Everyday Conversation Research Articles

Behavioural and electrophysiological analyses of written word processing in spoken and literary Arabic: New insights into the diglossia question

Diglossia in Arabic describes the existence and the use of two varieties of the same language: spoken Arabic (SA) and literary Arabic (LA). SA, the dialect first spoken by Arabic native speakers, is used in non‐formal situations for everyday conversations, and varies from one region to another in the Arabic world. LA, acquired later in life when the children learn to read and write at school, is used for formal purposes such as media, speeches in public and religious sermons. Previous research showed that, in the auditory modality, SA words are processed faster than LA ones. In the visual modality, written LA words are processed faster than SA ones, the latter comparing with low‐frequency words. This study analysed event‐related potentials (ERPs) during the processing of high‐frequency (LAHF), LA low‐frequency (LALF) and SA high‐frequency words (SAHF) in a visual lexical decision task. Faster reaction times were observed for LAHF, followed by SAHF and then by LALF. ERPs showed a modulation of the early components starting from the P100 component and of the late P600 component, supposedly related to memory processes. These findings, indicating that processing written SAHF words was largely comparable with processing of LALF, are discussed in the context of Arabic diglossia.

Language Translator Application

Abstract: A language translator is a mobile application that can be utilized for translating from one language to another. The problemof language difference has hindered effective information communication over the years. This traditional approach used for solving the problem of language differences has not been productive and favorable. The study develops an android language converter app in order to make learning and language translation easy and facilitates stress-free communication. The system will also be able to evaluate language translation to determine their suitability for everyday conversation.

Barriers and opportunities to accessing social support in the transition from community to prison: a qualitative interview study with incarcerated individuals in Northern Norway

BackgroundIncarcerated individuals have poor mental health compared to the general population. Social support has a beneficial effect on mental health. The buffering model proposes that social support facilitates coping under stressful conditions, while the main effects model suggests that belonging to social networks and having positive social interactions are beneficial for mental health. Prisons are a highly interesting context for studying social support, as imprisonment is perceived as stressful and disrupts social relationships and the availability of support. This study aims to explore incarcerated individuals' perceptions of social support from various sources in the transition from community to prison, its perceived significance for mental health, and the opportunities and barriers to accessing social support in a Norwegian prison context.MethodsThe experiences of eight incarcerated individuals from a prison in Northern Norway were gathered through conducting individual in-depth interviews. The data analysis was inspired by Charmaz’s version of Grounded Theory.ResultsSocial support from peers was perceived to be important for the well-being and preserving of mental health in prison. Support from informal sources outside prison and prison officers were not granted the same significance by the participants. Although prison life was perceived as stressful, social support in the form of companionship, the feeling of belonging, shared activities, and everyday conversations were more important for the participants than support focusing on coping with the stress of incarceration.ConclusionsPeers are perceived to be the most important source of social support, and vital for well-being and mental health in prison. Barriers to support from family, friends and prison officers may amplify the significance of support from peers.

The influence of psychological safety on feedback conversations in general practice training.

Fostering trainee psychological safety is increasingly being recognised as necessary for effective feedback conversations. Emerging literature has explored psychological safety in peer learning, formal feedback and simulation debrief. Yet, the conditions required for psychologically safe feedback conversations in clinical contexts, and the subsequent effects on feedback, have not been explored. We conducted a qualitative study using interviews and longitudinal audio-diaries with 12 rural general practice trainees. The data were analysed using framework thematic analysis to identify factors across the data and as individual participant case studies with illustrative vignettes of dynamic interleaving of factors in judgements about feedback conversations. Findings identify the influence of intrapersonal (e.g. confidence and comfort to seek help), interpersonal (e.g. trust and relationship) and sociocultural factors (e.g. living and working in a rural community) that contribute to psychological safety in the context of everyday feedback conversations. Multiple factors interplayed in feedback conversations where registrars could feel safe and unsafe within one location and even at the one time. Participants felt psychologically safe to engage their educators in sanctioned systems of conversation related to the immediate care of the patient and yet unsafe to engage in less patient related performance conversations despite the presence of multiple positive interpersonal factors. The concept of a safe 'container' (contained space) is perhaps idealised when it comes to feedback conversations about performance in the informal and emergent spaces of postgraduate training. More research is needed into understanding how clinical environments can sanction feedback conversations in clinical environments.

Social Distancing and Social Biosensing: Intersubjectivity from Afar

The shelter-in-place orders across the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic forced many relationships once sustained by in-person interaction into remote states through computer-mediated communication (CMC). Work, school, holidays, social engagements, and everyday conversations formerly experienced through rich and contextual in-person interactions instead have taken place on messaging, voice, and video chatting platforms that diminish or altogether lack many social cues and other qualities critical to social interaction. The difficulties feeling connected to one another observed during this period have stressed the need for novel forms of communication that enable deeper interactions. Social biosensing, the interpersonal sharing of physiological information, has shown promise facilitating social connection at a distance. In the present research we document the experiences of nine pairs of friends (N = 18) who navigated living through a shelter-in-place order, reporting on their experiences sharing their electrodermal activity (EDA) in response to short videos. Participants described the artificial and unnatural nature of communicating using typical forms of CMC and a range of interpretations of EDA as both emotional response and as representative of personal characteristics. We implemented a phased approach to study the temporal nature of forming an understanding of unfamiliar yet intimate data like EDA. Our results indicate typologies of meaning-making processes: “stablers”, “broadeners”, and “puzzlers”. We also interpreted our findings through the lens of intersubjectivity, analyzing how analogical apperception and dialogical interaction both play a role in participants’ meaning-making about their own and their partner’s biosensory information. We conclude with implications from this work pertinent to intersubjectivity theorists, social biosensing researchers, and CMC system designers and developers.

Limits and Possibilities of Resilience as a Psycho-Sociological Strategic Game:

The aim of this paper is to analyze the psycho-sociological complexity inherent in the exercise ofresilience. The concept of resilience has become so popular that it is usual in academic publications,in popular self-help publications, and in everyday conversations. This monographic issue shows thevariety of empirical studies of resilience in different fields. However, my contribution is fundamentallytheoretical insofar as it tries to analyze the limits and possibilities of the very concept of resilience. Indeed,human society is inherently ambiguous and ambivalent. This requires a capacity for flexible adaptationin which risk and uncertainty are always present. However, resilience or the ability to adapt to adversesituations is a quality that can only be adequately analyzed within the complex etiological triangle of humanbehavior. Resilience is an exercise in which biology, culture, and environment establish the framework thatenables or frustrates its success. Resilience is a relational and ambivalent dynamic process in which peopleare both passive and active subjects. Overcoming adversity means ceasing to be who we were and becomingdifferent people. Therefore, resilience calls in question the sameness approach to human beings. Thiscomplexity of resilience always requires an integrated interdisciplinary approach that accounts for humanreality. The most important conclusion is that resilience is a useful concept as long as it is sufficientlyrooted in a realistic anthropological model such as the one I will try to develop throughout the article.

Imam Ali (Ali Ibn Abi Ṭalib), The Peak Personality Who Shaped Arabic Poetry with His Wise Words

Imam Ali, the sultan of wise words, who had a good command of the Qur'an, hadiths, and poems of the period of ignorance (Jahiliyyah), used literary sentences even in his everyday conversations. He proved to be the pinnacle of literature by skillfully bringing together words in his poems with deep meanings. His poems were examined in Arab and Turkish sources to reveal the literary power of Imam Ali and the beauty of the used language. Studies on the literary aspect of Imam Ali in the Arabic field are more than the studies in the Turkish field. In the literature, much research was conducted about Imam Ali, but very few of these studies examined his literary language side. As he was the basis of Islamic sciences and the master of scholars who grew up in these fields, he occupied a great place in the literature of Muslim countries. We tried to make up for the lack of analysis of Imam Ali's literary language in this context. Imam Ali was a great person who needed to be examined in every aspect of literature. We tried to reveal his literary side, which was a guide for those who came after him.

Book Language and Its Implications for Children’s Language, Literacy, and Development

The onset of literacy marks a significant change in children’s development. Written language is more complex than everyday conversation, and even books targeted at preschoolers contain more varied words and more complex syntax than child-directed speech does. We review the nature and content of children’s book language, focusing on recent large-scale corpus analyses that systematically compared written and spoken language. We argue that exposure to book language provides opportunities for learning words and syntactic constructions that are only rarely encountered in speech and that, in turn, this rich experience drives further developments in language and literacy. Moreover, we speculate that the range, variety, depth, and sophistication of book language provide key input that promotes children’s social and emotional development. Becoming literate changes things, and researchers need to better understand how and why reading experience shapes people’s minds and becomes associated with a range of skills and abilities across the life span.

Investigating the Importance of Conversational Implicature and Violation of Maxims in Daily Conversations

According to linguistic theory, conversational Implicature (CI) is the original intent of the speech expressed by a speaker. The assumption is that both the speaker and the receiver understand and respect the communication rules. In conversation theory, this is the significant component that has been the subject of discussion. This study investigates the importance of CI in various contexts of daily conversations. The focus of this study is to identify the violation of Grice’s theory in the conversation. There is a shortcoming in literature to investigate CI in everyday conversations. Moreover, some studies focussed on specific discussions, which led to a literature gap. The study’s outcome will assist researchers in exploring new ideas in conversational implicatures. In addition, it reveals the shortcomings of the usage of implicatures. In this study, the researchers analyzed a set of 77 daily conversations. The study showed that context is critical in determining the meaning of a person’s thoughts. In addition, the finding suggests that particularized CI are primarily employed in daily conversations.

An event-contingent method to track disfluency effects on the relationship and the self.

BackgroundTheoretically, reductions of self‐esteem among people who stutter (PWS) are often explained by individual negative cognitions or emotions of the PWS or their conversation partners. We propose that the flow of a conversation can be seen as a representation of the relationship between speakers, and that by disrupting this flow, a stutter may directly threaten this relationship, and in turn affect self‐esteem. Methodologically, we present a new, event‐contingent, method that assesses fluctuations in self‐esteem over time and thereby allows one to assess the predictive value of specific conversational experiences.AimsTo have both a theoretical and a methodological contribution on conversational disfluency.Methods & ProceduresOur focus is not on stable individual factors, but we expect that fluctuations within the flow of everyday conversations predict changes in self‐esteem. We studied these fluctuations with an experience sampling method which prompted participants to answer a brief survey after each of 10 conversations in a 2‐week period. Self‐identified PWS (n = 58) and people who do not stutter (PWNS; n = 53) reported on their individual negative cognitions and emotions and experienced relational quality and state self‐esteem in more than 1000 conversations. By assessing fluctuations in self‐esteem over time, this method allows one to assess the predictive value of specific conversational experiences.Outcomes & ResultsCorrelational evidence demonstrates that flow disruptions are associated with temporary reductions in self‐esteem. This association is mediated by increased individual negative cognitions and emotions, as well as threatened social relationships. This appeared to be true for both PWS and PWNS, although PWS experienced on average less conversational flow and lower state self‐esteem. On average, PWS did not experience lower relational quality than PWNS.Conclusions & ImplicationsAn event‐contingent recording method is a useful way to assess momentary fluctuations in self‐esteem. Findings are consistent with the notion that people monitor their relationship by attending to fluctuations in conversational flow; whereas a smooth conversational flow indicates a strong relationship, disruptions of flow (e.g., as caused by a stutter or other factors) signal a threat to the relationship.What this paper addsWhat is already known on the subject Even though adverse effects of stuttering on the experience of self‐esteem have been reported, the evidence for this relation is equivocal. Because the evidence is mixed, it becomes interesting to examine the processes that provide insight in how stuttering may affect self‐esteem. Theoretically, reductions of self‐esteem among PWS are often explained by individual negative cognitions or emotions of the PWS or their conversation partners. Methodologically, studies examine this relation by single self‐report measures, or by laboratory studies. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Our theoretical model shows that the flow of a conversation can be seen as a representation of the relationship between speakers, and that by disrupting this flow, a stutter directly threatens this relationship, and in turn, affects self‐esteem. Methodologically, we present a new, event‐contingent, method that assesses fluctuations in self‐esteem over time and thereby allows one to assess the predictive value of specific conversational experiences. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Going beyond the study of stable individual cognitions and emotions of PWS and listeners, our findings show that a close examination of between‐conversation fluctuations in flow can teach us about the day‐to‐day reality of people living with speech disorders, and the way they develop relationships and self‐esteem.

A Discursive Approach to Young Adult Romantic Couples Use of Active Listening to Manage Conflict During Natural Everyday Conversations

ABSTRACT The present study uses a discursive psychological approach to examine naturally occurring bids at active listening as they arise spontaneously in the everyday interactions between young adult couples. To date, there is scant research examining in microanalytic detail how active listening works as it spontaneously emerges in everyday natural troubles-talk contexts between romantic partners. Five discursive methods for engaging in active listening are identified: 1) the use of psychological attributions, 2) judgmental questions, 3) subtle reframes, 4) story-topping, and 5) minimal recycles. The findings reveal that active listening is less about simply reflecting what one is hearing in neutral, open, and/or nonjudgmental ways, but is mostly about managing accountability, blame/attribution, identities, and perceived relational symmetries and asymmetries. The findings offer a new and exciting perspective for researchers interested in understanding how active listening spontaneously emerges and how couples use it in everyday natural relational contexts.

Acoustic cues associated with Korean sarcastic utterances produced by right- and left-hemisphere damaged individuals

PurposeSarcasm, prevalent in everyday conversation, refers to the use of words that express negative attitudes toward persons or events. Acoustic cues associated with sarcasm have been reported to vary across studies and the relative importance of particular acoustic parameters for signaling sarcasm has not been fully determined. The hemispheric specialization for the production of acoustic cues has been a matter of controversy. This study investigated the possible prosodic cues associated with Korean sarcastic utterances and the differential effect of left hemisphere damage (LHD) or right hemisphere damage (RHD) on the production of acoustic features of Korean sarcastic utterances. MethodTwenty one native speakers of Korean (7 individuals with LHD, 7 individuals with RHD, and 7 healthy controls (HC)) produced six Korean utterances in two different modes: sarcastic and literal. Utterances validated by sarcasm ratings by native listeners were analyzed acoustically utilizing durational and fundamental frequency (F0) measures. ResultsListeners’ ratings and acoustic analyses indicated that sarcastic utterances in Korean were produced with a combination of multiple acoustic cues. Discriminant function analyses and multiple linear regression showed that LHD and RHD differentially affected the production of acoustic cues associated with sarcasm. ConclusionLHD negatively affects the production of durational cues, while RHD negatively affects the production of F0 cues.

Reduced and Citation Forms as Produced by Iraqi EFL University Students at Duhok University An Error Analytic Study

English is spoken by its native speakers in two different forms. Reduced form which marks the colloquial and rapid speech so that it is easily produced and a citation or unreduced form which is a characteristic of careful, emphasized and slow speech. This paper investigates Iraqi EFL university students’ production of the two forms mentioned above. The sample chosen includes twenty fourth year students, of which ten are males and the other ten are females from the Department of English of the College of Languages of the University of Duhok in Kurdistan Region of Iraq in the academic year 2020-2021. The material tested is six connective words which represent the commonest ones in every-day conversation. A pronunciation test is designed to measure the production

When an Ethnic Language Sneaks into the Tanzanian Rural Secondary School Classroom: How Teachers and Learners Perceive Multilingualism

Most African countries have adopted the languages of ex-colonial masters as media of instruction (MoI). In Tanzania, English has remained the sole MoI from secondary to post-secondary education despite the endemic multilingualism in the country. Such a monolingual tendency in a multilingual setting has raised debates on how learners manage their studies through English, a language which is scarcely used in their everyday conversation. Thus, the current paper investigates learners’ strategic use of ethnic languages (EL) Nyakyusa and Swahili in the learning of the English language and other selected subjects. It also examines teachers’ and learners’ attitudes to the use of ethnic languages in the teaching and learning process in Tanzanian rural secondary schools. The study was carried out in Kyela District, Mbeya Region, among Form One and Form Two students whose first language is Nyakyusa, but who also use Swahili often when talking to peers at home and around the school compound. We used classroom observation and focus groups to collect data. The analysis revealed that some learners made use of Swahili and Nyakyusa for a number of reasons, including seeking assistance from fellow students whenever they came across a new English word/expression in the classroom. We also found that teachers and students reacted differently to the use of languages other than English in the classroom. While students believed that they would not be able to learn anything if their language was completely unused in the class, teachers believed that the use of Nyakyusa and Swahili was inappropriate. Consequently, teachers controlled learners’ use of Swahili and Nyakyusa in the class and around the school.

Modelling of basic Indonesian Sign Language translator based on Raspberry Pi technology

Deaf people have hearing loss from mild to very severe. Such people have difficulty processing language information both with and without hearing aids. Deaf people who do not use hearing aids use sign language in their everyday conversations. At the same time, it is difficult for general people to communicate with the deaf, so in order to communicate with the deaf they must know sign language. There are two sign languages in Indonesia, namely SIBI (Indonesian Sign Language System) and BISINDO (Indonesian Sign Language). To help with communication between deaf and normal people, we developed a model using the one-handed SIBI method as an example, and then further developed it using the one-handed and two-handed BISINDO. The main function of the method is the recognition of basic letters, words, sentences and numbers using a Raspberry Pi single-board computer and a camera which are designed to detect the movements of language gestures. With the help of a special program, images are translated into text on the monitor screen. The method used is image processing and machine learning using the Python programming language and Convolutional Neural Network techniques. The device prototype issues a warning to repeat the sign language if the translation fails, and delete the translation if it doesn’t match the database. The prototype of the device requires further development providing its flexibility: to provide reading of dynamic movements, facial expressions, to provide translation of words not included in the existing database. You need to add a database other than SIBI, such as BISINDO, or sign languages from other regions or countries.

Konsep Kesantunan Komunikasi Berdasarkan Lafaz Al-Ta’dil Di Sisi Ibn Hajar Al-‘Asqalani

The credibility of the narrator in the chain of sanad is assessed using the method of al-Jarh wa al-Ta’dil. The standard of their credibility is looking through two main angles which are al-Dabt (accuracy of knowledge) and al-ʿAdalah (personality) based on the justification of sanad. Therefore, many expertise in this field that we can explore including Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani. The use of the method of al-Tacdil discussed by Ibn Hajar should be highlighted the communication of society by implementing it in the element of communication politeness. Furthermore, this article using descriptive and thematic studies based on qualitative research. The results of this study found that Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani’s expertise in the field of criticism and praise of hadith narrators transcends his prominence among nuqqad which can be as a basic guidance and interpret it as politeness in everyday conversation as he classifies tajrih and ta’dil utterances in stages.

Individual Differences in Conversational Self-Touch Frequency Correlate with State Anxiety

Self-touches are frequently performed in everyday conversations. Although self-touch appears to relate to itching skin sensations or grooming needs, there has been cumulating evidence that the production of self-touch is associated with emotional regulation and cognitive control. Yet, individuals vary greatly in how often they perform self-touch in conversations. The present study investigated how individuals’ anxiety levels (i.e., state and trait anxiety), personality traits (i.e., neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness), and inhibition ability can contribute to the individual differences in conversational self-touch frequency. Spontaneous self-touch was elicited from a hundred and twenty-seven participants in an animated cartoon description task and a social dilemma-solving task. Results from the correlational analysis showed that the self-touch frequency was significantly positively related to individuals’ state and trait anxiety levels and their neuroticism scores but was significantly negatively related to their agreeableness scores. However, when all predictor variables were entered simultaneously into a multiple regression analysis, the result showed that the state anxiety score was the only significant predictor of the conversational self-touch frequency. This result is consistent with the proposal that self-touch behaviors are produced to regulate negative emotional states such as anxiety and stress. The findings of the present study shed new light on the function of self-touch behaviors in conversations, and highlight the importance of using a broad correlational approach with simultaneous consideration of multiple predictors in future research aiming to understand individual differences in self-touch behaviors.

Achieving Mutual Understanding Without Saying a Word: The Conceptualization of Moqi and a Nomological Network

ABSTRACTWhile the construct of moqi (默契, pronounced ‘mò-chee’) is ubiquitously understood and finds itself in everyday conversations around the home and workplace in China, the theoretical development of moqi has been scarce. In this article, we expand on prior work on moqi and conceptualize moqi as a dyadic level construct that describes a situated state of shared contextualized understanding without saying a word between two counterparties. We further articulate a broader view of moqi as a dyadic communication construct that is both target-specific and situation-specific. We propose a nomological network of moqi that shows how shared contextualized understandings between counterparties are informed by several different layers, including ‘capability’ (a) a generalized proclivity to be able to form such understandings with others, and ‘contributing factors’, (b) how those understandings are formed either (i) through interactions or (ii) without them through overlaps in background characteristics or experiences, and (c) how other factors accentuate the capability and inclination to ultimately achieve moqi. We then discuss several potential consequences of moqi in organizational settings. Finally, we discuss why moqi is a powerful form of effective communication that is meaningful beyond the Chinese cultural context.

Deiksis dalam Film Bumi dan Manusia Karya Hanung Bramantyo

Deixis is a pragmatic study that examines the relationship between the structure of language and the environment in which the language is used. The phenomenon of deixis or use is most often seen in everyday conversation in the form of verbal language. Deixis is also found in the conversation of characters or figures in literary works such as films. The study entitled "Deixis in the Film Bumi dan Manusia by Hanung Bramantyo" examines the use of deixis in the film directed by Hanung Bramantyo with the title "Earth and Man". Persona, time, place, social, and discourse deixis are the five categories of deixis studied in this study. Researchers used analytical methods in the form of pragmatics with qualitative techniques to analyze the data that had been collected. The data used in this study include fragments of speech from film conversations, both words and phrases containing deixis, including personal deixis, time deixis, location deixis, social deixis, and discourse deixis. Watching movies, capturing data, recognizing, categorizing, analyzing, formulating, and presenting data are the stages of analyzing in this research. Data analysis illustrates that the film directed by Hanung Bramantyo with the title "Bumi dan Manusia" has a deixis in the form of person, time, place, social, and discourse.

Code-switching of Chinese students at the tertiary level in conversations: concerning English

We examined Chinese university students' daily-life casual attitudes regarding code-switching of English. It challenges students' everyday and simple conversations. Code-switching is "the use of two or more languages within the same conversation, usually within the same conversational turn, or even within the same sentence. According to the study, code-switching is a combination of two languages used during the same auditory communication or conversation between Chinese University students. An interview sample of students represents one of the public universities in Beijing. Participants included 42 Chinese students from various majors, including journalism, media, communication, drama, and languages. This study involved a questionnaire containing 21 questions. According to the study, there was an evident shortage of English code-switching features among this population. To say it differently, they rarely use code-switching, as they are afraid of conveying a wrong meaning, and using Chinese is easier and more convenient.