Cover not available
Article published In:
Cognitive Perspectives on Genre
Edited by Carla Vergaro
[Pragmatics & Cognition 25:3] 2018
► pp. 576–601

Genre as cognitive construction

An analysis of discourse connectors in academic lectures

| University of Genoa
| University of La Rioja
The present article investigates a set of discourse connectors in the academic lecture genre from the viewpoint of the inseparable pair of pragmatics and cognition. Making use of the MICASE corpus for data retrieval, a selection of discourse constructions encoding comparative contrastive meanings are analysed and their distinctive features are critically described and explained. The aim is to show how each particular genre promotes the use of certain constructions. The MICASE database reveals that, among all the subgroups of complementary contrastive constructions, some seem incompatible with the academic lecture contexts by virtue of the particular characteristics of this specific genre.
Keywords: academic lecture genre, cognition, complementary alternation, discourse construction
Article outline
  • 1.Genre as cognitive construction
  • 2.Genre in Construction Grammar
  • 3.Complementary contrastive constructions in the academic lecture genre
    • 3.1Neutral complementary contrastive constructions
    • 3.2Concessive complementary contrastive constructions
    • 3.3Correcting complementary contrastive constructions
    • 3.4Topic-changing complementary contrastive constructions
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.19006.bai
References (55)
References
Antonopoulou, Eleni & Kiki Nikiforidou. 2011. Construction Grammar and conventional discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 43(10). 2594–2609. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baicchi, Annalisa. 2015. Construction learning as a complex adaptive system: Psycholinguistic evidence from L2 learners of English. Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Beaugrande, Robert & Wolfgang Dressler. 1981. Introduction to text linguistics. London: Longman. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bergs, Alexander. 2008. Can we take Construction Grammar beyond sneezing napkins off tables? In Klaus Stierstorfer (ed.), Proceedings of the Anglistentag Münster 2007, 269–276. Trier: WVT.Google Scholar
Blakemore, Diane. 2002. Relevance and linguistic meaning: The semantics and pragmatics of discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butler, Christopher Stuard & Francisco Gonzálvez-García. 2014. Exploring functional-cognitive space. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dirven, René & Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza. 2010. Looking back at 30 years of Cognitive Linguistics. In Elżbieta Tabakowska, Michal Choiński & Łukasz Wiraszka (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics in action: From theory to application and back, 13–70. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick. 2013. Second language acquisition. In Graeme Trousdale & Thomas Hoffmann (eds.), Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar, 365–378. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, Nick & Diane Larsen-Freeman. 2009. Language as a complex adaptive system. Chichester: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Feyaerts, Kurt. 2006. Towards a dynamic account of phraseological meaning: Creative variation in headlines and conversational humour. International Journal of English Studies 6(1). 57–84.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J., Paul Kay & Mary C. O’Connor. 1988. Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of Let Alone. Language 64(3). 501–538. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1999. What are discourse markers? Journal of Pragmatics 31(7). 931–952. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Towards a theory of discourse. In Kerstin Fischer (ed.), Approaches to discourse particles, 189–204. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Fried, Mirjam. 2009. Construction Grammar as a tool for diachronic analysis. Constructions and Frames 1(2). 261–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fried, Mirjam & Jan-Ola Östman (eds.). 2004. Construction Grammar in a cross-language perspective. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. & Christian Matthiessen. 2006. Construing experience through meaning: A language-based approach to cognition. London, Oxford & New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas. 2015. Cognitive sociolinguistic aspects of football chants: The role of social and physical context in usage-based Construction Grammar. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 63(3). 273–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas & Alexander Bergs. 2014. Are you a construction in disguise? Was Fußballgesänge uns über soziale und physische Kontexteigenschaften von Konstruktionen lehren. In Alexander Ziem & Alexander Lasch (eds.), Konstruktionsgrammatik IV, 115–131. Tübingen: Stauffenburg,Google Scholar
Hoffman, Thomas & Alexander Bergs. 2018. A Construction Grammar approach to genre. CogniTextes 181. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holland, John. 1998. From chaos to order. Redwood City: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
. 2005. Language acquisition as a complex adaptive system. In James Minett & William Wang (eds.), Language acquisition, change and emergence, 411–435. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press.Google Scholar
Iza Erviti, Aneider. 2017. Discourse constructions in English: Meaning, form and hierarchies (Doctoral dissertation) Universidad de La Rioja, Spain.Google Scholar
Knott, Alistair & Ted Sanders. 1998. The classification of coherence relations and their linguistic markers. Journal of Pragmatics 30(2). 135–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1993. The contemporary theory of metaphor. In Andrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and thought, 2nd ed., 202–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, Knut. 1996. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2004. On the interaction of information structure and formal structure in constructions. In Mirjam Fried & Jan-Ola Östman (eds.), Construction Grammar in a cross-language perspective, 157–199. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1984. Active Zones. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 172–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001. Discourse in Cognitive Grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 12(2). 143–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Linell, Per. 2009. Grammatical constructions in dialogue. In Alexander Bergs & Gabriele Diewald (eds.), Contexts and constructions, 97–110. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mairal, Ricardo & Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza. 2009. Levels of description and explanation in meaning construction. In Christopher S. Butler & Javier Martín (eds.), Deconstructing constructions, 153–198. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mann, William & Sandra Thompson. 1988. Rhetorical Structure Theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization. Text 8(3). 243–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McKeown, Kathleen R. 1985. Text generation: Using discourse strategies and focus constraints to generate natural language text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Michaelis, Laura & Knut Lambrecht. 1996. Toward a construction-based theory of language function. Language 72(2). 215–247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nikiforidou, Kiki. 2009. Constructional analysis. In Frank Brisard, Jan-Ola Östman & Jef Verschueren (eds.), Grammar, meaning and pragmatics, 16–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Östman, Jan-Ola. 1999. Coherence through understanding through discourse patterns. In Wolfram Bublitz, Uta Lenk & Eija Ventola (eds.), Coherence in spoken and written discourse, 77–100. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. Construction discourse: A prolegomenon. In Jan-Ola Östman & Mirjam Fried. (eds.), Construction Grammars, 121–144. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Östman, Jan-Ola & Mirjam Fried. 2005. The cognitive grounding of Constructional Grammar. In Jan-Ola Östman & Mirjam Fried. (eds.), Construction Grammars, 1–13. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Östman, Jan-Ola & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Dialects, discourse, and Construction Grammar. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar, 476–490. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza, Francisco J. & María Ángeles Gómez-González. 2014. Constructing discourse and discourse constructions. In María Ángeles Gómez-González, Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco Gonzálvez-García (eds.), Theory and practice in functional-cognitive space, 295–314. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza, Francisco J. & Ricardo Mairal. 2008. Levels of description and constraining factors in meaning construction: An introduction to the Lexical Constructional Model. Folia Linguistica 42(2). 355–400.Google Scholar
Ruppenhofer, Josef & Laura A. Michaelis. 2010. A constructional account of genre-based argument omissions. Constructions and Frames 2(2). 158–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2010. Entrenchment, salience, and basic levels. In Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics, 117–138. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(ed.). 2017. Entrenchment and the psychology of language learning: How we organize and adapt linguistic knowledge. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Steen, Gerard. 2011. Genre between the humanities and the sciences. In Marcus Callies, Wolfram R. Keller & Astrid Lohöfer (eds.), Bi-directionality in the cognitive sciences, 24–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stukker, Ninke, Wilbert Spooren & Gerard Steen (eds.). 2016. Genre in language, discourse and cognition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taboada, Maite & María de los Ángeles Gómez-González. 2010. Discourse markers and coherence relations. Linguistics and the Human Sciences 6(1–3). 17–41.Google Scholar
The Five Graces Group (Clay Beckner, Richard Blythe, Joan Bybee, Morten H. Christiansen, William Croft, Nick C. Ellis, Holland, Jinyun Ke, Diane Larsen-Freeman, Tom Schoenemann). 2009. Language is a complex-adaptive system: Position paper. Language Learning 59(1). 1–26.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A. 1979. Pragmatic connectives. Journal of Pragmatics 3(5). 447–456. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vergaro, Carla. 2002. “Dear sirs, what would you do if you were in our position?” Discourse strategies of Italian and English chasing money letters. Journal of Pragmatics 34(9). 1211–1233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Concessive constructions in English business letter discourse. Text & Talk 28(1). 97–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wide, Camilla. 2009. Interactional construction grammar. In Alexander Bergs & Gabriele Diewald (eds.), Contexts and constructions, 111–142. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Yan, Hengbin
2022. Data-Driven Smart e-Learning for English for Specific Purposes. In Smart Education and e-Learning - Smart Pedagogy [Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 305], ► pp. 151 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.