Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Analysis of disagreement'

English
Ed.D.
While the small group discussion is widely used in language classes, there is little empirical research on its efficacy. This research specifically focuses on novice level language students in order to understand the ways that they express agreement and disagreement in group interaction. This study utilizes the methodological framework of Conversation Analysis conducting a micro-analysis of student turn-taking practices and their embodied behavior. This research uncovered the fact that the novice level language learners utilized resources that are not generally considered when investigating agreement and disagreement. Nonverbal actions such as smiles and gaze shifts accomplished affiliative work mitigating disagreement turns. Facial expression, laughter, and gestures were often relied on to compensate for deficits in grammar and lexicon. A second finding of the research was that the students were able to accomplish significantly more as members of a group than they could as individuals. The multi-person context created a framework enabling members to participate. The students demonstrated a high level of collaboration, joining in word searches, successfully constructing collaborated completions, and frequently offering support to each other through receipt tokens, nods, and smiles. They proved to be each other's best resource. Another finding of the study was the importance of basic patterns of turns in effective group discussion. For example, in order for an argumentative sequence to emerge, a third response was expected: Turn 1, the claim; Turn 2, disagreement; and, Turn 3, defense, counterattack, or concession by the first speaker or a different speaker. For less skillful groups where topics were not well developed, only two-part sequences were utilized, not allowing subsequent and related talk to occur. Finally, this study contributes to research on the acquisition of disagreement strategies. Surprisingly, in expressing disagreement, these novice level language students employed a number of different means to express disagreement that were more often associated with advanced learners. For example, they delayed their disagreement turns, and they utilized accounts, exemplification, and elaboration when disagreeing. Though these students were not always able to express themselves fluently, they were nevertheless quite capable in expressing agreement and disagreement in the target language.
Temple University--Theses

Knowledge of successful Business English as a lingua franca (BELF) has been recognized to be an essential element in overall business know-how (Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen, 2010). In line with this notion, research has found that professionals use BELF and exploit a variety of discourse and pragmatic strategies that aid the process of cooperation and agreement so that mutual understanding can be reached (Firth, 1996; Kankaanranta & Planken, 2010; Pitzl, 2005). However, research has reported situations where business negotiators need to handle discord while maintaining a working rapport with the opposing party (e.g. Bjørge, 2012), indicating that the ability to produce the appropriate expression of disagreement is an imperative skill. Nonetheless, while there is now a better understanding of how business professionals establish common ground through using BELF, little work has been carried out on the subject on how professionals express disagreement in the same aspect (but see e.g. Bjørge, 2012; Stalpers, 1995). The present study aims to address this gap and expand the current knowledge on how business professionals express and handle disagreement in naturally-occurring face-to-face negotiations. The collected material consists of approximately 4 hours of BELF discourse recorded at a business convention in Germany. Fifteen disagreement episodes were identified, transcribed and analyzed using Conversation Analytic (CA) procedures. The present paper seeks to explore two aspects of the current topic, namely how business professionals (using BELF) express disagreement during business negotiations, and whether mitigation strategies are used when disagreement is expressed. The findings suggest that disagreements are solely content-related and are expressed in a variety of ways as they are coupled with a varied use of mitigation devices (i.e. delay and added support). Furthermore, there were instances of unmitigated expressions in the form of blunt contradictions. It is suggested that disagreements in BELF negotiations are required actions and may serve a dual purpose. The main goal of expressing disagreement is to increase clarity in cases where essential information may be misinterpreted or misguided; additionally, it indicates the speaker’s stance in the argument. Lastly, as there is a need for better knowledge of successful BELF, the present study is likely to be of interest for those who are engaged in the global business discourse community as well as researchers studying international business settings.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi o de avaliar a aplicação de dois índices de vegetação, NDVI e NDWI, para fins de mapeamento de áreas de arroz irrigado a partir de chaves de classificação temporal. A área do estudo localiza-se na planície costeira interna do Rio Grande do Sul, compondo-se de lavouras de arroz cultivadas no perímetro de irrigação do projeto de assentamento Viamão, região agrícola pertencente à bacia hidrográfica do rio Gravataí. Obtiveram-se imagens digitais de três sistemas sensores, TM (satélite Landsat-5), LISS-III (satélite IRS-P6) e OLI (satélite Landsat-8) para o período compreendido entre primeiro de julho de 2008 e 30 de junho de 2014, correspondendo a seis safras agrícolas. Os dois índices foram calculados para cada cena após o registro geométrico das imagens com a base cartográfica oficial, permitindo avaliar a concordância do mapeamento a partir de imagens de referência de campo. Os padrões de variação temporal dos dois índices de vegetação para as seis safras agrícolas foram analisados para fornecer os parâmetros utilizados na escolha dos limiares dos algoritmos de classificação temporal. As duas chaves de classificação geraram mapas temáticos de uso da terra com duas classes cada: arroz e não arroz. Posteriormente, o resultado do mapeamento para três safras agrícolas sucessivas (2009/10, 2010/11 e 2011/12) foram comparados com a referência e procedida análise da matriz de confusão. Os valores resultantes da análise de concordância ficaram em 77%, 63% e 77% de exatidão global, respectivamente para cada safra considerando o algoritmo do NDVI, e de 88%; 59% e 76%, respectivamente para o algoritmo do NDWI. A análise de discordância evidenciou que a maior parte do erro dos dois algoritmos se deveu à quantidade da discordância, com pouca ou nenhuma discordância na alocação, e que a metodologia empregada pode ser utilizada para auxiliar no mapeamento do plantio de arroz irrigado na área de estudo.
The objective of this work was to evaluate two vegetation indexes, NDVI and NDWI, for mapping paddy rice from temporal classification algorithms. The study area is located in the inner coastal plain of Rio Grande do Sul, consisting of crops of paddy rice in the irrigation perimeter of settlement Viamão, agricultural region in the basin of rio Gravataí. Digital images were obtained from three sensors, TM (satellite Landsat- 5), LISS-III (satellite IRS-P6) and OLI (satellite Landsat-8) for the period from 1 July 2008 and June 30, 2014, corresponding to six agricultural harvests. The two indices were calculated for each scene after the geometric registration of images with the official cartographic base, allowing the correlation mapping from field reference images. The patterns of temporal variation of the two indices of vegetation for six agricultural crops were analyzed to provide the parameters used in the choice of thresholds for temporal classification algorithms. The algorithms generated thematic maps of land use with two classes each: rice and no rice. Subsequently, the result of the mapping for three successive agricultural harvests (2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12) were compared with the reference and carried discordance. The resulting of accuracy assessment were in 77%, 63% and 77% of overall accuracy, respectively for each crop considering the NDVI algorithm, and 88%; 59% and 76%, respectively for the NDWI algorithm. The analysis of discordance showed that most of the error of the two algorithms was due to the quantity of disagreement, with little or no disagreement on allocation of disagreement, and that the methodology employed can be used to assist in mapping paddy rice in study area.

This paper focuses on facework used by the invited guests in a broadcasted debate. The purpose of this analysis is to investigate how the invited guests use facework and how the guest relate to their functional role within the debate. The aim is also to investigate how the phases of the debate regulate the facework used by the guests. The analysis is based on transcrition and videomaterial from one of Sweden’s most viewed debates, Opinion Live. Conversation analysis (CA) is part of the theoretical framework used to analyse support, interruption and conversation turns. To analyze facework this paper relies on Goffman’s theory of face and Muntigl & Turnbull’s four types of disagreement acts in facework and arguing. Brown & Levinson’s politeness theory has also been used to investigate facework and strategies. In addition, Svensson’s definition of the debate’s specific roles within the format has also been used. The results show that facework has two purposes. The first is that it is used to defend the guest’s own face. The other purpose is to attack other guest’s faces which implies that their functional roles in the debate are being challenged. The results also points towards that the structure of the conversation in the debate itself influence the types of facework used by the guests.

The thesis deals with quality theory, quality management system based on the ISO ČSN EN 9001 norm and disagreement management in a construction production company. In addition, the work describes ways of reaching quality and principles of managing quality of a given product. Procedures, methods and appropriate measures emerging from the theory of managing product quality are followingly implemented into a proposal for leading a real construction production company.

This diploma thesis deals with the generation of the different drope stampings in industrial process in MBNS Kovárna Company. The main purpose of this thesis is analysis of the industrial process and finding the main factors influences on the process. It especially deals with forgings of the shafts and also flanges with the similar quality of material 42CrMo4. Reasons of the disagreements are focused on surface insensibilities of the forging - crack. First theoretic part introduces company, meaning of the quality of material and describes tools used for finding reasons of the generation of disagreements. In the second practical part is described the whole industrial process and determination of the reasons of disagreements. In concluding part the results are analyzed and some correctional recommendations are suggested.

The main purpose of this study is to conduct a contrastive analysis on a corpus of Swedish and Spanish family conversations with respect to two adjacency pairs: opinion-agreement/disagreement (OADs) and offer-acceptance/rejection (OARs). On one hand, from a structural perspective, based on the methodology of Conversation Analysis, one of the objectives is to observe how (dis)preferred turns of the OADs and OARs are managed by the interlocutors. On the other hand, from a functional perspective, based on the methodology of Sociocultural Pragmatics, the intention is to study how face is constructed and how politeness is managed by the family members when expressing OADs and OARs. The structural analysis of OADs and OARs shows that the majority of agreements and acceptances follow the rules for preferred turns proposed by orthodox conversation analysts, i.e. they appear directly after the first part of the adjacency pair (opinion or offer), and they are brief and unambiguous. However, the structural analysis also reveals that 70% (Swedish corpus) and 72% (Spanish corpus) of the disagreements as well as 64% (Swedish corpus) and 70% (Spanish corpus) of the rejections have a tendency to not follow the proposed rules for dispreferred turns, i.e. they are not delayed or accompanied by hesitations, justifications, etc. and nor are they evaluated as dispreferred by the participants. This indicates that social perspective, especially face, has to be considered when deciding what is considered (dis)preferred. The functional analysis of the OADs indicates that the majority of the disagreements in both Swedish (68%) and Spanish (79%) corpus are not mitigated, but rather are expressed in a fairly direct manner. Swedes tend to avoid disagreements, and therefore we expected to find a major difference between the two groups. One explanation could be that family members enjoy close relationships, and therefore the Swedes feel free to express their disagreements. As for the impact on the family members face, in both groups, it is both autonomy face and affiliation face that are influenced when OADs are expressed. As for agreement, for example, it is usually autonomy face that is affected. We interpret this as a way for the participants to show that both speakers and listeners have valuable opinions that deserve to be both voiced and commented on. This reveals the more discursive (rather than ritual) nature of OADs. In addition, the functional study of OARs shows that acceptances and rejections in both corpora are expressed using both ritual and attenuating politeness according to the norms required by the situation. Concerning the impact on face, autonomy face has different requirements in the two cultures: in the Swedish conversations, it is important to offer food without insisting several times, and in the Spanish corpus, it is important to offer food more than one or two times, and there is also a tendency to refuse the offer several times before accepting it. Therefore, according to one’s situational role, one has to know how to both give and receive offers, which points to the more ritual nature of OARs. Finally, we want to emphasize that by adding a social perspective to the structural one, we can interpret the meaning of the conversations in a way that provides a broader understanding of what is being said as participants express OADs and OARs.

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The objective of this research is the examination of disagreement in an informal casual talk-in-interaction between a man and a woman to verify the lexicogrammatical choices that highlight the occurrence of disagreements, and the circumstances surrounding these events. The study of the act of disagreeing in daily conversation has been associated to both, Conversation Analysis studies, based on the notion of preference, and to the concept of model of Politeness. There are notable points of convergence in the preference setting and politeness. More specifically, both see disagreement as socially disruptive and, thus, considered as the second dispreferred part or face-threatening-acts. Both approaches emphasize the fact that disagreements should be mitigated or postponed: between, within and across speech turns. Thus, conversational disagreements tend to be temporarily postponed and structurally complex and generally preceded by partial agreements, hesitations, requests for clarification, repetitions of the question, among others. In fact, the degree and the type of strategy used to mitigate face-threatening-acts or dispreferred acts cannot be postulated a priori, but must be supported by empirical data analysis, which are situationally and contextually sensitive of the event of speech in which the act occurs. The critical nature of the analysis carried out is supported by the Systemic Functional Linguistics, which allows the relationship between the microstructure of lexicogrammatical choices with the macrostructure of disagreement and their implications. Following the trend of this research area trend, I adopt an eclectic theoretical base, extracting insights of different approaches, but with special focus on Conversation Analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Linguistics. This research aims to answer the following questions: (a) How are disagreement and mitigation characterized linguistically? (b) Which roles do causality, concession and adversativity perform in this process? (c) What is the function of Appraisal and Modality in relation to these issues?
O objetivo desta pesquisa é o exame do desacordo em um diálogo informal entre um homem e uma mulher para verificar as escolhas léxico-gramaticais que marcam a ocorrência de desacordos, bem como as circunstâncias que cercam essas ocorrências. O estudo do ato de discordar na conversa diária tem sido associado de um lado ao trabalho de Análise da Conversa, com base na noção de preferência, e, de outro lado, ao conceito de face no modelo de polidez. Há notáveis pontos de convergência na definição de preferência e de polidez. Mais especificamente, ambas veem o desacordo como socialmente disruptivo, sendo assim, considerado como segunda parte despreferida ou atos-ameaçadores-de-face. Ambas as abordagens enfatizam o fato de que os desacordos devem ser mitigados ou adiados: entre, dentro e através de turnos. Assim, os desacordos conversacionais tendem a ser temporariamente postergados e estruturalmente complexos e, em geral, prefaciados por acordos parciais, hesitações, pedidos de esclarecimento, repetição da pergunta, entre outros. Na realidade, o grau e o tipo de estratégia usados para mitigar as ameaças-de-face ou os atos despreferidos não podem ser postulados a priori, mas precisam ser apoiados em análises de dados empíricos, sensíveis ao contexto tanto situacional quanto cultural - do evento da fala em que o ato ocorre. A análise de cunho crítico tem o apoio da Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional, que permite fazer a relação entre a microestrutura das escolhas léxico-gramaticais com a macroestrutura do desacordo e suas implicações. Seguindo tendência dessa área de pesquisa, adoto uma base teórica eclética, extraindo as intravisões de diferentes abordagens, mas com referência especial para a Análise da Conversa, a Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional e a Linguística Crítica. A pesquisa deve responder às seguintes perguntas: (a) Como se caracteriza linguisticamente o desacordo ou a sua mitigação? (b) Que papéis exercem, nesse processo, a causalidade, a concessividade e a adversatividade? (c) Qual é a função da Avaliatividade e da Modalidade em relação a essas questões?

This thesis deals with the evaluation of the control system outputs in the production of fire car. In the first part of thesis is evaluated control system by company THT, Ltd.. The second, theoretical part, describes the seven basic quality tools, which represents tools for detection and analyzing of quality problems. In the third, practical part, is describes the proposed program, which serves as a simple tool for identification of the most frequent disagreements in the fire engines. In the final part is evaluated implementation of the proposed program in the company.

In this thesis, I study three aspects of sell-side analysts’ stock price forecasts, henceforth target prices: analyst teams’ target price forecast characteristics, analysts’ use of information to revise target prices, and determinants of target price disagreement between analysts.The first essay studies the target price forecast performance of team analysts in the UK and finds that teams issue timelier but not less accurate target prices. Unlike evidence from previous studies, my findings suggest that analyst teamwork may improve forecast timeliness without sacrificing forecast accuracy. However, market reactions to team target price revisions are not significantly different from those to individual analyst target price revisions, suggesting that although target prices issued by analyst teams are timelier and not less accurate than those of individual analysts, investors do not consider analyst team target prices more informative. I conjecture that analysts may work in teams to meet the demand to cover more companies while maintaining the quality of research by individual team members rather than to issue more informative reports.In the second essay, I study how analysts revise their target prices in response to new information implicit in recent market returns, stock excess returns and other analysts’ target price revisions. The results suggest that analysts’ target price revisions are significantly influenced by market returns, stock excess return and other analysts’ target price revisions. I also find that the correlation between target price revisions and stock excess returns is significantly higher when the news implicit in these returns is bad rather than good. I conjecture that analysts discover more bad news from the information in stock excess returns because firms tend to withhold bad news, disclosing it only when it becomes inevitable, while they disclose good news early. Using a new measure of bad to good news concentration, I show that the asymmetric responsiveness of target price revisions to positive and negative stock excess returns is significant for firms with the highest concentration of bad news but is insignificant for firms with the lowest concentration of bad news. I argue that firms with the highest concentration of bad news are more likely to withhold and accumulate bad news. The findings, therefore, support my hypothesis that analysts discover more bad news than good news from stock returns because firms tend to withhold bad news, disclosing it only when it is inevitable. The third essay examines the determinants of analyst target price disagreement. I find that while disagreement in short-term earnings and in long-term earnings growth forecasts are significant determinants, recent 12-month idiosyncratic return volatility has the strongest explanatory power for target price disagreement. The findings suggest that target price disagreement is driven not only by analyst disagreement about short-term earnings and long-term earnings growth, but also by differences in analysts’ opinions about the impact of recent firm-specific events on value drivers beyond short-term future earnings and long-term growth, which are eventually reflected in past idiosyncratic return volatility.

Aquesta tesi té com a objectiu principal estudiar l’expressió de l’acord i el desacord en català en tres gèneres discursius diferents: converses col·loquials, reunions i tutories universitàries. Per dur a terme aquest estudi, s’ha compilat un corpus oral ad hoc que s’ha explotat amb una metodologia que combina elements propis de la pragmàtica, la lingüística de corpus i l’anàlisi de la conversa. L’anàlisi del corpus parteix de l’aplicació d’una taxonomia que conté cinc nivells diferents (situació comunicativa, informació sociolingüística, pragmàtica, interacció i estructura), l’aplicació de la qual ofereix uns resultats quantitatius que proporcionen una visió global de l’acord i el desacord i de les diferències que apareixen a causa de la incidència de diferents factors de la situació comunicativa en què tenen lloc. L’anàlisi quantitativa es complementa amb una anàlisi qualitativa en què s’aprofundeix en la realització d’aquests actes i s’estudia la gestió de la imatge que fan els parlants de català en la interacció en els tres gèneres discursius a partir de l’observació de fragments concrets.
The main aim of this PhD dissertation is to study agreement and disagreement in Catalan in three different discourse genres: colloquial conversations, meetings and professors’ office hours. To this end, a spoken corpus was compiled ad hoc, which has been exploited combining the methodology of pragmatics, corpus linguistics and conversation analysis. The analysis results from the design of a complex taxonomy which contains five different layers (situational, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, interactional and structural), the application of which provides a global vision on agreement and disagreement and on the differences that are caused by the different factors that come into play in each specific communicative situation. The quantitative analysis is complemented by a qualitative analysis that delves into the realization of these acts and studies the management of face in interaction carried out by Catalan speakers in these three genres through the observation of specific extracts from the corpus.

The specialised literature has suggested the intermediate position of television dialogue and subtitling along the continuum from spoken to written language (e.g. Díaz-Cintas 2003; Quaglio 2009; Forchini 2012). This dissertation adopts a corpus-driven methodology to tackle this issue from a descriptive, contrastive point of view. It reports on results of the analysis of the Corpus of Police Procedurals (CoPP), a corpus containing the transcribed dialogue (EN) and the DVD subtitling (ES) of fifteen episodes of three contemporary police procedurals, namely Dexter (Showtime, 2006), The Mentalist (Warner Bros, 2008), and Castle (ABC, 2009). A selection of syntactic and lexical features typically attributed to either poles of the continuum have been scrutinized from a quantitative and a qualitative approach. The statistical basis of the quantitative study allows identification of patterns of behaviour (i.e. norms) on the dialogue creators’ and the subtitlers’ part. Qualitative lexical analysis adapts the corpus pattern analysis (CPA) methodology proposed by Hanks (esp. 2004, 2013a), to date used for lexicographic purposes only, for the study of lexical exploitation, i.e. creativity, in this type of texts.
La bibliografía especializada ha sugerido la posición del diálogo televisivo y del subtitulado como géneros intermedios en el continuo oralidad-escritura (p. ej. Díaz-Cintas 2003, Quaglio 2009; Forchini 2012). Esta tesis adopta la metodología corpus-driven (‘dirigida por el corpus’) para abordar esta cuestión desde un punto de vista descriptivo y contrastivo, a partir del análisis del Corpus of Police Procedurals (CoPP), un corpus compilado para los propósitos de esta investigación que contiene, alineados, el diálogo (EN) y el subtitulado para DVD (ES) de quince capítulos de tres series de ficción policíaca procesal contemporáneas: Dexter (Showtime, 2006), El mentalista (Warner Bros, 2008) y Castle (ABC, 2009). Una selección de rasgos sintácticos y léxicos prototípicamente atribuidos a ambos polos del continuo han sido examinados tanto cuantitativa como cualitativamente. La base estadística de los análisis cuantitativos llevados a cabo revela patrones de comportamiento (normas) en los creadores del diálogo ficcional y en sus traductores. El análisis cualitativo del léxico adapta la metodología lexicográfica de análisis de patrones de corpus (CPA) propuesta por Hanks (esp. 2004, 2013a) para el estudio de la explotación léxica (creatividad) en este tipo de textos.

L’enjeu de la présente recherche est d’examiner la gestion du désaccord entre magistrats dans une Cour d’Appel brésilienne, tout en procédant à l’identification de la stase (du conflit) entre eux, dans les moments de définition du juste montant (le « suum cuique tribuere »), souvent désigné par l’expression pretium doloris ou « prix de la douleur ». On s’intéresse moins au côté technique et strictement juridique des affaires de dommages et intérêts et plutôt à l’analyse argumentative/rhétorique des interactions enregistrées en audio. Après des réflexions à propos de quelques théories de l’argumentation (Aristote, Ducrot, Grize, Toulmin et autres), de l’argumentation juridique (Atienza, Perelman, Cornu et autres), des interactions verbales (Goffman, Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Traverso et autres) et des émotions en contexte d’interaction argumentative (Plantin), ce travail offre quatre chapitres analytiques où, parmi des analyses descriptives, on examine de près la façon que les magistrats/interactants allient la raison (la lettre de la loi) au côté émotionnel, au moment de qualifier une affaire en tant que « dommage », concept flou, ouvert à maintes possibilités d’interprétation juridique, selon les juristes brésiliens (Reis, Cahali et autres). On procède à un inventaire des critères, parfois très originaux, qui font toute la richesse du moment des délibérés connu sous le terme de quantum debeatur (ou, si l’on préfère, l’ad quantum). De cette façon, on constate que les magistrats peuvent même utiliser des « nonlegalist factors », ajoutant aux arguments techniques juridiques quelques valeurs, qui supposent une appréciation subjective des affaires en cours de jugement. Dans ces analyses, on montre encore comment l’hétéro-attribution d’une émotion acquiert une valeur argumentative, sans que cela disqualifie les jugements en appel pour autant. On examine aussi les procédés d’atténuation du désaccord exprimés par les magistrats, tout en mettant en relief la dimension stratégique de l’adoucissement conversationnel, car, comme on peut le constater, les attitudes des magistrats lors des délibérés manifestent une dimension rhétorique, dans les moments de définition du pretium doloris. De cette façon, en considérant la richesse et diversité des formules de politesse (par exemple, l’expression data venia), des réparateurs (excuses et justifications), des modalisateurs, entre autres procédés identifiés par la pragmatique des interactions, on découvre plusieurs façons très efficaces de gérer le conflit, employées par les magistrats lorsqu'ils prennent en charge le rôle actanciel d’opposant lors des délibérés. On repère aussi quelques stratégies argumentatives utilisées exclusivement en contexte d’interaction, comme l’accord dissonant, ce qui nous permet de pointer la “colonisation argumentative” du discours d’un magistrat par l’autre. L’identification de ce que nous avons nommé renverseur (dispositif qui permet aux magistrats de retourner à 180° une décision) nous aide aussi à comprendre comment les avis des magistrats peuvent s’affronter irrévocablement, donnant place à des stases irréversibles.On montre aussi, à partir de quelques études de cas, comment fonctionne l’assimilation argumentative en tant que phénomène interactif-argumentatif qui émerge dans les moments de stase réversible entre les magistrats, faisant s'écrouler les barrières argumentatives entre les interactants, avant que l’un d’entre eux ne manifeste un changement de disposition vis-à-vis de la décision à prendre. On présente enfin un type d’argument très caractéristique du corpus TRIBUNAL (le corpus dont on dispose pour cette recherche) : l’argument de l’expérience vécue, lequel apparaît dans les séquences examinées et qui donnent une valeur argumentative et rhétorique non négligeable aux votes des magistrats
This thesis aims to describe the mechanisms of disagreement management among judges in a court of Brazil. The source of the analyzes will be some discussions between judges, audio recorded, always in Second Instance. The focus of the research is the moment of (re)definition of the value of compensation (or the so-called « price of pain » / pretium doloris) to be paid in cases of moral damage. Thus, after plunging in texts related to theories of argumentation (Aristotle, Ducrot, Grize, Toulmin among others), to strictly legal argumentation (Atienza, Perelman, Cornu among others), to the theories of verbal interaction (Goffman, Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Traverso among others) and also the theories related to the study of emotions in the context of argumentative interaction (Plantin), this research presents four analytical parts in which, through meticulously descriptive work, we propose to examine the way that judges, when to judge controversial cases, combine reason and emotion to their justifications. Thus, we proceed to an inventory of the criteria used by judges, some very original, and that make particularly interesting the moment of defining the quantum debeatur (or, if you prefer, the ad quantum). As we will see, the magistrates will also use non-legal criteria (« nonlegalist factors »), in this endeavor, at the time of integrating to the strictly legal arguments some arguments related to their own personal experiences, without, thereby, disqualifying the handed down verdicts. In fact, and as we will note, the time of definition of pretium doloris is still quite controversial, according to Brazilian jurists (Reis, Cahali among others).We also examine the mechanisms of attenuating disagreements, used by magistrates in times of conflict (stase), always trying to unveil the strategic and rhetoric sides of such attitudes. Thus, taking into account the richness and diversity of the so called « formulas of politeness », in in the use of expressions such as data venia or in the use of modalizers, among others, we discover the unique and effective ways that magistrates find to deal with conflict of opinions among them, during deliberations. Thus, we will highlight the strategy of « dissonant agreement » observed in some sessions and that, as we show, indicates a kind of « argumentative colonization » of speeches given by the judges. We also highlight an important mechanism used in times of conflict, to which we gave the name of argumentative inverter. Such a device allows a magistrate invert in 180º the decision of the Magistrate of First Instance, for example, in addition to helping us understand how the irreversible disagreement (stase irréversible) ranks among the expert judges.The analyzes also show, from case studies, how the argumentative assimilation works, an argumentative-interactional phenomenon that emerges in times of reversible conflict (stase réversible) among judges. Such manifestation will allow us to check how a judge can convince / persuade another in moments of controversy and disagreement between them. Finally, we show how the argument from personal experience works, a typical agument of the COURT corpus (the name of the corpus we adopted), widely used by judges and which gives a rhetorical touch to the more technical arguments, in moments of deliberations; particularly in the moment of qualification of an action as illegal

This doctoral thesis analyzes various philosophical treatments of the phenomenon of legal disagreements, particularly focusing on the exchange, based on it, stemming from Ronald Dworkin’s challenge to legal positivism. The thesis presents Dworkin’s initial attack to legal positivism grounded on the idea that the latter is supposedly unable to account for disagreements in law, as well as Dworkin’s explanatory alternative to it, which involves developing a theoretical approach largely different (even opposed) to the positivist’s. After that, three different positivist replies are analyzed. All of them are critically scrutinized, but from their discussion I also collect elements which I finally use to try to offer 1) a more comprehensive and sophisticated framework for explaining the phenomenon of legal disagreements, and 2) a general reassessment of the discursive role pertaining to jurisprudence, in contrast to that pertaining to the participants of the legal practice
El trabajo consiste en un análisis de diversos tratamientos iusfilosóficos del fenómeno de los desacuerdos jurídicos, en particular teniendo en cuenta el desafío que Ronald Dworkin presentara al positivismo jurídico. En el trabajo se presenta el ataque inicial de Dworkin fundado en la idea de que el positivismo sería incapaz de dar cuenta de este fenómeno, y la propia alternativa explicativa dworkineana, que supone el desarrollo de un enfoque en gran medida distinto (y opuesto) al positivista. De allí se pasa al análisis de tres distintas respuestas ofrecidas a dicho desafío. Las tres reciben un fuerte escrutinio crítico, pero de su discusión se extrae, asimismo, una serie de elementos con la que se intenta ofrecer 1) un marco explicativo más comprehensivo y sofisticado del fenómeno, y 2) una reconsideración general del rol discursivo que corresponde a la teoría del derecho, frente al que cumplen los participantes de la práctica jurídica

碩士
國立政治大學
語言學研究所
97
Although people try to avoid opposition for the sake of politeness or other reasons, disagreement, which may threaten interpersonal relationship and the success of communication, is inevitable in our daily life. Previous studies on disagreement (including dispute, argument, conflict, etc.) have not probe into the nature of the referential content—whether it is content-based (in this study, C-disagreement) or evaluation-based (in this study, E-disagreement), and the influences of social factors on disagreement have rarely been examined in Taiwan. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to see what type of disagreement are most likely to occur in daily conversations and to examine whether age is an influential factor on linguistic choices for in disagreement in Chinese society. This study uses the framework of conversational analysis (CA), and adopts speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1975), Cooperative Principles (Grice, 1975) and Politeness Principles (Brown and Levinson’s, 1978, 1987; Leech, 1983) as the theoretical foundations. 12 conversations by speakers of 8 same-age groups (including 4 old groups and 4 young groups) and 4 cross-age groups were examined for disagreement. Related data are categorized, analyzed, and discussed by types of disagreement, linguistic markers, pragmatic strategies, social variable (in this study, age), and the interaction among the four. The results of the data analyses show, first, people adopt nearly twice more E-disagreement than C-disagreement; moreover, E-disagreement based on personal judgment emerges more often than E-disagreement based on socio-cultural evaluation. Second, for linguistic markers, negation, pre-announcement marker, and affirmative (in this order) are adopted more in disagreement. However, preferences for linguistic markers change according to types of disagreement. In C-disagreement, direct syntactic markers, such as negation and affirmative, are used more frequently than the others; however, in E-disagreement, direct negation (syntactic) and indirect pre-announcement (lexical) are used with equal frequencies. Third, among pragmatic strategies, correction, account, and challenge (in this order) are adopted more frequently than the others. The usage of pragmatic strategies varies with types of disagreement. In C-disagreement, correction is highly adopted. But in E-disagreement, correction, account, and challenge are used with equal percentages. Fourth, the fact that more varieties of linguistic markers are used in each pragmatic strategy in E-disagreement than in C-disagreement may imply impoliteness, since face-threatening force is more serious in E-disagreement than in C-disagreement, which, in turn, indicates that more careful manipulation is needed in using E-disagreement. Fifth, age is influential in disagreement. More disagreements are found in the same-age groups than in the cross-age groups. Last, the hearer’s role is found to be more influential than the speaker’s role.

博士
國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
94
ABSTRACT AN ANALYSIS OF DISAGREEMENT SPEECH ACT IN TAIWANESE EFL SPEAKERS’ ARGUING TALK By Tuan, Hui-tsen Doctor of Philosophy National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan. 2006 Dr. Grover K. H. Yu The purpose of this study is to explore the speakers’ norms of disagreements used in an arguing talk by Taiwanese EFL learners, native speakers of American English and Chinese native speakers, with respect to interlanguage pragmatics. By so doing, we can have a better understanding of the interlanguage behavior of Taiwanese EFL learners and the issue of language transfer. The subjects were comprised of 67 Taiwanese EFL students with English major, 54 American college students to form a L1-English control group, and 45 Chinese college students with non-English major in Taiwan whose data served as L1-Chinese baseline. According to their TOEFL scores, The Taiwanese EFL students were placed into two groups: the advanced EFL group and the intermediate EFL group. The data elicitation method was a web-based interactive discourse completion task. The research findings were summarized as follows. (1) The CNS and ENS had preference for different local strategic choices for expressing disagreement; in particular, their choice of global approaches to the speech event of conflict talk or argument varies. First of all, the Chinese were sensitive to power differential and the type of situation when applying facework. They tuned up their linguistic forms at appropriate pitch in order to specify their acknowledgement of social status and in situations. Therefore, the Chinese spoke ‘up’ by opting for a deference style to show respect and deference to the addressee with greater institutionalized power. The CNS in the present corpus were observed to avoid direct confrontation and constrain themselves from producing face-aggravating acts, like contradicting the interlocutor’s prior claims, when they were placed in a situation with higher-status addressees. The Chinese spoke ‘down’ by using a solidarity style to claim authority and assure their power privilege. As a result, they employed more face-damaging acts, such as challenges (CH), contradictions (CT) and accusation, to express an oppositional turn in addressing to the interlocutor with less power. The findings suggest that the Chinese tend to be situation-centered in terms of the use of politeness strategies. (2) The American native speakers valued highly their own individual achievement and self-respect. Politeness was thought to be an individual’s option. When face threats to the current speakers outweighed concerns for the interlocutor’s face want, Americans would like to speak forcefully and chose aggravated disagreements, irrespective of the interlocutor’s relative power status. For Americans, it is common to be involved in rational argument. (3) The advanced EFL subjects, in general, resembled the ENS, in terms of the patterns of behavior in expressing opposition. However, they were still highly sensitive to power differentials. In response to the boss’s reprimand, like their L1-Chinese folks, the advanced participants employed a deferential style to convey their oppositional messages. In the case of the professor’s unfavorable assessment, the advanced subjects used a defensive tone to directly deny and contradict the interlocutor’s previous claim. Such a difference between the cases marks out the significance of the variable of topic of disagreement in affecting choice of politeness strategies. Roughly speaking, the advanced EFL students did not differentiate their L1 and L2 in the politeness strategies to express disagreements. Yet, they seemed to be more polite in English than in Chinese. (4) Generally, the intermediate EFL subjects transferred a number of L1-Chinese speaking rules into their L2-English processing. However, the intermediate participants indeed differentiated their L1 and L2 in the directness of expressing their opposition. In L2-English situations, the intermediate subjects favored a deference style to show their submission to the boss’s reprimand and the professor’s unfavorable assessment; they preferred a friendly tone to claim solidarity with their subordinates. The intermediate EFL learners had a face-off in L1-Chinese by asserting their righteousness to their interlocutors with more power and by claiming authority with the subordinates in a “bossy” tone. It stands to reason that the intermediate subjects resorted much to the formulaic speech, which makes their expressions of disagreement more polite and less threatening. (5) The hypothesis of gender-related differences in disagreement expressions was partially confirmed. In a broad sense, the group differences were not affected by the speakers’ gender, except for some mitigated disagreements preferred by female advanced participants. The addressees’ gender played a key role in the realization of disagreements. For example, mitigated disagreements were more employed to address to male interlocutors, and aggravated disagreements to be expressed more often to female addresses. The dominance approach can be drawn upon to explain the different linguistic performance. The present results illustrate the complexity of power, gender and contextual variables of topic of disagreement and perception of face aggravation as factors in influencing the choice of politeness strategies of disagreements. The results also have some pedagogical implications: explicit teaching of TL cultural conventions (like the use of cultural scripts) and observation tasks of different types can raise L2 learners’ cultural awareness. By dint of various activities, the learners are provided with opportunities to practice the TL speaking rules or conventions; as a result, they can enhance and enrich their communicative competence. In the end, this dissertation suggests that the further research should extend to the data based on ethnographic observation to examine the validity of the present findings. More sociolinguistic variables, such as social distance and age, need to be taken into account in future studies. The perception of face aggravation towards direct confrontation across culture also merits a closer look. The findings of the further research are believed to shed more light into the field of interlanguage pragmatics and cross-cultural communication.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
華語教學碩士學位學程
107
According to needs analysis of predecessors (Wang, 2006, 2011; Li, 2011; Du, 2014), Chinese language learners'' demand for business Chinese does exist, and the ability to express opinions during the meeting is also among the learner''s expectations. In addition to the influence of the mother tongue, the expressions of Chinese learners'' opinions are also affected by the guidance of the textbooks, so that the expressions are more limited. The practice of expressing objective opinion is, even more, lacking in textbooks. This present study collected 269 minutes of natural speech corpus from the private small-scale company''s internal meeting. It is divided into two major analytical categories according to the type of objection, including 7 pragmatic strategies and 11 linguistic features. Supplemented by Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987), the Face-threating act (FTA) theory is used to rank the strength of the opposition strategy. It has been observed that even if the meeting context has obvious institutionality, the participants in the company are more familiar, therefore, the language performance is still mostly close to the ordinary conversation. However, although the content and form are similar to the ordinary conversation, the analyzed data proves that the institutionality still could be seen within sentence structure and strategy used by the speakers. In addition to the lexical difference, the use of the opposing strategy in the sentence hierarchy, such as weakened strategies, and the interpretation composed by explanatory strategy are the proves of difference between original conversation and institutional talk. The present study found that when the speaker expresses the objection, they often use a variety of strategies and linguistic features to generate subtle changes in the strength of the opposition, strengthen or weaken the face-threatening act. Furthermore, we found that when both sides speak with a higher-strength strategy or the turn becomes stagnant, a third person often joins and actively coordinates with suggestions or other weakened pragmatic strategies to make the dialogue go smoothly. From the results of data analysis, the combination of various strategies and features, as well as vocabulary and sentence patterns have different functions, and represent different strengths. The present study used these results to design three-stage teaching activities based on the formulaic speech pedagogy, at the same time to provid teaching advice. The teaching activities include basic form-focused structures, comprehensive use of strategies, and thematic activities. It is recommended as a comprehensive exercise after multiple lessons. The purpose of present study is to practice the results derived from natural speech corpus in the teaching field, and provide an institutional language reference for objection expressions.

The phenomenon of laughter has intrigued many philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and – most recently – linguists. While laughter is conventionally thought of as a component of the phenomenon of humor, this paper seeks to empirically illustrate how laughter may be used in unconventional ways, i.e. in response to nonhumorous (and in fact discordant) sequences in conversation. The term coping laughter refers to laughter that attempts to remedy, correct, reframe, or distract from something that is undesirable in a conversation. This paper proposes that there are two types of coping laughter (IN-laughter and RE-laughter) that accomplish different functions based on who initiates the laughter. Eight data samples are analyzed within the analytical frameworks of politeness and conversational framing with special treatments of the evolution of laughter and the structure of conflict.
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博士
高雄師範大學
英語學系
98
The purpose of the present study is to explore the interlanguage performance of 30 Taiwanese advanced EFL learners (EFL-A henceforth) and 30 intermediate ones (EFL-I thereafter) by comparing their oral disagreement behavior with that of 31 native speakers of American English (ENS henceforth) and 33 native speakers of Chinese (CNS thereafter) who serve as baselines. Detailed analyses of the four groups’ employment of different strategy types, the mean length of oral production and the use of paralinguistic features reveal important information among different groups’ communicative styles, which not only sheds light on the phenomenon of transfer effects, but also gives us insights into understanding different cultural values, norms, and assumptions concerning interpersonal use of disagreement speech act in a Western and a non-Western language (i.e., American English and Chinese respectively). With regard to variables investigated in the present study, they are composed of relative social status between the subjects and their interlocutors, (i.e., higher or lower), the gender of the subjects, the gender of the subjects’ interlocutors, and the English proficiency levels of Taiwanese English learners (EFL henceforth). Concerning the data elicitation method employed in the present study in obtaining oral production from the subjects, it is a web-based simulated role-play task. As for the major findings in the preset study, they are summarized as follows. To begin with, firstly, irrespective of the social status and gender difference, CNS tends to be the most direct group and is followed by ENS, EFL-A and then EFl-I. This reveals that CNS subjects in Taiwan have become bolder over these decades due to the rapid social change under the influence of Western culture, the educational reform in the higher education, Taiwan’s transformation from a collectivist to an individualist society, and the shift from extended to nuclear family arrangement in Taiwan, etc. Secondly, EFL-A tends to have comparable mean lengths with ENS and EFL-I has the lowest mean length. This is due to the fact that EFL-A’s linguistic competence is higher than EFL-I. In addition, EFL-I may find it safer to produce shorter utterances to evade any mistakes or miscommunication from occurring. Thirdly, CNS and ENS have the highest counts in the use of laugh quality. This phenomenon is understandable as ENS and CNS are native speakers of their languages and they have a better control on how and when to use this feature. As for EFL-A and EFL-I, the lower frequency of laugh quality may be due to the fact that they are aware that laugh quality needs to be tended with care. If it is not used in the right place at the right time with the right people, the user of this feature, instead of reaching the effect of lightening the atmosphere, can be interpreted as being cynical or ironic. This may accounts for EFL’s lower frequencies in the use of this feature, in particular for EFL-I. Fourthly, with respect to emphasized tone, on the whole, all the four groups have high frequencies in the use of this feature. In particular, CNS has the highest count, followed by ENS, EFL-A and then EFL-I. This may be due to the fact that the use of this feature does not require linguistic competence; thus, all four groups tend to make good use of this feature to make their utterances more effective and powerful. With respect to the use of the modifiers in the supportive move(s) by the four groups, on the whole, among the three categories of modifiers (i.e., syntactic downgraders, lexical/phrasal downgraders and upgraders), all the groups make more use of lexical/phrasal downgraders than the other two categories. When comparing among the four groups, we find that ENS tends to make the most use in the category of syntactic downgraders and upgraders, followed by EFL-A, EFL-I and then CNS As for the category of lexical/phrasal downgraders, EFL-A makes the most use. Regarding the four groups’ uses of the sub-categories of each main category, ENS tends to favor past tense of modals or auxiliary verbs, a sub-category of syntactic downgraders, more than EFL-A and EFL-I, in particular, to EFL-I. This reveals that EFL learners have the most difficulty in making use of the politeness function of this sub-category to mitigate the force of their disagreement, though they have all received instruction on the pragmatic use of this sub-category. Concerning the use of the other sub-category, conditional clause, the results show that there is not much difference among the four groups in its use, due to the effect of L1 transfer, for Chinese language also has the grammatical structure of conditional clauses; hence, it is considered to be easy for EFL learners to employ this sub-category to mitigate their disagreement. As far as the sub-categories of lexical/phrasal downgraders are concerned, the results reveal that ENS tends to have the lowest mean on politeness marker and maybe this is because this sub-category is greatly emphasized early in people’s childhood in Chinese culture. Regarding hedges, EFL-A is more adept at making use of them to mitigate the force of their disagreement, and this also leads to EFL-A’s long utterances than EFL-I. With respect to the use of downtoners, the researcher come across the finding that a wider range of it is found in the data of ENS and EFL-A than in that of EFL-I. Concerning subjectivizers, EFL-A and ENS are inclined to make more use of it than EFL-I. This reveals that both ENS and EFL-A are more adept than EFL-I at making use of it to gain extra time to plan their following utterances. In addition, both the groups of ENS and EFL-A have the tendency to make more use of inclusive pronouns than the other two groups. Last but not least, ENS is inclined to make the most use of contrastive markers and CNS tends to make the least use of it. Regarding the sub-category of upgraders, intensifiers, both ENS and EFL-A make more use in this sub-category than EFL-I with statistical distinctiveness. In addition, in the use of emphatic do/does, ENS and EFL-A tend to be more adept at making use of this structure than EFL-I, for this structure does not exist in Chinese language. Thus, to some extent, it causes difficulty to EFL-I subjects. In conclusion, all these results reveal that firstly, to some extent, the variables of social status, gender of the subjects and gender of the subjects’ interlocutor do cast some influence on the four groups’ employment of strategy types, mean length of oral production and employment of the paralinguistic features. Secondly, in the examination of the subjects’ use of modifiers in the supportive moves, the results also shed light into the effect of pragmatic transfer in that EFL-A demonstrates a greater developmental tendency toward ENS, whereas EFL-I’s behavior resembles that of CNS.

This study compared simulated sales negotiations with authentic negotiations. Specifically, three areas of language were considered: (i) chat phases, (ii) mitigation in disagreements, and (iii) argumentation. Findings indicated that greatly reduced use of chat phases in the simulations led to an impoverishment of the interactional aspect of communication. A statistical analysis indicated that mitigation of disagreements was significantly reduced when compared to authentic negotiations. Finally, in spite of the difference noted between professional and non-professional negotiators in the simulated negotiations, a significant increase in the use of argumentation was found in the simulations. Even though further research would be required, it could be hypothesized that these differences may be attributed to the one-off nature of simulations, the absence of a surrounding business context and the intrinsic difficulty of using interactional language in simulations. These factors should be considered when simulations are used and designed for business and LSP training courses.
Linguistics and Modern Languages
M.A. (Linguistics)