Computational Models of Discourse Analysis

1
Computational Models of Discourse Analysis

• Carolyn Penstein Rosé
• Language Technologies Institute/
• Human-Computer Interaction Institute

2
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

3
Review
4
Building Tasks

• According to Gees 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

5
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?

6
Imagine an environmentalist commercial
Form-Function Correspondence Range of meanings
for the word sustainability
Conversation Global Warming
Discourse Environmentalism
Discourse StatusQuo
Socially Situated Identity Environmentalist
Social Language Liberal rhetoric
Figured World Expected structure of
Conservationist Commercial
Situated Meaning Meaning of sustainability in
the commercial
7
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 youre
  expected to speak in English in class

8
Systemic Functional Linguistics
How is it similar to and different from James
Gees approach?
9
Systemic Functional Linguistics
What do form-function correspondences look like?

• 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.

10
What is a system?
11
Metafunctions
12
(No Transcript)
13
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.

14
Questions?