Explicit Utterances Research Articles

Fast habituation to semantic interference generated by taboo connotation in reading aloud

ABSTRACT The recognition of taboo words – i.e. socially inappropriate words – has been repeatedly associated to semantic interference phenomena, with detrimental effects on the performance in the ongoing task. In the present study, we investigated taboo interference in the context of reading aloud, a task configuration which prompts the overt violation of conventional sociolinguistic norms by requiring the explicit utterance of taboo items. We assessed whether this form of semantic interference is handled by habituative or cognitive control processes. In addition to the reading aloud task, participants performed a vocal Stroop task featuring different conditions to dissociate semantic, task, and response conflict. Taboo words were read slower than non-taboo words, but this effect was subject to a quick habituation, with a decreasing interference over the course of trials, which allowed participants to selectively attend to goal-relevant information. In the Stroop task, only semantic conflict was significantly reduced by habituation. These findings suggest that semantic properties can be quickly and flexibly weighed on the basis of contextual appropriateness, thus characterising semantic processing as a flexible and goal-directed component of reading aloud.

Developing Teachers’ Skill to Identify High Ability Students

The question: “how to educate teachers in order to help them be more understanding, more suitable, and more motivated when teaching gifted students” has been widely discussed. The question whether it is possible at all certainly needs more research. However, we shall hereby suggest some “signs”, hints, or even explicit utterances that might help teachers to notice students who need extra-supervision, enrichment activities or an accelerated track. These sayings, or doings, are usually either ignored by teachers or quite often wrongly interpreted. Had teacher known how to “read” these signs it would have helped them to know if a certain student needs extra-challenging, different, higher-level school curriculum, more creative homework or self-learning assignments. Here are the 5 main points a teacher should consider when having to decide whether their student is gifted or talented. 1. Boredom: looking bored or complaining about being bored 2. Finishing all tasks before everybody else 3. Correcting the teacher or/and other students/”Takes over” class conversation 4. Does not do homework or prepares for exams but gets high grades; 5. Shows emotional high level

Poetic Resistance: Girls’ Autograph Albums during World War II in Norway

Poetic Resistance: Girls’ Autograph Albums during World War II in Norway

Perceptual and Semantic Processing in Cognitive Robots

The challenge in human–robot interaction is to build an agent that can act upon human implicit statements, where the agent is instructed to execute tasks without explicit utterance. Understanding what to do under such scenarios requires the agent to have the capability to process object grounding and affordance learning from acquired knowledge. Affordance has been the driving force for agents to construct relationships between objects, their effects, and actions, whereas grounding is effective in the understanding of spatial maps of objects present in the environment. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a methodology for the extension of object affordance and grounding, the Bloom-based cognitive cycle, and the formulation of perceptual semantics for the context-based human–robot interaction. In this study, we implemented YOLOv3 to formulate visual perception and LSTM to identify the level of the cognitive cycle, as cognitive processes synchronized in the cognitive cycle. In addition, we used semantic networks and conceptual graphs as a method to represent knowledge in various dimensions related to the cognitive cycle. The visual perception showed average precision of 0.78, an average recall of 0.87, and an average F1 score of 0.80, indicating an improvement in the generation of semantic networks and conceptual graphs. The similarity index used for the lingual and visual association showed promising results and improves the overall experience of human–robot interaction.

How are emotional distress and reassurance expressed in medical consultations for people with long-term conditions who were unable to receive curative treatment? A pilot observational study with huntington\u2019s disease and prostate cancer

ObjectiveIt is unclear whether how people with long-term conditions express distress, and how clinicians respond, influences perceptions of consultation outcomes. The pilot study examined emotional distress and reassurance in consultations with people whose long-term conditions (at the time of consultations) were treated using active surveillance or symptom management (as no curative treatment was suitable).MethodsAn observational pilot study was conducted involving consultations between people with long-term conditions and their respective clinician. Consultations between three clinicians (two Huntington’s Disease; one Prostate Cancer) and 22 people with long-term conditions (11 Huntington’s Disease; 11 Prostate Cancer) were audio-recorded. Participants also completed an expanded Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) Measure. Two researchers coded sessions using Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences (VR-CoDES/VR-CoDES-P). Code frequencies were calculated, t tests performed between conditions, and Pearson’s correlations performed for associations between CARE responses and clinician utterances.ResultsPeople with long-term conditions expressed emotional distress on average 4.45 times per session, averaging 1.09 Concern and 3.36 Cue utterances. Clinicians responded with more explicit (2.59) and space-providing (3.36), than non-explicit (1.86) and space-reducing (1.09), responses per session. Clinicians expressed spontaneous reassurance on average 5.18 times per session, averaging 3.77 Cognitive and 1.5 Affective reassurance utterances. Huntington’s Disease consultations featured significantly more 'Cues', 'Concerns' and 'Overall' 'Emotional Distress', and 'Cognitive' and 'Overall' ‘Reassurance'.ConclusionEmotional distress was expressed more using hints than explicit concern utterances. Clinicians predominantly explicitly explored distress rather than providing information/advice and provided advice using spontaneous cognitive reassurance. People with Huntington’s Disease expressed more concerns and received more reassurance, indicating different needs between conditions. Future research is required to explore emotional distress and reassurance in a larger sample of participants and long-term condition types, and how the practical implications of these findings may be used to enhance outcomes of consultations.Trial registrationN/A.

“Fearless, powerful, Filipino”: identity positioning in the hashtag activism of #BabaeAko

ABSTRACT This study investigated the discursive production and contestation of identities in the Philippine hashtag campaign, #BabaeAko (“I am a woman”). Using Slocum-Bradley’s Positioning Diamond (2009) it explored the relational process of identity negotiation between the women of the campaign and the President along with his supporters. Explicit utterance of the identity category “woman” with attributes of fearlessness and power, and sustaining such positioning across social episodes, allowed #BabaeAko advocates to resist oppressive attributions grounded on structural inequalities. In addition, the twofold storylines of calling out misogyny and calling for solidarity established the discursive activism of the campaign as both “talking back” and “calling for” likeminded individuals. Findings are further discussed in relation to hashtag feminism and political action along with the implications of identity claiming to feminist online mobilization.

Trends in Interactional Competence: Targeting Engagement and Explicit Utterances

This paper aims to examine how an IELTS candidate keeps himself engaged in communication and conveys his ideas clearly to the examiner in the speaking section. Despite very occasional errors, the candidate shows fluency and a good mastery of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. His performance demonstrates his abilities in interactional competence, a construct of speaking pedagogy that highlights dynamics of interaction between participants of a conversation. The nature of interactional competence requires the speaker to make utterance explicit to the listener and actively respond to the conversation partner. Influencing factors of interactional competence include speaking skills, communication abilities, cognitive skills and contextual factors. Issues might arise from unmanageable factors in some occasions, which requires the test taker to adapt to changes and adjust utterances as an engaged listener. Thus, contingent responses reflect comprehension and engagement in interactions. In this case, the speaker responds to the examiner by expanding information with a flexible use of vocabulary, grammatical structures and pronunciation skills. Examples show that major contributors to errors might be inattentiveness and lack of context awareness. If he fixes the problems in his speech, he can improve his rating on the marking rubric in future tests.

Overlapping Mechanisms in Implying and Inferring.

Prior psychological work on Gricean implicature has revealed much about how listeners infer (comprehension) but little about how speakers imply (production). This is surprising given the inherent link between the two. This study aimed to obtain a more integral understanding of implicatures by investigating the processes that are shared between inference and implication. In two experiments, a participant and a confederate engaged in a dialogue game that invited the use of implicatures. In each there was a global priming manipulation, in which a confederate predominantly used implicit or explicit utterances, and a local priming manipulation, in which the utterance structure varied from trial to trial. Participants could choose whether to imply or use an explicit expression. Our results revealed that speaker and listener align on their use of implicatures. We interpret the local priming results as providing evidence of shared implicature representations between speaker and listener, and the global priming results as a form of audience design. We also present a model of implicature production that explains our findings.

Implicit Ethics: Normative Claims to Culture in Multilateral Negotiations

Multilateral negotiations are often critiqued for not sufficiently addressing issues of justice and for rendering contentious issues ‘technical.’ Such a view is problematic as it limits the voicing of justice claims to explicit utterances and neglects implicit claims. This paper shows that the communicative modalities of multilateral negotiations can lead to situations in which a shift to implicit justice claims is advantageous. The seeming absence of such claims does not necessarily preclude a mostly technical discourse or the absence of issues of justice but can also signify a shift towards a strategically favorable diplomatic register in which normative stances are implied but not made explicit.

What’s really going on with the ham sandwich?

Abstract Working within the framework of Relevance Theory, I investigate the nature of referential metonymy (specifically, metonymically-used definite descriptions), aiming to elucidate (i) the pragmatic mechanisms involved in referential metonymy comprehension, and (ii) the contribution of a metonymically-used definite description to the explicitly communicated content of an utterance. I propose that, while the interpretation of referential metonymy is properly inferential in nature, it cannot be explained in terms of ‘meaning modulation’ (narrowing and broadening); rather, the literal meaning of a metonymically-used referring expression remains intact, and is used as evidence of the speaker’s target referent. In addition, I argue that the referential/attributive distinction proposed by Donnellan (1966) for literally-used definite descriptions also applies to metonymically-used definite descriptions. Thus, the contribution of a metonymically-used definite description to explicit utterance content differs according to whether the definite description is used ‘referentially’ or ‘attributively’.

Utterance as the Unit of Analysing Self-presentation Strategy in the English-language Discourse

The article provides insights into characteristic features of utterances-self-presentemes and the ways of their identification in the English-language dialogical discourse. The understanding of self-presentation as a discursive phenomenon and a discourse strategy prompts that it is an utterance which acts as a self-presenteme. Utterances-self-presentemes have the identification frame as their conceptual base. These utterances are built on the syntactic model Pronoun (1st person sing/pl) + be + Noun. Explicit utterances self-presentemes are formed on the variants of this model; implicit utterances self-presentemes can be transformed into those formed on the variants in this model. The identification of utterances-self-presentemes in the English-language dialogical discourse involves contextual analysis which proves to be necessary for implicit utterances-self-presentemes and explicit utterances-self-presentemes with Pronoun 1st person pl (group self-presentemes).

Structural and semantic types of warning utterances in the German dialogical discourse

The article uses the material of modern German-speaking dialogical discourse to define the structural and semantic ways of expressing the speech acts of warning, taking into account its hybrid nature. The speech act of warning is a hybrid illocutionary type, which is characterized by the simultaneous realization of two illocutions – assertive and directive. These illocutions are related at the level of propositional content: the directive component is the motivation of the addressee to a specific action in the interests, and the assertive component is the reporting of a certain state of affairs relevant to the action predicted in the motivation. By the criterion of the language expression the speech acts of warning demonstrate two types – explicit and implicit. Explicit speech acts of warning occur when: 1) the assertive and directive components are explicitly expressed; 2) the warning illocution is expressed by the explicit performative formula of the type Ich warne dich. The implicit speech act of warning has three types – with an implicitly expressed directive component, with an implicitly expressed directive component and with implicitly expressed both components. Eleven structural and semantic models of the speech acts of warning are established in the German dialogical discourse, among which three are explicit utterances and eight are implicit. The most common means of expressing the speech acts of warning in the German dialogical discourse are the performative formula, the conjunctions sonst and denn, conditional sentence with the wenn conjunction, utterances of imperative structure and modal verbs.

Rethinking explicit utterance content

This paper challenges the view that interpreting an assertoric utterance of a declarative sentence requires representing the explicit content of the utterance, where this is understood to be a level of representation that is a development of its linguistically encoded meaning. Such a form, often referred to as an ‘explicature’ or ‘impliciture’, is assumed to be an output of pragmatic processing by both Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory and Recanati's two-system model. The paper considers a number of reasons why such a level might be posited, and concludes that none of these is sufficient to require the view that utterance interpretation processes aim at identifying a level of explicit content that is arrived at by augmenting and/or adjusting the encoded meaning of the sentence uttered. Rather, the paper argues, the distinction drawn by Jary (2013) between material and behavioural implicatures better explains certain phenomena highlighted by putative tests for explicit utterance content, and provides a principled basis for the distinction between two levels of pragmatic processing.

СЕМЕЙНЫЕ ПИСЬМА РУССКИХ КЛАССИКОВ В СЕМАНТИКОПРАГМАТИЧЕСКОМ АСПЕКТЕ

Kovaleva Natalya Anatolievna – Ph.D. of linguistics, associate professor, professor. Center of linguistics and professional communication. Abstract . The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. The article deals with semantic-pragmatic aspect of family letters of A.S. Pushkin and A.P. Chekhov. Style and stylistic forms in the text, taking into account the recipient’s letter is determined by the method of presentation of information, expressive and emotional mood, estimated characteristics, the use of certain language constructions, types of applications. Depending on the recipient’s letter etiquette inversion formula can be different and characterized by a certain tone in accordance with the social roles of the recipients, their role positions, relationships with the communicants. Autopragmatics of A.S. Pushkin is associated with the statement of ethical normativity, it manifests itself not only in the cognitions and emotions of everyday thinking, but lies in the portrait and landscape sketches. Family letters of A.P. Chekhov are characterized by genre and stylistic diversity. Pragmatic rules related to the author’s letters are connected with the description of the explicit and implicit utterance goals (direct and indirect), chosen tactic of speech and types of verbal behavior, defined by the addressee. Key words : semantics, pragmatics, family letters, communicative orientation.

On the emergence of Korean markers of agreement

This paper discusses the emergence of some of the discourse markers of agreement (DMAs) in Korean. This paper shows the processes that DMAs have historically undergone en route to their grammaticalization into discourse markers. The DMAs under discussion originated from three different sources: conditionals, quotations, and causals. The development of these DMAs involves the strategic use of ellipsis. By way of strategically withholding the main clause, the speaker indicates that the situation is so obvious that the elided part does not require explicit utterance. This is a common strategy in Korean utilized in the development of connectives into sentence-final particles that acquired diverse meanings through conventionalization of pragmatic inferences. These DMAs also recruited the anaphoric kule- ‘be so’ that makes reference to the speaker's prior utterance and becomes a part of a conditional or causal protasis or a subordinated quotative clause. This paper also shows that the development of these DMAs crucially makes use of intersubjectification through which the elided parts are pragmatically reconstructed and the residual ‘defective’ (i.e. partially elided and phonologically reduced) discourse segments become full-fledged DMAs.

RELATING EFL LEARNERS’ GRAMMAR KNOWLEDGE TO THEIR USE OF PRAGMATIC EXPRESSIONS

When people use language as a tool to communicate, the meaning that is conveyed or received will be more than what is heard from the explicit utterances. It is believed that the language we use as the code can be interpreted in any meaning, which interpretation becomes part of pragmatics. Grammar ability and pragmatic competence should work together to create good communication and avoid misunderstanding. This paper presents three aspects. The first aspect is the kinds of pragmatic knowledge that the EFL learners may have about their foreign language they are learning. The second aspect is how the EFL learners use their foreign linguistic expressions in a contextually appropriate manner within their daily communication. The last one is to what extent the EFL learners understand the implicit messages of expressions.

Avoiding split attention in computer‐based testing: Is neglecting additional information facilitative?

AbstractThis study investigated whether design guidelines for computer‐based learning can be applied to computer‐based testing (CBT). Twenty‐two students completed a CBT exam with half of the questions presented in a split‐screen format that was analogous to the original paper‐and‐pencil version and half in an integrated format. Results show that students attended to all information in the integrated format while ignoring information in the split format. Interestingly, and contrary to expectations, they worked more efficiently in the split format. A content analysis of the ignored information revealed that it was mostly not relevant to answering the questions, unnecessarily taxed students' cognitive capacity and inefficiently increased the mental effort they expended. Further comparisons of different mental effort measures indicate that mental effort had an explicit (ie, self‐reports, explicit utterances) and an implicit component (ie, silent pauses in thinking‐aloud, eye tracking parameters). Consequently, when designing CBT environments, not only the design of the tasks but also the content of the given information and their effect on the different aspects of mental effort must be considered.

Enhanced voice activity detection using acoustic event detection and classification

We examine user-friendly voice interface that requires the hands-free speech acquisition in the continuously listening environment. The traditional voice activity detection (VAD) algorithms cannot successfully identify potential acoustic event sounds from speech. This makes the speech recognition system frequently or incorrectly activated. In this paper, we propose a novel voice activity detection technique that consists of two major modules: 1) classification and 2) detection module. In the classification module, we label the successive audio segments based on the training models. Then, in the detection module, we remove the acoustic event sounds and make decision of the explicit utterance boundary from the input audio stream. As a result, the proposed technique enables the efficient operation of speech recognition in the continuously listening environment without any touch and/or key input. Experiments in a real-world environment and performance comparison with state-of-the-art techniques are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

Der Topos der Juden: Studien zur Geschichte des Antisemitismus im deutschsprachigen Musikschrifttum (review)

Der Topos der Juden: Studien zur Geschichte des Antisemitismus im deutschsprachigen Musikschrifttum, by Annkatrin Dahm. Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2007. 388 pp. euro69.00. The study deals with both the origins and the effects of antisemitism in the realm of German musical and musicological thinking and writing whose devastating consequences became apparent in the Nazi politics of music. Annkatrin Dahm thoroughly examines a vast number of 19th and 20th century German sources - and her careful conclusion proves to be deeply depressing: below the surface of the elaborate Nazi propaganda down to notorious writings such as Richard Wagner's 1850 pamphlet Dasjudenthum in der Musik and reaching even deeper back to early 19th century publishing there is a broad and continuously growing prejudicial mainstream of in fact anti-Jewish (albeit seemingly harmless) cliches and caveats which eventually enabled Goebbels and his staff to convert German public opinion to their politics. Following the subtle definition of important differences between modern (racist) and ancient (religious) antisemitism, Dahm convincingly shows the linguistic aspects of discrimination. In 19th-century German writing, even when the words are not overtly anti-Jewish, they still can be understood in the way they were intended because both writer and reader subconsciously recognize stereotypes. Reading through this impressive amount of documentation, it soon becomes clear that even seemingly harmless phraseology contributed to general anti-Judaism, preparing the ground for much more explicit utterances. Of course, one of the most prominent figures of a study of this nature would expectedly be Richard Wagnet; He is, however, given less than 10% of the volume - and rightly so. For seen within a much broader German context, admirably covered by Dahm's investigation, Wagner appears to be only the tip of the iceberg (albeit a most influential one, at least from 1869 on, when he released the second edition of his Judenthum), or, to put it another way, as the first culmination of an already ongoing subliminal development. Before analyzing Wagner's writings, Dahm thoroughly examines the emergence of the cliches of Tiefe (depth) and Warme (warmth), both allegedly being substantial features of German music from mid- 18th-century writings on, the absence of which could readily serve as an instrument for discrimination against Meyerbeer, Offenbach, or Mendelssohn. …

La Poética De Francisco Pino, Rara Avis En La Poesía Española

Francisco Pino (1910–2002) can be considered as a “rara avis” in Spanish poetry. Having published dozens of books rather anonymously, and generally with small private presses, he began publishing through more renowned publishing companies in 1978. His various new editions, anthologies and editions of complete works give the impression that his poetry suffered from an evolution similar to that of modern Spanish poetry – with a special place for experimental and visual poetry, generally related to the historical avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde. Relevant is the observation that between 1969 and 1978 Pino published the majority of his experimental poetry – in this period he was searching for communication and “the other” – while after 1978 his poetry signified a return to the more private and personal poetry of his beginnings. Yet an analysis of Francisco Pino’s implicit and explicit poetical utterances, and of their application in the original, small editions as compared with his later works, reveals that tradition and experiment, religion and revolution have always coexisted in Pino’s poetry, from his earliest writings until his death. In poetry themes and forms normally are changeable and interdependent, but in Pino’s case his books always offer different and appropriate forms for the same themes.