Dissertations / Theses: 'English language Discourse analysis'

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Cheung, Wai-ling Sonia. "A contrastive discourse analysis of warnings /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2001. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk:8888/cgi-bin/hkuto%5Ftoc%5Fpdf?B23424369.

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Shi, Yili. "Referring expressions in Chinese and English discourse." Virtual Press, 1998. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1117097.

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Noun phrases (NPs) with the same reference may take a number of different forms. For example, in English a particular conference can be referred to as a conference, the conference, that conference, this conference, that, this, or it. This dissertation attempts to account for the use of such referring expressions in Chinese, based on Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski's (1993) Givenness Hierarchy, and compares the discourse use of Chinese referring expressions with those of English.The Givenness Hierarchy is given below:THE GIVENNESS HIERARCHY:inuniquelytypefocus > activated > familiar > identifiable >referential> identifiable that{it}this{that N}{the N}{indefinite this N}{a N}this NThe Givenness Hierarchy correlates the form of referring expressions with their cognitive statuses, with each status being necessary and sufficient for the appropriate use of a different form or set of forms.The dissertation tests the Givenness Hierarchy to see if it adequately explains the use of referring expressions in Chinese. The data for this study are drawn from spoken and written texts from several different text types (cf. Biber 1986, 1988). The spoken data represent three different speech situations, i.e., face-to-face casual conversations, news broadcasts, and public speeches. The written texts represent different types, including short stories, novels, academic prose, magazine and journal articles, published letters and personal letters. The spoken and written data cover a range of formality and degree of planning.The results of the study show that the Givenness Hierarchy cannot account for the choice of form when two forms meet the sufficient cognitive requirements for appropriate use. More specifically, the Givenness Hierarchy fails to account for choices in Chinese between yi `one' NP and a bare NP when type identifiable is a necessary and sufficient condition for the appropriate use of both, or between nei `that' NP and a bare NP when uniquely identifiable is a necessary and sufficient condition for the appropriate use of both.It is proposed that within the individual categories of the Givenness Hierarchy, further distinction of the degree of discourse salience must be made in order to account for the distribution of Chinese NP forms in discourse. For example, the study shows that nei `that' encodes a uniquely identifiable referent and is used to increase referential salience, while a bare NP encodes a referent of neutral referential salience. Following Givon's (1984) line of research, the use of the numeral yi `one' is to code pragmatically important referents in discourse vs. the use of a bare NP to indicate referentially unimportant referents.To interpret the distribution of referring expressions in Chinese discourse, a number of properties of different expressions have been identified and characterized. The distal demonstrative determiner nei `that' has an associative anaphoric use, encoding an entity whose referent is uniquely identifiable based on what Hawkins (1978, 1991) calls P-sets, association sets. This function of nei as an associative anaphor demonstrates that its deictic function has become weak. In this regard, nei is beginning to function like the English definite article the.The distal demonstrative determiner nei has a recognitional use in talk-ininteraction, to use Schegloff's (1996) terms, negotiating shared knowledge and personal experiences.The demonstrative determiners zhe/na 'this/that' are studied in terms of word order variation. When in postverbal position, they function as definite markers, precluding indefinite interpretation of the postverbal NP. In preverbal position, they tend to increase referential salience of the subject/topic NP.The demonstrative pronouns are compared with the neuter pronoun to `it' and zero when referring to inanimates. The neuter to and zero tend to continue a topic, while demonstrative pronouns are likely to signal topic shift. This distinctive feature is shared by both English and Chinese.In sum, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of the use of referring expressions in both Chinese and English, which should be of interest both to linguists and to language teachers.
Department of English

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Lo, Bianco Joseph. "Officialising language : a discourse study of language politics in the United States." View thesis entry in Australian Digital Theses Program, 2001. http://thesis.anu.edu.au/public/adt-ANU20020902.101758/index.html.

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Li, Citing. "Chinese EFL learners' pragmatic and discourse transfer in the discourse of L2 requests." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2009. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B43085763.

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Hong, Hyo-chang. "Discourse functions of Old English passive word order variation." Virtual Press, 2003. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1259301.

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The purpose of this study was to determine discourse and functional motivation for passive word order variation as shown in three of the major Early Old English prose texts, Orosius, Pastoral Care, and Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The main variation of Early Old English passive word orders are of three types, which this study showed to be distinct in the extent to which passive subjects represent information structure. This study further shows that, while thematicity functions as a main motivating factor for the use of passives, positional variation of passive verbal elements is also an important determinant of the degrees of information structure of passive main clause subjects.
Department of English

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Silva, Karina T. F. da. "Do scripted textbook dialogues reflect native speaker discourse an analysis of English textbooks for adult students in Brazil /." Ohio : Ohio University, 2002. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ohiou1040048746.

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Burris, Jessica Margaret. "Finding Feminism in American Political Discourse : A Discourse Analysis of Post-Feminist Language." UNF Digital Commons, 2012. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/395.

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The term “feminist” is a widely used label that is often embraced by women who do not advocate feminism. The wide use of the feminist label in contrast to the declining presence of feminist activism indicates a problem with the development of a third wave of feminism in the United States. In this study, I evaluated trends in feminism in the United States through an analysis of public political discourse. A semantic discourse analysis of political discourse from 1870 to 2011 evaluated a shift in the use of inclusive and exclusive pronoun usage by female political speakers. Speeches compiled for this study were obtained from internet sources such as NPR, C-Span and CNN, and evaluated the oratory of Victoria Woodhull, Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. The results of this study indicated that there was not a strong shift in the use of inclusive and exclusive pronouns overtime, but there was a large growth in both population and diversity of the targeted audience, and this growth was often not accommodated for in the discourse of contemporary female political candidates. The slow shift in inclusive discourse indicated a post-feminist line of thought that questioned the validity of an argument for a third wave of feminist activism in the United States. Political discourse cannot define a cause for post-feminism, but can indicate a downward trend in the influence of feminism as a contemporary cultural movement.

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Brearey, Oliver James. "Peripheral subjectivity and English-language Hong Kong literature." online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium, 2007. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?1451242.

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Liu, Jing. "Mini-lectures of Chinese native speakers of English : a comparative discourse analysis /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9318.

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Cheung, Wai-ling Sonia, and 張慧玲. "A contrastive discourse analysis of warnings." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B30409202.

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Parent, Kevin. "Polysemy : a second language pedagogical concern : a thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics /." ResearchArchive@Victoria e-thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/970.

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Woo, Ka-hei Michelle. "An analysis of gender and discourse with reference to data from the Hong Kong International Corpus of English." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1999. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B21161641.

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Lewis, Diana M. "Some emergent discourse connectives in English : grammaticalization via rhetorical patterns." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2000. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:137436a0-a0e7-4764-a667-6312d899f909.

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Discourse connectives are metatextual comments that signal discourse coherence relations. They can be realized by sentence adverbials that have their roots in verb phrase adverbials and have followed a path of development that is well attested both for English and cross-linguistically. This study investigates how and why it occurs. It claims that the development belongs to a wider phenomenon of unidirectional internal semantic change, that this change involves context-induced reinterpretation, and that both the immediate discourse context and the wider rhetorical context can be instrumental in bringing it about. Using diachronic and synchronic data in a corpus-linguistic approach, the frequency and distribution of the adverbials after all, in fact, at least and of course are investigated. These are found to follow similar paths of development at different rates and to varying extents. Each undergoes some increase in frequency, subjectification and abstraction, shift of discourse plane and categorial reanalysis. Each acquires at least one connective function to express rhetorical relations such as concession, contrast, justification or elaboration. These relations are defined using the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory. The analysis identifies, in the history of the expressions, contexts of co-occurrence with particular relations that are argued to generate connective implicatures which later crystallize. During long periods the expressions may have stable but defeasible implicatures in the relevant contexts. These contexts include rhetorical structures spanning two or more clause complexes and often consisting of quasi-conventional sequences of rhetorical relations typical of argumentation. They may be described as incipient discourse constructions or rhetorical idioms. The emergence of new discourse connectives is seen to share many of the features attested in the grammaticalization of lexical material. It is argued that these phenomena are best accounted for in a single, usage-based theory of internal semantic change.

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Hicks, Diana. "English language teaching teacher's guides : a critical discourse analysis of three texts." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1983/a13246cc-dda1-4a94-b061-7c3a415ee82e.

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Cahl, Gregory Elkan. "An analysis of dominant discourse in Grade 8 English Home Language textbooks." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23458.

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Post-Apartheid South Africa has heralded a period of intense curriculum reform, explicitly aimed at fostering social transformation and a shift from the uncritical rote-learning which dominated Apartheid-era schooling. There have been three major curriculum shifts since 1994 and each change has required the production of new textbooks for every single school subject, usually within highly limited time-frames. This study focuses on textbooks produced for the most recent iteration of the Language curriculum, that is, the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement, commonly known as CAPS. The study draws on poststructuralist theory on discourse, in particular Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), to engage in close, critical analysis of the dominant discourses in two grade 8 English home language learner textbooks. The textbooks are examined in terms of how social issues are depicted; the notions of English education; the extent to which they promote a critical approach to language and literacy learning as outlined in the curriculum and the ways in which learners are constructed as subject. The analysis of different levels of discourse evident in the texts and text-based tasks demonstrates that the orientations to reading that are offered are focussed largely on the surface meaning of the texts. While social issues related to contemporary South African and global topics are evident in the choice of content, the texts often perpetuate fairly conservative ideologies, either through their content, the exercises that follow or through the silences implicit in the selection of excerpts. Many of the text-based exercises are decontextualized, cognitively undemanding and learners are often steered towards particular answers, leaving very limited space for critical engagement. The thesis ends with a consideration of the implications of this analysis for teaching and learning.

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Ho, Siu-wah Annie, and 何小華. "Discourse structure of English telephone conversation: a description of the closing." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1987. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3194906X.

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Iida, Eri. "Hedges in Japanese English and American English medical research articles." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=99723.

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The present study analysed the use of hedges in English medical research articles written by Japanese and American researchers. The study also examined the relationship between Japanese medical professionals' employment of hedges and their writing process. Sixteen English medical articles: eight written by Japanese and eight by Americans were examined. Four of the Japanese authors discussed their writing process through questionnaires and telephone interviews.
The overall ratio of hedges in articles written by the two groups differed only slightly; however, analyses revealed a number of specific differences in the use of hedges between the groups. For example, Japanese researchers used epistemic adverbs and adjectives less frequently than the American researchers. The results were discussed in relation to the problems of nonnative speakers' grammatical competence, cultural differences in rhetorical features, and the amount of experience in the use of medical English.

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Kluepfel, Gail A. "Reading textual differences : grammars, epistemologies, and their subjects in composition /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9385.

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Geldenhuys, Natasjia. "The language of forms: A discourse analysis of municipal application forms." University of the Western Cape, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/6952.

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Magister Artium - MA
This thesis focuses on the genre of municipal documents (application forms) and the variety of written and visual languages that make up their corpus to reveal the various lexical semantics used in the forms as communication tool between individuals and the larger organisations. It was important to review not only how other researchers have dissected such documents, but also what they have used to study their corpus. The thesis also provides a thorough overview of literature pertaining to forms from the municipal and governmental sector as it relates to social semiotics, genre, corporate identity, branding and multimodality. As there was not enough empirical data or research from the African or non-European perspective, a wider literature review was needed to enable me to use a number of complimentary models that could fit the study area. Drawing on a theoretical framework based on the fields of Social Semiotics (Kress 2010; 2014), Applied Linguistics (Brumfit 1996) and Visual Communication (Tam 2008) as well as analytical tools like the genre and multimodality model (GeM), as described in Bateman (2008) and the grammar of visual design (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006), branding and language ideology, the study offers an analysis of the language of particular forms used widely by the City of Cape Town (CCT). The language of forms in essence is as unique as a dialogue held between two people to obtain information. Misunderstanding and communication can easily occur if the questions and sections are not formulated correctly. Although both the textual and visual modes were investigated, the aim was to uncover the corpora used on forms with which a basic set of standard words, phrases and sentences could be designed. If the language of forms in a particular organisation like the CCT can be standardised, the amount of effort on the language practitioners will decrease, and the textual components can be made available in all three of the official languages (Afrikaans, isiXhosa and English) in as simple a language structure as possible.

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Tang, Wai Kuen Connie. "An analysis of the genre of a standard listing documentation of a multinational accounting firm in Hong Kong." HKBU Institutional Repository, 1997. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/112.

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Mustedanagic, Anita. "Gender in English Language and EFL- Textbooks." Thesis, Halmstad University, School of Teacher Education (LUT), 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-5567.

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Abstract

A textbook is a key component in the arsenal of a teacher of English. For this reason, it is of importance that textbooksused in Swedish schools are compliant with the fundamental values of equality, provided in the LPO 94. I will attempt to discover the extent to which English textbooks present males and females in non-stereotyped ways and as equal. I want to provide an overview to show how they deal with gender issues. In addition, I aim at establish whether there are any connection between learning and gender, and whether it hinders the pupil’s language learning.

My analysis will draw on previous research and theories presented by prominent figures in the field, such as, Butler (1990), Mills (1995), Renner (1997), Ravitch (2004) and Jones, Kitetu & Jane Sunderland (1997)among others. Thereafter, these theories, and my own research will be compared, to and contrasted with the guidelines from the Swedish National Agency of Education.

This dissertation comprises a qualitative critical discourse analysis of two randomly selected textbooks that have been, or are being used, in Swedish secondary schools. For my study, I have chosen Team 8 (1984) and Wings 8 (2000).

In my analyses, a number of different aspects will be taken into consideration, such as the gender distribution of narrators, main characters and sub characters, as well as the description of gender/gender roles, and the representation of gender in illustrations. Further, I will study what kind of language is used: the extent to which it is gendered or de-gendered language. These aspects will be collected quantitatively.

The findings from the analysis show that the language in Wings 8 gives a broad and non-stereotypic view of gender roles, which is in accordance with the fundamental values of LPO 94. However, the illustrations tend to portray males and females in what can be considered as quite stereotypical.

Team 8, on the other hand, contains gendered language and male dominance; women were placed in the background or left out completely. Therefore, Team 8 would not be deemed to be compliant with the requirements set by the Swedish National Agency of Education today.

Key words: Education, teaching material, Wings, Team 8, gender, critical discourse analysis.

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Tayub, Mohammed Farhad Abu. "A Critical Discourse Analysis of Bangladeshi English-Language Newspaper Editorials on Extrajudicial Executions." Thesis, Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-51220.

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Tomazoni, Mônica Denise Godarth. "A discourse analysis of participants' views in an english language teacher development course." Florianópolis, SC, 2005. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/handle/123456789/101922.

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Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.
Made available in DSpace on 2013-07-15T23:33:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 222267.pdf: 1153324 bytes, checksum: dea4029eb59a705d71c198576246066e (MD5)

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Matuka, Yeno Mansoni. "Patterns of tense, aspects and modality in the metalanguage of academic English prose." Virtual Press, 1987. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/505145.

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Vadhanasindhu, Chanika. "Contrastive discourse analysis and reader perception of newspaper editorials in Thai and English." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280016.

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The primary purpose of this study was to provide a descriptive comparison of newspaper editorials in Thai written by native speakers of Thai (TT), in English written by both native speakers and non-native speakers of English published in Thailand (ET), and English written by native speakers of English published in the US (EA). The corpus used for textual analysis was composed of 10 editorials from each of the groups. A secondary purpose was to explore and contrast reader practices, expectations and perceptions relating to English-language editorials in Thailand and the US, which involved analysis of response to questionnaires by 30 native Thai (TS) and 30 native English speakers (ES). It was found that more EA editorials were published per day, covering broader topics than did editorials in Thailand. The Thai texts are more linguistically complex than English as there are typically more V-Units (terminal 'Verb-Units', posited in this study) in Thai sentences. ET editorials were more similar to EA than to TT on the range of purposes and the numbers of purposes per editorial. TT editorials have more diverse types of titles than do ET and EA editorials. ET editorials were more similar to EA editorials in terms of organization type preference. EA editorials follow Schneider and Connor's model of coherent text (1990) most closely and Witte's model (1982) least closely. Both TT and EA editorial writers generally write about their countries/people while ET writers write about other countries/people more often. Most ES subjects are correct in identifying the place of publication as the US or Thailand while guesses by Thai subjects are only at the level of chance for both. Linear organization, strong voice, grammatical structures and certain idiomatic expressions generally led ES subjects to believe an editorial was written by a native speaker of English. Methodologies used in this study could be useful for EJP and ESL students in Thailand.

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Yuen, Dick-yan Dennis, and 源迪恩. "A comparison of oral and written composition in L1 Chinese and L2 English in an L2 English medium school." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1995. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31958424.

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Chan, Sui Ping. "Organization of teacher/pupil discourse in a communicative language classroom." HKBU Institutional Repository, 1994. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/25.

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Nagendra, Geetha. "An activity theoretical analysis of synchronous electronic discourse a case study /." Thesis, Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2006. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B36776968.

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Almutairi, Bandar Alhumaidi A. "Visualizing Evaluative Language in Relation to Constructing Identity in English Editorials and Op-Eds." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/13591.

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This thesis is concerned with the problem of managing complexity in Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) analyses of language, particularly at the discourse semantics level. To deal with this complexity, the thesis develops AppAnn, a suite of linguistic visualization techniques that are specifically designed to provide both synoptic and dynamic views on discourse semantic patterns in text and corpus. Moreover, AppAnn visualizations are illustrated in a series of explorations of identity in a corpus of editorials and op-eds about the bin Laden killing. The findings suggest that the intriguing intricacies of discourse semantic meanings can be successfully discerned and more readily understood through linguistic visualization. The findings also provide insightful implications for discourse analysis by contributing to our understanding of a number of underdeveloped concepts of SFL, including coupling, commitment, instantiation, affiliation and individuation.

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Guerrero-Nieto, Carmen Helena. "National Standards for the Teaching of English in Colombia: A Critical Discourse Analysis." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195935.

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The spread of English in the world today is not only the result of colonizing campaigns (Canagarajah, 1999, 2005; Pennycook, 1994a, 1998a, 2000; Phillipson, 1992, 2000) but also of the compliance of the governments associated with the "expanding circle" (Kachru, 1986). In part, this compliance is a consequence of the different mechanisms of the circulation of discourse, in particular the idea that speaking English is a sine qua non condition to be a worldwide citizen. Colombia is a good example of this phenomenon, because its national government is implementing a National Bilingualism Project (PNB) where there is an explicit interest in the promotion of English over all other languages spoken in the country. This dissertation is a critical discourse analysis of the handbook Estándares básicos de competencias en lenguas extranjeras: Inglés. Formar en lenguas extranjeras, el reto" (Basic standards for competences in foreign languages: English. Teach in foreign languages: the challenge) published by the Ministry of Education of Colombia. This handbook is aimed at establishing the national standards for the teaching of English in Colombian public schools. The objective of the study is to offer an interpretation of the way in which bilingualism, English, and teachers are constructed through the language used in the handbook. The analysis of data follows Fairclough’s textual analysis and is supported by other written texts and informed by scholarly articles. The analysis of data shows that the official discourse creates a whole new meaning for “bilingualism” since it indexes exclusively the learning of English in Colombia. Along with this, the authors of the handbook perpetuate mainstream concepts and ideas about the symbolic power of English as the one and only necessary tool for academic and economic success. This is achieved by a redundant discourse on the neutrality of English on the one hand, and the benefits it brings to its speakers, on the other. In relation to the portrayal of teachers in this document, the data show that their role is either downplayed or made invisible, which also correlates with the low prestige that school teachers have in Colombia. The study leads to the conclusion that a document that contains national standards for the teaching of a language should include multiple voices where local knowledge gets the same recognition as global knowledge, and where the diversity of the country is represented, respected and promoted. In that way, official institutions would be legislating to benefit the majority of the population, and not the small number of elites of the country.

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Li, Citing, and 李茨婷. "Chinese EFL learners' pragmatic and discourse transfer in the discourse of L2 requests." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2009. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B43085763.

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Kerr, Ronald George. "Changing discourse, the discourse of change : a critical analysis of discourse in the fields of English language teaching, governance and development." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.418437.

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Doray, Michele Brigitte Antoinette. "Gender differentiated discourse: a study of teacher discourse in the adult ESL classroom." Thesis, Curtin University, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/2122.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate similarities and differences in the classroom discourse of male and female ESL teachers in the academic stream of one Western Australian tertiary institutions ELICOS program. Language and gender research generally suggests that males and females have different and quite distinctive communicative styles. This study attempts to examine if this finding is also manifested in male and female teachers discourse in adult ESL classrooms in the three main aspects of classroom interaction; giving explicit instructions, asking questions and providing verbal feedback, using Sinclair & Coulthards (1975) IRF framework. A sample of six teachers, three males and three females were observed through a process of non-participant observation and their lessons video-recorded in the naturalistic situation of the classroom in order to make a comparative analysis of their discourse.Teacher discourse in the three aspects of classroom interaction, namely, instructions, questioning and feedback, was examined with the purpose of exploring gender differences and similarities so that the reasons and implications for the manifestation of such similarities and differences can be further investigated. Conclusions were then made about the influence of traditional masculine and feminine speech styles on the discourse choices of the teachers.The discourse analysis found that more similarities than differences existed in the teachers classroom discourse supporting the notion that the choice of discourse features is dependent firstly on the context and secondly on the role of the interactants vis-à-vis each other in the community of practice. Although some differences emerged, the teachers in this study generally adopted a facilitative, cooperative speech style in their classroom discourse.

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Varga, Kate, and Ronja Cato. "A multimodal critical discourse analysis of Swedish teaching materials for English." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Malmö högskola, Institutionen för kultur, språk och medier (KSM), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-41075.

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Education in the Swedish school system should aim to assist pupils in the development of fundamental values. This study investigates to what extent different groups of people are represented within two textbooks for English language teaching (ELT), produced in Sweden and commonly used in Swedish schools and how these representations correlate with the values indicated in the curriculum. Additionally, this study explores if textbooks designed for ELT can be adapted and used as a resource in the Arts classroom for multimodal representation analysis. The study used a multimodal critical discourse analysis with a social semiotic approach to address these questions, looking at the textbooks' textual and visual elements. The result is addressed both quantitatively and qualitatively and showed that, while women were shown in active roles, white men were overrepresented in both the visual and textual representations and people of colour of both genders were underrepresented. The results imply that ELT textbooks have some ways to go in order to meet the representation demands that the curriculum sets and that more research needs to address how to more accurately and frequently represent different groups of people within ELT teaching materials.

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Woo, Ka-hei Michelle, and 胡嘉熙. "An analysis of gender and discourse with reference to data from the Hong Kong International Corpus of English." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1999. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31952495.

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Laohawiriyanon, Chonlada. "From climate change to deforestation a genre of popularised science /." Phd thesis, Australia : Macquarie University, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/22696.

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Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, School of English, Linguistics and Media, 1999.
Bibliography: p. 299-305.
Introduction -- Theoretical background -- The structure of popular scientific writing on 'climate change' -- Findings of analysis of texts on population growth and deforestation -- Interaction between verbal and visuals representations -- Conclusion.
The topics of climate change, population growth, and deforestation, as discussed in publications such as New Scientist, Discover, Time, and Our Planet, exemplify contemporary writing on science for the general community. As such, it is assumed that they are presented in an objective, scientific, informative way. Furthermore, these topics illustrate what it means to write complex issues in a popular manner. Consequently, they provide an opportunity for examining at least one area of popular science as a generic phenomenon.-- Through an investigation of thirty texts (ten on each of the three topics mentioned), the consistencies and distinctive features of writing on these environmental issues are investigated, in particular using discourse tools drawn from Systemic Functional linguistics. The foremost tools are the proposals concerning GSP (Generic Structure Potential) put forward by Hasan, which provide an outline of the syntagmatic unfolding of a text ("logogenetic perspective") and the four stratal perspective that is illustrated in the work by Halliday and Hasan, in particular as such work relates wording to culture. By assessing the degree to which the thirty texts constitute a genre, and the degree to which they exhibit their own internal variations, it is also possible to clarify Halliday's notion of the 'cline of instantiation' between, at one end, the 'potential/system' and, at the other end, the instance of 'text as process'.-- The investigation reveals that the assumption of an informative, objective style in popular science journal articles actually obscures a deeper underlying activism about the future, but an activism strongly based on only Western perceptions of environmental crisis.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
ix, 305, 217 p. ill. (some col.)

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Marko, Georg. "Penetrating language a critical discourse analysis of pornography." Tübingen Narr, 2005. http://d-nb.info/986878383/04.

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Suaysuwan, Noparat. "English language textbooks in Thailand 1960-1997 : constructing postwar, industrial and global iterations of Thai society through and for the child language learner /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe18722.pdf.

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Cheng, Winnie, and 鄭梁慧蓮. "Intercultural communication between native and non-native speakers of English." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2002. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29711629.

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Traiger, Cheryl B. "Tourists' English Expectations: Discourse Analysis of Attitudes towards Language and Culture on Travel Websites." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194974.

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While the importance of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in business and the media is well-studied, little attention has been paid to ELF in tourism. This study analyzes postings on websites such as TripAdvisor (http://www.tripadvisor.com/), which feature non-professional reviews of international travel destinations and services, in order to evaluate the effects of cultural capital, stereotypes and relative power on: expectations of English availability in non-English speaking countries, evaluation of the language spoken by EFL speakers (e.g. hotel clerks, shop owners), and attitudes towards speaking the local language.This study explores the issue of speech accommodation between the tourists and the local hospitality industry workers and other residents (Giles, Taylor, and Bourhis, 1973; Giles, Coupland, and Coupland, 1991; Giles and Powesland, 1997) and the likely factors leading to convergence/divergence as indicated by attitudes towards language choices. Website excerpts will show the circumstances in which travelers expect the locals (who deal with tourists) to speak English as well as how much of the local language the travelers are willing to learn and use.Findings indicate that the tourists' willingness to take responsibility for linguistic accommodation, tolerance for restricted English proficiency levels, and attitudes towards being exposed to the local culture and language differ according to the presumed cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986, 1991; Hanks, 2005) - often governed by stereotypes - and relative power of the interlocutors, the visited location and the local language. The role of ELF in the tourism sector and attitudes toward the local residents and language(s) are highly relativized, such that the specificity of the local context must be taken into account. Proficiency in the English language itself is, in some locations, the source of presumed higher status and symbolic of luxury. The second important dynamic demonstrated to affect the levels and type of language expectation is the degree to which the traveler desires interaction with and exposure to the local culture, or wants to stay with familiar experiences in an "environmental bubble" (Cohen and Cooper, 1986). The differences in expectation of ELF demonstrate that traveler attitudes towards specific locations are key to determining linguistic needs.

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Tan, Man Wai Emily. "Lexical signalling of notions of solution in the problem-solution discourse context." HKBU Institutional Repository, 1997. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/119.

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Hannan, Mairead. "The discourse of ESL policy : the impact of the 'Literacy Crisis' /." Connect to thesis, 2009. http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/6868.

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Leung, Yiu Hung Humphrey. "Bona to vada your dolly old eke! : a case study of the differences of English use between homosexual and heterosexual people in written discourse." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2002. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/390.

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Cheng, Yonghong. "English non-plural nouns in -s : a survey and corpus-based study." Virtual Press, 2008. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1395455.

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The English suffix -s is usually used to mark third person singular present tense, noun plurals, possessives, and in some adverbs, but it is also used in words like news, linguistics, measles, billiards, belongings, riches, oats, shivers, scissors, etc. In the literature so far, words like these have been studied mainly from the diachronic perspective, according to their morphological features and within the realm of count and mass nouns, and the suffix -s has been called a plural marker, possessive marker, pseudo-morpheme, or nominalizer. But these functions identified for the English suffix -s can't successfully explain usages of the suffix -s in all the non-plural English nouns, especially those that are not abstract nouns.In this dissertation a survey on the use of English non-plural nouns in -s is conducted with middle school students, college freshmen, college seniors, college professors and staff members as subjects using six different grammatical tests. It is found that the High School group and Staff Members always stand out as different from College Students and Professors suggesting that education level or the heterogeneousness of education levels does play a role in affecting the subjects' use of the English non-plural nouns in -s. In the survey, the subjects' performance in different types of tests is statistically different indicating that different kinds of tests affect the subjects' performance and grammaticality judgment differently.The FROWN-based study shows that most of these English non-plural nouns in -s are not used very frequently in contemporary American English, revealing that most of the English reference grammars are using obsolete or historical examples. The corpus-based study also tells us that most of the cases of these English non-plural nouns in -s are in non-subject positions, making it harder for us to test the number status of these words. But this large number of non-subject cases just means that we can't tell whether these words are intrinsically plural or singular and in fact except for only a few clearly marked plural cases there is a strong tendency towards generic interpretations for these non-plural nouns in -s. Actually it is this in-determinateness that makes the appearance of the new morpheme or new functions of old morphemes possible.The data from the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed, Online (OED), supports Stahlke, Cheng & Sung's (forthcoming) argument that in the late 16th and early 17th century a new morpheme--the nominalizer -s, was developed in the English language to turn adjectives and concrete nouns into abstract nouns. The data on the historical semantic development of English non-plural nouns in -s from the OED also reveals the process of a semantic shift of Adj. -+ Sing. N -+ Pl. N -+ Col. N - Gen. N. This process of semantic shift is strongly evidenced by the disappearance of singular forms of the English non-plural nouns -s in the late 16th and early 17th century and successfully explains why the English nouns in -s have the generic interpretation and require singular verb agreement.
Department of English

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Amir, Alia. "Chronicles of the English Language in Pakistan : A discourse analysis of milestones in the language policy of Pakistan." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-65526.

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In this thesis, I will be investigating educational policies with a focus on English as a medium of instruction. The medium of instruction in Pakistan varies with respect to each province and the social status of the school. Consequently, English is not taught only as a foreign language but is a medium for upward mobility. I will be investigating the chronicles of English as a medium of instruction in Pakistan both before and after the partition (1947) of British India. I have selected three phases: the mid-eighteenth century, the 1970s and the present decade. I will be tracing the similarities and differences in the language policies of these eras, and identifying any patterns which transcend these eras. I shall deal with each phase separately with a brief introduction and the rationale for their selection. The Colonial period which I have marked as an important phase is before 1857; the First War of Independence (also called the War of Mutiny). This is a period of the British East India Company Rule, and indirect involvement of the British Crown. My thesis revolves around the principle that language policy of an alien origin has played an important role in South Asian history which segregated between the colonized and the colonizer, which later turned to the segregation of the masses on the basis of Anglicised and non-Anglicised. I will also be looking at this segregation, in the LPP documents of the present decade as well. The language policy of the 1970s will be analyzed for the patterns in contrast with the present decade. The 1970s in Pakistan are a period of extraordinary chaos, beginning with a language-based separatist movement in East Pakistan gaining independence in 1971, the execution of a deposed elected prime minister and a nationalist language policy. Here, I would like to shed light on the reason of my label “nationalist” for this policy , as this was the only policy which determined, and made some concrete steps towards the establishment of Urdu as a medium of instruction, and Zia’s reinforcement of Urdu as a symbol of nationalism and Islam. But ironically this could not be implemented, in its true spirit either. This policy will not be dealt in detail, but the effect of its annulations on the present decade, if any. This decade will also be analyzed for patterns linked to the past colonial trajectories and the continuity of policies in favour of the English language as a medium of instruction. I will also be investigating the link between the present decade in relation to the interplay between colonial and Post- colonial influences. I would also like to bring forth the research carried on Pakistan’s language policy. The research carried on colonial India is vast, with researchers like Robert Philipson, and his influential book Linguistic Imperialism (1992). Pennycook (2001) also sheds light on the introduction of English language in colonial context and its implications. My contribution in this field is the comparison between the colonial and post-colonial policies with, Discourse Analysis. The selection of the policies of 2008 is also an advancement in this paper, which has helped in looking at the current policies in Pakistan.

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Guerriero, A. M. Sonia (Antonia Michela Sonia). "The development of argument representation : a crosslinguistic discourse-pragmatic analysis of English and Japanese child language." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=100614.

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Children's learning of language-universal and language-specific principles of argument representation was the topic under investigation in the three studies comprising this thesis. Another objective was to investigate whether a discourse-pragmatic approach could be employed to explain children's patterns of argument omission and production, developmentally and crosslinguistically. To answer these questions, referential choice in the spontaneous language of monolingual English-speaking and monolingual Japanese-speaking children and their mothers was developmentally investigated whereby a sentence argument's morphological form (null, pronominal, lexical), referential status (given, new), and syntactic location (transitive subject, transitive object, intransitive subject) were systematically analysed. The first and second studies revealed that neither the English-speaking nor the Japanese-speaking children showed sensitivity to the referential distinction between given and new information early on in development (at 21 months of age). The English-speaking children mastered English-specific referential conventions between MLU 2.00 and 3.99 (between 24 and 32 months) and employed non-linguistic pragmatic correlates to supplement unconventional argument use from as early as MLU 1.00 (between 21 and 23 months). By contrast, the Japanese-speaking children showed unconventional referential choices as late as MLU 4.00 (between 33 and 36 months), as well as inconsistent use of non-linguistic pragmatic correlates. The third study revealed that, although language-specific differences were observed, neither group of children violated any of the four Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) constraints: The children avoided using more than one new or lexical argument per transitive clause and avoided casting new or lexical arguments as transitive subjects. However, evidence of sensitivity to PAS strategies from early on in development was inconclusive because the children omitted most sentence arguments at the beginning of speech production. Finally, all three studies revealed that children's referential choices that were inconsistent with expected discourse-pragmatic principles reflected similar patterns observed in parental input. Altogether, this set of studies led to the following general conclusions regarding the learning of argument representation and distribution in syntax: (1) a discourse-pragmatic approach can explain language-universal features of argument omission and production in child language and (2) language-specific strategies are learned via parental input.

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Sirén, T. (Tea). "Representations of men and women in English language textbooks:a critical discourse analysis of Open Road 1–7." Master's thesis, University of Oulu, 2018. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201805312348.

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The purpose of the current thesis is to investigate possible gender bias and sexism and the description of masculinity and femininity in the Open Road textbook series, a series that is used in Finnish high schools in the teaching of English. A critical discourse analysis was conducted on seven Open Road books. The research materials consisted of the entirety of the books; main texts in the chapters, illustrations on the pages, exercises that had text and the materials found in the teacher’s file in https://opepalvelu.otava.fi/. I examined the research materials on the basis of five themes which were overrepresentation of men, social gender roles, activities, sexualization and language. Stereotypical and traditional ways of portraying both men and women were found but, also, patterns that broke the stereotypes appeared on the pages of the textbooks. What sets this research apart from earlier studies is that it does not exclude men in the analysis. Further research on gender representation in school textbooks should be continued because we have not reached gender equality in the school world
Tämän pro gradu -tutkielman tarkoitus on selvittää kriittisen diskurssianalyysin keinoin, miten maskuliinisuus ja feminiinisyys ilmenee Open Road oppikirjoissa, joita käytetään englannin kielen opetuksessa Suomen lukioissa. Tarkoitus on myös selvittää, ilmeneekö kirjasarjassa seksismiä tai sukupuoleen liittyviä ennakkoluuloja. Tutkimusmateriaali koostui seitsemästä oppikirjasta, niiden pääteksteistä, kuvista, tehtävistä sekä internetistä löytyvästä opettajan oppaasta. Tutkimus paljasti, että kirjoista löytyy stereotyyppisiä sekä perinteisiä tapoja esittää sekä miehiä että naisia, mutta myös stereotypioita vastaan taistelevia esimerkkejä esiintyi. Tarkastelin tutkimusmateriaaleja viiden teeman näkökulmasta, jotka olivat: miehien yliedustus, sosiaaliset sukupuoliroolit, aktiviteetit, seksualisointi sekä kieli. Aikaisemmista tutkimuksista tämä työ eroaa siinä, että se ottaa huomioon myös miehet ja sen, kuinka heistä luodaan kuvia tutkittavassa kirjasarjassa. Tutkimusta sukupuolien näkyvyydestä tulee jatkaa sillä emme ole tavoittaneet tasa-arvoisuutta sukupuolikysymyksissä koulumaailmassa

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Allan, Margaret D. "Migrant ESOL learners : a Foucauldian discourse analysis." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/22335.

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This study aims to contribute uniquely to both the debate and the literature on diversity and difference within the college sector in Scotland. It investigated how migrant ESOL learners are supported within one large college in Glasgow, and adopted a qualitative approach underpinned by a previously under-used strand of Foucault’s theory of practices of the self to interpret the language and practices of both ESOL learners and their lecturers. It analysed how the college situates the migrant learners’ experience by examining the discourses of two focus groups of learners and staff, as well as seven individual members of staff and selected learners at both Intermediate and Advanced levels. The research found that both the learners and their lecturers have to negotiate quite different manifestations of power as they work towards their individual goals. The learners’ practices illustrate their sophistication as they assimilate behaviours and language which help to ease their progression through and beyond the college, while the lecturers work within the challenges of their role to enable, with evident care, the goals of the learners which are entangled with their own. The findings raise issues for practitioners working within the field of ESOL learning and teaching, specifically how to support students in negotiating the learning process, and the associated layers of power embedded within the practices of the college. The key beneficiaries of this study are the lecturers but, ultimately, the migrant ESOL learners and the potential is identified for Foucault’s framework of practices of the self to be used to support lecturers in developing more culturally sensitive practices.

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Doray, Michele Brigitte Antoinette. "Gender differentiated discourse : a study of teacher discourse in the adult ESL classroom /." Curtin University of Technology, Department of Language and Intercultural Education, 2005. http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=16608.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate similarities and differences in the classroom discourse of male and female ESL teachers in the academic stream of one Western Australian tertiary institutions ELICOS program. Language and gender research generally suggests that males and females have different and quite distinctive communicative styles. This study attempts to examine if this finding is also manifested in male and female teachers discourse in adult ESL classrooms in the three main aspects of classroom interaction; giving explicit instructions, asking questions and providing verbal feedback, using Sinclair & Coulthards (1975) IRF framework. A sample of six teachers, three males and three females were observed through a process of non-participant observation and their lessons video-recorded in the naturalistic situation of the classroom in order to make a comparative analysis of their discourse.Teacher discourse in the three aspects of classroom interaction, namely, instructions, questioning and feedback, was examined with the purpose of exploring gender differences and similarities so that the reasons and implications for the manifestation of such similarities and differences can be further investigated. Conclusions were then made about the influence of traditional masculine and feminine speech styles on the discourse choices of the teachers.The discourse analysis found that more similarities than differences existed in the teachers classroom discourse supporting the notion that the choice of discourse features is dependent firstly on the context and secondly on the role of the interactants vis-à-vis each other in the community of practice. Although some differences emerged, the teachers in this study generally adopted a facilitative, cooperative speech style in their classroom discourse.

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Petkova, Mariana M. "Classroom discourse and Teacher talk influences on English language learner students' mathematics experiences." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0002912.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'English language Discourse analysis'

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