The computer-mediated expression of surprise
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Laura Ascone
Abstract
This paper investigates how Italian native speakers express surprise in English as their second language on Facebook. A qualitative study was conducted on a corpus of forty English utterances by Italian native speakers conveying surprise and two control corpora composed of forty Italian and forty English native speakers’ expressions. First, a systemic approach will be adopted: by analysing the order in which the speaker reacts to, comments on, and wonders about new information, the objective is to determine a pattern peculiar to the verbal expression of surprise, and to ascertain how the mother tongue and the language-learning background are influential when expressing an instinctive reaction such as surprise in a foreign language. Attention will then be paid to the lexical expression of surprise. In particular, the analysis will focus on the features specific to non-native speakers (i.e. use of verbs and code-switching), on the codes peculiar to CMC (i.e. smileys and punctuation), and on how these codes are employed to convey surprise disruption, valence and intensity. By examining all these aspects, this research examines how English non-native speakers express surprise in chats.
Abstract
This paper investigates how Italian native speakers express surprise in English as their second language on Facebook. A qualitative study was conducted on a corpus of forty English utterances by Italian native speakers conveying surprise and two control corpora composed of forty Italian and forty English native speakers’ expressions. First, a systemic approach will be adopted: by analysing the order in which the speaker reacts to, comments on, and wonders about new information, the objective is to determine a pattern peculiar to the verbal expression of surprise, and to ascertain how the mother tongue and the language-learning background are influential when expressing an instinctive reaction such as surprise in a foreign language. Attention will then be paid to the lexical expression of surprise. In particular, the analysis will focus on the features specific to non-native speakers (i.e. use of verbs and code-switching), on the codes peculiar to CMC (i.e. smileys and punctuation), and on how these codes are employed to convey surprise disruption, valence and intensity. By examining all these aspects, this research examines how English non-native speakers express surprise in chats.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Surprise as a conceptual category 7
- The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise” 27
- Grammatical evidentiality and the unprepared mind 51
- Operationalizing mirativity 91
- The computer-mediated expression of surprise 121
- Surprise routines in scientific writing 153
- Surprise in the GRID 173
- Surprise and human-agent interactions 197
- Expressing and describing surprise 215
- Index 245
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Surprise as a conceptual category 7
- The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise” 27
- Grammatical evidentiality and the unprepared mind 51
- Operationalizing mirativity 91
- The computer-mediated expression of surprise 121
- Surprise routines in scientific writing 153
- Surprise in the GRID 173
- Surprise and human-agent interactions 197
- Expressing and describing surprise 215
- Index 245
