Changing practices for connected discourse: Starting and developing topics in conversation

Subjects and topics in conversation

This paper presents an examination of the expression of subject and topic in conversation, using parameters established by Centering Theory. Based on a corpus analysis of English and Spanish casual conversations, we show (i) under what circumstances the subject and the topic of an utterance coincide (‘topic’ is defined, according to Centering, as the backward-looking center of an utterance); an...

Developing and Validating a Questionnaire to Assess Critical Discourse Analysis Practices among EFL Teachers

The present study was an attempt to investigate to what extent Iranian EFL teachers practice critical discourse analysis in the English language classroom during their teaching. To reach this aim, a 27-item questionnaire was designed and administered among 120 male and female Iranian English teachers in different language schools in Tehran. Following descriptive statistics through which the mea...

Discourse Topics and Metaphors

Using metaphor-annotated material that is sufficiently representative of the topical composition of a similar-length document in a large background corpus, we show that words expressing a discourse-wide topic of discussion are less likely to be metaphorical than other words in a document. Our results suggest that to harvest metaphors more effectively, one is advised to consider words that do no...

Discourse Strategies for Conversation in Time

Tone in Connected Discourse

Connected discourse has a number of substantial impacts on tone. First, the ideal form of tone is routinely compromised due to articulatory sluggishness. Second, the underlying tonal target itself is sometimes changed. Third, the surface tonal form is further distorted by other linguistic functions that also change pitch either deliberately or inadvertently. This article discusses how the surfa...