Volume 31, Issue 5

Structural operations in a text may be seen as realizing systemic choices in a network of interlocking options (Halliday and Matthiessen, An introduction to functional grammar, Edward Arnold, 2004: 23). The probability of these choices, however, varies in different functional contexts (Halliday, Methods—techniques—problems, Continuum, 2009: 252). This paper aims to show that the probabilities of structural choices above the clause in research article abstracts (RAA), first between the clause simplex and the clause complex, then between parataxis and hypotaxis, are affected by the genre features of abstracts and disciplinary differences. To this end, the two moments of choice are quantified in a corpus of 120 research article abstracts belonging to six academic disciplines (representing the hard–soft distinction). It is statistically proved that clause simplexes have a higher probability in abstracts representing hard disciplines, whereas soft disciplines show a preference for the clause complex. The quantitative analysis also shows that, in case of the clause complex, hypotaxis is more probable than parataxis, regardless of disciplines. The interpretation of the quantitative results leads to the conclusion that the high probability of hypotaxis is due to the features of the abstract genre in terms of linguistic conventions and communicative purposes and that the varying probabilities of clause simplex versus complex can be explained by disciplinary differences as to what constitutes knowledge and its linguistic representation.

This paper examines instances of swearing in live television broadcasts. While some cable television shows routinely involve swearing without censorship and recorded shows may include swearing “bleeped out,” our interest is in instances of swearing in contexts where swearing is prohibited. We look at live interviews and panel debates where swearing is clearly noticed and reacted to strongly—and in all cases retracted or apologized for in some way. The examples we examine thus involve a participant visibly moving outside the normative limits of the interaction, and as such reveal the boundaries that serve as organizational structures for the interactions. Drawing on Goffman's work on gaffes and slips and ethnomethodological conversation analysis, the paper explores how swearing is treated by the participants as a practical concern, and how swearing and its management implicates the identities and relationships of the participants and the specific context of the interaction. We discuss how swearing in live broadcasts reveals the limits of authenticity within informal, conversational interviews and debates.

This paper aims at describing the styles of asylum officials when eliciting asylum seekers' narratives of persecution and recording them in the report of the hearing. In order to illustrate the effect of these styles on the assessment of the applicant's request, I analyze the recordings of first-stage hearings, their corresponding records, and the asylum agency's decisions, which I gathered during fieldwork in the Belgian asylum agencies between 2004 and 2007. I distinguish in my corpus two different styles of officials interacting with applicants: “narrative” and “elicitative.” The two styles are associated with two different techniques of drafting the reports, i.e., “simultaneous” and “mediated.” The analysis of my data reveals that officials employing an “elicitative-mediated style” delete assessment-relevant elements of the applicant's oral narrative of the persecution.

This paper examines how linguistic and image elements in a text may work at cross-purposes, so that, despite an apparent overall visual–verbal coherence, one semiotic resource undermines the message of another. This effect has implications for the study of intersemiosis and the making of meaning that occurs when semiotic resources, such as language, image, and sound combine in multimodal discourse, and also indicates that a multimodal approach, involving the study of language with other resources, is necessary to fully analyze contemporary discourse practices. In addition, the analysis in this paper aims to situate the competing discourses of science and the media at work in the analyzed text within the context of existing research findings on the communication of information relevant to the climate change debate. Our argument is illustrated by an analysis of an article appearing in New Scientist magazine and its Web site, and makes use of three established semiotic frameworks of analysis: Halliday and Matthiessen's (An introduction to functional grammar, Arnold, 2004) systemic functional theory, Martin and White's (The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) appraisal theory, and Kress and van Leeuwen's (Reading images: The grammar of visual design, Routledge, 2006) visual grammar.

How do experts make their own expertise relevant in offering criticisms of non-experts when what they say is, itself, addressed to a radio audience of non-experts? Discourse analysis of 13 interviews between a professional journalist and practicing psychiatrists from the United Kingdom and the United States examined how interviewees challenged others' versions of psychiatric expertise. Analysis focused on how these descriptions were rhetorically designed to address the potential expectations and lack of expertise of a lay audience. Interviewees' descriptions establish why lay constructions of psychiatry are at fault while attending to the concern that they may be heard as criticizing a lay audience. The data reveal that interviewees deployed forms of membership categorization that attended to this potential interactional difficulty. The interviewees either categorized others in a way that potentially excluded audience members as targets of criticism or aligned themselves with those being criticized.

This paper explores the cultural and political implications of some “seen but unnoticed” aspects of a TV program and its viewing. Both practices are approached as social interaction in a changing visual space. A close multimodal analysis is undertaken of an extract from a live Danish reality TV show Robinson Ekspeditionen 2000 and its two receptions. The extract was selected on the basis of what at first looked like a coinciding interpretative practice in two widely different audiences, first, an elderly couple in their living room, and second, four young men watching the same episode together. In the extract, the host interviews “judges” in the last episode of that year's series. The analysis shows how the host's talk, geared toward eliciting audience reactions, produces certain contrastive categorizations and positions. In both audiences, the host's categorization of a participant was met with an amused repetition of what was just seen and heard. The paper demonstrates why the two similar repeats actually show differing orientations to the formulation on the basis of different (life) experiences. The analysis of the extracts is used to discuss, with a combination of process-oriented theorization, the episodes in relation to the political atmosphere in Denmark anno 2000.