Procedural Discourse Research Articles

TOPIKALISASI DAN BENTUK WACANA KESEHATAN PADA KORAN SURYA JANUARI 2019

This research focuses on topicalisation and forms of discourse contained in the health discourse in the January 2019 edition of Surya newspaper. The description underlying the researcher conducted this study is using discourse analysis as the main theoretical basis and the basis of research, beside topicalisation and discourse form as the subjects in research. The objectives of this study are to describe the topics between sentences and to know health discourse form. Descriptive approach is used in this research. The type of data examined at the focus of the first problem is sentence in each the health discourse’s paragraph in the January 2019 edition of Surya newspaper and the type of data examined at the focus of the first problem is the paragraphs in the discourse. The data collection techniques are observation, deciding the object, identifying data and coding data. Based on the problem, to have a data validity test, the researcher uses triangulation theory which compares the final result as information with relevant theory perspective to avoid researcher’s individual biases of the finding produced. The result of the study shows that not all paragraphs in the discourse have the topic. However, whole discourses have each main topic. In the research of discourse form, the result of analysis shows that expository discourse is the most frequent delivered in the health discourse in the January 2019 edition of Surya newspaper. There are hortatory discourse forms in the health discourse in the January 2019 edition of Surya newspaper, but not as much as expository discourse. Narrative discourse form is a most rarely delivered. Procedural discourse form, dramatic discourse, epistolary discourse and ceremonial discourse are not found in the health discourse in the January 2019 edition of Surya newspaper.

Subjective rating scale for discourse: Evidence from the efficacy of subjective rating scale in amnestic mild cognitive impairments.

In clinical settings, the language ability of patients with neurologic communication disorders have been measured by quantitative parameters such as the total number of words in dialogue and picture description tasks. However, this quantitative analysis requires a long period of time in order to analyze the quantitative parameters, and results can differ according to discourse tasks. The purposes of this study are to explore whether SR-D may predict the quantitative measures of discourse tasks. Forty patients with amnestic MCI and 40 normal elderly participated in the study. We gathered responses to 10 items regarding SR-D and analyzed the quantitative measures of narrative discourse through 3 discourse tasks (i.e, picture description, dialogue, procedural discourse). We found significant differences in MLTW, CIU, and SR-D scores between the 2 groups. In particular, 4 items were significantly correlated with the performance of MLTW and CIU. Sensitivity and specificity of these 4 items were 100% and 75%, respectively. In terms of economic opportunity costs, objective measures cannot be evaluated to be practical, since it is used in research rather than clinical diagnosis in general. Therefore, evaluation of discourse using a few items proven in its sensitivity and specificity could allow a wide use of such measure in not only research but also in clinical diagnosis. These findings suggest that subjective measures of narrative discourse may be valid with objective language tests to predict individual discourse performance.

The Rhetorical Work of YouTube’s Beauty Community: Relationship- and Identity-Building in User-Created Procedural Discourse

ABSTRACTThis study investigates YouTube’s beauty community, an online group of women who make videos about makeup products and techniques. The videos contain makeup application instructions and challenge ideas about what is “usable” procedural discourse. They sometimes defy conventions for high production quality. Moreover, storytelling and instruction are integral to the rhetorical work of these tutorials. For the diverse groups in this community, procedural discourse also serves as a means of establishing credibility not otherwise afforded to them, as well as opportunities for identity- and relationship building.

Acute prediction of outcome and cognitive-communication impairments following traumatic brain injury: The influence of age, education and site of lesion

BackgroundCommunication impairment following a traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been well documented, yet information regarding communication skills in the acute period following the injury is limited in the literature. Also, little is known about the influence of TBI severity (mild, moderate or severe) on cognitive-communication impairments and how these impairments are related to short-term functional outcome. The goal of this study was to assess the performance of adults with mild, moderate and severe TBI on different language tests and to determine how this performance is related to functional capacity. We also aimed to explore which variables among age, sex, education, TBI severity and site of cerebral damage would predict initial language impairments. MethodsSeveral language tests were administered to a sample of 145 adult patients with TBI of a range of severities admitted to an acute care service and to 113 healthy participants from the community. ResultsTBI patients of a range of severities performed poorly on all language tests in comparison to the healthy controls. In addition, patients with mild TBI performed better than the moderate and severe groups, except on the reading test and on the semantic naming test. In addition, their performance on verbal fluency, conversational discourse and procedural discourse tasks predicted acute functional outcome. Finally, age, education and TBI severity and site of lesion predicted some language performance. A left temporal lesion was associated with poorer performance in conversational discourse and auditory comprehension tasks, a left frontal lesion with a decrease in the verbal fluency results and a right parietal lesion with decreased auditory comprehension and reasoning skills. ConclusionHealth care professionals working in the acute care setting should be aware of the possible presence of cognitive-communication impairments in patients with TBI, even for those with mild TBI. These deficits can lead to functional communication problems and assistance may be required for tasks frequently encountered in acute care requiring intact comprehension and expression.

English versus Spanish Procedural Law Terminology and Phraseology: Troublesome Features for Translators

AbstractLegal translation is increasingly demanded in the professional market.When a translator tackles the translation of a source text from the same law system as to the target text the difficulties encountered may not prove very onerous. Nevertheless, when the translation brief comprises heterogeneous legal systems it places the translator into a difficult translation task. That is precisely the case of Common Law versus Civil Law and the legislation arising therefrom: Procedural Law. In this paper we will explain the features of procedural legal discourse and the tools for providing an adequate translation (English-Spanish/Spanish-English) for the terminology and phraseology identified in our bilingual corpus.

A comprehensive and integrated clinical rating for storytelling produced by individuals with traumatic brain injury: A preliminary report

A comprehensive and integrated clinical rating for storytelling produced by individuals with traumatic brain injury: A preliminary report

Discourse Formulation and Neurovascular Activation in Four Genres

Discourse Formulation and Neurovascular Activation in Four Genres

CroDA

Rad opisuje postupak prikupljanja podataka i transkripciju upotrijebljenu u razvoju Hrvatskog diskursnog korpusa govornika s afazijom razvijenog u sklopu projekta Adult Language Processing (HRZZ-2421-UIP-11-2013) i dostupnog od 2017. kao dio AphasiaBank - baze multimedijalne interakcije za proučavanje komunikacije među govornicima s afazijom. U skladu s protokolom AphasiaBanka uzorkovani su diskursi na temelju četiriju zadataka: pripovijedanja osobne priče, opisa slike, prepričavanja priče i proceduralnog diskursa. Snimljeni govorni uzorci transkribirani su u skladu s Codes for Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT). CroDA, kao prvi diskursni korpus govornika s afazijom u hrvatskom može dati nove uvide u specifična jezična obilježja diskursne proizvodnje govornika s afazijom i poslužiti kao korisni izvor za kvantitativne i kvalitativne analize.

Procedural discourse performance in adults with severe traumatic brain injury at 3 and 6 months post injury

ABSTRACTBackground: There is limited research on communicative recovery during the early stages after a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) in adults.Methods and procedures: In the current study 43 people with severe TBI described a simple procedure at 3 and 6 months post injury and this was compared to the description provided by 37 healthy speakers. Linguistic productivity and the presence of macrostructural discourse elements were analysed.Main outcomes and results: No change occurred in productivity in the TBI group between the two time points. There was increased use of relevant information (macrostructure) over time for the TBI group, reflecting improvement. People with TBI differed from controls in speech rate and in two out of three macrostructural categories at both time points, indicating difficulties even after 12 weeks of recovery.Conclusions: Overall, the quality, rather than the quantity of discourse was disordered for participants with TBI. Findings indicate that procedural discourse is sensitive to discourse deficits of people with TBI and can be used to map recovery during the sub-acute phase.

A comparison of coherence in oral discourse between Cantonese speakers in Mainland China with cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and traumatic brain injury (TBI): A pilot study

A comparison of coherence in oral discourse between Cantonese speakers in Mainland China with cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and traumatic brain injury (TBI): A pilot study

A comparison of U.S.-based and Iraqi English research article abstracts using corpora

This paper explores the linguistic characteristics of English research article (RA) abstracts published in the United States (U.S.) and those published in Iraq, written by Iraqi authors. Because of their brevity, well-established purpose, and explicit format requirements, RA abstracts are ideal for genre-based studies (Hyland, 2004; Swales & Feak, 2009a) and cross-linguistic analyses. Eight parallel sub-corpora were used in this study, comprised of RA abstracts in four disciplines (Agriculture, Nursing, Engineering, and Languages) from the U.S. and Iraq. Overall, the texts collected in the eight corpora were written during the period from 1995 to 2016 across a wide-range of publications and research approaches. This study follows Biber's (1988, 1995) multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) approach in comparing and contrasting these U.S.-based and Iraqi RA abstracts. Specifically, extracted dimensions of academic writing from Hardy and Römer's (2013) MDA of NS and NNS upper-level academic written texts from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP) are utilized as primary points of comparison. Results suggest similarities and interesting differences in how U.S.-based and Iraqi writers structure their abstracts, specifically in (1) how information is packaged and shared, (2) the expression of procedural discourse in abstract writing, and (3) how directness and argumentation are articulated by writers.

Automated Proposition Density Analysis for Discourse in Aphasia.

This study evaluates how proposition density can differentiate between persons with aphasia (PWA) and individuals in a control group, as well as among subtypes of aphasia, on the basis of procedural discourse and personal narratives collected from large samples of participants. Participants were 195 PWA and 168 individuals in a control group from the AphasiaBank database. PWA represented 6 aphasia types on the basis of the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (Kertesz, 2006). Narrative samples were stroke stories for PWA and illness or injury stories for individuals in the control group. Procedural samples were from the peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich task. Language samples were transcribed using Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts (MacWhinney, 2000) and analyzed using Computerized Language Analysis (MacWhinney, 2000), which automatically computes proposition density (PD) using rules developed for automatic PD measurement by the Computerized Propositional Idea Density Rater program (Brown, Snodgrass, & Covington, 2007; Covington, 2007). Participants in the control group scored significantly higher than PWA on both tasks. PD scores were significantly different among the aphasia types for both tasks. Pairwise comparisons for both discourse tasks revealed that PD scores for the Broca's group were significantly lower than those for all groups except Transcortical Motor. No significant quadratic or linear association between PD and severity was found. Proposition density is differentially sensitive to aphasia type and most clearly differentiates individuals with Broca's aphasia from the other groups.

Análise do discurso de indivíduos afásicos fluentes e com leve dificuldade de compreensão oral

RESUMO: Objetivo: analisar os discursos narrativo, descritivo, conversacional e procedural de indivíduos afásicos fluentes e compará-los com indivíduos saudáveis. Métodos: foram selecionados, por meio de amostragem sistemática, 22 indivíduos afásicos fluentes com queixas de dificuldade discursiva e que apresentam alteração de linguagem pós-acometimento em Sistema Nervoso Central decorrente de Acidente Vascular Encefálico, que estão ou já estiveram em tratamento na instituição de origem. Estes foram pareados a indivíduos saudáveis de mesma idade e escolaridade e ambos os grupos foram submetidos a um protocolo de tarefas discursivas orais para avaliação dos discursos narrativo, explicativo, conversacional e procedural. Resultados: houve diferenças estatisticamente significantes na maioria das variáveis investigadas em todos os tipos de discursos tanto na análise quantitativa quanto na qualitativa. Conclusão: indivíduos afásicos apresentaram maior facilidade no discurso narrativo e maior dificuldade nos demais discursos, porém comparando-os aos indivíduos saudáveis apresentaram maior dificuldade em todos os gêneros discursivos orais.

Genre variation in student writing: A multi-dimensional analysis

EAP professionals often desire to better understand writing in the disciplines (WID) to inform their pedagogical materials and practices. While genre analysis has increased our understanding of academic writing, quantitative, corpus-based approaches can supplement the area (Biber, Connor, & Upton, 2007). To that end, a multi-dimensional (MD) analysis was conducted using dimensions extracted by Hardy and Römer (2013). Paper types from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP) were investigated along the following dimensions (1) Involved, Academic Narrative vs. Descriptive, Informational Discourse; (2) Expression of Opinions and Mental Processes; (3) Situation-Dependent, Non-Procedural Evaluation vs. Procedural Discourse; and (4) Production of Possibility Statement and Argumentation. The MICUSP paper types were found to pattern similarly across all four dimensions, with the more personal genres (e.g., creative writing, critiques/evaluations, response papers) and the more objective genres (e.g., research papers, reports) consistently averaging dimension scores on opposing ends of the poles.

Language and iconic gesture use in procedural discourse by speakers with aphasia

Background: Conveying instructions is an everyday use of language, and gestures are likely to be a key feature of this. Although co-speech iconic gestures are tightly integrated with language, and people with aphasia (PWA) produce procedural discourses impaired at a linguistic level, no previous studies have investigated how PWA use co-speech iconic gestures in these contexts.Aims: This study investigated how PWA communicated meaning using gesture and language in procedural discourses, compared with neurologically healthy people (NHP). We aimed to identify the relative relationship of gesture and speech, in the context of impaired language, both overall and in individual events.Methods & Procedures: Twenty-nine PWA and 29 NHP produced two procedural discourses. The structure and semantic content of language of the whole discourses were analysed through predicate argument structure and spatial motor terms, and gestures were analysed for frequency and semantic form. Gesture and language were analysed in two key events, to determine the relative information presented in each modality.Outcomes & Results: PWA and NHP used similar frequencies and forms of gestures, although PWA used syntactically simpler language and fewer spatial words. This meant, overall, relatively more information was present in PWA gesture. This finding was also reflected in the key events, where PWA used gestures conveying rich semantic information alongside semantically impoverished language more often than NHP.Conclusions: PWA gestures, containing semantic information omitted from the concurrent speech, may help listeners with meaning when language is impaired. This finding indicates gesture should be included in clinical assessments of meaning-making.

Language-Specific Effects on Story and Procedural Narrative tasks between Korean-speaking and English-speaking Individuals with Aphasia

Language-Specific Effects on Story and Procedural Narrative tasks between Korean-speaking and English-speaking Individuals with Aphasia

Missing persons: the processes and challenges of police investigation

Responding to reports of missing persons represents one of the biggest demands on the resources of police organisations. In the UK, for example, it is estimated that over 300,000 missing persons incidents are recorded by the police each year which means that a person in the UK is recorded missing by the police approximately every two minutes. However, there is a complex web of behaviours that surround the phenomenon of missing persons which can make it difficult to establish whether someone's disappearance is ‘intentional’ or ‘unintentional’ or whether they might be at risk of harm from themselves or others. Drawing on a set of missing person case reconstructions and interviews with the officers involved with these cases, this paper provides insights into the different stages of the investigative process and some of the key influences which shape the trajectory of a missing person's investigation. In particular, it highlights the complex interplay between actions which are ‘ordered and conditioned’ by a procedural discourse around how missing persons investigations should be conducted, and the narratives that officers construct about how they approach investigations which are often shaped by a mix of police craft, ‘science’ and ‘reputational’ issues.

Revealing disciplinary variation in student writing: a multi-dimensional analysis of the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP)

The purpose of this study was to uncover sets of co-occurring, lexico-grammatical features to help to characterise successful student writing. The writing was captured by the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP, 2009) and was taken from sixteen disciplines. MICUSP is a corpus of A-graded, upper-level student papers of different disciplines and paper types ( O'Donnell and Römer, 2012 ; and Römer and O'Donnell, 2011 ). Following Biber (1988) , we used a multi-dimensional analysis to identify dimensions of frequently co-occurring features that best account for cross-disciplinary variation in MICUSP. The four functional dimensions of MICUSP appear to distinguish between: (1) Involved, Academic Narrative versus Descriptive, Informational Discourse; (2) Expression of Opinions and Mental Processes; (3) Situation-Dependent, Non-Procedural Evaluation versus Procedural Discourse; and (4) Production of Possibility Statement and Argumentation. Along with a description of the methodology, this paper defines the features that constitute the factors, which have been labelled based on their communicative functions. Similarities and differences at the disciplinary and genre-specific levels are discussed as are the implications for discipline-specific and register-based pedagogies.

Modified Response Elaboration Training: Application to Procedural Discourse and Personal Recounts

This investigation was designed to examine the effects of a modification of response elaboration training (RET; Kearns, 1985) with speakers with mild to mild-moderate aphasia. The modification entailed application of RET to procedural discourse and personal recounts rather than to narrative discourse. Three participants with chronic aphasia received modified RET (M-RET) applied sequentially in the context of multiple baseline designs to the conditions of personal recounts and procedural discourse. Production of correct information units (CIUs; Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993) served as the primary dependent variable. Participants 2 and 3 demonstrated increases in the production of CIUs in response to treatment of procedures. M-RET applied to the personal recount condition was not associated with increased production of CIUs in personal recounts in probes. However, Participant 1 demonstrated increased CIU production for previously treated procedures when treatment was applied to personal recounts. Small effect sizes were obtained for procedural sets for Participant 1, and large effect sizes were obtained for procedural sets for Participants 2 and 3. Maintenance of gains at 3 and 6 weeks post treatment was strong. Application of M-RET to procedural discourse appears to be a viable treatment option for participants with mild to mild-moderate aphasia.

A Sub-Acute Case of Resolving Acquired Apraxia of Speech and Aphasia

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a neurogenic, motor speech disorder that disrupts the planning for speech production. However, there are only a few reports that have described the evolution of stroke-induced AOS symptoms in the acute or sub-acute phase of recovery. The purpose of this report was to provide a data-based description of an individual with sub-acute AOS and aphasia followed from 1 month post-onset a stroke to eight 8 months post-stroke. Six data collection sessions were conducted at periodic intervals using narrative and procedural discourse tasks and a series of speech and language analyses were completed. The language analyses involved measures of language content and efficiency. The speech production analyses examined the percentage and frequency of errors as well as determining the dominant types of errors produced within and across data collection sessions. For this individual, measures of language content and communication efficiency improved over the six sampling occasions. The number of speech production errors significantly declined after the first data collection session and then gradually over the subsequent sessions. This individual produced five dominant error types within and across sessions. The majority of these error types are behaviors that occur in chronic AOS, but do not distinguish AOS from other acquired neurogenic communication disorders. Due to the lack of research involving acute/sub-acute individuals with AOS additional research is warranted to better understand the evolution of AOS including the speech behaviors that are observed in the acute/sub-acute phase vs. the chronic phase of recovery.