Linguistic Categories Research Articles

The Colonial Constitution of Poly as a Racial and Linguistic Category through Policing, Gentrification, and an Ideology of Oppressionlessness

This article examines the historical, institutional, and interactional processes by which “Poly” (i.e., Polynesian) has come to be understood as a race and language within a context in the California Bay Area. Rather than understanding “races” as discrete categories—as well as sociolinguistic features as permanently attributable and patterned to specific racialized groups—I argue that racialization is ever‐changing and rooted in power relations that are (re)produced from interaction to interaction, and moment to moment. I primarily draw upon a semi‐structured interview with a Tongan young woman (“Maklea”), and more broadly ethnographic research conducted within her local language context, and argue that a racialized Polyness (i.e., Polynesianness) is becoming raciolinguistically enregistered due to experiences with White supremacy and processes of colonialism. That is, Polyness is in the process of being rendered mutually perceivable as a racial category and coherent set of semiotic practices as Polynesian diasporic peoples in this community are confronting policing, gentrification, and an ideology of oppressionlessness. The raciolinguistic enregisterment of Polyness is occurring as Maklea, and more broadly Polynesian young people, are grappling with and challenging the ways White supremacist institutions and systems are seeking to violently structure their lives and ways of knowing, being, valuing, and speaking.

Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs: A Guide to Nahuatl Writing

Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs: A Guide to Nahuatl Writing

Euphemisms of the death thematic group in Chinese and their translation into Russian

The article is devoted to the consideration of the euphemisms of the thematic group death in the Chinese language, expressing the unique cultural ideas and cultural psychology of the Han people. The aim of the work was to identify the conditions under which semantic accuracy is preserved during the translation of euphemisms of the death thematic group from Chinese into Russian. The object of the study is the euphemisms of the thematic group death in Chinese and their translation into Russian. The subject of the study is the specifics of the functioning of the euphemisms of the thematic group death in the Chinese language, which (euphemisms) convey value orientations, religious interpretations and folk customs of the Chinese (Han) people. In the course of the study, methods of analysis of research literature, linguistic and cultural analysis of linguistic units, structural analysis, comparison and classification of Chinese euphemisms of the death thematic group were used. The main conclusions of the study are: euphemisms are an integral part of the language of the Chinese (Han) people, expressed as a means of harmonizing interpersonal relations; the abundance of metaphorical language in the Chinese euphemisms of the thematic group of death indicates a cognitive mechanism by which people use concrete thinking to describe the abstract concept of death. The author's special contribution to the research of the topic is to identify the specifics of the functioning of the euphemisms of the thematic group death in the Chinese language, demonstrating not only the depth of the language of the Chinese (Han) people, but also the culture of the nation as a whole, its formation, attitude to the world. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the conditions were identified under which semantic accuracy is preserved during the translation of euphemisms of the death thematic group from Chinese into Russian, in the context of value orientations, religious interpretations, etc.

ПРОБЛЕМА ВІДТВОРЕННЯ ДЕМІНУТИВНОСТІ ПРИ ПЕРЕКЛАДІ ХУДОЖНІХ ТВОРІВ (НА МАТЕРІАЛІ ПОЕЗІЇ Т. Г. ШЕВЧЕНКА)

The analysis of the phenomenon of diminutiveness and its derivatives presents significant difficulties for the researchers because the views of linguistics on the definition of category of diminutiveness due to the peculiarities of the semantic-functional reality of it are extremely contradictory and its definition is still not set, which determines the relevance of the paper. The objective of the study is to establish the specificity of translation of the phenomenon of diminutiveness in poetic translation. To achieve this goal the continuous sampling method to research materials, the comparative method to compare the original and translated texts, the translation analysis method and the theoretical generalizations method were used. It was determined that diminutiveness is a universal linguistic category that is expressed in the languages of the world using different levels of the language structure and realizes the meaning of a reduced size of an object, a reduced manifestation of an action or sign, and may also be accompanied by some expressive or evaluative-emotional patterns. As a result of a comparative analysis of the original poetry of Taras Shevchenko with its translations into English, it was found that the emotional component of diminutives is reproduced or neutralized in the translation. Techniques that reproduce the emotional component of diminutives include substitution and addition; techniques that neutralize are following: omission, selection of a direct translation equivalent, addition.

Representation of female relationships in domestic discourse: pragmastilistic aspect

This article analyzes the peculiarities of the reflection of female relations in Chinese-language domestic discourse on the material of stories and novels of the 20th-21st centuries. The concepts of «contact» and «discourse» were analyzed, the characteristic features of female contact in domestic discourse were revealed, a number of strategies and tactics used during female domestic discourse were investigated. It was found out that the discourse as a fundamental category of modern linguistics combines linguistic and social features of speech. The least structured type of discourse is the discourse of everyday speech communication that occurs in the form of oral conversation. The main feature of domestic discourse is its communicative orientation and proximity to everyday language. Family communication, in which each person is immersed, forms the so-called «family language», which forms a certain linguistic behavior of the person, features of speech, intonation and emotional coloring. In constructing the female character Chinese authors often turn to metaphorization, comparisons, contextual periphrases, metonymy and paremy (chenyu, yanyu, suyu, guanyunyu), among which the picture of the external attractiveness of women prevails, comparing her to the moon, the flower, the jade, the goddess, the unclean force. In depicting female discourse the authors turn to the means of gradation (climax and anticlimax), anaphora, use all kinds of exclamations, appeals, particles, resort to the expressive possibilities of root morphemes. Having studied the tactics and strategies used by women during everyday communication, we found that the dominant strategies are assertion, persuasion, proof and argumentation. When deploying conflict communication, women pay special attention to the strategies of accommodation, avoidance, cooperation, competition. It was revealed that women's language differs from men's in its greater expressiveness, the extensive use of exclamations and particles to increase emotional coloring, and a large concentration of emotionally evaluative vocabulary. We consider the studies of the composition of women’s domestic discourse and its synergy, based on the interaction of the objectives of the discourse and its constitutional limitations are the continuation of these studies.

ETR German within the system of language variation

AbstractThe paper discusses whether easy-to-read (ETR) German can be classified as a ‘variety’ and/or a ‘register’. It appears to be very difficult to capture the variational status of ETR German within the system of language variation due to its rather artificial, rule-based character. On the other hand, the question of whether the notion of variety or register, or any other notion modelling language variation, is suitable for the linguistic classification of ETR German very much depends on how these notions are defined. Thus the article reveals general difficulties in capturing the functioning of language variation with clear-cut definitions and concepts due to the dynamics and complexity of language variation as such. Nevertheless, the explanatory frameworks of concepts such as variety and register prove to be useful for describing the special variational status of ETR German.

Pronouns, metonymy, and identity

Abstract Although formal linguists have focused on the deictic and (co)referential functions of pronouns, social categorization and identity are deeply involved in pronominal usage. I argue here that even the understanding of pronoun reference requires us to go beyond extensional (co)-reference. The extensive literature on linguistic categorization has focused on nouns more than on verbs, as has work on metonymy – but not on pronouns. Here I present two case studies, one of third-person pronouns and one of first-plural pronouns. In one I argue that cognitive science findings on categorization make it impossible for a masculine noun/pronoun usage to be truly “generic” in gender reference. The other examines the ways in which identity and group structure shape the possibilities for plural pronoun reference, in particular with respect to first-person plural (we) uses. To understand the principles of reference for these pronouns, we need to apply theoretical frameworks developed for lexical meaning: frames, category structure, prototypes, categorial metonymy and frame metonymy.

An Analysis of Grammatical Error on Students’ Writing

The research was aimed to analyze the most common grammatical error on students’ writing. All categories of grammatical error types were classified and described based on Dulay on theory of Linguistic Category. The data source of this study was 26 students of the second grade of Nurul Jadid Islamic Senior High School (MANJ). In this study, observation, writing test, and documentation were used to collect data. The major findings of this study found 155 errors in the students’ writing composition. The omission error percentage is 44%. Meanwhile, addition error occurs in 27% errors, and the misformation error is 23%. The last, the misordering error is 6%. The result of the analysis shows that omission error is the most common error produced by the students. As a whole, students still committed errors in their writing. Teachers have to pay high attention to the problematic area of the grammar structure, so some pedagogical implications on the error analysis are suggested.

A dissociation between conceptual prominence and explicit category learning: Evidence from agent and patient event roles.

We investigate whether linguistic categories have the same structure as categories used to conceptualize the world outside of language. We focus on the event roles Agent and Patient (in the sentence Murray ate the ice cream, Murray is the Agent and the ice cream is the Patient). These categories appear to be tightly linked across language and cognition: they are encoded robustly in the world's languages and have been argued to be highly prominent conceptually, even part of innate core knowledge. This view predicts (a) that Agent and Patient categories will be readily accessible to adults in explicit categorization tasks and (b) that these categories have similar structure across semantic and conceptual domains. We tested these predictions across four experiments in which adult speakers of English had to induce Agent and Patient categories from visual illustrations of events (e.g., one figure kicking another). We found that 25% to 40% of participants failed to induce the categories, suggesting that prominent concepts are not always easily accessed for conscious reasoning. At the same time, for those participants who did induce the categories, they generalized these categories in ways predicted by previous analyses of English syntax. This finding supports the view that Agent and Patient are domain-general, spanning both conceptual and linguistic representation, though not necessarily used by participants in explicit categorization tasks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Certain Linguistic Issues of Machine Translation

The article considers the possibility of translating literary texts from a natural language into a target language using an automatic machine translation system. The author considers the possibilities of biological intelligence in comparison with machine "intelligence", which is a prototype of artificial intelligence. The paper gives an example (based on the game in GO) of the emergence of neural networks that appear as a result of self-learning of automated systems. New types of neural networks create an algorithm that always wins (the game of GO) against a person, even with the title of “world champion”. Studies show that automated translation systems must be taught to recognize lexico-semantic groups that would be based on the linguistic categories of natural language. Another task is to teach the machine to “think” and operate with images, since natural language is closely related to images and, at present, cannot be fully algorithmized. The practical application of automatic translation of poetic works shows that automatic machine translation systems, not possessing a psyche, are not able to translate texts of this type.

A Review on Error Analysis Stages in Teaching English Structure

The goal of this research is to determine the role of error analysis in teaching English as a foreign language, particularly English Structure. Error analysis can provide information on a student's progress in learning a target language, which is then used to improve the teaching process so that they could still properly use the language. The method used is qualitative and descriptive research design. This research focuses on students of Politeknik Negeri Sriwijaya. Error analysis is essential for teachers to improve the quality of teaching. By doing so, the teacher owns information to improve the methodology including syllabus, teaching material and teaching techniques. The findings are four main stages of error analysis simplified in this study. They are detecting, locating the errors, describing the errors, and classifying the errors. First stage is done by gathering suspected errors; meanwhile works with unwanted errors are rejected or put aside. Then, locating the errors found on students' works were done by identifying them without considering types of the errors. Next step is describing errors where the errors are labeled based on the linguistic category. Final stage is error classification involving classification and counting errors. Each stage gives detailed information of students’ performance which is beneficial for the teachers to improve the quality of teaching including the material and how to deliver.

Historical-Comparative Linguistic Analysis of the Reduction Principle in Prose Texts

Critical scientific issues emerge when reduction principles in the language are refined from the point of view of history and modernity. Sounds and morphological indicators do not just blindly and usually combine in the composition of words. The fact that sounds and suffixes come into contact with each other and connect in terms is a legitimate linguistic phenomenon. It is the product of many years, the specific history of which is unknown. Just as words and word combinations are the main factors for the organization of the sentence, the sentence is the main factor in the organization of the text, and they perform communicative functions in the language. When we approach words and suffixes from many linguistic categories from the prisms of historicity and modernity, the inclination to the principle of reduction as a result of historical development in the context of those words and suffixes manifests itself. It determines the dynamic character of the evolutionary process. Azerbaijanis' restoration of the omitted sound or morphological indicator in the term can be determined through its position in the word structure. It can be revealed with the help of the situation and stylistic point that determines this position. There is a long historical process of development at the basis of the tendency to reduction, and this process of growth shows that the language is more inclined toward clarity and simplicity, which are explained in the article.

Дескриптивізм і прескриптивізм у китайській традиції кодифікації мов веньян і байхуа

This article analyzes in detail the mechanisms and concepts of the codification of the language norms of the ancient Chinese language in the historical perspective in the light of the problem of coexistence, interaction, development of several immanent linguistic categories. The ratio of descriptive and prescriptive approaches in the processes of codification of the ancient Chinese language, the study of dominant and peripheral approaches to the fixation of linguistic phenomena, the analysis of extralinguistic factors influencing the formation of the language, allow us to understand and explain the linguistic phenomena of the modern Chinese language. The formation of a speech norm through codification processes was caused by a whole range of factors: a political factor (the need for the consolidation of society, the formation of statehood and national identity); socio-economic (urbanization, communication and, as a result, social mobility of the population); cultural (correspondence of the processes of formation and selection of language norms to the ideas of the ruling ethical and philosophical trends, linguistic ideology and the aesthetic canon of their time). In this article, the terms “prescription”, “language codification” are considered in the context of the Chinese philological tradition, primarily in their relationship with the term’s “description”, as well as “language norm”. The codifiers of the ancient Chinese language are represented by various types of dictionaries, and most linguistic studies were carried out to reveal the original meaning of a certain hieroglyph, and not to establish the role of the processes of description and prescription in the selection of linguistic phenomena for the formation of a speech norm. In particular, the study carried out in this article aims to fill this gap and offer answers to questions about the factors of influence and methods for selecting the language norm in the Old Chinese language.

Понятие языковой формы, противоречащей общепринятым нормам морали и нравственности

This paper is devoted to the definition of the concept of a linguistic form that contradicts the generally accepted norms of morality and ethics. The concept under discussion is mentioned in article 5.61 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation and is essential for qualifying a particular controversial text as offensive. The article continues and develops the ideas of Professor Iosif Abramovich Sternin in terms of developing a methodology for text analysis for legal purposes. The concept under discussion is based on the understanding of the obscene form of the statement proposed in the works of I.A. Sternin. The need to refer to the concept of a linguistic form that is contrary to generally accepted norms of morality and ethics is due to the fact that the above formulation is not a linguistic term, and it does not obviously correlate with a specific linguistic category, although cases of claims for offence involve a linguistic examination, within which a question is raised about the form of expression of discrediting information. The ambiguity of the concept of a linguistic form, which is contrary to generally accepted norms of morality and ethics, also creates methodological difficulties for the expert community. In this paper, the author also sets and implements the task of developing some methodological recommendations for analyzing the controversial text for the presence of linguistic signs of offence in it. The proposed methodology for analysis is based on the concept of stylistic differentiation of vocabulary for the purposes of forensic linguistics, developed by I.A. Sternin, as well as the traditional concept of the culture of speech, which includes the idea of ​​the culture of speech as a phenomenon that functions in the form of three aspects – normative, communicative and ethical.

Behavior Change Around an Online Health Awareness Campaign: A Causal Impact Study.

National Eating Disorders Association conducts a NEDAwareness week every year, during which it publishes content on social media and news aimed to raise awareness of eating disorders. Measuring the impact of these actions is vital for maximizing the effectiveness of such interventions. This study is an effort to empirically measure the change in behavior of users who engage with NEDAwareness content, and compare the detected changes between campaigns in two different years. We analyze a total of 35,895 tweets generated during two campaigns of NEDAwareness campaigns in 2019 and 2020. In order to assess the reach of each campaign, we consider the users participating in the campaigns and their number of followers, as well as retweeting engagement. We use the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text modeling and causal impact analysis in order to gauge the change in self-expression of users who have interacted with the NEDAwareness content, compared to a baseline group of users. We further enrich our understanding of the users by extracting gender information from their display names. We find that, despite large media corporations (such as MTV and Teen Vogue) participating in the campaign, it is governmental and nonprofit accounts who are among the accounts that attract the most retweets. Whereas the most influential accounts were well-connected in 2019, the 2020 campaign saw little retweeting between such accounts, negatively impacting the reach of the material. Both campaigns engaged women at around 40% and men 17%, supporting previous research showing women to be more likely to share their experiences with eating disorders. Further, women were more likely to mention other health topics within the 15 days of the intervention, including pregnancy and abortion, as well as depression and anxiety, and to discuss the developing COVID pandemic in 2020. Despite the positive message of the campaign, we find that the users who have engaged with this content were more likely to mention the linguistic categories concerning anxiety and risk. Thus, we illustrate the complex, gender-specific effects of NEDAwareness online health intervention campaign on the continued self-expression of its audience and provide actionable insights for potential improvement of such public health efforts.

LINGUISTIC ASPECT OF MODALITY IN MODERN MATH DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH

The article reveals linguistic aspect of modality in modern math discourse in English, critically outlines a number of actual problematic issues in the area, such as the distinction between epistemic modality and evidentiality marked by formal logics philosophical grounding. General reference to previous scholarly activity in math modality research proves that it is largely based on propositional aspects of meaning. The math text corpus analysis aims to extract a set of modalities that are indispensable for formulating modal deductive reasoning. However, from a linguistic perspective academic math discourse requires natural language premise selection in the processes of mathematical reasoning and argumentation. It is presumed that two different self-attention cognition layers are focused at the same time on the proper classical symbolic logic and mathematical elements (formal language), while the other attends to natural language. Defining the semantic meanings of math discourse modality markers involves the interpretation phase. Thus, objectivity is generally associated with evidential adverbs which are markers of the evidence verification concerning the speaker’s assessment of the truth value of the proposition. Modal auxiliaries of high, medium and low modality, semimodal verbs and conditionals involve ascribing a justification value in the set of possible logical inference making. The formal logical structure of mathematical reasoning explains the non-intuitive possibility of a deductive proof. It has been grounded that a linguistic category of modality in math discourse indispensably presupposes the universal truth of knowledge, high level of logical formalization in propositional verification status, formulaic nature of the argumentation, i.e. synthesis of hypothetical preconditions, theoretical knowledge and subjectivity of reasoning leading to a new hypothesis verification and visual exemplification of the empirical deductive processes in particular by linguistic means of modality expression.

Linguistic Differences by Gender in Letters of Recommendation for Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship Applicants From 2010 to 2020.

Linguistic differences suggestive of gender bias have been detected in letters of recommendation (LOR) for female and male residency and fellowship program applicants within multiple medical specialties. The aim of the study was to determine whether linguistic differences exist in LOR for female and male physicians applying to female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery (FPMRS) fellowship. A retrospective analysis of FPMRS fellowship applications submitted to a university-affiliated academic center from 2010 to 2020 was performed. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, a text analysis software, was used to characterize the linguistic content of letters. Multivariable analysis was used to compare letter characteristics with applicant and letter writer demographics. Of 306 applications reviewed, 221 (72.2%) applicants were female and 85 (27.8%) were male. Of the 1,062 letters analyzed, 457 (43.0%) were written by female letter writers, 586 (55.2%) by males, and 19 (1.8%) were a combination. Multivariable analysis controlling for race, Step 1 score, and letter writer gender demonstrated more frequent use of affiliation words for female applicants compared with males (3.1% ± 0.3 vs. 2.9% ± 0.3, P = 0.02). No additional differences were noted in average letter length or all other linguistic categories analyzed. Multiple differences were detected between writing styles of female and male letter writers, including average letter length, use of multiple word categories, and use of communal (relationship-oriented) language. Data were stratified into 2-year periods and no longitudinal trends in linguistic differences were detected. No linguistic differences, suggestive of gender bias, were found between female and male applicants to FPMRS fellowship.

Discourse analysis on understanding the differential concept of high school students in a dynamic geometry environment

This study investigated the cognitive and social processes through which high school students acquire the differential concepts through communication in a dynamic geometry environment through some cases. Additionally, we observed how a dynamic geometry environment affects these processes. To achieve this objective, eight students were recruited by using the pre-test results and divided into an experimental group and a control group. The learning environment for the two groups was designed to be the same except for jointly manipulating Geogebra on the laptop in the experimental group. Students’ discourse was analyzed using an analysis framework that applied both Piaget’s (1959) linguistic categories and Rutherford’s (2011) neo-Piagetian model. We found that the dynamic geometry environment improved communication among students and their achievement levels. In particular, graphic and dynamic representations created by dragging stimulated students’ interest and increased communication among them. Although the quality of communication was somewhat different in the discourse analysis of the two groups, each participant’s role was confirmed in the co-construction of knowledge among all cases of eight students. We expect that precise verbal information on various representations of mathematical content in the process of understanding the concepts of students could be an opportunity to prepare educational environments corresponding thereto.

Mind the ad: How personality requirements affect older and younger job seekers' job attraction

AbstractAge discrimination may explain lower labour market chances of older and younger job seekers. What remains underresearched, however, is how older/younger job seekers might self‐select out from early recruitment procedures due to stigmatizing information in job ads. Building on theories of metastereotypes and the linguistic category model, two experimental studies investigated how personality requirements that older/younger job seekers hold negative metastereotypes about and the way in which these requirements are worded (behavioural vs. dispositional) affected their job attraction. Within‐participant mediation analyses showed that as expected, job attraction was higher for older (N = 123, aged 50 years or more) and younger (N = 151, 30 years or less) job seekers when requirements were worded in a behavioural way (e.g., ‘You can be flexible’), compared with a dispositional way (e.g., ‘You are flexible’). This relation was mediated by perceptions of challenge among younger but not older job seekers. Contrary to expectations, perceptions of threat did not explain the effects of negatively metastereotyped personality requirements on job attraction. Understanding how job seekers perceive information in job ads might help recruiters to design age‐sensitive recruitment policies.

Shoir taxallusining nutq subyektiga munosabati

The article analyzes the producer of speech and its (speech) subject, which are among the central categories of speech linguistics. In the linguistic analysis of lyrical works, attention is paid to the formation of these categories in a poetic text with the help of linguistic signs, their mutual unity and difference.In Eastern poetry, according to tradition, nicknames and the subject of speech, which are specifically included in the text of ghazals as a speaker, do not always correspond to each other, there are certain differences and inconsistencies between them. Clarification of the relationship of the subject category of speech to the addressee (the pseudonym of the poet) is important in determining the status of the speech structure of the lyrical text.