English Grammar

Downing, Angela; Locke, Philip

doi:10.4324/9780203087640

Cited by 130 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…It essentially denarrates a process. Downing and Locke (2006), in the same vein, see it as a grammatical metaphor that distances us from events, raising the representation of a situation from the iconic to a high level of abstraction. Politicians generally employ 'nominalizations' as they acquit them of the responsibility of saying who does what to whom and when.…”

Section: 'I' and 'Me'mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

“If I Could Make It, You Too Can Make It!” Personal Pronouns in Political Discourse: A CDA of President Jonathan’s Presidential Declaration Speech

Bello¹

2013

IJEL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

AbstractsThis paper attempts to use Critical Discourse Analysis to unravel the complex webs of political associations and identities that go into political speeches of Nigerian presidents using one as a model. Nigeria has always been plagued by leadership problems and a lack of critical appreciation of crises of interests that abound in our political sphere. This article aims to offer a linguistic evaluation of a given political discourse in Nigeria in the mode of close engagement with the constructions and context of the discourse. It shows how personal pronouns are used by President Jonathan in his presidential declaration of interest speech to construct various identities and to transpose sentiments and sympathies in order to probably promote a political agenda. The use of Fairclough's (1989) three-tier analytical framework, i.e., description, interpretation and explanation helps to reconstruct the import and real ideological thrust of the speech. The description level shows the linguistic associations, the interpretation level, the pragmatic and intertexual, while the explanation level shows how the socio-cultural practices in the Nigerian society are drawn upon to reflect in these two in a dialectical cycle. In essence, this study, in a systematic way, shows in general how ideologies in the status quo are (or can be) sustained and reproduced by discursively supplanting the consciousness of the people. The pronouns used in the speech end up creating identities that foster the president's political interest and sustain the state of affairs while at the same time mystifying the real class and power struggle at the political center.

show abstract

Section: 'I' and 'Me'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Downing and Locke (2006) classify the process 'fall' as an involuntary intransitive process. Using such a verb clearly hides the actual politicking involved in power transition and appearing as if 'power' on its own comes to him rather than the other way round.…”

Section: 'I' and 'Me'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“If I Could Make It, You Too Can Make It!” Personal Pronouns in Political Discourse: A CDA of President Jonathan’s Presidential Declaration Speech

Bello¹

2013

IJEL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Noun clauses (Yule, 2006, 160) are referred to as nominal clauses by Biber et al (1999, 193) or complement clauses by Trask (1993, 10) and Hurford (1994, 232), for example. The term 'adjective clause' or 'adjectival clause' seems to have been abandoned by linguists in favour of the term 'relative clause' (Biber et al, 1999;Downing, Locke, 2006;Yule, 2006, etc.). The term 'adverbial clauses' is generally accepted and has been widely used by linguists.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The dependent clause that follows the independent clause is normally separated by a comma in Latvian complex sentences (Blinkena, 2009), whereas comma use/non-use in English complex sentences (Downing and Locke 2006) is related to the semantic interdependency between the independent and the dependent clause. These and other differences in comma use have been previously discussed by Farneste (2006aFarneste ( , 2006b.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Comma use in Latvian and English complex sentences differs significantly and this can cause major problems to Latvian users of English. In particular, the dependent clause that follows the independent clause is normally separated by a comma in Latvian complex sentences (Blinkena, 2009), whereas comma use/non-use in English complex sentences (Downing, Locke, 2006) depends on the semantic relation between the independent and the dependent clause. These comma use differences, as previous research reveals (Farneste, 2006b), can cause challenges in English complex sentence punctuation to students whose native language is Latvian.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Complex Sentences and their Punctuation in English Texts Composed by Latvian Students

Vincela¹

2016

Žmogus Ir Žodis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Summary. Comma use in Latvian and English complex sentences differs significantly and this can cause major problems to Latvian users of English. In particular, the dependent clause that follows the independent clause is normally separated by a comma in Latvian complex sentences (Blinkena, 2009), whereas comma use/non-use in English complex sentences (Downing, Locke, 2006) depends on the semantic relation between the independent and the dependent clause. These comma use differences, as previous research reveals (Farneste, 2006b), can cause challenges in English complex sentence punctuation to students whose native language is Latvian.The goal of this study is to research Latvian students' punctuation of English complex sentences extracted from a corpus of essays. The analysis covers the cases of nominal and relative dependent clauses that are tightly related to the independent clause they follow. Normally, as Downing and Locke (2006) note, such dependent clauses are not separated by a comma in English texts. The analysis shows that a strong semantic relation between the clauses has been relevantly recognised by students in numerous examples, which they have relevantly punctuated. However, the results also reveal unnecessary separations of relative and nominal clauses from the independent clause by a comma. These findings call for the focusing of students' attention on the role of the semantic relation of clauses in English complex sentence punctuation by contrasting these sentences with the relevant complex sentences found in Latvian texts. In addition, further analysis of various sentence types and their punctuation in student-composed texts of different communicative purposes is required.

show abstract

Grammar and Evaluation

Downing¹

2015

The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The grammar of a language like English provides language users with linguistic (lexicogrammatical, specifically morphosyntactic) resources to express meaning, construct sentences and texts, and to communicate with other speakers. Prosodic, phraseological, and discourse‐pragmatic features are also included in numerous grammars. These grammatical resources are used by speakers to express evaluation.

show abstract

English Grammar

Cited by 130 publications

References 0 publications

“If I Could Make It, You Too Can Make It!” Personal Pronouns in Political Discourse: A CDA of President Jonathan’s Presidential Declaration Speech

“If I Could Make It, You Too Can Make It!” Personal Pronouns in Political Discourse: A CDA of President Jonathan’s Presidential Declaration Speech

Complex Sentences and their Punctuation in English Texts Composed by Latvian Students

Grammar and Evaluation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About