Language and Dialogue - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2019

Abstract

In classroom interactions, facilitation of children’s autonomous choice of acting (agency) may produce conflicts among children. While facilitation does not have the function of managing these conflicts, it shares some types of action with conflict mediation, one of which is formulation. Formulation elaborates the gist of previous utterances and enhances interlocutors’ actions. This paper provides a qualitative analysis of nine transcribed sequences of interaction, included into five different programs of facilitation. The analysis shows that formulations fulfil two different functions. First (function of mediation), they are designed as developments of the gist of children’s utterances, enhancing stories of cooperation. Second (function of facilitation), they are designed as explications of the gist of children’s utterances, without enhancing cooperative stories.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine whether humour can be used as a discursive strategy to reply to offensive humour about natural disasters and what purpose it serves. A corpus of 431 replies to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons concerning the earthquake in central Italy in August 2016 was analysed. Depending on the target of the humour in these replies, they were used to agree, disagree or deflect away from the offensive and aggressive content of the cartoons. The results show that humour can be used as a discursive strategy to respond to offensive humour. Moreover, an analysis of the corpus revealed that humorous replies were used mainly to agree rather than disagree with the cartoons.

Abstract

Mastering a language implies being able to deploy a wide variety of speech genres (Bakhtin 1952–1953). However, the features which define these genres are often obscure to students or ‘occluded’ in the sense used by Swales (1996). In this paper, nine dialogues between B1-level French learners in the context of an oral exam are analysed in order to describe the degree of dialogic competence-in-performance (Weigand 2017) achieved. Because these dialogues were of two types, an exchange of opinions and a guided interview, our analysis reveals hybrid results. This hybridity affects the opening and closing sequences of the dialogue, floor-taking in the central part and the linguistic resources used by the students to give their opinions. These findings identify formative needs as well as the indicators of achievement that are required to assess students’ oral competence-in-performance.

Abstract

The current study adopts a dialogue-analytic approach to the examination of complaint behavior in Saudi Arabic as spoken in the Najd region, the central region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To this end, role-plays with 120 Saudi nationals who are Najdi-speakers were recorded and transcribed. Statistical comparisons revealed that Najdis used a variety of complaint strategies with requests for repair, expressing annoyance and providing modified blame being the most frequent. Najdis also produced a large number of initiators and internal and external modifiers, mainly to mitigate the negative force of complaints. Although a small influence was found for gender, the variables of age, social distance and social dominance showed a strong influence on the Najdis’ complaint behavior. The results are discussed in light of relevant theoretical models and the existing literature.

Abstract

The article focuses on a few central issues of dialogic competence-in-performance which are still beyond the reach of models of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Learning machines have made an amazing step forward but still face barriers which cannot be crossed yet. Linguistics is still described at the level of Chomsky’s view of language competence. Modelling competence-in-performance requires a holistic model, such as the Mixed Game Model (Weigand 2010), which is capable of addressing the challenge of the ‘architecture of complexity’ (Simon 1962). The complex cannot be ‘the ontology of the world’ (Russell and Norwig 2016). There is no autonomous ontology, no hierarchy of concepts; it is always human beings who perceive the world. ‘Anything’, in the end, depends on the human brain.

This article reviews L2 Spanish Pragmatics: From Research to Teaching978-1-138-27994-0

This article reviews Emotional Lives: Dramas of Identity in an Age of Mass Media978-0-521-82014-1