15.2737, Review: Discourse Analysis: Aijmer & Stenström (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-15-2737. Sat Oct 02 2004. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 15.2737, Review: Discourse Analysis: Aijmer & Stenström (2004)                                                                                                                                                          

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1)
Date: 29-Sep-2004
From: Claudia Sassen < claudia.sassen at uni-dortmund.de >
Subject: Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora 
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 16:40:51
From: Claudia Sassen < claudia.sassen at uni-dortmund.de >
Subject: Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora 
 
EDITOR: Aijmer, Karin; Stenström, Anna-Brita 
TITLE: Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora 
SERIES: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 120 
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins 
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://test.linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-1522.html


Claudia Sassen, Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur, 
Universität Dortmund, Germany

This book is an edited collection of 12 papers which seeks to bring 
together corpus-based empirical studies on discourse patterns in speech 
and writing. It is a selection of papers presented at the 5th ESSE 
Conference in Helsinki 25-29 August, 2000 with some additional 
contributions. The papers represent new trends within the framework of 
text and discourse which is mirrored in the alliance of text 
linguistics and fields such as corpus linguistics, genre analysis, 
literary stylistics and cross-linguistic studies and look at the status 
and meaning of the terms "text, discourse" and "function" in modern 
linguistic theory. The book is divided into four parts: Part I is about 
cohesion and coherence, Part II covers metadiscourse and discourse 
markers, Part III offers a discussion on text and information structure 
while Part IV treats metaphor and text. An index of names and an index 
of terms are appended.

Aijmer & Stenström discuss in their introductory paper whether the use 
of different terminology, e.g. "text" for the printed record of 
communication and "discourse" for spoken texts, reflects different 
perspectives on the same area of research. The discussion begins with 
brief reviews ranging from text linguistics to linguistic theory and 
function to discourse analysis. Aijmer & Stenstroem go on by summing up 
recent trends in the linguistic study of text and discourse which 
includes the use of corpora for text-linguistic purposes, the interface 
between speech and writing, contrastive studies, and concludes with 
future prospects. Within this framework, Aijmer & Stenstroem describe 
how the papers of the collection go together.

Part I. Cohesion and coherence

Baicchi reports on a topic that constitutes one part of an Italian 
research project. She explores the interplay of indexical efficiency, 
complexity and markedness which she considers as three faces of the 
same object. With a corpus based on the Online Books Page and the 
English Server, she concentrates on the problem of the marked status of 
cataphoric titles. Baicchi analyses titles as textual phenomena and 
proposes a taxonomy based upon parameters that belong to semiotics. 
With this, Baicchi seeks to supply an alternative classification of 
titles and a foundation of their detailed analysis on a larger scale. 
She assigns titles to a hierarchical scale of complexity and thereby 
involves the evaluation of three basic criteria: (i) the quantity of 
indexical cataphors contained in the title, (ii) quality of the 
cataphors and (iii) the distance between the cataphors in the title and 
their co-referents in the text base. As types of transparency she 
identifies titles of total transparency which clearly identify the 
referent thus scoring a high value of iconicity, of partial 
transparency which displays some degree of indeterminacy to be 
clarified through the reading process, titles which are symbolically 
related and thus have a metaphoric link to their co-referents and 
opaque or unrelated titles with a lowest degree of transparency and 
iconicity.

Bruti explores cataphoric relations and complexity in a markedness 
framework. Her research is related to the same project as Baicchi's 
with the difference that Bruti focusses on spoken discourse. She sets 
up an inventory of cataphoric modalities to demonstrate a scope of 
cataphoric indexicality which ranges from more empty signs, mainly the 
demonstrative pronoun "this", to various degrees of indeterminacy, most 
notably the general noun "thing". The London-Lund corpus and the 
British National Corpus are the databases for her concordance-based 
analysis of the reduced clausal element "you know what?", which 
functions as an attention-getter. Bruti opts for a broader definition 
of cataphora, describes differences between the cataphoric devices she 
identified and proposes and applies a calculating grid to determine 
cataphoric complexity of three different types. With this she seeks to 
shed light on the variation of cataphoric instances and to propose a 
method to predict how cataphoric devices contribute to text complexity.

Hasselgard's goal is to investigate how two quite distinct aspects of 
texture, viz. cohesion and thematic structure, interact in sentences 
with "multiple themes". Unfortunately, it remains unclear what she 
means by this term. Hasselgard makes a cross-linguistic comparison by 
means of translations from English into the verb-second (V2) languages 
Norwegian and German, since in V2 languages restrictions on the number 
of constituents that can appear in the thematic field are higher than 
in English.  There is a tendency that Norwegian and German rely less on 
conjuncts than English and use either conjunctions or no overt 
conjunctive relation to mark certain cohesive relations. One of 
Hasselgards major findings is that over 90 per cent of multiple themes 
in English contain at least one cohesive tie which strongly suggests 
that an essential function of multiple themes is to tie a sentence 
explicitly to the preceding context. She finds the bulk of multiple 
themes consisting of a cohesive element coupled with at least one 
element that is not cohesive. She thus infers that the use of multiple 
themes can bring non-cohesive elements into thematic position without 
making the sentence seem unconnected with the preceding context. She 
also finds that a multiple theme can mark two or more cohesive 
relations at the same time. Future studies might benefit from taking 
all three aspects of texture into account: cohesion, thematic structure 
and information structure.

Tanskanen discusses cohesion patterns in spoken and written dialogue, 
specifically in face-to-face conversation and email mailing list 
messages. She explores the use of explicit cohesive markers 
(reiteration and collocation relations) and their effects on 
collaboration. Comparing the number of cohesive pairs of two-party 
conversations with three party conversations, Tanskanen states a higher 
number of relations for the former, particularly a use of simple 
repetition pairs produced by the same speaker. Tanskanen concludes that 
a dominance in same-speaker devices does not necessarily undermine 
collaboration, since communicators can use longer turns in which 
creating cohesive relations is possible. In three-party conversations, 
collaboration is evident from the negotiating communicants. Owing to 
the higher number in speakers, opportunities to produce cohesive 
relations is smaller for a single speaker; however, it is easier for 
them to jointly produce cohesive relations. In terms of cohesion, 
mailing lists display a profile that comes close to the one of dyadic 
conversations, although there is an increase in the number of 
collocation pairs, which is a difference that may lie in the less 
strict temporal constraints of email communication.  In terms of 
collaboration, mailing lists show the highest degree of monologic 
properties of the entire corpus data. Despite the differences in number 
of participants and context of dyadic conversations and mailing lists, 
the communicators' interaction with their interlocutors and the context 
results in a similar outcome.

Part II. Metadiscourse and discourse markers

Bamford looks at the interplay of the visual and verbal in 
communication, with emphasis on patterns of gestural and symbolic uses 
of the deictic "here" in lectures. She finds that gestural deixis is 
almost invariably associated with the use of visuals. Bamford confirms 
that both gesture and prosody are often to be found associated with 
deictics despite variations in the closeness of their attachment to 
these. Gestural deixis has a precise referent which is interpretable 
when the visual context is available. Less precise are the referents of 
symbolic deixis as they form part of the common cognitive space of the 
speakers and their student audiences. The referent of symbolic "here" 
is often abstract and belongs to the realm of concepts and ideas. 
Bamford furthermore claims that since the referent of symbolic "here" 
is vague it enables a variety of meanings and associations to be 
attached to it. For this reason, lecturers can use symbolic "here" to 
create rapport with their student listeners. Based on her tentative 
hypothesis that gestural reference is more common in lectures than in 
ordinary conversation, Bamford presumes that deictic use of lexical 
items is a promising field for genre-specific further research.

Bondi's paper elucidates the relationship between metadiscourse and 
specific disciplinary cultures in the use of connectors, highlighting 
the contrastive connector "however" in historical abstracts. Bondi 
takes the view that contrastive connectors do not only enable monologic 
discourse to be interactive, but also imply evaluation by assuming a 
common ground between reader and writer in terms of what is expected or 
unexpected at any given point in the discourse. Her quantitative and 
qualitative analysis was carried out by means of small corpora designed 
for the study of abstracts and consisted of the following steps: 
setting up and exploring frequency lists and key-words by Wordsmith 
Tools followed by a concordance-based study of "however" to isolate 
contrastive connectors and to explore patterns and meanings from a 
comparative point of view. Finally, an in-depth textual analysis on the 
use of "however" ensued to identify the core-meanings of the connector 
and the textual/positional patterns in which these meanings were found. 
The elements that precede "however" are identified as having a text-
structuring function, while "however" itself contributes to claiming 
significance and credibility, e.g. by problematising or signalling 
stance.  On the evidence of her findings, Bondi opts for considering 
multiple dimensions of language variation in the analysis of discourse 
patterns and their markers.

Starting out from the "general expectation that speakers cooperate and 
use language to facilitate the conveyance of information", Diani claims 
that "I don't know", does not live up to this expectation when 
considered as a discourse marker. What makes "I don't know" interesting 
is the observation that speakers tend to use the phrase even when the 
speaker is able to apply the information asked for. Diani describes the 
various pragmatic functions of "I don't know" in three respects: (i) 
its use within the framework of politeness and saving one's face, (ii) 
its meaning and pragmatic functions, (iii) how its pragmatic function 
is influenced in conjunction with the discourse markers "well, oh, I 
mean" and "you know". Diani backs her analysis by instances from the 
spoken language corpus of the Collins Birmingham University 
International Language Database. Diani concludes that although "I don't 
know" has significantly different functions they are unified by the 
central meaning of declaring insufficient knowledge.  She considers her 
analysis as not exhaustive. There would indeed be options to further it 
e.g. with focus on positional constraints within the turn and a 
concomitant functional change.

Mauranen takes a micro-level approach to hedging. She selects some 
typical hedges such as "sort of, or something, somewhat" and "just" and 
analyses their profiles of use in the Michigan Corpus of Academic 
Spoken English which she compares with data of the British National 
Corpus and the Bank of English.  She explores individual expressions to 
find out to what extent a functional distinction into "epistemic" and 
"strategic" is relevant in their usage and to what extent their primary 
use falls into one or the other category.  Mauranen reports that she 
could maintain her distinction with sufficient ease to warrant its 
application, although overlappings and bifunctional cases also occur. 
For preferences of use she comes up with the following results: of a 
highly epistemic use are "or so, or something" and "somewhat" while the 
most strategic one is "a little bit". What had been initially 
classified as vagueness indicators tends to display epistemic uses. 
Mauranen opts for a genre distinction, since the more dialogic genres 
tend to have more strategic hedges and the lectures more epistemic 
hedges.

Having in mind that over the years academic writing has been required 
to be impersonal and objective, Samson explores how academic economic 
writers convey their knowledge of economics and construct their written 
lectures by adopting a personal stance and projecting themselves in 
their texts. Thereby they challenge "what according to many should be 
written, detached, decontextualised, and autonomous academic language". 
Samson's reflections are based on results of a qualitative and 
quantitative analysis of 10 written economics lectures on various 
topics of macroeconomics which were all constructed in the same way: 
they contain an introduction to announce the direction the lecture will 
take, a middle to develop hypotheses, theses and model-worlds and a 
conclusion. Originally, the lectures existed in the spoken form and 
have been expanded by their authors for the written medium. Samson 
seeks to show that personal markers (e.g. "I", inclusive and exclusive 
"we") in the written economics lectures which she compares to planned 
monologues are highly frequent and carry the functions of expressing 
authorial and authoritative prominence. She also intends to show that 
they take on different meta-discursive roles in order to aid the less 
expert reader with comprehension, reinforce the interactional 
relationship with the addressee and create a sense of solidarity. The 
choice of personal markers mirrors the degree to which an author wants 
to involve the reader in what is conveyed which requires to some extent 
shared knowledge.

Part III. Text and information structure

Kaltenboeck focusses on functional properties and use of non-
extraposition whose communicative function has largely been 
disregarded. Non-extraposition is statistically a marked construction 
as its occurrence is by far outnumbered by its counterpart 
extraposition, particularly in spoken language. The distribution of the 
two constructions is tied to specific contexts which do not normally 
allow interchangeability. Non-extraposed subject clauses are generally 
not shifted into construction-final position with the result that the 
matrix predicate is in the focus and that a more balanced distribution 
of information within the construction is attained. This creates a 
strong cohesive link with the foregoing context. Sometimes, non-
extraposition may serve the introduction of a new topic while 
presenting it as if it were generally known and hence fulfills a 
rhetorical purpose.

Part IV: Metaphor and text

On the evidence that translators occasionally fail to translate English 
metaphors, Wikberg pursues the question of how qualitative corpus-based 
research helps throw light on metaphor in translation. For his 
analysis, Wikberg takes instances from the Oslo multilingual corpus and 
distinguishes three uses of the term "metaphor": as linguistic 
expressions, cognitive concept and discourse element. He argues that a 
linguistic approach to metaphor has to pay due attention to the textual 
and communicative aspects of metaphor and aims at the inclusion of 
metaphor in an overall discourse model which goes contrary to earlier 
approaches that limit the study of metaphor to the sentence or clause 
level. Wikberg, who doubts that it is always possible to envisage the 
existence of underlying propositions for all sorts of metaphors, 
ignores the propositional level in his paper. What is crucial for the 
correct translation into the target language is understanding of the 
original metaphorical expression and its pragmatic function, whereby, 
the respective semantic fields and their interpretation play an 
important role. Wikberg proposes an ideal case with translators and 
researchers having access to a word list for the original expression 
and a thesaurus and a collocation dictionary for each language.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

The book makes a good and interesting read. Its structure as given by 
the editors is helpful as a guide through the interrelations of the 
different topics. However, the two final sections "Text and information 
structure" and "Metaphor and text" only subsume one paper each and thus 
appear a bit odd and artificial. It might be argued whether it would 
have been wise to include the papers somewhere else among the other 
papers. This would probably have resulted in alternative section titles 
and a different emphasis of research. Proof reading was nearly flawless 
with a few negligible typos. These are however minor issues and what we 
should definitely remember about the book is that it offers an 
informative insight into recent trends and topics in present-day 
linguistics. It is perfectly designed for everybody who is into corpus 
linguistics and allied fields. A wealth of data from many different 
genres has been used for investigation. Particular delight arises from 
the fact that the analyses seek to bridge gaps between different 
linguistic disciplines, most notably text linguistics and corpus 
research.  Each area of study will undoubtedly benefit from an approach 
like this. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Claudia Sassen is a researcher in linguistics at Universitaet Dortmund. 
She holds a doctorate in computational linguistics. In her doctoral 
dissertation she explored and formalised constraints in a controlled 
language, i.e. cockpit voice recordings of airplane accidents. Her 
research interests are computational linguistics, corpus linguistics 
and in particular constraints in discourse.



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