This study examines the language situation in the media discourse on The Opposite Direction, al-Jazeera’s flagship talk show hosted by Faisal al-Qasim. It investigates the phenomenon of code-switching between Standard Arabic and different spoken vernaculars during the talk exchange. Theories of code-switching proposed by Gumperz, Giles, and Myers-Scotton et al. are introduced after the history of Arabic discourse analysis is briefly discussed. In order to explain under what conditions code-switching happens, I choose to observe and analyze instances of code-switching in four episodes of the program, focusing on the communicative functions and motivations for language choice. The applicability of relevant theories is examined to find the theories that best account for speakers’ engaging in code-switching in the pan-Arab media discourse. / text

The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the representation of China in British television documentaries broadcast between 1980 and 2000, focusing on historical documentaries. The thesis addresses, as its primary research questions and on the basis of substantial database, what is represented, how that representation is realised, and the social, historical influences which contextualise and underpin the representation of China. These questions relating to textual representation are framed within the wider context of Sino-Western relations, Western self-perceptions and conceptions of China. The study aims to reveal mechanisms of textual representation by concentrating on two main dimensions: the internal narrative structures and key discursive formations of the documentary text (including visuals), and structures of power relations operating to shape the representation in both the textual domain of meaning mediation and institutional domain of documentary production. Two aspects of the representation are foregrounded: China as a civilisation and China as a Communist `other'. The thesis focuses primarily on the narrative as a methodology in approaching representation, as documentary achieves meaning mainly through the stories it tells. Two dimensions of narrative are explored: a structuralist dimension drawing on theories developed by Propp and Silverstone, and a discursive dimension which is framed within Foucault's concept of power and knowledge. Extensive primary research established the database for the study, which is made up of 170 documentaries broadcast during the sample period between 1980 and 2000, and 18 field interviews with key personnel in broadcasting and production companies. The thesis argues that the British television documentary representation presents a largely Western understanding of China filtered through, among other things, selfperceptions and conceptions of the `other', and mediated by various sources of power. The process of representing `what is China' is enmeshed with the process of constructing how China should be viewed. The result of this social construction of truth and knowledge is that certain values, convictions, and ideologies are reinforced and reproduced in the vital domain of documentary representation

The present investigation is a mixed method study combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to explore the use of "como" as a discourse marker in the Spanish spoken in Southern Arizona, based on a corpus of twenty-four sociolinguistic interviews of young male and female Spanish-English bilinguals. In a data set of 1148 occurrences of "como," 21.3% fulfill a focus discourse function, 2.2% fulfill a quotative discourse function, and 76.5% fulfill a lexical function. The analysis of young Spanish-English bilinguals using "como" in Spanish to fulfill discourse functions of "like" in English sheds light on how bilinguals structure discourse by drawing from both languages. The results of this study on the diffusion of the focus and quotative "como" to another Spanish-English bilingual community add to our knowledge of how discourse markers can travel both within and between communities and across languages.

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The topic chain is an important concept used in narratives. However, its content is not very clear. This thesis mainly investigates a kind of topic chain in which the topic is introduced by Locative-Verb-Noun Phrase (LVNP) sentences. LVNP sentences have a locative phrase as the surface subject, followed by the main verb with the suffix zhe (the duration marker, DUR) or le (the perfect tense marker, PRT), and then the subject or the object. Following structural analysis and by surveying actual data--a novel, we examined and based on the distributions of ZA, PA, and NA which occur in topic chains to generalize three basic patterns and one derived pattern to explain their inner structures. The findings show that topic chains can be categorized according to the patterns they show. Besides, different types of topic chains show different inner structures. By describing the inner structures, the topic chain is not just a concept at all and we learn its actual content more clearly.

Although the United Kingdom is committed to the protection of refugees and the integration of migrants into society, many aspects of the asylum system actually prevent access to refuge or create barriers to integration. Extant research on this topic has often paid little attention to the role of discourse in legitimising particular asylum policies and notions of integration or has otherwise neglected the social functions of asylum seeker and refugee discourse. This thesis addressed these gaps by exploring the discourse of majority group members and asylum seekers / refugees, paying attention to the relationship between place and identity and the ways that notions of intercultural contact were constructed. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with seventeen people who work to support asylum seekers and refugees, fifteen asylum seekers / refugees and thirteen Scottish locals who reside in the areas where asylum seekers are housed. The data were analysed using discourse analysis, focusing on the ways that particular narratives and descriptions function to justify or criticise certain policies or sets of social relations. The analysis illustrated that the presence of asylum seekers could be justified through portraying their countries of origin as dangerous and the host society as problem-free, whereas the presence of asylum seekers was resisted through portraying the host society as ‘full’. When discussing antagonism towards asylum seekers, interviewees constructed this as stemming from ‘ignorance’, which functioned to portray the behaviour as unwarranted while emphasising the potential for positive social change. Similarly, asylum seekers’ and refugees’ accounts of violence tended to deny or downplay racial motivation, or produce accusations of racism in a tentative or reluctant manner, implying that a ‘taboo’ on racial accusations exists even in cases of violence. The analysis also illustrated how constructions of ‘integration’ perform social actions, such as highlighting the responsibility of asylum seekers or the host society. The analysis showed how the refugee status determination process could be criticised through references to a ‘culture of disbelief’, claims that it was racist or portrayals of cultural differences that undermine the process. The right of asylum seekers to work was advocated through portraying it as consistent with the national interest. Aspects of the asylum system related to destitution, detention and deportation were criticised through portraying them as ‘tools’ that treated asylum seekers inhumanely and by constructing asylum seekers in humane ways such as ‘families’ or as ‘human’. Overall the results illustrated that, in the context of asylum seekers, notions of identity and place are linked so that constructions of place constitute identity, in the sense of portraying people as legitimately in need of refuge, and these constructions can work to justify or criticise asylum policies. Results also illustrated that victims of seemingly racist violence may construct their accounts in ways that deny or downplay racial motivations, making racist behaviour difficult to identify and challenge. The analyses suggested that ‘two-way’ constructions of integration may function to overcome the view that asylum seekers have ‘special privileges’ over other members of the community and emphasise the responsibilities of the host society. Portraying punitive asylum policies as ‘inhumane’, and constructing asylum seekers in humane ways, provides a potential strategy for reforming aspects of the asylum system.

This thesis contributes to the body of research on listenership. It accomplishes this through an investigation of the functions of laughter in the listening behaviour of participants in Japanese interaction. The majority of studies concerning conversational interactions have focused on the role of the speaker rather than on that of the listener. Notable work on the listener's active role in conversation includes research done by Goffman (1981), Goodwin (1986) and Gardner (2001). Laughter research has shifted from an early interest in the causes of laughter to an interest in how it is organised and how it functions in conversational interaction. Despite many studies on listenership and laughter as distinct areas of research, there have been relatively few studies on how laughter contributes to listenership behaviour. In order to explore the relationship between listenership and laughter, I used a corpus of spoken interactional data. This data consists of conversations between Japanese participants (university students and teachers) who were asked to tell each other stories about a surprising moment that they had experienced. The corpus was constructed in such a way as to make it possible to compare (1) solidary (student-student) and non-solidary (student-teacher) interactions and (2) higher status story-teller (teacher telling student) and lower status story-teller (student telling teacher) interactions. Qualitative methods (drawing on a variety of techniques of discourse analysis) were used to discover laughter patterns and functions in relation to the role of the listener both at the micro-level and in relation to the macro-structure of the surprise story-telling. Quantitative methods were used to analyse the relationship between laughter patterns/functions and the above interaction types (solidary/non-solidary and lower status/higher status interactions). I found, firstly, at the micro-level of analysis, that the listener’s laughter contributed to the co-production of conversation through functions that included: responding/reacting, constituting and maintaining. There were two patterns of the listener’s laughter that were motivated by the speaker’s laughter invitation: acceptance, and declination. Acceptance involved the functions of responding/reacting or constituting, with the listener’s laughter functioning to support mutual understanding and bonding between the participants. Declination could be related to signal the listener’s lack of support for the speaker, however, the listener used the third option, the ambivalence. This shows that despite the absence of laughter, a verbal acknowledgement or understanding response was alternatively used. In a problematic situation, the listener’s laughter was found to reveal the listener’s third contribution: the maintaining function, helping to resolve an ongoing interactional problem. At the macro-level of analysis, based on the three phases in a surprise story, I found that laughter played a key role at phase boundaries (1st: preface/telling; 2nd: telling/response; and 3rd: response/next topic). The laughter patterns and functions appeared in each boundary. The acceptance pattern was more frequent than other patterns in all of the boundaries. The responding/reacting and constituting functions mainly appeared in the acceptance. The patterns of laughter in a trouble context were rare because they only appeared in a trouble context. The maintaining function in such a context also occasionally occurred in order to repair the trouble situation. Looking at laughter in relation to the different interaction types, I found, lastly, that the solidary dyads tended to demonstrate acceptance (constituting the responding/reacting and constituting functions), while the non-solidary dyads had a greater tendency to show declination. In addition, the lower-ranked listeners tended to show ambivalence, while the higher-ranked listeners tended to be more flexible in showing either acceptance or declination. These findings suggest the existence of a relationship between laughter patterns/functions and politeness: a higher degree of solidarity and a lower degree of status can influence the display of acceptance patterns/functions and listenership behaviour; a lower degree of solidarity and a higher degree of status can indicate flexibility when choosing a response type. In a trouble situation, laughter in its various patterns/functions was used in all interaction types to recover resolutions to any impediments in the ongoing engagement. All in all, I found that laughter contributes to listenership, both through supporting affiliation and through helping to resolve ‘trouble’ situations. I showed how listenership expressed through laughter plays a role in negotiating, creating, and maintaining the relationship between the self and the other in mutual interactions. As implications, I finally indicated that such laughter activities as the display of listenership could be closely connected to the Japanese communication style.

Within the framework of communicative accommodation theory, this study investigates the phonostylistic behaviour of French native speakers engaged in casual conversation. It examines some of the features speakers use to structure their discourse, particularly prosodic responses to the interlocutor and interaction management devices.  Part One gives an outline of previous research in the fields of conversation analysis, prosodic analysis and accommodation theory.  These insights are developed in Part Two into a framework that allows investigation of the following hypotheses: Accommodation and prosodic variation at topic change: this study examines the role of accommodation and prosodic variation as they occur at topic change in four case studies.  The management role of the pause at theme change will operate above the consensual/non-consensual categories, and hence variation in terms of melodic difference will be greater at such pauses.  By examining the thematic structure as it is reflected in prosodic behaviour around the pause by both speakers, the study demonstrates that at topic change there is a marked difference in the size of melodic gap in Hz around the pause. Accommodation and prosodic variation by length of pause:  It is contended that in consensual dialogue, the longer the duration of the empty pause which divides two consecutive turns, (1) the less the difference in intensity (dB) between the two speakers, and (2) the greater the difference in f0 between them, despite differences in their own vocal range. In non-consensual dialogue, it is contended that in instances where dispute or thematic refusal occurs (as witnessed through lexical indices), inversion of the two hypotheses above is possible. It was found that speakers can converge by matching each other’s pitch or by following a speech pattern whereby they both rise at small but regular intervals forming a smooth pattern in general pitch direction.

This study combines autoethnographies of the author‘s school experience with narratives of school experience as related by adult students who were not successful in school. The study evolved into a narrative exploration of notions of success and failure as they are conceptualized in school settings. Evaluative assessment experiences were examined as the seeds of the 'story of the self' that was planted in each of us as we reflected upon, and constructed through language, the social world of our school experiences through story. Various aspects of the power dynamics inherent in assessment processes are also examined in the context of the narratives. The placement of the adult students‘ narratives alongside the autoethnographies of the researcher reveals fascinating similarities and differences among the ways that each participant conceptualized his/her evaluative school experience. / Graduate

School has an important role in contributing to digitalization, where digital tools can increase students' knowledge development. The aim of this study is to study how popular-historical podcasts can be used in history teaching at upper secondary level. Furthermore, the starting point for the study is to investigate how the content of podcasts can promote a historical awareness. The popular-historical podcasts is analyzed with the help of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discourse theory and Jürn Rüsen's theory of history awareness. In order to be able to fulfil the analysis and to understand the content, the study takes inspiration from a qualitative discourse analyzis. The results of the study show that the content of the podcasts in various ways promotes Rüsen's historical awareness and can contribute to promoting a historical awareness. They affect content as actors, causal relationships, connections to present and future, and different historical views. The results also show differences in the podcasts discourses where the P3 history is more easily understood and has a clearer story while the history podium's language is more difficult. Consequently, there is a struggle between how different characters can be determined. History awareness is affected in a clearer and broader way in the History podium and can therefore be considered to affect history awareness to a greater extent while P3 history promotes it in a more understandable way. The conclusion is that the podcasts can be used to promote history awareness and be used as digital teaching material.