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Computational Models of Discourse Analysis

Computational Models of Discourse Analysis. Carolyn Penstein Ros é Language Technologies Institute/ Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Warm-Up. Pick either Greg or David’s analysis from the discussion board Evaluate its validity (recall discussion in Chapter 8) in terms of:

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Computational Models of Discourse Analysis

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  1. Computational Models of Discourse Analysis Carolyn Penstein Rosé Language Technologies Institute/ Human-Computer Interaction Institute

  2. Warm-Up • Pick either Greg or David’s analysis from the discussion board • Evaluate its validity (recall discussion in Chapter 8) in terms of: • Convergence, Agreement, Coverage, Linguistic details • How many of these are you able to address from what is given? For those that are not, what would it take to be able to do so?

  3. Example Analysis in Book (Ch 10) • Notice how discourse analysis is question driven, even in the design for the data collection • How does their different participation in Discourses perpetuate societal disparities? • How do you imagine this relating to computational approaches to discourse analysis? • Contrasting working class and upper-middle class teenagers • Two styles of interview for each kid so we can view them in two different “socially situated identities” • Home life • Academically related issues • Researchers “shadowed” the interviewees in their lives to get insight into “life beyond the discourse”

  4. Building Tasks • According to Gee’s theory, whenever we speak or write, we are constructing 7 areas of reality • What we build: Significance, Practices, Identities, Relationships, Politics, Connections, Sign systems and knowledge • How we build them: Social languages, Socially situated identities, Discourses, Conversations, Figured worlds, intertextuality

  5. Evaluating Validity (p123-124) • Note that an analysis is an argument, not just a bottom up “laundry list” of answers to 42 questions. • Convergence • To what extent do your answers to the 42 questions offer consistent support for your hypothesis • Agreement • Face Validity: do members of the discourse community you are studying agree with your analysis • Interrater-reliability: do multiple analysts agree with your analysis • Coverage • To what extent is your “model” generalizable to more data than what you specifically looked at or discussed? • Linguistic Details • To what extent is the analysis tied to evidence from specific form-function correspondences that native speakers agree exist?

  6. Elements of Context • Significance: things and people made more or less significant through the text • Practices: ritualized activities and how are they being enacted through the text (for example, lecturing or mentoring) • Identities: manner in which things and people are being cast in a role through the text • Relationships: style of social relationship, like level of formality • Politics: how “social goods” are being distributed, who is responsible for the flow, where is it going • Connections: connections and disconnections between things and people, e.g., what ideas are related, how are things causally connected, what is affecting what? • Sign Systems and Knowledge: languages, social languages, and ways of knowing, what ways of communicating and knowing are treated as standard and acceptable in the context, e.g., that you’re expected to speak in English in class

  7. Significance • Things and people made more or less significant through the text • Eric: significance of the number of rings, gender of the narrator • David: (1) the races of elf, dwarf, and man, emphasized and presented in brief caricatures. (2) the One Ring as a focus for and an agent of Bad Things (3) Middle Earth, as the setting (and home of the "free peoples")

  8. Significance • Things and people made more or less significant through the text • Greg: in the setting up, the repeated naming of things tells us whether they are important for the rest or not. We expect to see isildur, narsil, gollum, the ring, Sauron, the elves, dwarves and men, and bilbo again • Me: The focus of the text is on rings as symbols of governance. (A)The social language of a historical telling (B) The figured world of “power corrupts” helps us understand the significance of the ring’s passing

  9. Practices • Ritualized activities and how they are practiced in the text • Are these all practiced within the text? Are they discourse practices or practices within the world? Is there a difference? • Eric: Narrating • David: Betrayal and war • Greg: What does the ring do • Iris: practices related to leading races and earning rings • Beka: Belief system of the world allowing for supernatural occurrences

  10. Identities • Manner in which things or people are cast in a role (kinds of people) • Where do characteristics fit in? • Eric/Beka: Narrator/Storyteller • David/Beka: Speaker and listener along with their characteristics (presented in voice over, in a whisper) • Greg: Narrator as omniscient, men as weak, Hobbits as “different” • Martin: Within this fragment there are two types of audience. First of all there is the audience who will see the visualized script in the theaters and then there is the production crew who has to interpret the encoding

  11. Relationships • Style of relating, level of formality • David: a king as the leader of and placeholder for an army (and The Free Peoples): Isildur is the only good-guy combatant named by the speaker, the only face in the crowd. • Greg: “so far pretty much only the enactments of identities - let's hope we get a love story at some point” • Iris: Relationships amongst the races (each is described with their greatest flaws/strengths and all are separated by race)

  12. Politics • The flow of information, goods and services • David: the rings are emblematic of control and power ("the will and the power to govern"), the pursuit of which is cast as a sinister vice (especially in the hands of Men, "holding-[it]-close as a precious secret"). The "distribution" of these "social goods" are achieved through violence and deceit - the rings are given as a trick, Isildur claims the One Ring as a battle-trophy, and the Ring itself betrays him to his death. • Greg: good and evil, where different races fit in • What about the flow of information from the storyteller to us?

  13. Connections • What is associated or disassociated, causally connected or not? • Beka: Connections between the ring and characters in the story. • David: the One Ring persists through (and is implied to instigate) the events that are described, connecting this history to the present-day timeline of the listener. • Greg: Hobbits are a bit different - the ring is inanimate but has a mind of its own • Me: Ring/Sauron/Power --- the agency of the ring

  14. Sign Systems • Languages, social languages, symbols • Martin: The script accesses some common culturally pervasive semaphors through the usage of well established intertextuality (e.g. White flowers are scattered among the Well seeded grasses. An idyllic setting at the end of a long hot summer.) and figured worlds • David: Elvish is old and mysterious, its use implies that the English that overlays and follows it is a translation, and belongs to the same (old and mysterious) world as it is. • Greg: is the voiceover and explanation of the imagery or is the imagery a depiction of the voiceover? How do we know that this is the whole truth?

  15. Building Tasks • According to Gee’s theory, whenever we speak or write, we are constructing 7 areas of reality • What we build: Significance, Practices, Identities, Relationships, Politics, Connections, Sign systems and knowledge • How we build them: Social languages, Socially situated identities, Discourses, Conversations, Figured worlds, intertextuality

  16. Revisiting Styles of Analysis • Eric: Use analytic tools to identify “components of meaning” and then assemble them bottom-up • David: Zen out your interpretation and then use analytic tools to explain where the interpretation came from • Convergence • answers to the 42 questions offer consistent support for your hypothesis • Agreement • Face Validity and Interrater-reliability • Coverage • generalizability • Linguistic Details • analysis tied to evidence from specific form-function correspondences

  17. Research Connection: Social Interpretation of Code Switching English-Tswana-Afrikaans-English (Casaburi 1994) [An extract from the inaugural address of Matsephe Casaburi, the first woman to be sworn in as provincial premier (i.e. governor) in South Africa’s Free State Province. Tswana is in italics. 'YOU CANNOT DISCOVER NEW OCEANS UNTIL YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO LOSE SIGHT OF LAND. KE TLA SEBEDISA TSEBO YA KA GO BONTSHA GORE KE TLA KGONA GO KAONAPATSA PROVINCE YA RONA. ONS MOET SOOS BROERS EN SUSTERS SAAMLEEF EN NIE SOOS SWAPE SAAM STERF NIE. THANK YOU.' (TRANSLATION: “You cannot discover new oceans until you have the courage to lose sight of land. I will use my knowledge to show that we are capable of improving our province. We must live together like brothers and sisters and not die together like fools. Thank you.”)

  18. Questions?

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