Building Coherence and Cohesion


Book Description

This book examines the resources that speakers employ when building conversations. These resources contribute to overall coherence and cohesion, which speakers create and maintain interactively as they build on each other s contributions. The study is cross-linguistic, drawing on parallel corpora of task-oriented dialogues between dyads of native speakers of English and Spanish. The framework of the investigation is the analysis of speech genres and their staging; the analysis shows that each stage in the dialogues exhibits different thematic, rhetorical, and cohesive relations. The main contributions of the book are: a corpus-based characterization of a spoken genre (task-oriented dialogue); the compilation of a body of analysis tools for generic analysis; application of English-based analyses to Spanish and comparison between the two languages; and a study of the characteristics of each generic stage in task-oriented dialogue.




Building Coherence and Cohesion


Book Description

This book examines the resources that speakers employ when building conversations. These resources contribute to overall coherence and cohesion, which speakers create and maintain interactively as they build on each other’s contributions. The study is cross-linguistic, drawing on parallel corpora of task-oriented dialogues between dyads of native speakers of English and Spanish. The framework of the investigation is the analysis of speech genres and their staging; the analysis shows that each stage in the dialogues exhibits different thematic, rhetorical, and cohesive relations. The main contributions of the book are: a corpus-based characterization of a spoken genre (task-oriented dialogue); the compilation of a body of analysis tools for generic analysis; application of English-based analyses to Spanish and comparison between the two languages; and a study of the characteristics of each generic stage in task-oriented dialogue.




Coherence


Book Description

Complex times call for clear solutions—If initiative overload and fragmentation are keeping your best plans from becoming reality, it’s time to start leading differently. The key to bringing about the kind of successful and sustainable change you need is the Coherence Framework, a dynamic, customizable road map made up of four essential components: Focused direction to build collective purpose Cultivating collaborative cultures while clarifying individual and team roles Deepening learning to accelerate improvement and foster innovation Securing accountability from the inside out Coherence provides the insights and tools to drive effective leadership. Now you can gain a deeper understanding of Coherence with The Taking Action Guide to Building Coherence in Schools, Districts, and Systems. Coherence is a book that demands action – it moves from the narrative of fixing one teacher at a time, to asking about the coherence of the system (be it school, national, or world issues). Fullan and Quinn create an important narrative about direction, working together, deepening learning, and securing accountability. The book sparkles with examples of coherence in action, it makes no excuses for employing the wrong levers of change. This is the blueprint for a new vocabulary of education action; it shows where we need to go next, and is another example of Fullan at the top of his game. John Hattie Director, Melbourne Education Research Institute and Author of Visible Learning "School systems that struggle are riddled with incoherence—mismatched strategies, competing cultures, and illogical initiatives. Fullan and Quinn explain clearly how coherence can solve the problem. Based on solid research and lessons drawn from effective practice, Coherence provides a comprehensive model to guide educators as they learn and lead their way to better schools." Susan Moore Johnson Jerome T. Murphy Research Professor Harvard Graduate School of Education




Aspects of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation


Book Description

This book deals with the (re)production of cohesion and coherence in translation. Building on the theories and methods of Translation Studies and Discourse Analysis it answers some basic, still much debated questions related to translational discourse production. Such a question is whether it is possible to analyse the (re)production of coherence, and if yes, how? Can the models devised for the study of English original (not translated) and independent texts (unlike translations and their sources) be applied for the analysis of translation? How do cohesive, rhetorical and generic structure “behave” in translation? How do particular components of coherence relate to translation universals? The volume proposes a complex translational discourse analysis model and presents findings that bring new insights primarily for the study of news translation, translation strategies and translation universals. It is recommended for translation researchers, discourse analysts, practicing translators, as well as professionals and students involved in translator training.




Collaborating Towards Coherence


Book Description

This book approaches cohesion and coherence from a perspective of interaction and collaboration. After a detailed account of various models of cohesion and coherence, the book suggests that it is fruitful to regard cohesion as contributing to coherence, as a strategy used by communicators to help their fellow communicators create coherence from a text. Throughout the book, the context-sensitive and discourse-specific nature of cohesion is stressed: cohesive relations are created and interpreted in particular texts in particular contexts. By investigating the use of cohesion in four different types of discourse, the study shows that cohesion is not uniform across discourse types. The analysis reveals that written dialogue (computer-mediated discussions) and spoken monologue (prepared speech) make use of similar cohesive strategies as spoken dialogue (conversations): in these contexts the communicators' interaction with their fellow communicators leads to a similar outcome. The book suggests that this is an indication of the communicators' attempt to collaborate towards successful communication.




The Rise and Fall of Social Cohesion


Book Description

The book explores the ways in which social cohesion — measured as trust in unknown fellow citizens — can be established and undermined. It examines the US and UK, where social cohesion declined in the latter part of the twentieth century, and Sweden and Denmark, where social cohesion increased, and aims to put forward a social constructivist explanation for this shift. Demonstrating the importance of public perceptions about living in a meritocratic middle class society, the book argues that trust declined because the Americans and British came to believe that most other citizens belong to an untrustworthy, undeserving, and even dangerous 'bottom' of society rather than to the trustworthy middle classes. In contrast, trust increased amongst Swedes and Danes as they believed that most citizens belong to the 'middle' of society rather than to the 'bottom'. Furthermore, the Swedes and Danes came to view the (perceived) narrow 'bottom' of their society as trustworthy, deserving, and peaceful. The book argues that social cohesion is primarily a cognitive phenomenon, in contrast to previous research, which has emphasized the presence of shared moral norms, fair institutions, networks, engagement in civil society etc. The book is based on unique empirical data material, where American survey items have been replicated in the British Social Attitude survey and the Danish and Swedish ISSP surveys (exclusively for this book). It also includes a unique cross-national study of media content covering a five year period in UK, Sweden, and Denmark. It demonstrates how 'the bottom' and 'the middle' is differently constructed across countries.




Cohesion, Coherence and Temporal Reference from an Experimental Corpus Pragmatics Perspective


Book Description

This open access book provides new methodological and theoretical insights into temporal reference and its linguistic expression, from a cross-linguistic experimental corpus pragmatics approach. Verbal tenses, in general, and more specifically the categories of tense, grammatical and lexical aspect are treated as cohesion ties contributing to the temporal coherence of a discourse, as well as to the cognitive temporal coherence of the mental representations built in the language comprehension process. As such, it investigates the phenomenon of temporal reference at the interface between corpus linguistics, theoretical linguistics and pragmatics, experimental pragmatics, psycholinguistics, natural language processing and machine translation.




Writing Up Your University Assignments And Research Projects


Book Description

"Academic writing can be a daunting prospect for new undergraduates and postgraduates alike, regardless of whether they are home or overseas students. This accessible book provides them/students with all they need to know to produce excellent written work. Neil Murray from University of South Australia." -- BACK COVER.




Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion


Book Description

There is a need for general theoretical principles describing/explaining effective design -- those which demonstrate "unity" and enhance comprehension and usability. Theories of cohesion from linguistics and of comprehension in psychology are likely sources of such general principles. Unfortunately, linguistic approaches to discourse unity have focused exclusively on semantic elements such as synonymy or anaphora, and have ignored other linguistic elements such as syntactic parallelism and phonological alliteration. They have also overlooked the non-linguistic elements -- visual factors such as typography or color, and auditory components such as pitch or duration. In addition, linguistic approaches have met with criticism because they have failed to explain the relationship between semantic cohesive elements and coherence. On the other hand, psychological approaches to discourse comprehension have considered the impact of a wider range of discourse elements -- typographical cuing of key terms to enhance comprehension -- but have failed to provide general theoretical explanations for such observations. This volume uses Gestalt theory to provide general principles for predicting one aspect of coherence -- that of continuity -- across the entire range of discourse elements, and also to outline the relationship between cohesion and coherence. The theoretical core of this book argues that the cognitive principles that explain why humans "sense" unity in a succession of sounds (a whole musical piece) or in a configuration of visual shapes (a complete object) are the basis of principles which explain why we "sense" unity in oral, written, and electronically produced documents.




Taboo in Advertising


Book Description

Taboos are much more than just a synonym of ‘forbidden’. Proof of the concept’s complexity can be found in the way ads often try to hide the taboo inherent to their products or, conversely, in the way certain taboo readings are foregrounded on purpose in other ads. This volume shows why and how that happens, using print and television ads to exemplify (a) the elaborate strategies used by ads for certain products to cleverly hide the taboo inherent to them, and (b) the deliberate recourse to taboo references in ads for products that do not present any taboo connotation. The linguistic analysis undertaken takes into account the different modes (verbal language, music, sound effects, moving and static images) that convey meaning in ads. Taboo is very often conveyed or disguised through one of the channels while the others play the opposite role, thus achieving a balance that prevents the ad from being too obscure to be understood or too daring for the general public to accept it. For this comprehensive approach, concepts are drawn from different disciplines: textual and semiotic analysis from linguistics, theories of taboo from anthropology, and background to advertising from media studies.