and the adverbs perhaps and often. They are divided into three groups according to their stylistic attributes of hedging; namely, probability, indetermination, and approximation. The use of hedging found in the data confirms what Hyman (1994) says; i.e., that hedging allows writers to express their uncertainty about the truth of their statements. It is also found that English native speakers use hedges most frequently. The Filipino speakers of English are the second, and the Thai speakers of English use hedges the least frequency. This implies that hedging is likely to be related to the level of competence in English including knowledge of stylistic variation, and that it needs to be formally taught to those who speak English as a second or foreign language.


Author(s):  
Yehezkiel Adhi Nugraha

<p>People will not only use language for sharing message but also due to do an action. Through language, people will ask, promise, refuse, greet, invite, thank, and so on. The purpose of this research is to identify the speech acts preference used by Indonesian and Filipino non – native speakers of English via Facebook Messenger. Besides, to identify the similar or different of speech acts preference they used.</p><p>             The source of data are utterances of conversation in Facebook Messenger. The researcher applies documentation and an observation (reading the book and internet as the references) in collecting the data. After collecting the data, the researcher analyzes the data by focusing the speech acts theory. In order to support the evidence of the result, the researcher needs to describe and compare the high context-cultures and low context-cultures by Hall (1976) and also cultural dimension of Indonesia and Philippines by Hofstede.</p>The result of the analysis shows that the most speech acts preference used by Indonesian and Filipino non - native speakers of English is direct speech act. Similar and different types of speech acts are found. The similar speech act preferences are found in declarations and representatives. The different speech acts preferences are found in expressives, directives, commissives, direct, and indirect speech acts. The result of this research also shows that the communication of Indonesian and Filipino are included into low contex-cultures. It is contrary with the theory of Hall and Hofstede which shows that Indonesia and Philippines factually should be high context-cultures.


1984 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell S. Tomlin

This paper compares the foregrounding strategies of native speakers of English and advanced learners of ESL. Fifteen native speakers and thirty-five advanced learners produced on-line (play-by-play) descriptions of the unfolding action in an animated videotape. A methodology for the quantitative analysis of discourse production is described which permits the explicit identification of foreground-background information and its interaction with both native speaker and interlanguage syntaxes. Results show that: (1) Native speakers and learners exhibit one universal discourse strategy in retreating to a more pragmatic mode of communication under the severe communicative stress of on-line description, as revealed through the systematic loss of the coding relations ordinarily holding between foreground-background information and clause independence/tense-aspect; (2) Learners also exhibit a learner-specific general communication strategy in which significant events are described but nonsignificant events avoided.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaila Sultana

Based on the data drawn from an intensive ethnographic study on young adults in Bangladesh conducted in the virtual space, specifically Facebook (FB) and analysis of those data through a transglossic framework, the paper shows that the meaning-making processes in lingua franca (LF) encounters can be appropriately deciphered when their language is considered in terms of translocalisation, transculturation, transmodality, and transtextualisation. The data also demonstrate that the young adults deliberately flout the linguistic features of English with their Bangladeshi counterparts, while they prefer to approximate a native form of English with other native and non-native speakers of English. Even though their English is variable and emergent in the potential LF context of the virtual space, their conscious choice of approximating a near-native form indicates that they are keenly aware of the ideologies related to ELF and associated with ELF identity attributes. The paper confirms the necessity of reconceptualisation of ELF, considering the idiosyncrasies of young adults’ language practices; and identifies the paradoxes of sociolinguistic profiling of South Asian speakers, based on dichotomous and binary phenomena, such as ELF and non-ELF speakers, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) vs. ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers, or members of the Inner Circle vs. Outer Circle.


Author(s):  
Elisa Gironzetti ◽  
Lucy Pickering ◽  
Meichan Huang ◽  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Shigehito Menjo ◽  
...  

AbstractThis present article is part of a larger study on speaker-hearer allocation of attentional resources in face-to-face interactions. The goal of the paper is twofold: first, we present results concerning the degree of correlation, in computer-mediated conversation, between speaker’s timing and intensity of smiling when humor is either present or absent in the conversation. The results were obtained from the analysis of five dyadic interactions between English speakers that were video and audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to establish a baseline of synchronicity of smiling among participants. From the study it emerged that conversational partners engaged in humorous conversations not only reciprocate each other’s smiling, but also match each other’s smiling intensity. Our data led to the identification of different smiling and non-smiling synchronic behaviors that point to the existence of a synchronous multimodal relationship between humorous events and smiling intensity for conversational partners. Second, in the last part of the paper, we argue for the need of a multimodal conversational corpus in humor studies and present the corpus that is being collected, annotated, and analyzed at Texas A&M University–Commerce. The corpus consists of humorous interactions among dyads of native speakers of English, Spanish, and Chinese for which video, audio, and eye-tracking data have been recorded. As part of this section of the paper, we also present some preliminary results based on the analysis of one English conversation, and some exploratory analysis of Chinese data, that show that greater attention is paid to facial areas involved in smiling when humor is present. This study sheds light on the role of smiling as a discourse marker (Attardo, S., L. Pickering, F. Lomotey & S. Menjo. 2013. Multimodality in Conversational Humor.


Author(s):  
Andrew Johnston

This chapter is describing a plan for a mentor teacher assisting pre-service teachers during their practicum using English in an Emirati national school. The plan consists of 20 lessons that covers speaking, reading, listening, and writing to Kindergarten to primary school age students (3 – 12 years old). As an educator, the author is constantly looking for ways to enhance student's communicative abilities, especially non-native speakers of English. There is a constant need to provide scaffolding and learning situations to make sure pre-service education students feel comfortable using English language in a classroom setting. This chapter will give background information for people who want to do research into incorrect language usage and its effect on students in the classroom. It also describes an outline for a course to develop language proficiency and confidence to use communicative language in a classroom setting.


Author(s):  
Sedat Akayoglu ◽  
Arif Altun

This chapter aims at describing the patterns of negotiation of meaning functions in text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication by using computer-mediated discourse analysis. Two research questions were sought in this study: (a) what types of negotiation of meaning emerge in text-based synchronous CMC environments, and (b) is there any difference between native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English in terms of negotiations of meaning functions in this environment. The emerged functions of meaning negotiation were presented, and when comparing the NS with NNSs, the most frequently used negotiation of meaning functions were found to be different, but the least frequently used ones were found to be similar. The findings of this study might give insights to researchers, educators, and teachers of English Language when designing instruction in terms of patterns of negotiation of meaning functions in text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication.


2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Smiljana Komar

Attitudes and emotions are expressed by linguistic as well as extra-linguistic features. The linguistic features comprise the lexis, the word-order and the intonation of the utterance. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of intonation on our perception of speech. I will attempt to show that our expression, as well as our perception and understanding of attitudes and emotions are realized in accordance with the intonation patterns typical of the mother tongue. When listening to non-native speakers using our mother tongue we expect and tolerate errors in pronunciation, grammar and lexis but are quite ignorant and intolerant of non-native intonation patterns. Foreigners often sound unenthusiastic to native English ears. On the basis of the results obtained from an analysis of speech produced by 21 non-native speakers of English, including Slovenes, I will show that the reasons for such an impression of being unenthusiastic stem from different tonality and tonicity rules, as well as from the lack of the fall-rise tone and a very narrow pitch range with no or very few pitch jumps or slumps.


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