Computational Models of Discourse Analysis Carolyn Penstein Rosé Language Technologies Institute/ Human-Computer Interaction Institute

Warm-Up Look at my analysis (which includes an overview and a table with the 42 questions) Notice which rows and columns various kinds of observations are placed in Evaluate the validity of the analysis in terms of:  Convergence, Agreement, Coverage, Linguistic details

Review

Building Tasks According to Gee’s theory, whenever we speak or write, we are constructing 7 areas of reality What we build: Significance, Practices, Identities, Relationships, Politics, Connections, Sign systems and knowledge How we build them: Social languages, Socially situated identities, Discourses, Conversations, Figured worlds, intertextuality

Evaluating Validity (p ) Note that an analysis is an argument, not just a bottom up “laundry list” of answers to 42 questions. Convergence  To what extent do your answers to the 42 questions offer consistent support for your hypothesis Agreement  Face Validity: do members of the discourse community you are studying agree with your analysis  Interrater-reliability: do multiple analysts agree with your analysis Coverage  To what extent is your “model” generalizable to more data than what you specifically looked at or discussed? Linguistic Details  To what extent is the analysis tied to evidence from specific form-function correspondences that native speakers agree exist?

Discourse Environmentalism Conversation Global Warming Discourse StatusQuo Socially Situated Identity Environmentalist Social Language Liberal rhetoric Figured World Expected structure of Conservationist Commercial Form-Function Correspondence Range of meanings for the word “sustainability” Situated Meaning Meaning of “sustainability” in the commercial Imagine an environmentalist commercial

Building Tasks Significance: things and people made more or less significant through the text Practices: ritualized activities and how are they being enacted through the text (for example, lecturing or mentoring) Identities: manner in which things and people are being cast in a role through the text Relationships: style of social relationship, like level of formality Politics: how “social goods” are being distributed, who is responsible for the flow, where is it going Connections: connections and disconnections between things and people, e.g., what ideas are related, how are things causally connected, what is affecting what? Sign Systems and Knowledge: languages, social languages, and ways of knowing, what ways of communicating and knowing are treated as standard and acceptable in the context, e.g., that you’re expected to speak in English in class

Systemic Functional Linguistics How is it similar to and different from James Gee’s approach?

Systemic Functional Linguistics “Discourse analysis employs the tools of grammarians to identify the roles of wordings in passages of text, and employs the tools of social theorists to explain why they make the meanings they do.” What do form-function correspondences look like?

What is a system?

Metafunctions

What is the analogy between this flag and discourse analysis? The colors clearly have social significance, but not everyone would attribute the same meaning to each color.

Questions?