A Personal Model of Trumpery: Linguistic Deception Detection in a Real-World High-Stakes Setting

Language use differs between truthful and deceptive statements, but not all differences are consistent across people and contexts, complicating the identification of deceit in individuals. By relying on fact-checked tweets, we showed in three studies (Study 1: 469 tweets; Study 2: 484 tweets; Study 3: 24 models) how well personalized linguistic deception detection performs by developing the first deception model tailored to an individual: the 45th U.S. president. First, we found substantial linguistic differences between factually correct and factually incorrect tweets. We developed a quantitative model and achieved 73% overall accuracy. Second, we tested out-of-sample prediction and achieved 74% overall accuracy. Third, we compared our personalized model with linguistic models previously reported in the literature. Our model outperformed existing models by 5 percentage points, demonstrating the added value of personalized linguistic analysis in real-world settings. Our results indicate that factually incorrect tweets by the U.S. president are not random mistakes of the sender.

Fiction May Confront Theories. Locating Determinism of the Newspeak in G. Orwell’s 1984

The paper focuses on the relationships between theory and practice and the consequences of dislocating theory from practice as they are illustrated through fiction. The case study carried out here concerns an exemplary novel, Ninety Eighty-Four by George Orwell, observing how the literary discourse can display a confrontation between two linguistic models, each resulted from a different theory: “instrumentalism” (Winston Smith) and “determinism” (O’ Brien). Also, the possibility of identifying an Orwellian model as opposed to the Sapir-Whorf and the linguistic models deserves examination. Newspeak is full of problematic aspects: ideology shapes the language by means of “wooden language” (la langue de bois, in Françoise Thom’s terms). Therefore, the historical “regime of relevance” (Galin Tihanov) makes possible a peculiar (use of) theory: an instrument that translates the ideology becomes the very essence of the determinist theory on the language in a totalitarian state. In discussing the practical consequences of literary theory, Stanley Fish points out that they are inexistent, because theory can never be united with practice, as it is actually impossible to separate theory from practice – a similar observation made by Steven Knapp and Walter B. Michaels. Whether consequences are real poses a challenge: following Edward Said’s argument, Steven Mailloux observes that theory can be consequential by rhetorical means: theory does what all discursive practices do and that is that it attempts to persuade its readers (or population in a totalitarian state) to adopt its point of view, its way of seeing texts and the world.

Bilinguals have a single computational system but two compartmentalized phonological grammars: Evidence from code-switching

Classic linguistic models, such as Chomsky’s minimalist schematization of the human language faculty, were typically based on a ‘monolingual ideal’. More recently, models have been extended to bilingual cognition. For instance, MacSwan (2000) posited that bilinguals possess a single syntactic computational system and, crucially, two (or more) phonological grammars. The current paper examines this possible architecture of the bilingual language faculty by using code-switching data, since this type of speech is unique to bilingual and multilingual individuals. Specifically, the natural speech Maria, a habitual Spanish-English code-switcher from the Bangor Miami Corpus, was examined. For the interface of phonology, an analysis was completed on the frequency of syllabic structures used by Maria. Phonotactics were examined as Spanish and English impose differential restrictions on complex onsets and codas. The results indicated that Maria’s language of use impacted the phonotactics of her speech, but that the context of use (unilingual or code-switched) did not. This suggests that Maria was alternating between two independent phonological grammars when she was code-switching. For the interface of morphosyntax, syntactic dependencies within Maria’s code-switched speech and past literature were consulted. The evidence illustrates that syntactic dependencies are indeed established within code-switched sentences, indicating that such constructions are derived from a single syntactic subset. Thus, the quantitative and qualitative results from this paper wholly support MacSwan’s original conjectures regarding the bilingual language faculty: bilingual cognition appears to be composed of a single computational system which builds multi-language syntactic structures, and more than one phonological grammar.

Features of the historical memory of students of Russian megacities

In the course of sociological analysis, linguistic models of students’ historical memory, events and historical figures were identified, that represent, in the opinion of young people, the “political evil” and the “political good” in Russian history. The students identified serfdom, “Stalinist repressions”, the famine of the 1920s and 1940s and the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya as “political evil”. The “political good” – the victories in the Patriotic War of 1812, the Great Patriotic War, the flight to space, the 1980 and 2014 Olympics. The author’s sociological studies of the largest Russian megalopolises have revealed the complexity and inconsistency of the historical memory of student youth. The study established the adherence of student youth to liberal ideology, a shallow awareness of the life of their family, their kin in earlier periods of Russian history, from pre-revolutionary times to the lives of their relatives in the 20-40s of the XX century, the association of “political good” with the achievements of our country and the association of “political evil” with defeats and reforms.

Cognitive Linguistic Models for Analyzing Characterization in a Parable: Luke 10:25–37 The Compassionate Samaritan

This study employs an array of cognitive linguistic (cl) models to reveal some of the details in how contemporary readers understand and interpret characters in a New Testament parable, the one often tagged “The Good Samaritan.” It also uses cognitive narrative analysis to explore how Luke constructs and develops the dialog partners in the pericope and the characters in the parable. The larger goal is to use cl to reveal some of the ways in which meanings are evoked, constructed, constrained and opened up. The parable is embedded in a larger narrative and immediate co-text, its characters selected from the stock of Lukan personae. The study explains how narrative spaces are built up; how characters serve as anchors and links to the larger narrative; and how viewpoint shifts proliferate as the story unfolds. The Lukan narrator makes Jesus’ viewpoint clear: “Do this, and you will live!” Readers are implicitly invited to identify with the compassionate character of the parable and emulate him. But the opening question and closing dialog shape the parable’s point, expanding its trajectory beyond mere moral rule revision or definitions of “neighbor” or even of “good” character. This parable allows readers to imagine with Luke a way of life lived in the light of the new epoch Jesus is announcing and inaugurating.

The Aftermath: Twenty-First Century Linguistics

This chapter revisits the major linguists of the Generative/Interpretive Semantics dispute (except Noam Chomsky, who fittingly gets his own chapter): Robin Lakoff, George Lakoff, Haj Ross, Paul Postal, and Jim McCawley, noting both their contributions and their post-dispute trajectories. It also charts out two broad legacies of the Generative Semantics movement: a number of technical proposals that arose in that framework which found themselves in other formal linguistic models, prominently including those associated with Chomsky; and the general “Greening of Linguistics”: a range of functional, cognitive, and usage-based approaches whose origins trace to the Generative Semanticists’ rejection of defining Chomskyan values.

ОКАЗИОНАЛИЗМИТЕ В МЕДИЙНИЯ ДИСКУРС ПРЕЗ ПЕРИОДА 2014–2020 Г. – ЕТНОПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИ И СЛОВООБРАЗУВАТЕЛНИ АСПЕКТИ / OCCASIONALISMS IN MEDIA DISCOURSE IN THE PERIOD 2014–2020 – ETHNOPSYCHOLOGICAL AND WORD-FORMATION ASPECTS

The study examines occasionalisms excerpted from Bulgarian media texts in the short time span from 2014 to 2020. These newly coined words with strong semantic and emotional intensity are the lexical emanation of Bulgarian ethnopsychology. They represent the linguistic picture of the divided and dichotomised Bulgarian society cha-racterised by egocentricity, ethnoresistance, strive for globalisation, local selfconsciousness, slave complex, fault-finding, imitation of foreign fashions and at the same time – the stigmatisation of everything foreign, among others. The paper analyses occasionalisms as linguistic codes for deciphering the Bulgarian phenotype. They have been grouped according to 11 key ethnopsychological indicators that served as a prerequisite for exploring the participation of occasionalisms in ususbased and nonusus based relations and their connotative dimension, in particular – whether their emotional expressiveness is negative- or positive-evaluative. Further, the author has studied the various word-formation devices occasionalisms employ and has identified both word-formation representations based on familiar linguistic models – ones using a single pattern or a contamination of two or three patterns – and original combinations of two derivational means. Loanwords motivating the formation of occasionalisms have been identified as well. Keywords: media text, Bulgarian phenotype, usus, occasional word-formation, derivational devices, Bulgarian language

Disc Jockeys’ Profile and Oral Performances in the Selected English Vowel Sounds: An Attempt on Relatedness

Pronunciation is a key element of the learning of oral skills in a second language. The role it plays in an English language program varies and the amount of time and effort devoted to it seems to depend to a large degree on the linguistic models and environment (Willing, 1988). The study examined the accuracy in the production of the selected English vowel sounds among the pioneering Disc Jockeys of Cool FM, Marawi City, in the year 2004. Moreover, it attempted to find the relatedness in the respondents’ oral performances and in their educational status, length of work experience as a DJ, and exposure to the language outside being a DJ. Three selected faculty members from the English Department of CSSH were consulted to evaluate the oral performances of the respondents. Results showed that high educational status did not affect the respondents’ performances in vowel sound production. Respondents with short work experience as DJs could perform better on the oral test. Respondents who had exposures to the English language outside being a DJ performed better on the oral test. Furthermore, teachers and foreigners were cited as good linguistic models that were described as highly influential in the performances of the respondents.