There are critical questions we must engage in before we ever set foot or flag on Mars. Why do we go? How do we convince ourselves it is worth it? In this work, I will analyze the current discourse of Mars. Mars is legitimized as a place through a form of discourse whose roots can be traced back to earlier, colonial forms of discourse. Modernity acts as a normative force by limiting our language to established forms of discourse, like Hegelian notions of progress, while marginalizing other possibilities of narrative. The colonial gaze is only one possible way we have to understand Mars. What is necessary now is to perform the great Foucaultian task of seeking out lost narratives and lost knowledges of our past. I will examine how the power of narrative has been used to convince the public that we should go to Mars. Modernity has phenomenologically shaped Mars and our present discourse of Mars is the result of that metamorphosis. Narratives of science-fiction, science advocacy, special interest groups, and government bureaucracy reflect the modern notions that pervade Areological discourse, thereby promoting a colonial gaze of Mars. Modernity represents a way of seeing Mars that has been pushed upon us by history, eliminating alternate narratives of place through the nonnative practice of modern thinking.

Since 1999, migrants and refugees from across the Middle East and Northeastern Africa have squatted in makeshift camps in and around the strategic port city of Calais, France, hoping for the opportunity to stow away on a ferry or lorry to England. The inhabitants of these camps seek to engage the world in a dialogue, and although they speak a variety of languages, the voices the refugees and migrants in The Jungle of Calais raise through their protest placards and graffiti are more homogeneous. Like in many other protests, the languages of these messages are universal; they are French and English, the languages of their location, their desired destination, and of the world that they hope is watching. The data for this study are from still images freely available through Getty Images Embed Service. Using the techniques of linguistic landscapes, this paper analyzes the linguistic material of The Jungle. Like other recent works on the linguistic landscapes of protest, this analysis challenges the idea that territory is a fixed place or space (Kasanga, 2014), asserting rather that the migrants/refugees are co-creating a collective space that exists more through their raised voices, and less in the physical space they temporarily inhabit.

Social media has become a large part of today’s pop culture and keeping up with what is going on not only in our social circles, but around the world. It has given many a platform to unite their causes, build fandoms, and share their commentary with the world. A tool in helping group posts together or give commentary on a thought is the hashtag. In this paper I explore the evaluative roles of hashtags in social media discourse, specifically on Twitter. I use a sample of randomly selected tweets from the Twitter API stream I collected and compiled myself. I collected a total of 200,000 tweets and filtered out Re-tweets. Looking at each individual hashtag I sorted them into the categories outlined by the Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and White (Martin & White, 2005). I explore the types of evaluation expressed in hashtags, the relationships between evaluative hashtags and how users negotiate evaluations using meme hashtags.

This paper looks at the relationship between emotion and vowel length in spontaneous speech, specifically during narratives. It is hypothesized that during emotionally-laden speech, vowel length will be longer in duration than when in non-emotional speech. Data is drawn from the Univerisity of California, Santa Barbara linguistic corpus, with conversations focused on individuals in and around Southern California. The paper builds on work by Dabbs et al., Banse & Scherer, Estes & Adelman, and others regarding the nature of cognitive monitoring, as well as stance as discussed by Ochs & Schieffelin, Ochs, Kärkkainen, Local & Walker, and how emotion is displayed in speech. Tokens chosen for analysis are /ɑ/, /ɑɪ/, and /ə/. Three of each token in first syllable position is collected for analysis from both emotional and non-emotional speech. Analysis of tokens then takes place by (mean) averaging each token's length for each speaker in each stance, then the total vowel average time is calculated again for each speaker in each stance. Beyond intra-vowel, intra-speaker averages, inter-speaker average is calculated to assess consistency of the vowel length changes between stances. The paper finds that the length of tokens shows an average increase during intraspeaker emotional speech.

This thesis explores the ways in which teenage girls use narrative performance to negotiate participation, social and gender identity, and individual authority in order to establish ratified and equal statuses of power within their social peer group. Although previous work on narrative discourse has shown that narratives can act as the catalyst for the complex co/construction of identity especially in social situations of talk, little work has been done to focus on the way teenagers, particularly girls, use this discourse to their benefit as they fulfill social and gender goals in social and conversational settings. Furthermore, while multimodal, narrative performance has been discussed as a cognitive and participation centered function of narrative discourse, this work has been largely quantitative. Consequently, the field of sociolinguistics, predominantly in the realm of narrative discourse, could use more work on the social function of narrative performance. This project, then, combines an analysis of teenage girls’ narrative co/construction in social contexts with a qualitative analysis of their use of narrative performance to show the ways in which this combination allows the girls to do complicated social and linguistic work to manage membership statuses, via complex participation frameworks. Data for this project consists of 5, one hour long, audio and video recorded instances in which four teenage girls, who make up an established peer group, hang out during regular social meetings. An analysis carried out via a lens of Narrative Discourse influenced by Conversation Analysis (CA), revealed that teenage girls are doing a great deal of power negotiation during their social interactions and that moments of narrative, particularly those in which narrative performances are utilized, function to make these negotiations both visible and therefore more influential on overall group dynamics. Suggestions for how this research could be continued in the future are discussed.

This study attempted to explore one aspect of the communicative styles of Japanese and Americans: their approach to discourse. In a literature review, four distinctive characteristics were surveyed: linear/nonlinear presentation, inductive/ deductive reasoning, explicit/implicit communication, and analytical/emotional statements. The American style of argument was characterized by: 1) a linear presentation as evidenced by its preference for a sequential paragraph development, its reliance on logic, and its direct introduction of the subject. 2) either inductive or deductive reasoning. 3) explicit communication as shown by its emphasis on the use of concrete language, definite qualifiers, clearly stated conclusions and a wider perspective. 4) analytical and objective statements. The Japanese style of argument is characterized by: 1) its nonsequential presentation, noncontiguous paragraphs, its apparent disregard of logic and indirect introduction of the subject. 2) neither inductive nor deductive reasoning. 3) implicit communication as shown by its emphasis on the use of ambiguous language, the frequent use of conditional qualifiers, implied conclusions and a narrower perspective. 4) emotional and subjective statements. The literature review corroborated the author's hypotheses that Japanese express themselves in an ambiguous manner, whereas Americans express themselves in a more clearly defined manner. The differences of style of arguments were tested in a statistical setting using content analysis of current newspapers.

Despite advances in medical technologies, interpersonal communication remains the primary tool physicians use to exchange information, make diagnoses, and treat patients (Cameron & Williams, 1997; Groopman, 2007; Ong, de Haes, Hoos, & Lammes, 1995). In the medical encounter effective communication between physician and patient is essential so that beneficial health and wellbeing outcomes are achieved for patients. Taking a discourse analytic approach, this study examined interactions occurring between international medical graduate (IMG) residents, attending physicians, and patients during the treatment advice phase of the supervised medical encounter. The aim of the study was to examine the co-constructed nature of the delivery and receipt of treatment advice and the ways in which physicians and patients managed interpersonal relations through the negotiated activity. The theoretical framework of pragmatic competence was utilized to underpin the study. Physician-patient interactions served as the primary data source. Medical encounter interactions between five different IMG residents and 31 patients were observed and audio-recorded. Observations and a post-medical encounter survey completed by patients served as secondary data sources. The analysis of the data revealed that this medical speech activity embedded within the medical encounter was realized through the use of a variety of discourse strategies and contributions from multiple participants as they attended to the interpersonal and transactional goals associated with the delivery and receipt of treatment advice. Findings provided insights into how multi-party discourse worked to jointly construct and negotiate treatment recommendations. Findings indicated that IMG residents utilized indirect advice giving strategies. Additionally, both IMG residents and patients utilized interrogatives in various ways to engage actively in the treatment decision-making process. Finally, the data revealed how the participants attended to each other's face needs as they worked to enhance, maintain, or challenge face through the dynamic process of negotiating relationships.

This dissertation was a discourse analysis study, drawing upon discursive psychology, poststructural understandings of discourse, conversation analysis, and a social relational model of disability. The purpose of this study was to explore how autism was performed as an interactional event among children with autism labels, the therapists who work with them, and their parents, in the context of a pediatric therapy setting. I interrogated how the participants’ everyday discursive practices were shaped and, at times, constrained by the social and political institutions that often work to define autism and the related, official plans of treatment. A total of 12 families agreed to participate, resulting in the participation of 12 children with autism labels, three to 11 years of age, six fathers, and 11 mothers. The participants included three speech therapists, two occupational therapists, one physical therapist, one teacher/social group facilitator, and one medical secretary/sibling support group facilitator. Data sources included conversational data from the therapy sessions of the participating children and their therapists, 14 parent interviews, eight therapist interviews, documents used within the therapy sessions, demographic surveys/information from the participating therapists and parents, and two interviews with a state advocate and clinical directors focused on qualifying for services. Findings from the interview data highlighted the varied meanings and performances of autism, while pointing to the related political and social conditions that make the naming and treating of autism (im)possible. Findings drawn from the therapy session data pointed to how the participants’ discursive practices worked to reframe “behaviors of concern,” and to transgress normative communication patterns. The following conclusions were drawn from the findings: (a) autism, as a construct, remains open to multiple meanings, while being inextricably linked to institutionalized practices; (b) in therapy talk, therapists and children with autism labels often co-construct alternative accounts of problematic behaviors; and (c) therapy talk can function to reframe non-normative communication and behavioral patterns, expanding what is constructed as “acceptable.” The findings point to the complexities of defining and performing autism labels, and highlight the ways in which therapy talk can function to reframe behaviors and communication patterns presumed to be pathological.

When it comes to the production and reception of texts, most linguists will readily agree that writers as well as readers constitute and follow typical text patterns as they produce and read texts. It has become common today to describe text patterns as typical sets of manifestations of formal, thematic, and pragmatic features that arise from resemblances between different texts and that are inscribed in the communicative memories of a language community. However, speakers also transcend text patterns every day and oscillate between following and overstepping textual rules. This thesis investigates how speakers categorize linguistic knowledge in text patterns, and follow and transcend these patterns in everyday communication, using the example of Rainald Goetz’ text Loslabern. Excerpts from reviews about Loslabern illustrate how readers perceive the text: Some readers consider Loslabern as a ‘ruined’ text that falls apart, whereas others describe Loslabern as ‘ocean-like’ and fluid. Based on these reader experiences, the thesis attempts to answer the following central question: How can we describe ‘Loslabern’ and connatural texts from the viewpoint of textual linguistics in accordance with the readers’ intuitions? The thesis proposes and discusses three options: Textual linguistics may describe Loslabern i) as a broken text, ii) in terms of different concepts of text pattern, and iii) in terms of a novel concept of text pattern. The analytical section focuses on a discussion of different concepts of text pattern: discrete structural and prototypical pragmatic concepts. It examines how these concepts fall short of describing Loslabern in accordance with the readers’ intuitions. Following Wittgenstein and his concept of family resemblance, it creates a multi-dimensional and open concept of text patterns. This concept enables textual linguistics to depict the intertextual embeddedness of Loslabern and other texts systematically, to gain insight into the mechanisms of forming and transcending text patterns, and to describe Loslabern in accordance with the diversity of readers’ intuitions. In doing so, the thesis points at new directions in linguistics as well as literary studies.

For this study, thirty book reviews in two fields, sixteen in history and sixteen in economics, written in Thai and English (eight in each discipline) were randomly collected from Thai and US academic journals in order to examine the moves in the overall structures of the reviews and reviewers' politeness strategies, and to consider the extend to which the texts vary across the two languages and whether the variation is present in both disciplines.