Discourse Style Research Articles

Post-16 English Teaching: From recitation to discussion

In an earlier study of the discourse styles of 10 teachers of post-16 English from the northeast of England it was found that teacher-led recitation dominated the classroom discourse thereby imposing linguistic and cognitive constraints on the students. In a follow-up study, four of the teachers were coached in the use of strategies designed to break the recitation script in order to promote wider communicative and more cognitively demanding options for the students. The findings of the current study support the use of such strategies as a means of developing the quality of classroom discourse in post-16 English teaching. The need for more extensive research into teacher/student interaction is considered, together with the need for rigorous measures of quality.

Dissin' “the Standard”: Ebonics as Guerrilla Warfare at Capital High

This article analyzes the discourse styles, including the linguistic practices, of a group of African American high school students and offers a twofold conclusion: (1) Ebonics or Black English is the norm against which all other speech practices are evaluated by the students at the research site and (2) “the standard”—that is, the standard English dialect—is constructed as a vernacular. As a vernacular, this discourse is not privileged; indeed, it is “dissed” (disrespected) and is only “leased” by the students on a daily basis from nine to three. This linguistic practice is centrally implicated in the postulated guerrilla warfare at the school. With data from a predominantly African American high school in Washington, D.C., the effects of this practice on African American academic achievement are documented. Several policy implications are also noted.

Public Administration Discourse

This article proposes that a reorientation is required in public administration’s discourse style. It suggests that traditional style(s) cannot cope with complex problems like the ongoing antipathy against bureaucracy and bureaucracy’s “iron cage” challenges. It proposes, first, that public administration discourse should become more self-conscious about style, a feature often misunderstood as a decorative and unimportant add-on. Second, a self-conscious style should be what is described as post-ist, including emphasis on the autonomously macro and longer term. Traditional and post-ist styles are contrasted.

2 SYSTEM THEORETIC PORTENTS OF PREDISPOSITION TO SYSTEM FAILURE

AbstractThis paper is the first in what will be a series of papers concerned with system failure traceable to decisions taken at a level of specification above that of bioware/hardware/software components, failure ascribable to faulty requirements and architecture. The style of discourse is informal but the results are based on research in the mathematical, system theoretic foundations of systems engineering wherein rigorous mathematical structures for system requirements and designs have been established: input/output, functional, technology, performance, cost, tradeoff and system test requirements and functional, buildable and implementable system designs generated by these requirements. The results in this paper have been deduced from examples and counterexamples representing instances of the general structure of requirements and system designs. Discussed herein, is predisposition to system failure from the following sources: Completeness of problem statements. Simplification of system requirements. System functional analysis. Coupling of implementable system designs.

Bilingual legal interpreter education

The dramatic growth in the number of immigrants in the United States has been paralleled by an ever-increasing demand for interpreters in the courts. The fifth, sixth and fourteenth amendments of the Constitution support the provision of due process and equal protection under the law for all residents. Legal interpreters are therefore needed to provide equal access to justice for linguistic minorities. However, it takes more than bilingualism to make a legal interpreter. The legal interpreter must also be able to manipulate dialect and geographic variation in his/her working languages, possess wide general knowledge, understand both the legal process and the related terminology, and also understand the various discourse styles used in the courtroom. But, despite the stringent requirements needed to perform legal interpreting, academic institutions have been slow to develop suitable programmes. While a few ongoing but limited legal interpreting programmes exist at the undergraduate level, the only comprehensive and graduate programmes are the Master of Arts in Bilingual Legal Interpreting and the Graduate Certificate in Bilingual Legal Interpreting at the University of Charleston, South Carolina.

Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theater

A scholar and trained performer of vocal music and dance, ethnomusicologist Edward Herbst brings unique talents to bear in this provocative book. The lessons of his masters enable him to offer fresh insight to this culture's aesthetics and cultural elements. Appropriating John Cage's effective style of mixing theory, anecdote, context, philosophy, and humor, Herbst crafts an accessible body of work, compelling in substance and form. By merging the Balinese concept of place-time-context with Cage's concepts of structure, method, and form, [Herbst] returns to the critical issue of what scholars and intercultural artists are doing, and 'what' is their 'object' under study. Undergraduates and scholars in fields as varied as theater studies and anthropology will find this book and companion CD (in print editions) an important resource not only for its knowledgeable treatment of culture, but as an example of a more personal and engaging style of scholarly discourse. The ebook edition includes embedded audio.

The effect of supervisor and trainee therapist gender on supervision discourse

The effects of supervisor and trainee therapist gender on supervision discourse were examined in this study. Forty episodes of supervision discourse, with ten drawn from each of four types of supervision systems were videotaped. The systems were (1) male supervisor and male trainee therapist; (2) male supervisor and female trainee therapist; (3) female supervisor and male trainee therapist; and (4) female supervisor and female trainee therapist. The episodes of supervision discourse were analysed using a supervision discourse coding system which showed adequate inter‐rater reliability. For supervisors, the coding system allowed a directive discourse style and a collaborative discourse styled to be coded. A cooperative discourse style and a resistant discourse style could be coded for trainee therapists. Two statistically significant findings of considerable theoretical and clinical importance emerged. First, contrary to stereotypic expectations, discourse characterized by a directive supervision style and a resistant trainee therapist style was more common for systems containing a female supervisor than for those containing a male supervisor. Second, for same gender supervisor‐trainee‐therapist supervision systems, a collaborative systemic supervision style was correlated with both cooperative and resistant trainee therapist styles. This discourse pattern did not occur for opposite gender supervision systems, indicating that a collaborative supervision discourse style is consistently associated with trainee therapist parti‐cipation (either cooperatively or resistantly) within same gender pairings of supervisors and trainee therapists. These results are discussed in light of relevant literature on gender, power and supervision process and the limitations of the study are considered.

Culture-Based Considerations in Programming for Stuttering Intervention With African American Clients and Their Families.

This article describes a clinical framework that may be used with African American children who stutter and their families. It includes discussion of the clinical importance of culture-based factors such as myths, oral presentation styles, narrative discourse styles, and cognitive learning styles, as well as rules for interaction and turn-taking. These factors are considered relative to the various clinical stages in the evaluation and treatment of stuttering in African Americans.

Assessment of the intelligibility and perceived quality of speech produced by text-to-speech engines

The intelligibility and quality of speech produced by current text-to-speech (TTS) engines was assessed using well-established tests of speech intelligibility. TTS engines included Microsoft’s Whistler, AT&T’s Watson, and Elan Informatique’s ProVerbe. The speech intelligibility tests varied in complexity and in the degree to which syntax and lexical knowledge could aid perception. Stimuli included CVC words, semantically meaningful sentences, semantically anomalous sentences, and paragraphs representing different styles of discourse. Intelligibility was evaluated using transcription accuracy for isolated word and sentence items, as well as ratings of the clarity of articulation for word and paragraph items. Perceptual errors on word items also were analyzed by phoneme and word position (initial, medial, or final). Additional ratings were used to determine the perceived ‘‘naturalness’’ of meaningful sentences and paragraph items. Across levels of speech complexity, clear and consistent differences between TTS engines were obtained in terms of both intelligibility and naturalness. Possible explanations of the results will be discussed, as will potential areas where text-to-speech synthesis can generally be improved.

The effects of practicing speech accommodations to older adults

AbstractThis study evaluated the effects of practice with a referential communication task on the form and effectiveness of elderspeak, a speech register targeted at older listeners. The task required the listener to reproduce a route drawn on a map following the speaker's instructions. Young adults were given extended practice with this task to determine if they would modify their fluency, prosody, grammatical complexity, semantic content, or discourse style. The effectiveness of the young speakers' instructions was also evaluated in terms of how accurately their older partners could reproduce the routes and in terms of the older adults' evaluations of their own communicative competence. With practice, the young adults' instructions became shorter, simpler, slower, and more repetitious; these selective changes did not affect the older adults' accuracy, but did result in lower self-ratings of communicative competence by the older partners. In a second study, a new group of young adults was given extended practice with young adults as partners. The practice effects were limited to fluency (sentence length and speech rate) and had no effect on the young partners' accuracy or selfratings of communicative competence.

Use of Elderspeak by Young and Older Adults to Impaired and Unimpaired Listeners

This study examined the use of elderspeak, a speech register targeted at older listeners, by young and older adults. A simulation paradigm was used: The participants were asked to provide a set of instructions for navigating a route drawn on a map and they were given photographs and short biographical descriptions of listeners who were described either as healthy, active adults living independently or as older adults who were experiencing cognitive problems including memory lapses, disorientation, and failing to recognize family members. The fluency, prosody, grammatical complexity, semantic content, and discourse style of the instructions were compared. In addition, the participants were asked to rate the appropriateness of various speech accommodations, such as using long sentences, exaggerated intonation, and repetition, for the listeners. The results indicated that both young and older adults rated the speech accommodations as appropriate for use with cognitively impaired older adults. The young adults actually used such speech accommodations in response to the referential communication task whereas the older adults adopted a more limited range of speech accommodations for the impaired listeners.

The Discourse of Post‐16 English Teaching

The discourse styles of 10 teachers of post‐16 English from the northeast of England were intensively analysed using a descriptive system adapted from the study of discourse analysis. It was found that teacher‐led recitation, which research suggests dominates classroom practice in mainstream schooling, was also a prominent feature in post‐16 English teaching. The linguistic and cognitive constraints imposed on students by the pervasive use of the recitation script are considered together with the need for more qualitative analysis of classroom talk in order to promote wider communicative and cognitively demanding options.

Using elderspeak with older adults

This study examined the use of elderspeak, a speech register targeted at older listeners, during a referential communication task. The task required the listener to reproduce a route drawn on a map following the speaker's instructions. Young adults were paired with older adults who performed naturally or who followed a script simulating dementia to determine if the young adults would modify their fluency, prosody, grammatical complexity, semantic content, or discourse style. When paired with older adults simulating dementia, the young adults’ instructions were longer, more informative, and more repetitious; however, the young adults did not alter their prosody or grammatical complexity. Together with previous findings on practice effects on elderspeak, these findings suggest that young adults adjust their speech to the perceived communicative needs of older listeners by varying information content but not by varying information delivery.

Style and Genre in Japanese Women's Discourse

Style and Genre in Japanese Women's Discourse

The rhetorical use of double‐voiced discourse and feminine style: The U.S. senate debate over the impact of Tailhook ‘91 on admiral Frank B. Kelso II's retirement rank

On April 19, 1994, the seven women members of the U.S. Senate engaged in an emotional, six‐hour debate over whether Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, Chief of Naval Operations during Tailhook ‘91 and its subsequent investigation, should retire with two or four stars. This essay examines the text and subtext of that debate. The text consists of the arguments, pro and con, most directly relevant to the matter at issue; the subtext consists of the large chunks of argumentation offered by the women that seem irrelevant to the text of the debate. These subtextual chunks, most of which deal extensively and narratively with the events of Tailhook ‘91 and sexual harrassment in general, ultimately become more important than the text. In offering such a subtext, the women are engaging in a kind of double‐voiced discourse. In addition, the women use a “feminine style” to help achieve their rhetorical ends. The men of the Senate do not seem to grasp the rhetorical strategy the women have embraced. The women's use of subversive double‐voiced discourse has the potential to change Congressional communication and challenge existing power structures.

Between friends: Gender, peer group structure, and bilingualism in urban Catalonia

ABSTRACTA gap exists between studies of gender and language and studies of bilingualism. The considerable attention given by studies of discourse style to gender differences in friendship patterns is not reflected in research on bilingual communities. This ethnographic case study of high school students in the Barcelona area shows that gender differences in peer group structure can affect the use of the bilingual repertoire, even when there are no apparent sex differences in second language acquisition. In this setting, girls' friendship circles are more solidary and cohesive than boys'. Moreover, girls' groups are ethnically and linguistically homogeneous, while boys' social circles can be ethnically mixed and internally differentiated linguistically. Girls' friendships set stronger constraints on language behavior. In turn, boys and girls reap different social benefits and costs for their linguistic choices, with more serious consequences for girls' social identities and acceptance by peers. (Gender, sex differences, bilingualism, peer groups, language acquisition, social networks, language shift)

Hierarchical Interdependence Expressed Through Conversational Styles in Japanese Women's Magazines

There has been a common belief that the Japanese language has clear distinctions between male and female language use, and that such distinctions are not gender but sex differences. However, recent research re-examines this belief and shows that men and women's different use of speech styles is a sociocultural construct. In line with this research, this paper critically analyzes the language used in a popular form of self-help literature—Japanese women's magazines—and presents an account of the cognitive process whereby discourse positions women and women personalize the discourse. Deconstructing a discourse and the text behind the discourse helps to account for how language is used to control readers, how they perceive the social context through this language, and how they relate it to their personal experience. The paper argues that the polysemous nature of conversational styles, which represent hierarchy and solidarity, is strategically used in the magazines to construct the context in which the social images of a woman are stereotyped. The paper also argues that the `genderlect' (gendered women's speech style) in everyday conversation is a continuum of gendered speech styles in literary discourse.

Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu)

This paper documents some Malay ‘rules of speaking’ and articulates their connections with Malay cultural values, using the new theory of ‘cultural scripts’ developed by Anna Wierzbicka. Aspects of the preferred Malay discourse style, which is normally described as refined, restrained, and charming, are shown to be linked with the Malay social emotion of malu ‘shame, propriety’, with the personal qualities of maruah ‘dignity’ and harga diri ‘self-esteem’, and with the ideal of senang hati ‘(lit.) easy heart’. It is argued that the cultural scripts approach enhances descriptive accuracy, helps reduce ethnocentricism, and facilitates the integration of pragmatics and cultural semantics.

Anti-Politics or the Triumph of Postmodern Populism in Promotional Cultures?

Promotional cultures, to use Wernick.s expression, have transformed communication, as the ideology of the market seeps into every facet of social life. Promotional texts, whether verbal, written or visual, now have great impact upon cultural formation and are contributing to a reflexive transformation of both individual and collective political identities. Much commentary on political change (and especially electoral change) is exercised by a powerfully normative concern with the alleged death of modernist forms of politics and political discourse. This paper goes beyond metaphorical hand-wringing to examine changes in the cultural currents which are transforming the politics of many post-historical societies, and which are conveniently summarised in the changing character of electoral politics and campaign discourses. Although frequently discussed as a kind of anti-politics, these currents, and their phenomenal appearance in the guise of media parties and forms of lifestyle marketing are producing a highly selfreferential style of electoral discourse, and are better understood as imitations of postmodern populism, where that involves: (1) a growing reliance on the techniques and outputs of culture industries to provide sites where meaning is constituted, (2) a de-centring of ideas and outputs about authentic forms of publicness, and (3) the side-lining of palpable modern forms of politics, like mass political parties.

The Social Circulation of Media Discourse and the Mediation of Communities

This article demonstrates how mass media, because of their extensive accessibility and scope, can serve as both reservoirs and reference points for the circulation of words, phrases, and discourse styles in popular culture. Focusing on the social circulation of radio discourse in Zambia, I examine the semiotics of the decontextualization, recontextualization, and creative reworking of media discourse outside of contexts of direct media consumption. The analysis illustrates one productive avenue for probing the linguistic intertextuality of large‐scale societies, as well as the more general heteroglossic nature of language. It suggests that people's active engagements with mass media, along with the social circulation of media discourse and its intertextual connections, are key components in the construction and integration of communities.