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A little emotional: Diminutives, affect, and power

A little emotional: Diminutives, affect, and power. Tyler Schnoebelen 15 Apr 2011 i-mean@uwe2. Welcome to readers. Instead of reading this in full-screen mode, I recommend viewing it in “Normal” mode so you can read the comments. This is my little presentation. 3. Offensive.

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A little emotional: Diminutives, affect, and power

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  1. A little emotional: Diminutives, affect, and power Tyler Schnoebelen 15 Apr 2011 i-mean@uwe2

  2. Welcome to readers • Instead of reading this in full-screen mode, I recommend viewing it in “Normal” mode so you can read the comments.

  3. This is my little presentation

  4. 3

  5. Offensive How’s your little problem?

  6. Hedging Can I have a little water?

  7. Affectionate Look at your little toes!

  8. Questions • What’s the difference between having little in a phrase and not having it? • How does little mean more than “the thing being modified is small”? • Why insulting, hedging and affection? • Why a negative skew? • What does little tell us about how individuals create and orient to the social circumstances they find themselves in?

  9. Outline of the talk • Intro • (Already done!) • The collocates of little • A comparison with morphological diminutives • Little skews negatively…why? • Positioning • The effect of little • Experiments with corpus data • Little is there even when it’s not • Positioning, power, affect • Eurasia in the Middle Holocene • You can have your little Enterprise • Wrap-up

  10. The collocations of little(Corpora…but first diminutives)

  11. Jurafsky (1996) • Morphological diminutives skew positively • A natural extension of use with children, who we nurture and love.

  12. Little and the BNC (Spoken)

  13. But after the first ten…

  14. Typically positive collocates (BNC+COCA) • [NICE] • [CUTE] • [PRECIOUS] • [NEAT] • [SWEET] • [ANGEL] • [ADORABLE]* • [SOUVENIR]* • [MONKEY]* • [LAMB]* • [RABBIT]* • [PRINCESS]* • [DELICIOUS]* • [‘UN]* *Fewer than 25 tokens in spoken portions of British National Corpus + Corpus of Contemporary American English

  15. Typically negative collocates (BNC+COCA) • [NERVOUS] • [STRANGE] • [DIRTY] • [TIRED] • [ODD] • [CONFUSE] • [UNCOMFORTABLE] • [FAR-FETCHED] • [WEIRD] • [SKEPTICAL] • [DISAPPOINTED] • [EMBARRASSED] • [SUSPICIOUS] • [DISINGENUOUS] • [HARSH] • [CONFUSING] • [CAUTIOUS] • [CYNICAL] • [AWKWARD] • [SHAKY] • [CHILLY] • [INTIMIDATING] • [SCARY] • [NAIVE] • [APPREHENSIVE] • [UNCLEAR] • [JEALOUS]* • [CREEPY]* • [LEERY]* • [UNEASY]* • [WARY]* • [HESITANT]* • [SKINNY]* • [DISAPPOINTING]* • [PARANOID]* • [NASTY]* • [BITCH]* • [CUNT]* *Fewer than 25 tokens in spoken portions of British National Corpus + Corpus of Contemporary American English

  16. What are they doing? • In a few cases, it aggravates: • You wimp < you little wimp • It can be affectionate • Come here, you little bastard • And, of course, it attenuates • Negating the positive • There was little joy…(the most common use of little+joy/sympathy) • Minimizing the negative • He was a little awkward < he was awkward

  17. But here’s the rub • Any device that attenuates makes it possible to say things that couldn’t otherwise be said bare. • So attenuation, paradoxically, may make it possible to say something offensive. • The choice isn’t always between with little and without. It can be between with little or not saying the thing at all.

  18. Negative and affectionate/friendly Back to affection + negativity Sayability also plays a role in intimacy. To say something is to make a claim that you have a role relative to your interlocutor that you can say it. Teasing is a way of saying something like “this insult doesn’t really count because you know how I really feel about you”. It can, of course, go drastically wrong. [SHY] [POOR] [SILLY] [BUGGER]* [SNEAK]* [SOD]* [NUTTY]* [CHEEKY]* [PIGGY]* *Fewer than 25 tokens in spoken portions of British National Corpus + Corpus of Contemporary American English

  19. Making claims… Look at your plate, you little piggy!

  20. Making claims… Look at your plate, you little piggy!

  21. Making claims… Look at your plate, you little piggy!

  22. Back to morphological diminutives • In languages that have both productive synthetic diminutives as well as lexical items equivalent to little, a paraphrase using the word comes across more negatively. • E.g., Italian and German, according to Dressler and MerliniBarbaresi (1994: 161)

  23. Morphological diminutives

  24. Little and other full-blown words CHILD CONTEMPT SMALL

  25. Positioning

  26. Some terms • It seems like {my | your | Ryan’s | Acme Publishing’s} little magazine is really taking off. • Little relates the speaker to an object(a magazine) and a target (me, you, Ryan, Acme). • Regardless of who is associated with the object, the utterance also positions—in large or small ways—the speaker and the hearer.

  27. Positioning = stance • Probably • So I should use the same word • Probably • But “stance” seems static • I’d like something with more motion and dynamism

  28. Positioning = stance • Probably • So I should use the same word • Probably • But “stance” seems static • I’d like something with more motion and dynamism • But • I reserve the right • To be brow-beaten into submission

  29. A jump from physical size to social relations • Two facts: • Every utterance is a claim that the speaker occupies a role that has the rights/obligations necessary to express the utterance to their interlocutor • At its core, little is about size • These two facts are how little leaps from physical objects to social relations: the speaker, their interlocutor, and some action/thing modified by little are related in/through the utterance.

  30. Predictions • When the thing being modified by little is most clearly identified with the speaker and/or their interlocutor • the strongest effects of positioning are felt • Prediction: the greater the presence of you and mereferents in an utterance, the higher people will rate little for speaker confidence/control and the emotional intensity of the utterance.

  31. The effects of little (experiments)

  32. Stimuli • CALLHOME corpus = 120 telephone conversations between friends and family • 10 minutes transcribed (from the middle, usually) • 107 of these 120 conversations used little • 257 utterances that maintain truth conditions when little is removed. • So I didn’t use these type of utterances: • He’s playing in *(Little) League. • It matters *(very little) whether or not you’re financially well off. • Additional 99 items added from Twitter, translations from Dressler and MerliniBarbaresi (1994), and a few other sources. • These were chosen to get a few more pejorative/aggressive uses.

  33. Participants • 510 American subjects (monolingual English speakers) • How confident/in control is the speaker? • How likeable do you find the speaker? • How emotionally intense is what they are saying? • Avg subject completed saw ~35 fillers and 7 little stimuli (randomized) • Demographics: • 60% Female • Avg age: 34 (1 StdDev = 22-46 y/o) • 6 education levels, including: • High school (14%) • Some college, no degree (33%) • Graduate degree (12%) • Geographically diverse—raised until 7 in… • 43/50 states represented • 10 or more participants from 18 states • Biggest numbers came from California (57), New York (51), Pennsylvania (32), Texas (30), Illinois (29), Ohio (28)

  34. WITH little present…

  35. Predicting confidence ratings: what matters? • (Item as a random effect) • Likeability rating • Increases confidence rating • Is it a question? • Decreases confidence rating • CallHome • Decreases • Utterance includes a “you know” • Decreases • Subj=“I” • Decreases • Adj is what’s modified by little/0 • Decreases • Noun is what’s modified by little/0 • Increases • Emotionality rating • Increases

  36. Palimpsest • Little can’t be entirely erased. • Sentences have multiple ways of encoding “what matters”

  37. Confidence: just stimuli with little/0 modifying nouns • Item as a random effect • Likeability • Increases confidence rating • Is a question • Decreases • “My ___ N” • Increases • “You know” • Decreases • CallHome • Decreases • ___ N-PL • Decreases • Demon ____ N • Decreases • Placement of little/0 (how far through the utterance does/would it appear?) • Decreases as further from the start • Emotionality rating • Increases • Subj=“you” • Increases • Percentage of “we/us/our” in the sentence • Increases

  38. What matters?

  39. Predicting emotional intensity • (Item as a random effect) • CallHome • Decreases emotion (99 supplemental materials really were more emotional) • Likeability rating • Increases • Subj=“I” • Increases! • Subj=“you” • Increases • ___ N • Decreases! • “You know” • Increases! • Confidence rating • Increases

  40. Predicting emotionality—nouns only • CallHome • Decreases • Question • Decreases • “You know” • Increases • Likeability • Increases • Percentage I/me/my/mine/myself • Increases • Subject is “you” • Increases • Confidence • Increases • Percentage of we/us/our/ourselves • Increases • Noun is plural • Increases!

  41. Predictions • Prediction: the greater the presence of you and mereferents in an utterance… • the higher people will rate little for speaker confidence/control • Subj=“I” ends up announcing hedges and self-attenuation • But my ___ N is associated with increased confidence • the higher the emotional intensity of the utterance • Yep • There is a specter of little even in items where the little is left out.

  42. Positioning, power, affect

  43. Relationship creation/reflection • Little goes beyond denoting size and into reflecting and creating relationships among people and things. • Littlecan pull together and push apart. Its use is a claim that can reiterate “the way things are” or shift them.

  44. Positioning and getting positioned

  45. Alder trees

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