Rhetorical Structure Analysis Research Articles

Discursive pragmatics of justification in terrorist threat texts: Victim-blaming, denying, discrediting, legitimating, manipulating, and retaliation

This article explores the under-researched area of discursive tactics employed in terrorist threat texts that exploit moral values to constantly justify violence, fostering a ‘discourse of justification’, disaffiliation and conflict. Employing a discursive pragmatic analysis, it delves into the tactics of violent extremists associated with jihadism and far-right ideologies. Utilising the Appraisal framework and the ‘moral disaffiliation’ strategy, the study uncovers verbal practices shaping a dynamic of justification. Findings reveal threateners’ involvement in regulatory discursive functions – manipulation, deontic-retaliation, and boulomaic effect – and practices of ideologically positioning functions – discrediting, blaming, denying and (de)legitimating. The analysis highlights the construction of negative victim individuals and societies while praising the threatener/in-group, anchored predominantly in values of propriety, capacity, valuation and veracity, as the primary dynamic of threatener-victim disalignment. This study contributes insights into threatener profiling, motivations of violence and future research on threat-genre rhetorical structure analysis.

What can rhetoric bring us? Incorporating rhetorical structure into neural related work generation

The ever-increasing volume of research literature poses challenges for researchers in keeping up with related works in their fields. Automating the generation of related work section holds promise for saving time and effort. However, current models often fall short of producing coherent and logically correct related work with multiple sentences, a phenomenon we refer to as rhetorical structure chaos. Rhetorical structure describes how adjacent spans of units are connected to each other, and logically correct rhetorical structure is essential for a well-structured related work. Hence, to tackle the rhetorical structure chaos issue, this paper explicitly incorporates rhetorical structure information into related work generation. Firstly, we conduct the first rhetorical structure analysis for related work section, which provides insights into understanding the organization and arrangement of contents within related work. Then, based on two preliminary studies on rhetorical structure, we present a novel related work generation model called RSGen, which incorporates rhetorical structure at both the encoding and decoding stages. The encoding stage is facilitated with a rhetorical structure-based graph encoder, while the decoding process is guided by a rhetorical plan — ordered sequence of rhetorical functions of the related work. We conduct extensive experiments on three related work generation datasets to evaluate the performance of our model. The results show that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on ROUGE metrics. An ablation study and more analyses further highlight the remarkable efficacy of introducing rhetorical structure into both the encoding and decoding stages.

Ludwig: a revolt against the modern world. The language and ideology of an Italian Neo-Nazi group in the Years of Lead

ABSTRACT The Ludwig group is usually described by the media as a group of serial killers operating in Italy during the so-called Years of Lead. The present article examines the structure and the nature of the group’s language through a multidimensional approach to rediscuss its current classification and description. The source material of the analysis is represented by the handwritten leaflets released by the group to claim its actions. The collected material, comprised of seven leaflets released by the Ludwig group in 1980–1984, has been examined through the analysis of language register, syntactic and rhetorical structure, adopted lexicon and co-occurrences. According to the analysis of the group’s language and messages it passed on, this paper suggests that the political nature of the Ludwig group receives its inspiration from Nazi ideology. The ideology that inspired the group’s violent actions must be brought back to Nazi Ideology, especially to the ideas of what is generally known as Esoteric Nazism.

Persuasive Faculty and Rhetorical Structure Analysis of Popular Filipino Fiction Book Blurbs from 1980 – Present

Blurbs, being a subtle yet powerful pitch that influence readers to pick-up a book, might contradict the old adage ‘You cannot judge a book by its cover’. People do get influenced by blurbs (Schaefer & Nelson, 2012). And they provide a vista of writing styles, a rhetoric that not only appeals to readers’ senses, but also resonates the cultural or socio-political ideals of a population at a given decade, which Küçüksakarya (2015) calls “contextually motivated language choices”. A local study, for instance, has forwarded that in the Philippines, culture greatly influences the way of writing (Pariña, 2010), and is a potent factor for persuading people to read. The style of blurb writing for Filipino fiction books, however, still remains unexplored, which is why this study is conducted. Anchored on Gea-Valor’s (2005) textual strategies to analyze twenty (20) blurbs of fiction books gathered from Goodreads – five each from decades 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010 to present, findings showed that Filipino fiction book blurbs are more informational, than promotional. Albeit present in all decades, the blurbs in the following decades also focus on culture and romance. Utilizing Maan and Thompson’s (1986) Rhetorical Structure Theory, the analyses reveal that most blurbs entrench the plot to the potential readers, weaving both the informative and promotional intent of the blurbs. Filipino blurb writers more commonly use positive evaluative adjectives, superlatives, intensifiers, elliptical structure, personal pronouns like ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘ours’ including rhetorical questions and imperatives directed towards readers, which help establish the Filipino’s communal culture, or the interconnectedness of ‘pakikisama’, which Pariña (2010) noted as one of the features of Filipino writing. The researchers recommend looking into the rhetorical structure and other presentational schemes of blurbs used as virtual advertising to shed light on this growing inquisitiveness towards this genre.

Rhetorical structure analysis of prepared speeches and argumentative essays by Chinese advanced English learners

AbstractThis study focuses on the interrelationship between modes of argumentation and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ rhetorical strategies, by adopting the analytical framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) to produce reliable analyses of rhetorical structures of two most frequently required tasks in the Chinese context. The sample texts consist of 20 prepared speeches and 20 argumentative essays, both written by Chinese advanced EFL learners. The findings reveal that: (1) the essays favor a more direct structure with central units at the beginning while the speeches favor a more indirect structure with central units near the end; (2) Background, Circumstance and Preparation relations appear more frequently at the beginning of the speeches, while the Summary relation appears more frequently at the end of the essays; (3) the two most typical top-level patterns of rhetorical structure in the essays resemble the two patterns in the speeches, but with systematic variation and in reversed orders. The results reflect the active role of rhetorical situation in constructing different modes of argumentation for advanced EFL learners. This study could enrich the scope of the application of RST, and provide pedagogical implications for writing in EFL contexts.

Rhetorical Structure and Sociocultural Analysis of Muslim and Christian Obituaries in Jordanian Newspapers

This paper gives a detailed account of the distinctive macro-structural and micro-linguistic properties used in Muslim and Christian obituaries in Jordan society. It also examines how socio-religious practices and beliefs are played out through the overall genre text. In order to examine the discourse, a move-based analysis was conducted upon a corpus of 150 Muslim obituary announcements (MOAs), and another 100 Christian obituary announcements (COAs). The analysis of textual and linguistic features is carried out by following Bhatia’s (1993) model as it fruitfully illumines the relation between social discursive practice and written discourse. The genre analysis of the data demonstrates that eleven communicative moves exist in both types of obituary announcements (OAs). The study also highlights that the generic genre discourse reveals several socio-cultural and religious messages about the Jordanian community that are reflected in the rhetorical components of this genre..

Jordanian Wedding Invitation as a Genre: An Analysis of Rhetorical Structure and Linguistic Features

The present study is an attempt to conduct a genre analysis of Jordanian wedding invitations. Drawing on the model of genre analysis proposed by Bhatia (1993), a sample of 200 Jordanian wedding invitation cards has been collected and examined to provide an overview of the main linguistic devices used in the texts and analyze to what extent such devices have a social purpose. The corpus analysis revealed that Wedding invitation cards go beyond announcing the wedding of two people to mirroring and deconstructing the social practices, values and beliefs of the Jordanian society that shape the construction of this genre. I hope that the results of this study will be of help in further raising cultural awareness.

Rhetorical Structure Analysis on Introduction Chapters of English Master Theses by Indonesian Postgraduate Students

ABSTRACTThis study is aimed at investigating the rhetorical structure of Introduction chapters of English master theses written by Indonesian postgraduate students and identifying the frequency of communicative moves and their constituent steps as well as finding how the students justify their research projects reported in their Introduction chapters. The research design was mixed method research combining quantitative and qualitative method. Twenty Introduction chapters of English master theses were taken from two different fields; English language education and applied linguistics, and they were analyzed using checklists. The results: (1) three moves and fifteen steps are found in the introduction chapters of master theses and three newly identified steps other than those specified in Bunton’s are also found in the corpus of this study and (2) three moves are considered obligatory moves, seven steps are classified as obligatory, four Steps are conventional and seven Steps are optional. Further, the majority of Indonesian postgraduate students tend to rhetorically justify their research project based on the knowledge gap found in the literature. This study concludes that the move and step model suggested by Bunton (2002) and modified from Swales’ CARS is effective enough to capture the possible rhetorical structure of introduction chapter of master thesis written by Indonesian postgraduate students. ABSTRAKPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk menemukan pola retorika bab pendahuluan dalam thesis bahasa Inggris diantaranya mengidentifikasi bagian pendahuluan yang memiliki moves (tahapan), steps (langkah), dan menjustifikasi pentingnya penelitian dilakukan. Desain penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode campuran (mixed method) yang menggabungkan kuantitatif dan kualitatif, dan instrumen utama yang digunakan dalam menganalisis data adalah instrumen ceklist. Data penelitian ini diambil dari dua bidang thesis yang berbeda; pengajaran bahasa Inggris dan fitur linguistik. Hasil dari penelitian ini: (1) tiga Moves (tahapan) dan limabelas Steps (langkah) ditemukan dalam bab Pendahuluan thesis pada penelitian ini. Selain itu, ditemukan juga tiga Steps (langkah) baru yang tidak ditemukan dalam pola Bunton (2002); (2) tiga Moves (tahapan) dikategorikan harus/wajib ada, tujuh Steps (langkah) diiklasifikasikan harus ada, empat Steps (langkah) boleh ada, dan tujuh Steps (langkah) boleh tidak ada. Selanjutnya, mayoritas mahasiswa pascasarjana Indonesia cenderung secara retoris menjustifikasi proyek penelitian mereka berdasarkan pada celah (gap) yang terdapat dalam penelitian-penelitian terkait terdahulu. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa pola tahapan (Move) dan langkah (Step) yang dikemukakan oleh Bunton (2002) dan dimodifikasi dari pola retorika Swales yakni Creating a Research Space (CARS) cukup efektif digunakan dalam menggambarkan struktur retorika bab pendahuluan pada thesis yang ditulis oleh mahasiswa pascasarjana Indonesia.How to Cite: Pujiyanti, I. A., Arsyad, S., Arono. (2018). Rhetorical Structure Analysis on Introduction Chapters of English Master Theses by Indonesian Postgraduate Students. IJEE (Indonesian Journal of English Education), 5(2), 143-162. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423

Quality and clarity of health information on Q&A sites

This study investigated the quality and clarity of health information from a total of 238 (126 English and 112 Chinese) answers retrieved from Yahoo!Answers sites. Registered nurses and library professionals judged information quality based on 8 criteria: accuracy, completeness, relevance, readability, verifiability, professional advice, usefulness and non-commercialization. Writing clarity was assessed through rhetorical structure analysis. Results showed that 46% of answers were of poor quality. Furthermore, many Q&A site users were unable to distinguish adequately between high- and low-quality answers. Only 60% of their selected best-answers corresponded to those of the health professionals. These results indicate that the reliability of health information on Q&A sites is questionable. This unreliability may partially be due to the fact that Q&A site answers contain both medical information and social support. Although both are important, they are not always compatible. It may even be dangerous to mistakenly present social support as objective medical information. This research suggests that medical advice and social support should be separated. This has a further advantage in that medical advice could be subjected to stringent, necessary quality assurance measures, without interfering with social support.

ANALISIS STRUKTUR RETORIKA BAGIAN HASIL DAN PEMBAHASAN ARTIKEL JURNAL BIDANG BERBAHASA INDONESIA BIDANG ILMU SASTRA PADA JURNAL “BISA” FKIP UNIVERSITAS BENGKULU

This study was to describe the structure of rhetoric and linguistic characteristics of a part of results and discussion of articles in Indonesian language research journals in the field of literary studies. This research uses descriptive method. Data and sources of data in this study are the following documents speech writer in the text, while the data source in the form of 30 research journal articles in the field of research literature. Rhetorical structure analysis using the theory Swales which consists of 8 stages. Sedangkan ciri linguistik menggunakan teori (Wilujeng 2007, Ba?dulu 2004 dan Alwi, dkk., 2003) consisting of, among others; active voice, passive sentences and conjunctions. The results of the study of rhetoric structural analysis and discussion section of the results of research in the field of science research AJP literary form of the use of the stages are found or used. The results of the most common stages of research journal articles (AJP) Indonesian language literature on the science research journal “BISA” ie the first stage, (information about the study), the second stage (statement about the study results), and fifth stages (A description of the research results). While the linguistic characteristics contained in section AJP results and discussion in the field of literature the most dominant research that active use of cohesion grammatical sentence reference , conjunction and lexical cohesion markers reps in the research journal articles ( BISA ) section of the results and discussion of science research literature.

ANALISIS STRUKTUR RETORIKA DAN FITUR LINGUISTIK BAGIAN PENDAHULUAN ARTIKEL JURNAL PENELITIAN BERBAHASA INDONESIA DALAM BIDANG ILMU KEDOKTERAN DAN KESEHATAN

The purpose of this study was to describe the structure of the rhetoric of the introductory part of the research journal articles in Indonesian language. Linguistic features the introduction Indonesian language research journal articles in the field of medical science and health. This research uses descriptive method. Source of this research are 50 articles while the data in the form of research journal articles in the field of medical science and health. Data collection techniques are documents such as speech writer in the text of the discourse, data analysis techniques to read and memberian code of the article, the findings of this study analyzed the structure of rhetoric uses the theory of MMP which consists of 4 stages and 18 steps, while the feature linguistics is defined as the use of the type or variety text associated with active and passive sentences, types of clauses, conjunctions / circuit. The research result rhetorical structure analysis introductory part AJP in the field of medicine and health, such as the use of the stages and steps are found or used in a rhetorical structure AJP field of medical science and health with the result that most of the stages of T-2 to justify the research topic. While the use measures in stages in the field of medicine and health: (1) step T2-LC merefiu related literature, (2) a step T1-LD describe lok ation of geographic research, (3) a step T4-LA explain the purpose of the study, which the last (fourth) step T3-LD expressed interested in examining the issue. Furthermore, linguistic features found in the introductory part of AJP in the field of medical science and health, among others: (1) active and passive sentences, (2) coordination, (3) the subordinate attributes.

Das Signalisieren von Kohärenzstrukturen in deutschsprachigen wissenschaftlichen Texten

This paper discusses the relation between newer approaches of intercultural rhetoric research (and specifically its distinction between “big” and “small” cultures) and the academic literacies approach which assumes that local institutional and individual biographic factors influence decisively the development of an individual academic writing competence. Based on this discussion it claims that the “research article” does not constitute a single genre but rather a genre colony consisting of members (genres) which differ according to linguistic, disciplinary, institutional and individual affiliations and status of writers and which are connected through a system of family resemblances. This claim is exemplified through a qualitative case study of two German academic texts, a “professional” published paper and a students’ seminar paper. By applying a multi-level text analysis combining genre analysis and rhetorical structure analysis, it is shown that although the two texts exhibit several similarities in terms of their genre structure, their rhetorical macro- and micro-structures differ significantly. These results are interpreted as a corollary of the different institutional and hierarchical positions of the authors and as a single-case support for the initial claim of the paper.

Using rhetorical structure in sentiment analysis

A deep, fine-grain analysis of rhetorical structure highlights crucial sentiment-carrying text segments.

A structure of persuasion in Galatians: epistolary and rhetorical appeal in an aural setting

The purpose of this paper is to ponder the reception of the Letter to the Galatians in an aural setting. How did the first recipients react, what can we expect that they remembered after having listened to the letter? Are there structural elements in the letter that would have aided the aural reception of the letter? In four readings, the investigation traces textual indicators of interaction and emotion, compares their locations with epistolary and rhetorical structure-analysis and identifies a structure of persuasion. The focus on listeners is motivated by the supposition that illiteracy was the rule rather than the exception among those to whom the letter to the Galatians was sent. The different readings reveal a structure of persuasion with a realistic prospect to succeed as a mnemonic device in an aural setting on a macro-structural level. Situational passages (1:6-10; 3:1-5; 4:8-20; 5:2-12 and 6:12-13), together with recurring affirmations of Christ and Paul as embodiments of faithfulness and commitment in suffering, imprint on the aural memory of the first listeners a concern for an imitatio Christi crucifixi.

CROSS-CULTURAL ASPECTS OF ACADEMIC WRITING: A STUDY OF HUNGARIAN AND NORTH AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENTS L1 ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS

The paper presents the findings and implications of a contrastive rhetorical study of Hungarian and North American college students’ L1 argumentative writing. With the help of the refined version of Mann &Thompson’s Rhetorical Structure Analysis, the investigation highlights potentially culture-bound differences in the positioning and function of nuclear or thesis statements, logical organisation in terms of rhetorical structure relations on different levels of text and the representation of alternative viewpoints. Differing argumentative schemata are related to different underlying intellectual traditions, and suggestions are made for the pedagogical integration of findings.

Special Issue on Language-Based Human Intelligence and Personalization

At the annual conference of the Japan Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI), a special survival session called "Challenge for Realizing Early Profits (CREP)" is organized to support and promote excellent ideas in new AI technologies expected to be realized and contributed to society within five years. Every year at the session, researchers propose their ideas and compete in being evaluated by conference participants. The Everyday Language Computing (ELC) project, started in 2000 at the Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, and ended in 2005, participated in the CREP program in 2001 to have their project evaluated by third parties and held an organized session every year in which those interested in language-based intelligence and personalization participate. They competed with other candidates, survived the session, and achieved the session's final goal to survive for five years. Papers in this special issue selected for presentation at the session include the following: The first article, "Everyday-Language Computing Project Overview," by Ichiro Kobayashi et al., gives an overview and the basic technologies of the ELC Project. The second to sixth papers are related to the ELC Project. The second article, "Computational Models of Language Within Context and Context-Sensitive Language Understanding," by Noriko Ito et al., proposes a new database, called the "semiotic base," that compiles linguistic resources with contextual information and an algorithm for achieving natural language understanding with the semiotic base. The third article, "Systemic-Functional Context-Sensitive Text Generation in the Framework of Everyday Language Computing," by Yusuke Takahashi et al., proposes an algorithm to generate texts with the semiotic base. The fourth article, "Natural Language-Mediated Software Agentification," by Michiaki Iwazume et al., proposes a method for agentifying and verbalizing existing software applications, together with a scheme for operating/running them. The fifth article, "Smart Help for Novice Users Based on Application Software Manuals," by Shino Iwashita et al., proposes a new framework for reusing electronic software manuals equipped with application software to provide tailor-made operation instructions to users. The sixth article, "Programming in Everyday Language: A Case for Email Management," by Toru Sugimoto et al., making a computer program written in natural language. Rhetorical structure analysis is used to translate the natural language command structure into the program structure. The seventh article, "Application of Paraphrasing to Programming with Linguistic Expressions," by Nozomu Kaneko et al., proposes a method for translating natural language commands into a computer program through a natural language paraphrasing mechanism. The eighth article, "A Human Interface Based on Linguistic Metaphor and Intention Reasoning," by Koichi Yamada et al., proposes a new human interface paradigm called Push Like Talking (PLT), which enables people to operate machines as they talk. The ninth article, "Automatic Metadata Annotation Based on User Preference Evaluation Patterns," by Mari Saito proposes effective automatic metadata annotation for content recommendations matched to user preference. The tenth article, "Dynamic Sense Representation Using Conceptual Fuzzy Sets," by Hiroshi Sekiya et al., proposes a method to represent word senses, which vary dynamically depending on context, using conceptual fuzzy sets. The eleventh article, "Common Sense from the Web? Naturalness of Everyday Knowledge Retrieved from WWW," by Rafal Rzepka et al., is a challenging work to acquire common-sense knowledge from information on the Web. The twelfth article, "Semantic Representation for Understanding Meaning Based on Correspondence Between Meanings," by Akira Takagi et al., proposes a new semantic representation to deal with Japanese language in natural language processing. I thank the reviewers and contributors for their time and effort in making this special issue possible, and I wish to thank the JACIII editorial board, especially Professors Kaoru Hirota and Toshio Fukuda, the Editors-in-Chief, for inviting me to serve as Guest Editor of this Journal. Thanks also go to Kazuki Ohmori and Kenta Uchino of Fuji Technology Press for their sincere support.

Rhetorical Structure Analysis and the Case of the Inaccurate, Incoherent Source-hopper

L'A. compare la performance d'un etudiant non diplome locuteur natif dans deux situations de production scolaire (examen, dissertation). Les deux productions portent sur le meme sujet et sont realises a six semaines d'intervalle. L'analyse relationnelle telle qu'elle est concue par Mann et Thompson dans leur theorie de la structure rhetorique est utilisee pour la comparaison linguistique des deux textes. Le cas etudie montre un contraste entre un controle du materiel en memoire correct lors de l'examen conduisant a un texte parfaitement lisible et un controle incertain dans le cas de la dissertation qui conduit a un texte incoherent, pratiquement illisible

Discourse Structure and Anaphora: Written and Conversational English

1. Introduction 2. Conversation analysis 3. Anaphora in conversational English 4. Rhetorical structure analysis 5. Anaphora in expository written English texts 6. Anaphora in expository written and conversational English 7. Conclusions.