scholarly journals The role of causal discourse structure in narrative writing

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 711-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul van den Broek ◽  
Brian Linzie ◽  
Charles Fletcher ◽  
Chad J. Marsolek
Author(s):  
J. T. Torres

This chapter uses cognitive theory of information processing to demonstrate the role of visual learning in the context of reading and writing. According to the theory, individuals do not take a singular approach to processing information. Rather, they experience the world through visual and verbal channels. Information is then organized by working memory into more comprehensive models—the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the phonological loop. The author considers pedagogical strategies for writing instruction that rely on the multimedia principle, which states that our minds work best when learning combines the visual with the aural. The specific mission of the chapter is to show how the multimedia principle can benefit writing instruction in three different contexts: 1) reading and writing comprehension, 2) narrative writing, and 3) grammar usage. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that learning through images is not just a cultural phenomenon, but also a scientific one.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ladislav Kunc ◽  
Zdenek Míkovec ◽  
Pavel Slavík

Turn-taking and turn-yielding phenomena in dialogs receive increasing attention nowadays. A growing number of spoken dialog systems inspire application designers to humanize people’s interaction experience with computers. The knowledge of psychology in discourse structure could be helpful in this effort. In this paper the authors explore effectiveness of selected visual and vocal turn-yielding cues in dialog systems using synthesized speech and an avatar. The aim of this work is to detect the role of visual and vocal cues on dialog turn-change judgment using a conversational agent. The authors compare and study the cues in two experiments. Findings of those experiments suggest that the selected visual turn-yielding cues are more effective than the vocal cues in increasing correct judgment of dialog turn-change. Vocal cues in the experiment show quite poor results and the conclusion discusses possible explanations of that.


2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Eades

AbstractInvestigations of inequality within the courtroom have mostly examined ways in which discourse structure and rules of use constrain witnesses. This article goes beyond interactional practices to deal with four central language ideologies, which both facilitate these practices and impact on the interpretation and understanding of what people say in evidence. The article further shows that language ideologies can have much wider consequences beyond the courtroom. Focusing on language ideologies involved in storytelling and retelling in cross-examination, and using an Australian example, the article traces the recontextualization of part of a witness's story from an initial investigative interview to cross-examination, then to its evaluation in closing arguments and the judicial decision, as well as its (mis)representation in the print media. The analysis reveals the role of these language ideologies in the perpetuation of neocolonial control over Australian Aboriginal people. (Language ideologies, courtroom talk, cross-examination, decontextualization, recontextualization, neocolonial control, Australia)*


Author(s):  
Gianmarco Gaspari

The magazine of Milan Enlightenment had an open attitude to the new knowledge spreading through Europe and was committed towards the dissemination of the so-called «useful studies». This implied that themes related to medicine were widely present among its articles, which recognized the central role of medicine in social life and presented it as both the inescapable premise of the ‘well-being’ of individuals and the population at large, and the aim of any good administration. Il Caffè decisively stands for ‘new’ medicine, the one that best takes into account the progress of studies, and that values the constant updating of its practitioners; medicine to be considered as science rather than experience. Thanks to all these elements, together with its inclusion in the complex system of scientific knowledge (inherently subject to constant verification), the lively formula of erudite entertainment opens, in more than one case, to concrete results, as in Pietro Verri’s article Sull’innesto del vaiuolo (On smallpox grafting); here, the author resolutely places the Caffè in favor of the still suspect practice of inoculation. Furthermore, even though it is Pietro Verri again who offers a wide-ranging nomenclature framework (with the article La medicina), undoubtedly most of the contributors are involved in dealing with these issues with an almost revolutionary narrative writing; certainly the model is English educational journalism, but with an incisiveness that also pays attention to the emerging sensiblerie, especially the «diseases of imagination» and those from which «more or less every man suffers without exactly distinguishing the cause».


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