Volume 29, Issue 6

This paper investigates the use of rhetorical questions in the editorial discourse of the London-based Arabic-language daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi . A corpus of 150 editorial rhetorical questions is analyzed by drawing on the theories of Bakhtin, Althusser, and Vološinov. These rhetorical questions are characterized by their aggressive and polemical content in which two hostile voices are dialogically opposed, and by their recurrence in editorials dealing with politically controversial and volatile issues such as the role of the United States in the region. These questions serve four main functions: conferring a dialogic quality upon the text; launching a hidden polemic against the United States and its allies; questioning the very foundation upon which US and Western discourse is built; and speaking for and creating “identification” with the reader. Collectively, they are exploited to voice and double voice the United States and the West by taking an opposing stance toward their discourse on democracy and human rights. Through them, US and Western discourse is challenged and even disparaged and its legitimacy is called into question. By utilizing these rhetorical questions, readers are interpellated into a position where they are called upon to choose between the “hegemonic” policy of the United States and the “emancipationist” position of the newspaper.

For purposes of financial disclosure, large companies often organize earnings calls, i.e., multi-party telephone calls arranged through a teleconferencing service during which executives present financial results to investment analysts. The presentations are followed by question and answer sessions that allow the analysts to obtain additional information or clarification. This study investigates the language used by investment analysts to request information, with particular attention to indirect requests . It is based on a corpus of thirty authentic question and answer sessions from earnings calls. The methodological approach uses corpus techniques as a point of entry for in-depth textual analysis to acquire a broader understanding of the strategic use of indirectness. The emerging insights were further illuminated by the input of a professional informant. On the quantitative level, indirect requests were found to be more than twice as frequent as direct requests, even if the latter would seem entirely appropriate in these routine informative events. Qualitative analysis suggested that the motivation behind this usage does not reflect a particular concern for politeness, but rather the analysts' aim to extract as much information as possible in this technology-mediated setting, while projecting an image of highly competent yet likeable professionals at the same time.

This article examines evaluation—the language of opinion—in evangelical sermons. It uses the appraisal model to investigate a rhetorical feature which I have termed the misguided voice . A misguided voice is a representation of a point of view—for example through direct or indirect speech—which is, often dramatically and emphatically, contra-Christian. The article asks how speakers deploy appraisal so that these voices do not contradict, but rather work in harmony with, the speakers' evaluative positions and rhetorical purposes. The question is answered by isolating two stages of voice construction, which I have called framing and layering . The former concept relates to how the interpretation of a misguided voice is constrained by the preceding text. The latter relates to the claim that misguided voices have a complex evaluative function: the contra-Christian evaluation (the internal layer) simultaneously functions to imply another kind of evaluation (the external layer) which supports the evangelical purpose. After showing how these features work together in some extended examples, I conclude by relating misguided voices to evangelical ideology and history, and by suggesting some implications of the research for the appraisal model.

Minimally, narrative is traditionally defined as “a sequence of two clauses which are temporally ordered [such that] a change in their order will result in a change in the temporal sequence of the original semantic interpretation” (Labov, The transformation of experience in narrative syntax, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972: 360). However, recent explorations by Herman (Text 21: 515–541 2001, Story logic: Problems and possibilities of narrative, University of Nebraska Press, 2002) have suggested that the temporal sequence in this definition be re-specified as a spatiotemporal sequence. Taking a quantitative approach to this suggestion—by applying a coding scheme developed from Levinson's (Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 353–382, 1996) descriptive classes of static spatial arrays and the scaling of spatial reference types to seven institutionalized narratives—this article demonstrates that the number, frequency, and distribution of spatial linguistic resources align with spatiotemporal narrative domains , defined as “sets of verbal or visual cues anchored in mental models” reflective of the “mental construct that encompasses the history of spatial relationships between storyworld objects” (Herman, Text 21, 2001: 519). However, while the structure and categorization of narrative domains is resolvable from spatial linguistic resources, space, while undoubtedly present, is not functionally necessary for the minimal definition of narrative. Nonetheless, analyzing spatial linguistic resources provides important insight into event resolution and cognitive explorations in narrative.

A post-structuralist perspective suggests that our social context will lead to lasting ways of viewing the world, which will be reflected in what we think, say, and write. This study aims to test whether gendered expectations of success in a technological task are reflected grammatically in reflections on the task. Eighty-seven teacher trainees built and electrically wired a doll house as a class assignment. Their written reflections on this experience were analyzed using the appraisal framework, which allows analysis of expression of emotion ( affect ), assessment of behavior ( judgment ), and assessment of artifacts ( appreciation ). The grammar of male students' writing reflects a comparatively positive experience of the task. A greater proportion of the interpersonal content of the male students' compared to the female students' reflections was devoted to a positive assessment of the doll's house and the course ( appreciation ). Female students' reflections gave more attention to negative appraisal of their own emotions ( affect ) and actions ( judgment ), indicating that gendered experience is indeed encoded in the grammar of the reflections. We interpret our findings as reflecting the anxiety and diffculty of achieving a task when we ourselves and others in our social context expect us not to be able to achieve that task.

Within the framework of systemic functional linguistics, this paper aims to analyze the thematic structure of twenty children's storybooks in the English language in relation to four Piagetian-based stages of cognitive development: the sensory-motor stage, the pre-operational stage, and two stages of concrete operations. The analysis confirms the tendency of children's storybook authors for the 0–11 years age range to make the characters coincide with the thematic position of the clause. In this way, character identification and the ability to follow plot development is facilitated for the child. However, this general tendency is more evident in storybooks written for children who are in the first two stages (0–6 years) than in those related to the last two concrete operations stages (7–11 years). At the same time, in terms of developmental phases, the stories intended for older children conform less consistently to the patterns of thematic progression described by Danes (Functional sentence perspective and the organization of the text, Academic, 1974).

Stories about another country are often viewed as filled with stereotypes and prejudices. Still there are other ways to organize foreign experiences, especially for actors needing to achieve an attitude of proximity. This article analyzes arrival stories , in this case Swedish businessmen's stories about their first arrival to a post-communist country, in order to show how such stories may be used to transcend prejudices and to rhetorically construct a socially suitable “tolerance.” Arrival stories interrelate certain kinds of utterances that draw on the narrators' initial impressions of the sceneries and surroundings, and various surprises, dramas, or changes in their impressions and old opinions. By investigating how individual narrators make use of shared interpretative procedures from inside rather than outside their social circle, tolerance can be seen as dialogically produced.