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Abstract: This master’s thesis examines five selected TED Talks by using Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory (2005). TED Talks are a specific form of speech which has spread worldwide with live TED events and even videos online since the first organised TED event in 1984. The theoretical background of this master’s thesis covers mainly Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory (2005), although it does include the views of other researchers, including Mary Macken-Horarik and Anne Isaac, as well as Geoff Thompson, on appraisal analysis as well. Furthermore, it encompasses a short overview of discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics, as this is the theoretical framework from which Appraisal Theory has evolved. The empirical part includes the analysis of appraisal in the five selected TED Talks, chosen based on the assigned tag on the official TED web page. The selected TED Talks are: “Why I'm Done Trying to Be ‘Man Enough’” by Justin Baldoni; “Dare to Refuse the Origin Myths That Claim Who You Are” by Chetan Bhatt; “How Changing Your Story Can Change Your Life” by Lori Gottlieb; “My Year of Saying Yes to Everything” by Shonda Rhimes; and “Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality” by Anil Seth. The appraisal model explores the speaker/writer’s evaluation of certain occurrences, concepts and people in a form of his/her emotional responses, judgement and appreciation. Furthermore, it studies the speaker/writer’s positioning to alternative viewpoints and alignment with the text’s point of view. The aim of this thesis is to observe the use of appraisals in a contemporary form of a public speech, i.e. TED Talks. The further objective of this thesis is also to detect typical patterns in appraisal use within the genre of public speaking, specifically, within TED Talks which are known to have a set form and common features that distinguish them from other forms of speeches or academic lectures. Thus, this thesis aims to research ways in which the speakers of the selected TED Talks express themselves with the use of appraisals. Since all but one of the chosen five TED Talks are tagged as ‘Personal Growth’ on the official TED web page, the purpose of the research is also to see whether there are any differences in appraisal use, more specifically in the use of affect between the TED Talks tagged as ‘Personal Growth’ and the one which is not tagged as such and may therefore be more objective in its nature. Besides exploring attitudinal resources, the thesis also observes the occurrence of graduation resources and their prevalence, as well as the ways the speakers engage with their audience and their prevalence. The appraisal analysis of the selected TED Talks has proved the use of all attitudinal resources in the delivery of these talks. Furthermore, the analysis has shown that the chosen topics of TED Talks have an influence on the speakers’ use of attitudes. Affect has a prominent role in most talks, however, the more the speaker tries to stay unbiased and objective, the more she or he avoids affect in relation to her-/himself and turns to appreciation. In addition, the speakers of the selected TED Talks tend to use graduation heavily in their narrative, force being the predominant graduation resource in all selected talks. Even though the analysis of engagement resources in the selected TED Talks showed the presence of dialogically expansive expressions to be more common in four out of five examined TED Talks, dialogically contractive expressions also occur frequently in the speakers’ narratives, revealing the speakers’ attempt to balance welcoming of alternative viewpoints and at the same time maintain self-assurance in their knowledge and beliefs by restricting other voices.
Keywords: Appraisal, TED Talks, Evaluation, Appraisal Analysis, Discourse Analysis
Published in DKUM: 20.12.2021; Views: 1352; Downloads: 170
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Abstract: This master’s thesis deals with the construction of sexual harassment in American online tabloids and quality newspapers. Ten texts of relatively the same length, 5 articles from tabloids and 5 articles from quality newspapers, have been selected for analysis, which was based on the methods of discourse analysis. The thesis deals with ideational and interpersonal metafunctions of language in the selected texts. In connection with this, the thesis examines how victims and perpetrators of sexual harassment are described and classified, and which kinds of sexual harassment are mentioned in the texts. This master’s thesis also analyzed external voices included in the texts (heteroglossia). Findings from tabloids have been compared with findings from quality newspapers. The results have shown that perpetrators were judged negatively for their harassment in both kinds of newspapers, while victims were judged for their lack of strength and competence. As expected, victims were referred to more frequently than perpetrators. Physical harassment was the center of focus in tabloids, while in quality newspapers the reference to verbal harassment was made more often.
Keywords: Discourse analysis, sexual harassment, victim, perpetrator, heteroglossia, tabloids, quality newspapers.
Published in DKUM: 14.01.2019; Views: 1364; Downloads: 117
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Abstract: Background and purpose: Although employee share ownership (ESO) deserves of a long tradition, we still know little about employees’ perspectives about ESO. The lack of knowledge about the employees’ attitudes towards ESO is discursively filled in the ESO debate. This paper challenges that deficit by carrying out a semantic analysis of the literature with the aim to identify the various actor constructions used implicitly in the ESO discourse. Design/Methodology/Approach: We conduct a semantic analysis of the ESO discourse. To unfold the order of this discourse we draw on the distinction between surface and underlying structure of communication in the sense of Michel Foucault. We interpret some semantic lead differences, a term coined by Niklas Luhmann, to constitute the underlying structure of communication. Results: We can identify six different streams on the ESO discourse’s surface level each defined by the ends pursued. The discourse’s underlying structure is made up of the distinctions production-consumption, capital-labour, and ownership-control that also determine the actor models implicitly in use. Conclusion: We can identify five different actor models implicit in the ESO discourse. While the CEE discourse differs on the surface level in as far as it is more concerned with questions of political legitimation of the privatisation process than with questions of economic efficiency, thus introducing political distinctions in the discourse rather missing in the west, it shares the underlying semantic lead differences with the Western discourse as well as the actor models anchored in those differences.
Keywords: Employee Share Ownership, discourse analysis, semantic lead distinctions, actor constructions, CEE countries
Published in DKUM: 22.01.2018; Views: 1132; Downloads: 119
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Abstract: Nowadays, research on political speeches has become an important subject of linguistic studies. Discourse presents a language above the sentence or above the clause. Functional approach to discourse analysis is an effective way of determining the basic characteristics of political speech. Its purpose is to perceive language as a social practice. Language users do not function in isolation, but rather in a set of cultural, social, and psychological composition. Therefore discourse analysis must focus on how politicians think and consequently design their speech. In order to achieve this, metafunctions of language must be determined, as well as other functional components, which together combine the systemic functional linguistics. Political speeches are also known for their use of figures of speech, such as euphemisms, substitution, and metaphors, and other devices of language structures, for instance cohesion, the rule of three, and parallelism. This is why discourse analysis is a useful tool for translators and interpretors. Translating political speech is an important, even crucial part of spreading the discourse across individual language barriers, making it available to international audiences, giving it greater power and influence, and thus reaching more people.
Keywords: political speech, discourse analysis, process, metafunctions, translation
Published in DKUM: 17.09.2012; Views: 2503; Downloads: 176
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Abstract: Speech-to-speech translation technology has difficulties processing elements of spontaneity in conversation. We propose a discourse marker attribute in speech corpora to help overcome some of these problems. There have already been some attempts to annotate discourse markers in speech corpora. However, as there is no consistency on what expressions count as discourse markers, we have to reconsider how to set a framework for annotating, and, in order to better understand what we gain by introducing a discourse marker category, we have to analyse their characteristics and functions in discourse. This is especially important for languages such as Slovenian where no or little research on the topic of discourse markers has been carried out. The aims of this paper are to present a scheme for annotating discourse markers based on the analysis of a corpus of telephone conversations in the tourism domain in the Slovenian language, and to give some additional arguments based on the characteristics and functions of discourse markers that confirm their special status in conversation.
Keywords: discourse markers, speech corpora, annotating, conversation, discourse analysis, speech-to-speech translation, spontaneous speech, Slovenian language
Published in DKUM: 31.05.2012; Views: 2110; Downloads: 43
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