This study is aimed at clarifying the notions of ‘situation’ and ‘communicative situation’, drawing upon Alfred Schütz’s theories of pragmatic and communicative aspects of the lifeworld. The concepts of ‘situation’ and ‘communicative situation’ are approached in relation to the phenomena of human action and human communication, respectively. Following Schütz, it is argued that the overall nature of ‘situation’ arises from its ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ aspects, i.e. the spatial, temporal and socio-cultural conditions experienced by an individual and shaped by his or her unique ‘biographical situation’. This perspective is temporarily suspended in communication: private systems of relevances are superseded by intersubjective constructions or interpretations of ‘what-we-are-doing-in-and-through-communication’. The ‘communicative situation’ is conceived of as a dynamic phenomenon and a true achievement of social actors, who permanently define and redefine, interpret and reinterpret both its overall character and its relevant elements. This theoretical framework, enriched by the concept of semiotic multimodality, is exemplified by an analysis of conversational data drawn from ethnographic research into television news production. At the end of the paper, a distinction between the typifications made by ordinary social actors and by social scientists in characterizing communicative situations is discussed.
The DIALOG corpus is one of two collections of spoken language gathered in the audio-visual studio at the Czech Language Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The article begins by recalling the establishment of the corpus in 1997 as part of the project “Dialogue in a World of People and Machines”, defines the aim motivating the collection of data for this corpus, formulates distinctive criteria for this corpus as a specifically “spoken” one in terms of time, interaction and genre and partially even as topic-specific, and attempts to define the types of spoken dialogues which the corpus can aid in analysing. It characterizes speech in the media, which makes up a focal point here, and details the procedures for storing audio and video recordings of this speech and the resulting transcriptions. The second part provides an overview of the fundamentals of transcription systems and offers theoretical support for transcription method selection as determined by the aim of capturing segmental, supra-segmental, sequential, para-linguistic and extra-linguistic phenomena, including several examples of practical solutions. The third part reports on how this corpus has been thus far utilized in linguistic research, both in the creation of a contemporary Czech theory of dialogue and in the analysis of specific features of spoken Czech. The article concludes by detailing the prospects for further use of this corpus.
This text provides a critical analysis and assessment of Charles Goodwin’s theory of co-operative action. First, it characterizes Goodwin’s distinctive research style, analyzing his specific way of presenting research findings, as well as drawing on memoir and biographical texts and published interviews. This distinction lies in: a) a strong emphasis on the collection and analysis of empirical data, b) the use of video data, c) the original presentation of data and analysis in collages/assemblages of transcripts, images and analytical commentary, d) a holistic, integrative and interdisciplinary approach to the research object, e) the inclusion of ethnographic knowledge in the analysis, and f) an axiomatic style of thinking. Then the text introduces the conceptual architecture of the theory of co-operative action and discusses the contributions of this theory to the field of (linguistic) anthropology, particularly to questions about the origins of language, the historical diversification of languages and cultures, the situated nature of communication, the distribution of knowledge, and the formation of competent members of cultural communities. It concludes that Goodwin’s theoretical insights have the potential to shape the future of not only linguistic anthropology, but also interactionally-oriented linguistics.
Scholars have previously conceptualized academic writing as both process and product. Academic phrasebanks are a tool in which these two conceptions intertwine, i.e., where the products, existing texts such as journal articles, are broken down into smaller units such as steps and phrases, which are then used in the process of producing new texts. In this article, we examine the possibilities and limits of collecting these smaller units for research and didactic purposes, presenting a newly established phrasebank in this context. First, we consider various scholarly and pedagogical approaches to academic writing. We then provide an overview of existing academic phrasebanks, primarily the seminal University of Manchester Academic Phrasebank created by John Morley, focusing on how its principles and structure have been utilized to create similar tools for other languages. We subsequently describe the design and creation of the Czech Academic Phrasebank, the innovative character of which is its link to the Czech National Corpus, specifically a subcorpus of Czech scholarly articles. The processes of conceptualizing the phrasebank, its basic units and functions, excerpting phrases, linking to the corpus, and the various problems encountered throughout are reflected. We conclude by outlining directions for the phrasebank’s use in Czech-language genre-based pedagogy.
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