Rice Working Papers in Linguistics, volume 5

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1911/78537

Editorial board:

Stephen Watters, editor-in-chief
Christina Willis Oko, faculty advisor
Daniela Tijerina Benner
Sarah Seewoester Cain
Hussain Hijazi
Bazile Lanneau
Vlad Soare

For more information about RWPL, including submission details for future volumes, please visit our website at http://rls.rice.edu/rwpl/.

Table of Contents

—Requesting the Context: A Context Analysis of Let Statement and If Statement Requests and Commands in the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English

by Brown, Lynnelle Rhinier

—Using a Relational Database for Data Entry and Analysis

by Koth, Anthony

—“I Love You But I Disagree”: Politeness and Politics in Computer-Mediated Discourse

by Mauney, Samantha and Lisa Jeon

—Fast speech phenomena in Asante Twi

by Nelson, Katherine

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    Fast speech phenomena in Asante Twi
    (Rice University, 2014) Nelson, Katherine; Linguistics Department
    A descriptive study is utilized to examine fast speech phenomena in Asante Twi, a Niger-Congo language, focusing on three fast speech rules: vowel deletion, vowel alternation in modifiers, and fricative voicing between sonorants. Transcribed and interlinerized texts from a field methods class at Rice University are used for this study. The morphological and phonetic levels of the language are compared to formulate the rules for this paper. All phonetic level transcriptions were aurally checked at least twice for accuracy. Results indicate that fast speech rules are conditioned both phonotactically and syntactically in Asante Twi.
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    Front Matter, Volume 5, Fall 2014
    (Rice University, 2014) Linguistics Department
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    “I Love You But I Disagree”: Politeness and Politics in Computer-Mediated Discourse
    (Rice University, 2014) Mauney, Samantha; Jeon, Lisa; Linguistics Department
    In this paper we explore the possibility of new politeness paradigms in computer -mediated discourse on Facebook. Specifically, we examine the discoursal expectations, linguistic catalysts for ‘face-threatening acts’, and mitigations of opinions to maintain ‘face’ in discourse about politics. The present study addresses the gap in the literature concerning the relationship between politeness theory and discourse about politics (defined as any conversation about governmental policies and figures and/or controversial social issues) in online communication. Following Brown and Levinson (1987), Wierzbicka (1991), and Herring (2004), we analyze 10 Facebook wall posts containing discourse about politics for norms of linguistic appropriateness, concepts of ‘face’, and other sociopragmatic aspects. An analysis of these data suggests that the concept of ‘face’ is especially important for Facebook, where real names are typically preserved and relationships between interlocutors can be altered based on the conversation at hand. This study is a first step towards analyzing the relationship between politeness theory, discourse about politics, and computer-mediated discourse. Additionally, it has important implications for understanding the constantly changing interpersonal relationships in today’s increasingly socioculturally divers e, globalized, and digitally-savvy society.
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    Requesting the Context: A Context Analysis of Let Statement and If Statement Requests and Commands in the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English
    (Rice University, 2014) Brown, Lynnelle Rhinier; Linguistics Department
    This paper identifies two requestive forms in the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English, let statements and if statements, and the contextual conditions—linguistic, pragmatic, discourse and social—that co-occur with these forms. The analysis reveals a complex interplay of linguistic forms and contextual factors. The variables of social distance, social power, contingency, entitlement and specific discourse functions all influence the forms a speaker chooses when requesting, but not at the same time for both forms nor in equal measures. Rather, two or three contextual features become more or less relevant at a time, creating a distinct profile for each form.
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    Using a Relational Database for Data Entry and Analysis
    (Rice University, 2014) Koth, Anthony; Linguistics Department
    If you have ever gotten lost in scribbles, rows, columns and highlighting while trying to use a spreadsheet or pen and paper for coding linguistic data, then a relational database is a tool for you. It offers a clean and manageable way to code all of your data consistently and accurately. This paper is not meant to be a complete manual for using a database or all of the complexities of the Structured Query Language (SQL) which powers its searching and counting functions. Rather, this paper serves as a primer or how-to for using a relational database for linguistic analysis. Much of the information around the internet related to databases was not straightforwardly translatable to a linguist's needs, in particular the SQL code needed for counting hierarchical data (multiple different attributes with multiple different values). I hope the following can help you start utilizing this powerful tool with fewer growing pains.