The abstract is one of the most important sections in a research article (RA) because it is the first section researchers read to determine whether it is relevant to their research. The abstract provides an overview or summary of the entire article. In the dentistry discipline, the RA abstract can either be structured using headings or written as a summary. However, subdisciplinary investigations of intradisciplinary (within the same discipline) variations of move structures in dentistry RA abstracts are lacking. This study aimed to investigate the prototypical rhetorical move structure realizations of 119 English RA abstracts in eight dentistry disciplines: Oral Sciences, Periodontics, Restorative Dentistry, Endodontics, Operative Dentistry, Prosthodontics, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, and Orthodontics. It also aimed to investigate whether there are any intradisciplinary variations and/or similarities between the eight dentistry subdisciplines in terms of move sequence and length. The findings showed a lack of intradisciplinary variations in the rhetorical four-move structure (Purpose-Method-Result-Conclusion) across the eight dentistry subdisciplines. The Introduction/Background move was not present in all the dentistry subdisciplines; therefore, it is optional in five subdisciplines but conventional in the Oral Sciences, Endodontics, and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery subdisciplines since its occurrence exceeded 60 per cent of investigated RA abstracts of those subdisciplines. The analysis of the move lengths indicated the importance of the Methods and the Results moves in dental research discourse because each move constituted over 25 per cent of text space. The findings revealed the importance of drawing learners’ attention to the research gap when establishing the context for a study. Future studies may employ the proposed move-analysis model for RA abstract analyses in other academic disciplines.
{"title":"A MOVE STRUCTURE MODEL FOR DENTISTRY RESEARCH ARTICLE ABSTRACTS: A GENRE-BASED STUDY OF VARIATIONS AND SIMILARITIES IN EIGHT DENTISTRY SUBDISCIPLINES","authors":"H. Alyousef","doi":"10.5817/di2021-1-25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/di2021-1-25","url":null,"abstract":"The abstract is one of the most important sections in a research article (RA) because it is the first section researchers read to determine whether it is relevant to their research. The abstract provides an overview or summary of the entire article. In the dentistry discipline, the RA abstract can either be structured using headings or written as a summary. However, subdisciplinary investigations of intradisciplinary (within the same discipline) variations of move structures in dentistry RA abstracts are lacking. This study aimed to investigate the prototypical rhetorical move structure realizations of 119 English RA abstracts in eight dentistry disciplines: Oral Sciences, Periodontics, Restorative Dentistry, Endodontics, Operative Dentistry, Prosthodontics, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, and Orthodontics. It also aimed to investigate whether there are any intradisciplinary variations and/or similarities between the eight dentistry subdisciplines in terms of move sequence and length. The findings showed a lack of intradisciplinary variations in the rhetorical four-move structure (Purpose-Method-Result-Conclusion) across the eight dentistry subdisciplines. The Introduction/Background move was not present in all the dentistry subdisciplines; therefore, it is optional in five subdisciplines but conventional in the Oral Sciences, Endodontics, and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery subdisciplines since its occurrence exceeded 60 per cent of investigated RA abstracts of those subdisciplines. The analysis of the move lengths indicated the importance of the Methods and the Results moves in dental research discourse because each move constituted over 25 per cent of text space. The findings revealed the importance of drawing learners’ attention to the research gap when establishing the context for a study. Future studies may employ the proposed move-analysis model for RA abstract analyses in other academic disciplines.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42071147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study sets out to examine the British Prime Minister Theresa May’s speeches delivered through her premiership. It aims to unveil the ideological discursive formation of Brexit after the referendum, and to investigate the way May squares the rhetoric to persuade the general public and the British/European political Elites to deliver the Brexit deal, though she campaigned pro-European Britain. I conduct a corpus-assisted discourse study approach, using discourse analysis methods and corpus linguistics tools for a case study of a purpose-built corpus of the Prime Minister speeches (2016-2019). The analysis revealed that the Brexit representation eschewed any identifi cation with ‘Europe’ and boosted Eurosceptic sentiments by (1) rationalizing the decision to leave the European Union; (2) proposing a better future after Brexit; (3) appealing to the British people’s emotion to support the Brexit deal.
{"title":"THE DISCURSIVE FORMULATION OF BREXIT: DECISION, OPPORTUNITY AND NEEDFUL AGREEMENT","authors":"Sadiq Almaged","doi":"10.5817/di2021-1-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/di2021-1-5","url":null,"abstract":"This study sets out to examine the British Prime Minister Theresa May’s speeches delivered through her premiership. It aims to unveil the ideological discursive formation of Brexit after the referendum, and to investigate the way May squares the rhetoric to persuade the general public and the British/European political Elites to deliver the Brexit deal, though she campaigned pro-European Britain. I conduct a corpus-assisted discourse study approach, using discourse analysis methods and corpus linguistics tools for a case study of a purpose-built corpus of the Prime Minister speeches (2016-2019). The analysis revealed that the Brexit representation eschewed any identifi cation with ‘Europe’ and boosted Eurosceptic sentiments by (1) rationalizing the decision to leave the European Union; (2) proposing a better future after Brexit; (3) appealing to the British people’s emotion to support the Brexit deal.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45006556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
According to Alo and Mesthrie (2008), Nigerian English (NigE) becomes increasingly more influenced by American English (AmE), due to contact with American-trained professionals among other factors (cf. Gut 2008, Jowitt 1991). The online micro-blogging service Twitter offers potential communication with a vast number of English natives around the globe, using English in a vernacular usage domain, among other domains (or genres such as a news tweet vs a private tweet). With its foundation in 2006, Twitter is a new communication technology, which may indicate that it is used predominantly by “younger” urban people, and which may influence linguistic choices. The question I attempt to answer is whether Twitter influences NigE such that the British English (BrE) heritage of the country is contested by AmE influence. In this paper, I focus on the usage of prepositions and orthographic realizations of lemmata ending in -o(u)r, which can be categorized as BrE and AmE origin, respectively, in a NigE Twitter Corpus compiled in 2016-17 (13 mill. words). These features’ frequencies are contrasted with those of the Nigerian component of GloWbE (Davies 2013). Results from chi-squared tests suggest that AmE prepositions increasingly enter NigE Twitter discourse. Differences in spelling tend towards American English, but are not statistically significant. The only exception is the lemma labour, which is more often used in its British English spelling variant (χ2 = 26.30; df = 1; p one-tailed < 0.001).
{"title":"PROTEST AMERICAN ENGLISH INFLUENCE OR PROTEST AGAINST IT? CHANGING PREPOSITIONS IN NIGERIAN TWITTER ENGLISH","authors":"Matthias Hofmann","doi":"10.5817/di2020-2-55","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/di2020-2-55","url":null,"abstract":"According to Alo and Mesthrie (2008), Nigerian English (NigE) becomes increasingly more influenced by American English (AmE), due to contact with American-trained professionals among other factors (cf. Gut 2008, Jowitt 1991). The online micro-blogging service Twitter offers potential communication with a vast number of English natives around the globe, using English in a vernacular usage domain, among other domains (or genres such as a news tweet vs a private tweet). With its foundation in 2006, Twitter is a new communication technology, which may indicate that it is used predominantly by “younger” urban people, and which may influence linguistic choices. The question I attempt to answer is whether Twitter influences NigE such that the British English (BrE) heritage of the country is contested by AmE influence. In this paper, I focus on the usage of prepositions and orthographic realizations of lemmata ending in -o(u)r, which can be categorized as BrE and AmE origin, respectively, in a NigE Twitter Corpus compiled in 2016-17 (13 mill. words). These features’ frequencies are contrasted with those of the Nigerian component of GloWbE (Davies 2013). Results from chi-squared tests suggest that AmE prepositions increasingly enter NigE Twitter discourse. Differences in spelling tend towards American English, but are not statistically significant. The only exception is the lemma labour, which is more often used in its British English spelling variant (χ2 = 26.30; df = 1; p one-tailed < 0.001).","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44169164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study revisits the usage of I think in courtroom interaction based on transcripts from a murder trial. The analysis focuses on the structural diversity of I think and some of its variant forms, and it demonstrates pragmatic functions associated with the individual patterns. As the data reveal, I think performs the roles reported in earlier studies (discourse marker, hedge, booster, face-saving device, opinion marker, mindsay marker) as well as increases epistemic distance and decreases the degree of imposition in courtroom questioning. The findings obtained in the current research are also compared with Kaltenböck’s (2013) results documenting various uses of I think and other comment clauses in diachronic spoken data. This comparison demonstrates that, on the one hand, well-established patterns involving I think are frequent in the courtroom data and, on the other, that the recent trends with variant forms of I think – which have been identified in non-specialist settings – are scantily represented.
{"title":"VERB PATTERNS IN TRIAL DISCOURSE: THE CASE OF I THINK","authors":"Magdalena Szczyrbak","doi":"10.5817/di2020-2-119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/di2020-2-119","url":null,"abstract":"This study revisits the usage of I think in courtroom interaction based on transcripts from a murder trial. The analysis focuses on the structural diversity of I think and some of its variant forms, and it demonstrates pragmatic functions associated with the individual patterns. As the data reveal, I think performs the roles reported in earlier studies (discourse marker, hedge, booster, face-saving device, opinion marker, mindsay marker) as well as increases epistemic distance and decreases the degree of imposition in courtroom questioning. The findings obtained in the current research are also compared with Kaltenböck’s (2013) results documenting various uses of I think and other comment clauses in diachronic spoken data. This comparison demonstrates that, on the one hand, well-established patterns involving I think are frequent in the courtroom data and, on the other, that the recent trends with variant forms of I think – which have been identified in non-specialist settings – are scantily represented.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47671793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines the application of text-act theory in literary translation, attempting to evaluate its efficacy in the analysis of larger texts, such as novels. The texts that form the material basis for this examination are the Slovak novel Dunaj v Amerike (2010) and its (authorized, unpublished) English translation Danube in America (2016). The main research objective is to compare the performative function in the Slovak source text (ST) and the English target text (TT), implementing the concept of the pragmatic translator as suggested by Morini (2008, 2012). Aiming to discover the relationship between the performative function of the TT and its actual perception by TT readers, the research project was realised involving the participation of the translators 1 and TT recipients.
本文考察了文本行为理论在文学翻译中的应用,试图在分析小说等大文本时评估其有效性。构成本次考试材料基础的文本是斯洛伐克小说《Dunaj v Amerike》(2010)及其(授权、未出版)英文译本《Danube in America》(2016)。主要研究目的是比较斯洛伐克语源文本(ST)和英语目标文本(TT)中的表现功能,实现Morini(20082012)提出的语用译者的概念。为了发现TT的表演功能与其读者实际感知之间的关系,本研究项目由翻译人员1和TT接受者参与。
{"title":"EXPLORING THE PERFORMATIVE FUNCTION IN LITERARY TRANSLATION: THE TRANSLATOR’S PURPOSE","authors":"Gabriela Miššíková","doi":"10.5817/di2019-2-29","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/di2019-2-29","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the application of text-act theory in literary translation, attempting to evaluate its efficacy in the analysis of larger texts, such as novels. The texts that form the material basis for this examination are the Slovak novel Dunaj v Amerike (2010) and its (authorized, unpublished) English translation Danube in America (2016). The main research objective is to compare the performative function in the Slovak source text (ST) and the English target text (TT), implementing the concept of the pragmatic translator as suggested by Morini (2008, 2012). Aiming to discover the relationship between the performative function of the TT and its actual perception by TT readers, the research project was realised involving the participation of the translators 1 and TT recipients.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49347221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article reports on a study into the use of a subset of stance markers in the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, and it reveals how the choice of these markers is affected by the speakers’ interactional roles and communicative purposes. It looks in particular at the ways the Supreme Court nominee and his accuser deploy “Believing” mental verbs (think, believe, understand) and common communication verbs (say, tell, talk) to orient themselves to the epistemic domain. The investigation also demonstrates how the questioners, i.e. the Senators and the prosecutor, manifest their attitudes. In sum, the analysis suggests that Judge Kavanaugh prefers external domains of reference (communication verbs) whereas Christine B. Ford favours internal domains of reference (mental verbs). In this way, rational and credibility appeals (logos and ethos) are juxtaposed with affective appeals (pathos). Consequently, it is posited, patterns with mental and communication verbs determine the degree of certainty projected by the testifying parties.
{"title":"EPISTEMIC STANCE IN THE KAVANAUGH CONFIRMATION HEARING: FOCUS ON MENTAL AND COMMUNICATION VERBS","authors":"Magdalena Szczyrbak","doi":"10.5817/di2019-2-72","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/di2019-2-72","url":null,"abstract":"This article reports on a study into the use of a subset of stance markers in the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, and it reveals how the choice of these markers is affected by the speakers’ interactional roles and communicative purposes. It looks in particular at the ways the Supreme Court nominee and his accuser deploy “Believing” mental verbs (think, believe, understand) and common communication verbs (say, tell, talk) to orient themselves to the epistemic domain. The investigation also demonstrates how the questioners, i.e. the Senators and the prosecutor, manifest their attitudes. In sum, the analysis suggests that Judge Kavanaugh prefers external domains of reference (communication verbs) whereas Christine B. Ford favours internal domains of reference (mental verbs). In this way, rational and credibility appeals (logos and ethos) are juxtaposed with affective appeals (pathos). Consequently, it is posited, patterns with mental and communication verbs determine the degree of certainty projected by the testifying parties.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43147041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines modal resources in the mediatised discourse of social transformation in Nigeria with a view to showing how they are strategically used to code interpersonal meanings for enhanced and impactful delivery of messages of social transformation in the nation. Data for the study comprises texts on aspects of social transformation campaigns in Nigeria in the context of democracy, anti-corruption crusade, insecurity and domestic violence compiled as small corpora. The data comprises texts produced by government and non-governmental actors consisting of speeches, radio commentaries, jingles, printed texts, interviews, tweets and online newspaper comments and covers the period from March 2013 to March 2018. The five-year span was informed by the wide gamut of negative realities in the nation during the time frame which led to increased mediatisation of social transformation messages. Corpus-assisted critical discourse approach was employed for data analysis, using Fairclough’s (1989, revised 2015) dialectical relational approach, the corpus linguistic tool of Antconc, chi-square test on R-Studio and normalised relative frequencies. Data analysis revealed that the different participants in the discourse characteristically used different modal resources to reflect their power on the one hand and resistance on the other and to capture the intensity of their views and feelings on the actions required for Nigeria to experience genuine social transformation. The study concludes that even though the discourse is largely ideational, modal resources are deployed for emphasising the urgency and seriousness of the issues in the ideational contents of the discourse.
{"title":"A CORPUS-ASSISTED CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MODALITY IN SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION CAMPAIGNS IN NIGERIA","authors":"M. Ademilokun","doi":"10.5817/di2019-2-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/di2019-2-5","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines modal resources in the mediatised discourse of social transformation in Nigeria with a view to showing how they are strategically used to code interpersonal meanings for enhanced and impactful delivery of messages of social transformation in the nation. Data for the study comprises texts on aspects of social transformation campaigns in Nigeria in the context of democracy, anti-corruption crusade, insecurity and domestic violence compiled as small corpora. The data comprises texts produced by government and non-governmental actors consisting of speeches, radio commentaries, jingles, printed texts, interviews, tweets and online newspaper comments and covers the period from March 2013 to March 2018. The five-year span was informed by the wide gamut of negative realities in the nation during the time frame which led to increased mediatisation of social transformation messages. Corpus-assisted critical discourse approach was employed for data analysis, using Fairclough’s (1989, revised 2015) dialectical relational approach, the corpus linguistic tool of Antconc, chi-square test on R-Studio and normalised relative frequencies. Data analysis revealed that the different participants in the discourse characteristically used different modal resources to reflect their power on the one hand and resistance on the other and to capture the intensity of their views and feelings on the actions required for Nigeria to experience genuine social transformation. The study concludes that even though the discourse is largely ideational, modal resources are deployed for emphasising the urgency and seriousness of the issues in the ideational contents of the discourse.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48469910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During the last two decades, numerous studies have focused on linguistic features of academic writing. One of these features, which appears frequently in academic writing and which writers need to improve their use of, is the it-extraposition construction. The existing literature on subject it-extraposition has focused on syntactic analysis (types and patterns) of this construction and little attention has been paid to semantic analysis (meanings); thus, this study aims to explore the types, patterns and meanings of subject it-extraposition used in Applied Linguistics research articles. The study was run on a corpus of 57 Applied Linguistics research articles, wherein the common extraposed subject clauses were the that-clause followed by the infinitive to-clause. It was also evident that minimal attention was devoted to the use of the wh-clause and the -ing participle clause. Concerning patterns of it-extraposition subject clause, subject + predicate and subject + predicate + complement were the most commonly utilised in Applied Linguistics research articles. The findings showed that Applied Linguistics writers were more concerned with expressing and evaluating their opinions and claims semantically. This study could help novice writers, especially novice non-native writers, to increase their awareness regarding how such construction is used syntactically and semantically by expert writers in writing research articles.
{"title":"SUBJECT IT-EXTRAPOSITION IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS RESEARCH ARTICLES: SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS","authors":"S. F. Ebrahimi, R. Moghaddam","doi":"10.5817/DI2019-1-29","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2019-1-29","url":null,"abstract":"During the last two decades, numerous studies have focused on linguistic features of academic writing. One of these features, which appears frequently in academic writing and which writers need to improve their use of, is the it-extraposition construction. The existing literature on subject it-extraposition has focused on syntactic analysis (types and patterns) of this construction and little attention has been paid to semantic analysis (meanings); thus, this study aims to explore the types, patterns and meanings of subject it-extraposition used in Applied Linguistics research articles. The study was run on a corpus of 57 Applied Linguistics research articles, wherein the common extraposed subject clauses were the that-clause followed by the infinitive to-clause. It was also evident that minimal attention was devoted to the use of the wh-clause and the -ing participle clause. Concerning patterns of it-extraposition subject clause, subject + predicate and subject + predicate + complement were the most commonly utilised in Applied Linguistics research articles. The findings showed that Applied Linguistics writers were more concerned with expressing and evaluating their opinions and claims semantically. This study could help novice writers, especially novice non-native writers, to increase their awareness regarding how such construction is used syntactically and semantically by expert writers in writing research articles.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43752757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper provides a cross-cultural analysis of selected linguistic realizations of persuasion in technical manuals as typical representatives of technical discourse. It aims to identify differences and similarities between the ways persuasive power is expressed in this type of specialized discourse in English and Czech L1 texts. The data comprises manuals to various technical devices and amounts to slightly more than 200,000 words. This specialized corpus (15 manuals in English and 15 in Czech) is assumed to enable the comparison of the ways in which technical communicators express persuasion. The investigation, which is conducted from the perspectives of corpus analysis and discourse analysis, focuses on the ways in which the interactive and dynamic process of persuasion is explicitly manifested: 1. directly (i.e. using directives expressed by imperatives of full verbs, modals of obligation, necessity, prohibition, and predicative adjectives expressing the writer’s judgement of the necessity to perform an action) and 2. indirectly (i.e. using other language means than directives, such as other modals than those related to obligation, necessity or prohibition, conditional clauses, rhetorical questions). The findings are expected to be relevant and applicable in the education domain to raise technical writers’ awareness of directives as useful persuasive strategies suitable for the production of effective well-written technical manuals since their quality including the appropriate degree of persuasiveness can influence prospective consumers to make a purchase of a particular technical device.
{"title":"CROSS-CULTURAL VARIATION IN THE EXPRESSION OF PERSUASIVE POWER IN THE GENRE OF TECHNICAL MANUALS: THE CASE OF DIRECTIVES","authors":"Renata Povolná","doi":"10.5817/DI2019-1-47","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2019-1-47","url":null,"abstract":"The paper provides a cross-cultural analysis of selected linguistic realizations of persuasion in technical manuals as typical representatives of technical discourse. It aims to identify differences and similarities between the ways persuasive power is expressed in this type of specialized discourse in English and Czech L1 texts. The data comprises manuals to various technical devices and amounts to slightly more than 200,000 words. This specialized corpus (15 manuals in English and 15 in Czech) is assumed to enable the comparison of the ways in which technical communicators express persuasion. The investigation, which is conducted from the perspectives of corpus analysis and discourse analysis, focuses on the ways in which the interactive and dynamic process of persuasion is explicitly manifested: 1. directly (i.e. using directives expressed by imperatives of full verbs, modals of obligation, necessity, prohibition, and predicative adjectives expressing the writer’s judgement of the necessity to perform an action) and 2. indirectly (i.e. using other language means than directives, such as other modals than those related to obligation, necessity or prohibition, conditional clauses, rhetorical questions). The findings are expected to be relevant and applicable in the education domain to raise technical writers’ awareness of directives as useful persuasive strategies suitable for the production of effective well-written technical manuals since their quality including the appropriate degree of persuasiveness can influence prospective consumers to make a purchase of a particular technical device.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45723347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pattaya is one of the most popular tourist destinations attracting international travelers. Given its uniquely cosmopolitan nature, it can be regarded as one of the most multilingual and multicultural areas, making it linguistically stand out from other big cities. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the linguistic landscape of Pattaya’s two main streets by analyzing the data (542 signs) collected from commercial signs. The results present the variation and dominance of the use of languages in those public spaces. By highlighting the differences among the various linguistic landscapes, it draws on the factors of business types and population dominance.
{"title":"A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS OF PATTAYA, THAILAND’S SIN CITY","authors":"Keerati Prasert, Pattamawan Jimarkon Zilli","doi":"10.5817/DI2019-1-75","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2019-1-75","url":null,"abstract":"Pattaya is one of the most popular tourist destinations attracting international travelers. Given its uniquely cosmopolitan nature, it can be regarded as one of the most multilingual and multicultural areas, making it linguistically stand out from other big cities. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the linguistic landscape of Pattaya’s two main streets by analyzing the data (542 signs) collected from commercial signs. The results present the variation and dominance of the use of languages in those public spaces. By highlighting the differences among the various linguistic landscapes, it draws on the factors of business types and population dominance.","PeriodicalId":38177,"journal":{"name":"Discourse and Interaction","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49279937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}