This thesis presents a formal and functional analysis of footnotes In academic journal articles. In Chapter One a brief account of the recent history of Genre Analysis Studies leading to a definition of footnotes Is given. Also given is an account of the differences and similarities between footnotes and some other germane conventional structures (viz, parentheticals and asides) that may carry out similar functions to those that footnotes realize. Reasons why writers use footnotes are suggested and discussed. The work Is based on a corpus of 10 linguistics journal articles comprising 113 footnotes. In the search for a framework in Chapter Two, the relevant literature on text and discourse analysis studies is carefully examined and applied to a sample of the data used for the present work. A classification of the functions to which the article writers have put their footnotes Is offered In Chapter Three. The Chapter ends with a discussio. of the. cxttexta wttte.cs lzase. their footnoting decisions on. The cohesion and coherence relations between footnotes, the 'matrix text exit sentence' (i.e. the sentence tagged by the footnote) and the 'matrix text re-entry sentence' (i.e. the sentence following the one tagged by the footnote) had been Investigated In the context of cohesion and coherence theories and Winter's "Clause Relations". An experiment was conducted to test the coherence and cohesion relations between 'matrix text exit sentences' and footnotes. The issue of whether footnotes present new or old information Is then taken up and the literature on the THENE-RHEME dichotomy is reviewed with a view to shedding further light on footnotes. Chapter Five Is concerned with the question of whether footnotes help or hinder the reader and the reading process and the results are statistically analyzed. Readers' attitudes towards footnotes are surveyed through the use of a questionnaire. Also addressed are the Issues of: the utility of footnotes to readers and the purposes for which readers consult footnotes. In Chapter Six some linguistic features recurring In footnotes (e.g. formulaic expressions, the frequent use of proper names, hedges, etc.) are studied. The results of the study suggest that the employment of footnotes Is a compensatory strategy on the part of writers to overcome the problem of being over/under informative especially when an article is targeted at a multiple audience. This thesis, In addition to the fact that It provides a coverage of a neglected but intrinsically InterestIng and important genre (FOOTNOTES), makes certain theoretical and pedagogical suggestions and identifies further issues for future research which are presented on in Chapter Seven.

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This dissertation reports on the results of a study into the characteristics of epistemic topoi and the methods of their identification in a corpus of biomedical publications. The study was conceived in response to the need for a systematized description of the organization of argumentative text and discourse. This need is well recognized in knowledge-intensive fields: information processing, storage, and retrieval; corpus analysis and natural language processing; data mining, knowledge management and translation; professional training and education. The study followed the design of a situated study combined with a methodological inquiry. I used inductive methods to describe the features and functions of recurrent patterns of argumentative and linguistic organization. This part of the study consisted in close reading of a corpus of fifty-five NTG papers and rhetorical and linguistic annotation of seventeen clinical studies (45,599 words) selected from the corpus. The data was generated by means of rhetorical and linguistic analysis. Visual annotation played an essential role in the identification and description of the argumentative patterns, complementing the traditional methods of corpus analysis. Forty-eight basic and nine composite epistemic topoi forming the superstructure of the papers were identified in the corpus. The topoi were found to be loosely associated with the IMRD structure and signalled with configurations of lexicogrammatical, semantic, deictic, and coreferential features. The topoi were classified according to the modes of reasoning and textual and discursive functions. The obtained results confirmed earlier insights into the links of linguistic patterning with text and discourse semantics. A significant outcome of the linguistic analysis is a catalogue of linguistic features that were found to have regular links with the topoi in the corpus. The role of linguistic configurations as identifiers of argumentative meanings makes them a valuable medium of text and discourse analysis. By linking the argumentative meanings to the surface features of text and discourse, the analysis of linguistic configurations presents informatics practitioners with an alternative to the current methods of natural language processing and knowledge management. The catalogue of linguistic features and a detailed description of the study design make the presented findings amenable to secondary analysis, extrapolation, and generalization. The auxiliary objectives of this study were a survey of argumentative practices represented in the corpus and a review of the state of epistemic research. The results of the survey and review suggest that agonistic reasoning practices and over-reliance on reductionist models have negative implications for research writing and communication. Specifically, they hamper analysis of argumentative organization of natural text and discourse. As an alternative to agonistic argumentation, I propose an argumentation model based on Aristotle’s and Kneale’s conceptions of situated knowledge and learning. The model of textual and discursive organization that accommodates situated knowledge and learning is political stasis. This model can be used as a heuristic and analytic tool. In this dissertation I use it as an explanatory conception and as a system of reference points for identifying significant research trends both in argumentation studies and in clinical NTG research.

This dissertation reports on the results of a study into the characteristics of epistemic topoi and the methods of their identification in a corpus of biomedical publications. The study was conceived in response to the need for a systematized description of the organization of argumentative text and discourse. This need is well recognized in knowledge-intensive fields: information processing, storage, and retrieval; corpus analysis and natural language processing; data mining, knowledge management and translation; professional training and education. The study followed the design of a situated study combined with a methodological inquiry. I used inductive methods to describe the features and functions of recurrent patterns of argumentative and linguistic organization. This part of the study consisted in close reading of a corpus of fifty-five NTG papers and rhetorical and linguistic annotation of seventeen clinical studies (45,599 words) selected from the corpus. The data was generated by means of rhetorical and linguistic analysis. Visual annotation played an essential role in the identification and description of the argumentative patterns, complementing the traditional methods of corpus analysis. Forty-eight basic and nine composite epistemic topoi forming the superstructure of the papers were identified in the corpus. The topoi were found to be loosely associated with the IMRD structure and signalled with configurations of lexicogrammatical, semantic, deictic, and coreferential features. The topoi were classified according to the modes of reasoning and textual and discursive functions. The obtained results confirmed earlier insights into the links of linguistic patterning with text and discourse semantics. A significant outcome of the linguistic analysis is a catalogue of linguistic features that were found to have regular links with the topoi in the corpus. The role of linguistic configurations as identifiers of argumentative meanings makes them a valuable medium of text and discourse analysis. By linking the argumentative meanings to the surface features of text and discourse, the analysis of linguistic configurations presents informatics practitioners with an alternative to the current methods of natural language processing and knowledge management. The catalogue of linguistic features and a detailed description of the study design make the presented findings amenable to secondary analysis, extrapolation, and generalization. The auxiliary objectives of this study were a survey of argumentative practices represented in the corpus and a review of the state of epistemic research. The results of the survey and review suggest that agonistic reasoning practices and over-reliance on reductionist models have negative implications for research writing and communication. Specifically, they hamper analysis of argumentative organization of natural text and discourse. As an alternative to agonistic argumentation, I propose an argumentation model based on Aristotle’s and Kneale’s conceptions of situated knowledge and learning. The model of textual and discursive organization that accommodates situated knowledge and learning is political stasis. This model can be used as a heuristic and analytic tool. In this dissertation I use it as an explanatory conception and as a system of reference points for identifying significant research trends both in argumentation studies and in clinical NTG research.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:33:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Jose Nelo.pdf: 986765 bytes, checksum: bdf40fb7708be5c453cc91decbdb3f0f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-04-14 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This thesis aims 1) generally at contributing studies on the laughable and laughter both in verbal texts and texts expressed by semiotic means other than the multimodal ones; and, 2) more specifically at examining whether the laughable is a discursive or textual genre; at identifying the functions and actions performed by the speaker and interlocutor as participants of a discursive context; at evaluating the argumentative strategies used by the speaker, who, intending to secure the interlocutor s laughter causes him/her to accept a new opinion; at investigating the intersection of the intertexts and interdiscourses in the production of the laughable and laughter. In considering that both laughter and the laughable have been dealt with in uni and interdisciplinarity, this thesis places both laughter and the laughable in the intersection of intertexts and interdiscourses, forming an integrative view, once it is crucial to tackle them by a muldisciplinary view, viewing the cognitive sciences as transdisciplinarity. Thus, an integrative model was chosen, so as to discuss enunciative, textual, discursive, historic, interactional, anatomical/physiological and cultural aspects.In this sense, this research has adopted the following methodological procedures: 1) theoretical/analytical procedure: theoretical review of the different treatments given to laughter and the laughable, besides other studies concerning text and discourse, with socio-interactional point of view; 2) selection of the corpora; the material selected for the analysis comprises jokes, stories, chronicles of daily life and editorial cartoons. The findings suggest that intertexts and interdiscourses form the actions which integrate the illocutionary act provoking laughter with the perlocutionary act of the one who laughs / Esta tese tem por objetivo geral contribuir com os estudos do risível e do riso tanto em texto verbais, quanto os expressos por outras semióticas além dos multimodais; e, por objetivos específicos: 1) verificar se o risível é um gênero discursivo ou textual; 2) identificar as funções e as ações praticadas pelo locutor e pelo interlocutor, enquanto participantes de um contexto discursivo; 3) examinar as estratégias argumentativas utilizadas pelo locutor que, ao objetivar o riso de seu interlocutor, leva-o a aceitar uma opinião nova; e, 4) investigar a intersecção dos intertextos e interdiscursos na produção do risível e do riso. Ao considerar que o riso e o risível têm sido tratados na uni e interdisciplinaridade, esta tese situa tanto o riso quanto o risível na intersecção de intertextos e interdiscursos, numa visão integradora, visto que é fundamental tratá-los por uma visão multidisciplinar, tendo por transdisciplinaridade as ciências da cognição. Assim, optou-se por um modelo integrador de forma a tratar de aspectos: enunciativos, textuais, discursivos, históricos, interacionais, anatômico- fisiológicos e culturais. Nesse sentido, a pesquisa adotou os seguintes procedimentos metodológicos: 1) procedimento teórico-analítico: revisão teórica dos diferentes tratamentos sobre o risível e o riso, e outros estudos relativos a texto e discurso, com o ponto de vista socio-interacional; 2) seleção dos corpora, o material selecionado para análise é composto de chistes, histórias, crônicas do cotidiano e charges jornalísticas. Os resultados indicam que os intertextos e os interdiscursos compõem as ações que integram o ato ilocucional de provocar o riso com o ato perlocucional de quem ri

This study analyses four texts for Swedish as a Second Language in an Adult Education textbook published in 2018. The target group has passed the first level of beginners’ studies. The study concerns how the texts represent different life conditions in general and more specifically how otherness is shown in the Swedish majority society. It also concerns how the texts adjust to the learners’ language progression in the course syllabuses. Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used. The results of this study show that the textbook has a serious approach in that the analysed texts represent important and interesting perspectives in the curriculum. The fictional texts show a varied language and content – not too difficult to understand. The two factual texts though are far above the intended language level of the course, which has an excluding effect. These two texts could also – from a critical discourse perspective – be said to cause a feeling of other-ness and exclusion among the L2-readers and are therefore not consistent with the common values in the curriculum.