This work focuses on the socio-technical aspects of artificial intelligence, namely how (specific types of) intelligent systems function in human workplace environments. The goal is first to get a better understanding of human needs and expectations when it comes to interaction with intelligent systems, and then to make use of the understanding gained in the process of designing and implementing such systems. The work presented focusses on a specific problem in developing intelligent systems, namely how the artefacts to be developed can fit smoothly into existing socio-cultural settings. To achieve this, we make use of theories from the fields of organisational psychology, sociology, and linguistics. This is in line with approaches commonly found in AI. However, most of the existing work deals with individual aspects, like how to mimic the behaviour or emulate methods of reasoning found in humans, whereas our work centers around the social aspect. Therefore, we base our work on theories that have not yet gained much attention in intelligent systems design. To be able to make them fruitful for intelligent systems research and development, we have to adapt them to the specific settings, and we have to transform them to suit the practical problems at hand. The specific theoretical frameworks we draw on are first and foremost activity theory and to a lesser degree semiotics. Activity theory builds on the works of Leont'ev. It is a descriptive tool to help understand the unity of consciousness and activity. Its focus lies on individual and collective work practise. One of its strengths, and the primary reason for its value in AI development, is the ability to identify the role of material artefacts in the work process. Halliday's systemic functional theory of language (SFL) is a social semiotic theory that sets out from the assumption that humans are social beings that are inclined to interact and that this interaction is inherently multimodal. We interact not just with each other, but with our own constructions and with our natural world. These are all different forms of interaction, but they are all sign processes. Due to the obvious time and spatial constraints, we cannot address all of the challenges that we face when building intelligent artefacts. In reducing the scope of the thesis, we have focused on the problem of explanation, and here in particular the problem of explanation from a user perspective. By putting social theories to work in the field of artificial intelligence, we show that results from other fields can be beneficial in understanding what explanatory capabilities are needed for a given intelligent system, and to ascertain in which situations an explanation should be delivered. Besides lessons learned in knowledge based system development, the most important input comes from activity theory. The second focus is the challenge of contextualisation. Here we show that work in other scientific fields can be put to use in the development of context aware or ambient intelligent systems. Again, we draw on results from activity theory and combine this with insights from semiotics. Explanations are themselves contextual, so the third challenge is to explore the space spanned by the two dimensions ability to explain and contextualisation. Again, activity theory is beneficial in resolving this issue. The different theoretical considerations have also led to some practical approaches. Working with activity theory helps to better understand what the relevant contextual aspects of a given application are and helps to develop models of context which are both grounded in the tradition of context aware systems design and are plausible from a cognitive point of view. Insights from an analysis of research in the knowledge based system area and activity theory have further lead to the amendment of a toolbox for requirements engineering, so called problem frames. New problem frames that target explanation aware ambient intelligent systems are presented. This is supplemented with work looking at the design of an actual system after the requirements have been elicited and specified. Thus, the socio-technical perspective on explanations is coupled with work that addresses knowledge representation issues, namely how to model sufficient knowledge to be able to deliver explanations.

In recent years, US elementary and secondary education has put more emphasis on advancing students’ academic literacy. To address this need, many teachers have looked to systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory to frame writing instruction. Drawing from this literature, this report identifies major pedagogical principles relevant for an English as a foreign language (EFL) instructional context, delineates the linguistic markers characteristic of academic registers, and expands on the existing literature in regards to feedback and error correction. SFL-informed literacy instruction can benefit English language instruction in countries such as South Korea, where learners’ writing development has traditionally been neglected. The report begins with a brief overview of systemic functional linguistics, and follows with a review of the literature on SFL-based writing pedagogy. Implications for EFL educational settings are discussed. / text

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> <p align="left">This thesis is a discourse analysis of five testimonies from South Africa&rsquo / s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The aim of the analysis is to explore the ways in which the testifiers perform their identities, construe their experiences of life under apartheid, and position themselves and their audiences in relation to these experiences. The shaping role of context &ndash / both local and historical &ndash / is also considered.</p> </font></font></p>

Syftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på hur gymnasieskolors webbtexter kan förstås i förhållande till diskurs. För att undersöka detta utgår jag från Norman Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys och den systemisk-funktionella grammatiken (SFG). Jag undersöker fyra webbtexter som beskriver fyra olika gymnasieskolor – två privata och två kommunala skolor. Uppsatsens ansats är språkvetenskaplig. Stor vikt läggs därför vid den systemisk-funktionella grammatiken. Jag utgår från den interpersonella analysens språkhandlingar, modusmetaforer och modalitet. Texternas första- och andradeltagare analyseras även separat liksom texternas tilltal. Analysresultaten visar att alla fyra texter bär drag av marknadsföringsdiskurs. Detta realiseras bland annat av direkt du-tilltal och en rad erbjudanden till läsaren. Vissa erbjudanden uttrycks explicit i form av varor. Andra erbjudanden, som kunskap och utveckling, är mer abstrakta. Analysen visar också att texterna bär spår av bland annat elitistisk diskurs. Detta realiseras bland annat genom modalitetsmarkörer, modusmetaforer och placeringen av förstadeltagaren i olika satskomplex. Genom att använda diskurser utanför den traditionella utbildningsdiskursen visar skolornas webbtexter en förändring i samhället. Marknaden har flyttat in verksamheter som tidigare tillhört den offentliga sektorn. Detta skapar en ny relation mellan skolan och eleverna. Genom att element från marknadsföringsdiskursen har lånats in i skolans värld konstrueras eleven till en konsument av utbildning.

This research is a practical attempt to develop academic writing pedagogy at secondary level in New Zealand because from interviews with teachers, personal experience and literature in the professional journal for teachers of English in New Zealand, English in Aotearoa, it appears that this would be a useful enterprise. Literature relating to this, and extending to the related contexts of the UK and Australia has been reviewed. The approach taken is an investigation of top-rated senior secondary writing in subject English, using elements of Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). The concepts of SFG chiefly drawn upon, namely, Theme and linguistic metafunctions, and their application to the data are presented and explained. This grammatical model was chosen because it allows the interface of grammatical structure and linguistic function to be explored, which in turn permits insight into how the qualities of top-rated writing may be formulated grammatically. This insight may then become part of teaching resources in academic writing by way of both pre- and in-service training material for teachers. Over 100 top-rated English literature essays (graded by teachers) were collected from students, via their schools, so that the data obtained were authentic. Two samples were collected: timed and untimed writing. Each sentence of each essay was typed into one of nine Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, representing locations within the essay. The nine locations were: three introduction locations: initial sentence, medial sentences, terminal sentence; three paragraph locations (all paragraphs in the body of the essays, not introductions or conclusions): initial sentence, medial sentences, terminal sentence; and, three conclusion locations: initial sentence, medial sentences and terminal sentence. The initial grammatical elements and their metafunction(s) for each sentence were categorised. Percentages in each category for each location were calculated so that individual locations could be compared for grammatical and metafunctional characteristics. Grouped locations were also considered where this seemed felicitous; for instance, introductions were compared to conclusions or medial sentences compared to boundary sentences (initial and terminal). Comparisons were also made between the timed and untimed samples. The results showed that some grammatical structures could be associated with particular grouped locations and metafunctional characteristics were not independent of location. The research was also able to suggest grammatical means to achieve metafunctional effects that align with descriptors for writing given by examination boards. For example, clear, logical organisation of writing is highly valued by examination boards. This is achieved by means of elements that perform the textual linguistic metafunction. A variety of grammatical elements to perform this function and their most prominent locations were identified. It is intended that the findings may be a highly directed way to help teachers address some of the writing challenges faced by their students at secondary level.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Education. / The Thai government has proposed education reform programs to be competitive with its neighbours and globally. One major policy is to improve competency in English. Thailand has a long history of importing approaches for teaching English from western countries. For a complex variety of reasons the structural-based approaches have been the most influential ones on both teachers and bureaucrats. While these approaches enable Thais to communicate at the basic level, emphasising spoken language, they do not provide systematic guidance to write extended texts effectively. Thai educators have tended to import approaches literally without adequately researching the practicality and suitability of them. This thesis is an attempt to explore whether it is possible to adapt a recently evolved, western 'genre-based' approach to the teaching of English in Thailand. The research focuses on factual English writing because it is highly valued in government, commerce and industry. English and Thai rhetorical patterns differ significantly so students need to write their texts to meet English readers' expectations. To achieve this, students need to be taught to write explicitly. Soundly based in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the genre-based approach teaches writing at whole text, paragraph and clause levels. It is concerned with realising appropriate generic structure for the different social communication tasks. This approach has the potential to improve Thai students' writing ability. The research project was primarily an ethnographic-case study that was carried out with the co-operation of 45 third year English major students for 14 weeks (from October, 1997 to February, 1998) at the Department of Foreign Languages, Khon Kaen University in northeast Thailand. It is centred on the Exposition genre because some Thai educators had noted that it was one of the most neglected in the Thai educational system, but one of the most valuable genres in western culture. The research outcomes showed that the genre-based approach had a significant positive impact on students' factual writing, showing gains in the control of generic structure and language features of the Exposition. Nevertheless, the research suggests that for the genre-based approach to be successfully implemented in a foreign language context such as Thai, a number of modifications are necessary. The genre-based approach provides students with insights into cultural expectations of writing in English and has the potential to contribute to the policy goals of the Thai government for the upgrading of English teaching and also contribute to its wish of achieving the education refonn agenda.

This thesis is concerned with explicating the role of language in mobilising action through management emails. Situated within the context of organisational change in a globalised manufacturing business, the project is framed by behavioural observations from management scholars Palmer and Hardy (2000) of mobilisation strategies that utilise linguistic resources since they: (a) involve a sense of obligation or inclination in directives; (b) show how co-operation will produce mutual benefits; (c) construct desired actions as legitimate, beneficial or inevitable; and (d) use past or anticipated meanings, for or against certain actions. Systemic Functional Linguistics is the underlying framework employed to provide a theoretically principled account of the intuitively derived observations from Palmer and Hardy (2000) which are applied to a sample of twenty-seven email texts, through corpus- and text-based analysis. A major finding is that the representation of action is enacted interpersonally through the verbal group. This view complements experientially dominated accounts of the verbal group which focus on the tense system. Further, action is found to be motivated through the negotiation of evaluative stance. By relating the grammar of the verbal group as well as other resources to the discourse semantics of Appraisal, modulation (of obligation or inclination) is found to be enabled by both negative as well as positive judgements of capacity. Specifically, judgements of capacity are re-interpreted as invocations of high obligation as managers seek to mobilise (further) positive performance. The analysis demonstrates that elements in the verbal group (complex) and Appraisal co-opt action through enabling positioning of the writer, in terms of assessing and grading categorical meanings, manipulating interpersonal time, or foregrounding solidarity. A significant contribution to the thesis is an extension of the system of GRADUATION: FOCUS (Hood, 2004a) through the demonstration of how resources of the verbal group negotiate expectations of appearances and achievements. This study has also extended the resources of GRADUATION: FORCE by applying it to the management context. The practical contribution of the study is that these insights may more explicitly inform management training and enable managers to participate more effectively within their community of practice.

This research is a practical attempt to develop academic writing pedagogy at secondary level in New Zealand because from interviews with teachers, personal experience and literature in the professional journal for teachers of English in New Zealand, English in Aotearoa, it appears that this would be a useful enterprise. Literature relating to this, and extending to the related contexts of the UK and Australia has been reviewed. The approach taken is an investigation of top-rated senior secondary writing in subject English, using elements of Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). The concepts of SFG chiefly drawn upon, namely, Theme and linguistic metafunctions, and their application to the data are presented and explained. This grammatical model was chosen because it allows the interface of grammatical structure and linguistic function to be explored, which in turn permits insight into how the qualities of top-rated writing may be formulated grammatically. This insight may then become part of teaching resources in academic writing by way of both pre- and in-service training material for teachers. Over 100 top-rated English literature essays (graded by teachers) were collected from students, via their schools, so that the data obtained were authentic. Two samples were collected: timed and untimed writing. Each sentence of each essay was typed into one of nine Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, representing locations within the essay. The nine locations were: three introduction locations: initial sentence, medial sentences, terminal sentence; three paragraph locations (all paragraphs in the body of the essays, not introductions or conclusions): initial sentence, medial sentences, terminal sentence; and, three conclusion locations: initial sentence, medial sentences and terminal sentence. The initial grammatical elements and their metafunction(s) for each sentence were categorised. Percentages in each category for each location were calculated so that individual locations could be compared for grammatical and metafunctional characteristics. Grouped locations were also considered where this seemed felicitous; for instance, introductions were compared to conclusions or medial sentences compared to boundary sentences (initial and terminal). Comparisons were also made between the timed and untimed samples. The results showed that some grammatical structures could be associated with particular grouped locations and metafunctional characteristics were not independent of location. The research was also able to suggest grammatical means to achieve metafunctional effects that align with descriptors for writing given by examination boards. For example, clear, logical organisation of writing is highly valued by examination boards. This is achieved by means of elements that perform the textual linguistic metafunction. A variety of grammatical elements to perform this function and their most prominent locations were identified. It is intended that the findings may be a highly directed way to help teachers address some of the writing challenges faced by their students at secondary level.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis is concerned with the realm of the interpersonal: broadly, those linguistic phenomena involved in the negotiation of social relations and the expression of personal attitudes and feelings. The initial contention is that this realm has been consistently marginalised not only within linguistic theory, but more broadly within western culture, for cultural and ideological reasons whose implications extend into the bases of classical linguistic theory. Chapter 1 spells out the grounds for this contention and is followed by two further chapters, constituting Part I: Language and Social Relations. Chapter 2 identifies and critiques the range of ways in which the interpersonal has been conventionally interpreted: as style, as formality, as politeness, as power and solidarity, as the expressive, etc. This chapter concludes with an argument for the need for a stratified model of language in order to deal adequately with these phenomena. Chapter 3 proposes such a model, based on the systemic-functional approach to language as social semiotic. The register category tenor within this model is extended to provide a model of social relations as a semiotic system. The basis for the identification of the three tenor dimensions, power, distance and affect, is the identification of three modes of deployment or realisation of the interpersonal resources of English in everyday discourse: reciprocity, proliferation and amplification. Parts II and III turn their attention to one significant issue in the negotiation of social relations: address. The focus is explicitly on Australian English, but there is considerable evidence that most if not all of the forms discussed in Part II occur in other varieties of English, especially British and American, and that some at least of the practices discussed in Part III involve the same patterns of social relations with respect to the tenor dimensions of power, distance and affect. Because most varieties of contemporary English do not have a set of options for second-person pronominal address, as is the case in many of the world's languages, English speakers use names and other nominal forms which need to be described. Part II is descriptive in orientation, providing an account of the grammar of VOCATION in English, including a detailed description of the nominal forms used. Chapter 4 investigates the identification and functions of vocatives, and includes empirical investigations of vocative position in clauses and vocative incidence in relation to speech function or speech act choices. Chapter 5 presents an account of the grammar of English name forms, organised as a paradigmatic system. This chapter incorporates an account of the processes used to produce the various name-forms used in address, including truncation, reduplication and suffixation. Chapter 6 consists of an account of non-name forms of address, organised in terms of the systemic-functional account of nominal group structure. This chapter deals with single-word non-name forms of address and the range of nominal group structures used particularly to communicate attitude, both positive and negative. Part III is ethnographic in orientation. It describes some aspects of the use of the forms described in Part II in contemporary address practice in Australia and interprets such practice using the model of social relations as semiotic system presented in Part I. The major focuses of attention is on address practice in relation to the negotiation of gender relations, with some comment on generational relations of adults with children, on class relations and on ethnic relations in nation with a diverse population officially committed to a policy of a multiculturalism. Part III functions simultaneously as a coda for this thesis, and a prologue for the kind of ethnographic study that the project was originally intended to be, but which could not be conducted in the absence of an adequate linguistically-based model of social relations and an adequate description of the resources available for address in English.

"November 2001". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Dept. of Linguistics, 2002. / Bibliography: p. 285-291. / Introduction -- Language from a systemic functional perspective -- Social networks: a review of literature relevant to the Scotland Island study -- Methodology -- Analysing relational ties: a social network perspective -- A systemic functional approach to analysing social reality -- Discussion and conclusion. / This research is concerned with the study of language and the social order. Working within the systemic functional theory of language, and utilising the concept of a social network to model the social order, the primary aim is to put on display the relationship between the linguistic system and social order, between language and culture. Systemic functional grammar (Halliday, 1995; Halliday and Hasasn, 1985/9; Halliday and Matthiesen, 1997; Eggins and Slade 1997), with its emphasis on language as a social semiotic, is used to analyse the language used by a group of four women engaged in casual conversation in a small Australian island community. Here the analysis reveals how the women negotiate their social reality when speaking to each other. It shows how their social relations are shaped within a text (Hasan, 1996), and explores the notion that, despite the seemingly trivial, unconscious nature of casual interactions, power and solidarity are continually being negotiated by the participants (Halliday, 1994; Eggins and Slade, 1997). More specifically, this research examines the notion that through lexico-grammatical and semantic selections participants are able to negotiate dominant positions in interaction. Social Network analysis has been used to examine the relationship between the individual and the group. It offers a quantifiable analytical tool for describing the character of an individual's everyday social relationships (Milroy, 1987). A social network analysis is used in the present study to map the social relationships in the tight-knit network, or speech fellowship, of these women (creating a map of the context of situation in SFL terminology). Change in the social relationships and language choices is modeled by revisiting the participants 15 months later in a contextually similar environment and re-analysing the network and linguistic options. Systemic functional linguistics is then used to highlight the interdependency of language and social order. Through systematic accounts of language and the context in which it is embedded this reciprocal nature is displayed and language and social order can be seen, not as two distinct entities, but rather as one phenomena seen from two different perspectives (Halliday, 1978; Mathiessen, 1993). / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / v, 291 p. ill