Search results for "Discours"
showing 10 items of 1119 documents
Topicality matters: Position-specific demands on Chinese discourse processing
2011
We report an event-related potential study designed to explore the nature of context-induced topicality in Chinese discourse processing. Topic is what an utterance is about and represents the most prominent discourse element, which occurs sentence-initially in Chinese. We tested question-answer pairs consisting of topic and non-topic questions followed by different continuations (Topic-Continuity, Topic-Shift, Novel-Topic). ERPs were measured at distinct sentential positions and revealed that sentence-initially information processing is guided by topicality, which affects N400 and Late Positivity effects alike. In non-initial positions, the given-new distinction is the dominant principle, a…
Animacy matters: ERP evidence for the multi-dimensionality of topic-worthiness in Chinese
2013
Abstract An event-related potential (ERP) study was conducted to investigate how animacy interacts with givenness during topic processing. Both animacy and givenness have been considered as within-discourse factors that contribute to an element׳s potential to form an optimal topic (i.e., topic-worthiness). ERPs were recorded while participants read question–answer pairs, of which the target sentence induced either a continuation or an alternation of a previously introduced topic (i.e., given vs. new). Depending on the context, a potential topic further differed in its animacy from the preceding one (i.e., animate vs. inanimate). The data revealed a robust givenness effect with an N400 reduc…
Physiotherapists' accounts of their clients in geriatric inpatient rehabilitation.
2008
This article aims to describe how physiotherapists working with frail older people talk about their clients. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with physiotherapists (n = 11) were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed using discourse analysis. Two accounts were identified: (i) older adults as recipients of a treatment intervention at the rehabilitation centre, with the dimensions 'a focus on physical impairments' and 'a focus on social needs' and (ii) older adults as partners in an exercise intervention to support their everyday living at home. Older adults' everyday living context was not considered in the approach where, in an isolated and objectified manner, the physiotherapists f…
The facilitative effect of gestures on the neural processing of semantic complexity in a continuous narrative
2019
© 2019 Elsevier Inc. Gestures are elemental components of social communication and aid comprehension of verbal messages; however, little is known about the potential role of gestures in facilitating processing of semantic complexity in an ecologically valid setting. The goal of this study was to investigate whether cognitive load, as indexed by semantic complexity, is modulated by the presentation of gestures accompanying speech. Twenty healthy participants watched 16 video clips of a short narrative while instructed to carefully listen to and watch the narrator while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired. The videos contained passages with and without various co-s…
Spatial Inferences in Narrative Comprehension: the Role of Verbal and Spatial Working Memory
2016
During the comprehension of narrative texts, readers keep a mental representation of the location of protagonists and objects; a breach in spatial coherence is detected by longer online reading times (consistency effect). We addressed whether these spatial inferences involve verbal or spatial working memory in two experiments, combining the consistency paradigm with selective verbal and spatial working memory concurrent tasks. The first experiment found longer reading times with a concurrent spatial task under imagery instructions (t33 = 2.87, p =.021). The second experiment, under comprehension reading instructions, found effects of verbal interference on reading times and accuracy. With a…
Affective (re)orientations in online discussions on the threat of violence posed by migrants
2020
Online discussions are rife with fear-evoking images and meaning making that highlight a perceived threat to the security of European nations and their inhabitants posed by migrants’ violence in the wake of increased immigration. This paper examines the role of emotions in shaping anti-immigration views as a response to the threat of violence attached to migrants in online conversations. Using a dataset of Finnish online discussion threads from 2015 to 2017 that were prompted by extensive media attention paid to various cases of violent crime in which migrants were suspects, we particularly analyse the affective dynamics of interpellation processes wherein discussants are invited to adopt a…
Algebre, Gettoni, Enunciati
2021
The paper aims at describing some differences between the formal languages of Mathematics and the features of Natural Language
Allo-repetition in Academic Settings. Cooperation, Understanding Co-construction and Knowledge Negotiation in the Medical Section of the ELFA Corpus
2015
In recent years, spoken academic ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) has been an object of in- creasing interest in linguistic and communication studies thanks to the position of academia as “one of the domains which have most eagerly adopted English as their common language in in- ternational communication” (Mauranen 2006a: 146) 1. In a context where different linguistic and cultural backgrounds come together, clarity and explicitness play a prominent role. In this respect, ELF research has paid much attention to the importance of communicative strategies, the most prominent of which is repetition. ELF studies on repetition have been carried out in several do- mains, including academia. Withi…
Les revues professionnelles comme corpus ? Un mode d'accès privilégié au spécialisé professionnel, à son discours et à sa culture
2016
International audience; La proposition, inscrite dans l’axe b de l’appel, a pour objet le « spécialisé professionnel » envisagé, à la suite de Petit (2010), comme l’une des formes d’existence du spécialisé à côté du spécialisé académique, prototypiquement réalisé dans le discours de recherche propre à une discipline, et du spécialisé « du troisième type », c’est-à-dire le spécialisé en dehors de son champ de référence. L’objet d’étude ainsi défini rejoint donc les conceptions de Gunnarsson (2009) et sera abordé dans une perspective méthodologique en posant la question de ses modalités d’accès, des modes de construction possibles des corpus correspondants et de leur potentiel pour approcher,…
Le discours du guide-conférencier comme marqueur d'identité d'une institution touristique : l'apport d'un corpus oral authentique
2018
International audience; Cet article propose une analyse outillée d'un type de discours rarement étudié dans les travaux sur la communication touristique : les visites-conférences. Il s'inscrit dans une linguistique située des discours spécialisés et vise à modéliser, à partir de données authentiques, le protocole discursif sous-jacent à ces interactions, avec pour objectif de mettre au jour les récurrences pouvant être interprétées comme marqueurs de l'identité institutionnelle du guide. Après avoir circonscrit le cadre méthodologique retenu et présenté le corpus inédit compilé, la section principale propose des études de cas illustrant comment une analyse à la fois qualitative et quantitat…