Semantics and Pragmatics Commons^™

Comparative Analysis Of Email Request Strategies Used By Native And Non-Native Speakers Of English In Academic Settings, Karyna Tytar

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents an analysis of pragmatic features of email request composite parts: email openings and closings, request Head Acts, and supportive moves elicited from native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (Non-NSs) of English, in two different email request situations. The two email request situations in this study have different levels of imposition, where the email request in situation 1 is considered more of an imposition than the email request in situation 2. It is thus expected that email requests in situation 1 would exhibit more politeness features than email requests in situation 2.

Analysis of the email request composite …

L’Usage De La Rhétorique Émotionnelle Dans Les Récits De Jean Hatzfeld, Michael Rinn

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In France, the books of Jean Hatzfeld -- journalist and writer -- have played a key role for the public opinion to become aware of the tragedy of the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi in 1994. Our paper aims to show how the discourse strategy of Jean Hatzfeld aims to influence the reader by using emotions. We would like to know how this rhetoric of emotions relies on specific cultural codes which are largely western centered. Our thesis is that since Auschwitz, those codes have constructed an argumentative framework for contemporary understanding of passion and pain in discourse.

Brevity, By Laurence Goldstein, Monica Mcmillan, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Bilingual Typography: Study Of The Linguistic Landscape Of Jeddah, Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, Shayna Tova Blum

Faculty and Staff Publications

Abstract: With the rise of globalization and the spread of Western culture across the globe, the use of English as an “international” language is often represented in bilingual and multilingual typographic signage. Throughout the Middle East North Africa and the Gulf region, the integration of Arabic and Latin letterforms is commonly viewed within the signage of storefronts, street signs, advertising billboards, and informational materials. This paper explores the use of bilingual/multilingual typography within the linguistic landscape of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Revisiting Pragmatic Abilities In Autism Spectrum Disorder, Jessica De Villiers, Brooke Myers, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

In a 2007 paper, we argued that speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) exhibit pragmatic abilities which are surprising given the usual understanding of communication in that group. That is, it is commonly reported that people diagnosed with an ASD have trouble with metaphor, irony, conversational implicature and other non-literal language. This is not a matter of trouble with knowledge and application of rules of grammar. The difficulties lie, rather, in successful communicative interaction. Though we did find pragmatic errors within literal talk, the transcribed conversations we studied showed many, many successes. A second paper reinforced our finding of a …

Digital Diagramming: Adapting A Tried And True Pedagogy To A Digital Environment, Mary Lynne Gasaway Hill

Faculty Publications

With the move away from formal grammatical instruction in many US primary and secondary schools over the past thirty years, college writing teachers often find themselves dealing with student papers riddled with basic syntactic errors. Sentence diagramming, which requires students to parse a sentence into its most basic components, provides a method to assist students in mastering syntactic fundamentals.

Pronominal Complex Predicates In Colloquial Persian, Ghazaleh Kazeminejad

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Pronominal complex predicates in colloquial Persian are periphrastic constructions with an idiosyncratic syntactic pattern. They show a peculiar behavior compared to the regular agreement system in Persian, and they are the only construction in Persian which requires the obligatory presence of a pronominal enclitic. This work is an attempt to analyze this construction in order to find its function. For this purpose, a lexical semantic classification of them was proposed, which helped in presenting a new analysis. It was found out that this construction is used to express a particular diathesis in which the topic of the sentence (determined according …

Hykss: Hybrid Keyword And Semantic Search, Andrew J. Zitzelberger, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Del T. Scott

Faculty Publications

Keyword search suffers from a number of issues: ambiguity, synonymy, and an inability to handle semantic constraints. Semantic search helps resolve these issues but is limited by the quality of annotations which are likely to be incomplete or imprecise. Hybrid search, a search technique that combines the merits of both keyword and semantic search, appears to be a promising solution. In this paper we describe and evaluate HyKSS, a hybrid search system driven by extraction ontologies for both annotation creation and query interpretation. For displaying results, HyKSS uses a dynamic ranking algorithm. We show that over data sets of short …

To The Jew First: A Socio-Historical And Biblical-Theological Analysis Of The Pauline Teaching Of `Election' In Light Of Second Temple Jewish Patterns Of Thought, Anthony Thornhill

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Paul's "doctrine" of election has remained a controversial and enigmatic topic for centuries. Few studies, however, have approached Paul's doctrine through the context of Second Temple Judaism. This study examines Paul's view of election through the lens of Second Temple Jewish texts written prior to 70 CE. In doing so, it is argued that the best framework through which to view Paul's discussion of election is through a primarily corporate model of election. While such a model is rooted in Judaism, Paul departs from his Jewish contemporaries in arguing that the locus of election is in God's Messiah, Jesus.

Moore’S Paradox, Direct Doxastic Voluntarism, And Atheist Distrust, Kyle Thompson

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

The concept of belief is analyzed and then discussed within the context of the current climate of atheist distrust in America. To begin, Moore’s Paradox, and its relationship to an important claim made by Wittgenstein regarding false beliefs, is explored. Next, the definition of belief that results from affirming Wittgenstein’s claim is outlined and subsequently defended from an attempted refutation constructed by John N. Williams. The defended definition of belief, which regards direct doxastic voluntarism as false, is then used to argue that atheists do not directly choose to not believe in any gods so as to evade moral responsibility.

“But That Actually Happened!” Exploring The Speech Genre Of Brainstorming, Jennifer Herbert

Slavic Studies Student Projects and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Semiotic Ecology And Linguistic Complexity Of An Online Game World, Steven L. Thorne, Ingrid Fischer, Xiaofei Lu

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Multiplayer online games form complex semiotic ecologies that include game-generated texts, player-to-player communication and collaboration, and associated websites that support in-game play. This article describes an exploratory study of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) World of Warcraft (WoW), with specific attention to its qualities as a setting for second language (L2) use and development. This empirical study seeks to answer the following question: What is the nature of the linguistic ecology that WoW players are exposed to? Many studies have described the developmental opportunities presented by commercially available gaming environments (e.g., Gee, 2003, 2007), their value as sites of …

Tuturan Tindakan Komunikatif Subjek Diri Dalam Wacana Narasi, Heri Suwignyo

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

Placing self-autonomy of human beings as purely rational subjects represents one extreme, while positioning rational human subjects as entirely dependent on psychological and socio-economic relations represents the other extreme. This study aims to explain how the main character, Minke, in narrative discourse addresses these two extremes. The data in this research were in the form of textual units analyzed using Bühler’s semiotic model. The results of the study show that there are three ways used by subjects to express themselves: (1) the symptomic way, expressed through validity claims of honesty; (2) the signalic way, shown through regulative speech using normative …

Is It Sexy? A Semiotic Analysis Of Sexual Imagery In Japanese And United States Advertising, Marc P. Pereira

Northwest Communication Association Conference Papers & Presentations

This study presents a semiotic analysis of several magazine advertisements in an attempt to explore body image and sexuality as it is illustrated in marketing campaigns in both the United States and Japan. Each of the magazines from which the artifacts were drawn was published in 2011, and each presents a similar focus on fitness, fashion, and television in each country. A comparison of the sexuality portrayed in advertisements was conducted to explore similarities and differences. It was found that there is a difference in how sexual imagery was used between the United States and Japan, with the United States …

An Application Of Discourse Analysis Methodology In The Exegesis Of John 17, Thomas W. Hudgins

Liberty Theological Review

This study applies discourse analysis methodology to the study of the seventeenth chapter of John. Instead of adopting the typical three-fold division of Jesus' prayer based upon the three referents (Jesus, the immediate disciples, and future disciples), greater attention is given to Jesus' requests and final commitment, the mainline verbs. By giving more structural significance to the mainline verbs, the structural division and natural outline of Jesus' prayer become more evident.

Whatever: Prosodic Context Cues And Their Influence On Pragmatic Meaning, Pamela Kathleen Wahler

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis examines real language in use to observe the different intonation contours associated with the discourse marker "whatever" to see if or how these contours contribute to the pragmatic meaning associated with the different functions. Interactional sociolinguistic and conversational analysis approach to investigate the different pragmatic meaning associated with the discourse marker "whatever" were employed to carry out the analysis. In addition, corpus linguistic methodology was used to gather data to investigate the different pragmatic meanings of the word "whatever."

Analisis Kata Sifat Bahasa Melayu Berdasarkan Data Korpus Berkomputer., Norliza Hj. Jamaluddin

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study highlights the property of Malay language adjectives based on computer corpus data. Using 150,000 corpus data, the actual property of Malay language adjectives produced by native speaker could be explained in detail. Through corpus data, adjective formula/model managed to be developed as the language data focused were produced naturally. Therefore, the need to form Malay language sentences to suit the formula were avoidable. As such, the research based on data corpus is different form research adopting “theory first” approach which compares language data to the existing language formula/model. This research utilizes functional approach in which the emphasis is …

A Sociopragmatic Study Of Linguistic Politeness In Iranian Requests And Apologies., Mohsen Shahrokhi

Student Works (2010-2019)

To tap the native speakers’ perception of request and apology speech acts situations, this study investigated the realization of request and apology speech acts in single-sex discourse of Persian males. The study explored the variability of requests and apologies due to such context-external variables as social distance and social dominance as well as context-internal variable to categorize and tabulate the request and apology strategies employed in Persian male discourse. The relevant data was collected through Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and audiorecorded Role-Play from among Persian males in situations where the social distance between the interlocutors was a binary valued variable, …

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 …

Timing In The Performance Of Jokes, Salvatore Attardo, Lucy Pickering

Faculty Publications

The notion of timing in humor is often mentioned as a very significant issue, and yet very little has been written about it. The paper reviews the scant literature on the subject and narrows down the definition of timing as comprising pauses and speech rate. The discussions of timing in the literature see it either as a speeding up or slowing down of speech rate. Using data collected from twenty joke performances, we show that speakers do not significantly raise or lower their speech rate at and around the punch line. The other common assumption is that punch lines are …