The AlethGen tool has been used to build a system for automatically generating replies to complaints, for a European mail-order company. In the current version, letters are generated in French. AlethGen consists of several modules: the text deep structure planner (or conceptual planner), the text surface structure planner (or rhetorical planner), the computation of pronouns and quantifiers, and...

According to experts in rhetoric, Interrogation refers to asking about a thing which is unknown to the speaker and aims at knowing something; they mention, however, that these statements deviate from their real purposes sometimes and refer to some other secondary meanings. Writers have mentioned more or less different secondary purposes mainly based on the Quran. More recent writers have also p...

It is now generally accepted that academic writing is a social activity by which the authors negotiate with their audience to gain community acceptance for their findings. One of the ways to achieve such an acceptance is by establishing intertextual links to prior research using citation. Despite a vast research on the topic and suggestion of typologies for the form and function of citation in ...

Novice academic writers, particularly Iranian graduate students (IGSs), upon entering an academic community, are hypothesized to face probable difficulties in practicing rhetorical expectations set by the experienced (EXP) members, hence, not being able to write in a way acceptable to these professionals. To explore the probable rhetorical distance between them, this study investigated the empl...

In this paper we investigate how discourse structure a ects the meanings of words and how the meanings of words a ect discourse structure We integrate three ingredients a theory of discourse structure called sdrt which represents discourse in terms of rhetorical relations that glue together the propositions introduced by the text segments an accom panying theory of discourse attachment called d...

A traditional approach to contrastive rhetoric has emphasized cultural difference in rhetorical patterns among various languages. Despite its laudable pedagogical intentions to raise teachers’ and students’ cultural and rhetorical awareness in second language writing, traditional contrastive rhetoric has perpetuated static binaries between English and other languages and viewed students as cult...

This paper critically appraises the rhetoric of marketing management texts. Its interpretive frame is informed respectively by critical management and discourse analytic theoretical traditions. Its main data set is drawn from popular textbooks written for taught university courses but it also draws attention to similar rhetorical strategies in leading academic marketing journals. In addition, p...

While the concept of the rhetorical situation is regularly used in composition instruction, its value to information literacy instruction has rarely been addressed. As defined by Bitzer, the rhetorical situation consists of three interrelated elements: an exigence, an audience and a set of constraints. The exigence is the problem, described as ―an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect,...

Recent studies in academic discourse show that rhetorical choices in student academic writing differ across disciplines. Focusing on the introductions of examination essays, the present study examines the rhetorical choices made by second-year undergraduates in Literature-in-English and Sociology courses in a Ghanaian state university. A combined framework comprising Swales‟ rhetorical move app...