Transcript Slide 1

Computational
Models of
Discourse Analysis
Carolyn Penstein Rosé
Language Technologies Institute/
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Warm-Up

Find examples of Foregrounding and Coarticulation in the analyses you did as well as
mine

What are the equivalent of these in Gee’s
theory if any?
Student Question
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Quickies: what is the difference for our
purposes between a system and a model.
What is the difference between systemic
and systematic in the context of Discourse
analysis?
Foregrounding and Coarticulation

Foregrounding: how does the text make
some things stand out over others?
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Coarticulation: systems working together to
achieve a particular effect
Guidelines
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Identifying the genres
 Helps
to find an
organizing principle

Using formatting and
periodicity to identify how field unfolds


But remember that formatting only reflects discourse structure!
3 analyses, all different genres
 Analysis
1:recount, time as an organizing principle
 Analysis 2: report, using contrasts for emphasis
 Analysis 3: autobiographical recount, assuming story
of life frame sets up expectations, and using negation
and concession to address those
Where are the rows and
columns?
Confused?
Student Quote

I've read each of the Martin and Rose
readings several times but can't tell if there
is a general technique they are using to
analyze different works or if the analyses
are all genre specific.
Student Quote

It seems to me that Gee's approach to
introducing analysis was a lot more standoff-ish. In chapter 8, Martin and Rose not
only have the idea of "genre" but specific
genres (i.e., recount, etc). I wonder if Martin
& Rose have a list of potential genres
(accompanied by a list of features that
denote them, as done in this chapter?). Not
knowing where the bounds of Martin &
Rose are makes analysis a bit confusing.
Wondering where this was?
Student Quote
“Having read the assigned
chapters from Martin and Rose
I feel like I'm missing the trees
of the forest. The text defines a
lot of terms but doesn't seem to
build a system out of it. For
example it did not describe any
procedural approaches to the
analysis. I kept wondering if the
missing chapters had the
answer and I had a hard time
interpreting chapter 8.”
Starting by observing overall organization
** In the absence of predefined system maps, look for things that “go
together as a set” and could be used to structure the text.
Other Confusing Vocab
Not critical at this stage
 Roles of sentences within paragraphs

 hyperTheme:
introduces the topic before
details are given
 hyperNews: ties together what was given
already into a generalization

Roles of paragraphs in the larger text
 macroTheme:
introduces the topic before
details are given
 macroNews: ties together what was given
already into a generalization
Student Quote

I actually find it difficult to converge on an
argument when using SFL style analysis. It
seems like there are a million different tools to
analyze the text with and I can pick it apart along
so many different dimensions, that when I look at
it I see it for the textual and linguistic features
rather than for the story about the person
speaking. I'm looking for all of these cues from
periodicity, engagement, appraisal, etc. and it's
easy to get caught up in them, and seeing those
patterns as the end goal to discover, rather than
look at what they're being used for by the author.
“student” quote


I think that some of the confusion around Martin and Rose may come
from our not knowing how the previous chapters are structured (which
I vaguely do, having read most of the book). While Gee's approach
seems to discuss how form is linked to function and that semantic
function is a complex matroshka doll set of meanings in contexts,
Martin and Rose seem to be more about examining "pure" form
and without discussing exactly how to proceed from form to
function. In a way this makes Martin and Rose's work easier to
implement computationally, but it makes it harder to do so with a
further goal in mind as the human "meaning maker" is implicit
where Gee has attempted to make meaning making explicit. In other
words, even with Martin and Rose's forms, how would we use a
computational approach to gain in semantics?
I get the feeling that Martin and Rose's tools allow us to justify a
pre-existing opinion, whereas Gee's tools allow us to examine
more systematically the analytic options present within a text.
Student Quote

Slowly I'm beginning to appreciate the open
nature of Gee's approach. Instead of a
fixed system by which to analyze a text
using SFL, Gee proposes that texts and
discourses are so widely different through
their human diverse aspects that imposing
one system onto which we map a text is
fairly unfeasible. Of course on the other
hand it makes Critical Discourse Analysis
much harder to cast into a software
algorithm.
Other comparisons?

What frustrations do you have with Gee and/or
Martin&Rose?

What is different or similar about the kinds of
insights into language that you get from them?
 What
do you see that distinguishes different types of
language: interviews, newsgroup threads, blogs, movie
scripts, literature…?

Which one do you think you would choose to
use and why?
Quote from Chapter 9
** Keep this in mind as a challenge!!!
Where do we go from here?
Assignment 1 (not due til Feb2)

Transcribe a scene from a favorite move, play, or TV show




Select one of the methodologies we are discussing in Unit 1
(e.g., from Gee, Martin & Rose, or Levinson)
Do a qualitative analysis of the data and write it up
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
As a shortcut, you can find a script online
Excerpt should be no more than one page of text
Use readings from Unit 1 as a collection of models to chose from
Due on Week 4 lecture 2


Turn in data, raw analysis (can be annotations added to the data),
and write up (your interpretation of the analysis)
Not required now!! Prepare a powerpoint presentation for class (no more than 5 minutes of
material)

Other Ideas: Twitter data, Google Groups, transcribe a real
conversation (if your conversational partners agree…)
Questions?
Metafunctions