Discourse stance

Berman, Ruth A.; Ragnarsdóttir, Hrafnhildur; Strömqvist, Sven

doi:10.1075/wll.5.2.06ber

Cited by 82 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Hebrew has three main kinds of constructions that lack a surface lexical subject : impersonal, generic, and specific. Following the distinction proposed for analysis of ' discourse ' stance in Berman, Ragnarsdóttir & Strömqvist (2002), these null subject constructions can be ranked in terms of relative ' generality of reference', as illustrated in (1a) to (1c) below.…”

Section: Subjectless Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic indicators of inter-genre differentiation in later language development

Berman

Nir-Sagiv

2004

J. Child Lang.

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A B S T R A C TThe paper examines two types of texts, personal experience narratives and expository discussions, dealing with the shared theme of interpersonal conflict. Both were produced by the same 80 subjects, participants in a crosslinguistic study on developing literacy : gradeschoolers aged 9; 0 to 10 ; 0, twelve-to-thirteen-year-old junior high school students, sixteen-to-seventeen-year-old high school students, and graduate-level university students. The study reported here aims to demonstrate that inter-genre differentiation is evident from an early age and is reflected by distinct forms of expression across different interlocking linguistic systems. In keeping with the focus on relations between linguistic forms and discourse functions that motivates our study, we further aim to show how particular grammatical elements can fulfil different discourse functions across development. To this end, we analysed several different lexical and morphosyntactic constructions in 160 Hebrew-language texts as diagnostic of inter-genre distinctiveness : subjectless constructions ; verbless copular clauses ; verb types and the temporal categories of verb tense and mood, including lexical expressions of modality in the two genres. Results show that narratives are clearly distinguished from expository texts along all these dimensions ; these distinctions are evident from the youngest age group we considered ; and with age, inter-genre differentiation emerges as more moderately dichotomous. We concluded from this that maturely proficient text construction is able to combine expository-type [*] The authors are indebted to two anonymous reviewers, and to the editor and action editor of the journal for their detailed and helpful comments. Their insights were invaluable in revising the paper. The authors alone are responsible for inadequacies that remain.

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Section: Subjectless Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic indicators of inter-genre differentiation in later language development

Berman

Nir-Sagiv

2004

J. Child Lang.

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“…In contrast, children do not manifest command of expository text construction until high school age, and only from adolescence on are they able to organize the information in their expository texts hierarchically, around a well-defined introductory opening, then to develop key themes presented earlier in the body of the text, and to reach a final summary or conclusion deriving from the contents of the preceding discourse (Berman, 2002, in press;Berman & Verhoeven, 2002;Nippold, 2002). By this age, children are also able to distinguish clearly in linguistic expression between narrative and expository texts -for example, in use of verb tense, mood, and aspect (preference for past tense and perfective aspect in narratives and reliance on the timeless present and irrealis modalities in expository texts) ; in forms of reference (use of personal pronouns and other means for specific reference in narrative texts compared with reliance on generic pronouns and impersonal constructions in expository texts) ; in voice (more use of passive and middle voice constructions in expository than in narrative texts) ; and in lexical selection (more dynamic predicates in narratives, greater reliance on abstract nominals in expository texts) (Berman, Ragnarsdóttir & Strömqvist, 2002 ;Tolchinsky, Johansson & Zamora, 2002).…”

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confidence: 99%

Morphosyntactic constructs in the development of spoken and written Hebrew text production

Ravid

Zilberbuch

2003

J. Child Lang.

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This study examined the distribution of two Hebrew nominal structures – N–N compounds and denominal adjectives – in spoken and written texts of two genres produced by 90 native-speaking participants in three age groups: eleven/twelve-year-olds (6th graders), sixteen/seventeen-year-olds (11th graders), and adults. The two constructions are later linguistic acquisitions, part of the profound lexical and syntactic changes that occur in language development during the school years. They are investigated in the context of learning how modality (speech vs. writing) and genre (biographical vs. expository texts) affect the production of continuous discourse.Participants were asked to speak and write about two topics, one biographical, describing the life of a public figure or of a friend; and another, expository, discussing one of ten topics such as the cinema, cats, or higher academic studies. N–N compounding was found to be the main device of complex subcategorization in Hebrew discourse, unrelated to genre. Denominal adjectives are a secondary subcategorizing device emerging only during the late teen years, a linguistic resource untapped until very late, more restricted to specific text types than N–N compounding, and characteristic of expository writing. Written texts were found to be denser than spoken texts lexically and syntactically as measured by number of novel N–N compounds and denominal adjectives per clause, and in older age groups this difference was found to be more pronounced. The paper contributes to our understanding of how the syntax/lexicon interface changes with age, modality and genre in the context of later language acquisition.

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“…Where, then, does the difference between spoken and written narration reside? Related to the above discussion, the spoken version is closer to canonical conflict narration instance, although it, too, shifts towards the general, non-dynamic, less agentive, detached pole on the stance spectrum (see an extensive review in Berman, Ragnarsdóttir & Strömqvist 2002). The spoken version presents more of an actual story rather than the expository-like discussion of the written version, with events told in storytime rather than from the external perch of storytelling time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…This involved the analysis of the tenor or 'flavor' of the text as expressed by the range of linguistic devices appearing in it (Biber 2006;Du Bois 2007). In the current context, we took as a reference point the typically specific, dynamic, concrete, proximally positioned, and immediate stance of personal-experience narratives (Berman, Ragnarsdóttir & Strömqvist 2002;Hyland & Sancho Guinda 2013). Thus, we looked for linguistic markers of stance, such as the multiple personal pronouns and past tense verbs in the spoken version of Content Unit 1 (Inter-textual introduction).…”

Section:  Levels Of Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Spoken and written narration in Hebrew

Ravid¹,

Chen-Djemal²

2015

WL&L

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The study is premised on speech and writing relying on differently coordinated temporal frames of communication, aiming to pinpoint the conceptual and linguistic differences between spoken and written Hebrew narration. This is a case study presenting in-depth psycholinguistic analyses of the oral and written versions of a personal-experience story produced by the same adult narrator in Hebrew, taking into accountdiscursive functions,discourse stance,linguistic expression, andinformation flow,processing,and cohesion. Findings of parallel spoken and written content units presenting the same narrative information point to the interface of the narrative genre with the spoken and written modalities, together with the mature cognitive, linguistic, and social skills and experience of adulthood. Both spoken and written personal-experience adult narrative versions have a non-personal, non-specific, detached stance, though the written units are more abstract and syntactically complex. Adult narrating skill encompasses both modalities, recruiting different devices for the expression of cohesion.

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Discourse stance

Cited by 82 publications

References 9 publications

Linguistic indicators of inter-genre differentiation in later language development

Linguistic indicators of inter-genre differentiation in later language development

Morphosyntactic constructs in the development of spoken and written Hebrew text production

Spoken and written narration in Hebrew

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