Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Rhetorical Structure (rhetorical + structure)
Selected AbstractsChoosing Rhetorical Structures To Plan Instructional TextsCOMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, Issue 3 2000Leila Kosseim This paper discusses a fundamental problem in natural language generation: how to organize the content of a text in a coherent and natural way. In this research, we set out to determine the semantic content and the rhetorical structure of texts and to develop heuristics to perform this process automatically within a text generation framework. The study was performed on a specific language and textual genre: French instructional texts. From a corpus analysis of these texts, we determined nine senses typically communicated in instructional texts and seven rhetorical relations used to present these senses. From this analysis, we then developed a set of presentation heuristics that determine how the senses to be communicated should be organized rhetorically in order to create a coherent and natural text. The heuristics are based on five types of constraints: conceptual, semantic, rhetorical, pragmatic, and intentional constraints. To verify the heuristics, we developed the spin natural language generation system, which performs all steps of text generation but focuses on the determination of the content and the rhetorical structure of the text. [source] The rhetoric of conference presentation introductions: context, argument and interactionINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 1 2005Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet The process of socialisation into the academic discourse community involves acquiring mastery of its established genres. While written academic genres have been intensively studied, spoken genres are relatively under-researched. This study focuses on one such spoken research genre, the scientific conference presentation (CP) in English, and specifically on the introduction section, a sub-genre which often poses particular problems for presenters. A move analysis of the CP introductions shows that their rhetorical structure is markedly different from that of the research article, and that these differences are closely related to the contextual and epistemological characteristics of the genre. The interpersonal relations set up by the allocation of speaker and addressee roles through the use of personal pronouns are also discussed. Through a contrastive analysis of the CP introductions and those of the corresponding proceedings papers, the article examines how speakers facilitate information processing and create rapport with the audience. The data comprise video recordings of 44 CPs from 3 scientific fields (geology, medicine, and physics) and a smaller corpus of 13 corresponding articles from the physics conference proceedings. [source] Representations of scientists in Canadian high school and college textbooksJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 9 2008Michiel van Eijck Abstract This study investigated the representations of a select group of scientists (n,=,10) in a sample of Canadian high school and college textbooks. Drawing on semiotic and cultural-historical activity theoretical frameworks, we conducted two analyses. A coarse-grained, quantitative analysis of the prevalence and structure of these representations exhibited bias toward particular scientists' representations and particular types of texts and inscriptions therein, suggesting a domain-specific rhetorical structure. A fine-grained, qualitative analysis of scientists' representations revealed that high school and college textbooks represent: (a) objects of scientific practice as projected or anticipated independently from human activity; (b) scientists' individual actions aiming at the creation of non-tangible tools and rules by means of observation, modification, or manipulation of given, tangible objects; (c) scientific practice as isolated due to which the simultaneous belonging to different practices hardly determines the goals of scientists' actions; and (d) scientists as part of a small community of mainly other scientists who subsequently determine each other's individual actions. The implications of these outcomes were discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 1059,1082, 2008 [source] How Historians Begin: Openings in Historical DiscourseHISTORY, Issue 320 2010TREVOR DEAN Why is the problem of beginning , much discussed in literary scholarship , not dealt with in similar depth by historians? This article attempts an answer to this question, and does so in three ways. First, it examines literary scholarship on textual openings, showing the various ways in which the beginning is given significance. Then, it examines and challenges the common presentation of historical discourse as distinct from fiction. Finally, it examines two sets of data: the openings of 100 historical monographs are analysed for their ,fictionality', and the openings of 200 research articles are analysed for their rhetorical structures. [source] | ||||||||||