Events
Survey Seminar Series Spring 2016
The Survey of English Usage organises a number of seminars each
year for staff and students from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities
and beyond. They are generously sponsored by the English Department.
The following research seminars took place during the Spring term.
Thursday
3rd March |
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Simon Horobin (Oxford) |
‘No gentleman goes on a bus’:
H.C. Wyld and the historical study of English |
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Wednesday
16th March |
Nele Pöldvere (Lund) |
‘I think you're clearly wrong’: A corpus-based
and experimental study of dialogic engagement in spoken discourse |
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This study examines the dialogic functions of expansion
and contraction of first-person epistemic and
evidential Complement-Taking Predicate constructions
(CTPs), such as I think, I suppose and
I know, in spoken discourse. It combines corpus
and experimental methods (i) to investigate whether
CTPs are used to open up the dialogic space for new
ideas or counterarguments, or to fend off alternative
views, and (ii) to identify what contextual factors
play a role in determining their dialogic force.
First, an exploratory analysis of CTPs in the London-Lund
Corpus (LLC) of spoken British English is carried out
with the aim to identify important contextual factors
and generate hypotheses about their effects. Then, a
laboratory experiment is conducted to test the impact
of the three most prominent factors for speakers’ interpretations
of utterances containing CTPs. In contrast to the a
priori classification of expressions of engagement in
appraisal theory, the results indicate that CTPs
do not only serve to expand the dialogic context in
which they occur, but to put a lid on alternative views.
Interlocutor status, the co-occurrence of contractive
markers and prosodic marking of the CTP are shown to
have a significant effect on the dialogic function of
the expressions. These findings call into question some
assumptions in the appraisal theory about the
role of CTPs in discourse, and highlight the need for
a flexible approach in the analysis of these poly-functional
stance expressions. |
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This page last modified
14 May, 2020
by Survey Web Administrator.