Abstract This paper focuses on aspects of Nigerian corrupt practices and how perceptions of public service and leadership responsibilities are framed linguistically, or discursively, around predatory elitist interests. It is based on two premises. The first pertains to the ways in which the national wealth is metaphorically called the national cake, and how it is viewed as an object that elicits consumption. Textual data is generated from 19 national newspapers and blogs that show 85 occurrences of the term the national cake. The surrounding contexts of the term indicate that national wealth is eatable, shareable and is spatially located. The second premise relates to how the Nigerian elite use metonymic associations to make themselves serve as the aggregate of, or shorthand to, the geographical, partisan and religious interests of the country. This stand-for relationship plays a prominent role in establishing contiguous representations which aid (conceptual) proximity to the national cake. This study uses critical metaphor analysis, corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to demystify the facts about Nigeria’s national life otherwise overlaid by ideology.
{"title":"Metaphors we are robbed by: a critical discourse analysis of ‘the national cake’ and Nigeria’s prebendal elite","authors":"U. Bello","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0130","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper focuses on aspects of Nigerian corrupt practices and how perceptions of public service and leadership responsibilities are framed linguistically, or discursively, around predatory elitist interests. It is based on two premises. The first pertains to the ways in which the national wealth is metaphorically called the national cake, and how it is viewed as an object that elicits consumption. Textual data is generated from 19 national newspapers and blogs that show 85 occurrences of the term the national cake. The surrounding contexts of the term indicate that national wealth is eatable, shareable and is spatially located. The second premise relates to how the Nigerian elite use metonymic associations to make themselves serve as the aggregate of, or shorthand to, the geographical, partisan and religious interests of the country. This stand-for relationship plays a prominent role in establishing contiguous representations which aid (conceptual) proximity to the national cake. This study uses critical metaphor analysis, corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to demystify the facts about Nigeria’s national life otherwise overlaid by ideology.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"42 1","pages":"827 - 847"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48504364","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}
Abstract “VP/AP + (dek)le + AP/VP” is a predicative complement construction in Shanghai Wu Chinese (SWC) with (dek)le being the complement marker. In everyday SWC conversation, the terminal complement is often dropped, forming the Truncated Predicative Complement Construction (TPCC): “AP + (dek)le”. The data for the present study are approximately 4.5 h of naturalistic SWC face-to-face conversations. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, we explore the interactional functions of the TPCC in the SWC conversational data. We find that TPCCs after the possible closure of a topic are deployed to initiate a new topic in two ways: initiating a disjunctive topic shift, and changing to a topic that is connected to a prior one. The findings demonstrate that TPCCs are routinized grammatical patterns accomplishing the conversational action of initiating new topics in SWC conversation.
{"title":"Interactional functions of truncated predicative complement construction “AP + (dek)le” as topic initiator in Shanghai Wu Chinese conversation","authors":"Xiaoting Li, Yaqiong Liu","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0154","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract “VP/AP + (dek)le + AP/VP” is a predicative complement construction in Shanghai Wu Chinese (SWC) with (dek)le being the complement marker. In everyday SWC conversation, the terminal complement is often dropped, forming the Truncated Predicative Complement Construction (TPCC): “AP + (dek)le”. The data for the present study are approximately 4.5 h of naturalistic SWC face-to-face conversations. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, we explore the interactional functions of the TPCC in the SWC conversational data. We find that TPCCs after the possible closure of a topic are deployed to initiate a new topic in two ways: initiating a disjunctive topic shift, and changing to a topic that is connected to a prior one. The findings demonstrate that TPCCs are routinized grammatical patterns accomplishing the conversational action of initiating new topics in SWC conversation.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"45 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41546071","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}
Abstract This study investigates the use of explicit manifestations of authorial identity (namely self-mention pronouns) and their collocation networks in academic and workplace written texts. Based on a purpose-built corpus of research articles and the Hong Kong Financial Services Corpus (HKFSC), this study used Antconc and Graphcoll to extract and analyze the pronouns and their collocation networks. The statistical analysis shows that the academic register contains significantly more self-mention pronouns than the workplace corpus, which can be attributed to a stronger tendency towards self-positioning. We also identified significant register-specific semantic features of the collocation networks of self-mention pronouns. These findings contribute to our understanding of how self-mention pronouns operate in tandem with their surrounding context in register-specific discourse. Pedagogically, the findings can be useful for workshop-based training for finance students and early-career professionals in this domain to support the development of the discipline-specific writing skills needed for careers in academia and industry.
{"title":"Identity construction and its collocation networks: a cross-register analysis of the finance domain","authors":"Jihua Dong, L. Buckingham","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0094","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study investigates the use of explicit manifestations of authorial identity (namely self-mention pronouns) and their collocation networks in academic and workplace written texts. Based on a purpose-built corpus of research articles and the Hong Kong Financial Services Corpus (HKFSC), this study used Antconc and Graphcoll to extract and analyze the pronouns and their collocation networks. The statistical analysis shows that the academic register contains significantly more self-mention pronouns than the workplace corpus, which can be attributed to a stronger tendency towards self-positioning. We also identified significant register-specific semantic features of the collocation networks of self-mention pronouns. These findings contribute to our understanding of how self-mention pronouns operate in tandem with their surrounding context in register-specific discourse. Pedagogically, the findings can be useful for workshop-based training for finance students and early-career professionals in this domain to support the development of the discipline-specific writing skills needed for careers in academia and industry.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"42 1","pages":"647 - 670"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67362943","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}
Abstract In this paper we offer a longitudinal Conversation Analysis of talk lasting 18 months between a father and son, which reveals changes in the child’s level of Interactional Competence (IC). We propose an index of developing IC based upon Sacks’ distinction between “invited” and “volunteered” stories. While stories have a “socialization function” we suggest stories may be tracked in terms of IC also. What has been called “today narrative” routines (“What did you do at school today”, etc.), initiated by the father, predominate in a series of conversations. The analysis reveals how the child is encouraged to take extended turns through the father’s questions and comments, which are developed into a storytelling sequence. We observe that the child’s responses to the initial inquiries become more elaborate over time. Furthermore, there is a gradual resistance to the invited story format because it inhibits how the child organizes his stories. Volunteered stories obtain a more personal ‘voice’. The paper showcases the nexus between socialization and interactional competence.
{"title":"Nextness and story organization: ‘my day’ sequences in parent-child interaction","authors":"Younhee Kim, Andrew P. Carlin","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0137","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper we offer a longitudinal Conversation Analysis of talk lasting 18 months between a father and son, which reveals changes in the child’s level of Interactional Competence (IC). We propose an index of developing IC based upon Sacks’ distinction between “invited” and “volunteered” stories. While stories have a “socialization function” we suggest stories may be tracked in terms of IC also. What has been called “today narrative” routines (“What did you do at school today”, etc.), initiated by the father, predominate in a series of conversations. The analysis reveals how the child is encouraged to take extended turns through the father’s questions and comments, which are developed into a storytelling sequence. We observe that the child’s responses to the initial inquiries become more elaborate over time. Furthermore, there is a gradual resistance to the invited story format because it inhibits how the child organizes his stories. Volunteered stories obtain a more personal ‘voice’. The paper showcases the nexus between socialization and interactional competence.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"21 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48612927","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}
Abstract In developing ethnopoetics as an approach to the interpretation and analysis of oral performance, Dell Hymes controversially insisted that spoken narratives should be heard and read as poetry rather than prose. Although ethnopoetics is cross-culturally intended, only a few studies in a limited number of languages have so far been conducted. This article provides an analysis of a Danish spoken narrative of personal experience that supports Hymes’s contention that narratives are patterned in lines, that verses constitute the units that organize lines, that relations among verses are measured, and that parallelism is a pervasive feature of everyday storytelling. Verse analysis is unique in demonstrating the expressive force, poetic sophistication, psychological complexity, and aesthetic quality of spoken narrative. The article discusses the methodological implications of moving between text and performance, a static object and a dynamic body, the spatial distribution of written symbols and the temporal organization of orally expressed language.
{"title":"The Love Letters: ethnopoetics and echoes of the past in a Danish spoken narrative of personal experience","authors":"Bettina Perregaard","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0132","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In developing ethnopoetics as an approach to the interpretation and analysis of oral performance, Dell Hymes controversially insisted that spoken narratives should be heard and read as poetry rather than prose. Although ethnopoetics is cross-culturally intended, only a few studies in a limited number of languages have so far been conducted. This article provides an analysis of a Danish spoken narrative of personal experience that supports Hymes’s contention that narratives are patterned in lines, that verses constitute the units that organize lines, that relations among verses are measured, and that parallelism is a pervasive feature of everyday storytelling. Verse analysis is unique in demonstrating the expressive force, poetic sophistication, psychological complexity, and aesthetic quality of spoken narrative. The article discusses the methodological implications of moving between text and performance, a static object and a dynamic body, the spatial distribution of written symbols and the temporal organization of orally expressed language.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"93 - 112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45440322","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}
Abstract Underpinned by the assumption that the legitimacy of a social practice is obtained discursively, this study proposes a linguistically-grounded model for examining moral legitimation in the sentencing phase of capital trials. Drawing upon state lawyers’ closing speech in six capital trials (Indiana, USA), the study identifies key strategies the State uses to justify death and explores their ideological basis. The quantitative findings indicate that moral legitimation is integral to this genre, and, qualitatively speaking, the State relies to a great extent on strategies such as naming labels, assignment of agency, and evaluation, respectively. This is followed by emotion-based reasoning and analogy. It is argued that the reliance on moral legitimation treats death as a natural corollary of such moral characterizations and precludes the discussion of the life-sentence option.
{"title":"Moral legitimation in capital trials: the case of the prosecution’s closing summation","authors":"Krisda Chaemsaithong","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0129","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Underpinned by the assumption that the legitimacy of a social practice is obtained discursively, this study proposes a linguistically-grounded model for examining moral legitimation in the sentencing phase of capital trials. Drawing upon state lawyers’ closing speech in six capital trials (Indiana, USA), the study identifies key strategies the State uses to justify death and explores their ideological basis. The quantitative findings indicate that moral legitimation is integral to this genre, and, qualitatively speaking, the State relies to a great extent on strategies such as naming labels, assignment of agency, and evaluation, respectively. This is followed by emotion-based reasoning and analogy. It is argued that the reliance on moral legitimation treats death as a natural corollary of such moral characterizations and precludes the discussion of the life-sentence option.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"42 1","pages":"849 - 870"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45842335","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}
Abstract This paper describes one of the embodied resources language teachers use to pursue a response from students: placing one hand behind the ear in an Ear Cupping (EC) gesture. The data analyzed are taken from over 20 h of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom interaction video-recorded at a Japanese university. The paper explores how teachers use EC to pursue a response in cases when a Second-Pair Part (SPP) contribution from the student(s) is sequentially and temporally delayed, missing or inapposite. The findings suggest that the use of the EC gesture to pursue a response demonstrates the teachers’ orientation toward a normative understanding that a question posed within the classroom should be answered, even when a specific respondent has not been nominated. The analysis therefore reveals that the gesture constitutes an embodied means of monitoring intersubjectivity and increasing engagement in large groups of language learners.
{"title":"Ear cupping in EFL classroom interaction: an embodied means of pursuing students’ response","authors":"Cheikhna Amar","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0127","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper describes one of the embodied resources language teachers use to pursue a response from students: placing one hand behind the ear in an Ear Cupping (EC) gesture. The data analyzed are taken from over 20 h of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom interaction video-recorded at a Japanese university. The paper explores how teachers use EC to pursue a response in cases when a Second-Pair Part (SPP) contribution from the student(s) is sequentially and temporally delayed, missing or inapposite. The findings suggest that the use of the EC gesture to pursue a response demonstrates the teachers’ orientation toward a normative understanding that a question posed within the classroom should be answered, even when a specific respondent has not been nominated. The analysis therefore reveals that the gesture constitutes an embodied means of monitoring intersubjectivity and increasing engagement in large groups of language learners.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"42 1","pages":"779 - 799"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48091172","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}
Abstract Processes of blame-attribution can be conceptualised as socially-situated and discursively-mediated events that feature attempts to assign meaning to harmful (or at least potentially harmful) occurrences. Part of the process involves the search for culprits and subsequent argumentation as to the blameworthiness of those singled out for blame. This study conducts a discourse analysis of blame-attribution in 33 online opinion pieces, posted on the website of the civil society organisation: ACTIVATE! Change Drivers. It concentrates on arguments that address the nexus between youth activism, active citizenship, the legacy of Apartheid and blame for the numerous problems afflicting the South African youth. The most recurring arguments hinged on constructions of the South African government as responsible to supporting the capacity of the contemporary youth to participate effectively in democracy, particularly since the youth continue to endure the repercussions of Apartheid. My analysis details the discursive repertoires through which this proposition is made, and considers its implications for research into contemporary online youth cultures and democratic argumentation.
{"title":"ACTIVATE! Change Drivers: blame-attribution and active citizenship on a South Africa youth blog","authors":"M. Conradie","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0115","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Processes of blame-attribution can be conceptualised as socially-situated and discursively-mediated events that feature attempts to assign meaning to harmful (or at least potentially harmful) occurrences. Part of the process involves the search for culprits and subsequent argumentation as to the blameworthiness of those singled out for blame. This study conducts a discourse analysis of blame-attribution in 33 online opinion pieces, posted on the website of the civil society organisation: ACTIVATE! Change Drivers. It concentrates on arguments that address the nexus between youth activism, active citizenship, the legacy of Apartheid and blame for the numerous problems afflicting the South African youth. The most recurring arguments hinged on constructions of the South African government as responsible to supporting the capacity of the contemporary youth to participate effectively in democracy, particularly since the youth continue to endure the repercussions of Apartheid. My analysis details the discursive repertoires through which this proposition is made, and considers its implications for research into contemporary online youth cultures and democratic argumentation.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"42 1","pages":"871 - 890"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43950398","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}
Abstract In everyday conversations, after a story of an event or one’s experience is told, the recipient often tells a second story, similar to the previous one in terms of content and structure. A second story exhibits, rather than simply claims, its teller’s understanding of a prior story. While stories are often told with reenactments of an event, this study specifically examines the cases in which second tellers produce reenactments similar to that presented by the prior teller through reusing similar verbal and bodily conduct produced by the prior teller. Drawing on conversation analysis using a total of approximately 16 h of Japanese videotaped everyday conversation, this study explores how reenactments of similar moments contribute to the display of understanding and what they further accomplish. The findings reveal that the second teller’s reenactments similar to the one presented by the prior teller exhibit the understanding of not only the contents, but also the main focal point of the prior story while demonstrating different stances towards it. This study contributes to the body of research on the embodied display of understanding by showing how performing an operation on already shared verbal and bodily resources embedded within the ongoing sequence can exhibit multiple levels of understanding.
{"title":"Display of understanding in a second story: second teller’s reenactments and reuses of the prior teller’s resources","authors":"Eiko Yasui","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0218","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In everyday conversations, after a story of an event or one’s experience is told, the recipient often tells a second story, similar to the previous one in terms of content and structure. A second story exhibits, rather than simply claims, its teller’s understanding of a prior story. While stories are often told with reenactments of an event, this study specifically examines the cases in which second tellers produce reenactments similar to that presented by the prior teller through reusing similar verbal and bodily conduct produced by the prior teller. Drawing on conversation analysis using a total of approximately 16 h of Japanese videotaped everyday conversation, this study explores how reenactments of similar moments contribute to the display of understanding and what they further accomplish. The findings reveal that the second teller’s reenactments similar to the one presented by the prior teller exhibit the understanding of not only the contents, but also the main focal point of the prior story while demonstrating different stances towards it. This study contributes to the body of research on the embodied display of understanding by showing how performing an operation on already shared verbal and bodily resources embedded within the ongoing sequence can exhibit multiple levels of understanding.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"381 - 404"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43269385","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}
Abstract This paper studies referential accessibility marking in predicative and specificational clauses, in particular the ones in which the roles of ‘description’ and ‘variable’ are realised by an indefinite NP (e.g. He is a baker vs. One of his talents is pastry). While the indefinite NP in the two clause types has been studied in detail, little is known about how the other two roles – of ‘describee’ and ‘value’ – are typically realised. This study, therefore, examines the choice of referring expressions for the items filling these roles, as an index of their retrievability and degree of accessibility. The analysis is based on 750 corpus examples from spoken and written British English. Moreover, since specificational clauses allow for the value to be either complement or subject, this study also provides insight into what may motivate the choice for one pattern or the other. Significant differences were found between describees and values, as well as between value-subjects and value-complements. These findings are interpreted as indicative of different discourse functions of the three constructions. While predicative clauses typically elaborate familiar information, specificational clauses serve a broader discourse-organising function: starting a new discourse-topic, pivoting from one topic to another, or summarising prior propositions as concluding a topic.
{"title":"Referential accessibility as an index of the discourse functions of predicative and specificational clauses","authors":"Wout Van Praet","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0150","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper studies referential accessibility marking in predicative and specificational clauses, in particular the ones in which the roles of ‘description’ and ‘variable’ are realised by an indefinite NP (e.g. He is a baker vs. One of his talents is pastry). While the indefinite NP in the two clause types has been studied in detail, little is known about how the other two roles – of ‘describee’ and ‘value’ – are typically realised. This study, therefore, examines the choice of referring expressions for the items filling these roles, as an index of their retrievability and degree of accessibility. The analysis is based on 750 corpus examples from spoken and written British English. Moreover, since specificational clauses allow for the value to be either complement or subject, this study also provides insight into what may motivate the choice for one pattern or the other. Significant differences were found between describees and values, as well as between value-subjects and value-complements. These findings are interpreted as indicative of different discourse functions of the three constructions. While predicative clauses typically elaborate familiar information, specificational clauses serve a broader discourse-organising function: starting a new discourse-topic, pivoting from one topic to another, or summarising prior propositions as concluding a topic.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"113 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49359408","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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