Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Spoken communication'

The field of spoken language processing is concerned with creating computer programs that can understand human speech and produce human-like speech. Regarding the problem of understanding human speech, there is currently growing interest in moving beyond speech recognition (the task of transcribing the words in an audio stream) and towards machine listening—interpreting the full spectrum of information in an audio stream. One part of machine listening, the problem that this thesis focuses on, is the task of using information in the speech signal to infer a person’s emotional or mental state. In this dissertation, our approach is to assess the utility of prosody, or manner of speaking, in classifying speaker affect. Prosody refers to the acoustic features of natural speech: rhythm, stress, intonation, and energy. Affect refers to a person’s emotions and attitudes such as happiness, frustration, or uncertainty. We focus on one specific dimension of affect: level of certainty. Our goal is to automatically infer whether a person is confident or uncertain based on the prosody of his or her speech. Potential applications include conversational dialogue systems (e.g., in educational technology) and voice search (e.g., smartphone personal assistants). There are three main contributions of this thesis. The first contribution is a method for eliciting uncertain speech that binds a speaker’s uncertainty to a single phrase within the larger utterance, allowing us to compare the utility of contextually-based prosodic features. Second, we devise a technique for computing prosodic features from utterance segments that both improves uncertainty classification and can be used to determine which phrase a speaker is uncertain about. The level of certainty classifier achieves an accuracy of 75%. Third, we examine the differences between perceived, self-reported, and internal level of certainty, concluding that perceived certainty is aligned with internal certainty for some but not all speakers and that self-reports are a good proxy for internal certainty.
Engineering and Applied Sciences

The present study investigates the pupils' spoken English in the classroom as opposed to their spoken English outside school, and suggests ways of how the teachers can incorporate the pupils' pre-knowledge into the teaching of ESL. Today the pupils' pre-knowledge of ESL is developed into their own vernacular, which I choose to refer to as “Media English”, as opposed to the “Academic English” they are taught in school. Two classes in year 8 have answered a questionnaire, and the pupils show both willingness to learn, and awareness of the necessity of knowing the English language, since most pupils spend a lot of their free-time on the Internet. Additionally, four teachers have answered a second questionnaire, and both pupils and teachers agree that the pupils rather talk in small groups, if they talk at all, a finding which is supported by previous studies. The conclusion is that pupils and teachers need to collaborate, but most importantly, the teachers need to encourage the pupils to talk.

There is awareness and concern in Japan that the process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in the school system does not produce students who can communicate in the target language. This is especially true of communication in the spoken mode. Attempts have been made to move towards more communicative language teaching, despite constraints such as large class size, compulsory use of structurally-organized textbooks, and grammar-based university entrance examinations. However, such attempts do not seem to have been particularly successful. The purpose of this study is to suggest modifications to the teaching of English in upper secondary schools in Japan which could enable students to develop their communicative competence and also to consider implications for the assessment of spoken communication. Chapter I describes the scope and background of the study. Chapter II looks at the teaching of English in upper secondary schools in Japan, discussing aspects such as the place of English in the total school curriculum and constraints on the introduction of spoken communicative activities. Chapter III discusses the theory and practice of the Communicative Approach to Language Teaching in the English teaching context in Japan. Chapter IV offers suggestions for incorporating spoken communication in English lessons at upper secondary school level. In Chapter V, the problem of assessing oral communicative performance is considered in practical terms. The final chapter highlights major constraints and points to recent developments which may give an impetus to a move towards more communicative teaching of English as a foreign language in Japanese schools. It is intended that this Study Report will provide guidelines for the feasible introduction of spoken communicative activities in large classes at upper secondary level and that it will offer practical suggestions for assessing students' performance in such activities.

This thesis is a step towards the long-term and high-reaching objec-tive of building dialogue systems whose behaviour is similar to a human dialogue partner. The aim is not to build a machine with the same conversational skills as a human being, but rather to build a machine that is human enough to encourage users to interact with it accordingly. The behaviours in focus are cue phrases, hesitations and turn-taking cues. These behaviours serve several important communicative functions such as providing feedback and managing turn-taking. Thus, if dialogue systems could use interactional cues similar to those of humans, these systems could be more intuitive to talk to. A major part of this work has been to collect, identify and analyze the target behaviours in human-human interaction in order to gain a better understanding of these phenomena. Another part has been to reproduce these behaviours in a dialogue system context and explore listeners’ perceptions of these phenomena in empirical experiments. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part serves as an overall background. The issues and motivations of humanlike dialogue systems are discussed. This part also includes an overview of research on human language production and spoken language generation in dialogue systems. The next part presents the data collections, data analyses and empirical experiments that this thesis is concerned with. The first study presented is a listening test that explores human behaviour as a model for dialogue systems. The results show that a version based on human behaviour is rated as more humanlike, polite and intelligent than a constrained version with less variability. Next, the DEAL dia-logue system is introduced. DEAL is used as a platform for the re-search presented in this thesis. The domain of the system is a trade domain and the target audience are second language learners of Swedish who want to practice conversation. Furthermore, a data collection of human-human dialogues in the DEAL domain is presented. Analyses of cue phrases in these data are provided as well as an experimental study of turn-taking cues. The results from the turn-taking experiment indicate that turn-taking cues realized with a di-phone synthesis affect the expectations of a turn change similar to the corresponding human version. Finally, an experimental study that explores the use of talkspurtinitial cue phrases in an incremental version of DEAL is presented. The results show that the incremental version had shorter response times and was rated as more efficient, more polite and better at indicating when to speak than a non-incremental implementation of the same system.
QC20100830

This thesis investigated the nature of gesture and its relation to speech in deaf and hearing French-speaking children between the ages of four and six. Although the spoken language of the two groups was not different, significant differences were found in the amount and kinds of gestures produced. The deaf children produced significantly more gestures, and a higher proportion of iconics, than the hearing controls. The deaf children were systematic in their use of speech in conjunction with gesture in that they combined iconic gestures with verb phrases and points with noun phrases. This systematicity was not displayed by the hearing children. The deaf children were also found to gesture more frequently during partially intelligible than during intelligible utterances. The implications of this data for the speech-gesture relation are discussed.

This study examines opening and closing segments in instant messaging (IM) and demonstrates how openings and closings differ between oral conversation and instant messaging as well as the factors that account for the difference. Many researchers have discussed the differences and similarities between spoken and written languages. Tannen (1980) claims that spoken and written languages are not distinct categories and there is a continuum between them. She also holds that interpersonal involvement is one of the factors that determine if a particular communication is closer to spoken communication or written communication. I will analyze IM, which is best thought of as a communication mode that resides in the middle of the continuum between spoken and written language. Beißwenger (2008) studied the turn-taking of IM and argued that contributions to instant message dialogues are achieved as individual tasks rather than through interactions between participants. He holds that the nature of the individual tasks provides the most important characteristic which distinguishes IM from oral conversation. Closings in IM were studied by Raclaw (2008), who found two patterns of closing: one is an expanded archetype closing which is similar to oral conversation, and the other is a partially automated closing which is totally different from oral conversation because an automated message terminates the conversation. He did not discuss the characteristics underlying the two patterns of closing in instant messaging. I reanalyzed the argument by Raclaw utilizing a segment of instant messaging from my data, and discovered that what characterize the two patterns of closing in instant messaging are the nature of interpersonal involvement and the nature of the individual tasks. These reflect the characteristics of spoken and written communication respectively. In this study it was found that characteristics of IM communication fluctuate between spoken and written communication. Instant messaging resides in the middle of the spoken and written continuum, but whether it exhibits characteristics of spoken or written communications can vary depending on the way participants contribute to the conversation.

Studies have demonstrated that classroom climate strongly affects the likelihood of students communicating within the classroom (e.g., Henson & Denker, 2009; Ifert Johnson, 2009). Furthermore, students are more likely to engage within a supportive environment (Myers & Claus, 2012). By exploring the impact of classroom discussions of diversity, such as gender, race, sexuality and class, this panel seeks to highlight the importance, difficulties, and possibilities of discussing diverse issues while maintaining a supportive classroom climate.

Aquest estudi pretén examinar les estratègies i la producció oral d’aprenents d’anglès com a llengua estrangera en tres tasques comunicatives a l’aula. Els objectius van ser investigar: a) diferències entre les tasques en la producció oral d’aprenents de competència alta i baixa b) diferències entre les tasques en l’ús de les estratègies d’aprenents de competència alta i baixa c) diferències en la producció oral i l’ús de les estratègies entre els grups d’alta i baixa competència d) si les estratègies que els aprenents creuen que fan servir reflecteixen les estratègies que realment fan servir i e) fins a quin punt el qüestionari d’estratègies pot preveure la producció oral. En aquest estudi, hi van participar 48 estudiants universitaris catalans i espanyols amb un nivell de competència oral baix (N=24) i alt (N=24), a més a més de quatre nadius que van actuar com a punts de referència per a la producció oral. Els participants es van gravar en vídeo en parelles, fent les tres tasques: explicant una història en dibuixos (Picture Story), descrivint una obra d’art (Art Description) i omplint buits en la informació proporcionada (Information Gap). Les tasques es van fer en un espai de dues setmanes entre cadascuna. Immediatament després de cada tasca els aprenents van assenyalar les estratègies que havien percebut (PSU) en un qüestionari de 44 ítems (SQ). Una anàlisi factorial va agrupar PSU en cinc categories: les estratègies Interaccionals, Compensatòries, de Manteniment de flux de la conversa, Planificació i Avaluació, que es van utilitzar per a l’anàlisi de diferències en l’ús de les estratègies. Així mateix, una submostra dels grups d’alta (N=4) i baixa (N=4) competència van participar en sessions retrospectives per reflexionar sobre com van actuar durant les tasques. Entre les tres tasques, segons les proves Friedman-Wilcoxon, es van trobar diferències significatives en totes les mesures de producció oral, amb l'excepció de la velocitat de la parla, i l'autoreparació en el grup alt. La complexitat estructural va ser més alta en el Picture Story, la complexitat lexical va ser més alta en l'Art Description i la precisió i fluïdesa van ser més altes en l'Information Gap. Pel que fa a PSU, el 34% de les estratègies van ser diferents en el grup alt i el 9% en el grup baix. En el grup alt la majoria de les diferències van ser en les estratègies Interaccionals i Compensatòries, que es van utilitzar més en l'Information Gap. Entre els grups de competència baixa i alta, segons les proves Mann-Whitney, hi havia diferències significatives en la producció oral. La precisió, la complexitat lèxica, la complexitat estructural i la velocitat de la parla van ser constantment més altes en el grup alt a cada tasca. No obstant, hi havia poques diferències entre les altres mesures de fluïdesa (pauses llargues, repetició, reformulació i autocorreció). En el cas de PSU, hi havia poques (18% max.) diferències entre els grups de diferents competències en cadascuna de les tasques. En general, el grup baix feia servir unes quantes estratègies Compensatòries més. Per validar el qüestionari, el PSU va ser contrastat amb l’ús real de les estratègies (ASU) identificades en les actuacions en les tasques i en els comentaris durant les sessions retrospectives. Primer, el grup alt va ser constant a l’hora de concretar el nivell d’ús d’un 63% de les estratègies comparada amb un 48% en el grup baix. Segon, el grup alt va ser capaç de indicar les diferències en l’ús de les estratègies entre les tres tasques amb més precisió. No obstant, es van trobar més diferències en ASU entre les tasques que les indicades pels dos grups en PSU. Finalment, l’anàlisi de regressió múltiple de les cinc categories d’estratègies i les nou mesures de producció va mostrar que la SQ podria preveure moderadament la precisió (23%), la complexitat lexical (36%) i la velocitat de la parla (31%). Concretament, com més estratègies Compensatòries indicaven els aprenents, més baixa era la precisió, la complexitat lexical i la velocitat de la parla. Els resultats s’expliquen segons els mecanismes de processament de la parla i els trets cognitius i interaccionals de les tasques, i s‘arriba a les conclusions següents: a) l’ús de les estratègies i la producció oral es pot preveure a partir de les característiques de les tasques, b) la tasca influeix en l’ús de les estratègies més que la competència, c) és possible que no es vegin diferències en l’ús de les estratègies entre grups de diferentes competències perquè fan servir les mateixes estratègies però de maneres diferents, d) els qüestionaris sobre estratègies són indicadors moderats de l’ús real de les estratègies i e) la relació entre les estratègies i la producció oral és no-lineal.
Este estudio pretende examinar las estrategias y la producción oral de los estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera en tres tareas comunicativas en el aula. Los objetivos fueron investigar: a) diferencias entre las tareas en la producción oral tanto en estudiantes de competencia alta como baja b) diferencias entre el uso de las estrategias tanto en estudiantes de competencia alta como baja c) diferencias en la producción oral y el uso de las estrategias entre los grupos de competencia alta i baja d) si hay correspondencia entre las estrategias que creen que utilizan y las que realmente utilizan y e) hasta qué punto un cuestionario sobre las estrategias refleja la producción oral. En este estudio participaron una muestra de 48 estudiantes universitarios catalanes y españoles con competencia oral baja (N=24) y alta (N=24), además de 4 nativos que actuaron como puntos de referencia para la producción oral. Los participantes se grabaron en video por parejas, realizando tres tareas: explicando una historia en dibujos (Picture Story), describiendo una obra de arte (Art Description) y rellenando lagunas en la información proporcionada (Information Gap). Las tareas se realizaron dejando un periodo de dos semanas entre cada una. Inmediatamente después de cada tarea los estudiantes señalaron las estrategias que creyeron utilizar (PSU) en un cuestionario de 44 artículos (SQ). Un análisis factorial agrupó las estrategias en cinco categorías: Interaccionales, Compensatorias, Mantenimiento del flujo de la Conversación, Planificación y Evaluación, que se utilizó para analizar las diferencias en el uso de las estrategias. Así mismo, una submuestra de los grupos de competencia alta (N=4) y baja (N=4) participaron en sesiones retrospectivas para reflexionar sobre su actuación durante las tareas. Entre las tres tareas, de acuerdo con las pruebas Friedman-Wilcoxon, encontramos diferencias significativas en todas las medidas de producción oral, con la excepción de la velocidad de habla y la autocorrección en el grupo alto. La complejidad estructural fue más alta en el Picture Story, la complejidad léxica fue más alta en el Art Description y la precisión y la fluidez fueron más altas en el Information Gap. Por lo que se refiere a PSU, se encontraron diferencias en un 34% de las estrategias en el grup alto y un 9% en el grupo bajo. En el grupo alto, la mayoría de las diferencias se dieron en las estrategias Interaccionales y Compensatorias, más utilizadas en el Information Gap. Entre los grupos de competencia baja y alta, de acuerdo con las pruebas Mann-Whitney, hubo diferencias significativas en la producción oral. La precisión, la complejidad léxica, la complejidad estructural y la velocidad de habla fueron coherentemente más altas en el grupo alto en todas las tareas. No obstante, hubo pocas diferencias entre las otras medidas de fluidez (pausas largas, repetición, reformulación y autocorrección). En el caso de PSU, hubo pocas diferencias (18% max.) entre los grupos de diferente competencia en cada una de las tareas. En general, el grupo bajo utilizó unas cuantas estrategias Compensatorias más. Para validar el cuestionario se contrastó el PSU con el uso real de las estrategias (ASU), identificadas en las tareas y a partir de los comentarios durante las sesiones retrospectivas. Primero, el grupo alto concretó de forma precisa un 63% de las estrategias frente a un 48% en el caso del grupo bajo. Segundo, el grupo alto fue capaz de indicar con más precisión las diferencias de uso de las estrategias en cada una de las tres tareas. No obstante, encontramos más diferencias entre las tareas en ASU que las identificadas en el PSU por los dos grupos. Finalmente, el análisis de regresión múltiple de las cinco categorías de estrategias y las nueve medidas de producción indicó que la SQ podría predecir un 23 % de la precisión, 36% de la complejidad léxica y 31% de la velocidad de habla. A más estrategias Compensatorias, menor precisión y complejidad léxica y menor velocidad de habla. Los resultados se explican de acuerdo con los mecanismos de procesamiento de habla y los rasgos cognitivos e interaccionales de las tareas, y se llega a las conclusiones siguientes: a) el uso de las estrategias y la producción oral se puede predecir a partir de las características de las tareas, b) la tarea influye en el uso de las estrategias más que la competencia, c) es posible que no se reflejen las diferencias en el uso de las estrategias entre grupos de diferente competencia, debido a que, aunque utilizan las mismas estrategias, las utilizan de forma diferente, d) los cuestionarios sobre estrategias son indicadores moderados del uso real de las estrategias y e) la relación entre las estrategias y la producción oral es no-lineal.
This study sought to examine EFL learners’ strategies and spoken production on different types of oral communication tasks in the classroom. The objectives were to investigate: a) across-task differences in spoken production for high and low proficiency learners, b) across-task differences in strategy use for high and low proficiency learners, c) differences in both spoken production and strategy use between high and low proficiency groups, d) whether strategies learners perceived using reflected the strategies they actually used and e) to what extent a strategy questionnaire could predict spoken production. In this study 48 Catalan and Spanish undergraduates participated with low (N=24) and high (N=24) oral proficiency, as well as four native speakers who acted as benchmarks for spoken production. Participants were recorded on video in pairs performing three oral tasks: a Picture Story, an Art Description and an Information Gap. Tasks were carried out two weeks apart. Immediately after each task learners reported their perceived strategy use (PSU) on a 44–item strategy questionnaire (SQ). Factor analysis grouped PSU into five categories: Interactional, Compensation, Conversation flow maintenance, Planning and Evaluating strategies, which were used to analyze differences in strategy use. In addition, a sub-sample from the high (N=4) and low (N=4) proficiency groups participated in stimulated recall sessions to reflect on their task performance. Across the three tasks, according to Friedman-Wilcoxon tests, significant differences in all spoken production measures were found for both proficiency groups, except for speech rate, and self repair for the high group. Structural complexity was highest on the Picture Story, lexical complexity was highest on the Art Description and accuracy and fluency were highest on the Information Gap. As for PSU, 34% strategies differed for the high group compared to 9% for the low group. For the high group most differences were in Interactional and Compensation strategy use, which was higher on the Information Gap. Between low and high proficiency groups, according to Mann-Whitney tests, there were significant differences in spoken production. Accuracy, lexical complexity, structural complexity and speech rate were consistently higher for the high group on every task. However, there were few differences in other fluency measures (long pauses, repetition, reformulation and self- repair). As for PSU, there were few (18% max.) significant differences between proficiency groups on any one task. In general, the low group used a few more Compensation strategies. To validate the questionnaire PSU was contrasted with actual strategy use (ASU), identified in task performances and stimulated recall comments. Firstly, results showed that the high group were consistent in reporting 63% strategies compared to 48% for the low group. Secondly, the high group was able to gauge differences in strategy use across the tasks more accurately. However, more differences in ASU were found across tasks than identified by both groups as PSU. Finally, multiple regression analysis with the five strategy categories and nine production measures revealed that the SQ was a weak predictor of accuracy (23%), lexical complexity (36%) and speech rate (31%). In particular, the more Compensation strategies learners perceived using, the lower their accuracy, lexical complexity and speech rate. Results are discussed in terms of speech processing mechanisms and cognitive and interactional task features with the following conclusions: a) strategy use and spoken production can be predicted from task characteristics, b) task influences strategy use more than proficiency, c) differences in strategy use may not be observed between proficiency groups, because they may use the same strategies but in different ways, d) strategy questionnaires are moderate indicators of actual strategy use and e) the relationship between strategies and spoken production is non-linear.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2004.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-166). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This dissertation focuses on the use of strategic communication in the context of contemporary environmental activism. It examines the case of Bold Nebraska, a grassroots advocacy group opposing the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline in the state of Nebraska. Such an analysis of activist communication informs several areas of research, including public relations theory and practice, social movement theory, and environmental communication. To understand the construction of strategic communication within such activism, this study employs a movement framing analysis, a media framing analysis, and a rhetorical analysis. A quantitative framing analysis of Bold Nebraska’s website communication against the pipeline during the five-year period of 2011 to 2015 assesses how activists craft and project strategic messages. A framing analysis of Bold Nebraska’s national media coverage during the same timeframe highlights the relationship between activist framing and mainstream news coverage. Finally, a rhetorical analysis of Bold Nebraska’s 2014 Harvest the Hope concert is provided to understand the role of rhetorical appeals in building an environmental activism metanarrative or master frame. Taken together, these three approaches provide both a more holistic means to considering environmental activism campaigns in the context of strategic communication, and fill in the gaps for understanding the interplay of social movement organizations, public relations, and persuasion. This study brings a framework of strategic advocacy framing to the realm of environmental politics, and builds upon this framework by considering the dynamic of populism in activism. It also explores the role of strategic communication in evolving a movement organization’s metanarrative as it toggles between short- and long-term goals. Finally, it identifies a civic environmental persuasion built upon the attributes of narrative, hyperlocalization, engagement, and bipartisanship in order to build broad support and influence public policy.

Previous research has compared speech samples from people both diagnosed and not diagnosed with schizophrenia and found that differences exist between the speech patterns. However, the previous research has focused on specific aspects of speech. For example, sentence structure, adjective use, syntax, etc. The current study investigated if speech differences between people diagnosed with and not diagnosed with schizophrenia could be detected by people with no experience with schizophrenia using a global rating system. A comparison was made between the ratings of coherence and “weird/crazy” speech of people who described pictures seen on a computer screen. The participants were 61 adults from the Stockton, CA area who had no experience working with people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Participants were asked to rate the level of coherence of 42 speech samples and rate the statement as “weird/crazy.” The results indicated that the sentences of people diagnosed with schizophrenia were rated as significantly less coherent ( t [df 60] = −16.34, p < .001) and significantly more weird/crazy ( t [df 60] = 13.68, p < .001) than those of people not diagnosed with schizophrenia.

This thesis aims to investigate the eect context could have to interaction between a user and a spoken dialogue system. It was assumed that using context-dependent voice commands instead of absolute semantic voice commands would make the dialogue more natural and also increase the usability. This thesis also investigate if introducing context could aect the user's privacy and if it could expose a threat for the user from a user perspective. Based on an extended literature review of spoken dialogue system, voice recognition, ambient intelligence, human-computer interaction and privacy, a spoken dialogue system was designed and implemented to test the assumption. The test study included two steps: experiment and interview. The participants conducted the dierent scenarios where a spoken dialogue system could be used with both context-dependent commands and absolute semantic commands. Based on these studies, qualitative results regarding natural, usability and privacy validated the authors hypothesis to some extent. The results indicated that the interaction between users and spoken dialogue systems was more natural and increased the usability when using context. The participants did not feel more monitored by the spoken dialogue system when using context. Some participants stated that there could be a theoretical privacy issues, but only if the security measurements were not met. The paper concludes with suggestions for future work in the scientic area.
Denna uppsats har som mal att undersoka vilken eekt kontext kan ha pa interaktion mellan en anvandare och ett spoken dialogue system. Det antogs att anvandbarheten skulle oka genom att anvanda kontextberoende rostkommandon istallet for absolut semantiska rostkommandon. Denna uppsats granskar aven om kontext kan paverka anvandarens integritet och om den, ur ett anvandarperspektiv, kan utgora ett hot. Baserat pa den utokade litteraturstudien av spoken dialogue system, rostigenkanning, ambient intelligence, manniska-datorinteraktion och integritet, designades och implementerades ett spoken dialogue system for att testa detta antagande. Teststudien bestod av tva steg: experiment och intervju. Deltagarna utforde olika scenarier dar ett spoken dialogue system kunde anvands med kontextberoende rostkommandon och absolut semantiska rostkommandon. Kvalitativa resultat angaende naturlighet, anvandbarhet och integritet validerade forfattarens hypotes till en viss grad. Resultatet indikerade att interaktionen mellan anvandare och ett spoken dialogue system var mer naturlig och mer anvandbar vid anvandning av kontextberoende rostkommandon istallet for absolut semantiska rostkommandon. Deltagarna kande sig inte mer overvakade av ett spoken dialogue system vid anvandning av kontextberoende rostkommandon. Somliga deltagare angav att det, i teorin, fanns integritetsproblem, men endast om inte alla sakerhetsatgarder var uppnadda. Uppsatsen avslutas med forslag pa framtida studier inom detta vetenskapliga omrade.

Children with complex communication needs (CCN) routinely have difficulty attaining appropriate literacy skills. Two indicators of literacy development are the alphabetic principle and phonemic awareness (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989). The acquisition of minimal literacy skills such as letter sound knowledge can give children with CCN the opportunity to communicate and generate their own messages, instead of being reliant on vocabulary provided by others. In order to identify appropriate intervention approaches, nonverbal assessments of phonological and phonemic awareness for individuals with CCN are needed. The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability of the Dynamic Assessment of the Alphabetic Principle, as well as determine to what extent the performance of DAAP was associated with other measures of phonological and phonemic awareness and emergent reading skills. The DAAP was administered over the course of one to five session to seven participants with an assortment of developmental and language disorders. In addition to the DAAP, participants were administered a letter-sound knowledge task, a sound matching task that evaluated awareness of first sounds of words and separately evaluated awareness of the last sounds of words (i.e., either sound matching from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing – 2nd edition [CTOPP-2; Wagner, Torgesen, Reshotte, & Pearson, 2013] or initial sound matching and final sound matching from the Phonological and Print Awareness Scale [PPA; Williams, 2014]). The reliability of the DAAP was calculated in two different ways. First, Cronbach alphas were calculated to estimate the reliability of items within subscales and between the subscales. Reliability of the items within each subscale ranged from .96 to .99 and the reliability of the items between each subscale ranged from .87 to .99. Overall the alpha between all four of the subscales was .96. Next, bivariate correlations were calculated between each subscale score. Values ranged from .82 to .99, and all were significant according to bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals that did not contain 0. This information indicated that there was a high degree of internal consistency for the items and the subtests for the DAAP. To evaluate the extent to which performance on the DAAP was associated with other measures of phonemic awareness, Bivariate Pearson correlations with standard significance values and bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals were calculated. The scores on the onset, rime, coda, and vowel subtests of the DAAP were correlated with sound matching first (SM-First), sound matching last (SM-Last) and sound matching chance (SM-chance) variables. The rime subtest of the DAAP was found to be significantly correlated with SM-First variable. Furthermore, the rime and vowel subscales of the DAAP were found to be significantly correlated with SM-Last variable. All four subtests of DAAP were significantly correlated to SM-chance variable. Lastly, to evaluate the performance on the DAAP in association to other measures of emergent reading skills, bivariate Pearson correlations were calculated between the subtests of the DAAP and letter sound knowledge (LSK). Scores on LSK was significantly related to rime, coda, and vowel. The data suggest that the DAAP is a reliable assessment. Furthermore, many conventional measures of phonological awareness and emergent reading skills were significantly correlated with subtests of DAAP. The pattern of the results suggests that the DAAP may be a reliable tool for measuring acquisition of the alphabetic principle in children with CCN.

Com o uso das tecnologias digitais da comunicação e da informação (TDCIs), os sujeitos, em perspectiva comunicacional, além de terem acesso a diversas informações, também podem ser produtores de conteúdos sobre o mundo. Assim, nesses ambientes digitais, os públicos tendem, cada vez mais, a ofertar e transacionar sentidos sobre as organizações (seus processos, produtos e serviços), podendo interferir, inclusive, nos seus relacionamentos e processos gerenciais. Nessa direção, este estudo tem como objetivo compreender como os sentidos ofertados na dimensão da “organização falada” (BALDISSERA, 2009b), particularmente na internet, interferem nos processos de gestão hoteleira. Para isso, além de estar epistemicamente fundamentado no interacionismo simbólico (MEAD, 1972), este estudo também aciona aportes teóricos sobre características do contexto contemporâneo – a partir de autores como Maffesoli (2012) e Castells (2009a) – que interferem na relação organização-públicos. Na mesma perspectiva, disserta-se sobre comunicação organizacional (BALDISSERA, 2009a), gestão organizacional (GAULEJAC, 2006) e gestão hoteleira (ABREU, 2003), noções basilares para esta investigação. A pesquisa empírica, por sua vez, compreendeu a realização de quinze entrevistas em profundidade com gestores hoteleiros de três munícipios da Microrregião das Hortênsias (Gramado, Canela e Nova Petrópolis), na Serra Gaúcha/RS. A análise dos relatos, pelo procedimento da Análise de Conteúdo (BARDIN, 2009) e à luz dos fundamentos epistêmico-teóricos, evidenciou que as avaliações e opiniões dos hóspedes sobre hotéis, publicadas na internet - âmbito da “organização falada” -, exigem monitoramento e demandam investimentos em comunicação e gestão, tais como: redimensionamento dos processos de comunicação e alterações nas práticas de gestão, com mudanças nos processos decisórios, nas políticas de atendimento e nos planos de investimento.
With the use of information and communication digital technologies (ICDT), the subjects in communication perspective have access not only to a variety of information, but also they can be content producers about the world. Thus, in these digital environments, the public tends more and more to offer and transact senses regarding organizations (their processes, products and services), which may interfere even in their relationships and management processes. In this sense, this study aims to understand how the senses offered in the dimension of "spoken organization" (BALDISSERA, 2009b), particularly on the internet, interfere in hotel management processes. Therefore, besides being epistemically grounded in symbolic interactionism (MEAD, 1972), this study also discusses theoretical studies on characteristics of the contemporary context - from authors like Maffesoli (2012) and Castells (2009a) - that interfere with the organization-public relationship. Within this perspective, organizational communication (BALDISSERA, 2009a), organizational management (GAULEJAC, 2006), and hotel management (ABREU, 2003) are discussed, considered basic notions for this investigation. The empirical research, in turn, involved fifteen interviews with hoteliers from three cities of the microregion Hortênsias (Gramado, Canela and Nova Petrópolis), in Serra Gaúcha/RS (Gaucho Highlands/RS). The reports analysis, through the procedure of Content Analysis (BARDIN, 2009) and in the light of epistemic-theoretical foundations, showed that guests’ evaluations and opinions on hotels published on the Internet – considering the "spoken organization" – require monitoring and investments in communication and management such as: resizing of communication processes and changes in management practices with changes in decision-making processes, service policies, and investment plans.

Abstract This study explores the phenomenon of brand co-creation from a communicative perspective. The study investigates how Finnish SMEs operating in international B2B markets use English as a business lingua franca (BELF) for brand communication. The purpose of the study is to contribute to brand co-creation theory by illustrating how using BELF affects spoken brand co-creation discourse and increase our understanding of brand co-creation communication by applying a discursive approach. The theoretical framework of the study is based on branding literature, BELF research, discourse theory and social constructionism. The study introduces an analytical framework for exploring BELF in spoken brand co-creation communication through the discourse dimensions of verbal language use, the communication of brand meanings and face-to-face social interaction among stakeholders. The empirical data was collected by implementing a business communication simulation designed for the study. It was used to analyse how internal stakeholders use verbal BELF to communicate brand meanings in face-to-face social interaction. A discursive approach was also applied in the analysis. In the study, three spoken brand co-creation discourses were identified: informative, credible and emotional discourse. This study shows that brand co-creation is a phenomenon intertwined with language. When the language of business communication is BELF, it can both enable and impede brand co-creation communication. Efficient and informative communication is often regarded as essential in business communication but from brand communication perspective informative communication may not be sufficient to create an interesting and a memorable brand. The study also shows that spoken brand co-creation communication with BELF requires versatile language and communication competence; especially emotional brand discourse may require more versatile BELF competence than previously has been acknowledged. From a managerial viewpoint, it is important to understand that internal stakeholders are continuously communicating about the brand to external stakeholders with spoken language. Thus, the brand is visible in the daily operations through language, although not necessarily as intended by the management
Tiivistelmä Tässä väitöskirjassa tutkitaan brändin yhteisluomista yritysviestinnän näkökulmasta. Tutkimuksessa selvitetään, miten suomalaiset yritystenvälisillä markkinoilla (B2B) toimivat pk-yritykset käyttävät liike-englantia lingua francana (BELF) suullisessa yhteisluomisviestinnässään. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on lisätä ymmärrystä kielen ja viestinnän roolista brändin yhteisluomisessa ja kuvata, miten BELF vaikuttaa puhuttuun brändin yhteisluomisviestintään diskursiivisesta näkökulmasta. Tutkimus nojaa brändikirjallisuuden lisäksi BELF-tutkimukseen, diskurssiteoriaan ja sosiaaliseen konstruktionismiin. Tutkimus esittää brändin suullisen yhteisluomisviestinnän kolmiulotteisena ilmiönä, jota voidaan tarkastella sanallisen kielenkäytön, brändimerkitysten viestimisen ja kasvokkain tapahtuvan, sidosryhmien välisen vuorovaikutuksen avulla. Työn empiirinen aineisto kerättiin tutkimusta varten kehitetyn liikeviestintäsimulaation avulla, ja sen avulla analysoitiin, miten yrityksen sisäiset sidosryhmät käyttävät BELFiä viestimään brändimerkityksiä yrityksistään ja niiden tuotteista sosiaalisessa vuorovaikutuksessa. Tutkimuksessa hahmoteltiin kolme suullista brändin yhteisluomisdiskurssia: informatiivinen diskurssi, uskottavuusdiskurssi ja tunneperäinen diskurssi. Tutkimus osoittaa, että brändin yhteisluomisviestintä on kieleen kietoutunut ilmiö. Kun liikeviestinnän kielenä on BELF, vieraskielinen viestintä voi sekä mahdollistaa että vaikeuttaa brändin yhteisluomisviestintää. Tehokas ja faktaperäinen viestintä on usein tärkeää liikeviestinnässä, mutta brändäyksen näkökulmasta informatiivisesti painottunut viestintä voi olla riittämätöntä, jotta se herättäisi mielenkiintoa brändiä kohtaan tai loisi muistettavan brändin. Tutkimus osoittaa myös, että osallistuminen brändin yhteisluomisviestintään käyttämällä BELFiä edellyttää monipuolista kieli- ja viestintätaitoa. Erityisesti tunteita herättävä brändäysviestintä voi vaatia laajempaa kieli- ja viestintäosaamista kuin aiemmin on ajateltu. Liikkeenjohdon kannalta on tärkeää ymmärtää, että yrityksen henkilöstö viestii brändistä jatkuvasti jokapäiväisessä vuorovaikutuksessa eri sidosryhmien kanssa. Näin ollen brändi välittyy sidosryhmille kielen kautta, mutta ei kuitenkaan välttämättä sellaisena kuin yrityksen johto on tarkoittanut

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: If they don’t come out clearly to show us the true picture of different areas, it means that some areas that do not get the weather forecast cannot profit from their farming activities. This pushes our country into more poverty. If an agency can be identified and charged with the responsibility to disseminate the forecast to the various parts of the country, it would greatly help the farmers and Uganda as a country to develop. These are the words of a participant at one of fifteen Ugandan farmer group meetings that were convened and asked to discuss a tape-recorded seasonal weather forecast, following their own rules of procedure. The audio recordings and transcriptions of these meetings, which are in Luganda, form the object of inquiry for this study. Using a multi-perspective approach to spoken discourse analysis, this study investigates manifestations and patterns of participation and decision-making as they emerge through evaluation and appraisal in the context of participatory community development processes. Taking the discourse of farmer group meetings as a genre of business meetings, where the public is included in decision-making interactions between government and citizens, the study invokes the appraisal theory, genre analysis theory, citizenship talk analysis model, and the business-meeting negotiation approach to explore how participants use Luganda to express assessment and make decisions during interactive discourse. The study identifies three main styles of making decisions, which demonstrate a culturally constructed concept of participation in Luganda. Whereas subtle decision-making involves spontaneous group positions that are not formally announced as a decision, explicit decision-making manifests positions that are overtly announced by a participant. Virtual decision-making involves intermittent moves towards a group position. While some meetings have moderators, several others have the role of moderator performed by various participants. Indeed, in several cases participants take turns to speak in a spontaneous way, without having to seek the permission of the moderator. Despite the difference in styles of decision-making, the overarching goal of participation in this genre of Luganda discourse is to reach consensus and to demonstrate a collective identity. This goal however does not take away the right and freedom of participants to reason critically, negotiate for a position, express conflict, and to question authority. This study breaks the ground for further research into areas of evaluation, intercultural communication, forensic linguistics, professional discourse, and other fields of applied linguistics in Ugandan languages, as well as in other African languages.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: As hulle nie duidelik na vore kom om aan ons die ware prentjie van verskillende gebiede te toon nie, beteken dit dat sommige gebiede wat nie die weervoorspelling kry nie, nie wins uit hulle landbou-aktiwiteite kan maak nie. Dit dompel ons land al meer in armoede. As ʼn agentskap geïdentifiseer kan word en met die verantwoordelikheid getaak kan word om die voorspelling na die verskillende dele van die land te versprei, sal dit die boere baie help en Uganda as ʼn land help ontwikkel. Dit is die woorde van ʼn deelnemer by een van vyftien vergaderings vir Ugandese boere wat byeengeroep is en gevra is om ʼn bandopname van seisoenale weervoorspelling te bespreek deur hulle eie reëls van prosedure te volg. Die bandopnames en transkripsies van hierdie vergaderings in Luganda was die navorsingsonderwerp vir hierdie studie. Met behulp van ʼn multiperspektiefbenadering tot gesproke diskoersanalise het hierdie studie manifestasies en patrone van deelname en besluitneming ondersoek soos dit deur evaluering en waardebepaling teen die agtergrond van deelnemende gemeenskapsontwikkelingsprosesse na vore gekom het. Met die diskoers van vergaderings deur boeregroepe as ʼn genre van sakevergaderings, waar die publiek by besluitnemingsinteraksies tussen regering en burgers ingesluit is, het hierdie studie sig op die teorie van waardebepaling, die teorie van genre-analise, die model vir die analise van burgerskapgesprekke, en die benadering tot sakevergadering-onderhandeling beroep om te verken hoe deelnemers Luganda gebruik om assessering uit te druk en gedurende interaktiewe diskoers besluite te neem. Die studie het drie belangrike besluitnemingstyle geïdentifiseer wat ʼn kultureel gekonstrueerde begrip van deelname in Luganda demonstreer. Terwyl subtiele besluitneming spontane groepsposisies behels wat nie formeel as ʼn besluit bekend gemaak word nie, gee eksplisiete besluitneming blyke van posisies wat op overte wyse deur ʼn deelnemer aangekondig word. Virtuele besluitneming behels intermitterende beweging in die rigting van ʼn groepsposisie. Terwyl sommige vergaderings moderators het, voer verskeie ander die rol van moderator deur verskillende deelnemers uit. Om die waarheid te sê, in etlike gevalle neem deelnemers beurte om op ʼn spontane wyse te praat, sonder om die toestemming van die moderator te verkry. Ondanks die verskil in besluitnemingstyle is die oorkoepelende doel van deelname in hierdie genre van Luganda-diskoers om konsensus te bereik en ʼn kollektiewe identiteit te toon. Hierdie doel neem egter nie die reg en vryheid van deelnemers om krities te redeneer, vir ʼn posisie te onderhandel, konflik uit te spreek, en gesag te bevraagteken weg nie. Hierdie studie baan die weg vir verdere navorsing ten opsigte van gebiede van evaluering, interkulturele kommunikasie, forensiese linguistiek, professionele diskoers, en ander gebiede van toegepaste linguistiek in Ugandese tale, asook in ander Afrikatale.
The Graduate School of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Stellenbosch, the African Doctoral Academy (ADA), Makerere University, the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA), and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University

This project provides a background on English instruction in Korea and features a literature review that builds theoretical aspects of this project. This project also presents a model of communicative competence applied to the speaking process which incorporates the application of speaking strategies.

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Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
The theme of this investigation The Insertion of Foreign Words from the Information Technology in the Mother Tongue originated from the work developed with the students of the Technology and Engineering Bachelor courses at Sociedade Educacional de Santa Catarina SOCIESC in Joinville, Santa Catarina. Most of the students who opt to take a college course at this institution come from mechanical or metallurgical industries and present two main characteristics: a) they have been for some time working in their area of study and are searching for updating or upgrading in their profession, and; b) they have been working for a short time or are entering the job market now, but trying specialization in some area. The former group enters the collegial environment bringing a vocabulary which has lots of technical words and expressions; the latter group only comes into contact with such vocabulary and expressions when starting their tertiary level courses. What is important to note is that, over the last three decades, the technological development has gone so far that it has made computing really popular, changing the linguistic habits of those who work in practically automatized industries, as well as in institutions which prepare people for the job market. In this same line of thought, in the family environment, where computer technology and the informational web are present, the computing language is bringing about cultural changes and, as can easily be seen, these changes will have reflections in the native language. This research, using a phenomenological approach, has as its main aim to comprehend and interpret the way the speakers use these foreign words and expressions that are produced by the technological advances which are, in turn, inserted in the mother tongue. The participants in this research were chosen deliberately six professors and three college students and made up a list of nine interviewees who spontaneously contributed to unveil these two essences: As a natural expression, foreign words are used and influence the mother tongue; and Foreign words come up in the man/world relationship. These essences correlate to each other reciprocally and originated from these dimensions: computer technology as a promising work field; the simple and the natural in the computer technology language; globalization forces the use of foreign words; foreign words insert themselves in the written language; and the teaching activity, in middle technical schools, without appropriate teachers qualification. Reflecting upon the oral language of those interviewed, I shall go on, committed to the work that aims at linguistic education.
O tema/problema desta investigação - Inserção de Estrangeirismos Procedentes da Tecnologia da Informação na Língua Materna - fluiu a partir do trabalho que desenvolvo com alunos dos cursos de tecnologia e do bacharelado em Engenharia, na SOCIEDADE EDUCACIONAL DE SANTA CATARINA - SOCIESC - em Joinville. A maioria das pessoas que optam por fazer o terceiro grau nessa instituição, provém de indústrias mecânicas ou metalúrgicas e apresentam duas características: a) estão há algum tempo no mercado de trabalho e buscam atualização ou ascensão profissional; b) trabalham há pouco tempo ou estão entrando no mercado de trabalho, mas buscam especialização em alguma área. O primeiro grupo adentra o recinto universitário trazendo uma bagagem lingüística eivada de palavras e expressões técnicas; o segundo grupo se depara no recinto universitário com essas palavras ou expressões. Ocorre que, nas últimas três décadas, o desenvolvimento tecnológico avançou vertiginosamente, popularizando a informática e mudando os costumes lingüísticos de quem trabalha em indústrias praticamente automatizadas e em instituições que preparam pessoas para o mercado de trabalho. Por extensão, no ambiente familiar, onde a informática e a rede informacional se fazem presentes, a linguagem computacional está provocando mudanças culturais e, ao que tudo indica, respingam na língua materna. Tratase de uma abordagem fenomenológica, objetivando compreender e interpretar o uso que os falantes do português do Brasil fazem desses estrangeirismos, produzidos pelo avanço tecnológico, e inseridos na língua materna. Os participantes da pesquisa foram selecionados intencionalmente - seis professores e três alunos universitários - e compuseram um rol de nove entrevistados que contribuíram, de forma espontânea, para o desvelar das duas essências: Como expressão "natural", estrangeirismos fluem e influenciam a língua materna; e Estrangeirismos se des-velam na relação homem/mundo. Essas essências se correlacionam entre si e fluíram das seguintes dimensões: a informática como promissor campo de trabalho; O simples e o natural na linguagem da informática; A globalização provoca o uso de estrangeirismos; Estrangeirismos inserem-se na língua escrita; e O exercício da docência, no ensino técnico, sem habilitação docente. Refletindo sobre as falas dos sujeitos entrevistados, prossigo, comprometida com um trabalho visando à educação lingüística.

Cette thèse a pour objectif de donner une représentation du fonctionnement de la communication dans les discussions à visée philosophique (enregistrées à l’école primaire et au collège). Plus particulièrement, il s’agit d’étudier la dimension intersubjective de la communication et de la construction du sens au sein de ces pratiques ainsi que la façon dont l’interaction se co-construit. Selon nous, la reconnaissance de l’importance de l’interlocuteur dans l’énonciation est indispensable pour saisir la véritable nature de la communication. Ainsi, en partant d’une approche interactionniste et socio-constructiviste, la construction du sens est envisagée comme un processus dynamique et comme une action commune aux locuteur et interlocuteur(s). Les bénéfices des pratiques philosophiques avec les enfants sont reconnus. L’analyse des interactions menée sur corpus montre que la discussion à visée philosophique est un terrain propice à la construction collective du discours, du sens et de la conceptualisation. Nous nous intéressons aux mécanismes de cette construction collective réalisée par les enfants et au rôle de l’animateur dans cette construction. Nous étudions particulièrement les phénomènes de reprise et un phénomène linguistique figurant parmi les processus d’orientation de l’attention permettant de guider l’interprétation et la compréhension des interlocuteurs : la dislocation à gauche du sujet. L’observation des données permet de contribuer à définir les fonctions pragmatiques de ces phénomènes ainsi que les différents buts communicatifs associés à leur emploi par les enfants et par l’animateur lors des discussions à visée philosophique
This thesis investigates meaning construction during philosophical discussions that took place at both a French first and middle school. More precisely, it studies the intersubjective dimension of communication and the construction of meaning in these practices. At the same time, it examines the ways in which the interaction is co-constructed. We believe that recognising the interlocutor’s importance in the utterance act is essential in order to understand the true nature of the communication. Employing interactionist and socio-constructivist approaches, the construction of meaning is considered as a dynamic process and as a joint action between the speaker and interlocutor(s).The benefits of conducting philosophical discussions of this type with children have previously been recognised in the literature. The analysis of interactional corpora shows that philosophical discussion is a favourable environment for the collective construction of speech, meaning and conceptualization. This doctoral study considers the mechanisms of this collective construction conducted by children and the role of the facilitator within this process. In this way, the thesis examines different phenomena like the repetition/reformulation and the left-dislocation of the subject. This linguistic phenomenon forms part of the attention orientation process and guides collective interpretation and understanding. Data analysis allows the thesis to contribute to define the pragmatic functions of the studied phenomena and the different communication purposes associated with their use by children and by the facilitator during philosophical discussions

Many positive outcomes have been documented for children with hearing loss utilizing current treatment approaches such as early identification and intervention, including appropriately fit sensory devices and communication modes that focus on listening and spoken language. However, challenges related to social-emotional development have been widely observed. The development of communication skills in children with hearing loss is impacted by many factors, including the degree of hearing loss, the child's age at onset and identification, the presence of other disabilities, and when the child receives intervention. While there are a variety of therapeutic options available for children with hearing loss to develop communication skills, listening and spoken language is of particular interest to parents with normal hearing. In addition to affecting social competence and participation, problems with social-emotional development are linked to poor academic performance. This study examined the social-emotional development of a small group of young children who communicated using listening and spoken language as measured by parent and caregiver report. Three psychosocial scales were used to evaluate the children's social-emotional development in comparison to peers. These results were analyzed within the context of other demographic variables. One of the five children was identified as facing problems with social-emotional development.

De nombreux travaux, dont ceux de P. Koch et W. Œsterreicher (2001), ont permis de repenser l'opposition oral/écrit en termes de continuum (proximité/ distance), au-delà du support graphique ou phonique des productions. Le cadre communicationnel dans lequel les interactions sont produites influence largement la construction du discours, et fait passer le medium au second plan. A partir de ce modèle, cette thèse traite de la construction et de la présence du discours rapporté, plus particulièrement du discours direct (désormais DD), dans les interactions orales et écrites ordinaires. Le DD apparait comme un phénomène intriguant de par sa fréquence dans les interactions ordinaires, et constitue une pièce maîtresse de l'implication du locuteur dans l'interaction. Les formules comme il m'a dit, il me dit, j'ai dit... ponctuent nos conversations quotidiennes et permettent d'introduire une interaction passée, fictive, ou qui aurait pu avoir lieu, dans l'interaction en cours. L'étude des éléments se manifestant en contexte de DD (verbes introducteurs, particules d'amorce/d'extension, ponctuation, pauses...) et permettant d'encadrer et de signaler le discours cité, aura pour objectif de mieux comprendre le fonctionnement du DD. Nous tenterons de rendre compte de corrélations entre le choix d'une structure, la présence ou l'absence de certains éléments et le cadre communicationnel. Pour mener à bien cette étude, nous mettons en parallèle plusieurs situations de communication orales et écrites (entretiens, enregistrements écologiques, posts de forums, conversations instantanées, anecdotes Vie De Merde), impliquant des degrés de proximité différents, pour tenter de comprendre les paramètres en jeu dans les variations de recours et de formes du DD, au-delà de considérations médiales
P. Koch & W. Œsterreicher's works questioned the spoken/written opposition in terms of a continuum (proximity/distance) beyond graphic or phonic characters of interactions. The communication situation widely influences the construction of the discourse, and it allows for the medium to be overshadowed. From this model, we will deal with the construction of reporteed speech, more specifically with the direct reported speech (DRD) in ordinary written and spoken interactions. DRD is very frequent in these interactions and appears as a centrepiece of the speaker's involvement. He said, I said... punctuate everyday conversations and allow for the introduction of reported utterances.The study of elements and their manifestation in the context of DRD (reporting verbs, discourse particles, punctuation, pauses...) and the framework used to indicate quoted speech, will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of DRD functioning. We will try to give account of the correlation between the choice of the structure, the presence or absence of certain items and the communication situation. To carry out this study, we have built a heterogeneous corpus which consists of several spoken and written interactions with different degrees of proximity (interviews, spontaneous conversations, forum posts, chat, anecdotes Vie de Merde). The aim of this study is to understand the paramaters entering into DRD's variation (appeal and form), beyond the spoken/written opposition

Cette recherche propose une analyse multimodale du positionnement interactionnel ou stance-taking. Le corpus de travail, filmé, transcrit et annoté par nos soins dans trois logiciels compatibles (CLAN, PRAAT, ELAN), est une collection de discussions semi-guidées sur le thème de l’environnement (2h 20 min). Les 16 locuteurs sont des étudiants locuteurs natifs d’anglais britannique qui discutent par deux et entre amis. Dans cette recherche, nous adoptons une définition large du « langage », en y incluant l’ensemble des ressources sémiotiques verbales et non-verbales mobilisées pour la co-construction dynamique et intersubjective du sens au cours de l’interaction orale. Nous montrons que les locuteurs intègrent une grande variété de ressources verbales (segments, énoncés), mais aussi vocales (intonation) et mimo-posturo-gestuelles (gestes, expressions du visage), en les synchronisant de manière tant simultanée que séquentielle, pour prendre position vis-à-vis de leur interlocuteur. Au plan théorique, notre approche multi-niveaux et multimodale tisse des liens entre théories françaises de l’énonciation (Benveniste, 1966, Morel et Danon-Boileau, 1998), théorie discursive-fonctionnelle du stance-taking (Kärkkäinen, 2006, Du Bois, 2007), analyse conversationnelle multimodale (C. Goodwin et M.H. Goodwin, 1992, Mondada, 2007), anthropologie linguistique (Ochs, 1996), et étude de la gestualité (Kendon, 2004, Müller, 2004, Streeck, 2009) ; au plan méthodologique, nous combinons analyse qualitative et codage systématique. Notre thèse pose d’abord les bases théoriques et méthodologiques d’une étude multimodale des stances (Partie 1), puis propose la possibilité d’un marquage visuel du positionnement intersubjectif (Partie 2), avant de montrer comment les locuteurs intègrent mots et syntaxe, voix, visage et corps pour prendre position en interaction (Partie 3)
In this research, we propose a multimodal analysis of stance-taking based a collection of semi-guided discussions between pairs of friends who discuss environmental issues (2h 20 min). All 16 speakers are university students who are native speakers of British English. We filmed, transcribed and annotated this video corpus in three compatible software tools, CLAN, PRAAT and ELAN. In this research, we defend a broad understanding of “language”, defined as encompassing all verbal and non-verbal semiotic resources involved in the dynamic and intersubjective co-construction of meaning during spoken interaction. We show that speakers integrate a wide range of verbal resources (segments, utterances) as well as vocal (intonation) and visual ones (gestures, postures and facial expressions), and synchronize these resources simultaneously and sequentially so as to take stances with respect to their interlocutors. On a theoretical level, our multi-level, multimodal approach brings together French utterer-centred approaches to language (Benveniste, 1966, Morel and Danon-Boileau, 1998), discursive-functional theories of stance-taking (Kärkkäinen, 2006, Du Bois, 2007), multimodal conversation analysis (C. Goodwin and M.H. Goodwin, 1992, Mondada, 2007), linguistic anthropology (Ochs, 1996) and gesture studies (Kendon, 2004, Müller, 2004, Streeck, 2009); our methodology combines qualitative analysis with systematic coding. This thesis starts with laying the theoretical and methodological bases for a multimodal study of stance-taking (Part 1); it then proposes that some gestures and facial expressions can be used as intersubjective visual stance markers (Part 2), before showing how speakers integrate words and syntax, voice, facial expressions, gestures and physical posture to take stance in interaction (Part 3)

Cette thèse propose une analyse multimodale de l’expression des émotions chez deux enfants américaines et leurs parents monolingues. Les enfants ont été filmées entre 11 mois et 3 and et 10 mois pour l’une et entre 1 an et 1 mois et 4 ans pour l’autre au cours d’interactions spontanées en milieu familial. Nous adoptons une définition du langage large car toutes les ressources sémiotiques sont à prendre en compte : ressources verbales (lexique, marqueurs grammaticaux), vocales (vocalisations), gestuelles et corporelles (gestes, expressions faciales, actions).Nous nous concentrons sur l’acquisition et le développement des marqueurs verbaux et non verbaux exprimant les émotions chez l’enfant et sur l’usage de ces marqueurs chez l’adulte. Nous montrons que des profils expressifs bien précis et distincts semblent déjà émerger chez les enfants, grandement influencés par l’input auquel ils sont exposés chaque jour.Au plan théorique, notre recherche s’inscrit dans une approche constructiviste et fonctionnaliste de la langue (Tomasello, 2003) et nous analysons les données à l’aune de la socialisation langagière, et des études sur la gestualité et les expressions faciales comme vecteurs d’informations communicationnelles. Au plan méthodologique, nous réalisons des analyses quantitatives et qualitatives afin d’éclairer les comportements propres à chaque locuteur.Après avoir exposé notre socle théorique et notre méthodologie (partie I), nous révélons nos résultats sur l’expression de trois émotions (colère, joie, et tristesse) chez les locuteurs adultes et enfants (partie II). Nos résultats suggèrent que le développement linguistique des enfants n’a pas d’incidence sur l’expression de leurs émotions, mais que l’input et les attitudes parentales jouent un rôle majeur dans l’acquisition et le développement de chaque modalité et dans la transmission de modèles expressifs
This research provides a multimodal analysis of the expression of emotion in two monolingual American children and their parents. The children were filmed in natural interactions in a family setting from the ages of 11 months to 3 years 10 months, and from 1 year 1 month to 4 years.We adopted a broad definition of language in this research which encompasses various semiotic resources – from verbal resources (lexicon and grammatical features), to nonverbal (vocalizations, facial expressions, and gestures). We focus on the children’s acquisition and development of these verbal and nonverbal markers and on how they are used by their parents. Our research shows that children develop specific and distinct communicational patterns, which are greatly influenced by the input to which they are exposed.From a theoretical perspective, our research draws from a constructivist and functionalist approach (Tomasello, 2003), and our data is analyzed in light of language socialization and of studies which have shown that facial expressions and gestures are used as communicational signals in face-to-face dialogue. Our methodology combines quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate each speaker’s verbal and nonverbal behavior when expressing emotions.Having outlined our theoretical and methodological foundation (Part I), we present our results on the expression of three emotions (happiness, sadness, and anger) in children and adults (Part II). Our research suggests that while children’s linguistic development has little impact on the richness of their emotional expression parental input and attitudes both play a crucial role in the acquisition of each modality and in the transmission of communicational patterns

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo categorizar as estratégias de comunicação (EC) encontradas no curta-metragem em língua italiana Le Avventure di Marco Polo, realizado em 2011 por alunos do 6º ano do ensino fundamental de um colégio particular na cidade de Atibaia, participantes do Projeto Filmes em Italiano (PFI). Apresentaremos o modelo de operação global para o ensino de línguas (MOGEL), proposto por Almeida Filho, buscando demonstrar como a interação de seus níveis principais ocorre no âmbito do PFI. Procuraremos justificar o PFI como projeto comunicativo, através do postulado de que a autonomia do aprendiz, como preconizado pelo ensino comunicativo de línguas, é potencializada por meio do engajamento em projetos (project work) e em tarefas (tasks). O trabalho por projetos e as tarefas colocam o aluno como centro das atividades didáticas e estão relacionados aos novos cenários comunicativos audiovisuais-multimídia, acessíveis através de ferramentas tecnológicas que já fazem parte do dia a dia das novas gerações. Durante a apresentação do PFI 2011, introduziremos o conceito de falas guiadas, termo que cunhamos para definir as produções orais resultantes dos diversos tipos de apoio que fornecemos aos alunos durante as filmagens, buscando auxiliá-los na produção em língua italiana diante de problemas comunicativos de diversas ordens, favorecendo, assim, o uso de EC. O corpus da análise é constituído pelas produções orais coletadas no curta-metragem e é dividido em duas partes, sendo que a primeira contempla as produções surgidas na filmagem das lacunas inseridas no script, idealizadas para propiciar momentos de interação espontânea entre os alunos, e a segunda contempla as produções orais relativas às falas do script, baseadas no texto escrito previamente ensaiado pelos estudantes. No tocante à literaturasobre EC, apresentamos as teorias de três teóricos: Tarone (1977), Faerch & Kasper (1983), e Poulisse (1993), discutindo suas contribuições e justificando nossa escolha pela taxonomia lexical de Poulisse para a categorização das duas partes do corpus. Nossos resultados parecem demonstrarque os discentesutilizam-se, igualmente, de EC nas falas do script e nos momentos de interação espontânea,o que ressalta a validade da problematização como um dos critérios principais para que haja uso de EC,e não a interação nos moldes tradicionais.Além disso, o corpus coletado parece-nos apontar a importância, muitas vezes desconsiderada, da transferência linguística na constituição da interlíngua (IL) do aprendizeno uso de EC. Também nos parece que o contato com mais de uma LE, como ocorre com os alunos do PFI, pode propiciar o desenvolvimento da competência estratégica deles, aumentando as possibilidades de transferência linguística e de fontes para a criação de itens lexicais, bem como seus recursos para sanar problemas comunicativos.
This dissertation aims to categorize the communication strategies (CS) found in the short film in Italian Le Avventure di Marco Polo, conducted in 2011 by students of the 6th grade of elementary education at a private school in the city of Atibaia, who participates of the project Movies in Italian (PFI). We will present the global operating model for teaching languages (MOGEL), proposed by Almeida Filho, to demonstrate how the interaction of its main levels occurs within the PFI. We will seek to justify PFI as a communicative project through the postulate that the learner autonomy, as recommended by the communicative language teaching is enhanced by the engagement projects (project work) and tasks (tasks). The work by projects and tasks put students at the center of educational activities and are related to new-media audiovisual communicative scenarios, accessible through technological tools that are already part of everyday life of the new generations. During the PFI 2011 presentation, we introduce the concept of guided speech, a term coined to define the oral productions resulting from various types of support we provide to students during filming, seeking to assist them to produce in Italian facing a variety of communicative problems, thus favoring the use of CS. The analysis corpus consists of utterances collected in the short film and is divided into two parts, the first of which includes productions filming in emerging gaps inserted into the script, devised to provide moments of spontaneous interaction among students, and the second includes oral production statements regarding the script, based on the previous written text rehearsed by students. Regarding the CS literature, we present three theorists: Tarone (1977), Faerch & Kasper (1983), and Poulisse (1993), discussing their contributions and justifying our choice of Poulisse lexical taxonomy to categorizing the two parts of corpus. Our results seem to demonstrate that learners use also the CS in the script speeches and in the moments of spontaneous interaction, underscoring the validity of questioning as one of the main criteria for use of the CS there, not in the traditional interaction. Moreover, the corpus collected seems to point out the importance often neglected, of the transfer language to constitute the learner interlanguage and in the usage of the CS. It also seems that the contact with more than one LE, as with students of PFI, can encourage the development of their strategic competence, increasing the possibilities of language transfer and sources for creating lexical items as well as their resources to solve communication problems.

This thesis is an inquiry into the nature and structure of face-to-face conversation, with a special focus on group meetings in the workplace. I argue that conversations are composed of episodes, each of which corresponds to an identifiable communicative activity such as giving instructions or telling a story. These activities are important because they are part of participants’ commonsense understanding of what happens in a conversation. They appear in natural summaries of conversations such as meeting minutes, and participants talk about them within the conversation itself. Episodic communicative activities therefore represent an essential component of practical, commonsense descriptions of conversations. The thesis objective is to provide a deeper understanding of how such activities may be recognized and differentiated from one another, and to develop a computational method for doing so automatically. The experiments are thus intended as initial steps toward future applications that will require analysis of such activities, such as an automatic minute-taker for workplace meetings, a browser for broadcast news archives, or an automatic decision mapper for planning interactions. My main theoretical contribution is to propose a novel analytical framework called participant relational analysis. The proposal argues that communicative activities are principally indicated through participant-relational features, i.e., expressions of relationships between participants and the dialogue. Participant-relational features, such as subjective language, verbal reference to the participants, and the distribution of speech activity amongst the participants, are therefore argued to be a principal means for analyzing the nature and structure of communicative activities. I then apply the proposed framework to two computational problems: automatic discourse segmentation and automatic discourse segment labeling. The first set of experiments test whether participant-relational features can serve as a basis for automatically segmenting conversations into discourse segments, e.g., activity episodes. Results show that they are effective across different levels of segmentation and different corpora, and indeed sometimes more effective than the commonly-used method of using semantic links between content words, i.e., lexical cohesion. They also show that feature performance is highly dependent on segment type, suggesting that human-annotated “topic segments” are in fact a multi-dimensional, heterogeneous collection of topic and activity-oriented units. Analysis of commonly used evaluation measures, performed in conjunction with the segmentation experiments, reveals that they fail to penalize substantially defective results due to inherent biases in the measures. I therefore preface the experiments with a comprehensive analysis of these biases and a proposal for a novel evaluation measure. A reevaluation of state-of-the-art segmentation algorithms using the novel measure produces substantially different results from previous studies. This raises serious questions about the effectiveness of some state-of-the-art algorithms and helps to identify the most appropriate ones to employ in the subsequent experiments. I also preface the experiments with an investigation of participant reference, an important type of participant-relational feature. I propose an annotation scheme with novel distinctions for vagueness, discourse function, and addressing-based referent inclusion, each of which are assessed for inter-coder reliability. The produced dataset includes annotations of 11,000 occasions of person-referring. The second set of experiments concern the use of participant-relational features to automatically identify labels for discourse segments. In contrast to assigning semantic topic labels, such as topical headlines, the proposed algorithm automatically labels segments according to activity type, e.g., presentation, discussion, and evaluation. The method is unsupervised and does not learn from annotated ground truth labels. Rather, it induces the labels through correlations between discourse segment boundaries and the occurrence of bracketing meta-discourse, i.e., occasions when the participants talk explicitly about what has just occurred or what is about to occur. Results show that bracketing meta-discourse is an effective basis for identifying some labels automatically, but that its use is limited if global correlations to segment features are not employed. This thesis addresses important pre-requisites to the automatic summarization of conversation. What I provide is a novel activity-oriented perspective on how summarization should be approached, and a novel participant-relational approach to conversational analysis. The experimental results show that analysis of participant-relational features is a.

The subject matter of this thesis are some aspects of the expression of explanations in spoken discourse. The study of explanations has occupied the attention of many researchers in social psychology and in neighbouring disciplines; the study of talk has occupied an even greater number. In the thesis I try to integrate certain areas of these two fields. Chapter one sketches the history of the concern with language which has characterised developments in the social sciences this century. This chapter is incidentally an introduction to some of the key themes of the thesis and to why I think research based on naturally occurring discourse is important. Research on explanations in social psychology has been dominated by research which has gone on under the heading of attribution theory. In chapter two I address a controversy in the application of concepts drawn from attribution theory to clinical psychology, namely whether or not people have fixed styles in the way that they attribute causes for outcomes. Studying family therapy sessions and interviews with parents with a coding procedure I show that the variety of possible styles is broader than has been suggested previously. Chapter three further pursues causal expressions as cases of explanations by asking what a causal statement is. The chapter opens with a discussion of how causes relate to reasons concluding that reasons are a species of cause. I then go on to use data from earlier work to study what expressions speakers use to make causal utterances. The direction of enquiry has been to suggest that rather than studying causal beliefs it is causal utterances that are under study. An utterance is, if you like, "situated", that is to say, what a speaker says is context-bound. I talk of "communicative constraints" operating here. Chapter four reviews some work in the study of conversation with an eye to elucidating the sense in which a speaker's utterances are a product of the situation in which they occur and to look at the researchability of this intuition. Practical and conceptual reasons suggest that the approach generally known as conversation analysis stemming from the study of ethnomethodology is the most interesting and fruitful way toproceed (in this context). Chapters five and six report studies of a computing advisory centre showing 1, the range of accounting procedures which occur as part of the business-at-hand in these sessions, 2, how speakers' utterances, can change within a single conversation. Chapter six looks at the integration of non-vocal behaviour and by considering data on this argues that the idea of normativity, rather than a quasi grammatical notion, is the appropriate level of explanation for the regularities which we find in human interaction. In moving away from beliefs as the object of analysis I could be accused of taking an anti-cognitive stance. Chapter seven explores cognitive versus interactional perspectives in communication. Chapter eight reflects on the approach which I have adopted and suggests how inspite, indeed through, its focus on situational events an account of the capacities drawn on in offering explanations can itself illuminate phenomena seen as beyond its grasp

Cette recherche vise à étudier et rendre-compte du fonctionnement des interactions orales entre pairs, en classe d’anglais L2, au niveau du collège en France. L’enjeu est donc, à partir d’une description détaillée de tâches (au sens didactique du terme) et de l’analyse des productions des apprenants, de documenter la notion de compétence d’interaction orale. L’approche retenue relève de la recherche-action et s’appuie sur des données empiriques recueillies dans des classes. Après avoir mené plusieurs études exploratoires sur des groupes d’apprenants, un protocole de recherche a été mis en place pour collecter des données longitudinales sur un échantillon 24 dyades, soit 48 élèves de 3ème. Les participants ont mené deux tâches d’interaction orale en début d’année puis en fin d’année scolaire, après avoir bénéficié, d’une formation spécifique à l’interaction orale. Leurs performances ont été filmées (18h) et transcrites sous CLAN pour être analysées. Au plan théorique, des liens sont tissés entre plusieurs cadres. Le premier est la didactique des langues qui retient la perspective actionnelle telle que décrite dans le CECRL (2001). Je m’appuie également sur la théorie socioculturelle, issue des travaux de Vygotsky (1978), puis de Lantolf (2000) qui avancent que l’interaction sociale ne se contente pas de faciliter l’apprentissage, mais est au cœur du processus de développement. Enfin les outils de l’analyse conversationnelle sent convoqués afin d’étudier la construction des échanges de manière systématique. Ce sont les questions de formation spécifique des apprenants à l’interaction orale, les résultats auxquels il est raisonnable de s’attendre dans ce contexte, et enfin les modalités d’évaluation de cette compétence en milieu institutionnel qui sont au cœur du sujet
This research explores the potential of teenage peer spoken interactions in ESL classrooms in France. The focus here is on analysing task-based activities and learners’ performances, in order to improve our understanding of interactional competence. My approach is based on Action Research and a collection of empirical data from language classrooms. Several studies were conducted before setting up a protocol for a longitudinal corpus of video-recorded conversations between 24 dyads of peers. The 48 lower intermediate participants performed two tasks at the beginning and end of the school year. Specific training was offered in order to improve strategic spoken interaction. The 18 hours of verbal and non-verbal outcome was transcribed on CLAN and analysed according to the Conversational Analysis method. On a theoretical level, my approach brings together the European tradition of language didactics based on the CEFR (2001) and the sociocultural theory that takes its roots in Vygotsky’s (1978) work, followed by Lantolf (2000) who deals more specifically with SLA. According to these authors, social interaction not only promotes learning but is also at the core of a development process. This thesis examines the effects of training on communication strategies, the expectable outcomes and assessments of such a competence in an institutional environment

Les jeunes apprenants français de BTS de l’École Nationale d’Industrie Laitière et des Biotechnologies (ENILBio) de Poligny, bien qu’ayant reçu un enseignement de plusieurs années en anglais langue étrangère, éprouvent souvent des difficultés à comprendre, mais surtout à s’exprimer oralement dans cette langue. En tant qu’enseignante, c’est un problème auquel je me heurte quotidiennement sans parvenir à trouver des explications et des solutions.Le but de cette recherche est d’explorer les raisons qui expliquent la gêne souvent ressentie par les étudiants au contact de l’anglais oral qu’ils sont amenés à parler dans le contexte scolaire et extra-scolaire, et de s’interroger sur leurs pratiques (dans la classe et hors de celle-ci) et représentations. Ce travail tente donc de comprendre pourquoi les élèves de BTS ne s’expriment pas, peu ou mal, en mettant en lien leurs expériences de la langue et leurs représentations, et en étudiant leur degré réel de compétence en expression orale.Cette recherche laisse une large place à la parole des élèves, que j’ai mise en évidence au travers de questionnaires et d’entretiens individuels en français. Les résultats qualitatifs et quantitatifs recueillis au cours de ces étapes sont mis en relation avec les données d’une tâche d’expression orale à laquelle les étudiants volontaires ont bien voulu se soumettre.Si l’influence du cadre institutionnel semble jouer un rôle primordial dans la (non) prise de parole des jeunes à l’école et en dehors de ses murs, les liens entre représentations de l’anglais, représentations de soi en tant qu’apprenant de langue et exposition à celle-ci sont plus difficiles à déterminer.Quelles sont alors les perspectives pour aider les apprenants de BTS à améliorer leurs compétences orales ? Ce travail tente d’ouvrir des voies pour répondre à cette question
Although French learners studying at BTS level at the National School of Dairy Industry and Biotechnologies (ENILBio) in Poligny have studied English as a second language for several years, they often have difficulty not only understanding it, but more importantly speaking it. As a teacher, it is a problem I am faced with daily and to which I haven’t been able to find explanations or solutions.The aim of this research is to explore the reasons that explain why students often feel embarrassed when they have to speak the language in and outside school, and to question their own practices and representations. This work aims at understanding why BTS students don’t speak English – or speak it little or badly – by linking their experiences with the language, their representations and their actual speaking skills.This research emphasizes what students have to say about this subject through questionnaires and face-to-face interviews in French. The gathered qualitative and quantitative results are analysed in relation to a speaking task which was carried out by student volunteers.The institutional context plays a crucial part in the fact that students speak English (or not) in and outside school, but the links between the representations of the English language, the students’ representations of themselves as language learners and their exposure to the language remain unclear.What are the prospects to help BTS learners to improve their speaking skills? This research tries to open new ways to answer this question

A common task for spoken dialogue systems (SDS) is to help users select a suitable option (e.g., flight, hotel, restaurant) from the set of options available. When the number of options is small, they can simply be presented sequentially. However, as the number of options increases, the system must have strategies for helping users browse the space of available options. In this thesis, I compare two approaches to information presentation in SDS: (1) the summarize and refine (SR) approach (Polifroni et al., 2003; Polifroni, 2008) in which the summaries are generated by clustering the options based on attributes that lead to the smallest number of clusters, and (2) the user-model based summarize and refine (UMSR) approach (Demberg, 2005; Demberg and Moore, 2006) which employs a user model to cluster options based on attributes that are relevant to the user and uses coherence markers (e.g., connectives, discourse cues, adverbials) to highlight the trade-offs among the presented items. Prior work has shown that users prefer approaches to information presentation that take the user’s preferences into account (e.g., Komatani et al., 2003;Walker et al., 2004; Demberg and Moore, 2006). However, due to the complexity of building a working end-to-end SDS, these studies employed an ”overhearer” evaluation methodology, in which participants read or listened to pre-prepared dialogues, thus limiting evaluation criteria to users’ perceptions (e.g., informativeness, overview of options, and so on). In order to examine whether users prefer presentations based on UMSR when they were actively interacting with a dialogue system, and to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the two approaches, I compared them in a Wizard-of-Oz experiment. I found that in terms of both task success and dialogue efficiency the UMSR approach was superior to the SR approach. In addition, I found that users also preferred presentations based on UMSR in the interactive mode. SDS are typically developed for situations in which the user’s hands and eyes are busy. I hypothesized that the benefits of pointing out relationships among options (i.e., trade-offs) in information presentation messages outweighs the costs of processing more complex sentences. To test this hypothesis, I performed two dual task experiments comparing the two approaches to information presentation in terms of their effect on cognitive load. Again, participants performed better with presentations based on the UMSR algorithm in terms of both dialogue efficiency and task success, and I found no detrimental effect on performance of the primary task. Finally, I hypothesized that one of the main reasons why UMSR is more efficient is because it uses coherence markers to highlight relations (e.g., trade-offs) between options and attributes. To test this hypothesis, I performed an eye-tracking experiment in which participants read presentations with and without these linguistic devices, and answered evaluation and comparison questions to measure differences in item recall. In addition, I used reading times to examine comprehension differences between the two information presentation strategies. I found that the linguistic devices used in UMSR indeed facilitated item recall, with no penalty in terms of comprehension cost. Thus, in this thesis I showed that an approach to information presentation that employs a user model and uses linguistic devices such as coherence markers to highlight trade-offs among the presented items improves information browsing. User studies demonstrated that this finding also applies to situations where users are performing another demanding task simultaneously.

En raison de sa focalisation sur l’enseignement du français du tourisme, de l’hôtellerie et de la restauration (FTHR), cette étude se situe dans le champ de l’enseignement des langues de spécialité. Dans ce domaine, l’enseignement se veut fondé sur les besoins de l’apprenant et c’est en partant de cette prémisse que nous avons cherché à déterminer si le français écrit faisait partie des besoins de l’apprenant en FTHR dans le contexte kenyan. Pour ce faire, nous avons voulu déterminer les besoins immédiats et à venir des apprenants du FTHR. L’établissement des besoins immédiats était basé sur le discernement des attentes et des motivations des apprenants en ce qui concerne leur apprentissage du FTHR. Par ailleurs, l’établissement des besoins ultérieurs reposait sur la détermination de leurs aspirations professionnelles ainsi que sur les compétences effectivement requises sur les marchés du travail ciblés. Pour établir ces besoins, nous avons recueilli des données auprès de quatre catégories de personnes : les étudiants inscrits aux programmes de formation de tourisme, hôtellerie et restauration (THR) dans les universités kenyanes, les enseignants impliqués dans ces programmes, les anciens étudiants qui ont suivi le FTHR dans les universités kenyanes et, enfin, les professionnels travaillant déjà dans les secteurs du THR. Pour cela nous avons utilisé des questionnaires et mené des entretiens individuels et collectifs. Nous avons ensuite analysé les données de manières quantitative et qualitative. Les données recueillies ont révélé que les facteurs qui motivent les étudiants à apprendre le français étaient principalement de nature pragmatique. Elles ont également mis en évidence que l’expression orale était la compétence la plus souhaitée par les apprenants. De plus, l’analyse des métiers exercés par les professionnels dans les secteurs du THR et celle des compétences requises révèlent que le français écrit est peu nécessaire sur le marché du travail, voire inutile
Because of its focus on the teaching of French for tourism, hospitality and catering (FTHR), this study is situated in the teaching of language for special purposes. In this field, the teaching is designed to be based on the needs of the learner and it is on the basis of this premise that this we sought to find out whether writing is part of the learner’s needs in FTHR in Kenya. To do this, we endeavoured to determine the needs to find out the immediate and future needs of the FTHR students. The establishing of immediate needs was based on discerning the expectations and the motivation of the students concerning the learning of FTHR. On the other hand, establishing the future needs relied on finding out their professional aspirations as well as the actual competences required in the targeted job markets.To establish these needs, we collected data from four categories of people: students enrolled in the bachelor of tourism and hospitality programs in the Kenyan universities, teachers in charge of these programs, old students who did FTHR in the Kenyan universities and finally the professionals already working in the tourism and hospitality sectors. We did this by means of questionnaires, individual and collective and interviews. We then analysed the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. The data collected revealed that the factors that motivate students to learn French are mainly pragmatic in nature. The study also demonstrated that oral expression is the most desired competence by the students. In addition to that, analysis of the jobs exercised by the professionals and the competences required reveal that very little written French, if any is needed at the job market

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e Telemática
Service robots operate in the same environment as humans and perform actions that a human usually performs. These robots must be able to operate autonomously in unknown and dynamic environments, as well as to maneuver with several people and know how to deal with them. By complying with these requirements, they are able to successfully address humans and fulfill their requests whenever they need assistance in a certain task. Natural language communication, including speech that is the most natural way of communication between humans, becomes relevant in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). By endowing service robots with intuitive spoken interfaces, the specification of the human required tasks is facilitated. However, this is a complicated task to achieve due to the resources involved in creating a sufficiently intuitive spoken interface and because of the difficulty of deploying it in different robots. The main objective of this thesis is the definition, implementation and evaluation of a dialogue system that can be easily integrated into any robotic platform and that functions as a flexible base for the creation of any conversational scenario in the Portuguese language. The system must meet the basic requirements for intuitive and natural communications, namely the characteristics of human-human conversations. A system was developed that functions as a base to give continuity to future work on Spoken Dialog Systems. The system incorporates the client-server architecture, where the client runs on the robot and captures what the user says. The client takes advantage on external dialogue management services. They are executed by the server, which processes the audio obtained, returning an appropriate response given the context of the dialogue. The development was based on a critical analysis of the state of the art in order for the system to be as faithful as possible to what is already done. Through the evaluation phase of the system, it was managed to obtain by few volunteers the conclusion that the main objective was accomplished: a base system was created that is flexible enough to explore different contexts of conversation, such as interacting with children or providing information on a university environment.
Os robôs de serviço operam no mesmo ambiente dos humanos e executam ações que um humano normalmente executaria. Estes robôs devem ser capazes de operar de forma autónoma em ambientes desconhecidos e dinâmicos, assim como de manobrar em ambientes com várias pessoas e de saberem lidar com elas. Ao respeitarem estes requisitos, conseguirão abordar com sucesso os humanos e cumprir as suas solicitações sempre que estes precisem de assistência em alguma tarefa. A comunicação por linguagem natural, nomeadamente a fala que é a forma mais abrangente de comunicação entre humanos, torna-se relevante na área da Interação humano-robô (IHR). Ao dotar os robôs de serviço com sistemas de voz intuitivos facilita-se a especificação das tarefas a realizar. No entanto, é uma tarefa complicada de se realizar devido aos recursos envolvidos na criação de uma interação suficientemente intuitiva e devido à dificuldade de funcionar em diversos robôs. O objetivo principal deste trabalho é a definição, implementação e avaliação de um sistema de diálogo que seja de fácil integração em qualquer sistema robótico e que funcione como uma base flexível para qualquer cenário de conversação na língua Portuguesa. Deve obedecer a requisitos base de comunicação intuitiva e natural, nomeadamente a características de conversas entre humanos. Foi desenvolvido um sistema que funciona como uma base para dar continuidade a trabalho futuro em sistemas de diálogo. O sistema incorpora a arquitetura cliente-servidor onde o cliente é executado no robô e capta o que o utilizador diz. O cliente tira partido de serviços de gestão de diálogo externos ao robô, executados pelo servidor, que processa o áudio obtido, devolvendo uma resposta ao cliente adequada ao contexto do diálogo. O desenvolvimento foi baseado numa análise crítica do estado da arte para se tentar manter fiel ao que já foi feito e de forma a se tomarem as principais decisões durante a implementação. Mediante a fase de avaliação do sistema, tanto a nível do ponto de vista da interação como do programador, conseguiu-se obter por parte de alguns voluntários que o objetivo principal foi cumprido: foi criada uma base suficientemente flexível para explorar diferentes contextos de conversação, nomeadamente interagir com crianças ou fornecimento de informações em ambiente universitário.

La langue étant un système formel par rapport à l'interaction verbale, cette étude s'intéresse à illustrer comment le sujet se construit dans le langage par la parole. L'être humain n'a d'accès à lui-même que dans l'ordre symbolique qui le reçoit sous la forme du langage. En dépit de la médiation de l'institution symbolique qui fournit des repères aidant le sujet à reconnaître non seulement des enchaînements opératoires à exécuter mais aussi des postures à adopter favorisant sa réalisation, le contact avec autrui et l'interaction avec la langue fait valoir le sujet comme divisé par son propre discours. L'expression orale, quant à elle, est comprise non seulement comme moyen de communication mais aussi comme intermédiaire à l'apprentissage. L'étude explicite davantage la place accordée non seulement à la production de nature orale mais aussi à sa pratique dans le contexte éducatif spécifique au Kenya

The study is concerned with the problem of how to improve the teaching of Arabic as a foreign or a second language. It lays down some of the essential foundation-work necessary for bringing about systematic and constructive improvements in the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL) by investigating the contributions of modern linguistic sciences (such as applied linguistics, educational linguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics) to the development of foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. A survey of the literature indicates that a 'revolution' is currently taking place in FL teaching and that a new approach, known as the Communicative Approach (CA), has begun to emerge and influence the teaching of FLs in general, over the last decade or so. Since the CA is currently being adopted to the teaching of most major FLs and since this revolution has not yet had much impact on TAPL, the study explores the possibility of the application of the CA to the teaching of Arabic as a living language. The thesis is divided into 7 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the importance of viewing the nature of language and FL teaching from a multidimensional point of view. Chapter 2 outlines the general nature and importance of the subject matter (i.e. the Arabic language) in a wide context. In order to understand what has directly or indirectly influenced the teaching practices of TAFL, Chapter 3 provides an overview of the development of views of FL teaching approaches and methods in recent times, from formalism (teacher-centred learning) to functionalism (student -centred learning). Chapter 4 concentrates on providing an interpretation of the current 'state of the art' of TPPL in Britain. A theoretical outline of the CA is presented in Chapter 5. This chapter provides a working hypothesis of a proposed integrative model for communicative competence that can be used as a practical reference tool in the relevant areas of communicative language development In TAPL. Chapter 6 focuses on one of these areas; communicative syllabus design, in which the stages in Arabic language programme development and types of communicative syllabuses are discussed. The last chapter concludes with a suggetion of specific further research needs in TAFL: communicative teaching methodology, communicative materials development, communicative testing techniques and communicative tea cher training.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the amount of feedback given in language-focused exchanges and communicative exchanges. I also investigated if recasting is the feedback method most frequently used in communicative activities. Errors are natural parts of learning and cannot be avoided. However, corrective feedback is very important because fossilization can occur if students are not aware of their errors. Several different types of corrective feedback can be used to correct the students’ speech, but the most subtle one is recasts. Studies show that recasting is the method most common in communicative exchanges in the classroom. I have observed three different classes, at different levels of the Swedish school system, and also interviewed the teachers. It was shown that feedback was more frequently provided during the language-focused exchanges. It was also shown that two of the teachers were very reluctant to provide their students corrective feedback during communicative activities. All three teachers agreed that recasting is the best method to use for correcting the students’ speech because it does not interrupt the communication and does not inhibit the students. Communicating with students about feedback is something that I believe could help and facilitate some of the issues about giving corrective feedback. I believe that clarification requests and other types of feedback could be used more frequently without damaging the students’ self-confidence if there is a dialogue between the teacher and the students.

Vad är grejen med dataspel? Det är en fritidssyssla, något som unga killar sysslar med istället för att vara ute i friska luften skulle nog många svara. Det stämmer för en hel del men det har också börjat växa upp en tävlingskultur med proffs, sponsorer och internationella tävlingar. Det kallas för e-sport och är på stark frammarsch, och idag kan ungdomarna som sitter kvar hemma ses som e-sportens amatörer.

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the communication strategy within TNT Express and its critical evaluation. The theoretical part is devoted to marketing and its tools, the brand and its importance and corporate identity and its ingredients. I introduce the company TNT Express and its strategy in the practical part. It is followed by the SWOT analysis. Then I analyze various communication activities related to the change of the brand identity. Based on identified problems that have arisen with the change in the company I will propose their solution.

När man som TV-tittare ser på sportprogram, kan man lätt förledas att tro att ”alla människor” tycker sport är viktigt, men så är det naturligtvis inte. Man kan dock anta att framställningar av medierad TV-sporten som fenomen, finns i de flesta människors föreställningsvärld. Utgångspunkten för den här uppsatsen är att placera in TV-sport i ett större sammanhang, där TV-sport kan ingå som en del av det som människor tar del av och som i viss mån inverkar på hur individer formar och skapar sin identitet. Den här uppsatsen handlar om hur kön (re-) presenteras genom TV-sport och hur detta kan ingå i vad som konstruerar en könsidentitet för en yngre generation av den kvinnliga TV-publiken. Uppsatsen bygger på en intervjustudie med en grupp tjejer på en skola i en sydsvensk småstad, som genomfördes i november 1999.   För att belysa detta område har jag valt att utgå från tre huvudteman- urbäddning, återinbäddning och könsidentitet  i syfte att försöka synliggöra och förstå vilken betydelse och mening TV-sport kan ha för unga idrottsaktiva kvinnor. Genom att använda begrepp från bl a Giddens och Thompson tittar jag på hur urbäddning och återinbäddning av TV-sport ser ut för en ung kvinnlig publik. Jag kommer fram till att tjejerna använder idrott och TV-sport när de själva konstruerar sin könsidentitet, som delvis bygger på de manliga värderingarna som återfinns både i samhället och medierna. De unga kvinnorna använder en manlig värderingsnorm, när de bedömer både sina egna och andras sportprestationer, samtidigt som de är kritiska till hur TV återger kvinnligt idrottande. När det gäller den egna könsidentiteten sker en viss förskjutning av det manliga värderingssystemet om hur de själva uppfattar sig själva som idrottande kvinnor. I spänningsfältet mellan den kollektiva och den individuella könsidentiteten skapas ett dubbelt förhållningssätt, som dessa tjejer växlar mellan när de diskuterar idrott och identitet.  Idrotten är en viktig del av den livsstil och smak som utvecklas och skiljer ut de här tjejerna från andra ungdomar, i deras vardag. Gruppen positionerar sig som del i en idrottsaktiv kultur. Den TV-sport och idrott som cirkulerar inom den här samtalskulturen utgör ett riktmärke för grupp- och könsidentitet, som t ex att veta vilka som leder serien eller vann senaste matchen. Vidare visar studien att kunskaper om TV-sport används för att få kontakt och samtala med killar. TV-sporten möjliggör därmed en könsöverskridande kommunikationsprocess. Jag kommer också fram till att förebilder från TV-n och den egna idrottskulturen har betydelse för hur dessa tjejer själva idrottar och att de införlivar TV-sport och använder den i sin egen idrottsutövning. Hur skapandet av könsidentiteter och dess konstruktioner blir till är endast en spegelbild av samhället genom TV-sporten. Medierna verkar i samhället och identiteter skapas av en rad olika faktorer, varav TV-sport endast utgör en av dessa faktorer. Jag valde att begränsa mig till hur kön presenteras genom TV-sport och hur detta kan påverka och ingå i vad som konstruerar en könsidentitet för en yngre generation, och det är mot denna bakgrund den analytiska slutsatsen bör förstås: Slutsats skapandet av en könsidentitet sker i samverkan med en rad olika faktorer där TV-sport endast utgör en del av vad som formar könsidentiteten. TV-sportens framställningsform ingår somen del av det som unga kvinnor tar del av och använder när de själva formar sin egen identitet, som får mening och betydelse för dem i den kultur de verkar och ingår i.

In last years phenomena of wireless communication technologies became a primary interest of big development laboratories whole world. Domain of point to point links which are realized by laser technology with narrow beam divergence and very sensitive photo-detectors is ordinarily used these days. This trend of using light waves as carrier medium turned interests of scientist to the sphere of wide area networks which is domain of wi-fi radio technologies. One of new trends in this sphere is also in-door free space optics. With expansion which leads to using LED's in everyday applications and with technological progress of last years, also grows tendency of most effective utilization of LED systems. The result of this effort is thought which considerate LED as source of artificial lighting and source of carrier medium for modulated signal. This kind of device must fulfill hygienic standards for illumination and also must be able to work with high frequency by which is signal modulated. These systems can provide links with sufficient capacity in order of hundred megabits.