Sara Vilar-Lluch, Emma McClaughlin, Svenja Adolphs, Dawn Knight, Elena Nichele
Health messaging is effective if it achieves audience adherence to guidance. Through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics, we examine the expression of obligation in poster-based health campaigns (4 posters) employed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK by considering whether differences in grammatical mood and modality values impact on public compliance toward the message content. Effects of mood and modality variations are examined through a quantitative-cum-qualitative analysis of results from a representative survey (N = 1,089), which included closed questions on self-predicted compliance to health guidance and open questions on the respondents’ understanding of messaging. The quantitative results favour medium values of obligation (“should” vis-à-vis “must”) and directives in declarative mood for self-efficacy messages, and expressions of certainty when the need to take action to prevent negative outcomes is conveyed. The qualitative results show that, communication context and linguistic features being equal, message types (i.e., self-efficacy, moralising, fear appeals) and visual cues prevail in conditioning public reception. Moreover, since directives employing modality allow for speakers’ inclusion among the targeted addressees, they appear to offer more favourable outcomes than those in the imperative mood. This study provides empirical insights into the effects of modality and mood on health guidance compliance.
{"title":"The effects of modal value and imperative mood on self-predicted compliance to health guidance: the case of COVID-19","authors":"Sara Vilar-Lluch, Emma McClaughlin, Svenja Adolphs, Dawn Knight, Elena Nichele","doi":"10.1515/text-2023-0125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2023-0125","url":null,"abstract":"Health messaging is effective if it achieves audience adherence to guidance. Through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics, we examine the expression of obligation in poster-based health campaigns (4 posters) employed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK by considering whether differences in grammatical mood and modality values impact on public compliance toward the message content. Effects of mood and modality variations are examined through a quantitative-cum-qualitative analysis of results from a representative survey (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic> = 1,089), which included closed questions on self-predicted compliance to health guidance and open questions on the respondents’ understanding of messaging. The quantitative results favour medium values of obligation (“should” vis-à-vis “must”) and directives in declarative mood for self-efficacy messages, and expressions of certainty when the need to take action to prevent negative outcomes is conveyed. The qualitative results show that, communication context and linguistic features being equal, message types (i.e., self-efficacy, moralising, fear appeals) and visual cues prevail in conditioning public reception. Moreover, since directives employing modality allow for speakers’ inclusion among the targeted addressees, they appear to offer more favourable outcomes than those in the imperative mood. This study provides empirical insights into the effects of modality and mood on health guidance compliance.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142225544","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}
The ability to achieve social interaction is both a key feature of research writing and an important aspect of advanced academic literacy. It can be seen in how doctoral students employ rhetorical resources to acknowledge limitations in thesis writing while securing a positive view of the research. Negation is one of the crucial interactional options, but less explored in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) literature. In this study, we drew on the appraisal theory to see negation as a disclaim marker that engaged with alternative positions and employed corpus analysis to examine the forms and functions of negation in the ‘limitations’ section of doctoral theses. To better understand how student writers exploit negation to achieve the rhetorical end, we further explored co-articulations of negation with other appraisal resources. A corpus-based analysis of 100 doctoral theses by Chinese and American doctoral students in applied linguistics showed that American students made significantly more use of negation, especially pairing negation with engagement and graduation resources. We attribute the difference to genre and culture norms and also raise pedagogical implications on the cultivation of students’ rhetorical awareness and the classroom teaching of research writing.
{"title":"“The results might not fully represent…”: Negation in the limitations sections of doctoral theses by Chinese and American students","authors":"Shuyi Amelia Sun, Feng (Kevin) Jiang","doi":"10.1515/text-2023-0076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2023-0076","url":null,"abstract":"The ability to achieve social interaction is both a key feature of research writing and an important aspect of advanced academic literacy. It can be seen in how doctoral students employ rhetorical resources to acknowledge limitations in thesis writing while securing a positive view of the research. <jats:italic>Negation</jats:italic> is one of the crucial interactional options, but less explored in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) literature. In this study, we drew on the <jats:italic>appraisal</jats:italic> theory to see <jats:italic>negation</jats:italic> as a <jats:italic>disclaim</jats:italic> marker that engaged with alternative positions and employed corpus analysis to examine the forms and functions of <jats:italic>negation</jats:italic> in the ‘limitations’ section of doctoral theses. To better understand how student writers exploit <jats:italic>negation</jats:italic> to achieve the rhetorical end, we further explored co-articulations of <jats:italic>negation</jats:italic> with other <jats:italic>appraisal</jats:italic> resources. A corpus-based analysis of 100 doctoral theses by Chinese and American doctoral students in applied linguistics showed that American students made significantly more use of <jats:italic>negation</jats:italic>, especially pairing <jats:italic>negation</jats:italic> with <jats:italic>engagement</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>graduation</jats:italic> resources. We attribute the difference to genre and culture norms and also raise pedagogical implications on the cultivation of students’ rhetorical awareness and the classroom teaching of research writing.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"236 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140571564","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}
Despite the inherently multimodal nature of the courtroom, studies of multimodality in forensic linguistics have been scarce. This study uses the stance triangle and ideological square concepts and the assumption that recurrent gestures serve as stance-taking resources to analyze conflicting embodied stances taken by the prosecutor and defense attorney in their opening remarks during the State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin 2021 trial. Statistical results reveal that the prosecutor predominantly uses modal gestures to display a strongly aggravated oppositional stance and attempts to be more persuasive, while the defense attorney favors performative gestures. The analysis of the interplay between the verbal and gestural resources suggests that recurrent gestures such as open hand prone or supine, open hand held with vertical palms, index finger extended, and precision grip have a threefold indexical realization: prototypical, argumentative, and stance-taking. The findings contribute to a more complete understanding of persuasion in the courtroom.
尽管法庭本身具有多模态性质，但法医语言学中的多模态研究却很少。本研究使用立场三角和意识形态广场概念，以及反复出现的手势作为立场采取资源的假设，来分析在明尼苏达州诉德里克-迈克尔-肖文（Derek Michael Chauvin）2021 年案的审判过程中，检察官和辩护律师在开场白中相互冲突的体现立场。统计结果显示，检察官主要使用模态手势表现出强烈的加重反对立场，并试图增强说服力，而辩护律师则偏爱表演性手势。对语言和手势资源之间相互作用的分析表明，反复出现的手势，如张开手俯卧或仰卧、张开手垂直握掌、食指伸展和精确握持等，具有三重索引实现：原型、争论和立场。这些发现有助于更全面地理解法庭上的说服。
{"title":"Recurrent gestures and embodied stance-taking in courtroom opening statements","authors":"Min Yang, Min Wang","doi":"10.1515/text-2023-0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2023-0042","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the inherently multimodal nature of the courtroom, studies of multimodality in forensic linguistics have been scarce. This study uses the stance triangle and ideological square concepts and the assumption that recurrent gestures serve as stance-taking resources to analyze conflicting embodied stances taken by the prosecutor and defense attorney in their opening remarks during <jats:italic>the State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin</jats:italic> 2021 trial. Statistical results reveal that the prosecutor predominantly uses modal gestures to display a strongly aggravated oppositional stance and attempts to be more persuasive, while the defense attorney favors performative gestures. The analysis of the interplay between the verbal and gestural resources suggests that recurrent gestures such as open hand prone or supine, open hand held with vertical palms, index finger extended, and precision grip have a threefold indexical realization: prototypical, argumentative, and stance-taking. The findings contribute to a more complete understanding of persuasion in the courtroom.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140571748","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}
This article examines the literary representation of contemporary urban vernaculars (CUV) in fiction. It focuses specifically on four Swedish novels published in the last ten years, whose narratives are set in the urban and increasingly multilingual, migrant-rich and class-stratified peripheral areas of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The analysis centers on how they are situated in these urban peripheries, using written representations of spoken, non-standard Swedish CUV as symbolic resources to give authenticity to the narratives. We examine the distinctive linguistic features that are employed to evoke the imagination of CUV, and how these are used to build the fictional characters and to create certain recognizable social personas and practices. We also discuss the linguistic features that are available but are not exploited to represent the fictional characters’ ways of speaking, and possible reasons why this is so. Finally, we examine how the novels exploit contrasts between registers, particularly between CUV and adult second-language speaker styles and between CUV and standard Swedish, and with what effects. The findings are discussed in the context of the broader social discourses about language, migration, CUV and adult second-language speakers in present-day Sweden.
{"title":"Turning talk into text: the representation of contemporary urban vernaculars in Swedish fiction","authors":"Natalia Ganuza, Maria Rydell","doi":"10.1515/text-2023-0084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2023-0084","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the literary representation of contemporary urban vernaculars (CUV) in fiction. It focuses specifically on four Swedish novels published in the last ten years, whose narratives are set in the urban and increasingly multilingual, migrant-rich and class-stratified peripheral areas of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The analysis centers on how they are situated in these urban peripheries, using written representations of spoken, non-standard Swedish CUV as symbolic resources to give authenticity to the narratives. We examine the distinctive linguistic features that are employed to evoke the imagination of CUV, and how these are used to build the fictional characters and to create certain recognizable social personas and practices. We also discuss the linguistic features that are available but are not exploited to represent the fictional characters’ ways of speaking, and possible reasons why this is so. Finally, we examine how the novels exploit contrasts between registers, particularly between CUV and adult second-language speaker styles and between CUV and standard Swedish, and with what effects. The findings are discussed in the context of the broader social discourses about language, migration, CUV and adult second-language speakers in present-day Sweden.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140571568","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}
Critical comments have shown to figure prominently in determining the fate of manuscripts submitted to reputable journals. While various studies have explored different facets of this evaluative genre, there has been limited examination in the context of second language and disciplinary writing. Using a discourse analytic approach, this study analyzed a corpus of 160 reviewers’ reports on submissions by Iranian nonnative writers in applied linguistics (AL) and engineering. The aim was to compare how reviewers employ different categories of critical comments to prompt writers to revise their submissions. The findings revealed that reviewers, regardless of discipline, more frequently commented on language-use issues than content-related issues. Among language-use comments, issues pertaining to lexical and syntactical usage of English were more prominent than concerns about discourse and rhetoric. The analysis also indicated consistent patterns in the reviewers’ reports regarding discourse organization and the balance between positive and negative feedback. These findings are discussed in terms of their practical implications for novice and nonnative researchers in the examined fields, offering insights into the rhetorical and disciplinary norms governing peer reviews and the linguistic choices made by reviewers to guide authors throughout the review process. Increased awareness of these issues can facilitate more effective responses to reviewers’ feedback.
{"title":"Critical comments in the disciplines: a comparative look at peer review reports in applied linguistics and engineering","authors":"Hadi Kashiha","doi":"10.1515/text-2023-0055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2023-0055","url":null,"abstract":"Critical comments have shown to figure prominently in determining the fate of manuscripts submitted to reputable journals. While various studies have explored different facets of this evaluative genre, there has been limited examination in the context of second language and disciplinary writing. Using a discourse analytic approach, this study analyzed a corpus of 160 reviewers’ reports on submissions by Iranian nonnative writers in applied linguistics (AL) and engineering. The aim was to compare how reviewers employ different categories of critical comments to prompt writers to revise their submissions. The findings revealed that reviewers, regardless of discipline, more frequently commented on language-use issues than content-related issues. Among language-use comments, issues pertaining to lexical and syntactical usage of English were more prominent than concerns about discourse and rhetoric. The analysis also indicated consistent patterns in the reviewers’ reports regarding discourse organization and the balance between positive and negative feedback. These findings are discussed in terms of their practical implications for novice and nonnative researchers in the examined fields, offering insights into the rhetorical and disciplinary norms governing peer reviews and the linguistic choices made by reviewers to guide authors throughout the review process. Increased awareness of these issues can facilitate more effective responses to reviewers’ feedback.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140571720","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}
Linguistics and discourse studies have recently started treating fictional interactions as data worth analyzing in their own right, rather than incomplete representations of naturally occurring conversations. Aligning with advances in research on the use of language in fiction, this study addresses the functions of characters’ conversational practices in fictional works from an interactional perspective. By applying conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to a sitcom series, this study explores how characters’ repair operation, membership categorization, and attribute ascription contribute to the construction and revelation of those characters (i.e., fictional characterization). Three patterns are illustrated: (1) a character engages in implicit categorization to account for trouble after operating repair; (2) a character’s changes of turn design in multiple repair operations show the character’s orientation toward an attribute of the other character; and (3) a character gives up repair operation and shows an orientation toward other characters’ attributes through implying negative assessment of them. The findings suggest that conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis are beneficial for research on fictional characterization. This study also discusses the reflexive and mutually constitutive relationship between the interactional participants’ characters and their conversational practices.
{"title":"Fictional characterization through repair, membership categorization, and attribute ascription","authors":"Ryo Okazawa","doi":"10.1515/text-2023-0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2023-0033","url":null,"abstract":"Linguistics and discourse studies have recently started treating fictional interactions as data worth analyzing in their own right, rather than incomplete representations of naturally occurring conversations. Aligning with advances in research on the use of language in fiction, this study addresses the functions of characters’ conversational practices in fictional works from an interactional perspective. By applying conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to a sitcom series, this study explores how characters’ repair operation, membership categorization, and attribute ascription contribute to the construction and revelation of those characters (i.e., fictional characterization). Three patterns are illustrated: (1) a character engages in implicit categorization to account for trouble after operating repair; (2) a character’s changes of turn design in multiple repair operations show the character’s orientation toward an attribute of the other character; and (3) a character gives up repair operation and shows an orientation toward other characters’ attributes through implying negative assessment of them. The findings suggest that conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis are beneficial for research on fictional characterization. This study also discusses the reflexive and mutually constitutive relationship between the interactional participants’ characters and their conversational practices.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140299775","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}
This paper is concerned with an exploration of the structural arrangement of Arabic hard news reporting with reference to a corpus of twenty accident news stories drawn from two leading Middle Eastern news organizations, Aljazeera and Alarabiya. A range of journalistic traditions has been examined with respect to organizational structures used in their hard news reporting texts. Within journalism discourse analysis, the nucleus-satellite structure developed by scholars of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is commonly found in news reporting in English and across various languages. However, news media texts in some cultures, such as Arabic, have not undergone any close scrutiny from a generic perspective. Accordingly, this study attempts to fill such a gap by investigating the genre-related features of the Arabic accident reports, drawing on the insights provided by SFL literature on the news story as a genre. It employs various lines of analysis such as textual deconstruction, timeline, radical editability, and lexical chaining. The findings of these analyses suggest that the Arabic accident news reports are non-chronologically organized operating with the lead-dominated orbital model, and thus generically bearing a close resemblance to the English news reports.
{"title":"Genre-structural analysis of Arabic accident news reporting","authors":"Abdulmohsin A. Alshehri","doi":"10.1515/text-2022-0146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2022-0146","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is concerned with an exploration of the structural arrangement of Arabic hard news reporting with reference to a corpus of twenty accident news stories drawn from two leading Middle Eastern news organizations, Aljazeera and Alarabiya. A range of journalistic traditions has been examined with respect to organizational structures used in their hard news reporting texts. Within journalism discourse analysis, the nucleus-satellite structure developed by scholars of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is commonly found in news reporting in English and across various languages. However, news media texts in some cultures, such as Arabic, have not undergone any close scrutiny from a generic perspective. Accordingly, this study attempts to fill such a gap by investigating the genre-related features of the Arabic accident reports, drawing on the insights provided by SFL literature on the news story as a genre. It employs various lines of analysis such as textual deconstruction, timeline, radical editability, and lexical chaining. The findings of these analyses suggest that the Arabic accident news reports are non-chronologically organized operating with the lead-dominated orbital model, and thus generically bearing a close resemblance to the English news reports.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139768624","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}
This paper explores ways in which the strategic use of discursive and generic conventions has the potential to create a non-existent pathology and mislead the public. This case study compares and examines datasets of different genres (newspaper issue reports, online videos, and Wikipedia pages) dealing with a condition considered as an actual illness (Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, SCT), and another (Motivational Deficiency Disorder, MoDeD), invented as a spoof to raise awareness about disease mongering, overdiagnosis, and medicalization. We evince common language strategies that, irrespective of the genre, can be employed in media discourse, both in the name of genuine medical information and in pursuit of more ethically questionable ends. The methodological tools provided by Critical Discourse Analysis are applied to both the authentic and the hoax texts in order to investigate the media representations of SCT and MoDeD, juxtaposing the ways in which both are framed conceptually, defined linguistically, and popularized to lay audiences. The findings indicate the existence of a common repertoire of lexical-phraseological, rhetorical and discursive patterns that typify the popularization of medicalized statuses and combine to increase the persuasiveness and authority of overdiagnosis, ultimately advancing the case for medicalization with the public at large.
{"title":"Disease mongering, overdiagnosis, and media practices: a critical discourse analysis of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and the motivational deficiency disorder (MoDeD) spoof","authors":"Dermot Heaney, Giorgia Riboni","doi":"10.1515/text-2022-0197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2022-0197","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores ways in which the strategic use of discursive and generic conventions has the potential to create a non-existent pathology and mislead the public. This case study compares and examines datasets of different genres (newspaper issue reports, online videos, and Wikipedia pages) dealing with a condition considered as an actual illness (Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, SCT), and another (Motivational Deficiency Disorder, MoDeD), invented as a spoof to raise awareness about disease mongering, overdiagnosis, and medicalization. We evince common language strategies that, irrespective of the genre, can be employed in media discourse, both in the name of genuine medical information and in pursuit of more ethically questionable ends. The methodological tools provided by Critical Discourse Analysis are applied to both the authentic and the hoax texts in order to investigate the media representations of SCT and MoDeD, juxtaposing the ways in which both are framed conceptually, defined linguistically, and popularized to lay audiences. The findings indicate the existence of a common repertoire of lexical-phraseological, rhetorical and discursive patterns that typify the popularization of medicalized statuses and combine to increase the persuasiveness and authority of overdiagnosis, ultimately advancing the case for medicalization with the public at large.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139768634","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}
Respondents in standardized survey interviews do not always answer closed-ended questions with just a type-conforming answer, such as “yes” or “three.” Instead, they sometimes expand the type-conforming answer or provide a response that does not contain a type-conforming answer. Standardized survey methodology aims to avoid such answers because they are found to cause interviewers to deviate from their script. However, we found that many expanded and non-conforming responses do not lead to intervention by the interviewer and are treated as unproblematic. A Conversation Analytic study of survey interviews, incorporating three different surveys, with recordings available for interviews varying in number between four and 430 interviews, shows that answer attempts can be divided into five types: four turn expansions (serial extras, uncertainty markers, prefaced answers, answers followed by elaborations), and non-conforming answers. Each of these targets a specific aspect of the interview situation. A follow-up quantitative analysis of 610 Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) shows that expanded answers are overwhelmingly accepted by interviewers, while non-conforming answers are in most cases followed by interviewer probing.
{"title":"Expanded and non-conforming answers in standardized survey interviews","authors":"Sanne Unger, Yfke Ongena, Tom Koole","doi":"10.1515/text-2022-0157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2022-0157","url":null,"abstract":"Respondents in standardized survey interviews do not always answer closed-ended questions with just a type-conforming answer, such as “yes” or “three.” Instead, they sometimes expand the type-conforming answer or provide a response that does not contain a type-conforming answer. Standardized survey methodology aims to avoid such answers because they are found to cause interviewers to deviate from their script. However, we found that many expanded and non-conforming responses do not lead to intervention by the interviewer and are treated as unproblematic. A Conversation Analytic study of survey interviews, incorporating three different surveys, with recordings available for interviews varying in number between four and 430 interviews, shows that answer attempts can be divided into five types: four turn expansions (serial extras, uncertainty markers, prefaced answers, answers followed by elaborations), and non-conforming answers. Each of these targets a specific aspect of the interview situation. A follow-up quantitative analysis of 610 Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) shows that expanded answers are overwhelmingly accepted by interviewers, while non-conforming answers are in most cases followed by interviewer probing.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139649483","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}
This paper deals with automated football match reports as a common genre of automated journalism. Based on a corpus of automated and human-written reports (n = 1,302) on the same set of matches and with reference to linguistic concepts of text and textuality, the textual properties of these texts are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The analysis is based on the idea that the task of text generation can be described as the task of automatically selecting cues of textuality such as connectives or signals of thematic relatedness. The results show that automated and human-written texts differ significantly in the use of these cues, particularly in the use of linguistic means for creating evaluation and contrast, and thus allow to trace in detail, how these cues contribute to cohesion, coherence and narrative qualities. Different from computational linguistic approaches focused on optimizing text generation algorithms, this paper proposes to use automated texts, which are to some extent imperfect, as models of textuality that through their imperfection can say something about the nature of texts in general. The paper thus contributes to the field of (mostly communication studies) research on automated journalism in which the texts themselves are rarely investigated.
{"title":"Automated football match reports as models of textuality","authors":"Simon Meier-Vieracker","doi":"10.1515/text-2022-0173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2022-0173","url":null,"abstract":"This paper deals with automated football match reports as a common genre of automated journalism. Based on a corpus of automated and human-written reports (<jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = 1,302) on the same set of matches and with reference to linguistic concepts of text and textuality, the textual properties of these texts are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The analysis is based on the idea that the task of text generation can be described as the task of automatically selecting cues of textuality such as connectives or signals of thematic relatedness. The results show that automated and human-written texts differ significantly in the use of these cues, particularly in the use of linguistic means for creating evaluation and contrast, and thus allow to trace in detail, how these cues contribute to cohesion, coherence and narrative qualities. Different from computational linguistic approaches focused on optimizing text generation algorithms, this paper proposes to use automated texts, which are to some extent imperfect, as models of textuality that through their imperfection can say something about the nature of texts in general. The paper thus contributes to the field of (mostly communication studies) research on automated journalism in which the texts themselves are rarely investigated.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139585384","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}
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