Computational
Models of
Discourse Analysis
Carolyn Penstein Rosé
Language Technologies Institute/
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Warm-Up
Pick either Greg or David’s analysis from the
discussion board
 Evaluate its validity (recall discussion in
Chapter 8) in terms of:

 Convergence,
Agreement, Coverage, Linguistic
details
 How many of these are you able to address from
what is given? For those that are not, what
would it take to be able to do so?
Example Analysis in Book (Ch 10)

Notice how discourse analysis is question driven, even in the
design for the data collection




Contrasting working class and upper-middle class teenagers
Two styles of interview for each kid so we can view them in
two different “socially situated identities”



How does their different participation in Discourses perpetuate societal
disparities?
How do you imagine this relating to computational approaches to
discourse analysis?
Home life
Academically related issues
Researchers “shadowed” the interviewees in their lives to get
insight into “life beyond the discourse”
Building Tasks

According to Gee’s theory, whenever we speak
or write, we are constructing 7 areas of reality

What we build: Significance, Practices,
Identities, Relationships, Politics, Connections,
Sign systems and knowledge
How we build them: Social languages, Socially
situated identities, Discourses, Conversations,
Figured worlds, intertextuality

Evaluating Validity (p123-124)

Note that an analysis is an argument, not just a bottom up “laundry
list” of answers to 42 questions.

Convergence


To what extent do your answers to the 42 questions offer consistent
support for your hypothesis
Agreement

Face Validity: do members of the discourse community you are studying
agree with your analysis
 Interrater-reliability: do multiple analysts agree with your analysis

Coverage


To what extent is your “model” generalizable to more data than what you
specifically looked at or discussed?
Linguistic Details

To what extent is the analysis tied to evidence from specific form-function
correspondences that native speakers agree exist?
Elements of Context







Significance: things and people made more or less significant through
the text
Practices: ritualized activities and how are they being enacted
through the text (for example, lecturing or mentoring)
Identities: manner in which things and people are being cast in a role
through the text
Relationships: style of social relationship, like level of formality
Politics: how “social goods” are being distributed, who is responsible
for the flow, where is it going
Connections: connections and disconnections between things and
people, e.g., what ideas are related, how are things causally
connected, what is affecting what?
Sign Systems and Knowledge: languages, social languages, and
ways of knowing, what ways of communicating and knowing are
treated as standard and acceptable in the context, e.g., that you’re
expected to speak in English in class
Significance

Things and people made more or less
significant through the text

Eric: significance of the number of rings, gender
of the narrator
David: (1) the races of elf, dwarf, and man,
emphasized and presented in brief caricatures.
(2) the One Ring as a focus for and an agent of
Bad Things (3) Middle Earth, as the setting (and
home of the "free peoples")

Significance

Things and people made more or less
significant through the text

Greg: in the setting up, the repeated naming of
things tells us whether they are important for the
rest or not. We expect to see isildur, narsil,
gollum, the ring, Sauron, the elves, dwarves and
men, and bilbo again
Me: The focus of the text is on rings as symbols
of governance. (A) The social language of a historical

telling (B) The figured world of “power corrupts” helps us
understand the significance of the ring’s passing
Practices

Ritualized activities and how they are
practiced in the text

Are these all practiced within the text? Are they discourse
practices or practices within the world? Is there a
difference?





Eric: Narrating
David: Betrayal and war
Greg: What does the ring do
Iris: practices related to leading races and earning rings
Beka: Belief system of the world allowing for supernatural
occurrences
Identities

Manner in which things or people are
cast in a role (kinds of people)

Where do characteristics fit in?
 Eric/Beka:
Narrator/Storyteller
 David/Beka: Speaker and listener along with their
characteristics (presented in voice over, in a whisper)
 Greg: Narrator as omniscient, men as weak, Hobbits
as “different”
 Martin: Within this fragment there are two types of
audience. First of all there is the audience who will see
the visualized script in the theaters and then there is
the production crew who has to interpret the encoding
Relationships

Style of relating, level of formality

David: a king as the leader of and placeholder for
an army (and The Free Peoples): Isildur is the
only good-guy combatant named by the speaker,
the only face in the crowd.
Greg: “so far pretty much only the enactments of
identities - let's hope we get a love story at some
point”
Iris: Relationships amongst the races (each is
described with their greatest flaws/strengths and
all are separated by race)


Politics

The flow of information, goods and
services


David: the rings are emblematic of control and power ("the
will and the power to govern"), the pursuit of which is cast as
a sinister vice (especially in the hands of Men, "holding-[it]close as a precious secret"). The "distribution" of these
"social goods" are achieved through violence and deceit the rings are given as a trick, Isildur claims the One Ring as
a battle-trophy, and the Ring itself betrays him to his death.
Greg: good and evil, where different races fit in

What about the flow of information from the storyteller to us?
Connections

What is associated or disassociated,
causally connected or not?

Beka: Connections between the ring and
characters in the story.
David: the One Ring persists through (and is
implied to instigate) the events that are
described, connecting this history to the presentday timeline of the listener.
Greg: Hobbits are a bit different - the ring is
inanimate but has a mind of its own
Me: Ring/Sauron/Power --- the agency of the ring



Sign Systems

Languages, social languages, symbols

Martin: The script accesses some common culturally pervasive
semaphors through the usage of well established intertextuality (e.g.
White flowers are scattered among the Well seeded grasses. An
idyllic setting at the end of a long hot summer.) and figured worlds
David: Elvish is old and mysterious, its use implies that the English
that overlays and follows it is a translation, and belongs to the same
(old and mysterious) world as it is.
Greg: is the voiceover and explanation of the imagery or is the
imagery a depiction of the voiceover? How do we know that this is the
whole truth?


Building Tasks

According to Gee’s theory, whenever we speak
or write, we are constructing 7 areas of reality

What we build: Significance, Practices,
Identities, Relationships, Politics, Connections,
Sign systems and knowledge
How we build them: Social languages, Socially
situated identities, Discourses, Conversations,
Figured worlds, intertextuality

Revisiting Styles of Analysis


Eric: Use analytic
tools to identify
“components of
meaning” and then
assemble them
bottom-up
David: Zen out your
interpretation and then
use analytic tools to
explain where the
interpretation came
from

Convergence


Agreement


Face Validity and Interraterreliability
Coverage


answers to the 42 questions
offer consistent support for
your hypothesis
generalizability
Linguistic Details

analysis tied to evidence
from specific form-function
correspondences
Research Connection: Social
Interpretation of Code Switching
English-Tswana-Afrikaans-English (Casaburi 1994)
[An extract from the inaugural address of Matsephe Casaburi, the first woman to
be sworn in as provincial premier (i.e. governor) in South Africa’s Free State
Province. Tswana is in italics.
'YOU CANNOT DISCOVER NEW OCEANS UNTIL YOU HAVE THE
COURAGE TO LOSE SIGHT OF LAND. KE TLA SEBEDISA TSEBO YA KA
GO BONTSHA GORE KE TLA KGONA GO KAONAPATSA PROVINCE YA
RONA. ONS MOET SOOS BROERS EN SUSTERS SAAMLEEF EN NIE
SOOS SWAPE SAAM STERF NIE. THANK YOU.'
(TRANSLATION: “You cannot discover new oceans until you have the courage
to lose sight of land. I will use my knowledge to show that we are capable of
improving our province. We must live together like brothers and sisters and
not die together like fools. Thank you.”)
Questions?