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Conversationalization in public discourse

Conversationalization in public discourse. Tryntje Pasma Kirsten Vis. Overview. Introduction Conversationalization VU-Ster project Metaphor Subjectivity. Conversationalization. Hypothesis by Norman Fairclough (CDA)

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Conversationalization in public discourse

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  1. Conversationalization in public discourse Tryntje Pasma Kirsten Vis

  2. Overview • Introduction • Conversationalization • VU-Ster project • Metaphor • Subjectivity

  3. Conversationalization • Hypothesis by Norman Fairclough (CDA) • “the modelling of public discourse upon the discursive practices of ordinary life, ‘conversational’ practices in a broad sense” (Fairclough, 1994: 253) • movement towards norms of ‘casual’ conversation • in university brochures, news reports etc. • Example: Di’s butler bows out . . . in sneakers. (headline Daily Mirror) • Conversational vocabulary • Graphic devices

  4. Di’s butler bows out . . . in sneakers. • description of certain stylistic markers as ‘conversational’ is problematic (Pearce (2005)) • Which word is conversational? • ‘bows out’ (vs. ‘resigns’)? • ‘sneakers’ (vs. ‘trainers’)? • ‘Di’ (vs. ‘Diana’ / ‘Princess Diana’)? • Lexical density • Tense • Intuitively plausible but intuitive approach

  5. VU-Ster project • Goal • empirically test Fairclough’s conversationalization hypothesis for Dutch public discourse • Corpus analysis • Dutch news from 1950 <-> 2002 • Dutch news from 2002 <-> Dutch conversations from 2002 • News • 1950: 30,000w • 2002: 50,000w • 5 national newspapers; different sections • Conversations • 50,000w from Corpus of Spoken Dutch • 30 complete spontaneous conversations

  6. To metaphor… • Conversationalization includes: • colloquial vocabulary; phonic, prosodic and paralinguistic features of colloquial language; direct address (you and we); repetition; lack of subject-verb agreement • Biber’s features of involved vs informational production • involved: causative subordination; wh-questions/clauses; etc. • Can same be observed for metaphor? • seen as conventional, stylistic property, rhetorical effect

  7. Metaphor in conversation • Studies of metaphor in conversations • Focus on certain forms and functions (Cameron 2003, 2008; Drew & Holt 1995) in certain settings • Idiomatic expressions • Delexicalised verbs (lexical density) • Position in sentence

  8. Idiomatic expressions • Their role in English conversations • Cheshire (2005): fixed expressions function as a means to help speakers keep up with the demand of online speech production • Drew and Holt (1995): idiomatic expressions in naturally occurring conversations seem to be used predominantly for topic summarizing and topic termination purposes • Their role in Dutch conversations • Termination and summary function; topic transition and start of new topic

  9. Example 78: ja je gaat vanavond maar weer flink te s aan de zuip. 79: ik heb een kater vandaag gewoon. 80: ongelooflijk. 81: ik heb uh helse pijnen doorstaan. 82: ik ben nog maar net uit b uit bed. 83: net nou eigenlijk net. 84: ja dat kasteelbier van jou dat uh dat ga dat hakt erin als een kasteel de volgende dag. 85: ja die zijn inderdaad genadeloos ja. 86: ik heb trouwens uh... 87: ben net even naar de videotheek geweest. 88: en daar lag gewoon Lars Von Trier The Idiots bij de videotheek. 89: bij in de vijfhoek. (fn000496)

  10. Idioms in news similar? • Occur more often in news than in conversation • roughly 1 per 500 words • Functions are similar • a lot of the examples fit within termination, summary, transition function • Example: Bijbelimporteur drijft wig tussen China en de VS (Vbu2)

  11. Position of metaphor • Do metaphor-related words occur at beginning, middle or end of a sentence • What is expected? Are expectations different for conversation and news? • What are the results? Are results different for conversation and news?

  12. Results conversation

  13. Results news

  14. Form, function, position • Comparison between conversations and news • patterns on different levels • diachronic element for conversationalization • with respect to form and position • Conceptual analysis of metaphor • patterns in registers

  15. To subjectivity • Definition: the degree to which the presence of the speaker (/writer) is felt e.g. when speaker gives opinion or shows (un-)certainty • Why subjectivity? • Presence of speaker in conversations • Examples: • It is a beautiful city. • Maybe your friend will come to the party. • John must be ill. • SPEAKER subjectivity

  16. Analysis • Two levels • Text: coherence relations • Sentence / word: lexico-grammatical

  17. 1. Text level: coherence relations • Relations between text parts like Cause-Consequence, Contrast, Evidence etc. • Capture part of what makes a text a text (rather than a random set of sentences) • Starting point: Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST; Mann & Thompson, 1988) • fairly exhaustive list of 24 well-defined relations

  18. Subjective relations • 10 subjective relations • Antithesis • Concession • Concessive opposition • Enablement • Enumeration • Evidence • Evaluation • Interpretation • Justify • Motivation • Conversationalization hypothesis: • The relative amount of subjective relations has increased over time.

  19. Subjective relations in news increase decrease no change

  20. Conclusion coherence relations • Overall number of subjective relations has not changed significantly, but the nature of the textual subjectivity has: ‘Old’ newspapers interpret more, ‘new’ newspapers prove / conclude more • Explanation: • back to texts

  21. 2. Sentence/word level • Following Bekker (2006), Scheibman (2002), Wiebe (2005) • Intensifiers • very, enormously • Modal verbs • must • Modal adverbs • maybe, presumably, certainly • Verbs of cognition • think, say • First and second person pronouns • I, you • Direct questions • uncertainty; listener is addressed

  22. Subjective elements

  23. Conclusion lexico-grammatical analysis • Only marginal support for conversationalization hypothesis • More research is needed • Verbs of cognition • only 1st person • Direct speech • exclude character speech • not straight-forward: e.g. Semi-Direct Speech

  24. Conclusion lexico-grammatical analysis • Only marginal support for conversationalization hypothesis • More research is needed • Verbs of cognition • only 1st person • Direct speech • exclude character speech • not straight-forward: e.g. Semi-Direct Speech • De enige werkelijke oplossing is de sluiting van het terrein, stelt Molenman. (Nbi1) The only real solution is closing the area, says Molenman. • De Ned. marine had een zeer gunstige indruk op hem gemaakt, zo zei hij. (TRObu2) The Dutch navy had made a very favourable impression on him, he said.

  25. What’s next? • Refine lexico-grammatical analysis • Automatic lexico-grammatical analysis of larger corpus • Qualitative studies • conversation 1950 • analysis of perspective • etc. • Reception experiment • Possibly automatic analysis of adjectives and nouns with help from Computational Lexicology & Terminology Lab

  26. Thank you!

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