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Conversationalization in public discourse

Tryntje Pasma

Kirsten Vis

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Overview

• Introduction• Conversationalization• VU-Ster project

• Metaphor• Subjectivity

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Conversationalization

• Hypothesis by Norman Fairclough (CDA)

• “the modelling of public discourse upon the discursive practices of ordinary life, ‘conversational’ practices in a broad sense” (Fairclough, 1994: 253)

• movement towards norms of ‘casual’ conversation • in university brochures, news reports etc.

• Example:Di’s butler bows out . . . in sneakers.(headline Daily Mirror)

• Conversational vocabulary• Graphic devices

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Di’s butler bows out . . . in sneakers.

• description of certain stylistic markers as ‘conversational’ is problematic (Pearce (2005))• Which word is conversational?

• ‘bows out’ (vs. ‘resigns’)?• ‘sneakers’ (vs. ‘trainers’)?• ‘Di’ (vs. ‘Diana’ / ‘Princess Diana’)?

• Lexical density• Tense

Intuitively plausible but intuitive approach

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VU-Ster project• Goal

• empirically test Fairclough’s conversationalization hypothesis for Dutch public discourse

• Corpus analysis• Dutch news from 1950 <-> 2002• Dutch news from 2002 <-> Dutch conversations from 2002

• News• 1950: 30,000w• 2002: 50,000w• 5 national newspapers; different sections

• Conversations• 50,000w from Corpus of Spoken Dutch• 30 complete spontaneous conversations

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To metaphor…

Conversationalization includes: colloquial vocabulary; phonic, prosodic and paralinguistic

features of colloquial language; direct address (you and we); repetition; lack of subject-verb agreement

Biber’s features of involved vs informational production involved: causative subordination; wh-questions/clauses; etc.

Can same be observed for metaphor? seen as conventional, stylistic property, rhetorical effect

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Metaphor in conversation

Studies of metaphor in conversations Focus on certain forms and functions (Cameron 2003, 2008;

Drew & Holt 1995) in certain settings

Idiomatic expressions Delexicalised verbs (lexical density) Position in sentence

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Idiomatic expressions

Their role in English conversations Cheshire (2005): fixed expressions function as a means to

help speakers keep up with the demand of online speech production

Drew and Holt (1995): idiomatic expressions in naturally occurring conversations seem to be used predominantly for topic summarizing and topic termination purposes

Their role in Dutch conversations Termination and summary function; topic transition and

start of new topic

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Example

78: ja je gaat vanavond maar weer flink te s aan de zuip. 79: ik heb een kater vandaag gewoon. 80: ongelooflijk. 81: ik heb uh helse pijnen doorstaan. 82: ik ben nog maar net uit b uit bed. 83: net nou eigenlijk net. 84: ja dat kasteelbier van jou dat uh dat ga dat hakt erin als een

kasteel de volgende dag. 85: ja die zijn inderdaad genadeloos ja. 86: ik heb trouwens uh... 87: ben net even naar de videotheek geweest. 88: en daar lag gewoon Lars Von Trier The Idiots bij de videotheek. 89: bij in de vijfhoek. (fn000496)

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Idioms in news similar?

Occur more often in news than in conversation roughly 1 per 500 words

Functions are similar a lot of the examples fit within termination, summary,

transition function

Example:

Bijbelimporteur drijft wig tussen China en de VS(Vbu2)

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Position of metaphor

Do metaphor-related words occur at beginning, middle or end of a sentence

What is expected? Are expectations different for conversation and news?

What are the results? Are results different for conversation and news?

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Results conversation

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Results news

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Form, function, position

Comparison between conversations and news patterns on different levels diachronic element for conversationalization

with respect to form and position

Conceptual analysis of metaphor patterns in registers

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To subjectivity• Definition:

the degree to which the presence of the speaker (/writer) is felte.g. when speaker gives opinion or shows (un-)certainty

• Why subjectivity?• Presence of speaker in conversations

• Examples:• It is a beautiful city.• Maybe your friend will come to the party.• John must be ill.

• SPEAKER subjectivity

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Analysis• Two levels

1. Text: coherence relations

2. Sentence / word: lexico-grammatical

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1. Text level: coherence relations

• Relations between text parts like Cause-Consequence, Contrast, Evidence etc.

• Capture part of what makes a text a text (rather than a random set of sentences)

• Starting point:

Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST; Mann & Thompson, 1988)• fairly exhaustive list of 24 well-defined relations

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Subjective relations• 10 subjective relations

1. Antithesis2. Concession3. Concessive opposition4. Enablement5. Enumeration6. Evidence7. Evaluation8. Interpretation9. Justify10. Motivation

• Conversationalization hypothesis:• The relative amount of subjective relations has increased

over time.

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Subjective relations in news

1950 2002 Chi2

per 10,000 w per 10,000 w

Antithesis 7.6 6.8 0.138149

Concession 28.5 29.3 0.033829

Concessive opposition 12.8 8.2 3.431172

Enablement 0.0 1.6 ***

Enumeration 4.3 5.4 0.39456

Evaluation 10.0 6.4 2.558607

Evidence 26.1 37.8 5.966287

Interpretation 16.2 6.4 15.36982

Justify 1.9 0.2 ***

Motivation 0.0 0.0 ***

107.5 102.2 0.396887

increase

decrease

no change

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Conclusion coherence relations

• Overall number of subjective relations has not changed significantly, but the nature of the textual subjectivity has:

‘Old’ newspapers interpret more,

‘new’ newspapers prove / conclude more

• Explanation:• back to texts

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2. Sentence/word level• Following Bekker (2006), Scheibman (2002), Wiebe (2005)

• Intensifiers• very, enormously

• Modal verbs• must

• Modal adverbs• maybe, presumably, certainly

• Verbs of cognition• think, say

• First and second person pronouns• I, you

• Direct questions• uncertainty; listener is addressed

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Subjective elements

  1950 2002 Chi2 conversations

  10,000 w 10,000 w   10,000 w

1p sg pron 8.6 32.0 32.6702 348.4

1p pl pron 21.9 22.7 0.049368 84.3

2p sg pron 4.8 15.2 13.30681 248.6

2p pl pron 0.0 0.0 *** 10.2

modal verb 36.7 42.6 1.29107 57.3

modal adverb 33.3 32.3 0.048473 57.7

particle 76.1 90.3 3.530204 196.0

verb of cognition

53.2 35.0 12.38341 66.0

intensifier 249.1 250.8 0.017301 792.4

question 13.8 8.0 5.241389 207.4

deictic 27.6 23.7 0.901491 45.5

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Conclusion lexico-grammatical analysis• Only marginal support for conversationalization

hypothesis• More research is needed

• Verbs of cognition• only 1st person

• Direct speech• exclude character speech• not straight-forward: e.g. Semi-Direct Speech

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Conclusion lexico-grammatical analysis• Only marginal support for conversationalization

hypothesis• More research is needed

• Verbs of cognition• only 1st person

• Direct speech• exclude character speech• not straight-forward: e.g. Semi-Direct Speech• De enige werkelijke oplossing is de sluiting van het terrein,

stelt Molenman. (Nbi1)

The only real solution is closing the area, says Molenman.• De Ned. marine had een zeer gunstige indruk op hem

gemaakt, zo zei hij. (TRObu2)

The Dutch navy had made a very favourable impression on him, he said.

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What’s next?• Refine lexico-grammatical analysis• Automatic lexico-grammatical analysis of larger

corpus• Qualitative studies

• conversation 1950• analysis of perspective• etc.

• Reception experiment• Possibly automatic analysis of adjectives and

nouns with help from Computational Lexicology & Terminology Lab

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Thank you!