Oral Genres Research Articles

Jérôme Lentin, Jacques Grand’Henry (éds.), Middle and Mixed Arabic over Time and across Written and Oral Genres: From Legal Documents to Television and In

Jérôme Lentin, Jacques Grand’Henry (éds.), Middle and Mixed Arabic over Time and across Written and Oral Genres: From Legal Documents to Television and In

Количественное измерение жанра: функционирование «краткий» и «короткий» в позиции определений имен жанров

The relevance of the study of the quantitative dimension of genres, in particular genres of small format and short implementations of genres in general, has increased due to the need to “compress” information of various types in modern communications, insufficient knowledge of the patterns of functioning of short and abbreviated texts/discourses, attention to the quantitative aspects of speech in terms of their value. The problematic situation is defined by the author as a contradiction between the ascertainment of the prototypical nature of texts of small volume, rather complete descriptions of a number of small-format genres, on the one hand, and the lack of clarification of the factors that allow or do not allow the genre to function in a short (short, incomplete, abbreviated) mode. The purpose of the study is to identify and describe the circumstances that determine the external differentiation and internal variability of genres based on the quantitative characteristics of “brief” and “short”. It is a corpus research, the data about genres was formed on the corpus basis, the names of which formed the right contexts of the adjectives “brief” and “short” in the main body of the Russian National Corpus. It has been established that as “brief” are defined the realizations of genres that involve a written form, expansion, a rational strategy of text generation, standard content. “Short” versions are attributed to oral genres in which the subject of speech is free to choose the strategy and semantic content of the text. Brief forms can form institutionally fixed variants of genres, independent genres and represent individual realizations of the genre. The attitude of speech subjects to the choice of a short form depends on many pragmatic factors, it is rather approved than condemned.

A Study of Elpis in Ancient Greek Literary Laments and Songs for the Dead: Hope and the Tradition of Greek Lament

Much of current scholarship aims at reconstructing ritual lamentation based on evidence from early Greek epic and lyric poetry and fifth-century tragedy. This paper, although it is an examination of a specific human emotion, elpis, within the corpus of early and classical Greek epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry that are thought to preserve the oral traditions of the genre, takes also into consideration the inscribed ancient Greek songs for the dead; that is archaic and classical epigrams and their later counterparts encountered, mainly, in the Greek Anthology. A study of elpis, a highly culturally dependent emotion, within these contexts will allow us to have a glimpse of the hermeneutic frames provided by each poetic genre, their performative contexts, and the expectation of the audiences, as well as of the general world-view that is shared by the poetic genres in question. In other words, a study of elpis in ancient Greek laments and songs for the dead will enable us to have a slightly clearer image of the evolution and the nature of this oral genre from archaic times until the Late Antiquity.

Linguistic realizations of engagement in TED talks

The article describes linguistic items used for actualizing the engagement strategy in the oral genre of popular science discourse of TED lectures, which seems to be understudied in modern scientific linguistics literature. A huge number of studies have shown that popular science discourse is an interactive event, the success of which depends on the degree and efficiency of interaction between the speaker and the audience. However, the metadiscourse strategies employed in popular science genres, including TED talks addressed to a wide audience, remain insufficiently studied. The research gap in this area of pragmalinguistics predetermines the need to study the strategies of interaction between the speaker and the audience. The research corpus consists of 80 scripts of TED talks posted on the ted.com website. The aim of the study is to analyze linguistic items used for realizing the strategy of engagement of the audience into the discussion, their categories, pragmatic functions and frequency. In order to study the types, functions and frequency of linguistic actualizers of engagement, the methods of quantitative and interpretive analysis were adopted. The study showed that TED lecturers use a variety of language tools, the most productive of which were questions and reader mentions. It was found that at the lexical and grammatical levels, the engagement strategy was realized through imperative verbs, first and second personal pronouns, interrogative constructions, as well as impersonal constructions with solidarity adjectives. The results of the analysis suggested that TED speakers strive to construct an effective dialogue with the addressee, to engage the audience in the process of representing scientific information, making it accessible to lay listeners. It was concluded that the pragmatically correct use of the engagement strategy in the genre of TED talks is an indicator of the pragmatic competence of the speaker and the key to effective communication with the audience.

Orality in Yorùbá films: A study of selected films of Akínwùmí Iṣọ̀lá

Despite technological innovations, orality still forms one of the aesthetic elements in the new media such as home video films as a result of the unending interface between orality and the literacy tradition. Using intertextuality as an approach, in this article I examine orality in selected films of Akínwùmí Ìṣọ̀lá, with a view to showing how he uses verbal arts as a powerful tool for the transmission of cultural values. The selected films are Saworoidẹ (1999), Agogo Èèwọ̀ (2002) and Ẹfúnṣetán Aníwúrà (2005). The films were selected based on their preponderant featuring of oral narratives. My findings reveal that folktales, legends, songs, Ifá corpus, drumbeats, incantations, and panegyric are the Yorùbá oral genres that Akínwùmí Ìṣọ̀lá incorporates into his films. One can infer from Ìṣọ̀lá’s films that there is an overlap between his oral culture and his creative work because culture is the active force that energises and drives the creative work. I conclude that Ìṣọ̀lá uses his creative ingenuity to re-awake and preserve Yorùbá oral tradition in his films, which points to the fact that oral literature has a continued vitality for contemporary society.

Using genre to explain how children linguistically co-construct make-believe social scenarios in classroom role-play

Abstract This paper argues that classroom role-play can be conceptualised theoretically as an oral genre, as defined within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The work draws on analysis of 15 video-recorded child-led role-plays in which groups of three 4–5 year-old children engage in five different life-like social scenarios. The study is underpinned by SFL register and genre analysis of the children’s interactions, and the findings reveal how the children’s linguistic choices have a direct impact on the dynamically unfolding role-play, and how imaginary scenarios are construed by the instantiation of individual genre stages, some of which serve to regulate the role-play and others that mimic real life social scenarios. The findings suggest that the two different types of stages construe two separate, but interwoven contexts, with the make-believe context often being dependent on the regulative context. The paper offers new insights into the ways in which SFL can reveal nuances in children’s dialogic and dynamic language in play.

<i>Polyphony</i> for a novel’s stylistics: a logistical map of ‘transsemiotization’

The article discusses the intermedial transfer of the concept of polyphony in Mikhail Bakhtin’s and Leo Spitzer’s studies of Dostoevsky and Proust from the late 1920s. There are plenty of good reasons to compare the two scholars’ works. Firstly, Spitzer’s stylistics was of key importance to Bakhtin throughout his scientific career. Secondly, there is a correlation between the methods for studying Proust’s and Dostoevsky’s novels, which Bakhtin considered as the pinnacle of the European and Russian novel, respectively. The stylistic revolution of the novel anticipated not only the development of 20th-c. prose, the polyphonic novel and stylistic perspectivism, but also the trajectory of theoretical innovations, the study of the dialogue between the Self and the Other, as well the verbal symphonization of the author/narrator’s outer and inner Self. Once polyphony was extrapolated into the field of the novel, the problem of the spoken word and oral genres became more compelling. From the late 1930s until the early 1940s, Spitzer and Bakhtin independently set out to study the genre of ‘shouts’ (cri): Spitzer in Proust’s The Prisoner, and Bakhtin in Rabelais’s novel and Russian literature. Bakhtin’s short theoretical essay on the genre of ‘shouts’ in a Russian town square was discovered by the author of this article and is published here for the first time.

Yoruba Culture in a Changing World

Culture, a way of life, ideology, and philosophy of a people, has been a focal point of scholarly research in the fields of literature, language, history, and sociology, among others. The findings of existing research have established that culture is dynamic. The Yorùbá culture, like other cultures of the world is not static. Hence, in this discourse, we will examine the impact of the changes in the Yorùbá society on the culture of the people.
 Data for the study drawn from Yorùbá cultural heritage, literary works, home video, films and oral genres. The data were subjected to content and interpretive analysis. Findings reveal that some indices of Yorùbá culture have experienced constant flux due to the mobile nature of the culture and its contact with other cultures. The research also affirm that the preservation of the culture prompted some stakeholders to change the existing norm in order to add value to the Yorùbá culture for the benefit of the upcoming generation. It further revealed that the changes that the culture witnesses could be seen as a two-edged sword, with both positive and negative impacts. Positive in the sense of elements that enhance sustainable development and negative from the purview of elements that degrade, diminish, and decimate human flourishing.
 The research concludes that the response of the Yorùbá culture to changes could impact positively on growth. In other word, human activities in Yorùbá culture should be tailored in positive direction to enhance national and social-economic development. Hence, the revitalization, documentation and preservation of culture should be of interest to the government and policy makers.

INCOMPLETE SENTENCES IN THE LANGUAGE OF JAPANESE MASS CULTURE AS A DEVIATION FROM THE LANGUAGE NORMS

Background. The paper draws attention to the deviations from the syntactic norm in the sentences of the language of mass culture, in particular, the frequency of incomplete sentences that are not typical for literary language, on the example of the oral and written genres of modern mass culture of Japan. The main objective was to analyze, using quantitative and qualitative methods, the phenomena of ellipsis and nominative sentences, widely represented in the language of both written (fashion magazines, manga comics) and oral (lyrics of popular songs, the language of entertainment TV shows) genres of Japanese mass culture. Results. A so called “norm” for the language of mass culture is the production of entire texts that fully consist of ellipted and nominative sentences, that is, they do not contain a single complete one (such examples occur, in particular, in the language of magazine articles, song lyrics, or manga chapters). In incomplete sentences, the predicate is partially or completely removed, which sometimes makes it impossible to interpret the grammatical tense of one sentence or entire texts. The omission of the predicate, which is often accompanied by the introduction of an exclamation mark, that is not typical for Japanese text in general, shifts the emphasis from the action to the objects that are presented to the recipient in isolation, sort of careless manner, which, on the one hand, leads to easier perception of information, but, on the other hand, spreads mistaken samples of word usage due to the non-compliance of the structure of such messages with the syntactic norm. In addition to complete or partial removal of the predicate from the sentence, the language of mass culture is also characterized by sentences-words expressed by a single interjection; interjections often replace verbs in the predicate position. Conclusions. This overusing of ellipsis and nominative clauses in the language of mass culture seems to bring it closer to colloquial speech or spontaneous informal speech, which most likely aims to make the language of mass culture more accessible and the meanings it conveys “closer” to the consumer. The reproduction of colloquial speech in the syntactic structure of the language of mass culture seems to have a manipulative potential, as well as a destructive role in blurring literary norms and destructing the language “feeling” among the mass culture audience.

The Lexical field of water in ballads of Portuguese modern oral tradition

The water element has a symbolic, ancestral value in all cultures, and it is possible to trace, throughout human history, the importance that water had and still has for different cultures and the symbolic values ​​that have been attributed to it. From an object of worship to a symbol of life, water is also associated with different cultural practices. To this extent, we find references to water in literature or painting and we find that, in these expressions, the symbolic values ​​that each community attributes to the water element are evidenced. Thus, based on the importance and symbolic values ​​of the water element in different cultures, in different cultural practices and in different expressions, we revisit the symbolic constructs associated with the water element in literature, particularly in an oral genre: spanish balads. In a very particular way, we intend to analyze the linguistic options of the lexical field of water in novels of the modern Iberian oral tradition, trying to verify to what extent the linguistic forms present in the texts contribute to the incorporation of metaphorical values ​​of the water element and in what measure those are the underpinning of a symbolic construct.

Anaphoric Distance in Oral and Written Language: Experimental Evidence

We investigate the variation in oral and written language in terms of anaphoric distance (i.e., the textual distance between anaphors and their antecedents), expanding corpus-based research with experimental evidence. Contrastive corpus studies demonstrate that oral genres include longer average anaphoric distance than written genres, if the distance is measured in terms of clauses (Fox, 1987; Aktaş & Stede, 2020). We designed an experiment in order to examine the contrasts in oral and written mediums, using the same genre. We aim to gain more insight about the impact of the medium, in a situation where both mediums convey a similar level of spontaneity, informality and interactivity. We designed a story continuation study, where the participants are recruited via crowdsourcing. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind, where anaphoric distance is manipulated systematically in a language production experiment in order to examine medium distinctions. We observed that participants use more pronouns in oral medium than in written medium if the anaphoric distance is long. This result is in line with the implications of the earlier corpus-based research. In addition, our results indicate that anaphoric distance has a larger effect in referential choice for the written medium.

Free verse and speech texture

Based on the theories of Yuri Rozhdestvensky, this article considers vers libres a ‘third’ genre: neither prose nor poetry, but a separate artistic form where prose and poetry intersect. As other types of speech, free verse is influenced by the changes in communication technologies. Using representative examples of Russian free verse, the article studies this influence. It traces the correlations between Russian vers libres and oral genres, including proverbs and fables, and between vers libre and written genres, specifically sacred texts: psalms and prayers. It explains the influence of print technology on free verse, shows that prose printed texts can be close to free verse, and explains why scientific texts, even well written, cannot. It demonstrates how Russian verlibrists responded to mass media styles and pressures, highlighting the use of irony. The patterns and regularities observed for the Russian material may be applicable to free verse in other languages, pending further research.

New genres and new approaches: teaching and assessing product pitches from a multimodal perspective in the ESP classroom

One of the most innovative genres in today’s business communication is the product pitch (PP), mainly characterised by its multisemiotic nature (Daly & Davy, 2016), which makes it essential to take a multimodal approach to the analysis and teaching of this genre (Tamarit & Skorczynska, 2014; Valeiras-Jurado, 2017). However, despite the increasing importance of this oral genre in the business field, little research has been conducted on the teaching of PPs to business ESP students. The purpose of this paper is therefore to present an innovative pedagogical model consisting of a learner-led genre-based pedagogy based on a teaching-learning cycle that fosters critical thinking and multimodal awareness (AUTHOR, 2019). Following the four stages of the cycle proposed, and with the constant scaffolding of the lecturer in the initial stages, a group of tertiary business students were requested to decode the multimodal ensembles of a YouTube PP to subsequently create their own PPs. These samples were assessed multimodally by the rest of the class (peer review) and by the teacher using an “all-mode-inclusive” rubric. This innovative pedagogical approach to a new genre increased students’ motivation and multimodal awareness, surpassing the traditionally exclusively language-bound teaching and assessment of ESP.

The Social Spaces of Music Traditions in Baghdad before and after Destruction

The Social Spaces of Music Traditions in Baghdad before and after Destruction

Re-interpreting Yoruba incantation: an example of Fryean apocalyptic and demonic imagery

Yoruba incantation is an oral poetic genre known to Yoruba people. Incantations can make things magically materialise and mostly follow the logic of observational truisms. Scholars have examined Yoruba incantation from different perspectives ranging from its poetics, aesthetics, potency, therapeutic value, contextual realisations, and typology. However, none of the available literature employs a particular theory to analyse Yoruba incantation. This study re-interprets Yoruba incantation using Fryean imagery vis-à-vis the incantation’s relevance in modern times. To this effect, a number of incantatory chants were collected from skilled chanters and translated by the researchers. The researchers adopted descriptive and content analysis research methods. The study employed Northrop Frye’s archetypal model, particularly his theoretical tenets of apocalyptic and demonic imagery, to analyse the data used in the article. The study then establishes that Yoruba incantation is not only rife with apocalyptic and demonic images, but that it also appeals to contemporary socio-cultural realities.

Street language in Dùndún Drum Language

Dùndún drum language is a practice of speech surrogacy employed by dùndún drummers in Yoruba culture. The dùndún drummers play sequences of melo-rhythmic patterns; a form of communication that employs musical and linguistic elements, comprehensible to listeners knowledgeable in the Yoruba language. Although these sequenced patterns are sourced from Yoruba everyday sentences and oral genres (proverbs, poetry, praise-chants, and idiomatic phrases), the drummers also embrace other social narratives. These include the popular linguistic expressions in public spaces referred to as “street language.” This is because the streets serve as spaces for social life, musical and cultural imaginaries, musical and language expressions, and identity. This street language, referred to as “ohùn ìgboro” in Yoruba, include slang (saje), slurs (òtè), neologies (ènà), satire (èfè), dance-drum patterns (àlùjó), and socio-political slogans (àtúnlò-èdè). This article explores the influence of street language on dùndún music. This article follows an ethnographic model, with an analysis of the content of the dùndún music and its associated texts. The article’s findings include the extent to which the two cultures have overlapped, and the various socio-cultural benefits of adopting the language of each other’s cultural practices. In the process, the article contributes to the debate on authenticity and social structure in Yoruba culture. The article emphasises the need for an integrated research approach of music and language and their interrelationship to street cultures in Nigeria.

Ethno-ornithology: Birds in Jando and Nsondo folksongs among the Yawo of South-Eastern Malawi

From an ethno-ornithological perspective, this article analyses how birds are sources of indigenous ecological knowledge that can be utilised for environmental pedagogy. The article demonstrates how the depiction of birds in jando and nsondo initiation songs for boys and girls, respectively, reflect the people’s environmental consciousness. Children are ingrained in their environment and teaching them ecocentric values through birds is likely to mesmerise their interests in nature. When children grow up with informed knowledge about their environment, their likelihood of being environmental stewards is high because they have been exposed to the interrelatedness of ecological entities at a tender age. They begin to value human-animal relationships and the various ways through which they are ineluctably interrelated. Such values inform an environmental ethic that ensures not only earth-centredness, but also the restoration of the lost biodiversity. My endeavour in this article is to draw from oral literature, especially the folksong as an oral genre in order to analyse the depiction of birds and how they relate with humans. The findings reveal that birds are vehicles through which the people sight see the environment and express their experiential knowledge about nature.

Don’t go all “TED Talks” on them, but... make a good presentation! – teaching the oral genre through the didactic sequence procedures

Language teaching in a higher education (HE) environment is complex and challenging, much more so when we consider the contemporary demands concerning the additional languages, specifically, English. We start from the understanding that a genre-based approach in teaching is established as a positive strategy for teaching/learning and developing students’ linguistics skills. However, reflections and questions emerge when, as professors, we discuss the role of the HE and its disciplines in potentializing students' actions through language in real social practices, which can contribute to their personal and professional development. Our premise, as well as a problem, considering there seems to be a gap regarding this point, is that academic oral genres should be taught in a systematic and clear way in HE. Seeking to solve this problem, by the supports of Applied Linguistics, we structured two questions to guide this qualitative and exploratory study: 1) What would be an appropriate theory-oriented approach to support the teaching of oral genres in HE? 2) Considering the HE contexts, what would an achievable proposal aiming at the mastery of an oral genre be like? In order to answer these questions, we brought a theoretical discussion and also a Didactic Sequence (DS) regarding oral presentations in academic events as a proposal to show that the Socio-discursive Interactionism and the DS model can be powerful educators’ allies in planning and organizing classes that allow students to perform through language in different academic routines

Genealogies as an interpretive paradigm for engaging African women writers’ historical consciousness

Historical discourses in women’s writing are inherently revisionist. My paper proposes genealogical narrations as an interpretive paradigm for thinking through women narrators’ engagement with history in Grace Akinyi Ogot’s Days of My Life (2012) and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s This Child Will Be Great (2009). Drawing on autobiographical theories by Jane Marcus and Elleke Boehmer, and on orature, the paper examines how women autobiographers narrate genealogies which contest dominant autobiographical and historical discourses and practices that silence women and their agency, or distort them in history. These genealogical forms draw parallels with oral genres to produce a hybrid form that capitalizes on the agency African women enjoyed in matriarchal cultures before ­colonialism. The emergent power dynamic enables the writers to deploy symbolic grammar and resignify the private act of ­auto-biographical narration as a historical process and women as producers of history. These genealogies (in writing) advanced by the women writers in autobiography and the oral genres they intertextually interact with form the basis for writing alternative histories, and serve as a demonstration of their historical consciousness.

Gêneros orais e letramento crítico em livro didático de ciências da natureza

Este estudo objetiva analisar duas propostas de produção de gêneros orais em uma coleção de livros didáticos de Ciências da Natureza, com base em Bakhtin (2019) e Schneuwly e Dolz (2011). Observou-se o favorecimento para o letramento crítico sob a ótica de Freire (2019), Street (2014) e Soares (2009). Justificamos a investigação do livro didático e apontamos a relevância de pesquisas sobre os gêneros orais e suas vinculações com o letramento crítico. É uma análise de conteúdo documental com enfoque quanti-qualitativo e interpretativista. Os dados mostram a ocorrência de um baixo percentual destas propostas, contudo o estudo sinaliza a contribuição para o letramento crítico do estudante.