Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2023.2223506
Timothy Shea, Andy Gibson, Anita Szakay, Felicity Cox
ABSTRACT The fricated allophone of coda /t/ is a variant in which full occlusion of the alveolar stop is not achieved, resulting in the consonant instead being produced via frication. Fricated /t/ is attested in several varieties of English from the British Isles and Southern Hemisphere. While awareness of the variant can be found in Australian popular culture, it has been the focus of few sociophonetic studies. Here we report on an experiment which investigated the social meanings that Australian English (AusE) speakers ascribe to fricated /t/. We used an online matched guise paradigm in which listeners were presented with short utterances from six speakers that had been acoustically manipulated to differ only in the variant of phrase-final /t/. Using a series of sliding scales, 100 listeners recorded their impressions of the speakers, both in terms of the speakers’ social identity and favourability. We hypothesized that AusE listeners would associate fricated /t/ with the descriptors ‘urban’ and ‘educated’, and that, for the three male speakers, fricated and released /t/ would be associated with the description ‘gay’. Partially consistent with the first hypothesis, results revealed that tokens were rated significantly more educated in the fricated guise than the unreleased guise, but this effect was driven by one male speaker who was also rated ‘straight’ and ‘rural’. Guise did not significantly predict ratings of ruralness, nor were male speakers rated significantly more gay in any specific guise. Additionally, straight males rated the accent of the gayest rated male speaker least like their own, unlike gay males or females and others. It is posited that the articulation associated with fricated /t/ situates it within an indexical field pointing to education, but that the effect of this is modulated by the presence of other indicators or markers.
{"title":"Australian English speakers’ attitudes to fricated coda /t/","authors":"Timothy Shea, Andy Gibson, Anita Szakay, Felicity Cox","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2023.2223506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2023.2223506","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The fricated allophone of coda /t/ is a variant in which full occlusion of the alveolar stop is not achieved, resulting in the consonant instead being produced via frication. Fricated /t/ is attested in several varieties of English from the British Isles and Southern Hemisphere. While awareness of the variant can be found in Australian popular culture, it has been the focus of few sociophonetic studies. Here we report on an experiment which investigated the social meanings that Australian English (AusE) speakers ascribe to fricated /t/. We used an online matched guise paradigm in which listeners were presented with short utterances from six speakers that had been acoustically manipulated to differ only in the variant of phrase-final /t/. Using a series of sliding scales, 100 listeners recorded their impressions of the speakers, both in terms of the speakers’ social identity and favourability. We hypothesized that AusE listeners would associate fricated /t/ with the descriptors ‘urban’ and ‘educated’, and that, for the three male speakers, fricated and released /t/ would be associated with the description ‘gay’. Partially consistent with the first hypothesis, results revealed that tokens were rated significantly more educated in the fricated guise than the unreleased guise, but this effect was driven by one male speaker who was also rated ‘straight’ and ‘rural’. Guise did not significantly predict ratings of ruralness, nor were male speakers rated significantly more gay in any specific guise. Additionally, straight males rated the accent of the gayest rated male speaker least like their own, unlike gay males or females and others. It is posited that the articulation associated with fricated /t/ situates it within an indexical field pointing to education, but that the effect of this is modulated by the presence of other indicators or markers.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"43 1","pages":"87 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42160207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2023.2217412
Thomas Ennever, Mitchell Browne
ABSTRACT About one third of the Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia employ pronominal cross-referencing, yet systematic typological patterns of non-subject argument registration remain unexamined. We analyze this variation from two perspectives by surveying 22 Pama-Nyungan languages. Firstly, we survey which kinds of case-marked arguments can be cross-referenced by these pronominal systems. From this perspective, we find that a number of nominal expressions marked with so-called ‘local’ cases (e.g. locative, allative, ablative, etc.) can be cross-referenced when instantiating certain argument relations. Secondly, we find striking cross-linguistic predictability in how such relations, which we descriptively group as ‘locational’, are morphologically integrated into the pronominal paradigms. We show that the variation can be captured by two major parameters: firstly, whether locational cross-referencing utilizes the same form as another non-subject series, or whether locational cross-referencing is serviced by a unique series formally built off another non-subject series. In this latter case there is further variation as to which other non-subject series provides the base for the dedicated locational series. These parameters result in six surface pattern types, and we show that each of the patterns is instantiated in languages of the survey.
{"title":"Cross-referencing of non-subject arguments in Pama-Nyungan languages","authors":"Thomas Ennever, Mitchell Browne","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2023.2217412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2023.2217412","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT About one third of the Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia employ pronominal cross-referencing, yet systematic typological patterns of non-subject argument registration remain unexamined. We analyze this variation from two perspectives by surveying 22 Pama-Nyungan languages. Firstly, we survey which kinds of case-marked arguments can be cross-referenced by these pronominal systems. From this perspective, we find that a number of nominal expressions marked with so-called ‘local’ cases (e.g. locative, allative, ablative, etc.) can be cross-referenced when instantiating certain argument relations. Secondly, we find striking cross-linguistic predictability in how such relations, which we descriptively group as ‘locational’, are morphologically integrated into the pronominal paradigms. We show that the variation can be captured by two major parameters: firstly, whether locational cross-referencing utilizes the same form as another non-subject series, or whether locational cross-referencing is serviced by a unique series formally built off another non-subject series. In this latter case there is further variation as to which other non-subject series provides the base for the dedicated locational series. These parameters result in six surface pattern types, and we show that each of the patterns is instantiated in languages of the survey.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"43 1","pages":"1 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47215329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2023.2218270
Mark Harvey, Nay San, Michael Proctor, Forrest Panther, Myfany Turpin
ABSTRACT There are three phonological hypotheses on the Kaytetye segmental inventory. Hypothesis 1 proposes 30 segments: four monophthongs, one diphthong and 25 consonants. Hypothesis 2 proposes 54 segments: two monophthongs and 52 consonants. Hypothesis 3 proposes 55 segments: three monophthongs and 52 consonants. The choice between these three hypotheses has significant implications for models of phonological contrast, phonotactic organization, syllable structure and partial reduplication processes in Kaytetye. We evaluate the three hypotheses against evidence from these domains and find that Hypothesis 1 is the best supported phonological analysis. Companion analysis of the phonetic distribution and functional load of medial Kaytetye monophthong tokens was conducted by phonetically-trained transcribers, and compared with groupings of vowels obtained through unsupervised classification of first and second formant values using finite Gaussian mixture models. Both transcriber-perceived and machine-learnt categorizations agree that none of the four monophthongs are marginal, nor can their qualities be attributed to phonological context effects. These data demonstrate the importance of both phonological and phonetic evidence in evaluating the structure and properties of vowel systems in under-described languages.
{"title":"The Kaytetye segmental inventory","authors":"Mark Harvey, Nay San, Michael Proctor, Forrest Panther, Myfany Turpin","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2023.2218270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2023.2218270","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There are three phonological hypotheses on the Kaytetye segmental inventory. Hypothesis 1 proposes 30 segments: four monophthongs, one diphthong and 25 consonants. Hypothesis 2 proposes 54 segments: two monophthongs and 52 consonants. Hypothesis 3 proposes 55 segments: three monophthongs and 52 consonants. The choice between these three hypotheses has significant implications for models of phonological contrast, phonotactic organization, syllable structure and partial reduplication processes in Kaytetye. We evaluate the three hypotheses against evidence from these domains and find that Hypothesis 1 is the best supported phonological analysis. Companion analysis of the phonetic distribution and functional load of medial Kaytetye monophthong tokens was conducted by phonetically-trained transcribers, and compared with groupings of vowels obtained through unsupervised classification of first and second formant values using finite Gaussian mixture models. Both transcriber-perceived and machine-learnt categorizations agree that none of the four monophthongs are marginal, nor can their qualities be attributed to phonological context effects. These data demonstrate the importance of both phonological and phonetic evidence in evaluating the structure and properties of vowel systems in under-described languages.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"43 1","pages":"33 - 68"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47291368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2022.2149256
Haiping Long, F. Ursini, B. Heine, Yaohua Luo
ABSTRACT The source construction and the pathway for the formation of English epistemic adverbials are widely discussed in the literature. However, few studies to our knowledge have specifically discussed a hypothetical source construction of separate clauses and a hypothetical initial-to-medial pathway. Chinese guoran was first used as a separate clause, and later developed into an epistemic adverbial meaning ‘it really happens’. Diachronic investigations reveal that it followed a hypothetical initial-to-medial pathway leading from a clause-initial position to a clause-medial position. The hypothetical source construction and the hypothetical pathway are supported by diachronic changes of other epistemic adverbials in Chinese, and may be adopted to account for the formation of some epistemic adverbials in the other languages.
{"title":"From separate clause to epistemic adverbial, the neglected source construction and initial-to-medial pathway: Chinese guoran ‘it really happens’","authors":"Haiping Long, F. Ursini, B. Heine, Yaohua Luo","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2149256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2149256","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The source construction and the pathway for the formation of English epistemic adverbials are widely discussed in the literature. However, few studies to our knowledge have specifically discussed a hypothetical source construction of separate clauses and a hypothetical initial-to-medial pathway. Chinese guoran was first used as a separate clause, and later developed into an epistemic adverbial meaning ‘it really happens’. Diachronic investigations reveal that it followed a hypothetical initial-to-medial pathway leading from a clause-initial position to a clause-medial position. The hypothetical source construction and the hypothetical pathway are supported by diachronic changes of other epistemic adverbials in Chinese, and may be adopted to account for the formation of some epistemic adverbials in the other languages.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"226 - 250"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41343492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675
Gwendolyn Hyslop
ABSTRACT The birth of tone, or tonogenesis, has been an area of research for over a century, yet we are still unable to predict how and when a language will acquire tone. This article compiles a typology by researching tonogenesis from 40 different languages across a range of families. Each tonogenetic event within these languages is coded for syntagmatic position, manner and laryngeal setting of the tonogenetic trigger. I further make a distinction between ‘strict’ tonogenesis, when a language acquires tone for the first time, as something distinct from ‘broad’ tonogenesis, in which a tonal language develops additional tones. The results of this typology then reveal several novel findings, including the prevalence of onset-conditioned tonogenesis and the importance of sonority in strict tonogenesis. In summary, I show that the Vietnamese model is not applicable in most cases and that tonogenesis is a highly varied phenomenon, warranting further detailed study and a more refined model.
{"title":"Toward a typology of tonogenesis: Revising the model","authors":"Gwendolyn Hyslop","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The birth of tone, or tonogenesis, has been an area of research for over a century, yet we are still unable to predict how and when a language will acquire tone. This article compiles a typology by researching tonogenesis from 40 different languages across a range of families. Each tonogenetic event within these languages is coded for syntagmatic position, manner and laryngeal setting of the tonogenetic trigger. I further make a distinction between ‘strict’ tonogenesis, when a language acquires tone for the first time, as something distinct from ‘broad’ tonogenesis, in which a tonal language develops additional tones. The results of this typology then reveal several novel findings, including the prevalence of onset-conditioned tonogenesis and the importance of sonority in strict tonogenesis. In summary, I show that the Vietnamese model is not applicable in most cases and that tonogenesis is a highly varied phenomenon, warranting further detailed study and a more refined model.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"275 - 299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44957464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2023.2198078
Yuanhuang Zhang
ABSTRACT Negation and spatial experiences are basic to human cognition. While both should be indispensable to the exploration of each other, the relationship between them has seldom been touched upon. This study takes the Chinese negative marker mei (you) as a case study by investigating its evolutionary path in relation to spatial cognition. Drawing on corpus-based data across three historical stages before Modern Chinese, the study yields the following findings. First, the original meaning of mei involves dynamic spatial movement, which can extend to abstract domains. Second, rich concrete meanings of mei trigger semantic schematization at the second stage, spatial cognition playing a fundamental role. Third, the negative marker use of mei combines with you at the third stage, which is attributed to the fact that the spatial existence of you fits with the semantic component of existence in mei. The significance of the study lies in three aspects: first, the division of historical stages accords with the key turning points in the evolution of Chinese; second, the exploration follows a diachronic development, instead of being based merely on static performance; and third, this perspective sheds light on the role of spatial cognition in the conceptualization of negation in both Chinese and other languages.
{"title":"Negation and underlying spatial cognition: The evolution of Chinese mei (you) as a case study","authors":"Yuanhuang Zhang","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2023.2198078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2023.2198078","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Negation and spatial experiences are basic to human cognition. While both should be indispensable to the exploration of each other, the relationship between them has seldom been touched upon. This study takes the Chinese negative marker mei (you) as a case study by investigating its evolutionary path in relation to spatial cognition. Drawing on corpus-based data across three historical stages before Modern Chinese, the study yields the following findings. First, the original meaning of mei involves dynamic spatial movement, which can extend to abstract domains. Second, rich concrete meanings of mei trigger semantic schematization at the second stage, spatial cognition playing a fundamental role. Third, the negative marker use of mei combines with you at the third stage, which is attributed to the fact that the spatial existence of you fits with the semantic component of existence in mei. The significance of the study lies in three aspects: first, the division of historical stages accords with the key turning points in the evolution of Chinese; second, the exploration follows a diachronic development, instead of being based merely on static performance; and third, this perspective sheds light on the role of spatial cognition in the conceptualization of negation in both Chinese and other languages.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"323 - 347"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44303601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2022.2153580
Clair Hill
ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the functions of interactional devices used by co-tellers in multiparty stories in Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u, two closely related dialects of a Paman language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. Within the Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u speech community there is a strong cultural preference for multiparty storytelling – a preference which has been noted in a number of Aboriginal Australian contexts. This paper seeks to understand the mechanisms through which co-tellers in these multiparty narratives contribute to the story. It first discusses co-teller roles, and distinguishes three key narrator roles and orders of conduct associated with each. The analysis then focuses on the use of questions and evaluative comments used by one type of co-teller, supporting narrators. The following discussion demonstrates that questions and evaluative comments go beyond immediate functions of seeking information or spontaneous expressive reactions. They help to fulfil expectations on supporting narrators to engage actively in the talk. It is additionally shown that these devices have functions in highlighting key aspects of the story and developing stance in intricate ways that complement the main line of the storytelling. The analysis demonstrates the close coordination of co-tellers in constructing a story; piece-by-piece they collaboratively describe and evaluate the story events as a group, prioritizing a local and situated shared telling over other potential story goals like performance and progressivity of a plot. The analysis of Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u storytelling contributes to the field of interaction and narrative studies by furthering our understanding of the organization of storytelling in different cultures and languages contexts.
摘要本文分析了澳大利亚约克角半岛帕曼语的两种密切相关方言Umpila和Kuuku Ya 'u在多方故事中共同讲述者使用的互动装置的功能。在Umpila和Kuuku Ya 'u语言社区中,有一种强烈的文化偏好,即多方讲故事-这种偏好在许多澳大利亚土著语境中都有所体现。本文试图理解这些多方叙述中的共同讲述者对故事的贡献机制。首先讨论了共同讲述者的角色,并区分了三种主要的叙述者角色以及与之相关的行为准则。然后分析集中在一种类型的辅助叙述者所使用的问题和评价评论的使用上。下面的讨论表明,问题和评价性评论超越了寻求信息或自发表达反应的直接功能。它们有助于实现支持叙述者积极参与谈话的期望。此外,这些手段在突出故事的关键方面和以复杂的方式发展立场方面发挥了作用,补充了故事的主线。分析表明,共同讲述者在故事构建过程中的密切配合;他们作为一个团队,一块一块地合作描述和评估故事事件,优先考虑局部和位置的共享讲述,而不是其他潜在的故事目标,如情节的表现和进展。对乌姆皮拉语和库库语的分析有助于加深我们对不同文化和语言背景下讲故事组织的理解,从而有助于互动和叙事研究领域。
{"title":"Multiparty storytelling in Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u","authors":"Clair Hill","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2153580","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2153580","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the functions of interactional devices used by co-tellers in multiparty stories in Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u, two closely related dialects of a Paman language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. Within the Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u speech community there is a strong cultural preference for multiparty storytelling – a preference which has been noted in a number of Aboriginal Australian contexts. This paper seeks to understand the mechanisms through which co-tellers in these multiparty narratives contribute to the story. It first discusses co-teller roles, and distinguishes three key narrator roles and orders of conduct associated with each. The analysis then focuses on the use of questions and evaluative comments used by one type of co-teller, supporting narrators. The following discussion demonstrates that questions and evaluative comments go beyond immediate functions of seeking information or spontaneous expressive reactions. They help to fulfil expectations on supporting narrators to engage actively in the talk. It is additionally shown that these devices have functions in highlighting key aspects of the story and developing stance in intricate ways that complement the main line of the storytelling. The analysis demonstrates the close coordination of co-tellers in constructing a story; piece-by-piece they collaboratively describe and evaluate the story events as a group, prioritizing a local and situated shared telling over other potential story goals like performance and progressivity of a plot. The analysis of Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u storytelling contributes to the field of interaction and narrative studies by furthering our understanding of the organization of storytelling in different cultures and languages contexts.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"251 - 274"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42670831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2022.2148455
H. Bromhead
ABSTRACT Disasters occasion ways of speaking and writing in the societies in which they take place. Now, due to climate change, events such as wildfires, floods and heatwaves are becoming more severe and more frequent. Therefore, the climate crisis poses a challenge, not only materially, but discursively. Habitual vocabulary may no longer be appropriate, and there is a pull between these turns of phrase and newer ones informed by climate change. The article takes the case of Australia whose public discourse in English about ‘bushfires’ has been characterized by traditional vocabulary, focused on battling the elements. Through three examples, the study treats tensions between the habitual and the climate-informed in event names (e.g. Black Summer), a social category (volunteer firefighters) and a construction of political critique (I don’t hold a hose). The frame taken is semantically-enhanced discourse studies, inspired by natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) and other cultural takes. A transtextual approach is used, along with research from humanities and social science. The study finds that through the interplay between habitual and climate-informed vocabulary about ‘bushfires’, one can view conceptions of events, cultures, social relations, identities and relationships to places in Australia. Extreme weather formations and climate change formations cannot be easily separated.
{"title":"Tensions in talking about disasters: Habitual versus climate-informed – The case of bushfire vocabulary in Australia","authors":"H. Bromhead","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2148455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2148455","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Disasters occasion ways of speaking and writing in the societies in which they take place. Now, due to climate change, events such as wildfires, floods and heatwaves are becoming more severe and more frequent. Therefore, the climate crisis poses a challenge, not only materially, but discursively. Habitual vocabulary may no longer be appropriate, and there is a pull between these turns of phrase and newer ones informed by climate change. The article takes the case of Australia whose public discourse in English about ‘bushfires’ has been characterized by traditional vocabulary, focused on battling the elements. Through three examples, the study treats tensions between the habitual and the climate-informed in event names (e.g. Black Summer), a social category (volunteer firefighters) and a construction of political critique (I don’t hold a hose). The frame taken is semantically-enhanced discourse studies, inspired by natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) and other cultural takes. A transtextual approach is used, along with research from humanities and social science. The study finds that through the interplay between habitual and climate-informed vocabulary about ‘bushfires’, one can view conceptions of events, cultures, social relations, identities and relationships to places in Australia. Extreme weather formations and climate change formations cannot be easily separated.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"207 - 225"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46982576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2023.2180320
F. Jiang, Xuyan Qiu
ABSTRACT The changing landscape of scientific communication raises new academic contexts in which research postgraduate students are exposed to diversified forms of interaction and a less predictable audience. Against this backdrop Three Minute Thesis (3MT) presentations have emerged, although we have not yet developed sufficient knowledge about how students present their research work to diverse audiences. In this study, we compared 80 students’ hyping practice of using promotional language to embellish or exaggerate aspects of the same research in 3MT presentations and thesis abstracts to explore how they understand their disciplinary knowledge and its connection with different audiences, and how they adapt their discourse accordingly. Our findings show that students hyped more frequently in 3MT presentations, relying on adverbial affective markers and attending to the broad research area. In thesis abstracts, conversely, boosting hypes were mainly used, especially verb resources, to comment on certainty of knowledge claims and promote the research methods used in the doctoral research. We see the divergency as a likely consequence of different communicative purposes between the two genres, and the different academic status and power asymmetry between students and the audience of each genre. In addition, disciplinarity was noted. Students in the hard sciences made more use of hypes in their 3MT presentations than their peers in the soft sciences and were inclined to promote both broad and specific research areas and embellish the primacy attached to their research. This disciplinary hyping practice is perhaps related to the conceptual abstractness of scientific knowledge and its opaque connection with common wisdom and public interest. Therefore, this study reveals not only that hypes mark a speaker’s orientation to what and who is addressed, but also that students modulate academic persuasion to balance their promotion of results and claims against the discoursal expectations and knowledge bases of different audiences.
{"title":"“These findings are very astonishing”: Hyping of disciplinary research in 3MT presentations and thesis abstracts","authors":"F. Jiang, Xuyan Qiu","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2023.2180320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2023.2180320","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The changing landscape of scientific communication raises new academic contexts in which research postgraduate students are exposed to diversified forms of interaction and a less predictable audience. Against this backdrop Three Minute Thesis (3MT) presentations have emerged, although we have not yet developed sufficient knowledge about how students present their research work to diverse audiences. In this study, we compared 80 students’ hyping practice of using promotional language to embellish or exaggerate aspects of the same research in 3MT presentations and thesis abstracts to explore how they understand their disciplinary knowledge and its connection with different audiences, and how they adapt their discourse accordingly. Our findings show that students hyped more frequently in 3MT presentations, relying on adverbial affective markers and attending to the broad research area. In thesis abstracts, conversely, boosting hypes were mainly used, especially verb resources, to comment on certainty of knowledge claims and promote the research methods used in the doctoral research. We see the divergency as a likely consequence of different communicative purposes between the two genres, and the different academic status and power asymmetry between students and the audience of each genre. In addition, disciplinarity was noted. Students in the hard sciences made more use of hypes in their 3MT presentations than their peers in the soft sciences and were inclined to promote both broad and specific research areas and embellish the primacy attached to their research. This disciplinary hyping practice is perhaps related to the conceptual abstractness of scientific knowledge and its opaque connection with common wisdom and public interest. Therefore, this study reveals not only that hypes mark a speaker’s orientation to what and who is addressed, but also that students modulate academic persuasion to balance their promotion of results and claims against the discoursal expectations and knowledge bases of different audiences.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"300 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41968454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2022.2124844
Patrick Duffley, Gabrielle Morin
ABSTRACT Previous research on the Present Perfect suggests that the latter is acceptable in since-clauses only if the situation expressed by the subordinate clause extends in time up until the present, as in Tony has been happy since he has been taking Prozac, i.e. if the Present Perfect in the since-clause is a Universal Perfect whose predication is true at all subintervals in the time-interval delimited by since and not an Existential Perfect whose predication is true only at a certain moment therein, as in *Tony has been happy since he has visited Cape Cod. The present study puts the implications of this claim and others found in the literature to the empirical test through an examination of all of the 2,621 occurrences of the Present Perfect in since-clauses with pronominal subjects in the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. A significant proportion of the data is shown to contradict the generalizations proposed in previous studies. An explanation capable of accounting for all of the uses of the Present Perfect in since-clauses is put forward based on the complex meaning of this verbal structure which involves the notion of present stative after-phase of a past situation. The Present Perfect is possible in a since-clause whenever the beginning of the after-phase serves to mark the beginning-point in the past from which the main-clause situation unfolds towards the present. The beginning of the after-phase is argued to be interpretable in two ways: either as the first moment after the end of the prior situation or as the first moment in the process of accruing the after-phase itself.
{"title":"It’s been a while since I’ve been to church: The use of the Present Perfect after the conjunction since","authors":"Patrick Duffley, Gabrielle Morin","doi":"10.1080/07268602.2022.2124844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2124844","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Previous research on the Present Perfect suggests that the latter is acceptable in since-clauses only if the situation expressed by the subordinate clause extends in time up until the present, as in Tony has been happy since he has been taking Prozac, i.e. if the Present Perfect in the since-clause is a Universal Perfect whose predication is true at all subintervals in the time-interval delimited by since and not an Existential Perfect whose predication is true only at a certain moment therein, as in *Tony has been happy since he has visited Cape Cod. The present study puts the implications of this claim and others found in the literature to the empirical test through an examination of all of the 2,621 occurrences of the Present Perfect in since-clauses with pronominal subjects in the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. A significant proportion of the data is shown to contradict the generalizations proposed in previous studies. An explanation capable of accounting for all of the uses of the Present Perfect in since-clauses is put forward based on the complex meaning of this verbal structure which involves the notion of present stative after-phase of a past situation. The Present Perfect is possible in a since-clause whenever the beginning of the after-phase serves to mark the beginning-point in the past from which the main-clause situation unfolds towards the present. The beginning of the after-phase is argued to be interpretable in two ways: either as the first moment after the end of the prior situation or as the first moment in the process of accruing the after-phase itself.","PeriodicalId":44988,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"42 1","pages":"184 - 205"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42690523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}