Multiple Discourse Research Articles

Gender and Age Differences in Using Apology Strategies in Saudi Arabia

Apology has been an important topic in personal relationship studies over the past three decades. This study is based on Sugimoto’s empirically derived characterization of apology strategies and explores how Saudis of both genders and of different ages use apology strategies to demonstrate their politeness. The study’s three main objectives were to identify the most commonly employed apology strategies and to determine the significance of gender and of age on how people used apology strategies. Data collection relied on the Multiple Discourse Completion Task Questionnaire, which contains questions about different real-life scenarios and multiple answers that measure the use of apology strategies. It was distributed to 102 female and 93 male participants of different ages (between 18 and 50). The study established that the most used apology strategies are self-blame and then compensation, while the least used are blaming the victim and asking the victim not to be angry. The rest of the apology strategies occur at different frequencies. The study also found that women use apology strategies significantly more than men do. Women tend to use thanking, lack of intent, asking for forgiveness, and asking the victim not to be angry, whereas men use compensation, avoiding the victim, blaming the victim, promising not to repeat, and offending the victim more than women do. In addition, the study found significant differences in which apology strategies people of different ages used.

Harnessing Holistic Discourse Features and Triadic Interaction for Sentiment Quadruple Extraction in Dialogues

Dialogue Aspect-based Sentiment Quadruple (DiaASQ) is a newly-emergent task aiming to extract the sentiment quadruple (i.e., targets, aspects, opinions, and sentiments) from conversations. While showing promising performance, the prior DiaASQ approach unfortunately falls prey to the key crux of DiaASQ, including insufficient modeling of discourse features, and lacking quadruple extraction, which hinders further task improvement. To this end, we introduce a novel framework that not only capitalizes on comprehensive discourse feature modeling, but also captures the intrinsic interaction for optimal quadruple extraction. On the one hand, drawing upon multiple discourse features, our approach constructs a token-level heterogeneous graph and enhances token interactions through a heterogeneous attention network. We further propose a novel triadic scorer, strengthening weak token relations within a quadruple, thereby enhancing the cohesion of the quadruple extraction. Experimental results on the DiaASQ benchmark showcase that our model significantly outperforms existing baselines across both English and Chinese datasets. Our code is available at https://bit.ly/3v27pqA.

Multiple Identities and Trauma Discourse in Shutter Island Movie

This study aims to describe multiple identities and trauma discourse in Shutter Island movies. To get answers to the research questions, this study uses two theories. First is the theory of multiple identities by Caldas Coulthard and Ladema (2008). Secondly theories of trauma discourse by Indradjaja and Zaumzeil (2014). This research uses the qualitative descriptive method. The source of data in this study was collected from the Shutter Island movie and audio and visual to support primary data. Procedures of this study collected data by downloading, watching, screenshooting, taking notes, selecting, and coding. Techniques of analyzing data by presenting, describing, interpreting, and concluding. The results show that the aspects of multiple identities and trauma discourse dominate each other because when the main character performs multiple identities then he will always experience strange dreams and hallucinations related to his past trauma and otherwise the main character performs multiple identities due to trauma. Second, the researcher found a relation between multiple identities and trauma discourse is something that affects each other because in each condition the main character performs multiple identities, and the trauma aspect will always appear and affect the main character's mental state, and otherwise the trauma aspect that makes the main character perform multiple identities.

Talking about race and racism: The developing discourse practices of elementary students

This study explores how fourth-grade students in a multiracial classroom began to develop racial literacy through a dialogic process of reading and discussing literature. I analyze three discussions drawn from a yearlong ethnographic study using critical theories of race and discourse to demonstrate how students developed multiple discourse practices to make sense of race and racism. While previous research has accounted for the ways young learners can and do talk about issues of race, this analysis expands current conceptions of how students develop racial literacy by demonstrating how they moved from race-evasive language to racially literate ways of talking over the course of the year. Contrary to claims made by anti-justice politicians and parents that students are being indoctrinated into liberal viewpoints when race is included in the curriculum, students in this study were persistent in shaping the trajectory of their racial literacy development.

Sub-disciplinary variation of metadiscursive verb patterns in English research articles: a functional analysis of medical discourse

Abstract As a cover term for the negotiation of propositional information and reader engagement, metadiscourse has gained considerable attention from scholars of academic discourse. Recent studies have extended to previously unexplored structures that realize metadiscourse, such as ‘metadiscursive nouns’ (Jiang and Hyland 2018. Nouns and academic interactions: A neglected feature of metadiscourse. Applied Linguistics 39. 508–531). Among various linguistic resources, verbs are often regarded as a linguistic element undertaking multiple discourse acts and functions in different contexts, with some acts and functions being metadiscursive. Based on previous studies on reporting verbs and functional sentence stems, this study proposes the concept of metadiscursive verb patterns (MVPs) and examines this linguistic resource in a self-built MedDEAP corpus of five million words, a clinical medicine English research article corpus consisting of 18 sub-disciplines. We conducted an intradisciplinary investigation into MVPs to analyze their structural and functional variations across the sub-disciplines of medical academic English. The findings revealed that most MVPs exhibit a preference for some sub-disciplines, and a few sub-disciplines reflect certain characteristic genre features in the use of certain MVPs. It is shown that medical academic discourse is characterized by methodological and conceptual cross-fertilization. Hence, variation in MVPs is a natural linguistic representation of interdisciplinary synergy. Based on our findings, we conclude by addressing the pedagogical implications for proper use of MVPs in academic writing.

Facilitating Scientific Literacy Through Writing: A Write-to-Learn Assignment for Large Introductory Undergraduate Biology Courses

Write-to-learn (WTL) assignments have been used in a variety of disciplines to encourage conceptual learning and critical thinking in undergraduate education. These assignments focus on facilitating rather than assessing learning. Conversely, write-to-communicate (WTC) assignments (<em>e.g.,</em> lab reports and exams), often with the goal of assessing learning, are more commonly employed in foundation STEM courses. We developed a WTL assignment that focuses on promoting curiosity driven learning, critical thinking, and metacognition; skills that promote students&rsquo; scientific literacy through writing. We integrated theoretical frameworks for scientific literacy, that include the sub-constructs of <strong>third space</strong>, <strong>authenticity</strong>, and <strong>multiple discourse</strong> as well as <strong>science as a human endeavour</strong>, and <strong>metacognition and self-direction</strong> (<a href="#1" rel="nofollow">1</a>, <a href="#2" rel="nofollow">2</a>) to develop this 3-part WTL assignment. In this assignment, students first select a topic of interest and write freely on their current understanding of the topic (Part 1). They then develop a research question based on their writing and seek answers to their question from published literature (Part 2). Finally, they reflect on their overall experience with the WTL process and propose further avenues of investigation for their research topic (Part 3). Student feedback suggests that they enjoyed the WTL process and their overall satisfaction with the structure of the assignment was high. As we continue to evolve the assignment based on student feedback, we are gratified that students reported high self-efficacy with regard to future writing as a result of participating in this assignment. We recommend use of this type of WTL assignment in large, introductory STEM courses, so as to facilitate rather than simply assess students&rsquo; learning. <em>Primary Image:</em>&nbsp;Scientific literacy through writing. Schematic depicting a write-to-learn assignment format implemented in an introductory undergraduate biology course, along with corresponding science literacy constructs.

Discourse Communities and the Discourse of Experience.

Discourse communities are groups of people who share common ideologies, and common ways of speaking about things. They can be sharply or loosely defined. We are each members of multiple discourse communities. Discourse can colonize the members of discourse communities, taking over domains of thought by means of ideology. The development of new discourse communities can serve positive ends, but discourse communities create risks as well. In our own work on the narratives of people with interests in health care, for example, we find that patients speak of their illness experiences as victims of circumstance; policy makers construct adverse experiences and challenges as opportunities to be taken; health care workers speak from a mixed perspective, seeing themselves as both victims and opportunists depending on context. To be trapped within the discourse of a particular community is to put at risk the ability to communicate across discourses. Membership of a discourse community can impair the habit of critique, and deny opportunities for heteroglossic discourse. Privileging critique as a mode of discourse perhaps might define the ethical community, suggesting that ethical community may be an antidote to the constraining effects of conventional discourse community.

Two Modes of Game-Based Learning for Middle School Mathematics

Game-based learning has received more focus as a way to engage students and increase interest in mathematics. Game-based learning should be integrated with effective practices for teaching mathematics, though these is a need for further research on effective implementation models. The purpose of this article is to describe two modes of game-based learning that are aligned with National Council of Teachers of Mathematics effective practices for teaching mathematics including multiple representation and meaningful discourse. Examples will be discussed from the implementation of game-based learning in a Saturday Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program for middle school students offered at a large research university.

The Restrictive Concepts of Teacher Evaluation and their Discourse Communities

Teacher evaluation is a personnel practice in education and a field of study with multiple discourse communities, including a community in supervision. Many concepts from these discourse communities have influenced practice over time. In this article, I place teacher evaluation as a practice originating in the intersection of supervision and administration, describe its tumultuous relationship with supervision, and identify the many concepts that restrict its practice with examples of scholarship. This article is important “fieldwork” that scholars must periodically conduct on their niche to better understand its audiences, scope, and influences.2 Examples of fieldwork include: analyses of scholarship, collections on a theme, handbooks, histories, interviews of scholars, memoirs, and genealogies of scholars. This article is a type of analysis of scholarship for the field of teacher evaluation, as Bolin (1988), Blumberg (1990), Garman (2020), Glanz (2018), Gordon (2019), Mette (2019), and Glanz and Hazi (2019) have done for the field of supervision. I am often asked, “Is there anything left to study about teacher evaluation?” This article may help scholars broaden their thinking about the many discourses of teacher evaluation as well as their own niche. Understanding the nature of the discourses helps a scholar navigate its writings and research, situate his/her contribution, and interpret the results of emerging research.

A Longitudinal Study of Speech Acoustics in Older French Females: Analysis of the Filler Particle euh across Utterance Positions

Aging in speech production is a multidimensional process. Biological, cognitive, social, and communicative factors can change over time, stay relatively stable, or may even compensate for each other. In this longitudinal work, we focus on stability and change at the laryngeal and supralaryngeal levels in the discourse particle euh produced by 10 older French-speaking females at two times, 10 years apart. Recognizing the multiple discourse roles of euh, we divided out occurrences according to utterance position. We quantified the frequency of euh, and evaluated acoustic changes in formants, fundamental frequency, and voice quality across time and utterance position. Results showed that euh frequency was stable with age. The only acoustic measure that revealed an age effect was harmonics-to-noise ratio, showing less noise at older ages. Other measures mostly varied with utterance position, sometimes in interaction with age. Some voice quality changes could reflect laryngeal adjustments that provide for airflow conservation utterance-finally. The data suggest that aging effects may be evident in some prosodic positions (e.g., utterance-final position), but not others (utterance-initial position). Thus, it is essential to consider the interactions among these factors in future work and not assume that vocal aging is evident throughout the signal.

RETROSPECTIVE CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF BARACK OBAMA’S AND OLUSEGUN OBASANJO’S POLITICAL COMMUNICATION FEATURES AND STYLES

Governments make calculated human capital commitment to political communication because of its indispensability and effectiveness as a veritable tool, which underlies and is underlined by massive government investment in public communication. Presidential communication is rooted in, influenced, and limited by, usually, certain written codes. This study examined why, when, and how two presidents said what they said, and why they did or not do as said. Thesis problem was unravelling how features and styles of two presidents facilitated their political communication and public policies. Study fitted into two models, using two political communication theories: mainly ‘Aristotelian Political Rhetoric;’ Walter Fisher’s ‘the Narrative Paradigm’ as theoretical guides. Using original communications of two presidents, this comparative and historical study bridged the sparse scholarship on comparative presidential political communication. Data were obtained from purposively selected sample population, collated, analysed and interpreted, deploying multiple instruments, majorly content and discourse analyses chosen for their effectiveness at measuring predetermined variables. Selected published presidential communications 178 and 158 each all totaling 336 obtained from secondary sources formed the sample population. Findings of study revealed both presidents were largely more dissimilar than otherwise. Their backgrounds reflected, not dominated their communications. As communicators, they were urban-romanticisers, but rural-jilters, promoting rural exclusion, and accessibility to selected urban congregations. Obama’s presidential communication was delivered using peculiar styles, like Olusegun Obasanjo’s, both relying on diverse notable features. Conclusively, presidential political communication should be additional statutory responsibility of presidents to legally guarantee accountability, and practical democracy. Presidential communication system must be deconstructed and reconstructed to promote professional speech-making, and polity-connected presidential political communication.

Managing information, interaction and team building in nurse shift-change handovers

Whilst there is a wealth of literature on medical handovers, discourse analytic work based on recorded interactional data on these pivotal speech events in health care is less prevalent. This case study of a shift-change nursing handover at a UK hospital Medical Assessment Unit (MAU) takes a microanalytical perspective on nurses’ talk and interaction, which enables us to examine its structural and functional complexity at utterance level. Our methodological approach comprises observations, one semi-structured interview with senior nursing staff (and many informal conversations with various staff), and in total twelve audio-recordings of interactions during, and around, the twice-daily shift-change handovers. By adopting ‘a multiple goals in discourse’ perspective and the framework of activity analysis, we demonstrate the nurses’ interactional management of multiple discourse and activity roles and pursuance of goals that transcend the medically and institutionally crucial transmission of information. This shows the nurses’ orientation to the handover task as not only a structured institutionally regulated event, but also one that tolerates more spontaneous activities that can potentially contribute to team cohesion and staff well-being.

THE POLITICAL NATURE OF THE CHURCH ACCORDING TO STANLEY MARTIN HAUERWAS, WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH AND WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

In the context of the fragmented and multiple theological discourse of postmodernism, one of the important themes that unites modern theologians and political theologians in particular is the theme of the Сhurch. However, it is not about the Сhurch in general, but about those special features and dimensions that have been forgotten or lost in the modern era. Primarily, it is related to the political dimension of the Christian community, which has become the subject of research by representatives of various theological schools.This article is devoted to the theological analysis of the ecclesiology of three prominent contemporary theologians: Stanley Hauerwas, William Cavanaugh and Walter Brueggemann. Each of them, despite belonging to different schools, different areas of interest and church affiliation, addresses the topic of the political nature of the Church in search of a constructive response to current challenges. According to Hauerwas, there should be a restoration of the vision of the Christian community as an alternative to the world in which it is located. For Hauerwas, the Church is not only a community, one of many, but a polis, which challenges both modern empires and dominant ideologies. This is exactly what William Cavanaugh is talking about, when he emphasizes that the Church's tragic loss of its own political dimension has led to the "migrations of the Holy" and the sacralization of ideologies and power structures. At the same time, Walter Brueggemann writes Church’s prophetic authority and practical capability to resist the "royal consciousness", which manifests itself in the demonstration of strength and power, as an important feature of the Church.

The PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE AMONG GENDER AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH MOTIVATION IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING

This study aimed at revealing the correlation between pragmatic competence among gender and the relationship with motivation. A correlation design was to measure the level of relationship between students' pragmatic competence and their motivation. Furthermore, a comparative method was used to investigate the level of difference between male and female students. It involved 60 male students and 49 female students. Multiple Discourse Completion Task (MDCT) was administered to measure students' pragmatic competence, and a set of close-ended questionnaires adopted from Zaitun and Nopianah (2015) was used to measure the motivation level. This study revealed that 1) there is a significant difference in pragmatic competence between male and female learners. 2) there was a positive, deficient correlation between students' pragmatic competence and students' English learning motivation. By the end of this study, the research on improving students' pragmatic competence and motivation is needed considering that males and females have different pragmatic competence.

Contestations and Transformations: The Shared Religious Space of Jhule Lal in Sindh, Pakistan

Syncretic and shared religious spaces have long been perceived as reflections of tolerance. This does not imply that tolerance is completely liberated from multiple clashing components and the coexistence of interfaith practices do not suggest that hostility is entirely missing. In recent times, a transformation is taking place at the shared space of the Jhule Lal by the dominant religious group. However, there remains an appearance of tolerance at the shared space of the Jhule Lal among believers of both Islam and Hinduism, which blinds the observer of the deep internal contestation and process of transformation between both Sindhi Hindus and Sindhi Muslims who revere the same saint of the Jhule Lal. A syncretic space does not simply absorb different religious groups, and by studying the practices, rituals and interactions of the custodians, visitors and devotees at the shrine, this paper aims to unearth the processes through which shrine is contested in multiple identities, discourse (written, textual, verbal) authority, and belief systems.

Paths to Islamic Modernities: The Emergence of Reformist American Muslim Intellectuals and Their Dialectical Engagement with Modernity

This article examines the emergence of reformist American Muslim intellectuals [hereafter RAMIs] and their discourses that challenge the authoritarian views and practices of traditional and fundamentalist Muslims in the U.S. over the last three decades. This study illustrates how RAMIs reformulate Islamic socio-political discourses on democracy, religious freedom, and gender equality when faced with the challenges of modernity and the complexity of meeting the needs of contemporary Muslims in multicultural societies. Many of the works produced by these intellectuals demonstrate a dialectical engagement, which refers to a critical reconciliation between liberating premises of modernity and Islamic ideas for greater social justice. Relying on multiple modernities framework, interviews, and critical discourse analyses of RAMIs’ major works, I argue that their distinct approach leads to the rise of Islamic modernities in the US. This study also shows that there are at least three levels of engagements with modernity among Muslims including rejection, adaptation, and critical synthesis.

The Effect of Flipped Classroom on Iranian EFL Learners' Speech Act Production: Does Flip Type Make a Difference?

This study investigated the effect of two types of flipped classroom on the Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learnerschr('39') appropriate use of refusals, apologies and requests. The participants of the study included 60 upper-intermediate EFL learners from a language institute in Tehran, Iran. The participants were selected based on convenience sampling in the form of three intact classes. Then, the three classes were randomly assigned to three groups namely, traditional flipping group, debate-oriented flipping group and non-flipping group. The three groups were exposed to 14 treatment sessions. Speech act instruction was offered to the flipping groups through explicit flipped instruction and to the non-flipping group through explicit non-flipped instruction. Moreover, a Multiple Choice Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) was administered to the participants to measure their speech act production ability at the pre-treatment and post-treatment, phases of the study. The results revealed that both types of flipped instruction had a significantly positive effect on the EFL learnerschr('39') use of the speech acts (F=10.622, p<.0.05; F=19.358, p<.0.05; F=18.785, p<.0.05). Accordingly, EFL teachers are recommended to use flipping methods in an attempt to enhance EFL learnerschr('39') appropriate use of speech acts.

叠连形式话语标记“好说好说”及其语用功能

叠连形式话语标记“好说好说”及其语用功能

A Discourse Analysis of Three Past TAM Forms in Vwanji

This paper presents data from Vwanji, an under-documented Bantu language spoken by approximately 28,000 people in southwestern Tanzania. Bantu languages are well known for having multiple degrees of past time reference grammaticalized in their TAM systems, and Vwanji is a good example of such a language, but one with some interesting typological differences from certain general TAM trends in Bantu languages noted in Nurse (2008). Three past TAM forms, in particular, are the focus of the research: P1 /Anterior SM-VB-ile, P2 SM-a-VB-a, and the Near Past Habitual SM-a-VB-aɣa. The analysis of data from a corpus of narrative and non-narrative texts (both written and oral) reveals that these three TAM forms have multiple discourse functions which do not necessarily follow in expected ways from their places in the TAM system as a whole. Comparing the Vwanji findings with those of neighbouring languages suggests some possible directions in which the verb forms in Vwanji may be changing functionally or being lost. The goal of this investigation is to increase understanding of a typologically interesting language which has not been well described and for which there is very little published data. The paper also shows the importance of taking natural discourse data into account when considering TAM functions in a language. Relying on elicited data alone may hide interesting complexities and variation.

“The Stain of Breath Upon a Mirror”: The Unitary Self in &lt;em&gt;Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde&lt;/em&gt;

This essay refutes recent scholarship on the relationship between Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and multiple personality disorder discourse, instead positioning the novella in an alternate historical scientific context—that of addiction to deviant desire. Recontextualizing the story in this way, this essay argues, helps us to understand the story as many early reviewers did: as a highly philosophical critique of materialism, as a rebuttal rather than an advancement of the “new physiological view” that the self might be fundamentally nonunitary, and as a rejoinder to the related issue of the soul’s possible nonexistence. In addition to tracing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s relationship to canonical works like Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) within this new context, the essay also reclaims a novella by H. G. Wells, “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham” (1896), which has received virtually no scholarly attention.