Volume 40, Issue 2 -

This paper offers a stylistic analysis of the tasting notes (TNs) of wine writers Jancis Robinson and Terry Theise. We define linguistic style as those distinctive, consistent, and creative linguistic choices writers make beyond what is conventionally expected in a TN, which are only discernible by comparison to other wine reviewers. Using a corpus of Robinson’s and Theise’s TNs on German and Austrian wines 2012, we compare their TNs in terms of rhetorical and grammatical structure, use of descriptors, and other evaluative language. Robinson’s elliptical note-form style is characterized by adherence to canonical rhetorical structure, verbless clauses, extensive use of conventional metaphoric descriptors and limited use of object descriptors. Theise has an effusive, people-centered additive style characterized by non-conventional rhetorical structure, multiple phrase and clause and coordination, and extensive and exotic use of diverse object descriptors, personification, and intensifier + evaluative adjective phrases. We then connect their varying linguistic styles to their differing approaches to wine tasting.

An integrated Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)-Discourse Theory (DT) framework is proposed that utilizes the Dialectical-Relational (DR) approach from CDA as its primary basis and incorporates DT concepts of articulation and nodal point to further develop DR and thus enhance descriptions and analyses of the complex, shifting and contingent nature of meaning making in discourses of late modernity that impact the construction of social realities (logic) and subjectivity. This paper argues that the addition of the above DT concepts enhances the description and analysis of the dynamics of meaning making by focusing on shifting and contingent meanings present in discourses operating within and between particular social contexts as a means to specifically and systematically capture the influence of context-specific ideologies. Furthermore, using DR allows for the inclusion of the relative permanence of social structures in dialectical relation with processes of meaning making which avoids the risk of a radical contingency that DT potentially entails. The framework is demonstrated using conceptual metaphors in the context of Singapore higher education discourse to show how neoliberalism as a seemingly hegemonic phenomenon operates as a variegated mobile technology adapting to its specific context by manifesting context-specific meanings, thus reflecting characteristics of complexity, non-permanence and contingency.

This paper presents an investigation into patterns of interaction in synchronous, text-based computer-mediated communication (SCMC) with a focus on participation. The data constitute a corpus of 3,785 words from a series of interactions between student teachers performing learning activities in a three-dimensional online environment. Drawing on a systemic functional grammar perspective of language, we aim to develop a conceptual framework for understanding participation as made up of interactional patterns in students’ linguistic exchanges while performing learning activities. Our findings show that verbal negotiation that creates a shared understanding of what the group should accomplish or a common view of how to perform the activity is more frequent than strict activity organization. We argue that there are features of CMC signaling higher levels of complexity than those ordinarily found in face to face or written communication. The three broad interactional features identified – blending, turn-taking collaboration and delay endurance – corroborate our claim. This paper presents evidence that participation in text-based SCMC with learning purposes demands a disposition for collaboration and solidarity, a capacity to endure delay, and the ability to manage a conglomerate of information and communication tools without instructions on how-to processes.

This article adopts an interactional sociolinguistic perspective to investigate the forms and functions of breaking into song in in-group interaction. The data are approximately two hours of interaction among three sisters in their home, during which the sisters occasionally sing together or make references to songs they know. I examine how singing in interaction promotes affiliation and solidarity between participants. In terms of form, the turn-by turn format of instances of singing is investigated, and evidence is presented to argue that joint singing constitutes a speech activity. In terms of function, it is argued that joint singing is a site of shared affect. Singing also makes participants’ relationship with one another relevant in the interaction at hand by indexing the familiarity dimension of that relationship. These affordances of singing allow it to become a resource at moments of trouble to restore affiliation.

This study focuses on the interrelationship between modes of argumentation and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ rhetorical strategies, by adopting the analytical framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) to produce reliable analyses of rhetorical structures of two most frequently required tasks in the Chinese context. The sample texts consist of 20 prepared speeches and 20 argumentative essays, both written by Chinese advanced EFL learners. The findings reveal that: (1) the essays favor a more direct structure with central units at the beginning while the speeches favor a more indirect structure with central units near the end; (2) Background, Circumstance and Preparation relations appear more frequently at the beginning of the speeches, while the Summary relation appears more frequently at the end of the essays; (3) the two most typical top-level patterns of rhetorical structure in the essays resemble the two patterns in the speeches, but with systematic variation and in reversed orders. The results reflect the active role of rhetorical situation in constructing different modes of argumentation for advanced EFL learners. This study could enrich the scope of the application of RST, and provide pedagogical implications for writing in EFL contexts.

Research on spoken interactions has long shown interest in the communication of evaluations or assessments, but it remains limited in revealing the functions of evaluations charged with attitudinal values. Based on the appraisal framework developed in systemic functional linguistics, this article examines the attitudinal evaluations in eighteen job interviews from a live Chinese television program entitled ‘Only You’, exploring how they are communicated as attitude-ideation couplings to negotiate and construct axiological affiliation between interlocutors. The findings reveal that axiological affiliation in spoken interactions can be built via four strategies, including attitudinal enhancement that involves two layers of attitude-ideation coupling; attitudinal elaboration that may appear as specification of a target of evaluation or elaboration of an attitude; attitudinal extension that works with consistent attitudinal polarity and similar evaluative function; and attitudinal projection that is realized through the expression of attitudinal affinity or attitudinal agreement. This article seeks to extend the existing linguistic account of dialogic affiliation and spoken evaluations and shed light on the systemic functional notion of individuation by construing it as a social process in which social persons’ negotiation of communal identities is coupled with their enactment of different personae.