exercise on anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric. defining reference and referring expressions, stance markers, cohesion and conversation analysis PDF

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exercise on anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric. defining reference and referring expressions, stance markers, cohesion and conversation analysis...

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Exercise 3: mark if anaphoric, cataphoric or exophoric Neil: Vera’s (Exophoric) looking better. Dennis: oh, she (endophoric – anaphoric) is. She’s a lot better. She’s getting better everyday. Once she and mother (Exophoric) can bury the hatchet (idiom, not analyzed), we’ll (it refers to all of them: endophoric) be laughing. Neil: are they (endophoric – anaphoric: mother and Vera) still…? Dennis: Not talking at all. Neil: Really. Dennis: well, actually it’s (dummy subject, it could be cataphoric referring to something that’ll come later, but we said in class, dummy) Vera (endophoric, it’s easier for the reader to follow) who’s not talking to mother (endophoric, repetition). Mother (repetition, lexical cohesion) comes in one door, Vera goes out the other (Expression). Ridiculous. Been going on for weeks. I (endophoric) said to them (anaphoric – endophoric) – look, girls…

DEFINING REFERENCE AND REFERRING EXPRESSIONS

REFERENCE: As we have already seen, the act of using language to refer to (and to identify) entities in the context is known as reference: an act in which the speaker uses linguistic forms to enable the hearer to identify something It refers to something and we identify our expression. “the teacher” --- referring expression in the classroom. Reference is the concept, the use of language to identify an entity in the world: a person, an object or an animal, for example. These expressions are called referring expression, after them we do reference. The triangle of meaning: These linguistic forms are known as referring (or referential) expressions and enable the hearer to identify the entity being referred to, which is in turn known as the referent. reference

Referring expression (the teacher)

Entity

Another example: Paris (Referring expression) ---- referent (city of Paris).

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Deixis (unit 2) and reference are very closely related

Deixis: point to something in the situational context. The typical deixis is usually the personal pronouns (“I” changes the referent a lot).

All the deictics (this, that, here, now) are referential expressions, but there are other referential expressions which are not deictic.

Referring expressions: – Proper names (e.g. Aristotle, Paris): these name persons, institutions and objects whose reference is clear as opposed to common nouns (e.g. a philosopher, a city). – Singular definite terms (e.g. the woman standing by the table) --- if it’s an idiom like “he kicked the bucket” “the bucket” is not referential because it’s an idiom, it doesn’t refer to any existing bucket in the world. – Pronouns (which serve to identify a referent) ---- DEIXIS.

What about generics and indefinite noun phrases? 

There is some debate on whether generic expressions (“cats”) and indefinite noun phrases (“a cat”) are referring expressions. ---- it depends on context.

If we walk down the street and someone tells us “look, cats” it’s referential because there’s actually a group of cats you’re being referred to. • In fact, semantically they refer to entities but, as it were, they are “mental pictures” for the speaker

“do you like dogs?” --- is it referential? Or does it point to a mental structure? If it’s a group of dogs, it’s referential, if it’s a mental image/picture is not referential. In pragmatics we always go to the physical context (if you can see it, it’s referential).

Here, many authors argue that “dogs” is a generic referring expression but we shouldn’t consider it a referent in examples like: A: Yesterday I saw Susan and Toby (referring expressions) B: Who is Toby? A: Toby is a dog (“ a dog” is not a referring expression here)

“a dog” doesn’t refer to anything, it is simply explaining what Toby is. Since this is more connected to semantics; in the case of pragmatics and discourse analysis, we will consider as referring expressions only those that identify an entity in the context

WE NEED CONTEXT AND COTEXT TO ANALYZE IT.

THEREFORE VS. FORTUNATELY Discourse marker and stance markers Discourse marker: therefore. Relationship between parts of a text, they’re connectors, conjunctions. (objective, you’re organizing the text). Stance (perspectiva, punto de vista) markers: fortunately. (subjective, you’re evaluating). If you use it while writing, you’re biased. Discourse markers: • We have already seen them above (see cohesion – conjunction) • They are used to structure discourse and the (objective) relationship between sentences • E.g. Results are not definite. Therefore, a new experiment should be carried out. “therefore” links the two sentences and expresses the effect (a conclusion to a consequence).

Stance markers: • The ways that speakers or writers express their attitude to, or evaluation of, or commitment to, what it is that they are saying (or writing) • E.g. Results are not definite. A new experiment should be carried out, unfortunately. Stance markers include… • Stance adverbs: – E.g. Thankfully, it stopped raining • Finite clauses: – E.g. They are back together, it seems (it is tentative, you’re not 100% certain) • Non-finite clauses: – E.g. That is intolerable, to put it bluntly (maxim of manner) (idioms) • Prepositional phrases: – For all I know (protect the maxim of quality, you don’t want to lie, and you give the information you think it’s true), they could be in Honolulu right now Modals also enter in this category.

These are chunks, idioms:

• Notice that these expressions all take the form of fixed, or semi-fixed, phrases or lexical chunks. • For example, so to speak (stance marker, idiomatic expression) is a fixed phrase, in that you can’t substitute tell or talk for speak without it losing its idiomaticity.

• However, stance is much more complex, as proven by the wide research it has attracted • In fact, it could be argued that any term expressing the author’s (speaker / writer) opinion, evaluation or commitment to their utterance involves stance • Remember that language is a matter of choices and it is as important what we choose to say as what we choose NOT to say instead (this is one of the definitions of pragmatics). • For example, adjectives also express stance when they express an evaluation (positive or negative by the speaker) • Compare these two: – Julia is pretty – Julia is gorgeous

It is difficult to be fully objective with language, it is difficult to separate the speaker form from the text.

EXERCISE ON COHESION: Exercise 2: Identify the type of cohesion performed by the words in bold in the following extracts from the texts (1) While Japan is the world leader for recycling plastics, that has not always been the case. It (endophoric – anaphoric, grammatical cohesion, coreference) recycled less than 40% of plastic waste in 1996 (2) While (discourse marker, grammatical cohesion, conjunction, adversative (offers contrast)) Japan is the world leader for recycling plastics, that has not always been the case. It recycled less than 40% of plastic waste in 1996 (3) Nevertheless, (discourse marker: adversative, grammatical cohesion, conjunction) the change has come about partly as a result of legislation and partly from a clearly focused educational programme. (4) Several laws (reiteration: synonyms, laws as synonym of measures) requiring businesses and consumers to separate plastic waste have been brought into effect since 1997. Those measures… (this cannot be endophoric, because it’s lexical cohesion, if we wanted it to be grammatical cohesion, it should say “these, those, …”). Reiteration: repetition, synonyms, hyponims, hypernims.

You’re not linking the text with discourse markers, here’s a case of lexical cohesion, the author is using synonyms. (5) The change has come about partly as a result of legislation and partly from a clearly focused educational programme. Two ways of analyzing it, it could be lexical cohesion (repetition), but partly it’s an adverb so it could be analyzed as a conjunction, too. You can state both cases, or just one of them.

Two big types of cohesion: lexical and grammatical (pronouns, conjunctions, linking the text)

Kahoots:

UNIT 7: CONVERSATION ANALYSIS This unit doesn’t have a quiz, we have a group project. 1. Conversation: there’s language involved. 2. Social interaction. B: I’m the bath (implicature: I can’t pick up the phone. She’s flouting relevance). Some people say that both of them are conversations and both of them are interactions. The only conversation would be A, because there’s language involved, the lecturer thinks that there is body language in conversation analysis, too.

4.1. Defining conversation analysis - area of discourse analysis focused on the analysisof conversation as structured (far from casual) patterned discourse: if you talk about a car accident that you were in, the rest of the people in the group will talk about other car accidents they had. If you don’t have an experience like that you refer to a friend’s experience to relate. Back channeling: “ah” “yeah” “oh, really?” (smiles, too). We do it to show the other that we’re active listeners. If someone talks about how the weekend was, and one of them says that he had an accident, the topic diverts and focuses on this topic.

Pattern in a classroom: -teacher initiates with a question, the students usually answer the question, and then the teacher gives a follow-up. These kinds of things are studied in conversational analysis. Take turns:

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Interruptions are not polite. You should mark it “I’m sorry to interrupt you…”.

Conversations follow an order, and we know that because of background knowledge (overlapping in Spanish conversations: it happens all the time, in other cultures, overlapping is rude). 4.2. turn-taking organization British people do turn-taking by looking at you in the eyes. We learn how to take turns, we notice how adults do it. When people monopolizes the turn of the conversation, we get upset. It’s part of the acculturation process. Turn-taking is a cyclical process. Conversational floor: The turn should change. Important for the project: how do they take turns? - Turn taking has two central aspects: (1) FREQUENCY: the number of turns you have. Conversation is categorized by power and gender: the power of the teacher in the class. (2) CONTROL OF CONTRIBUTION Frequency: the amount of turn taking. The more people, the less frequency. A lecture has low frequency: there are not many turns, and the turns of the lecturer are very long.

Control of contribution: -

Refers to the amount of control a person has over what to say and how much to say. This is what the lecturer does.

No gap, no overlap model: No gap: threr shouldnt be a very long silence between terms. No overlap: we should wait for the other to finish, before we begin.

In Spanish: “no gap, overlap” There’s one culture where the gap between one and the other is usually long: in finland, they have very long gaps between one term and the next. Pragmatic failure could happen because of this crosscultural difference.

TRP: transition relevant points. -

Interlocutors can take the conversational floors. It’s when we say things like “so, what do you think?”

When the current speaker asks a question it might be a cue for someone else to take over. If the current speaker trails off, it could be a cue for someone else to take over.

We can also violate conversation rules: turn taking violations may happen

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Interruptions: in some cultures it could be very rude. We feel like the hearer doesn’t care about what we’re saying. Grabbing the floor Overlaps Hogging or monopolizing the floor: when the speaker takes a long time (they don’t care about what the other might want to say) Silence: a long silence when you ask a question and they don’t look at you – in some cultures it might be a very polite answer. It’s very cross-cultural, but we’re analyzing English....