Common Scientific Lexicon for Automatic Discourse Analysis of Scientific and Technical Texts

The paper reports on preliminary results of an ongoing research aiming at development of an automatic procedure for recognition of discourse-compositional structure of scientific and technical texts, which is required in many NLP applications. The procedure exploits as discourse markers various domain-independent words and expressions that are specific for scientific and technical texts and organize scientific discourse. The paper discusses features of scientific discourse and common scientific lexicon comprising such words and expressions. Methodological issues of development of a computer dictionary for common scientific lexicon are concerned; basic principles of its organization are described as well. Main steps of the discourse-analyzing procedure based on the dictionary and surface syntactical analysis are pointed out.

On the F word:a corpus-based analysis of the media representation of feminism in British and German press discourse, 1990-2009

Research in social psychology has shown that public attitudes towards feminism are mostly based on stereotypical views linking feminism with leftist politics and lesbian orientation. It is claimed that such attitudes are due to the negative and sexualised media construction of feminism. Studies concerned with the media representation of feminism seem to confirm this tendency. While most of this research provides significant insights into the representation of feminism, the findings are often based on a small sample of texts. Also, most of the research was conducted in an Anglo-American setting. This study attempts to address some of the shortcomings of previous work by examining the discourse of feminism in a large corpus of German and British newspaper data. It does so by employing the tools of Corpus Linguistics. By investigating the collocation profiles of the search term feminism, we provide evidence of salient discourse patterns surrounding feminism in two different cultural contexts. © The Author(s) 2012.

Feminist poststructural discourse analysis

Feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis (FPDA) is an approach to analyzing spoken interactions that focuses on the ways in which speakers negotiate their subject positions within competing and interwoven discourses. This article identifies the theoretical background to FPDA, its key principles, its distinctiveness from other approaches such as critical discourse analysis, and outlines some of the main directions in current research.

An analysis of police interview discourse and its role(s) in the judicial process

This study analyses the current role of police-suspect interview discourse in the England & Wales criminal justice system, with a focus on its use as evidence. A central premise is that the interview should be viewed not as an isolated and self-contained discursive event, but as one link in a chain of events which together constitute the criminal justice process. It examines: (1) the format changes undergone by interview data after the interview has taken place, and (2) how the other links in the chain – both before and after the interview – affect the interview-room interaction itself. It thus examines the police interview as a multi-format, multi-purpose and multi-audience mode of discourse. An interdisciplinary and multi-method discourse-analytic approach is taken, combining elements of conversation analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. Data from a new corpus of recent police-suspect interviews, collected for this study, are used to illustrate previously unaddressed problems with the current process, mainly in the form of two detailed case studies. Additional data are taken from the case of Dr. Harold Shipman. The analysis reveals several causes for concern, both in aspects of the interaction in the interview room, and in the subsequent treatment of interview material as evidence, especially in the light of s.34 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The implications of the findings for criminal justice are considered, along with some practical recommendations for improvements. Overall, this study demonstrates the need for increased awareness within the criminal justice system of the many linguistic factors affecting interview evidence.

James Paul Gee, How to Do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit, New York: Routledge, 2011; ix + 206 pp., €25.00/US$33.00 (pbk)

Book reviews

Deconstruction-analysis-explanation:contextualization in professional digital discourse

It is already a truism that emerging communication technologies have changed the landscape of communication in every aspect of our lives, but this is specifically true for how we communicate at work. Advances in communication technologies have enabled a wide range of digital communication modes to be utilized for both internal and external business communication; including audio and visual communication and voice-over protocols, as well as text-based channels, such as email, forums, instant messaging and social media. In spite of the wide range of available audio-visual channels, and despite the ever-increasing popularity of email, real-time text-based communication technologies (instant messaging or IM) are also on the rise (see Mak, 2014; Pazos et al., 2013; Radicati & Levenstein, 2013; and Markman in this volume). The prominence of IM is evident in the rise of this mode of communication, not only as a tool for internal business communication, but as a front-stage channel, particularly for customer service encounters or professional-client conversations (Makarem et al., 2009; Pearce et al., 2013; L. Zhang et al., 2011).

Discourse Analysis of Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man Through a Feminist Educational Lens

This qualitative study used critical discourse analysis to highlight how educational stakeholders can examine discourses and react to power in texts using a feminist lens to problematize identity.

When Poverty Becomes Profitable: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Microfinancial Development in Haiti

For the past thirty years, policymakers have lauded microfinance for its promises to reduce poverty and empower women in developing nations. First conceived by the Bangladeshi economist Muhammed Yunus and the bank he founded, microfinance has been hailed as a visionary project that promises to advance the economic interests of the poor by engaging them directly. Conventional studies by political scientists explore the place of microfinance in the global development architecture of international financial institutions, governments, and NGOs. Economic studies of its effectiveness are contributing to a crisis of legitimacy since they reveal that thousands of clients in developing nations continue to default on their loans due to predatory lending practices. Drawing on discourse analysis methodology, this article seeks to explain how microfinance, an industry embedded in the financialization of development, is now concerned with high financial returns for investments, not the social goals promised by its original raison d'être. Treating microfinance as a discourse, I argue that there is a fundamental tension between the short-term social goals promised by microfinance and the long-term financial objectives of sustainability of investors.

A critical discourse analysis on the (self) representation of Hillary R. Clinton in public discourse

El rol de la mujer dentro de la sociedad ha sido y aún es un tema de mucha controversia. Incluso en nuestra sociedad, se suscitan debates sobre si les está permitido a las mujeres ocupar ciertos ámbitos laborales que han estado siempre dominados por una fuerte presencia masculina, como es el caso del ámbito político. Además, en muchos países aún ni siquiera están reconocidos los derechos de las mujeres, y mientras que, en otras culturas, a pesar de que la ley vela por los derechos humanos sin importar la raza, la religión o el género, la realidad es que incluso en las culturas más desarrolladas existe desigualdad de género y estereotipos que afectan el desenvolvimiento de la mujer. Sin embargo, a pesar de que aun la desigualdad de género está presente en la sociedad, es innegable que la situación actual es mucho más positiva para la implicación de las mujeres incluso dentro de ámbitos de la sociedad, que décadas atrás sería impensable, como la política. En esta línea, toda esta situación ha suscitado el interés de muchos investigadores y lingüistas, que han dedicado tiempo a investigaciones sobre las relaciones entre discurso y género, y sobre la representación mediática de mujeres que tienen cierta influencia en el ámbito público, y cómo la desigualdad de género afecta su imagen pública. Si bien es cierto, durante mucho tiempo el ámbito de la política ha estado dominado por presencia masculina, ahora la situación ha cambiado. En las últimas décadas, se ha hecho evidente una gran presencia de mujeres dentro de la política, mujeres que a comparación de la situación vivida décadas atrás, ahora tienen la posibilidad de presentarse incluso como candidatas a la presidencia, como es el caso de Hillary Clinton. En este sentido muchas corrientes feministas han contribuido en gran medida a esta nueva situación. Ahora bien, en vista de toda esta situación, el presente estudio de investigación intentará dar respuesta a las siguientes preguntas. ¿Hasta qué punto los estereotipos de género están aún presentes en la sociedad? ¿La representación mediática de una figura política está realmente basada en su conducta y en su actividad discursiva, o está influida por esquemas e ideas preconcebidas de género? Teniendo en cuenta que hoy en día hay una mayor presencia femenina dentro del ámbito político, una de mis hipótesis iniciales es que la situación de los estereotipos de género ha disminuido. Además, se espera que la forma en la que Hillary Clinton se representa a sí misma como una mujer y como una política esté menos perjudicada por estos esquemas. El objetivo de este estudio es, primeramente, llevar a cabo un análisis sobre diez discursos de Hillary Clinton, desde el 15 de junio de 2015, fecha en la que Hillary Clinton lanzo su candidatura a la presidencia, hasta el 26 de abril de 2016, para a través de este análisis poder identificar como Hillary Clinton se caracteriza a sí misma en sus discursos políticos, y asimismo identificar si los esquemas convencionales sobre género afectan su auto representación. Con este objetivo, el enfoque de este estudio se va a centrar en análisis cuantitativos y cualitativos sobre la frecuencia de palabras, seguido de un análisis crítico del discurso sobre la auto representación de Hillary en sus discursos. Además, siguiendo la línea de investigación de Tannen (1996), se realizará un análisis sobre los usos de los pronombres “nosotros” y “yo”, para adquirir una mayor perspectiva sobre esta situación. Seguidamente, teniendo en cuenta que los medios de comunicación reflejan ideologías sociales, este estudio ha sido también diseñado para analizar diez artículos de noticias sobre los discursos previamente analizados de Hillary Clinton. De esta manera, se examinará si los estereotipos de género están presentes en la representación mediática de Hillary Clinton, para seguidamente analizar si la interpretación mediática de la candidata a la presidencia está realmente relacionada con los discursos analizados o, si por lo contrario están influidos por estereotipos y esquemas de género. Para cumplir con este objetivo, los datos recopilados para este corpus consisten en exactamente diez artículos que reporten sobre los discursos estudiados en el primer análisis, y la actuación de Hillary Clinton. Estos artículos fueron recogidos de cuatro de los periódicos más importantes de los Estados Unidos, que son New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles times y The Washington Post. En este caso el análisis estará centrado en la frecuencia de palabras y en el uso de reporting verbs, siguiendo la línea de investigación de Caldas – Coulthard (1995). Se espera que el presente estudio pueda servir para mayores investigaciones sobre cuestiones de género, y de esta manera contribuir a la creación de teorías que puedan explicar mejor la situación de las mujeres dentro de la política. Para finalizar, aún queda mucho que investigar en esta disciplina, e incluso más por descubrir

The State of the Nation Debate as part of the democratic parliamentary ritual: Rajoy and Rubalcaba discourse analysis, 2014

In this article we analyze the Debate on the State of the Nation 2014. The methodology consists in coding the speeches of the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy (PP) and the then opposition leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba (PSOE) through extracting word clouds, branched maps and word trees that have shown the most common concepts and premises. This preliminary analysis of two dimensions, quantitative and qualitative, makes it much easier and viable subsequent discourse analysis where we focus on the different types of arguments in the communicative act: claim/solution, circumstantial premises, goal premises, value premises, meansgoal premises, alternative options/addressing alternative options.

The perception of the African-American community through the eyes of the Hispanic media in the U.S.: a critical discourse analysis of the reporting of the death of Michael Brown

In this paper, 36 English and 38 Spanish news articles were selected from English and Spanish newspapers and magazines published in the U.S.A. from August 2014 to November 2014. All articles discuss the death of Michael Brown, the ensuing protests and police investigations. A discourse analysis shows that there are few differences between reporting by the mainstream and the Hispanic media. Like the mainstream media, the Hispanic media adopts a neutral point of view with regard to the African-American minority. However, it presents a negative opinion with regard to the police. It appears that the Hispanic media does not explicitly side with the African-American community, but rather agrees more with the mainstream media’s opinion and is substantially influenced by it.

Assessment of the EEE-4 oral test: a discourse analysis based on complex networks.

With the development of information technology, the theory and methodology of complex network has been introduced to the language research, which transforms the system of language in a complex networks composed of nodes and edges for the quantitative analysis about the language structure. The development of dependency grammar provides theoretical support for the construction of a treebank corpus, making possible a statistic analysis of complex networks. This paper introduces the theory and methodology of the complex network and builds dependency syntactic networks based on the treebank of speeches from the EEE-4 oral test. According to the analysis of the overall characteristics of the networks, including the number of edges, the number of the nodes, the average degree, the average path length, the network centrality and the degree distribution, it aims to find in the networks potential difference and similarity between various grades of speaking performance. Through clustering analysis, this research intends to prove the network parameters’ discriminating feature and provide potential reference for scoring speaking performance.