L’imitation de la conversation en tant que strategie de connivence dans le discours journalistique sportif

Creating and maintaining an imaginary bond between the journalist and readers is a communicational strategy of the written sports news discourse. Since news discourse is monologal, it has specific communicational constraints that it seeks to overcome, and the lack of direct contact between the authors and their readers is a key hurdle to cross. Additionally, sport has a notable cohesive function, and as such produces a sense of a sports community even when taken as a news subject. The imaginary bond is therefore a strategy for overcoming the discursive gap between the journalist and their readers, while at the same time reinforcing the impression of community that the subject of sports draws on. In the sports news discourse this strategy is translated through different linguistic means, such as conversational elements. Based on selected articles from the French written sports news, a qualitative analysis of texts enabled us to observe the linguistic means through which the imitation of conversation contributes to the discursive strategy of bonding. The analysis is focused on informal and interactive conversational features. It shows that such conversationalization is particularly apparent in the informal character of the discourse on the lexical and discursive levels. This adds to the seeming informality of the communicational situation, and therefore to the readers’ sense of an imaginary sports community. On the syntactic level this is reinforced by interactional elements such as rhetorical questions and other interrogatives that address the reader as an interlocutor and echo the dynamics of a dialogue. Both conversational aspects, as used in the French sports news discourse, contribute to a sense of informal atmosphere and community bond among sports enthusiasts.

As relações de intertextualidade conforme as funções discursivas anafóricas no gênero digital comentário, no Facebook

RESUMO: Recente estudo sobre o nível microdiscursivo e o nível macrodiscursivo do gênero digital comentário, na rede social Facebook, comprovou que esse gênero é uma superestrutura discursiva. Pautado na análise de funções discursivas de Tedesco (2002) de expressões anafóricas diretas, foi possível constatar em sequências textuais do gênero digital comentário o fenômeno da intertextualidade, propriedade de coerência textual. A intertextualidade é uma propriedade reconhecida em hipertextos. No entanto, observa-se que abordagens sobre a intertextualidade em hipertextos, especificamente na Internet, são deficitários por não exemplificarem como a propriedade de coerência é desenvolvida em gêneros digitais. Neste sentido, o presente artigo tem o objetivo de discutir a intertextualidade e suas particularidades discursivas a partir das funções discursivas de expressões anafóricas diretas em textos verbais de comentários publicados em perfil público da jornalista Eliane Cantanhêde. As expressões anafóricas diretas apresentam significativa função coesiva em textos verbais, as quais são estratégias textuais e cognitivas que muito contribuem para a produção de sentidos do texto e, assim, refletem que a instabilidade dos objetos no uso da linguagem. Essa é uma abordagem fundamentada na Linguística Textual, a qual apresenta a concepção de língua com uma atividade de interação que pressupõe a existência do sujeito social. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: intertextualidade; funções anafóricas; gênero discursivo comentário; Facebook. ABSTRACT: Recent study on the micro-discursive and the macro-discursive levels of the digital genre comment, on the social network Facebook, proved that this genre is a discursive superstructure. Based on the analysis of discursive functions of Tedesco (2002) of direct anaphoric expressions, it was possible to verify the intertextuality phenomenon in text sequences of the digital genre comment, property of textual coherence. Intertextuality is a property recognized in hypertexts. However, it is observed that approaches on intertextuality in hypertexts, specifically on the Internet, are deficient because they do not exemplify how coherence property is developed in digital genres. In this sense, this article aims at discussing intertextuality and its discursive particularities from the discursive functions of direct anaphoric expressions in verbal texts of comments published in the public profile of the journalist Eliane Cantanhêde. The direct anaphoric expressions present a significant cohesive function in verbal texts, which are textual and cognitive strategies that contribute much to the production of meanings of the text and thus reflect that the instability of objects in the use of language. This is an approach based on Textual Linguistics, which presents the concept of language with an interaction activity that presupposes the existence of the social subject. KEYWORDS: intertextuality; anaphoric functions; discursive genre comment; Facebook.

A mechanism for temporary bioadhesion

The flatwormMacrostomum lignanofeatures a duo-gland adhesive system that allows it to repeatedly attach to and release from substrates in seawater within a minute. However, little is known about the molecules involved in this temporary adhesion. In this study, we show that the attachment ofM. lignanorelies on the secretion of two large adhesive proteins,M. lignanoadhesion protein 1 (Mlig-ap1) and Mlig-ap2. We revealed that both proteins are expressed in the adhesive gland cells and that their distribution within the adhesive footprints was spatially restricted. RNA interference knockdown experiments demonstrated the essential function of these two proteins in flatworm adhesion. Negatively charged modified sugars in the surrounding water inhibited flatworm attachment, while positively charged molecules impeded detachment. In addition, we found thatM. lignanocould not adhere to strongly hydrated surfaces. We propose an attachment–release model where Mlig-ap2 attaches to the substrate and Mlig-ap1 exhibits a cohesive function. A small negatively charged molecule is secreted that interferes with Mlig-ap1, inducing detachment. These findings are of relevance for fundamental adhesion science and efforts to mitigate biofouling. Further, this model of flatworm temporary adhesion may serve as the starting point for the development of synthetic reversible adhesion systems for medicinal and industrial applications.

The Metonymic Functions of the Verb fa?ala in the Holy Qur’an

This study builds on an observation that the verb fa?ala in Arabic, which means ‘do’, is essentially metonymic; it can refer to any transitive or intransitive verb in the language. This referential function is paradigmatic in nature and has been mentioned by classical Arab grammarians, hence their choice of this verb as the template or pattern on which all action verbs are formulated and modulated. The study proceeds from this basic observation to propose another type of referential function of the verb fa?ala, which is syntagmatic in nature: the cohesive function. Taking the Holy Qur’an as the corpus for this study, both functions of the verb are investigated in this study. A statistical analysis is carried out to identify all the occurrences of the verb fa?ala and its derivatives in the Holy Qur’an within their textual contexts, usually the verse. A textual analysis of each of these occurrences is, then, carried out to reveal the metonymic function of the verb fa?ala in all these instances. The study shows that within the general metonymic referential function of the verb fa?ala two basic sub-functions can be identified. The first is plain reference and the second is euphemistic reference. The findings of this study show that the plain reference function only accounts for about 37% of the total occurrences, while the euphemistic reference accounts for about 63% of the total Holy Qur’an corpus. These findings are significant because no previous study has addressed this textual aspect of the verb fa?ala in the Holy Qur’an, not even classical and contemporary exegetes. This study is also significant to linguistic and figurative studies of the Holy Qur’an, Holy Qur’an corpus studies and textual and pragmatic analysis of the Holy Qur’an.

Lexical bundles and discourse signalling in academic lectures

This paper discusses some approaches to the categorisation of cohesive devices with reference to spoken academic discourse, multi-word units, and strings of frequently co-occurring words (lexical bundles). It goes on to investigate the cohesive role of lexical bundles in a corpus of 160 university lectures (120 from the BASE corpus and 40 from MICASE). Like the bundles from the T2K SWAL teaching subcorpus, investigated by Biber, Conrad and Cortes (2004), the bundles in the lecture corpus included both ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ elements. The majority of frequently occurring bundles were found to be used to signal discourse relations, although their cohesive function was not necessarily obvious when listed out of context.