Volume One, Number Two (December 1998)
ABSTRACTS
Articles
Managing roles in
the openings and closings of an Italian oral test
Anna Filipi, Monash University
This paper reports on one of the findings of a study of twenty-one interactions that occurred during the 1992 Victorian Certificate of Education Italian Oral Common Assessment Task (CAT 2). One of the main aims of the study was to see how roles are constrained by the institutional character of the setting. This was done by examining the interactions occurring in the openings and closings of each segment of the CAT using a Conversation Analysis approach. Not surprisingly, it was found that the assessors initiate and conclude the opening and closing segments of the CAT. Violations of this format are rare and when they do occur, the assessors act quickly to reaffirm the roles of each of the participants using features of ordinary conversation. The opening and closing boundaries also provide one of the few environments in the CAT where students ask and indeed are invited to ask questions. The major sequences in these boundaries are made up of adjacency pairs such as questions and answers, greetings and leave taking, and basic expansion sequences.
Novice
and expert writing in the medical sciences: report of a program of
language assistance for a PhD medical student
Tim Moore, Monash University
This paper reports findings from a program of language assistance for a PhD medical student. The program took the form of a comparative study of the student's draft of a research article, and her supervisor's rewrite of it. The linguistic framework for the analysis was based on the "functional grammar" of Halliday (1985) and the move analysis of Swales (1981). Observed differences in the transitivity and thematic structure in the two texts suggested a greater level of self-consciousness on the part of the student in the research process. The value of this comparative approach, both as a tool for genre analysis and as a pedagogical method, is considered at the end of the paper.
Participation
frameworks, discourse features and embedded requests in police V.A.T.E.
interviews with children
Georgina Heydon,
University of Melbourne
This paper examines training interviews conducted as a part of the Video and Audio Taping of Evidence (VATE) project run by the Victorian Police Force. Transcriptions of seven video-taped interviews between police officers and children aged eight to eleven years formed the corpus of data for this study. Adopting an Interactional Sociolinguistics framework in order to examine certain discourse features of the interviews, it was found that the data could not be classified as typical of police institutional discourse such as that described by Auburn, Drake and Willig (1995:384) and Thomas (1989:137). Features such as frames and participant roles in the interviews as well as discoursal indicators (Thomas 1989) indicate an asymmetrical discourse structure said to be typical of institutional talk. However, other features of the data such as receipt markers (Atkinson 1992) were found to be indicative of a less formal style of discourse where such asymmetry is less common. Thus it was concluded that the notion of institutional discourse as asymmetrical discourse with asymmetrical patterns is problematicized by data such as that analyzed here.
Logophoricity
redefined - the case of Boko
Ross Jones,
Monash University
This paper examines the phenomenon of logophoricity in Boko, a Mande language, and argues that in Boko at least, logophoricity is syntactically defined, contrary to recent claims that it is partially controlled by semantics. In this respect my analysis is an extension of what Culy (1997) postulated in claiming that logophoricity and point of view are distinct phenomena. Boko logophoric domains are broader than what is normally attributed to logophoricity, although limited to the sentence. The hierarchy of logophoric licensing verbs is extended maximally: any context where a pronoun in a lower level structure has an antecedent on a higher level is a logophoric domain. Relative and adverbial clauses are included. Boko reflexive possessive pronouns are interpreted as logophoric and are described here in detail. Their domains include noun phrases, postpositional phrases, simple clauses and complex clauses. In this paper a wide range of Boko examples is presented to illustrate the extent of all its forms, and the non-syntactic definitions of logophoricity are shown to be inadequate for Boko.
Examining
the code-switching practices of teachers of French as a foreign language
Margaret Gearon, Monash University
In classes where French is taught as a foreign/second language in Victorian secondary schools, a study of native and non-native speaking teachers' classroom discourse shows a preponderance of the use of English as the unmarked language. The second language, French, is used as the marked language, that is, it is rarely used purposefully, to communicate an authentic message; this, in spite of the recognised value of comprehensible input and immersion situations for successful second language learning/acquisition. However, the performance of students at the final oral examination tends to belie any adverse effects of such an approach. This study examines the code-switching practices of six teachers of French as a foreign language and attempts to describe what is actually happening in an average lesson in a Victorian secondary school classroom. It considers the development of a model for analysing the data in the light of the large amount of teacher monologue and seeks to develop an understanding of how the code-switching occurs.
Reviews
Endangered Languages:
Current Issues and Future Prospects, edited by Lenore
A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. Whaley. 1998. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Reviewed by Mark Newbrook
Semantics
in Generative Grammar, by Irene Heim and Angelika
Kratzer. 1998. Malden MA.: Blackwell.
Reviewed by Keith
Allan