Computational Models of Discourse Analysis

Carolyn Penstein RoséLanguage 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 (p123-124)

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?

DiscourseEnvironmentalism

ConversationGlobal Warming

DiscourseStatusQuo

Socially Situated IdentityEnvironmentalist

Social LanguageLiberal rhetoric

Figured WorldExpected structure of Conservationist Commercial

Form-Function CorrespondenceRange of meanings for the word “sustainability”

Situated MeaningMeaning 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?