Research Articles (General Linguistics)

Permanent URI for this collection

Browse

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 5 of 108
  • Item
    Message in a bottle : scenic presentation of the unsayable
    (Oxford University Press, 2020-05-06) Busch, Brigitta
    Linguistic studies related to trauma are primarily interested in how traumatic events can be verbalized. This article, in contrast, focusses on ways of translating a traumatic experience into forms of symbolization that do not report on what happened but rather foreground the bodily and emotional sensations linked to (re)living such experiences. In discussing such forms of scenic presentation and condensation, I will build, inter alia, on Wittgenstein’s (1919/1997) distinction between saying and showing as well as on Langer’s (1948) distinction between discursive and presentational forms of meaning making. The close reading of a multimodal text authored by an eight-year-old schoolgirl in the context of a creative-writing activity allows us to identify poetic and artistic means that suggest a reading of the text as a ‘bottled message’ about intense feelings of fear and helplessness. In concluding I argue that Bruner’s (1986) dichotomous distinction between the paradigmatic and the narrative mode of meaning making needs to be extended by recognizing a third mode, which might be termed the presentational mode.
  • Item
    Language and trauma : an introduction
    (Oxford University Press, 2020-04-17) Busch, Brigitta; McNamara, Tim
    This paper introduces the conceptual framing of studies of trauma. It considers how, on the one hand, applied linguistics may contribute to this study, responding to the suggestion that trauma ‘can be best understood through plural, multi-disciplinary perspectives’ (Luckhurst 2008: 214), and, on the other hand, the extent to which linguistic studies of trauma can contribute to a better understanding of what Coupland and Coupland (1997: 117) have called ‘discourses of the unsayable’. It argues that the tools of linguistic analysis may be used to understand the role of language in how individuals may experience, recount, and potentially recover from psychological trauma, in personal, literary, and institutional contexts, as exemplified by the papers in this volume.
  • Item
    Afrikaanse taalvariasie : uitdagings vir regverdige meting van jong kinders se taal
    (Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, 2020) Southwood, Frenette; Oosthuizen, Helena
    Sowat 5% van alle kinders toon ʼn taalagterstand (Law, Boyle, Harris, Harkness en Nye 2000) en daar is aanduidings dat hierdie syfer hoër is in Suid-Afrika, veral onder baie jong kinders (Van der Linde, Swanepoel, Sommerville, Glascoe, Vinck en Louw 2016). Geen voldoende instrument bestaan waarmee vasgestel kan word watter jong Afrikaanssprekendes hulp sal benodig om toekomstige taalverwante akademiese probleme te oorkom nie. Hierdie artikel lewer verslag oor uitdagings wat weens Afrikaanse taalvariasie ervaar word tydens die ontwikkeling van ʼn ouervraelys waarmee jong kinders se taal gemeet kan word. Hierdie vraelys beslaan vrae oor vroeg-ontwikkelende kommunikatiewe gebare, eerste woorde en vroeë sinskonstruksies, en ouers word versoek om op die lys aan te dui watter gebare, woorde en konstruksies hul kind verstaan en/of voortbring. Die vraelys kan nie onbeperk verleng word nie, want die voltooiing daarvan moet ʼn realistiese taak bly, ook vir ouers met lae geletterdheidsvlakke (vgl. Alcock, Rimba, Holding, Kitsao-Wekulo, Abubakar en Newton 2015). Besluite oor die insluiting of uitsluiting op die vraelys van woorde uit spesifieke Afrikaanse variëteite is egter gereeld nie voor die hand liggend nie.Bestaande taalmetingsinstrumente diskrimineer wêreldwyd tipies teen kinders wat nie deel van die dominante kultuur en taalgemeenskap vorm nie. Gegee Suid-Afrika se bevlekte geskiedenis wat die erkenning van sprekers van niegestandaardiseerde taalvariëteite betref (vgl. bv. Hendricks 2012; Williams 2016), is die opstel van ʼn geldige ouervraelys ononderhandelbaar. Daar moet dus noukeurig oorweeg word watter woorde op die lys verskyn, want ʼn goeie ouervraelys sal bydra tot kultureel- en talig-regverdige taaltoetsing van jong Afrikaanssprekende kinders. Dit sal help om kinders te identifiseer wat sukkel om hul taal te verwerf en wat ekstra hulp benodig sodat hul taal genoegsaam kan verbeter vóór hul formele skoolloopbaan begin. Sodoende sal hulle ʼn groter kans hê om die kurrikulum te verstaan, skoolsukses te ervaar en’n lang genoeg skoolloopbaan te hê om hul potensiaal te verwesenlik.
  • Item
    Factors 2 and 3 : towards a principled approach
    (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona & Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana, 2019) Biberauer, Theresa
    This paper seeks to make progress in our understanding of the non-UG components of Chomsky’s (2005) Three Factors model. In relation to the input (Factor 2), I argue for the need to formulate a suitably precise hypothesis about which aspects of the input will qualify as ‘intake’ and, hence, serve as the basis for grammar construction. In relation to Factor 3, I highlight a specific cognitive bias that appears well motivated outside of language, while also having wide-ranging consequences for our understanding of how I-language grammars are constructed, and why they should have the crosslinguistically comparable form that generativists have always argued human languages have. This is Maximise Minimal Means (MMM). I demonstrate how its incorporation into our model of grammar acquisition facilitates understanding of diverse facts about natural language typology, acquisition, both in “stable” and “unstable” contexts, and also the ways in which linguistic systems may change over time.
  • Item
    Effecten van anti-rookboodschappen bij jongeren : een conceptueel replicatieonderzoek
    (Amsterdam University Press, 2019-04) Van Wijk, Heleen; Jansen, Carel
    Based on an experiment with young Dutch smokers, Mollen, Engelen, Kessels, and Van den Putte (2017) advise the European Commission to reconsider the use of warning labels on cigarette packages. Participants in their study were students at institutes for higher education (N = 132). Their attitudes and behavioral intentions were found to be affected both by message framing and temporal discounting in the verbal anti-smoking messages they were presented with. Gain frames were more persuasive than loss frames, and short-term consequences were more persuasive than long-term consequences. We performed a conceptual replication study in which we employed the same experimental design, followed the same procedure, and used similar anti-smoking messages. Other than in Mollen et al., however, both smokers (N = 129) and non-smokers (N = 173) participated, and the verbal messages were accompanied with matching visuals. Furthermore, participants were younger (M = 18.0 years) than in the original study (M = 22.4 years), and they were students at a lower educational level. We found none of the effects reported in the original study, neither for smokers nor for non-smokers. Therefore, our study does not support the advice from Mollen et al. (2017).