The series You (2018) challenges the traditional characteristics of a protagonist and introducesthe audience to a psychopathic protagonist with traits which are typically recognised in thetraditional villain. This study investigates the portrayal of the fictional character JoeGoldberg’s psychopathic characteristics by analysing the language used in his external andinternal dialogues. More specifically, drawing on the tools of transitivity analysis (Halliday1985), the study focuses on the process types and corresponding semantic roles assigned tothe pronouns I and you used by the protagonist over the course of three strategically selectedepisodes of the series. The results of the qualitative and quantitative transitivity analysis ofinternal and external dialogues throughout three chosen episodes shows that in the internaldialogues Joe appears analytical and assigns attributes and actions to you which correspond tothe mental representation of the object of his desire, Beck. While Joe’s internal dialoguesascribe some appealing attributes to Beck, the transitivity analysis also shows that he identifiestraits of vulnerability, such as lack of confidence and being indolent in reaching her goals. Incontrast, Joe’s approach in the external dialogues continuously appears to project him as ahumble person who puts the needs of others before his own, expressing deep considerationand understanding of the needs and emotions of others. The audience is introduced to hismanipulative behaviour by this contrast between his external and internal dialogues, which ishighlighted by the transitivity analysis in the present study.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / As an official and second language in Ghana, English is used as a medium of instruction in the Ghanaian educational setting, especially at the university level. Therefore, for Ghanaian students to go through their university education successfully, they should be able to demonstrate competence in the usage of English. However, time and again, there have been series of complaints from most English language teachers about the Ghanaian students’ lack of dexterity in writing cohesive and coherent texts. The present study, therefore, has as its aim to explore texture in first-year Ghanaian undergraduate students' essays (GUSEs). This focus is achieved through four main specific objectives. Thus, the study accounts for (1) the types of cohesive devices (2) the cohesive errors (3) the disciplinary variation in the type of cohesive devices and cohesive errors and (4) the thematic progression patterns in the essays of these first-year Ghanaian undergraduate students. To achieve these objectives, I use the Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective to text analysis, specifically the metafunction of texture as projected by Halliday (1967, 1970, 1985, 1994, and 2004), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin and Rose (2003) and Martin (2015). / 2023

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第19808号 / 人博第779号 / 新制||人||187(附属図書館) / 27||人博||779(吉田南総合図書館) / 32844 / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生人間学専攻 / (主査)教授 東郷 雄二, 教授 藤田 耕司, 教授 田窪 行則 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the potential of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) pedagogy to support English language learners (ELLs) in enhancing their meaning making potential as they engage in persuasive writing practices within academic contexts. The dissertation results from a teacher action research project in which the teacher researcher (the author) constructed qualitative case studies focusing on the teaching practice of a veteran ESL teacher (the researcher) and the persuasive writing practices of three middle school beginning level ELLs. Through data analysis methods drawing on SFL and intertextuality, the study illuminates connections between the SFL based teaching practice and the expanding linguistic repertoire of ELLs as they enact the genre of persuasive argument in the context of producing persuasive music reviews. Research methods are qualitative in nature and designed to attend to both the sociocultural context of teaching and learning as well as a linguistic analysis of written texts. Through a qualitative case study approach focusing on the literacy practices of three emergent bilingual middle school students and the reflective teaching practices of their veteran ESL teacher, the teacher researcher highlights how SFL pedagogy created space for urban middle school ELLs to participate in high interest language learning activities designed to increase their control over the semiotic resources needed to construct persuasive texts. The subsequent SFL and genre analysis of students' texts analyzes changes in the schematic structure and register variables of student texts aims to explore the intertextual connections between these changes and the SFL pedagogical practices described in the study. Data derive from multiple sources including student texts, videotaped interactions among classroom community members, field notes, lesson plans and instructional materials. The study offers important new directions in language teaching and learning as it demonstrates how SFL-based pedagogy can draw on the cultural and linguistic resources of ELLs to create a culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and permeable curriculum (Dyson, 2003) that both challenges the conceptualization of ELLs as students with a "deficit" and repositions them as skillful language users and text analysts.

Since the Greek phrase ἐγώ εἰµι has been used as a form of the divine name by God to reveal himself in the Septuagint, biblical scholars generally acknowledge that the appropriate interpretation of this phrase is important for understanding John’s unique presentation of Jesus. However, scholars have not reached a consensus on the interpretation of Johannine “I am” and there are several problems with contemporary interpretive works. First, the extant studies rely heavily on the background of the “I am” phrase and draw their conclusions almost on the basis of diachronic data only. Consequently, the significance of this phrase in the Gospel of John itself has not been fully understood. Second, the linguistic features that are actually essential for the appropriate interpretation of this particular linguistic structure have not been fully assessed in current biblical scholarship. Third, the existing research normally interprets the “I am” phrases individually but fails to explore the relationship between these uses. In the Gospel of John, the Greek phrase ἐγώ εἰµι and its variants occur in Jesus’ utterances in thirty-one verses, namely John 4:26; 6:20, 35, 41, 48, 51; 7:34, 36; 8:12, 18, 23, 24, 28, 58; 10:7, 9, 11, 14; 11:25; 12:26; 13:19; 14:3, 6; 15:1, 5; 17:14, 16, 24; 18:5, 6, 8. This study conducts a discourse analysis based on the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to interpret these thirty-one occurrences of “I am” in Jesus’ utterances, concentrating on their interpretation and significance within the Johannine context. This new methodological framework can analyze the linguistic features of the New Testament text and may offer new insights into the current research of Johannine “I am” in most regards. Examining the function of this phrase through a functional-semantic analysis and a rhetorical-relational analysis, this study argues that the thirty-one occurrences of “I am” in Jesus’ utterances throughout the Gospel of John reinforce John’s portrayal of Jesus’ divinity. According to John’s construing of Jesus’ divinity, this study demonstrates how Johannine Christology is expressed through the narrative of John’s Gospel with various textual characteristics.

Yes / This paper presents a critical evaluation framework for a linguistically orientated conversational software agent (CSA) (Panesar, 2017). The CSA prototype investigates the integration, intersection and interface of the language, knowledge, and speech act constructions (SAC) based on a grammatical object (Nolan, 2014), and the sub-­‐model of belief, desires and intention (BDI) (Rao and Georgeff, 1995) and dialogue management (DM) for natural language processing (NLP). A long-­‐standing issue within NLP CSA systems is refining the accuracy of interpretation to provide realistic dialogue to support the human-­‐to-­‐computer communication. This prototype constitutes three phase models: (1) a linguistic model based on a functional linguistic theory – Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) (Van Valin Jr, 2005); (2) Agent Cognitive Model with two inner models: (a) knowledge representation model employing conceptual graphs serialised to Resource Description Framework (RDF); (b) a planning model underpinned by BDI concepts (Wooldridge, 2013) and intentionality (Searle, 1983) and rational interaction (Cohen and Levesque, 1990); and (3) a dialogue model employing common ground (Stalnaker, 2002). The evaluation approach for this Java-­‐based prototype and its phase models is a multi-­‐approach driven by grammatical testing (English language utterances), software engineering and agent practice. A set of evaluation criteria are grouped per phase model, and the testing framework aims to test the interface, intersection and integration of all phase models and their inner models. This multi-­‐approach encompasses checking performance both at internal processing, stages per model and post-­‐implementation assessments of the goals of RRG, and RRG based specifics tests. The empirical evaluations demonstrate that the CSA is a proof-­‐of-­‐concept, demonstrating RRG’s fitness for purpose for describing, and explaining phenomena, language processing and knowledge, and computational adequacy. Contrastingly, evaluations identify the complexity of lower level computational mappings of NL – agent to ontology with semantic gaps, and further addressed by a lexical bridging consideration (Panesar, 2017).

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yes / This paper presents a critical evaluation framework for a linguistically motivated conversational software agent (CSA). The CSA prototype investigates the integration, intersection and interface of the language, knowledge, and speech act constructions (SAC) based on a grammatical object, and the sub-model of belief, desires and intention (BDI) and dialogue management (DM) for natural language processing (NLP). A long-standing issue within NLP CSA systems is refining the accuracy of interpretation to provide realistic dialogue to support human-to-computer communication. This prototype constitutes three phase models: (1) a linguistic model based on a functional linguistic theory – Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), (2) an Agent Cognitive Model with two inner models: (a) a knowledge representation model, (b) a planning model underpinned by BDI concepts, intentionality and rational interaction, and (3) a dialogue model. The evaluation strategy for this Java-based prototype is multi-approach driven by grammatical testing (English language utterances), software engineering and agent practice. A set of evaluation criteria are grouped per phase model, and the testing framework aims to test the interface, intersection and integration of all phase models. The empirical evaluations demonstrate that the CSA is a proof-of-concept, demonstrating RRG’s fitness for purpose for describing, and explaining phenomena, language processing and knowledge, and computational adequacy. Contrastingly, evaluations identify the complexity of lower level computational mappings of NL – agent to ontology with semantic gaps, and further addressed by a lexical bridging solution.

This thesis examines the scientific language in different subjects by analysing all grade 8 science items from TIMSS 2011, using four characteristic meaning dimensions of scientific language – Packing, Precision and Presentation of information, and the level of Personification in a text. The results, as well as results from established readability measures, are correlated with test performances of different student groups. The TIMSS vocabulary is compared with three Swedish corpora where low frequency words are identified and further analysed. The thesis challenges the notion that there is a single scientific language, as results show that the language use varies between subjects. Physics uses more words, biology shows higher Packing and lower Precision, while physics shows the opposite pattern. Items are generally low in Personification but physics has higher levels, earth science lower. Chemistry often presents information in more complex ways. The use of meaning dimensions manages to connect the language use in science items to student performance, while established measures do not. For each subject, one or more of the meaning dimensions shows significant correlations with small to medium effect sizes. Higher Packing is positively correlated with students’ results in earth science, negatively correlated in physics, and has no significant correlations in biology or chemistry. Students’ performances decrease when placing items in everyday contexts, and skilled readers are aided by higher precision, while less-skilled seem unaffected. Many meaning dimensions that influence low performers’ results do not influence those of high performers, and vice versa. The vocabulary of TIMSS and school textbooks are closely matched, but compared with more general written Swedish and a more limited vocabulary, the coverage drops significantly. Of the low frequency words 78% are nouns, where also most compound–, extra long– and made-up words are found. These categories and nominalisations are more common in biology and, except for made-up words, rare in chemistry. Abstract and generalizing nouns are frequent in biology and earth science, concrete nouns in chemistry and physics.