scholarly journals Discourse variation of vague language: vague quantifiers in spoken and written Lithuanian

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-67
Author(s):  
Jūratė Ruzaitė
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Vague Quantifiers ◽  
Spoken Interaction ◽  
Discourse Variation ◽  
Vague Language

Vagueness is a controversial issue, which was long stigmatised by both researchers and laypeople and largely neglected in linguistics until the publication of Channell’s (1994) study, which demonstrated that vague language (VL) is a multi-faceted phenomenon of high pragmatic importance. The present study focuses on one of the most central categories of VL in Lithuanian, i.e. vague quantifiers, which can be defined as non-numerical expressions used for referring to quantities, e.g. daug (“a lot”), mažai (“little/few”), keletas (“several”), or šiek tiek (“a little bit”). The meaning of quantifiers frequently encodes some evaluative content concerning the significance of a quantity. The evaluative function is an important and intended speaker’s message, expressed by choosing a vague expression, and is lost if reformulated into a precise expression. A systematic account of this pragmatic category has not been carried out yet in Lithuanian, and the vast majority of research on vague quantifiers focuses mainly on English with only very few exceptions.       VL is omnipresent and is used in all discourse types, but to a different extent and for different purposes; therefore, this investigation has a two-fold aim: (a) to determine the distribution of quantifiers in different discourses including spoken interaction and a variety of written texts (i.e. academic texts, newspapers and magazines, publicist texts, administrative texts, and fiction); and (b) to overview when and why vague quantifiers are prioritized over precise numerical references. The data for this investigation has been obtained from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language (tekstynas.vdu.lt), which is a reference corpus comprising over 140 mln words; it represents five major discourse types analysed in this paper. The present analysis has been carried out within the framework of corpus linguistics, pragmatics, variationist sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis; it is primarily quantitative, but to explain some dominant tendencies in the results, it also deals with some qualitative aspects. The findings obtained from spoken and written discourse have revealed that quantifiers are distributed very unevenly in the two modes of language; the results have also shown some dramatic differences in the use of quantifiers in different written texts. Their distribution and functions depend on the formality of quantifiers and their semantic type. Multal quantifiers (i.e. those referring to large quantities) are emphatic, whereas paucal quantifiers (i.e. those referring to small quantities) are mainly used for mitigation and are more prone to soften the effect of negatively loaded lexemes. Importantly, quantifiers are used for persuasion since they evaluate a quantity and convey the speaker’s interpretation of its significance. They can be important in discourse structuring, in shaping interpersonal relationships, and as a face-saving strategy. Due to the large variety of communicative functions that quantifiers can perform, they are an important category in second language teaching and should be adequately dealt with in lexicography.

General extenders and discourse variation

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jūratė Ruzaitė
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Structural Type ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Structural Types ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Spoken Interaction ◽  
Discourse Variation

Abstract The present study accounts for the use of general extenders (GEs) in spoken and written registers. The repertoire and usage of GEs is analysed in Lithuanian by focusing on their distribution across different registers, their structural properties, and discourse-pragmatic functions. The study is based on a reference corpus of Lithuanian, which includes four subcorpora of written discourse and a subcorpus of spoken discourse. The findings indicate that there are some significant cross-generic differences in GE frequency, but most frequently GEs in Lithuanian are used in written academic discourse. With regard to the structural types of GEs, adjunctives are considerably more frequent than disjunctives. GE structure allows for a large degree of variation, and in spoken interaction GEs can include deictic elements. Concerning discourse-pragmatic functions, GEs are predominantly used to serve textual and interpersonal functions, which appear to be strongly related to the structural type of the GE and discourse settings.

scholarly journals Forms and functions of vague language in academic journal article abstracts

Diacronia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Cusen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Journal Article ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Academic Journal ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Exploratory Investigation ◽  
Vague Quantifiers ◽  
Vague Language ◽  
And Linguistics

This paper reports on an exploratory investigation of the IMRaD moves (Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion) which show the degree of informativeness in terms of referential explicitness of academic texts and of use of vague language in academic journal abstracts published in 2010 and 2011. The areas of research these articles focus on are: language and linguistics, literature and cultural studies. The analysis of the data, based on an existing analytical framework (Cutting, 2012), revealed that authors use vague language (e.g.: ‘general nouns’, ‘hedging devices’ and ‘vague quantifiers’) and that the abstracts mostly consist of the introduction and discussion moves. Results of research into the writing of article abstracts may benefit both novice academic text writers and academics guiding their work.

Corpus Research Applications in Second Language Teaching: A Look into Corpus-informed Materials Development

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Norwati Roslim ◽  
Muhammad Hakimi Tew Abdullah ◽  
Anealka Aziz ◽  
Vahid Nimehchisalem ◽  
Azhani Almuddin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Materials Development ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Reference Grammar ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Clear Guideline

Numerous corpus studies have suggested that teaching materials design could greatly benefit from the empirical information about language use provided by corpus linguistics. In spite of the awareness that corpus-based research can offer valuable insights for materials development, still relatively small number of studies report on the practical applications of corpus data for teaching materials development. There is no clear guideline or framework on how corpora and corpus studies could assist in developing teaching materials. Hence, this study focusses on one grammatical item which poses problems to Malaysian learners, that is, prepositions. The objectives are (i) to identify prepositions in the British National Corpus as a reference corpus and the descriptions offered by linguists and grammarians as a reference grammar, and (ii) to provide a framework to use reference corpus, reference grammar and corpus-based research, as a resource for developing materials in the teaching of prepositions. In order to meet the objectives, content analysis was used as the methodology throughout this study. The findings showed that reference corpus, reference grammar and corpus-based research could be used systematically as guidance to develop corpus-informed materials. It is hoped that this contribution of knowledge could have an impact on second language learning-teaching.

scholarly journals Keywords and collocations in US presidential discourse since 1993: a corpus-assisted analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Hamed
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Us ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Key Topics ◽  
Presidential Discourse ◽  
Assisted Analysis ◽  
Shed Light

Purpose The purpose of this study is to apply a corpus-assisted analysis of keywords and their collocations in the US presidential discourse from Clinton to Trump to discover the meanings of these words and the collocates they have. Keywords are salient words in a corpus whose frequency is unusually high (positive keywords) or low (negative keywords) in comparison with a reference corpus. Collocation is the co-occurrence of words. Design/methodology/approach To achieve this purpose, the investigation of keywords and collocations is generated by AntConc, a corpus processing software. Findings This analysis leads to shed light on the similarities and/or differences amongst the past four American presidents concerning their key topics. Keyword analysis through keyness makes it evident that Clinton and Obama, being Democrats, demonstrate a clear tendency to improve Americans’ life inside their social sphere. Obama surpasses Clinton as regard foreign affairs. Clinton and Obama’s infrequent subjects have to do with terrorism and immigration. This complies with their condensed focus on social and economic improvements. Bush, a republican, concentrates only on external issues. This is proven by his keywords signifying war against terrorism. Bush’s negative use of words marking cooperative actions conforms to his positive use of words indicating external war. Trump’s positive keywords are about exaggerated descriptions without a defined target. He also shows an unusual frequency in referring to his name and position. His words used with negative keyness refer to reforming programs and external issues. Collocations around each top content keyword clarify the word and harmonize with the presidential orientation negotiated by the keywords. Research limitations/implications Limitations have to do with the issue of the accurate representation of the samples. Originality/value This research is original in its methodology of applying corpus linguistics tools in the analysis of presidential discourses.

scholarly journals Conducting a task while reconstructing its meaning

Pragmatics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-423
Author(s):  
Riikka Nissi ◽  
Esa Lehtinen
Keyword(s):  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Sequential Position ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Spoken Interaction ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Made In

This article investigates the way an institutional task of a meeting is oriented to by different meeting participants and developed in and through local interaction. Our data come from a city organization, where a large organizational change is planned and prepared through a series of face-to-face encounters and accompanying written texts. Using the notion of recontextualization and by connecting it to the conversation analytical method and to the notion of intersubjectivity, the study examines how the institutional task that is verbalized in written form prior to the meeting is conceptualized by meeting participants in their turns of talk. By doing so, the study will particularly shed light on the question of how different recontextualizations are motivated by their sequential position in interaction. Based on this, it also investigates how the meeting participants construct their professional identities through the conceptualizations made. In a wider sense, the article shows how spoken interaction and written texts interweave and form a reciprocal relationship in organizational life. Thus, it contributes to a deeper understanding about the multifaceted connections between the interactional management of meetings and wider organizational practices and processes that these encounters have been set up to advance.

scholarly journals Keywords in Written Academic Legal Texts: A Corpus-Derived List

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullah A. Alasmary
Keyword(s):  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
General Reference ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Pedagogical Utility

This study presents the Written Academic Legal Vocabulary (WALV), a discipline-specific genre-focused list of keywords in a corpus of academic legal texts. To generate this list, a purpose-customized corpus of full-length academic texts is created and analyzed with the help of corpus-based analytical tools. Items on the list are chosen based on criteria such as frequency of occurrence, range and keyness. The keywords recur more frequently in a specialized corpus than in a general reference corpus, a finding that attests to the pedagogical utility of these expressions as possible focus of explicit instruction. The final list consists of 298 headwords and 219 families (lemmas). Findings also indicate that the list includes words belonging to different grammatical types, the most common of which are nouns. The list also incorporates a large number of abbreviations, shortenings and acronyms.

scholarly journals ”Borders” in the Writing of Academic Texts: Investigating Informativeness in Academic Journal Abstracts

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-154
Author(s):  
Gabriela Cusen
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Academic Journal ◽  
Business Studies ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Vague Language

AbstractWhen researchers write academic journal abstracts, they need to meet the requirements of the publisher, which may very well mean that they need to be aware of “the meaning and functions of borders” within which their work is presented in this type of academic text. This paper reports on an investigation of the use of vague language (VL) and IMRaD moves (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion) showing the degree of informativeness of academic journal abstracts published in the “Bulletin of Transilvania University” of Braşov between 2010 and 2017. The areas of research these articles focus on range from linguistics and literature to business studies, medicine, and engineering. The analysis of the data, based on Cutting’s (2012) analytical framework, revealed that abstract authors use vague language (e.g.: “universal general nouns” and “research general nouns”) and that their abstracts mostly consist of introduction, method, and discussion moves. Results of similar research into the writing of article abstracts may be informative for both novice academic text writers and expert writers guiding their work.

scholarly journals Expressões do português brasileiro com o verbo cair: uma abordagem semântico-pragmática para o ensino de língua adicional

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Nanashara Fagundes Behle ◽  
Ana Maria T. Ibaños
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Communicative Process ◽  
Paul Grice

This study aims to present a way to help learners of Portuguese as an additional language to understand the meaning of expressions of Brazilian Portuguese, which need the context of the communicative process to have their meaning inferred. For this we adopted a semantic-pragmatic approach, with inferential bias proposed by the philosopher Paul Grice (1957, 1975) in his theories of conversation and of meaning. In this paper, we assume expressions of the verb cair because it is a frequent verb in Brazilian Portuguese everyday language, in expressions with a literal meaning and in idioms, assumed by Fernando (1996) as part of idiomaticity process. As a methodology we use Corpus Linguistics (Sardinha, 2004; O'keeffe; Carter; McCarthy, 2007) so we have access to authentic oral and written texts, using the corpus developed and maintained by Mark Davies and Michael J. Ferreira.

DEVELOPMENT OF TURSK CORPUS LINGUISTICS AND ITS PRESENT STATE

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-235
Author(s):  
Shahlo Khamroeva ◽  
◽  
Shakhnoza Gulyamova
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Present State ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
General Description ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Crimean Tatar

This article discusses the experience of creating a Turkic-speaking corpus. The general description, volume, possibilities and practical significance of the electronic corpus of written texts of the Tatar language and the linguistic corpus of the Crimean Tatar language, their general and various aspects are analyzed. Working with linguistic corpora is scientifically substantiated for objective language learning. The article also examines the composition, size and practical significance of the electronic corpus of the language of the Khakas, Tuvans, and Siberian minorities

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