“We’re hearing from Reuters that…”: The role of around-the-clock news media in the increased use of the present progressive with mental process type verbs', 2016
This paper explores the diachronically increased use of the present progressive (‘BE … V-ing’) wi... more This paper explores the diachronically increased use of the present progressive (‘BE … V-ing’) with one group of verbs which are said to not traditionally associate with this construction, verbs variously denoting cognitive experience (Palmer, 1965: 95-97; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik, 1985: 200-205; Leech, 2004: 25-27). Discussed in a systemic-functional tradition (Halliday, 1978; 1985; 1993; Halliday & Hasan, 1985), the focus here is some consideration of possible semantic and particularly contextual explanations for this grammatical phenomenon; any rounded understanding of some language phenomenon requiring an account of related phenomena at neighbouring strata (Halliday, 1979; 1996; Barthes, 1977). The rhetorical organisation of the chapter emphasises the importance here placed on adopting a method of language description which is suitable in this way; after an explanation of stratification as a formalisation of this fundamental organising principle of languages (§1), subsequent sections explore the use of the present progressive with verbs of cognition from the vantage point of different levels. This starts from the perspective of grammar itself (§2), where the discussion is pitched specifically in diachronic terms charting the construction’s increased use across the last two centuries. Following sections move upwards to explanations at the level of context (§4) via an exploration of semantic generalisations (§3). The chapter culminates in positing the advent of twenty-four hour live news television media as a specific contextual explanation for one apparent semantic sense of the present progressive with verbs of cognition.
'Representations of experience in the language of televised and radio football commentaries: Patterns of similarity and difference in Transitivity', 2017
This chapter presents the results of a fine-grained grammatical analysis of live commentaries of ... more This chapter presents the results of a fine-grained grammatical analysis of live commentaries of football (soccer) games, and so adds to a growing body of literature concerned with the linguistics of sport and, therein, particularly with football (Kuiper 1996; Marriott 1996; Bowcher 2001; Reaser 2003; Mackenzie 2005; Lavric et al. 2008; Wyatt and Hadikin 2015; Gavins and Simpson 2015; etc.). More specifically, two subtly different types of football commentary are compared via a linguistic analysis: U.K.-produced live radio and television commentaries. The linguistic inquiry here explores how the experiences reported in these commentaries are encoded grammatically in the language used. As such, a detailed and large-scale analysis of the commentary data is conducted using Systemic Functional Linguistics (hereafter SFL), specifically a Transitivity analysis (Halliday 1994; Martin et al. 1997). In Systemic Functional theory where language is seen as inherently related to social context and culture (Halliday 1977; 1978; 1985), such an analysis can tell us a lot about the data contextually. The paper starts, §1, by introducing the Transitivity system within Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics. §2 introduces the data analysed, explaining the contextual attributes and offering some preliminary linguistic characteristics of the component parts of the dataset. §3, the body of the chapter, presents the results of the analysis of Transitivity undertaken on the commentary data. This section is divided into three parts to reflect three pertinent trends consequent from the data analysis. The paper is brought to a close with the summary conclusion in §4.
Special issue of English Text Construction 9:1 (2016)
Edited by Ben Clarke and Jorge Arús Hita
Un... more Special issue of English Text Construction 9:1 (2016) Edited by Ben Clarke and Jorge Arús Hita University of Portsmouth / Facultad de Filología, UCM [English Text Construction, 9:1] Expected June 2016. ca. 150 pp. Publishing status: In production John Benjamins Publishing Company
2019 8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW), 2019
Classification of secondary emotions via facial expression analysis or other forms of social sign... more Classification of secondary emotions via facial expression analysis or other forms of social signal processing is a topic which has received more attention recently due to the increasing computational and algorithmic power of emotion expression and detection software. Of the social emotions (or affective states), confusion detection is of paramount importance in interactive tasks that require communicating from different viewpoints. Confusion has only fairly recently been the subject of computational modelling approaches owing to the contention as to what expressive components are foundational. One aspect of confusion that has been perhaps de-emphasized in such models is the temporal component. This includes facial expression and non-expression data and the temporal context (state) within which they are embedded. Using the Facial Action Coding schema of Ekman, this article reports the findings of a Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM neural network) modelling approach to (video) instances of confusion as expressed in the context of a “instructor-follower” interactive (map directions) task. The LSTM neural network is able to encode the temporal context of expressed micro instances of positive, negative, neutral and confusion based affective states and is compared against a simpler algorithm used in FaceReader 7.1. that does not account for temporal context (memory state). The LSTM neural network, when trained on time series data of a number of theoretically relevant Action Units, performed at a level comparable to the chosen benchmark highlighting its potential utility. Lesioning trials of the pre-trained best model showed that Action Units 25, 26 and 27, involving open mouth expressions, were the most individually important contributing factors to the model's performance. Testing on novel and larger datasets, as well as possible incorporation of multimodal social signals, would be expected to enhance generalizability and provide potential avenues for future work.
'Fighting talk: The use of the conceptual metaphor CLIMATE CHANGE IS CONFLICT in the UK Houses of Parliament, 2015-2019', 2022
Analyses on news media data in Conceptual Metaphor Theory have highlighted several frequent metap... more Analyses on news media data in Conceptual Metaphor Theory have highlighted several frequent metaphors used to understand climate change including climate change is conflict. This article analyses the frequency of that conceptual metaphor in a corpus of UK parliamentary debates on climate change. The language of political decision-makers is important to scrutinise because this group have the social and legislative power needed to deal with the issue. Our analysis shows the conceptual metaphor itself, and all three of its most frequent linguistic realisations ('challenge,' 'impact,' 'tackle'), increased in use between 2015 and 2019. Additionally, three notable semantic and pragmatic trends were observed: first, apparently little recognition of human behaviour as a cause of climate change; second, a narrative of Us/People vs Climate Change; and third, that political decision-makers are taking climate change increasingly seriously. Some of these findings challenge existing knowledge and thus beg questions that require future research efforts.
This paper puts the case that viewing text dynamically can be valuable in the practice of semanti... more This paper puts the case that viewing text dynamically can be valuable in the practice of semantic description. Using, as its case study, the statistically significant occurrence of Subject ellipsis across consecutive clauses in a corpus of newspaper football reports, the paper demonstrates a systematic difference between the lexicogrammatical characteristics of clauses containing such patterned use of ellipsis and the clauses of their surrounding co-text. The lexicogrammatical features in question, which are analysed in detail in the paper, are: clause length in words, number of clause elements, amount of syntactic embedding, and patterns in Hallidayan transitivity process-types. Given the nature of these lexicogrammatical features, the argument is made that Subject ellipsis across consecutive clauses can iconically express an increase in pace – something only observable when the text is viewed dynamically.
This paper puts the case that viewing text dynamically can be valuable in the practice of semanti... more This paper puts the case that viewing text dynamically can be valuable in the practice of semantic description. Using, as its case study, the statistically significant occurrence of Subject ellipsis across consecutive clauses in a corpus of newspaper football reports, the paper demonstrates a systematic difference between the lexicogrammatical characteristics of clauses containing such patterned use of ellipsis and the clauses of their surrounding co-text. The lexicogrammatical features in question, which are analysed in detail in the paper, are: clause length in words, number of clause elements, amount of syntactic embedding, and patterns in Hallidayan transitivity process-types. Given the nature of these lexicogrammatical features, the argument is made that Subject ellipsis across consecutive clauses can iconically express an increase in pace – something only observable when the text is viewed dynamically.
8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, 2019
Classification of secondary emotions via facial expression analysis or other forms of social sign... more Classification of secondary emotions via facial expression analysis or other forms of social signal processing is a topic which has received more attention recently due to the increasing computational and algorithmic power of emotion expression and detection software. Of the social emotions (or affective states), confusion detection is of paramount importance in interactive tasks that require communicating from different viewpoints. Confusion has only fairly recently been the subject of computational modelling approaches owing to the contention as to what expressive components are foundational. One aspect of confusion that has been perhaps de-emphasized in such models is the temporal component. This includes facial expression and non-expression data and the temporal context (state) within which they are embedded. Using the Facial Action Coding schema of Ekman, this article reports the findings of a Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM neural network) modelling approach to (video) instances of confusion as expressed in the context of a "instructor-follower" interactive (map directions) task. The LSTM neural network is able to encode the temporal context of expressed micro instances of positive, negative, neutral and confusion based affective states and is compared against a simpler algorithm used in FaceReader 7.1. that does not account for temporal context (memory state). The LSTM neural network, when trained on time series data of a number of theoretically relevant Action Units, performed at a level comparable to the chosen benchmark highlighting its potential utility. Lesioning trials of the pre-trained best model showed that Action Units 25, 26 and 27, involving open mouth expressions, were the most individually important contributing factors to the model's performance. Testing on novel and larger datasets, as well as possible incorporation of multimodal social signals, would be expected to enhance generalizability and provide potential avenues for future work.
“We’re hearing from Reuters that…”: The role of around-the-clock news media in the increased use of the present progressive with mental process type verbs', 2016
This paper explores the diachronically increased use of the present progressive (‘BE … V-ing’) wi... more This paper explores the diachronically increased use of the present progressive (‘BE … V-ing’) with one group of verbs which are said to not traditionally associate with this construction, verbs variously denoting cognitive experience (Palmer, 1965: 95-97; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik, 1985: 200-205; Leech, 2004: 25-27). Discussed in a systemic-functional tradition (Halliday, 1978; 1985; 1993; Halliday & Hasan, 1985), the focus here is some consideration of possible semantic and particularly contextual explanations for this grammatical phenomenon; any rounded understanding of some language phenomenon requiring an account of related phenomena at neighbouring strata (Halliday, 1979; 1996; Barthes, 1977). The rhetorical organisation of the chapter emphasises the importance here placed on adopting a method of language description which is suitable in this way; after an explanation of stratification as a formalisation of this fundamental organising principle of languages (§1), subsequent sections explore the use of the present progressive with verbs of cognition from the vantage point of different levels. This starts from the perspective of grammar itself (§2), where the discussion is pitched specifically in diachronic terms charting the construction’s increased use across the last two centuries. Following sections move upwards to explanations at the level of context (§4) via an exploration of semantic generalisations (§3). The chapter culminates in positing the advent of twenty-four hour live news television media as a specific contextual explanation for one apparent semantic sense of the present progressive with verbs of cognition.
'Representations of experience in the language of televised and radio football commentaries: Patterns of similarity and difference in Transitivity', 2017
This chapter presents the results of a fine-grained grammatical analysis of live commentaries of ... more This chapter presents the results of a fine-grained grammatical analysis of live commentaries of football (soccer) games, and so adds to a growing body of literature concerned with the linguistics of sport and, therein, particularly with football (Kuiper 1996; Marriott 1996; Bowcher 2001; Reaser 2003; Mackenzie 2005; Lavric et al. 2008; Wyatt and Hadikin 2015; Gavins and Simpson 2015; etc.). More specifically, two subtly different types of football commentary are compared via a linguistic analysis: U.K.-produced live radio and television commentaries. The linguistic inquiry here explores how the experiences reported in these commentaries are encoded grammatically in the language used. As such, a detailed and large-scale analysis of the commentary data is conducted using Systemic Functional Linguistics (hereafter SFL), specifically a Transitivity analysis (Halliday 1994; Martin et al. 1997). In Systemic Functional theory where language is seen as inherently related to social context and culture (Halliday 1977; 1978; 1985), such an analysis can tell us a lot about the data contextually. The paper starts, §1, by introducing the Transitivity system within Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics. §2 introduces the data analysed, explaining the contextual attributes and offering some preliminary linguistic characteristics of the component parts of the dataset. §3, the body of the chapter, presents the results of the analysis of Transitivity undertaken on the commentary data. This section is divided into three parts to reflect three pertinent trends consequent from the data analysis. The paper is brought to a close with the summary conclusion in §4.
Special issue of English Text Construction 9:1 (2016)
Edited by Ben Clarke and Jorge Arús Hita
Un... more Special issue of English Text Construction 9:1 (2016) Edited by Ben Clarke and Jorge Arús Hita University of Portsmouth / Facultad de Filología, UCM [English Text Construction, 9:1] Expected June 2016. ca. 150 pp. Publishing status: In production John Benjamins Publishing Company
2019 8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW), 2019
Classification of secondary emotions via facial expression analysis or other forms of social sign... more Classification of secondary emotions via facial expression analysis or other forms of social signal processing is a topic which has received more attention recently due to the increasing computational and algorithmic power of emotion expression and detection software. Of the social emotions (or affective states), confusion detection is of paramount importance in interactive tasks that require communicating from different viewpoints. Confusion has only fairly recently been the subject of computational modelling approaches owing to the contention as to what expressive components are foundational. One aspect of confusion that has been perhaps de-emphasized in such models is the temporal component. This includes facial expression and non-expression data and the temporal context (state) within which they are embedded. Using the Facial Action Coding schema of Ekman, this article reports the findings of a Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM neural network) modelling approach to (video) instances of confusion as expressed in the context of a “instructor-follower” interactive (map directions) task. The LSTM neural network is able to encode the temporal context of expressed micro instances of positive, negative, neutral and confusion based affective states and is compared against a simpler algorithm used in FaceReader 7.1. that does not account for temporal context (memory state). The LSTM neural network, when trained on time series data of a number of theoretically relevant Action Units, performed at a level comparable to the chosen benchmark highlighting its potential utility. Lesioning trials of the pre-trained best model showed that Action Units 25, 26 and 27, involving open mouth expressions, were the most individually important contributing factors to the model's performance. Testing on novel and larger datasets, as well as possible incorporation of multimodal social signals, would be expected to enhance generalizability and provide potential avenues for future work.
'Fighting talk: The use of the conceptual metaphor CLIMATE CHANGE IS CONFLICT in the UK Houses of Parliament, 2015-2019', 2022
Analyses on news media data in Conceptual Metaphor Theory have highlighted several frequent metap... more Analyses on news media data in Conceptual Metaphor Theory have highlighted several frequent metaphors used to understand climate change including climate change is conflict. This article analyses the frequency of that conceptual metaphor in a corpus of UK parliamentary debates on climate change. The language of political decision-makers is important to scrutinise because this group have the social and legislative power needed to deal with the issue. Our analysis shows the conceptual metaphor itself, and all three of its most frequent linguistic realisations ('challenge,' 'impact,' 'tackle'), increased in use between 2015 and 2019. Additionally, three notable semantic and pragmatic trends were observed: first, apparently little recognition of human behaviour as a cause of climate change; second, a narrative of Us/People vs Climate Change; and third, that political decision-makers are taking climate change increasingly seriously. Some of these findings challenge existing knowledge and thus beg questions that require future research efforts.
This paper puts the case that viewing text dynamically can be valuable in the practice of semanti... more This paper puts the case that viewing text dynamically can be valuable in the practice of semantic description. Using, as its case study, the statistically significant occurrence of Subject ellipsis across consecutive clauses in a corpus of newspaper football reports, the paper demonstrates a systematic difference between the lexicogrammatical characteristics of clauses containing such patterned use of ellipsis and the clauses of their surrounding co-text. The lexicogrammatical features in question, which are analysed in detail in the paper, are: clause length in words, number of clause elements, amount of syntactic embedding, and patterns in Hallidayan transitivity process-types. Given the nature of these lexicogrammatical features, the argument is made that Subject ellipsis across consecutive clauses can iconically express an increase in pace – something only observable when the text is viewed dynamically.
This paper puts the case that viewing text dynamically can be valuable in the practice of semanti... more This paper puts the case that viewing text dynamically can be valuable in the practice of semantic description. Using, as its case study, the statistically significant occurrence of Subject ellipsis across consecutive clauses in a corpus of newspaper football reports, the paper demonstrates a systematic difference between the lexicogrammatical characteristics of clauses containing such patterned use of ellipsis and the clauses of their surrounding co-text. The lexicogrammatical features in question, which are analysed in detail in the paper, are: clause length in words, number of clause elements, amount of syntactic embedding, and patterns in Hallidayan transitivity process-types. Given the nature of these lexicogrammatical features, the argument is made that Subject ellipsis across consecutive clauses can iconically express an increase in pace – something only observable when the text is viewed dynamically.
8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, 2019
Classification of secondary emotions via facial expression analysis or other forms of social sign... more Classification of secondary emotions via facial expression analysis or other forms of social signal processing is a topic which has received more attention recently due to the increasing computational and algorithmic power of emotion expression and detection software. Of the social emotions (or affective states), confusion detection is of paramount importance in interactive tasks that require communicating from different viewpoints. Confusion has only fairly recently been the subject of computational modelling approaches owing to the contention as to what expressive components are foundational. One aspect of confusion that has been perhaps de-emphasized in such models is the temporal component. This includes facial expression and non-expression data and the temporal context (state) within which they are embedded. Using the Facial Action Coding schema of Ekman, this article reports the findings of a Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM neural network) modelling approach to (video) instances of confusion as expressed in the context of a "instructor-follower" interactive (map directions) task. The LSTM neural network is able to encode the temporal context of expressed micro instances of positive, negative, neutral and confusion based affective states and is compared against a simpler algorithm used in FaceReader 7.1. that does not account for temporal context (memory state). The LSTM neural network, when trained on time series data of a number of theoretically relevant Action Units, performed at a level comparable to the chosen benchmark highlighting its potential utility. Lesioning trials of the pre-trained best model showed that Action Units 25, 26 and 27, involving open mouth expressions, were the most individually important contributing factors to the model's performance. Testing on novel and larger datasets, as well as possible incorporation of multimodal social signals, would be expected to enhance generalizability and provide potential avenues for future work.
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Edited by Ben Clarke and Jorge Arús Hita
University of Portsmouth / Facultad de Filología, UCM
[English Text Construction, 9:1] Expected June 2016. ca. 150 pp.
Publishing status: In production
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Edited by Ben Clarke and Jorge Arús Hita
University of Portsmouth / Facultad de Filología, UCM
[English Text Construction, 9:1] Expected June 2016. ca. 150 pp.
Publishing status: In production
John Benjamins Publishing Company