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Dans cette étude, on montrera que les répercussions d'événements graves (accidents, catastrophes, violences terroristes, guerres...) sur des personnes qui n'ont pas assisté directement à ces faits (victimes collatérales) dépendent des histoires de vie et des fragilités antérieures de ces personnes. À la lumière d'un nouvel outil qu'on appellera « Méta-entretien » associé à une analyse structurale de discours, on examinera le cas de Michèle L. en suggérant que l'activité créatrice pourrait constituer une possibilité de réparation des blessures provoquées par ces événements graves. In this study, it will be shown that the repercussions of serious events (accidents, disasters, terrorist violence, wars...) on people who have not directly witnessed these facts (collateral victims) depend on the life stories and previous fragilities of these people. In the light of a new tool called "Meta-interview" associated with a structural analysis of discourse, we will examine the case of Michèle L. by suggesting that creative activity could constitute a possibility of repairing the wounds caused by these serious events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of functional models of language, which purport to account for text, do not recognize the distinct dimension corresponding to "discourse", as conceived here. Instead, the various semantic-pragmatic aspects of the use of indexical expressions, in particular, tend to be conceived uniquely in terms of the textual environment of the markers involved. Correlatively, the invocation of "context" in such approaches tends to be limited essentially to the co-text. But according to the present study, such expressions operate in terms of the mental discourse representations which the participants are jointly as well as severally constructing as the discourse proceeds. The article's aim is to show that the discourse dimension of language use is crucial to the ways in which indexical markers function, and hence should be taken into account in their modelling. This can only be done, it is argued, by integrating their treatment within a model of the broader utterance context in which such expressions are used, thus permitting a dialectic between the system-derived properties of such expressions and those emanating from the particular uses of such resources in actual communication. • The dimensions 'text' and 'discourse' are often confused or conflated by many authors. • For an adequate account of indexical reference, the roles of each meta-dimension need to be distinguished. • Context is the crucial mediating dimension making possible the creation of discourse from text. • Two major functional models of language are examined in terms of this three-way distinction, but are both found wanting. • Integrating indexical reference within a broader model of use will make discourse and context fully relevant alongside text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Engagement as access to school, the wellbeing of the child, and curating diversity. • Parental actions both bridged and distanced the spaces of homes and schools. • The home-school language divide was upheld. • Reasons reflected complex language ideologies and notions of a parent and a family. • Insights are given to revisit theorisations of parental engagement. Persisting divides between 'multilingual homes' and 'monolingual schools' exist around the world, including Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Applying the lens of space production, we explore how 'parental engagement' is established, and the role it plays in shaping language separation. Discourse analysis on interviews with 24 parents of multilingual children revealed parental engagement as striving for parental access to schools, facilitating the schooling, learning and wellbeing of the child, and curating cultural and linguistic diversity. Parental actions both bridged and distanced 'schools' and 'homes', marking these spaces as intertwined and/or separate based on parents' motivations, reasons and opportunities to become engaged or not. However, the home-school language divide was upheld. Besides reflecting conformity with schooling and the language of schooling, parental rationalisations presented with a drive to preserve the family as independent from schools. These findings provide insights to revisiting theorisations of parental engagement, and its role in reconciling home- and school languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Le discours dans la relation de soins fait le pont entre la relation humaine et un parcours de soins, permettant aux malades de l'accepter et parfois d'en assumer la pénibilité. Ce discours permet des échanges techniques entre médecins, soignants et patient. Si les conditions d'écoute en profondeur et d'empathie réciproque sont présentes, le discours est le moteur permettant la construction d'une relation humaine, qui s'ajoute au cadre professionnel et le conforte. Cette construction ne se fait pas toujours, souvent en raison des conditions du fonctionnement institutionnel. Une communication sur le soin, limitée à des interactions entre les personnes, se substitue alors à une relation humaine qui n'a pas pu se présentifier. Pour construire la relation dans le soin, soignants et soignés ne peuvent s'appuyer que sur leur ouverture à l'humain, sur leur humilité théorique et respectueuse d'autrui, ainsi que sur le creuset de connaissances communes supportées par l'environnement institutionnel et le cadre scientifique. Le discours des soignants et du soigné vise à homogénéiser les représentations qu'ils se font de la maladie et à cultiver leur confiance réciproque pour construire une relation dans le soin, à la fois tenue sur la durée et mémorisant les temps marquants sur le plan émotionnel ou cognitif du parcours de soins. Il élabore et permet de partager leurs souvenirs communs. The discourse in the care relationship bridges the gap between the human relationship and a course of care, allowing patients to accept it and sometimes to take on the hardship. This discourse allows technical exchanges between doctors, caregivers, and patient. If the conditions for a deep listening and reciprocal empathy are present, discourse is the booster allowing the construction of a human relationship, which keeps and improved the professional framework. This construction is not always done, often because of the institutional operating conditions. Communication on care, limited to interactions between people, replaces then a human relationship that has failed to presentified itself. To build the relationship in care, caregivers and patients can only rely here on their openness to human people, their theoretical humility and respectful of others, as well as the crucible of common knowledge supported by the institutional environment and the scientific framework. The discourse of caregivers and patient aims to homogenize their representations of the disease and to cultivate mutual trust in order to build a relationship in care lasting over time and for both, memorizing key moments on the emotional or the cognitive level during the care circuit. It develops and allows to share their common memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The COVID-19 outbreak has prompted the growing recognition and reevaluation of vulnerability theory as proposed by Fineman (2008), which emphasizes the central role of the state in protecting citizens from their 'vulnerability' by providing their access to 'resilience'. It challenges the traditional construction of 'vulnerability' and 'resilience' in liberal discourse, which has typically emphasized individual capabilities over community roles. To investigate the impact of this recognition on the construction of 'vulnerability' and 'resilience' in liberal feminism discourse during COVID-19, discourse analysis was conducted among nine COVID-19-related briefings from the Fawcett Society website. Two main changes in liberal feminism discourse were revealed in this research. First, there has been a shift from a focus on self-resilience among women's groups to an acknowledgement of their weakened resilience in front of COVID-19. Second, liberal feminists delve into the passive characteristic of 'vulnerability' during COVID-19, recognizing the susceptibility of women's groups to their inner mental issues. The discourse constructed by liberal feminists during COVID-19, as evidenced by the collected briefings from the Fawcett Society website, also reveals the 'hidden social inequality' that existed in the long-standing undervaluation of socially reproductive workers, which has been exposed by the pandemic and necessary the need for increased social recognition of their role in maintaining daily social functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the environment of open science, the transformation of scientific exchange and research paradigms urgently needs diversified and open scientific evaluation. This study aims to advance the construction of academic journals, reform the quantitative evaluation mechanism, and provide references for promoting the international discourse power of Chinese academic journals. It also aims to enrich and improve the indicator system and evaluation theory of the discourse power of academic journals with Chinese characteristics. Firstly, this paper analyzes the fundamental concerns of the discourse power evaluation of academic journals, drawing on the theory of evaluation science, discourse power theory, and communication theory. According to the characteristics and connotation of the evaluation indicators, the definition and formation process of academic journals' discourse power, this paper constructed. the evaluation indicator system. Secondly, this paper obtained 163,628 international citations and 211,150 domestic citations, and 111,496 altmetrics indicators data for 29,203 published papers from 238 Chinese English-language journals. Meanwhile, 12 scientometrics indicators and 14 altmetrics indicators are selected. Thirdly, descriptive statistical analysis and an overview indexed by international databases are carried out at the macro level. Then, correlation analysis, factor analysis, entropy weight method and TOPSIS method are adopted to evaluate and analyze the discourse influence and discourse leading in Chinese English-language journals by integrating scientometrics and altmetrics indicators. Finally, Two-dimensional and four quadrant method is used to evaluate academic journals' discourse power. At the same time, this paper compares and verifies the reliability of the evaluation results. The findings demonstrate that the research on the academic journals' discourse power evaluation based on the theory, method and application logic is practical, comprehensive and reliable. This paper also puts forward the countermeasures to enhance the discourse power of Chinese academic journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mackenzie (2020) is a defense of the position adopted by the architects of the standard model of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG): namely that the model cannot (and even could never) be considered a 'grammar of discourse'. The article examines the arguments given for rejecting the 'discourse' dimension from the FDG model, proposes an independent account of discourse, and suggests a means of dovetailing it within a model of the wider utterance context. On the one hand, the author's arguments are in the main valid: for 'discourse', as characterized in section 3, is not a formal, clearly delineated object amenable to systematic treatment within a grammatical model of a given language. Yet on the other, it is arguable that even the presence of the term 'discourse' in the model's name is not in fine justified. Notwithstanding, in order to include the 'discourse dimension' (section 3), it is argued that the Core FDG model could be integrated with a broader model of the utterance context involved. This would enable it to account more adequately, for example, for the ways in which indexical reference, the lexicon and adjectival modification operate in actual texts. In turn, it would influence certain of the other characterizations independently assigned within the Core model. • For its architects , Functional Discourse Grammar could never be a discourse grammar. • For discourse is not amenable to systematic treatment within a formal grammar model. • Yet in fact even the term 'discourse' in the model's name is not fully justified. • A solution: complement the model with one dealing with the broader context of use. • This in turn will impact on certain of the characterizations yielded by the Core model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission is pursuing a circular bioeconomy to tackle pressing sustainability challenges, such as climate change and fossil dependency. Previous bioeconomy policy studies demonstrated the existence of competing bioeconomy discourses in the European Union. However, it remains nebulous how such discursive conflicts emerge and change, particularly in online settings. In this paper, we provide a more in-depth analysis of how argumentative changes of actors alter the network of online dynamic discourse coalitions. We base our findings on interviews and a qualitative discourse network analysis of 9983 tweets about European Union bioeconomy policies from the period 2008 – 2021. Our results indicate that initially, expert debates centred around storylines on bioeconomy advantages. After the 2012 Bioeconomy Strategy, the debate diversified with the entry of new actors and storylines. Two discourse coalitions, 'Green future' and 'Planetary boundaries', emerged around conflicting storyline clusters. In the aftermath of the 2018 Bioeconomy Strategy update, the debate simplified into core argumentations of few, highly conflicting storylines, leading to a polarization of the two discourse coalitions. Storyline hijacking further added to polarization and conflict. Understanding the evolution of online dynamic discourse coalitions provides new opportunities for practitioners to open up discourses towards storylines from other parts of the discourse network. This can help to prevent locking-in the limited range of solutions in congruence with the dominant 'Green future' discourse. [Display omitted] • The future of the bioeconomy in the EU is discussed controversially on X/Twitter. • Storyline diversification and simplification dynamics led to polarization. • The EU Commission is almost exclusively part of one side of the discourse network. • EU bioeconomy debates head towards a problematic discursive lock-in. • To open up the debate, include ideas of other parts of the discourse network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hashtag #secondcivilwarletters emerged after conservative media personality Alex Jones tweeted that Democratic Party supporters were planning a Second Civil War. The resultant tweets mimicked the style of American Civil War soldiers' letters home, delivering often scathing commentary and critique of contemporary U.S politics, in particular in opposition to President Trump. While this was often accomplished through direct reference to socio-political events, the tweets also utilised food references as a means of indexing particular social identities and ideological positions and related political alignment. The emergent indexicalities demonstrate four key food-related indexical fields: Nutrition, Hipster, Basic, and MAGA. The analysis shows how these indexicalities demonstrate aspects of contemporary classism in the US alongside the partisanship underpinning the #secondcivilwarletters community. • Tweeters affiliated around the #secondcivilwarletters hashtag to express political views and commentary. • Food references in #secondcivilwarletters tweets perform indexical work. • The tweets and food references index partisanship and classism through the various references made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicit discourse relation recognition is the performance bottleneck of discourse structure analysis. To alleviate the shortage of training data, previous methods usually use explicit discourse data, which are naturally labeled by connectives, as additional training data. However, it is often difficult for them to integrate large amounts of explicit discourse data because of the noise problem. In this paper, we propose a simple and effective method to leverage massive explicit discourse data. Specifically, we learn connective-based word embeddings (CBWE) by performing connective classification on explicit discourse data. The learned CBWE is capable of capturing discourse relationships between words, and can be used as pre-trained word embeddings for implicit discourse relation recognition. On both the English PDTB and Chinese CDTB data sets, using CBWE achieves significant improvements over baselines with general word embeddings, and better performance than baselines integrating explicit discourse data. By combining CBWE with a strong baseline, we achieve the state-of-the-art performance. [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]

Physicians are well-known for safeguarding medical professionalism by performing institutional work in their daily practices. However, this study shows how opinion-making physicians in strategic arenas (i.e. national professional bodies, conferences and high-impact journals) advocate to reform medical professionalism by discursively framing physicians as leaders. The aim of this article is to critically investigate the use of leadership discourse by these opinion-making physicians. By performing a discursive analysis of key documents produced in these strategic arenas and additional observations of national conferences, this article investigates how leadership discourse is used and to what purpose. The following key uses of medical leadership discourses were identified: (1) regaining the lead in medical professionalism, (2) disrupting ‘old’ professional values, and (3) constructing the ‘modern’ physician. The analysis reveals that physicians as ‘leaders’ are expected to become team-players that work across disciplinary and organizational boundaries to improve the quality and affordability of care. In comparison to management that is negatively associated with NPM reform, leadership discourse is linked to positive institutional change, such as decentralization and integration of care. Yet, it is unclear to what extent leadership discourses are actually incorporated on the work floor and to what effect. Future studies could therefore investigate the uptake of leadership discourses by rank and file physicians to investigate whether leadership discourses are used in restricting or empowering ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Italian adverbial clitics vi and ci , both routinely glossed ‘there,’ are not synonymous but instead are signals of opposing meanings in a grammatical system of Restrictedness of Space. Vi means more Restricted, and ci means less Restricted. Operating at the discourse level, the two meanings function to direct attention onto the relevant conceptual space for each event in a narrative. Conceptual space includes physical places, subject matter complements, and realms of existential constructions. The semantic hypothesis accounts both for quantitative patterns observed in stretches of discourse and for the respective interpretive effects of the two clitics and for their absence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the use of ‘like’ as a discourse-pragmatic marker by recently-arrived Polish and Chinese migrants in Dublin, Ireland. The data comprises 14 hours of audio-recorded sociolinguistic interviews with 42 participants, including a control sample of six native Irish English speakers. The frequency of ‘like’ is investigated, along with its variable positioning within the clause, and its discourse-pragmatic function. In total 926 tokens are examined, and statistical tests, including fixed and mixed effects regression models, are used to determine the significance of the results. The results show that the frequency of ‘like’ among the non-native speakers reaches the levels of the native speakers after approximately three years of residence in Ireland. Proficiency in English is not found to be significant, suggesting that it is exposure to native speaker input that drives this acquisition. The results also show that ‘like’ in clause-final position, considered to be an emblematic feature of Irish English (and a ‘non-standard’ feature of world Englishes more generally), was employed significantly more often by the native Dubliners, with no effect in this instance for length of residence among the migrants. As regards the function of ‘like’, it was found to be used predominantly to illustrate, explain or introduce information. ‘Like’ in clause-final position was also found to be used as a mitigator or hedge, predominantly by the Irish, and particularly in short statements of personal opinion that could be perceived as face-threatening or opposing the interlocutor's views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews discourse-based approaches to language attitudes in terms of their contributions to understanding the creation of socio-indexical meaning in metalinguistic discourse. It proposes a five-level typology of approaches which includes topic-oriented, linguistic, cognitive, interactional, and rhetorical analyses. The article discusses the ways in which different types of analyses expose various aspects of social-semiotic and meta-semiotic processes involved in constructions of sociolinguistic indexical relations in the local interactional and larger contextual frames. The paper argues in favor of integrated discourse-based approaches and illustrates the potential of a rhetorical approach to serve as a unifying framework for blending analytical levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined spatial story representations created by speaker's cohesive gestures. Participants were presented with three-sentence discourse with two protagonists. In the first and second sentences, gestures consistently located the two protagonists in the gesture space: one to the right and the other to the left. The third sentence (without gestures) referred to one of the protagonists, and the participants responded with one of the two keys to indicate the relevant protagonist. The response keys were either spatially congruent or incongruent with the gesturally established locations for the two participants. Though the cohesive gestures did not provide any clue for the correct response, they influenced performance: the reaction time in the congruent condition was faster than that in the incongruent condition. Thus, cohesive gestures automatically establish spatial story representations and the spatial story representations remain activated in a subsequent sentence without any gesture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to recognize and categorize the various ways that ecosystem services researchers perceive the concept and purpose of ecosystem services (ES). To do so, we employed the discourse analysis approach of Q methodology, where 33 researchers ranked 39 statements on ES derived from the literature. Factor analysis of the Q sorts allowed for the interpretation of five main perspectives on ES: a pragmatic view on nature conservation, seeing ES as useful tool (“Non-Economic Utilitarian”), a strongly value-focused perspective with a skeptical view on ES (“Critical Idealist”), an opposition to a utilitarian approach to nature conservation but seeing ES as more encompassing approach (“Anti-Utilitarian”), a focus on a methodological rather than a critical approach to ES (“Methodologist”), and a rather economic approach to environmental decision-making, in which ES is a useful tool (“Moderate Economist”). We see this plurality as illustrating both the potential of the ES concept to serve as a boundary object for collaboration, but also the threat of ineffective collaboration due to the lack of a common conceptual ground. However, as pluralism can be fruitful if handled transparently, we suggest the need for open dialogue about underlying assumptions when using a value-laden concept like ES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the incorporation of discourse-pragmatic features from English into Serbian, proposing the term ‘pragmatic Anglicisms’ to denote a range of directly or indirectly borrowed forms from English with pragmatic functions. The article offers a descriptive and taxonomic framework for the study of pragmatic Anglicisms in Serbian and analyzes their formal and functional characteristics, as well as sociolinguistic, sociopragmatic and sociocultural aspects of their use, related to the users, registers, stylistic and communicative markedness, motivational factors, perception and evaluation by Serbian native speakers, post hoc effects, and cultural influences. Apart from the commonly identified classes, such as interjections and discourse markers, the article recognizes the use of (calqued) discourse formulas from English in situations where there are either existing Serbian ones or a discourse ‘gap’ (i.e. when both the previously non-existent communicative act and the formulaic expression are adopted from English). This subclass is particularly interesting since it is not only a novel linguistic element that is thus introduced, but a novel communication and cultural pattern from the Anglo-American globalizing culture that gets adopted through new discourse formulas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine micro- and macrolinguistic underpinnings of circumstantiality in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), we examined the elicited narrative output of 15 individuals with TLE and 14 controls. To replicate and extend Field and colleagues' (2000) work, participants were asked to produce five immediately consecutive elicitations of an eight-frame cartoon "Cowboy Story" (Joanette et al., 1986). Following transcription and coding, detailed multi-level discourse analysis demonstrated a typical pattern of compression in controls. The narratives produced by individuals with TLE were less fluent, cohesive, and coherent across trials: producing fewer novel units and more repetitive and extraneous content. Significant group by trial interactions in sample length, spontaneous duration, and statements, were not explained by seizure burden, age, or lexical retrieval deficits. These findings suggest that they do not benefit from repeated engagement with a narrative in the same manner as controls. Disturbed social cognition and pragmatics in TLE might underpin communication inefficiencies. • A multi-centre multi-level discourse analysis examined narrative discourse in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). • Individuals with TLE do not benefit from repeating a narrative in the same way that neurologically normal individuals do. • Individuals with TLE fail to compress discourse and instead introduce more repetitive and extraneous content. • Their narratives are less fluent, cohesive, and coherent than controls which reflects inefficient discourse processing. • Disturbed pragmatics in TLE might underpin communication inefficiencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learner talk, a neglected area of study in the literature of language advising for second language (L2) learners, deserves more attention. With reference to multiple qualitative sources of data obtained from interviews and tutor-learner recorded conversations, this paper delineates learners' behaviors, strategies and contribution to language learning in tutor-dominant writing consultations. More importantly, it reveals the relationships between self-perception and learning behaviors via learning strategies. Nine native and non-native English-speaking writing tutors and 23 L2 learners from different disciplines participated in the study. Three types of L2 learners and 11 learning strategies were identified and analyzed based on the self-reported data and transcribed conversations. Analysis showed that the identified strategies signify the learners' behaviors and varied degrees of readiness to engage actively in learning by obtaining language input from tutors through some self-initiated acts, demonstrating selfawareness of their problems and establishing rapport with tutors to accomplish the learning task. Implications for teaching and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the use of sexist humor targeting a woman politician in public comments online. We examine the case of a Philippine woman senator and analyze jokes about her alleged sex video that was raised in a state congressional proceeding and became the object of public talk in media and online spaces. Using Positioning Theory as a discursive approach to conceptualize sexist humor, we understand sexist jokes as acts of positioning that evoke storylines, construct identities, and claim rights and duties. We argue that sexist humor as used in a political context has a social force of not only maligning a woman but also of delegitimizing her as a woman politician. We identified two sets of storylines within sexist jokes in relation to the alleged sex video, positioning her as an "animal" and making her the object of disgust and positioning her as a "moral threat" and questioning her moral capacity and legitimacy. The woman politician consequently lost the right to be respected as a woman, as a person, and as a politician, whereas the public gained the right to be sexist and denigrate women. We discuss implications of sexist humor in online public discourse and pose questions on the possibility and difficulty of counter-talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We attempted to replicate a foundational study by Cutler and Fodor (1979). • Cutler and Fodor found shorter reaction times to words focused by preceding questions. • They argued that both discourse and prosody guide attention to new information. • We successfully replicated their findings using updated statistical analyses. We report the results of a replication attempt of a foundational study by Cutler and Fodor (1979). This study sparked several lines of research into the role of information structure in language comprehension, based on the proposal that discourse characteristics, prosodic focus, and syntactic focusing constructions may all guide the comprehender's attention to new important information. Using a phoneme monitoring task, Cutler and Fodor reported that word-initial phonemes in acoustically identical sentences were identified faster when the word had been focused, as opposed to de-focused, by a preceding question. This influential finding has not been replicated using current experimental and statistical standards. Additionally, later research on this topic has deviated considerably from Cutler and Fodor's original proposal and has led to contradictory results. We attempted to replicate the original study following current standards for performing statistical analyses and assessed whether the results of these analyses differ from those obtained from analyses more similar to those conducted originally. We found that in our data, the critical interaction between focus and target position reported by Cutler and Fodor replicates using both the original and the updated analyses, while the two (less important) main effects of focus and target position were only replicated using the updated analyses. This replication provides a stronger foundation to these diverging lines of research, and it is likely to spark new investigations into information structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disparity of access to transportation also affects access to essential urban resources, particularly for lower income populations and minorities. Studies have shown how current transportation planning practices are dominated by the notion of planners as experts that produce the knowledge of future transportation needs using a series of analytical steps and computer modeling. Consequently, existing practices such as transport modeling perpetuate barriers to mobility and lack of accessibility, and therefore, there is a need to make explicit how these existing practices exclude particular population groups. Using the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Metropolitan Area as a case study, this paper makes a stronger connection between the assumptions planners make regarding transportation needs and goals with everyday travel experiences of a variety of residents. This research utilizes travel diaries to provide in-depth understandings of individual’s travel experiences from various neighborhoods in the DFW Region to understand how differences in mobility and accessibility affect access to places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses the emergence and characteristics of Israeli Medical Association (IMA) discourse on health inequality in Israel during the years 1977–2010. The IMA addressed the issue of health inequality at a relatively late stage in time (2000), as compared to other OECD countries such as the UK, and did so in a relatively limited way, focusing primarily on professional or economic interests. The dominant discourses on health inequalities within the IMA are biomedical and behavioral, characterized by a focus on medical and/or cultural and behavioral differences, the predominant use of medical terminology, and an individualistic rather than a structural conceptualization of the social characteristics of health differences. Additionally, IMA discourses emphasize certain aspects of health inequality such as the geographical and material inequities, and in doing so overlook the role played by class, nationality and the unequal structure of citizenship. Paradoxically, by disregarding the latter, the IMA's discourse on health inequality has the potential to reinforce the structural causes of these inequities. Our research is based on a textual critical discourse analysis (CDA) of hundreds of documents from the IMA's scientific medical journal, the IMA's members journal and public IMA documents such as press-releases, Knesset protocols, publications, and public surveys. By providing knowledge on the different ways in which the IMA, a key stakeholder in the health field, de-codifies, understands, explains, and attempts to deal with health inequality, the article illuminates possible implications on health policy and seeks to evaluate the direct interventions carried out by the IMA, or by other actors influenced by it, pertaining to health inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief ‘conceptual’ paper offers some reflections on the status of ‘subjectivity’ in language. Section 1 highlights the differences and correlations between a few of the major current concepts of subjectivity, notably the ‘general’ ones by Traugott (1989) , Traugott and Dasher, 2002 ) and Langacker (1990, 1999, 2008) , and the specific one(s) as postulated in the context of the analysis of modal expressions ( Nuyts, 2001, 2012 ). Section 2 then zooms in on the ‘functional’ role in language use of the modality-related – or probably more accurately, attitude-related – dimension, focusing on its discursive status. Section 3 , finally, returns to the issue of how the major notions of subjectivity discussed in Section 1 relate, and how this can only be understood with reference to both the conceptual and the discursive status of the phenomena at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within contemporary Western contexts, positive aging discourses are a key aspect of structured mandates for how to think about and act toward aging bodies. This study adds to previous work on embodiment that has situated how aging bodies are managed by focusing on the body as an aspect of retirement preparation, and critically considering how the imperative to govern the aging body in ways consistent with being a ‘good’ neoliberal citizen circulated through positive aging discourses is negotiated by aging individuals. Utilizing narrative data from a study addressing the discursive re-shaping and narrative negotiation of retirement within the Canadian context conducted with 30 informants aged 45 to 83, this paper draws upon a governmentality perspective to critically analyze ways informants talked about their aging bodies as part of preparing for and moving into retirement. Overall, the findings illustrate how informants embodied positive aging discourses and, in turn, embodied neoliberal rationality particularly in taking up the call to attend to the body as part of the broadening of retirement planning within a neoliberal context in which health, social, financial and other responsibilities are increasingly shifted toward individuals. Although informants described realizing some of the promises offered up with positive aging discourses, such as a sense of youthfulness and bodily control, their narratives also point to detrimental individual and social implications that can arise out of the limits of bodily practices, the need for perpetual risk management, an aversion to oldness, and attributions of failure. As such, this study raises concerns about the implications of the intersections of positive aging discourses and the neoliberal agenda of activation, responsibilization and individualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the use of tag questions in Italian conversation. We propose a classification of their discourse functions, and provide an account of their syntactic and discourse contexts. The data used are recordings of conversation in several settings: experimental game settings, a reality TV show, and TV and radio talk shows, for a total of 60.4 h. The analysis uncovered seven main functions, some of which do not conform to existing classifications in the literature. We explore the relationship between these functions and the conversational settings in which they are used, their placement within the utterance, and their relationship with asymmetries in participants’ leadership roles in specific settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A report from the market research firm Ambient Insight indicated that by 2015, 25 million post-secondary students in the United States could be enrolled in an online course ( Adkins, 2011 ). As a consequence, they argued, we will see a decline in student enrollment in physical classrooms. In fact, the report estimated a five-year decline of 22 percent (from 14.4 million in 2010 to 4.1 million in 2015) in students attending traditional classrooms. Yet, in the face of these projections and despite innovation in educational technologies, there remains a consistent number of academics who are concerned that the quality of online instruction is not equal to face-to-face (f2f) encounters ( Allen & Seaman, 2011 ). It is this question—a question of learning and how to facilitate high quality experiences—that we take up in this article. This question forces us to consider simultaneously: 1) what are the conditions that are necessary for learning to occur in online spaces, and 2) what are the best practices associated with effective learning these environments? To these ends, we focus on the characteristics of digital informal learning environments and on how these environments are constructed rhetorically and primarily discursively via deliberate facilitation strategies focused on encouraging learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding why people attempt to remove, relocate, or restrict books in an age of ubiquitous access is one of the more puzzling aspects of contemporary challenge cases. In order to better comprehend this largely symbolic phenomenon, this study focused on the arguments that book challengers employed to justify the removal, relocation, or restriction of books in 13 challenge cases in public libraries and schools across the United States between 2007 and 2011. Three sources of discourse, which were coded for common themes, were analyzed. The first consisted of a variety of documents, obtained via state open record requests to governing bodies, which were produced in the course of challenge cases. Recordings of book challenge public hearings constituted the second source of data. The third source of discourse consisted of interviews with challengers. The study found the following common themes in challengers' worldviews: First, they saw contemporary society as being in a state of decline and were concerned with preserving the innocence of children in the midst of this decay. Second, they constructed public institutions as symbols of the community that must represent their values and aid parents in their difficult role as boundary setters. Finally, challengers demonstrated a reverence for the books as a material object and employed common sense interpretive strategies. It is hoped that this analysis will offer a starting point for comparing the discourse of challengers to the discourse of other social actors and aid librarians and other information professionals in providing effective responses to challengers to materials in their respective institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attachment theory and its evolution in the area of adult attachment, offers a new paradigm to study the mental processes laying underneath the attachment representations, through the reading of different forms of enunciation as well as the way subjective experiences are told. The main objective of our study was to find and unveil the different types of discourse in depressed subjects, through an analysis procedure of semi-structured interviews. This procedure is inspired from Edicode, an attachment paradigm. The study involves a group of 23 women suffering from depression along with another group of 20 women with a melanoma history. Both groups took part in semi-structured interviews, which were then transcribed and analyzed following the Edicode method and double cotation. The results were then compared to another reference witness group. The results show an obvious fall of adequation factor in depressed subjects, which in the Edicode protocole indicate a preoccupied attachement. Also a drop in the reflexivity and coherence dimensions in both somatic and depressed groups as opposed the reference witness group. We can discuss, on one hand, the links between preoccupied attachment in depressed subjects along with the difficulties in treating cognitive and emotional informations when it comes to present and past relations. On the other hand, it seems that there are difficulties in regulating and in mentalizing in both groups as opposed to the reference witness group and results show anxiety and lack of certainty when it comes to the disease and its evolution. The latter leads us to consider more specifically the present psychological state of the subject and the way he manages and deals with the disease along with aspects of the therapeutic alliance in the medical environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] All groups were able to nominate topics for the assigned discussion prompt. [•] Roughly half of each group’s nominated topics became established. [•] All group members of each group nominated at least two topics. [•] Groups varied in how equal the distribution of topics among test takers was. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Clinical practice guidelines produced by NICE – the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – are seen as key mechanisms to regulate and standardise UK healthcare practice, but their development is known to be problematic, and their adoption and uptake variable. Examining what a guideline or health policy means to different audiences, and how it means something to those communities, provides new insight about interpretive discourses. In this paper we present a micro-analysis of the response of healthcare professionals to publication of a single NICE guideline in 2009 which proposed a re-organisation of professional services for chronic non-specific low back pain. Adopting an interpretive approach, we seek to understand both the meaning of the guideline and the socio-political events associated with it. Drawing on archived policy documents related to the development and publication of the guideline, texts published in professional journals and on web-sites, and semi-structured interview data from professionals associated with the debate, we identify a key discourse that positions the management of chronic non-specific low back pain within physician jurisdiction. We examine the emergence of this discourse through policy-related symbolic artifacts taking the form of specific languages, objects and acts. This discourse effectively resisted and displaced the service reorganisation proposed by the guideline and, in so doing, ensured medical hegemony within practice and professional organisations concerned with the management of non-specific low back pain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper is an examination of the “discourse of disaster” that has cleared the way for the dismantling of public housing in the US. It is argued that this narrative represents public housing communities as deviant, dysfunctional, or obsolete. In response, residents have generated a discourse of resistance that focuses on dimensions of home and community. The social science evidence that validates the residents’ storyline is summarized. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article addresses discourse among French teenagers of pan-immigrant, peripheral, and specifically southern descent that evokes the widely circulating spatial concept called le bled, a French word of Arabic origin. Drawing upon theories of cultural citizenship, this paper explores the connections that teens broker through le bled in two, divergent discourses that link French citizenship with modernity and race. The first discourse is one that conceptualizes le bled as less modern than France, which is ultimately a racially exclusive model of French citizenship because it typically treats le bled as a racialized and inferior place. The second discourse involves the conceptualization of France as a modern and racially inclusive place, seeking to assimilate people from various places (even though in reality, many of these policies that claim inclusiveness are exclusive). [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]

Public urban parks are valued community amenities and an integral part of an environmentally just society. Given increasing concerns of gentrification associated with urban parks, this paper critically analyzed the discourse of urban park development to understand its main message, rhetorical devices, and potential to affect praxis. I find current discourse surrounding park development overstates the ability of public urban parks to reverse trends in social stratification while understating the possible downsides to urban park development. The discourse of 'parks-as-social-healers' is produced by urbanists with significant sociopolitical power in their respective fields who use three distinct discursive tools to enhance the discourse's utility and efficacy. Using the power and influence of wealthy foundations to back up their claims, this discourse exerts hegemonic influence on urban public space development. Downplaying gentrification and exaggerating social benefits—hallmarks of this discourse—can lead to environmental injustices, potentially exacerbating park access disparities. • Urban park development discourse leads to environmental injustices by overstating benefits and understating consequences • Producers of this discourse exert hegemonic power over contemporary urban park development using multiple discursive tools • Downplaying urban park development's social and environmental injustices will perpetuate such injustices [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of refugee displacement, Somalis are at increased risk for poor mental health. However, uptake of treatment referrals in primary care is low among Somalis compared to other refugee groups. The objective of this analysis was to understand specific resistances to US mental health care contributing to this gap in coverage. One hundred and sixty-eight Somali men and women over the age of 14, participated in 28 focus group from October 2017 to November 2018 discussing wellbeing and healthcare in the US. Transcripts were analyzed based on critical discourse theory, informed by the theoretical work of Michel Foucault. This study identified two primary discourses, one biomedical and the other driven by Somali community mental health knowledge and social practice. Mental health as an object of Muslim faith, nosological fusion of psychiatric illness terms, and stigmatization and internal social control to limit disclosure were discussed. US mental health services were described as giving off a bad vibe, and represented external institutions of power, exacerbated by perceived discrimination. Somali youth occupied social bridging positions between cultural vs. US knowledge and practice. Three negotiating discourses emerged wherein participants created discursive solutions to these sites of resistance, including 1) how the social acceptability of seeking psychological care might be increased while maintaining Somali emotional resilience, 2) stressing the need to seek medical care as a practical supplement to spiritual care, and 3) highlighting the need for Somali youth to enter health fields. Findings suggest that intervention strategies not only ensure that services are culturally appropriate and sensitive to religion, but also consider that services are potentially seen as both an extension of US institutional power and an affront to Somali identity making. Overcoming these challenges may involve nurturing the negotiating discourses taken up by communities. • Biomedical mental health discourse is incongruent with Somali identity making. • Participants found their own discursive solutions to these incongruencies. • Cultural values of pragmatism and bravery may offset mental health stigma. • Somali youth hold vast social and societal potential to bridge this divide. • Successful interventions will nurture communities' existing discursive solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the globe, people are not equitably included or respected by health services. This results in some people being 'hardly reached' and having less access to safe and appropriate care. While some health services have adopted specific agendas to increase inclusion, these services can struggle to implement such strategies because the underlying reasons for exclusion have not been addressed. This calls for preparation prior to implementation of inclusion approaches that deconstructs discourses and practices of exclusion. This paper presents a pre-inclusion framework that seeks to deconstruct exclusion in health services. Authors developed this framework from action research in four 'mainstream' regional health services in southeast Australia over five years. Research identified dominant discourses of exclusion among staff in these services. The study also identified common experiences of residents hardly reached by these services. Following, a range of change activities were undertaken within these services to deconstruct exclusion. Researchers also kept journals, reflected on their impact, and identified lessons learned from trying to deconstruct exclusion. Triangulating these analyses, researchers developed an interdisciplinary framework that weaves together Foucauldian theory on power/discourse with continuous quality improvement processes to embed cultural humility and voices of the hardly reached in health care. The framework outlines five foundational concepts (power as productive, deconstruction, use of continuous quality improvement processes, cultural humility and voices of service users), followed by six principles (a journey, expect resistance, whole of service approach, make visible the reasons for change, we are all cultural beings and people centred care) and six actions undertaken within health services (commitment, assessment of exclusion, action plans, structural change, reflective discussions and engagement). Until such approaches to deconstruct exclusion are implemented, inclusive agendas are likely to be ineffective. • Before inclusion can be achieved, reasons for exclusion must be challenged. • Pre-inclusion readies a health service for engagement with those hardly reached. • This framework weaves Foucault, cultural humility, those hardly reached and CQI. • The framework aims to rupture power relations to privilege discourses of service users. • Health practitioners learn about their privilege and actions of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a discursive constructionist (DC) approach to narrative in second/foreign language teaching and learning research. We begin by sketching an historical and theoretical background of constructionism. Next, we describe how DC advances contemporary narrative research by prioritizing analysis of narrative construction , that is, the in situ mobilization of the constructed and constructive elements of discourse that story-tellers use to build narrative worlds. Drawing on an analysis of two narrative episodes from focus group research with ESL teachers, we examine the construction and versioning of narrative worlds, identities, and knowledge. We also consider an additional affordance that attends a DC approach to narrative research—methodography—which opens up for analysis the situated work of the researcher/data analyst. We conclude with suggestions for future applications of DC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we argue that a “hidden link” correlates discourse processing and spatial navigation. Specifically, we argue that two navigational systems (planning the route and landmark knowledge) can be profitably used to account for the analysis of the coherence of the flow of discourse. Consistent with this hypothesis, some brain regions activated by spatial navigation tasks are strikingly overlapping with the regions involved in discourse processing. Moreover, brain damaged people have severe deficits at the level of discourse processing that can be interpreted in terms of an impaired navigational capacity to orient themselves in the flow of discourse. [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: Corpus studies suggest that verb tense is a differentiating feature between, on the one hand, text pertaining to experimental results (involving methods and results) and on the other hand, text pertaining to more abstract concepts (i.e. regarding background knowledge in a field, hypotheses, problems or claims). In this paper, we describe a user experiment that investigates whether for biological readers, this tense correlation has a psychological correlate. To study this, we defined seven distinct discourse segments types and modified them either by changing the verb tense/mood (for all segment types), negation (for Problems), or presence of an epistemic matrix clause (‘These results suggest…’) for Implications. Regardless of the original segment type, we found that for Facts, Results and Hypothesis segments, present tense yielded more Fact classifications, past tense more Result interpretations, and modal auxiliaries more Hypothesis interpretations. Methods statements were less sensitive to verb form. Problem segments required negations to be recognized, while Implications required introductory matrix clauses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Background: With the aging of the population, increasing numbers of older people live in nursing homes. Discourse such as policies and standards highlight the need to optimize the mobility independence of residents. This is expected to occur in a way that is safe for residents and staff whilst meeting the residents’ needs. The influence of discourse on health care delivery can be poorly understood, being at times hidden or taken for granted. The aim of this study was to uncover discourse relevant to resident mobility optimization to enable the origins and reasoning behind existing and intersecting policy and practice to be critically appraised. Design: Narrative literature review and thematic analysis with a focus on discourse were employed for this study. Data sources: Databases (CINAHL and Ovid Medline) and websites of relevant professional and governmental bodies were accessed. Method: A literature search centered on retrieval of texts focused on discourses that influenced goals to optimize resident mobility. Database searches for texts covered the period from 1994 to 2011. Iterative thematic analysis focussed on the texts’ socio-cultural context and influence. Findings: Four discourses emerged that potentially influence goals to optimize resident mobility: safe manual handling; falls prevention; palliative care; and costs and funding constraints to individualized care. These discourses may influence mobility care in the direction of more routinized, passive and dependency support approaches. A common overarching theme was that of collaboration and communication. Conclusion: Discourses such as safe manual handling, falls prevention, palliative care and cost constraints to individualized care can negatively impact on the goal to optimize the mobility of residents in nursing homes. Inter-professional approaches where staff work collaboratively and communicate well may counter such influences and ensure individualized care that focuses more effectively on resident mobility. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We investigated the role of discourse context in relative clause processing. We first replicated finding that pronominal object relative clauses are easier to process than analogous subject relative clauses (an effect which stands in contrast to previous research on pronominal relative clauses). We then analyzed corpus data to demonstrate that the embedded noun phrase in object relative clauses nearly always has a discourse-old referent, even if the noun phrase is not pronominal, while the referent of the embedded noun phrase in subject relative clauses is typically discourse-new. We then extended the work of , by demonstrating in region-by-region reading that full noun phrase object relative clauses are not more difficult to process than subject relatives when they are preceded by appropriate discourse contexts. Finally, we reanalyzed data from the Dundee Eye-tracking corpus to show that contra , naturally occurring object relatives are no harder to process than subject relatives. We conclude that the processing difficulties associated with object as compared to subject relative clauses arises because object relative clauses violate more discourse expectations in typical experimental contexts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The Basic Communicative Spaces Network (BCSN –) accounts for crucial semantic–pragmatic characteristics of causal relations expressed by frequently used Dutch causal connectives. BCSN integrates subjectivity theory, domain theory, and mental spaces theory to explain their linguistic categorization. Starting with the original three-way classification of content, epistemic, and speech act use, BCSN represents different uses in separate but connected and embedded mental spaces that are linked to the Subject of Consciousness (SoC), who is present as an actor or concluder in many causal relations. The analytic structure of BCSN explains the contrasts between the backward Dutch causal connectives WANT ‘because/for/since’, signaling speech act and epistemic relations in which the speaker is the implicit SoC, and OMDAT ‘because (of the fact that)’, typically expressing content relations with an explicit SoC. This division of labor corresponds to a cognitive categorization in terms of BCSN. On a more general level, BCSN offers a model for the recursive patterning that characterizes perspective alternation in natural discourse, since the BCSN represents both the author''s subjectivity and the subjectivity of other actors in the discourse (such as speakers and characters in a narration), as well as the blends between these perspectives. The analysis is illustrated with corpus examples. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: When non-native speakers are required to produce lengthy discourse in the form of a short monologue or extended turn, there is a greater burden on them to package the utterances into a ‘tighter’ more coherent discourse for the listener. Under these conditions, miscues in specificity and consistency at the semantic level, and relevance at the pragmatic level often accumulate and interact leading to a discourse which can be perceived by the listener as difficult to follow or lacking in coherence. This study analyzes non-native extended discourse produced under such conditions to investigate the nature of these miscues and how they interact with each other at the discourse level. A manipulation experiment was used to test for the psycholinguistic reality of the miscues; an important procedure in discourse analysis if we are to speak with confidence of the validity of the miscues identified on paper. The experiment used a novel technique which allowed for the modification and insertion of features into the spoken discourse as well as their removal. The manipulated discourse was then rated for improvements in coherence against the original sample by a panel of native listeners. Results suggest that these miscues do indeed significantly impair the coherence of the discourse. The patterns of impairment and interaction are discussed in detail. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Recent debates about the care provided to looked-after children have been characterised by uncertainty about the differing roles and responsibilities of foster carers, birth parents, and social workers. To explore the assumptions underlying these uncertainties, we drew upon Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and compared the discourses used by professionals (social workers in a group discussion about foster placement breakdown) with those used by policy-makers (in the Governmental green paper ‘Care Matters’). In both cases, a discourse based upon Attachment Theory was used to explain why placements succeed and fail, and to predict the repercussions of failure. However, there was a key difference in the way that professionals and policy-makers constructed the roles of key players in foster placements. The social workers constructed the birth parents as the parental figures for children in care, constructing themselves in a non-parental role. ‘Care Matters’ largely ignores the role of birth parents, and instead constructs social workers as parental figures. Neither source viewed foster carers as parental and ‘Care Matters’ positions this group as strictly professional. We discuss the incongruence of foster placements being understood through Attachment Theory, while foster carers are understood as non-parental figures, and also the repercussions of labelling a social worker as a parent, and the professionalization of the role of the foster carer. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper addresses the use of the so-called double form –essess in Korean, which refers to the doubling of the suffix –ess. In the absence of much research attention on the double form compared to that devoted to the single form, this paper explores how the double form is used by ordinary speakers in contemporary Korean discourse. Language data collected from authentic corpora are analyzed, the manner in which different modes of communication, namely writing and speaking, affect the use of the double form is investigated, and the possible causes for any differences are discussed. The study analysis reveals that the double form is deployed for a wider variety of functions than previous research has assumed, while supporting the discontinuity sense as the overarching meaning of the double form. On the other hand, the two types of discourse show a discrepancy in terms of the distribution of these functions. The most frequently occurring function in written discourse is the double past sense, compared to the discontinued simple past function in the spoken discourse. This discrepancy in the most frequent function in the two corpora is attributed to the different natures of the discourse. The discontinuity sense, which is the essential meaning of the double form, comes from the intensification of the pastness involved in the single form. [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]