English Text Construction - Volume 14, Issue 1, 2021

Abstract

This paper considers the relevance of various approaches to the study of ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to a number of practical problems: complaints from listeners to UK radio programmes that presenters place emphasis on the wrong words; inaudibility of openings of utterances in radio news bulletins; and ambiguity of pronouns. Approaches to ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to be discussed include those whose concerns are with intonation (e.g., Halliday & Matthiessen 2014), those who pay attention to definiteness/indefiniteness in the nominal group (e.g., Martin 1992), and those who are more concerned with what is in the minds of hearers and readers (e.g., Prince 1981; Lambrecht 1994). The underlying questions that are being investigated are: How free are speakers and writers to assign ‘Given’ or ‘New’ status to entities? Are there constraints on what they can do intonationally, or with definiteness, or with pronouns?

Abstract

The Hillsborough football stadium disaster (1989) in Sheffield, UK, led to the deaths of 97 football fans and resulted in the longest jury case in British legal history (2016). This article examines the witness statements of two Sheffield residents who claim to have attended the match. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates a cognitive linguistic framework (Text World Theory) with visualisation software (VUE) we consider both form and function of a number of linguistic features, such as meta-narrative, evaluative lexis, syntax, and modality to investigate how institutional voices permeate and potentially distort layperson narratives. Our analysis casts doubt on the veracity of the statements and raises questions about what can be considered evidential in a forensic investigation.

Abstract

Inscribed in the field of cognitive narrative theory, this paper asks, and attempts to answer, a number of questions about the early emergence of mind in James’s notebook material for his short fiction. These questions essentially turn on the metarepresentational and aspectualizing potential of notebook entries in genetic relation to the finished tales, that is, on their capacity to present the projected storyworld, from its very conception, as a function of the subjectivity of one or several characters in the cognitive role of metarepresentational sources, or else as a dementalised lump of content to be aspectualised later in the process of execution. Analysis of the relevant notebook material yields a polarity between epistemic and contentual entries, and reveals a set of cognitive phenomena based on the alteration or continuity of the primitive balance of sources which allows one to conclude that James’s characteristic concern with the mental dynamics of his narratives, rather than being a compositional addition, was deeply embedded in his earliest fictional projects.

Abstract

This article examines to what dramaturgical effect Sam Shepard’s political play States of Shock (1991) remediates strategies associated with the culture industry. In plays, spectators forge an interpretation from a medium that is considered ‘hypermedial’ or capable of combining discrete signifying systems such as dialogue, costumes, acting style and scenography at the same time. In States of Shock, genre remediation implicates its audience in the spectacle of war by juxtaposing American war heroism and military ideology with entertaining vaudeville. By examining Shepard’s appropriation of the vaudeville genre in relation to other dramatic signifying systems, the article offers a new and more layered reading of the play’s supposedly ‘blatant’ political message.

This article reviews Contrastive Analysis of Discourse-pragmatic Aspects of Linguistic Genre978-3-319-54556-1