30.3736, Diss: English; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Nele Põldvere: ''What's in a dialogue? On the dynamics of meaning-making in English conversation''

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-3736. Thu Oct 03 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.3736, Diss: English; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Psycholinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Nele Põldvere: ''What's in a dialogue? On the dynamics of meaning-making in English conversation''

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Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2019 16:37:57
From: Nele Põldvere [nele.poldvere at englund.lu.se]
Subject: What's in a dialogue? On the dynamics of meaning-making in English conversation

 
Institution: Lund University 
Program: Department of English 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2019 

Author: Nele Põldvere

Dissertation Title: What's in a dialogue? On the dynamics of meaning-making in
English conversation 

Dissertation URL:  https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/publication/3004710c-5d08-4069-9dc9-80544f9c3b49

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Pragmatics
                     Psycholinguistics
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
Victoria Johansson
Carita Paradis

Dissertation Abstract:

This thesis is concerned with spoken dialogue and the dynamic negotiation of
meaning in English conversation. It serves two aims, one theoretical and the
other practical. The theoretical aim is to further our understanding of the
kinds of properties that influence the meaning of constructions in spoken
dialogue and the role of underlying socio-cognitive processes. The practical
aim is to compile a new corpus of spoken British English, the London–Lund
Corpus 2, modelled on the same principles as the first London–Lund Corpus from
50 years prior. The aims are addressed in the four articles included in the
thesis.

The first article focuses on a very common construction in English, namely I
think COMPLEMENT and the family of complement-taking predicate constructions.
It questions the rigid treatment of the constructions in APPRAISAL theory as
always having the same dialogic meaning. For example, I think is considered to
always open up the space for dialogic alternatives. By combining data from the
London– Lund Corpus 1 with a laboratory experiment, we show that I think
COMPLEMENT serves not only to expand the dialogic space, but it may also close
it down. The factors that influence the dialogic meaning of the construction
are not only semantic but also prosodic, collocational and social.

The second article draws on data from the London–Lund Corpus 2 to shed new
light on the interaction of intersubjective processes and priming mechanisms
in dialogic resonance, which emerges when speakers reproduce constructions
from prior turns. It does so by investigating the intersubjective functions
that resonance has in discourse and the time it takes for speakers to resonate
with each other. The results show that resonance is often used to express
divergent views, which are produced very quickly. We argue that, while priming
reduces the gap between speaker turns, intersubjective processes give the
speakers the motivation to respond early. This is due to the increased sense
of interpersonal solidarity that resonance is assumed to evoke.

The third and the fourth articles are both concerned with the reactive what-x
construction, which has not received any attention in the literature so far.
The aim of the third article is to define and describe the constructional
properties of the construction based on data from the London–Lund Corpus 2.
The constructional representation includes not only lexical–semantic
information but also essential dialogic and prosodic information, which are
mostly missing in Construction Grammar. The fourth article combines data from
the London–Lund Corpora to demonstrate the complex interplay between social
motivations and cognitive mechanisms in the diachronic development of
constructions in spoken dialogue. It shows that the development of the
reactive what-x construction is triggered by the pragmatic strengthening of
discourse-structuring and turn-taking inferences, and proceeds through
metonymic micro-adjustments of the conceptual structure of the construction
itself.

In sum, the thesis provides a systematic and empirically grounded account of
the dynamic negotiation of meaning in spoken dialogue. It contributes new
knowledge to our understanding of the broad and interactive nature of
constructional meaning and the complex interaction of underlying
socio-cognitive processes. The compilation of the London–Lund Corpus 2 will
facilitate many more investigations of this kind.




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