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Care theory and critical discourse analysis were utilized to examine bilingual reference interactions extracted from 20 h of observations in a U.S.-Mexico border town public library. The researchers identified three types of caring discourse, including commiseration, soothing, and expressions of condolence. They also associated five conversation devices with caring discourse: humor, idiomatic expressions, interjections, lexical intensifiers, and whispering. Notably, librarians' infrequent production of elements of care were primarily in English regardless of community members' language choice. Further analysis revealed that linguistic expressions of care frequently masked unintentional, deficit-based perceptions about community members. Other salient themes that emerged include camouflaged community members' needs, clashes between intersectional and shared identity(ies), and librarians' dismissal of community members. Ultimately, bilingual caring discourse in this setting was often an interpersonal and institutional illusion. • Care theory is a valuable framework to investigate reference discourse in public libraries. • Critical discourse analysis illuminates forms of linguistic care in bilingual reference interactions. • Indicators of commiseration, soothing, and condolence masked unintentional, deficit-based stereotypes. • Librarians produced caring discourse infrequently and primarily in English regardless of community members' language choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • There is a lack of evidence to motivate TBI treatment beyond the word level. • Some discourse-based treatments have improved language in TBI. • The treatment focuses on meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic strategies. • Participant demonstrated improve language ability following treatment. • The study's effects were maintained 1-month post treatment. Abstract Background Individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) present with numerous discourse deficits associated with impairments to the linguistic system and other cognitive systems. Individuals with TBI may produce discourse that is lacking important information and poorly organized, as well as containing numerous coherence disrupting elements. Yet there are few studies directly addressing discourse deficits in individuals with TBI to guide clinicians. Aims The purpose of the study was to determine if discourse processing treatment improved the discourse production in individual with TBI. Aims of the study included determining if the discourse processing treatment improved completeness and informativeness in TBI discourse samples. Methods & procedures The study included three participants with mild-to-moderate TBI. The study utilized an A-B with maintenance design that incorporated components of functional practice, structured cues in the form of comprehension questions and story guide, and meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic processes. Discourse samples were obtained for baseline, treatment, and maintenance one-week and one-month post treatment. Stimuli included 12 sequential pictures, as well as a single picture and a recount probe. Outcomes & results All participants demonstrated small gains in completeness and informativeness for treated items, and 2 of 3 participants demonstrated a medium therapeutic effect for untreated stimuli. Participants also produced discourse with fewer errors for both treated and untreated stimuli after treatment with no therapeutic effect to a small effect for the generalization stimuli. Conclusions The study demonstrated that the discourse processing treatment is capable of producing small therapeutic effects that persisted one-month post treatment in adults with mild-to-moderate TBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Font emphasis in a discourse influences subsequent recognition memory. [•] Helps reject important discourse alternatives but not unmentioned items. [•] Results suggest emphasis leads readers to encode specific important alternatives. [•] Effects from contrastive prosody generalize to emphasis in written text. [•] Discourse plausibility constrains the set of alternatives encoded. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Additive particles are peculiar in that they are often obligatory, although they do not increase the information content of the sentence in context. Two strands of analyses have been proposed to capture this feature, one in terms of exhaustivity implicatures, and one in terms of Heim''s “Maximize Presupposition” principle (MP). The article reviews both kinds of approaches, and offers experimental evidence in favor of an MP-based analysis. What remains to be understood is the fact that these particles—unlike other MP-ruled expressions—can also be omitted in certain contexts. The last part of the paper proposes to view MP as a principle which forces the speaker to signal the level of reliability of information in the specific text. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In languages like English or German, definite and indefinite markers serve to distinguish given/old from new information in the discourse model. Japanese, in contrast, lacks definiteness markers, but has a topic marker. The present paper examines how the information status of a noun phrase (NP) in Japanese is represented and integrated into the discourse model. An ERP experiment investigated the processing of topic-marked and non-topic-marked NPs following three different context sentences (making available a given, inferred, or new reading). The results revealed an increase in the N400 as a function of contextual cueing, i.e. the less accessible a referential expression is in the discourse model (i.e. given, inferred, new referent), the more pronounced is the amplitude of the N400. In addition, a late positivity was observed for topic shift, i.e. when topic-marked NPs occurred after contexts in which they were not already the established topic. Crucially, topic shift was facilitated by a particular semantic relation. Since acceptability ratings cannot account for the observed pattern, the positivity is considered to reflect costs from the establishment of a new discourse topic. From a cross-linguistic perspective, the data reveal that contextual cues universally influence discourse integration (N400), while processes subserving the updating of discourse structure (e.g., topic shift) differ across languages (late positivity): Discourse updating is guided by the given-new distinction in German and by topicality in Japanese (at least in canonical word order). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper is an application of Robert E. MacLaury’s Vantage Theory (VT) to the analysis of real life spoken discourse. It utilizes modification of MacLaury’s VT. It elucidates how cognitive processes of coordinate selection and combination contribute to the on-line construction of category membership in the abstract category of national identity. The analysis of data shows that in abstract categories coordinates can receive various strengths depending on the environmental pressures on the speaker. Also, unlike in the case of the physiologically-based category of colour, in the abstract category of identity the coordinates are hierarchically structured. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study explores the interactional achievement of expert–novice in NS–NNS interaction. The analysis identifies interactional processes that contribute to expert–novice differentiation during team meetings that take place as part of an electrical and computer engineering course. Through analysis of data from the team interaction, participant perspectives, and ethnographic context, it is demonstrated that the NS takes on an expert identity, while the NNS takes on a novice identity as the NS and NNS engage in face-to-face interaction with each other. This expert–novice differentiation specifically occurs through the process of ratification, failure to ratify, and rejection of contributions. The NS''s ability to gain expert status is linked to prior access to opportunities to participate in engineering teams and the forms of talk involved therein, which the NNS did not have access to. Conclusions indicate that this expert–novice relationship is not inherent to the NS–NNS relationship but that novice linguistically based identity has a bearing on the achievement of an expert non-linguistically based identity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article argues that there is no such thing as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in the sense of a method of political or ideological critique based on the application of conventional linguistic constructs. All of us, as language users and makers, are continuously engaged in the critical examination of and response to communication in our everyday lives. The article argues that this constant critical engagement with communication cannot be captured or accounted for by conventional linguistic methods and concepts. Such critical engagements involve the interrogation and evaluation, in moral, political and practical terms, of novel communicative acts in their unique, contextualised links with other aspects and dimensions of conduct. The abstract entities of conventional linguistics and pragmatics allow no critical purchase on this integration of communicative behaviour into the fabric of our social lives. The article argues that the attempts by Critical Discourse Analysts to build a method of political and ideological critique out of such entities is misguided and inevitably leads to a distorted view of the role of communication in society and of the workings of social processes more generally. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Natural disasters, such as what are known in English as 'floods' and 'wildfires', are increasingly a topic of concern due to the climate emergency, and their vocabulary and public discourses hold much to be explored through linguistics. This article inaugurates the examination of public discourse about extreme weather events through semantically-enhanced discourse studies, an approach which is based on Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and developed herein. Taking the example of floods in the particular geographic, cultural and historical environment of the Australian state of Queensland in 2011, this transtextual study draws on a public inquiry into the event and English as spoken in Australia, more broadly, along with media reports, and literature from humanities and social sciences. Five case studies of vocabulary and discourse patterns are presented to cast cultural and semantic spotlights on the public discourses. It is demonstrated that this approach can provide high resolution analysis of discourse and bring out cultural and historical factors at play in extreme weather language thereby contributing to disaster linguistics, climate change semantics and public discourse studies. • The meanings of words for natural disasters and extreme weather events, like flood , are culturally constructed. • Discourse of 2011 Queensland floods reveal geographic, cultural and historical aspects of English spoken in Australia. • Semantically-enhanced discourse studies is a novel method of public discourse studies based on NSM approach. • Semantically-enhanced discourse studies can provide high resolution analysis of vocabulary and discourse patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]