English Text Construction - Volume 18, Issue 1, 2025

This article adopts a corpus linguistics approach to investigate proper names of characters in an American modern play, Jack London’s Theft: A Play in Four Acts (1910). The analysis of proper names in drama has tended to link character names to characterization. As a result, the relationship between proper names and plot progression has been largely overlooked. The paper focuses on patterns and shifts in how the two main characters in Theft are addressed and referred to using their proper names. The findings suggest that proper names can be linked to plot progression in plays and, to a lesser extent, might reveal aspects about the relationship between authors, and their readers and audiences. The study provides a new understanding of how proper names can be linked to plot progression, and how they contribute to the construction of meaning in drama.

This study foregrounds the potential impact of ChatGPT usage on second language (L2) learners’ voice. L2 learners’ perceptions of ChatGPT’s interference with their self-representation in writing and the relationship of these perceptions with future intentions to use ChatGPT are investigated. Following a mixed-methods approach, questionnaire data from undergraduate students (N = 162) after two English for academic purposes courses, where they used ChatGPT as L2 academic writing support, were collected and analysed. About half of the participants were ambivalent; the remaining half were divided equally in their perceptions of ChatGPT as (not) a threat. The more threatening ChatGPT was perceived to be, the less inclined participants were to use it again. Ambivalence is influenced by usage, genre and GenAI advancements. Over-reliance, homogenisation and devaluation of human voice relate to the perception of? ChatGPT as a threat. A lack of perceived threat derives from ChatGPT’s mechanical voice, human agency, and different standards for acceptable convergence.

L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has oftentimes been regarded as an allegory for the United States, mapping Oz onto the America Baum lived in. 95 years later, however, Gregory Maguire’s retelling, Wicked, gives the floor to Elphaba, or the Wicked Witch of the West. The novel emphasizes her perspective on Oz before, during, and after the Wizard’s coup. It thereby shifts the interpretation of a fairytale Oz as discovered by Dorothy to a repressed land suffering under the Wizard’s colonialist regime. Following Hutcheon’s notion of adaptation, this article maps Wicked’s setting onto the United States, analogous with Baum’s novel. It finds that Wicked focuses on the cultural heritage and historical suffering of the native population, criticizing Baum’s work for its inherent colonialism. When mapped onto American history, Maguire’s retelling recovers the Native Americans’ cultural heritage and agency over their homeland.

Intense argumentation characterised the 2020 U.S. presidential debate. This study investigates the turn-taking strategies employed by Donald Trump and Joe Biden to build their arguments during the debate. The analysis draws on Stenström’s (2014) framework of turn-taking and Toulmin’s (2003) model of argumentation. A qualitative method is used, with data consisting of selected utterances from the first and second rounds of presidential debate videos obtained from C-SPAN. The findings indicate that “taking the turn” and its various subcategories are employed predominantly and assertively. Trump uses them to dominate the floor, while Biden adopts a more measured and structured approach. Trump’s arguments are characterised by assertive claims, specific backing, and repetition; Biden, by contrast, structures his arguments through data and warrants. Both candidates make use of distinct sub-strategies of “holding the turn” as they organise and deliver their logical arguments.