Discourse and Text Linguistics Commons^™

Destined Failure, Chengjun Pan

Masters Theses

I attempt to examine the complex structure of human communication, explaining why it is bound to fail. By reproducing experienceable phenomena, I demonstrate how they can expose communication structure and reveal the limitations of our perception and symbolization.I divide the process of communication into six stages: input, detection, symbolization, dictionary, interpretation, and output. In this thesis, I examine the flaws and challenges that arise in the first five stages. I argue that reception acts as a filter and that understanding relies on a symbolic system that is full of redundancies. Therefore, every interpretation is destined to be a deviation.

Misinformation And Disinformation: Detecting Fakes With The Eye And Ai, Victoria Rubin

Data and Test Instruments

How do we detect, deter, and prevent the spread of mis- and disinformationwith the human eye and AI? How does theory inform the practice, and how do theevidence-based research and best practices in lie-catching and truth-seekingprofessions—inform AI? The book looks into well-established human practicessuch as the routines and processes used in detective work, journalism, and scientificinquiry, and how they contribute toward innovative AI solutions. The book explainsthe principles, inner workings, and recent evolution of five types of state-of-the-artAI technologies suitable for curtailing the spread of mis- and disinformation:automated deception detectors, clickbait detectors, satirical fake detectors, rumordebunkers, and computational fact-checking tools.

Language As The Medium: A Literature Review. Harnessing The Prolific Power Of Dramatic Language As A Therapeutic Tool In Drama Therapy, Edward Freeman

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Language in and of the theatre, with its palate of variegated writing styles and playwrights from throughout time, has the potential to be harnessed, focused, and systematized for use as a therapeutic tool within drama therapy – the field’s artistic medium. Drama therapy could benefit from having a specific medium germane to its artform which has the potential to provide practitioners with a common resource and means of communication, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning, as well as align the field with other creative arts therapies. Language encompasses all forms of human communication – speaking, writing, signing, gesturing, expressing facially – …

Discursive Leadership: Exploring The "Black Box" Challenge In Transcultural Leadership Studies, Christopher Patrick Brown

Dissertations

The increasingly globalized U.S. workforce includes significant numbers of adult immigrants integrating into the North American professional sphere. As such, it is important to have concrete ways to study and interpret different cultures’ thinking about teamwork, and their models of enacting shared leadership and communication in a multicultural context. Since 2006, hundreds of millions in federal grant funding has been invested in university-based language and culture programs focused on training government personnel and heritage populations in the languages and cultures of the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia. Little is known about the performative strengths and challenges of the …

Language-Mixing In Discourse In Bilingual Individuals With Non-Fluent Aphasia, Avanthi Paplikar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Language-mixing (LM) as defined by Chengappa (2009, p. 417) is an “intra-sentential phenomenon referred to as the mixing of various linguistic units (morphemes, words, modifiers, phrases, etc.), primarily from two participating grammatical systems”. LM is influenced by grammatical, environmental, and social constraints (e.g., Milroy & Wei, 1995; Bhat & Chengappa, 2005). Researchers have suggested that LM in patients with aphasia is a communicative strategy used to achieve successful exchanges between speakers; the effectiveness of this mixing, however, had yet to be demonstrated quantitatively.

In the current study we investigated whether LM is present in bilingual speakers with aphasia, and if …

Resolutions And Their Incongruities: Further Thoughts On Logical Mechanism, Christian F. Hempelmann, Salvatore Attardo

Faculty Publications

This paper is a contribution to the study of the resolution of incongruities in humor. We reject some criticisms of logical mechanisms and analyze three different types of incongruities in humorous texts: completely backgrounded, backgrounded, and foregrounded. Only the latter are addressed by logical mechanisms. We identify a mechanism of “incongruity shifting” which may be a candidate for “deep” logical mechanism (along the lines of “parallelism” in Attardo et al. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 15: 1–44, 2002). We finally discuss the similarities between Oring's (Engaging humor, University of Illinois Press, 2003) “appropriate incongruity” theory and our approach, which …