Use Of Linguistic Features Research Articles

Linguistic Features and Foregrounding Aspects in Dylan Thomas’ “We Lying by Seasand”

The main difficulty in understanding Thomas’ poetry is his diction and style, which the reader usually relies on to comprehend his poems. It would be difficult to go through character, activity, situation, or anything else unless the reader is able to grasp their sense. Thomas wrote many great poems. The selected poem is among these difficult and great poems. An obvious way to remove these obstacles is to depend on the use of linguistic features and the foregrounding theory of stylistics to explicate his poem. For this purpose, the present study is also supplemented by the checklist of Leech and Short (2007) to identify, describe, and evaluate the linguistic categories of the poem while making use of literary interpretations. As a result, the study is based on a qualitative descriptive analysis, which is used first to investigate the specific types of parallelism and deviations in the poem, then through describing and evaluating them the study shows how these prominent features help understanding and highlighting the themes and meaning behind the words. The study finds out that being able to identify and relate the prominent linguistic aspects supports the reader’s explications of this poem.

Navigating the Audience: Trump’s Persona Management Processes Across Political Contexts

Speakers can project different personae when engaging in stylistic practices, which can be characterised by a consistent or variable use of linguistic features. This becomes relevant when addressing how politicians attempt to position themselves in communicative interactions through their use of language. The present study takes a third wave approach to the analysis of Donald Trump’s sociolinguistic behaviour across various speech events by focusing on the indexical mutability of PRICE/PRIZE and R-Dropping. The results evidence intra-speaker variation in Trump’s populist speech style used for interactional and political purposes in that he alters his use of + mainstream and non-mainstream forms as he operates across speech events. Thus, Trump exhibits a different sociolinguistic performance across different contexts, where he also takes a different approach towards the management and projection of his public persona, and therefore, transmits different social meanings through his language use. The results further suggest that the context, format and audience of the political event and the social meanings indexed by the selected linguistic features are what condition Trump’s sociolinguistic behaviour. We conclude that Trump’s speech style is characterised by the meaningful choices he makes about the linguistic resource to be used in a specific context and its corresponding social meaning.

Do words matter: Investigating the association between linguistic features of accounting examinations and marks

The use of linguistic features in school assessments, as well as the impact of these factors on the outcome of assessments have received limited attention in the literature. With this study I aimed to analyse linguistic features of accounting examinations. A quantitative technique, using tests for correlation, was employed to analyse the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate accounting examinations from 2011 until 2021. Advanced textual analysis software was used to identify connections between specific linguistic features and the marks obtained in these examinations. The findings of this study suggest that increasing the levels of linguistic features associated with analytical thinking, emotional tone and big words, which may be assumed to promote comprehension, may in reality be counterproductive, consequently potentially resulting in poorer marks attained in assessments in the future. The findings of this study are important for the creators of assessment to consider when developing accounting assessment. Given the effect of linguistic features on assessment results as identified in this study, it contributes to the debate on the use of certain linguistic features in assessment.

Exploring Online Communication in Self-Identified Autistic Adolescents.

Social media sites provide autistic youth a familiar space to interact that is devoid of many of the challenges that accompany face-to-face interactions. As such, it is important to determine whether the linguistic profiles observed during online interactions are consistent with face-to-face interactions. This preliminary study took a step in this direction by examining gender differences observed in autistic adolescents in an online forum to determine whether they are consistent with the emerging body of research investigating linguistic gender differences in autistic adolescents. We analyzed the entries of self-identified autistic adolescents in an online forum to determine whether autistic girls (n = 99) and boys (n = 94) differ in their use of linguistic features as a proportion of total words produced. Transcriptions were coded across discourse, lexical, and semantic features and compared to previous research investigating linguistic gender differences in autistic people. Exploratory comparisons were also made to linguistic gender differences in neurotypical people. Of the linguistic features we examined, three out of four of the gendered usage patterns observed in the online forum language samples were consistent with previous research on face-to-face communication for autistic adolescents. Only one feature out of 12 occurred in the same gender distribution as previous research on neurotypical communication. Autistic girls and boys demonstrate largely consistent gender differences in their language use across in-person and online communication contexts. Interestingly, most of the significant gender differences previously reported in neurotypical communicators were not seen in this sample of autistic adolescents, suggesting that perhaps autistic individuals may linguistically express gender characteristics to a different extent or in a different manner than neurotypical individuals.

Cultural Fusion Unleashed: Analyzing Xiaomi’s Multifaceted Brand Communication Strategy across Global, Chinese, and Egyptian Social Media Channels

The paper analyzes Xiaomi’s social media posts on Facebook and Weibo, addressing three different audiences: the global audience, the Egyptian audience, and the Chinese audience. Its primary aim is to dissect Xiaomi’s strategies in employing local, global, or glocal approaches within its intercultural brand communication. To achieve this, the study employs a multimodal framework that integrates brand communication and linguistics, allowing for a comprehensive examination of Xiaomi’s digital marketing strategies through brand personality appeals and the strategic use of linguistic features. The paper finds that Xiaomi displays an exciting personality on its global and Chinese social media pages, while it reflects a competent personality on its Egyptian social media page. The study also finds that Xiaomi employs culture-specific linguistic features in its social media posts, including intimate address forms for its Chinese audience, colloquial expressions for its global audience, and codemixing and dialect for its Egyptian audience. These insights not only affirm the existing literature’s observations of cultural disparities in intercultural marketing but also contribute to our understanding of how global brands strategically adapt to diverse cultural contexts.

Teaching Thai University Students How to Write Research Abstracts and Research Reports: The Case for Science Using CLIL

This study examines the effectiveness of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) implementation in science subjects and reports on the challenges that content teachers encountered during CLIL instruction. In addition, the study attempts to investigate students’ perceived knowledge of and satisfaction towards the implementation of CLIL. To accomplish these goals, relevant CLIL instructional materials were developed by the researchers and subject content teachers. Content teachers received training in English to apply the designed material and implement the CLIL instruction prior to CLIL classes. A convenience sample of 24 university students participated in this study. They were required to write research abstracts and reports in English according to the knowledge of genre and move-based structure. The data collection was conducted using a mixed qualitative and quantitative method. Student abstracts written in English were also analysed qualitatively to investigate the use of linguistic features, structural elements, and vocabulary. Additionally, six subject content teachers and six students were interviewed about their perceptions of and challenges from CLIL implementation. Student questionnaires about their attitudes towards CLIL implementation were then used to collect quantitative data. Over the seven weeks of CLIL lessons, the interview results revealed that close collaboration between content and language teachers prior to CLIL implementation was necessary to affirm the steps and procedures to be applied in the classroom. Some of the content teachers conveyed the importance of advancing students’ language-related knowledge in expressing scientific ideas in English. Most students also expressed their satisfaction towards CLIL instruction as it facilitates the learning process, helping them improve their writing and reading skills as well as their ability to use academic vocabulary. The findings of this study advance our understanding of how to implement CLIL lessons, including the importance of CLIL-related training, creating instructional materials, and language integration of content and language learning in science at the university level.

Discursive valuing practices at the periphery: Javanese use on Indonesian youth radio in multilingual Solo

AbstractThis paper seeks to understand how languages are discursively identified and valued within a youth radio station in Solo, Indonesia. This study seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge on the dynamic relationship between the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, and the local language, Javanese, by utilizing a social value and centre-periphery lens to approach continuity and change in present-day Central Java. Valuing practices are observed by examining the situated use of linguistic features and norms of their use within specific social practice (radio programming). From June 2020 to July 2020, a total of 120 h of radio content was recorded for analysis. Analysis showed that valuing practices emerged in response to the use of linguistic features within different radio segments of the program. The formation of participatory frameworks in the periphery and the evaluative commentaries accompanying them contributed to the construction of norms for using these linguistic features. Our analysis shows how paying attention to evaluative practices can highlight how the value of sets of linguistic features emerge, circulate, and are transformed within the media practices in the periphery.

Toward an empirical understanding of formality: Triangulating corpus data with teacher perceptions

Academic writing is often referred to as “formal,” but the teaching and assessment of formality can be challenging as formality has been conceptualized in many ways. The goal of this study is to explore the elusive construct of formality in the context of academic writing, especially with regard to what formality means to academic writing instructors. We used instructors’ perceptions of formality (i) to identify relationships between the use of linguistic features in academic texts and perceptions of formality and (ii) to determine the extent to which the situational characteristics of texts (e.g., differences in audience, purpose, and discipline) are related to perceptions of formality. Specifically, we asked 72 academic writing instructors to rate the formality level of 60 short academic text excerpts on a five-point scale. The excerpts were sampled from two publication types (university textbooks, journal articles) in three disciplines (psychology, biology, history). Overall, the results indicate that perceptions of formality can be explained by both linguistic features and situational characteristics. As linguistic features and situational characteristics are intertwined, differences in perceptions of formality seem to be functionally motivated. Implications for the teaching of academic writing are discussed.

Toddler-educator decontextualised talk and its value for toddlers’ learning

ABSTRACT In early childhood centres, decontextualised talk is often associated with literacy activities. In this study, however, we investigated toddler-educator conversations across various activities with a focus on those about topics that were not related to the immediate context. We examined the communicative purposes and linguistic features of these conversations and the opportunities they afford for toddlers’ learning. A qualitative analysis of video-recorded conversations between 12 2-year-old toddlers and their educators resulted in identifying four kinds of talk: ‘interview’, ‘story’, ‘inquiry’ and ‘rebuttal’. The findings reveal that toddler–educator conversations provide varied learning opportunities for toddlers, which are reinforced by both educators’ and toddlers’ conversational contributions. The participants’ contributions are shaped by the extent to which a topic is removed from their immediate activity. These findings can inform more effective use of linguistic features, such as questions and narrative constructions, for supporting under-3-year-old children’s learning and developing skills in using decontextualised talk.

Writing Trajectories of Grammatical Complexity at the University: Comparing L1 and L2 English Writers in BAWE

AbstractGrammatical complexity has been established as a key indicator of language and writing development (Ortega 2003; Bulté and Housen, 2014; Crossley and McNamara 2014). The present study uses the Register-Functional approach to complexity (Biber et al. 2022) to compare the development of L1 English and L2 English writers across year of study and discipline in the British Academic Written English corpus. It also introduces a novel method of examining developmental trajectories that uses both inferential statistics and descriptive measures to account not only for relationships between the year of study and use of linguistic features, but also for the shape of the trajectories and frequencies of occurrence over time. Statistical analyses reveal significant relationships for most of the complexity features. Means and confidence intervals indicate overall similarities in trends from early undergraduate to graduate-level writing across L1/L2 English writers, but also key differences in the developmental trajectories, including greater use of phrasal complexity features and less use of clausal features by L2 English writers in early levels, as well as distinct use of complexity features across certain disciplines.

The Use of Linguistic Features in Indonesian Students’ Texts at Hungarian Universities

Students enrolled in a higher level of education may face challenges in producing assignments, including writing an essay. They need to present appropriate linguistic features in the text to demonstrate their writing quality. Comparing linguistic features during university study is one fundamental aspect of administering writing quality and showing student writing development. The topic presented in this study describes an initial statistical analysis and the frequency of linguistic features in the texts produced by Indonesian graduate students enrolled at Hungarian universities. This study proposed two research questions: 1) How frequently do pre-selected linguistic features appear in the texts of Indonesian graduate students? 2) How do these features appear in a paired T-test statistical analysis? Seven MSc and MA graduate students took part in the study to meet the goal. They are students at three different universities in Hungary, which all have a Social Science Faculty. During their second-year studies, fourteen essays with a minimum text length of 2000 words were collected. The findings revealed an increase in conjunctions, adjectives, abstract nouns, concrete nouns, noun phrases, expanded noun phrases, active verbs, verb phrases, and passive forms. Meanwhile, the frequency of linguistic features such as prepositions, definite articles, indefinite articles, noun clauses, adverbial clauses, and adjective clauses decreased. In addition, both the rise of nine linguistic features and the decrease of six features in the second semester are not statistically significant.

At the Intersection of SLA and Sociolinguistics: The Predictive Power of Social Networks During Study Abroad

AbstractThis longitudinal study of 17 American learners of French lies at the intersection of 2 complementary fields of inquiry in second language acquisition (SLA): language variation and change (LVC) and language acquisition during study abroad. Studies in LVC examine the nature and use of linguistic features that have more than 1 possible realization in native‐speaker speech (i.e., variable features). Conversely, investigations into language acquisition during study abroad have primarily focused on the acquisition of categorical features that have only 1 possible, grammatical realization in the target language, or on the acquisition of global oral proficiency and fluency. Moreover, while studies in LVC have long relied on social network theory to predict language performance, existing research on language acquisition during study abroad provides conflicting results and explanations for learner gains during study abroad. The current study bridges this research gap by providing empirical evidence for the critical role of social networks with target‐language speakers in the acquisition of stylistic variation by French learners during study abroad. Additionally, because this study includes both semester and year‐long learners, results demonstrate the significant impact of time on task, which, when combined with network strength, negates the role of individual learner characteristics previously shown to influence acquisition during study abroad.

Stance of Indonesian Writers in Journal Articles

Stance refers to attitude, feelings, judgment or commitment of a speaker towards a proposition. A speaker employs certain linguistics features to express his stance including hedges, boosters, self-mentions and attitude markers. This research aims at analyzing stance of Indonesian writers in social and hard science journal articles written in English by examining the use of linguistic features employed as stance markers. The research result shows that the writers of social science articles use more stance marker compares to those of hard science articles. Indonesian writers maintain the objectivity of academic writing as there was very limited use of self-mentions in the articles. The stance markers used by Indonesian writers represent the positive, negative or neutral type of stance.

Linguistic Features Differences in Arabic Textbooks Used at Islamic Schools in Malaysia

The dearth of studies that assess linguistic differences in Arabic textbooks is the motivation for the present study, which identified significant differences in the use of linguistic features in textbooks for different secondary school levels. The study analysed 315 samples of 100-word texts, randomly selected from 105 Arabic textbooks used at Islamic secondary schools in Malaysia. Seven linguistic features were analysed using descriptive and inferential analyses through one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The analysis showed a moderate use of simple sentences, complex sentences and noun sentences. However, the use of complex sentences was higher than that of simple sentences. There were a high number of common and frequent words used, but the use of abstract words was low. Conjunctions and discourse markers were used at moderate levels. ANOVA analysis showed significant differences in the use of complex sentences, common and frequent words, conjunctions and discourse markers, and sentence length averages. The study also found that long sentences are higher in frequency in Form 3 textbooks compared to those in Forms 4 and 5 textbooks. The current study suggests that the frequency of linguistic features should correspond to students’ needs by taking into their school level, Arabic language proficiency and subject content.

Topic shifts in spontaneous interaction of speakers with schizophrenia: Cohesion and thematic structures

Abstract This study investigates the linguistic patterning that created shifts in the topic of spontaneous interactions of speakers with schizophrenia. The psychiatric category of disorganized speech in schizophrenia may be manifested in language across (derailment) or within (incoherence) clauses through unexpected topic shifts. Topic switching was examined for cohesion and thematic structures, within the framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Three patients diagnosed with schizophrenia conversed individually with a psychiatrist who elicited information on various topics, e.g., background information, hobbies, etc. The interviews were videotaped, and audio-recorded. The recordings were transcribed by the researcher and divided into clauses, which were analyzed and coded for consistency of field, cohesion and thematic structures. The findings revealed that speakers did not make use of linguistic features simultaneously to initiate topics. Topic shifts were marked by moving fields with atypical reference, intertwining of participant chains, and lexical items appearing out of context. The speakers created discontinuous participant chains across Themes and departed from the main thematic sequences of linear progression and Theme iteration. The specific linguistic findings correspond to the clinical description of schizophrenia.

Formation of a sociolinguistic style in translation

This paper illustrates the powerful role of translation in creating a sociolinguistic style. Through a quantitative survey of Japanese native speakers and a qualitative analysis of translated speech in an imported TV show and its Japanese parody, the study shows that Japanese translation practices have invented and preserved a widely recognised Japanese style associated with non-Japanese men. The study demonstrates that the style is linked with an image of non-Japanese young men characterised by cool informality; that it is marked by the use of linguistic features not commonly used among native speakers; and that it can be used to enregister a negative stereotype of non-Japanese masculinity, which serves to legitimate a polite, formal, Japanese normative masculinity. The findings suggest that translation is a process in which dominant ideologies of the target-language culture can be reinforced through the voices and bodies of nonnatives.

Depictions of deception: A corpus-based analysis of five Shakespearean characters

Drawing on the Enhanced Shakespearean Corpus: First Folio Plus and using corpus-based methods, this article explores, quantitatively and qualitatively, Shakespeare’s depictions of five deceptive characters (Aaron, Tamora, Iago, Lady Macbeth and Falstaff). Our analysis adopts three strands: firstly, statistical keywords relating to each character are examined to determine what this tells us about their natures more generally. Secondly, the wordlists produced for each of the five characters are drawn upon to determine the extent to which they make use of linguistic features that have been correlated with, or linked to, acts of deliberate deception in real-world contexts. Thirdly, we make use of the results identified during the two aforementioned strands by using them to identify particular (sequences of) turns that are worthy of more detailed analysis. Here, we are primarily interested in (a) whether these keywords/deceptive indicators cluster or co-occur and (b) whether these interactions are the same as those identified by other scholars exploring depictions of deception in Shakespeare from a literary perspective. The findings indicate that deception-related features are indeed used collectively/in close proximity, by Shakespeare, at points where a character speaks to other characters disingenuously. They also suggest that Shakespeare’s deceptive depictions do change stylistically, from character to character, in line with those characters’ different characterisations and situations, that Shakespeare draws on atypical language features – such as self-oriented references – when it comes to some of his depictions of deception and that Shakespeare uses these various stylistic features to achieve a range of dramatic effect(s).

Finding warning markers: Leveraging natural language processing and machine learning technologies to detect risk of school violence

IntroductionSchool violence has a far-reaching effect, impacting the entire school population including staff, students and their families. Among youth attending the most violent schools, studies have reported higher dropout rates, poor school attendance, and poor scholastic achievement. It was noted that the largest crime-prevention results occurred when youth at elevated risk were given an individualized prevention program. However, much work is needed to establish an effective approach to identify at-risk subjects. ObjectiveIn our earlier research, we developed a risk assessment program to interview subjects, identify risk and protective factors, and evaluate risk for school violence. This study focused on developing natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning technologies to automate the risk assessment process. Material and methodsWe prospectively recruited 131 students with or without behavioral concerns from 89 schools between 05/01/2015 and 04/30/2018. The subjects were interviewed with two risk assessment scales and a questionnaire, and their risk of violence were determined by pediatric psychiatrists based on clinical judgment. Using NLP technologies, different types of linguistic features were extracted from the interview content. Machine learning classifiers were then applied to predict risk of school violence for individual subjects. A two-stage feature selection was implemented to identify violence-related predictors. The performance was validated on the psychiatrist-generated reference standard of risk levels, where positive predictive value (PPV), sensitivity (SEN), negative predictive value (NPV), specificity (SPEC) and area under the ROC curve (AUC) were assessed. ResultsCompared to subjects’ sociodemographic information, use of linguistic features significantly improved classifiers’ predictive performance (P < 0.01). The best-performing classifier with n-gram features achieved 86.5 %/86.5 %/85.7 %/85.7 %/94.0 % (PPV/SEN/NPV/SPEC/AUC) on the cross-validation set and 83.3 %/93.8 %/91.7 %/78.6 %/94.6 % (PPV/SEN/NPV/SPEC/AUC) on the test data. The feature selection process identified a set of predictors covering the discussion of subjects’ thoughts, perspectives, behaviors, individual characteristics, peers and family dynamics, and protective factors. ConclusionsBy analyzing the content from subject interviews, the NLP and machine learning algorithms showed good capacity for detecting risk of school violence. The feature selection uncovered multiple warning markers that could deliver useful clinical insights to assist personalizing intervention. Consequently, the developed approach offered the promise of an accurate and scalable computerized screening service for preventing school violence.

Rhetorical Style Across Cultures: An Analysis of Metadiscourse Markers in Academic Writing of Thai and Malaysian Students

It is believed that students from different societies and cultural background have their own preferred rhetorical style of interaction. In writing, such distinctive preference is usually exhibited through the use of linguistic features, of which metadiscourse (MD) markers are considered as one of the signposts to the interpretation of writing style preferences. This study aims to investigate the use of interactional metadiscourse (MD) features and its relevance to the rhetorical style preferences in academic writing of Thai and Malaysian master’s students. Using Hyland’s (2005) taxonomy, their thesis discussions were manually analysed in terms of interactional MD markers to determine their frequency of occurrence and to relate the results to the rhetorical styles of writing preferred by each group of students. The analysis revealed that of all five types of interactional MD features, hedges were the most frequently used device followed respectively by boosters, attitude markers, engagement marker and self-mention. In terms of the rhetorical style of writing, the frequency of MD features suggests that tentative and indirect statements, reader-responsibility, distant-relationship between writer and readers, and less writer-involvement in the texts were the preferred rhetorical styles of interaction of both Thai and Malaysian students. The writing conventions and rhetorical styles of the students can be explained from a sociocultural point of view that they are relevant to the oriental style of interaction from which both groups of students originated. The study draws attention to the pedagogical implications that students in Thai and Malaysia should be given more instructional focus on how to utilize MD features in making academic writing more persuasive and interactive.

The Use of Nouns in Exhibition Texts at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia

Exhibition texts are commonly found alongside exhibitions in a museum. The texts are there to serve specific purposes in the overall context of the museum, and the linguistic features that are found within the texts are assumed to be functional and serve the respective purposes of the museum. This paper investigates the use of one of the linguistic features, i.e nouns, in the texts that accompany displays at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. The nouns are examined in terms of their frequency of use and the extend in which the nouns function in terms of serving the purposes of exhibition texts in the museum context. The findings reveal that nouns pertaining to locations and artefacts are the most frequently used, and they reflect the context of the studied museum which is Islamic history and civilisation. In addition, different categories of nouns, such as names of people, are also found to serve the communicative purpose of the exhibition texts. This study contributes to the linguistic description of the discourse of art and explains the relations between text, museum exhibits and visitors. It may benefit linguistic scholars and practitioners as the findings also suggest that the use of linguistic features can attract visitors to look at the exhibits.