Nature Of Discourse Research Articles

Educação do corpo e natureza: prescrições da revista Educação Physica (Brasil, 1932-1945)

Os processos de industrialização e urbanização, tanto na Europa quanto no Brasil, apresentam-se acompanhados de um novo olhar sobre a natureza. Antes vista como sombria e perigosa, a natureza e seus elementos passam a ser compreendidos como benéficos para a recuperação da saúde e da moral da população urbana, constituindo-se inclusive como prescrições médicas contra os males da cidade. Esse discurso de uma natureza benéfica tornou-se, cada vez mais, interlocutor de certa vertente do discurso médico-higienista, que passou a prescrever em seu receituário e recomendar em seus artigos o retorno à natureza. O objetivo deste artigo foi compreender as prescrições de práticas junto à natureza veiculadas por esse discurso médico na Revista Educação Physica, periódico especializado em esportes e educação física que circulou entre 1932 e 1945. Como resultados, percebemos que quase todos os volumes analisados da revista tratam de algum aspecto voltado à cura, regeneração ou divertimento em meio à natureza, seja através de exercícios físicos, da hidroterapia ou o contato com montanhas, alcançando seus cumes. Concluímos que esta revista corroborou com esta vertente do discurso médico higienista, ao associar as práticas em meio à natureza a valores morais, físicos e higiênicos que eram desejados para o fortalecimento dos corpos brasileiros do período.

Narrating technonatures: discourses of biotechnology in a neoliberal era

This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for opposing GMOs. Activist campaigns that directly target the political economic implications of GMOs within the context of neoliberalism have also had successes without resorting to appeals to the purity of nature. The successes of these campaigns suggest that while nature-culture dualisms remain politically effective normative groundings, concerns over equity, farmers' rights, and democracy retain potential as ideological terrains in the struggle for social justice.

Clefts In Otomi: Extended Uses Of The Copular Construction

In this article, I study clefts in Otomi, a small family of languages of Mexico from the Oto-Manguean stock. Clefts represent an area of Otomi syntax that has not been previously reported on. I compare the clefts we find in two very different languages: Tilapa Otomi and Northern Otomi. Clefts in Otomi are based on the copular construction and have three typologically expected elements (i.e., a copula, a focus phrase, and a relative-like clause encoding the common ground), but they also have two elements that are unique to Otomi: a pronominal enclitic that cross-references the focus phrase and a focus pronoun. The former is a property of the copular construction, but the latter only occurs in clefts. Clefts in Otomi also display a great amount of surface variation in natural discourse. In the article, I also explore the diachrony of the system by studying the historical sources from the colonial period.

„Figur“, „Grund“ und narrative Kontinuität in der Grammatikalisierung des gotischen Protoartikels

Abstract The author investigates the use of proto-article with locative nouns in the Gothic Bible and shows that the choice in Gothic among the anaphoric pronoun sa (proto-article) and Ø is pragmatically/functionally motivated. The locative nouns are mostly inherently definite and unmarked because of being elements of the frame in natural discourse. However, the anaphoric pronoun is used with unexpected locative objects or locative objects in surprising situations. It also marks the change NomLoc as ground > NomLoc as figure and serves as a highlighting device and as an attention-getter. When the topic-continuity is violated, the anaphoric pronoun is used as an invitation addressed to the hearer to mobilize previous knowledge in order to retrieve the referent. The investigation sheds light on the process of language change that led to the shift from demonstrative to article and the overall spread of anaphoric article.

Primary metaphors: Importance as size and weight in a comparative perspective

ABSTRACTThis is a linguistic study of two primary metaphors with the same target-domain concept, “IMPORTANCE IS SIZE” and “IMPORTANCE IS WEIGHT,” in English and Chinese. It is suggested that these two primary metaphors are derived from the OBJECT image schema, abstracted from our embodied, sensorimotor experience, especially our visual and tactile perception, in dealing with physical objects in everyday life. The study focuses on size and weight adjectives in both languages and on linguistic evidence in two areas: their lexicalizations of the importance senses as found in the dictionaries, and their roles in the instantiation of the two primary metaphors in natural discourse as found in the corpora. Our further analysis also shows that the primary metaphors can be manifested without explicit use of size and weight words when relevant conceptual frames in the source, evoked by other words or images, are mapped onto the target domain, thus activating the relevant region of our encyclopedic knowledge and triggering off the primary metaphors in our conceptual system. We also construct a hypothetical mapping scheme for primary metaphors based on the OBJECT image schema, in which OBJECT is mapped onto its target via three of its fundamental dimensions: SIZE, WEIGHT, and SOLIDITY. It is hoped that this mapping scheme will benefit future comparative studies of primary metaphors across languages and cultures in a more systematic way.

Using Dictionaries in Metaphor Identification

Metaphor has been the focus of cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, and metaphor identification lays a solid foundation for metaphor research. Since Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, much attention has been given to the conceptual and cognitive dimensions of metaphor, leaving linguistic dimension secondary. However, when MIP was introduced in 2007, which aims to identify metaphorically used lexical units in natural discourses, metaphor researchers have developed a systematic and reliable methodology for identifying linguistic metaphor instead of working with intuition and subjective criteria, which enables them to focus their research on different levels-linguistic forms, conceptual structure and cognitive processing. As MIP requires metaphor analysts to work through five steps, in which they depend heavily on dictionaries to determine lexical units and specify the basic and contextual senses, the use of dictionaries becomes the critical element in MIP. The Pagglejaz Group chose Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners a reference, while MIPVU, the elaborated version of MIP, used Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and Oxford English Dictionary apart from Macmillan dictionary. The author, by demonstrating the use of different types of dictionaries in MIP, tries to show that together with learners’ dictionaries, historical dictionaries, collocation dictionaries and specialized dictionaries can also be used for cross reference to guarantee the reliability of linguistic metaphor identification.

Switching direction affects switching costs: Behavioral, ERP and time-frequency analyses of intra-sentential codeswitching

Bilinguals have the unique ability to produce utterances that switch between languages. Most language switching research has focused on isolated, unrelated items, which emphasizes separation of the languages. Fewer studies examined the cognitive and neural mechanisms of switching languages in natural discourse. The present study examined the effect of codeswitching direction on the comprehension of intra-sentential codeswitching in Spanish-English bilinguals, using self-paced reading behavioral measurements (Experiment 1) and electroencephalography (EEG) measurements (Experiment 2), analyzed via both event-related potentials (ERPs) and time-frequency analysis (TFR). Reading times showed a significant switching cost for codeswitched sentences in both codeswitching directions, though switching costs were somewhat higher into the dominant language than into the weaker language. ERPs showed that codeswitched as compared to non-switched words elicited a late positivity, but only when switching from the dominant into the weaker language, not in the reverse direction. TFRs showed complementary and converging results: switches into the weaker language resulted in a power decrease in lower beta band while switches into the dominant language resulted in a power increase in theta band. These multi-method findings provide novel insights into neurocognitive resources engaged in the comprehension of intra-sentential codeswitches related to sentence-level restructuring processes to activate and access the weaker language.

Entity Metaphor, Object Gesture, and Context of Use

ABSTRACTThe study investigates the manifestation of the “IDEA-IS-AN-ENTITY” metaphor across the linguistic and manual modalities by the use of the object gesture in daily conversation, to understand the relationship between metaphorical conceptualization and the context of use. Two types of the entity metaphor were distinguished: “cross-modal entity metaphor” and “gesture-only entity metaphor.” For the former, the metaphor was expressed by metaphorical speech and the object gesture simultaneously. Among all of the 67 cross-modal instances, a wide variety of idea was represented as referring, characterizing, and quantifying referents in speech. Manually, the object gesture was configured in numerous ways. The way the object gesture was configured reveals the facet of the metaphorical conceptualization the speaker focuses on during speaking, and the details about the real-time thinking of a metaphorical object in discourse. For the gesture-only entity metaphor, it was manifested in the single modality of gesture. Among all of the 73 gesture-only instances, the object gesture depicted a stretch of talk as discrete object mainly by configuring a spatial boundary with curled fingers. Metaphor of this type attests that the thinking of phrasal-clausal ideas as entities is as common as that of lexical ideas as entities in conversation. Importantly, the object gesture bears out the emergence of a phrasal or clausal idea being conceptualized as object in natural discourse. Together, the findings demonstrate the inseparability of metaphorical conceptualization from cognition and the context of use.

The Role of Using Lexical Bundles onthe Development of Proficiency of Iraqi EFL University Students

It has been observed that vocabulary constitute an essential factor in foreign language learning. Learners of English language need to have command of a wide range of complex lexical units which are prefabricated as chunks of arranged patterns of phrases and words. Biber, et al.(1999:991-992) define lexical bundles as '' recurrent expressions or sequences of three or more word forms that commonly go together in natural discourse''. They(ibid) add that ''lexical bundles can be regarded as building blocks that tend to be used frequently by different speakers in different situations''.They are retrieved and reprocessed as whole units which may not only enhance the accuracy and fluency of language, but also speed up language processing significantly. The present study deals with the investigation of the role of teaching lexical bundles in the development of Iraqi EFL proficiency in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Kufa. The most important purpose of lexical bundles is creating discourse coherence which helps students tocommunicate and practice language with effective and successful facilities. The study attempts to answer the following questions: 1) Is the use of lexical bundles necessary and effective in enhancing and developing of Iraqi EFL? 2) What is the difference between students who are unaware and unfamiliar with the use of lexical bundles and those who are familiar and able to identify them? The sample of the test consists of two types of questions (fill in the blanks 'production' and multiple choices 'recognition' ) and 40 students are selected randomly at the mentioned department. The participants are divided into two groups , each group with 20 students. The first group who are not aware how to use lexical bundles constructed the pre-test exam and the second group with 20 students done the post-test exam who are well constructed with the experience and knowledge of learning lexical bundles. The findings of the analysis have shown that students(pre-test) at the level of production score high and low rates concerning noun phrase based bundles. Whereas at the level of recognition students face difficulty in the recognition of clauses. Here, phrases are recognized more than clause are. The post-test which is concerned with those students who have attended lexical bundles classes shows high rates of correct answers in the use of noun phrase, verb phrase, preposition phrase and it cleft clause at the level of production and recognition. Therefore, learning such multi word expressions can contribute to gaining effective proficiency in language communication and competence

A Study on the Application of Food Sovereignty in International Law

The purpose of the present investigation will be to analyse Food Sovereignty in the light of international law. It constitutes at its heart a legal analysis of this concept, observing exactly how it has been developed until the present moment. By so doing, we will be capable of familiarising ourselves with its legal strengths and inconsistencies, along with showing what might be the way to take so that its proposals and aims obtain the greatest possible legal viability. The complete legal construction of Food Sovereignty has not been carried out. Moreover, one can say that the movement for the defence of Food Sovereignty has focused above all on constructing a discourse of a political nature. It is desired to achieve a ruling as detailed and broad as the program that defends Food Sovereignty, it is worthwhile to propose the creation of a branch within international law, which could be denoted as International Law for the Rural World. Especially as the preoccupation for rural territories is the element that is present in every aspect of this broad political program that defends Food Sovereignty.

Long-term recovery in stroke accompanied by aphasia: a reconsideration

ABSTRACTBackground: This work focuses on the 26 individuals who provided data to AphasiaBank on at least two occasions, with initial testing between 6 months and 5.8 years post onset of aphasia. The data are archival in nature and were collected from the extensive database of aphasic discourse in AphasiaBank.Aims: The aim is to furnish data on the nature of long-term changes in both the impairment of aphasia as measured by the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R) and its expression in spoken discourse.Methods & Procedures: AphasiaBank’s demographic database was searched to discover all individuals who were tested twice at an interval of at least a year with either (a) the AphasiaBank protocol or (b) the AphasiaBank protocol at first testing, and the Famous People Protocol (FPP) at second testing. The FPP is a measure developed to assess the communication strategies of individuals whose spoken language limitations preclude full participation in the AphasiaBank protocol. The 26 people with aphasia (PWA) who were identified had completed formal speech therapy before being seen for AphasiaBank. However, all were participants in aphasia centres where at least 3 hr of planned activities were available, in most cases, twice weekly. WAB-R Aphasia Quotient scores (AQ) were examined, and in those cases where AQ scores improved, changes were assessed on a number of measures from the AphasiaBank discourse protocol.Outcomes & Results: Sixteen individuals demonstrated improved WAB-R AQ scores, defined as positive AQ change scores greater than the WAB-R AQ standard error of the mean (WAB-SEM); seven maintained their original WAB quotients, defined as AQ change scores that were not greater than the WAB-SEM; and the final three showed negative WAB-R change scores, defined as a negative WAB-R AQ change score greater than the WAB-SEM. Concurrent changes on several AphasiaBank tasks were also found, suggesting that the WAB-R improvements were noted in more natural discourse as well.Conclusions: These data are surprising since conventional wisdom suggests that spontaneous improvement in language is unlikely to occur beyond 1 year. Long-term improvement or maintenance of early test scores, such as that shown here, has seldom been demonstrated in the absence of formal treatment. Speculations about why these PWA improved, maintained, or declined in their scores are considered.

When Urania meets Terpsichore: A Theatrical Turn for Astronomy Lectures in Early Nineteenth–Century Britain

This paper highlights the significance of popular astronomy lectures in British theatres during the first half of the nineteenth century. The popular astronomy lecturing trade inherited from Enlightenment natural philosophy discourses. A ‘theatrical turn’ developed in the late eighteenth century and became extensive by the 1820s. Lecturers moved astronomy displays into theatres and used theatrical facilities, which resulted in a distinct type of show blending scientific instruction with sensational amusement. Lent was especially high season for this business in a metropolitan entertainment market. Pre–eminent cases of private entrepreneurs in this trade included William Walker, Deane Franklin Walker, George Bartley, and C. H. Adams. By exploring astronomy lectures in theatres, this paper also shows the spatial influence of the site on the format and style of the performance: the benefits and constraints of a theatre made a theatrical astronomy lecture distinct from others at a formal institution.

Hand gestures as visual prosody: BOLD responses to audio–visual alignment are modulated by the communicative nature of the stimuli

During public addresses, speakers accompany their discourse with spontaneous hand gestures (beats) that are tightly synchronized with the prosodic contour of the discourse. It has been proposed that speech and beat gestures originate from a common underlying linguistic process whereby both speech prosody and beats serve to emphasize relevant information. We hypothesized that breaking the consistency between beats and prosody by temporal desynchronization, would modulate activity of brain areas sensitive to speech–gesture integration. To this aim, we measured BOLD responses as participants watched a natural discourse where the speaker used beat gestures.In order to identify brain areas specifically involved in processing hand gestures with communicative intention, beat synchrony was evaluated against arbitrary visual cues bearing equivalent rhythmic and spatial properties as the gestures. Our results revealed that left MTG and IFG were specifically sensitive to speech synchronized with beats, compared to the arbitrary vision–speech pairing. Our results suggest that listeners confer beats a function of visual prosody, complementary to the prosodic structure of speech. We conclude that the emphasizing function of beat gestures in speech perception is instantiated through a specialized brain network sensitive to the communicative intent conveyed by a speaker with his/her hands.

К соотношению жанров естественного и художественного дискурсов: постановка проблемы (на примере жанра «письмо в редакцию»)

К соотношению жанров естественного и художественного дискурсов: постановка проблемы (на примере жанра «письмо в редакцию»)

The Discourse of Nature in Young Towns

The article is devoted to the "reading" and production of nature (in the terms of Macnaghten and Urry) in the discourse of young industrial towns arising in Russia after 1917. The empirical research is focused on four Ural settlements of Krasnoturyinsk, Lesnoy, Zarechny, and Kachkanar. Two chronologically different types of sources are used, those related to the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, which accumulated official and unofficial discourses. The main field method is the go-along interview. The analytical scheme elaborated to deal with the collected materials includes: a) semantic statements specifying the general vector of expression and perception of nature; b) the status of nature in a relationship with man, and; c) the predicative elements which reveal the understanding of nature and its relationship with non-nature. Three phases of the discourse of nature are highlighted on the basis of the analytical scheme. 'Conquest' is a semantic statement at the first stage. In the second stage, it is changed by the rhetoric of partnership, while the third stage emphasizes environmental issues. The article concludes that a fundamental duality is characteristic for the discourse of nature in young towns. On the one hand, it articulates environmental risks, and an admiration of forests and mountains since "natural" and "refined" environment are valued as a source of positive local identity, comfort, and interesting leisure opportunities. On the other hand, there is a recognition of the need for the further industrial use of nature to maintain the vitality of the town. The ecological line (argument?) is weaker because the perception of enterprise as a backbone of the basis of life persists.

The Role Of Using Lexical Bundles On The Development Of Proficiency Of Iraqi EFL University Students

It has been observed that vocabulary constitute an essential factor in foreign language learning. Learners of English language need to have command of a wide range of complex lexical units which are prefabricated as chunks of arranged patterns of phrases and words. Biber, et al.(1999:991-992) define lexical bundles as '' recurrent expressions or sequences of three or more word forms that commonly go together in natural discourse''. They(ibid) add that ''lexical bundles can be regarded as building blocks that tend to be used frequently by different speakers in different situations''.They are retrieved and reprocessed as whole units which may not only enhance the accuracy and fluency of language, but also speed up language processing significantly. The present study deals with the investigation of the role of teaching lexical bundles in the development of Iraqi EFL proficiency in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Kufa. The most important purpose of lexical bundles is creating discourse coherence which helps students tocommunicate and practice language with effective and successful facilities. The study attempts to answer the following questions: 1) Is the use of lexical bundles necessary and effective in enhancing and developing of Iraqi EFL? 2) What is the difference between students who are unaware and unfamiliar with the use of lexical bundles and those who are familiar and able to identify them? The sample of the test consists of two types of questions (fill in the blanks 'production' and multiple choices 'recognition' ) and 40 students are selected randomly at the mentioned department. The participants are divided into two groups , each group with 20 students. The first group who are not aware how to use lexical bundles constructed the pre-test exam and the second group with 20 students done the post-test exam who are well constructed with the experience and knowledge of learning lexical bundles. The findings of the analysis have shown that students(pre-test) at the level of production score high and low rates concerning noun phrase based bundles. Whereas at the level of recognition students face difficulty in the recognition of clauses. Here, phrases are recognized more than clause are. The post-test which is concerned with those students who have attended lexical bundles classes shows high rates of correct answers in the use of noun phrase, verb phrase, preposition phrase and it cleft clause at the level of production and recognition. Therefore, learning such multi word expressions can contribute to gaining effective proficiency in language communication and competence

A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Learn and Acquire

<p>As an important yet intricate linguistic feature in English language, synonymy poses a great challenge for second language learners. Using the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as data and the software Sketch Engine (SkE) as an analyzing tool, this article compares the usage of <em>learn</em> and <em>acquire </em>used in natural discourse by conducting the analysis of concordance, collocation, word sketches and sketch difference. The results show that different functions of SkE can make different contributions to the discrimination of <em>learn</em> and <em>acquire</em>. Pedagogical implications are discussed when the results are introduced into the classroom.</p>

Rise and Fall of the ‘Man-eater’: The Changing Science and Technology of a Species (1860–present)

Whither the man-eater? This entity was once the prime interest of an entire league of famous sportsmen in colonial India, the engrossing content of many books, headline news and even the object of several statistical enumerations. Where our current-day sensitivities open up rather differently to the presence of man-eaters, or even the memory of its hunters, the article at hand explores some of the processes by which the man-eater was first constructed, and then dismantled by spokespersons of the wilds themselves. This erratic rise and fall of the man-eater is descriptive of changing power relations, the ephemeral yet pervasive axis between the colonial and the post-colonial, and the overall cunning of human society to represent animals for its own purposes. The role of certain technologies (such as the rifle, the camera and the realm of print) in a discourse of nature is so immanent at the site of the man-eater that it serves to inform the production of wilderness, as much as the making of the endangered in current times.

TINDAK TUTUR DALAM PERSPEKTIF KAJIAN WACANA

All members of a society master at least one language and use it ininteraction and communication by which they are able to conduct social functionsto express their nature as social beings. As social activities, the interaction andcommunication reflect cultural products expressed in conversational discourse.With regards to the speech act theory, the discourse always occurs in a speechsituation, in which a speech event occurs. Speech events consist of speech acts. Onthe basis of these paradigms, we can conclude that in nature discourse is a set ofspeech acts so that the speech act theory can be used as an approach to analyzingdiscourses.Keywords: speech acts, discourse, discourse analysisA.

Playing Pregnancy: The Ludification and Gamification of Expectant Motherhood in Smartphone Apps

Like other forms of embodiment, pregnancy has increasingly become subject to representation and interpretation via digital technologies. Pregnancy and the unborn entity were largely private, and few people beyond the pregnant women herself had access to the foetus growing within her (Duden). Now pregnant and foetal bodies have become open to public portrayal and display (Lupton The Social Worlds of the Unborn). A plethora of online materials – websites depicting the unborn entity from the moment of conception, amateur YouTube videos of births, social media postings of ultrasounds and self-taken photos (‘selfies’) showing changes in pregnant bellies, and so on – now ensure the documentation of pregnant and unborn bodies in extensive detail, rendering them open to other people’s scrutiny. Other recent digital technologies directed at pregnancy include mobile software applications, or ‘apps’. In this article, we draw on our study involving a critical discourse analysis of a corpus of pregnancy-related apps offered in the two major app stores. In so doing, we discuss the ways in which pregnancy-related apps portray pregnant and unborn bodies. We place a particular focus on the ludification and gamification strategies employed to position pregnancy as a playful, creative and fulfilling experience that is frequently focused on consumption. As we will demonstrate, these strategies have wider implications for concepts of pregnant and foetal embodiment and subjectivity. It is important here to make a distinction between ludification and gamification. Ludification is a broader term than gamification. It is used in the academic literature on gaming (sometimes referred to as ‘ludology’) to refer to elements of games reaching into other aspects of life beyond leisure pursuits (Frissen et al. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures; Raessens). Frissen et al. (Frissen et al. "Homo Ludens 2.0: Play, Media and Identity") for example, claim that even serious pursuits such as work, politics, education and warfare have been subjected to ludification. They note that digital technologies in general tend to incorporate ludic dimensions. Gamification has been described as ‘the use of game design elements in non-game contexts’ (Deterding et al. 9). The term originated in the digital media industry to describe the incorporation of features into digital technologies that not explicitly designed as games, such as competition, badges, rewards and fun that engaged and motivated users to make them more enjoyable to use. Gamification is now often used in literatures on marketing strategies, persuasive computing or behaviour modification. It is an important element of ‘nudge’, an approach to behaviour change that involves persuasion over coercion (Jones, Pykett and Whitehead). Gamification thus differs from ludification in that the former involves applying ludic principles for reasons other than the pleasures of enjoying the game for their own sake, often to achieve objectives set by actors and agencies other than the gamer. Indeed, this is why gamification software has been described by Bogost (Bogost) as ‘exploitationware’.