Discourse Analysis

Some US researchers and practitioners are calling for the use of written codeswitching in mainstream college courses, despite a strong English-only sentiment among many teachers and the public. This paper describes the existing positions in this debate and presents findings from the author's research to shed light on the debate and make recommendations for the classroom. The research describes the functions of codeswitching found in 47 personal letters exchanged between two young adults. Findings indicate that there are many similarities between the functions of informal written and oral codeswitching. Also, not all bilinguals codeswitch or do so with the same frequency. In addition, bilinguals who codeswitch in writing are more likely to do so in informal situations among other codeswitching bilinguals than in formal school environments. Written codeswitching provides an unsurpassed opportunity for bilingual students to fully express themselves, but its use in the classroom runs counter to linguistic and cultural norms and must be guided by an informed and sensitive instructor in an appropriate context.

Halliday and Hasan (1976) hypothesise that the textuality of a text can be indirectly measured by analysing the degree of interaction between cohesive chains in a text. This study investigates the language of radio interview from the perspective of discourse cohesion and theme. The purpose is to know the cohesive and thematic information development patterns mostly applied in the texts. The data used for the study is purposively selected from Adamawa Broadcasting Corporation, Yola (ABC, Yola) interview texts. The principles of cohesion put forth by Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Bloor and Bloor (1995) is applied to demonstrate the patterns of cohesive elements that are present in the radio interview while the thematic progression theory of Dane (1974) is used to reveal the thematic structure of the text. After the analysis, the paper concludes that ABC, Yola radio interview discourse uses reference, conjunctions, substitution, ellipsis and lexical cohesion to bring about connections between information in the interview text. However, dynamic cohesive features that introduce new information relationships in the text are sparsely employed. Through the analysis of the theme development in the corpus, it is found that two divergent thematic progressions exist within the radio interview discourse; the simple linear theme employed by the interviewer and the derived themes employed by the interviewee. The study recommends that interviewees appearing on radio interview programmes should be warned about the danger of introducing too many sparing themes in a single utterance as this could render the interview discourse incoherent.

The paper aims to provide insights into the use of semiotic modes used in the shop signs of culinary business in Greece and Cyprus. In this context, we examine, comparatively, culinary shop signs collected from the commercial center of Thessaloniki and Limassol, two European, Mediterranean cities, with a significant gastronomic tradition and a lively city center. These semiotic modes are represented in a sample which is composed of shop signs whose verbal message constitutes verbo-cultural palimpsest or is written in a local dialect, as well as of shop signs which focus on their iconic visual message using intersemiotic translation or visual rhetoric to make their message appealing for the consumers. The main conclusion is that the shop signs under scrutiny seem to be addressed mainly to the native people of the two countries which are considered in the common cultural practice much better consumers than tourists as concerns their culinary habits. The study provides also evidence for the creative use of culinary shop signs in both cities. Intracultural interpretation as well as the design of the verbal element seems to make shop signs more appealing for the consumers.

This research studies the headlines representing migrants along the Balkan route in Bulgarian online news during the " migrant crisis " of 2015/2016, as well as the pictorial images that immediately follow the headlines. It compares the verbal and the visual representation of migrants and applies both critical discourse analysis and multimodal analysis. The study uses the term 'text' in a wider sense including both the verbal text and the pictorial display of migrants' social activities. The headlines develop two contradicting images of the migrants which are also reflected in the pictures. One of them is the image of poor and distressed people running away from the war in their home country. Europe for them is the Promised Land and they are presented with sympathy and compassion. The other image of the migrants is that of a natural disaster which cannot be stopped by country borders and threatens the stability on the continent.

The article is aimed at identifying the existing link between the media
and the predominant narrative on migration and asylum in the construction of public belief and the elaboration of various governing processes concerning migration and asylum, by carrying out a comparative multilevel analysis of public discourses launched
by the political leaders in different Member States and by the representatives of EU institutions during the current refugee/migration crisis begun in 2015. We believe that by undertaking a multilevel comparative critical discourse analysis concerning the current
migration crisis, we could better comprehend the elaborated policy actions and governing processes both at intergovernmental and supranational level.

To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy.  Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance.  In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy.  In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management.  On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

Following the signing of the Prespa Agreement in June 2018, the Macedonian name issue became the most prominent topic on the Greek political agenda, catalysing an exceptional political confrontation and contributing to the realignment of political parties and eventually to government change. Analysing the political discourse and public debate on the issue from January 2018 until the July 2019 national elections, as well as opinion polls and electoral results, the paper explores the conditions leading to the escalation of political polarisation on the left/right axis, at the expense of smaller centrist parties. It is argued that political antagonism was built on the previous political cleavage (although the populist/anti-populism axis was now reversed). However, by mobilising the public’s emotions around an alleged ‘national threat’, the polarisation around the Macedonian name issue proved to be far more successful for the Greek right than for the left.

ABSTRACT For all human beings, a crucial function of language is to draw attention to things in the world. Like most languages, Vietnamese has its set of ‘pointing words’ that fulfil this function, including này ‘this’, đây ‘this/here’ and đấy, đó, kia ‘that/there’, ấy ‘that’, and nọ ‘that’. Though the meaning of these seven words has expanded and changed over time, all of them originally served to orient the hearer’s attention to something proximal or distal to the speaker’s location. These words are termed demonstratives in English or chỉ định từ in Vietnamese. Chỉ định từ currently play a wide range of syntactic and semantic roles. They can occur as the determiner in a noun phrase (nhà này ‘this house’, nhà ấy/kia/nọ ‘that house’) or appear on their own as either pronominals (đây/đấy, đó, kia là nhà tôi ‘this/that is my house’) or as locative adverbs (lại đây ‘come here’, đến đấy/đó/kia ‘go there’). In the appropriate syntactic environments, these terms allow the speaker to ‘point’ not only to specific objects but also to abstract, invisible concepts that are present, distant, remembered or imagined. Despite the wide range of uses of chỉ định từ, an exhaustive analysis of their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic functions has previously been lacking in Vietnamese. Even a cursory analysis of the seven Vietnamese demonstratives reveals that each has not just one meaning or sense, but rather a complex network of related senses, or polysemy network. For example, the demonstrative ấy has thirteen different senses, including the function of indicating the position of a referent in space (a spatial sense), preceding discourse (an anaphoric sense) or in the memory of the speaker and/or hearer (as in recognitional, presentational, place holder, or avoidance usages). In addition, ấy has extended senses indicating person deixis, discourse cohesion, modality and interjective usages. Unquestionably, the form ấy has a wide variety of uses in Vietnamese. Is it coincidence that these uses share the same form ấy? If that were the case, the uses of ấy would be unconnected homonymous meanings. Or are these uses somehow related? If so, then the uses of ấy are polysemous senses, and it should be possible to trace how each sense evolved from another, ultimately tracking the evolution of the polysemy network back to a single ancestral sense. This study analyses the form and function of chỉ định từ as found in a range of written texts, and finds that the various functions of Vietnamese demonstratives are related. The extensions responsible for the current range of demonstrative functions follow recognised paths of metaphoric and metonymic change, so that these changes can be reconstructed from synchronic data even in the absence of direct historical evidence. Although all of the seven demonstratives are argued to be polysemous as the result of semantic extensions, each demonstrative has followed its own path of change and no two demonstratives have identical polysemy networks. These differences are due both to the individual semantics of the different demonstratives, and to the stage of change that each demonstrative has reached. The demonstrative nọ may be the best illustration of this second factor, the stage of development of a demonstrative. The demonstrative nọ once had a spatial sense referring to a distant referent, which is argued to be its oldest and most basic sense. This spatial sense extended to a range of other senses, but over time, the spatial sense itself was lost. The demonstrative nọ is the only one in the system currently lacking any spatial function, though its later, extended senses remain. A logical explanation of the present-day senses of nọ can only be achieved through a reconstructed connection with its now-defunct basic meaning. The polysemy structures of chỉ định từ can only be fully understood via the reconstruction of their earlier senses and the extensions these senses underwent. Without the reconstructed spatial sense of nọ, for example, the demonstrative’s polysemy network looks like a scattered system of unrelated senses, rather than a tidy network of senses related by recognised regular semantic changes. The current study, then, is intended to contribute to the field of linguistics in two ways. First, the study provides an in-depth documentation and analysis of the Vietnamese demonstrative system, which has previously been lacking. This comprehensive documentation and analysis could be used as a resource for diachronic or further cross-linguistic study. Second, the semantic evolution and polysemy of demonstratives has previously received relatively little attention in any language. It is therefore hoped that this research will contribute more generally to the study of universal tendencies of grammaticalisation, language change, and the polysemy networks that can result.

La Barcarolle op. 60 de Chopin fait partie de la dernière période créatrice du compositeur, également appelée « dernier style ». Cette œuvre a suscité de très nombreuses interprétations dans la littérature musicologique, mais l’objet de cette communication est de proposer notre propre analyse, à la fois formelle et narrative, qui permettra de mettre en lumière certaines nouveautés stylistiques caractéristiques de cette période et d’expliquer les déviances formelles apparentes. Ce double-niveau analytique souhaite en effet investir les aspects techniques du discours musical (forme, tonalités, sections, cadences, harmonies, etc.) mais également son niveau expressif, à travers l’utilisation des topiques musicaux. L’étude de la succession de ces unités expressives permettra notamment d’éclaircir et d’expliquer le parcours de l’œuvre, qui se détache de la forme ternaire si chère au compositeur, avec un retour varié des deux thèmes principaux dans un style héroïque au sein de la dernière section, amenant un sentiment apothéotique. Il s’agit donc d’une stratégie narrative construite selon une concaténation particulière des unités du discours musical, une disposition de type téléologique qui amènera à cette apothéose finale, également retrouvée dans d’autres œuvres du corpus de la dernière période.

In this paper, I explain how the gender binary is described by Sandy Stone, an academic theorist, media theorist and author, and considered a founder of the academic discipline of transgender studies, as a matter of space from which trans people cannot participate in the discourse. I use this notion of gender as a matter of space to compare Stone’s discourse to that of feminist theorist and artist bell hooks, who describes the position of black women as a matter of space as well – a space from which black women develop an oppositional gaze and thus engage in the discourse, instead of being excluded from it. I compare Stone’s strategy of reclaiming the insult and the notion of counter discourse that arises from that with hooks’ notion of the oppositional gaze, as I examine how these new discourses can lead to forms of agency in a context of oppression. I take into consideration philosopher of feminist epistemology Sandra Harding’s Standpoint Theory,  in order to understand Stone’s and hooks’ creation of a critical space that is developed through the deconstruction of oppressive binary systems, and in which knowledge and agency are generated by marginalized groups.

This study analyzes the language used in the construction of the personal identity of Dr. Heidegger through the labels attached to him, both given by self and by others, and his stance-taking. The researcher applies Discourse Analysis to analyze the main character's utterances. The researcher also uses Indexicality Principle by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) as a mechanism to analyze identity. The qualitative content analysis is used to analyze thoroughly and interpret text data to draw inference towards the utterances on the short story. The result of the study shows that Dr. Heidegger is labeled mostly with negative words by others, however, he responded to combat these labels by using re-appropriation or by revaluing the existing labels. Moreover, the stances taken by Dr. Heidegger are found to position himself among others. Together with the labels given by self and others, and his interlocutor(s) in his talk-in-interactions the findings reveal that he is a strange old man, who is very curious and knowledgeable. Lastly, the conclusion can also be drawn that language and discourse are central to the construction of identities that are not always determined by a person himself, but also bound up with how others perceive him.

In this paper Jones reviews the categories into which various linguists, working in different theoretical frameworks, have divided up the logico-semantic relations they have identified in texts. He stresses the potentially ambiguous and hence problematic nature of logical connectives, and suggests that macro-categories are preferable to micro-categories in analysing discourse relations. He notes that implicit conjunction (i.e. the absence of connectives) tends to predominate in expert writing, as evidenced in scientific and professional texts, and argues that this device both depends on and gives appropriate recognition to the strategies and knowledge the reader brings to the processes of decoding and meaning-construction. Jones offers a comprehensive investigation of logical connectives in the context of second language pedagogy, contrasting their ‘inappropriate’ use by non native speakers with their ‘underuse’ by native speakers to indicate the ultimate inadequacy of connectives for representing complex conceptual and particularly causal relations. Jones also discusses how relationships such as correlation and emergence rather than ‘cause and effect’ are foregrounded in much current writing, particularly in the sciences, furthering his argument that connectives are intrinsically inadequate and problematic. The paper concludes by suggesting that second language pedagogy can benefit by encouraging novice writers to adopt a more indirect approach to the representation of cause/consequence relations.

[April 2024: See now the Accepted-Manuscript version: https://www.academia.edu/117750386/The_Situating_Noun_in_Ancient_Hebrew_A_New_Understanding_of_א%D6%B4יש%D7%81_Accepted_Manuscript_version_ ]

This paper integrates insights from cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, various linguistics disciplines, and biblical studies to answer the questions “What did ancient Hebrew speakers/writers mean by using the noun אִישׁ (including אִשָּׁה and their plurals)? How and when did they use it?” | Answer: Prototypically, this noun profiles its referent as an essential participant in the depicted situation, when the speaker is depicting that situation schematically. Therefore אִישׁ deserves to be called “the situational noun.” Its use made communication more efficient. | This communication-based view of אִישׁ yields a more coherent and informative text of the Hebrew Bible than the conventional one. It also explains several ways in which אִישׁ differs from other general human nouns. | The original paper for the Biblical Lexicography section of the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature summarized and updated the author’s 2020 dissertation and two previous articles. This 2023 version includes further updates, including changing the main term used from “situational noun” to “situating noun.”

In this unit you will learn about the main purposes of advertising in
newspapers, different types of newspaper advertisements, components
of a newspaper advertisement, and the different techniques advertisers
use to persuade consumers. Understanding how advertisements
function to persuade consumers will make you a critical reader of advertisements
and, as a result, a more critical consumer.

This article argues against all forms of scientism and the widespread perceived need to define martial arts in order to study martial arts or 'do' martial arts studies. It argues instead for the necessity of theory before definition, including theorisation of the orientation of the field of martial arts studies itself. Accordingly, the chapter criticises certain previous (and current) academic approaches to martial arts, particularly the failed project of hoplology. It then examines the much more promising approaches of current scholarship, such as that of Sixt Wetzler, before critiquing certain aspects of its orientation. Instead of accepting Wetzler's 'polysystem theory' approach uncritically, the article argues instead for the value of a poststructuralist 'discourse' approach in martial arts studies.

This book provides an introduction to political psychology through a focus on European politics and topics. It describes a style of doing political psychology in Europe that has developed out of dialogue with as well as critique of North American approaches. By emphasising the theoretical and methodological diversity of political psychology, the book is intended to contribute to a greater understanding of the strength and utility of the field. • Opens up and extends the study of political psychology to a variety of socio-political contexts and manifestations of political behaviour • Clearly outlines the usefulness and promises of distinctive critical approaches in social and political psychology • Explicitly considers the role of language, communication, identity and social representations in the construction of political meanings. Political Psychology will appeal to upper-level students and scholars who seek to extend their knowledge of the complex relationship between psychology, politics and society.

This study has been conducted to analyze how Self (Iranians) and the Other (non Iranians) have been represented in the Persian novels written in the last 50 years. The main question of the present research is "how Iranians and non-Iranians are represented in the novels of two different periods of fiction writing in Iran?" By answering this question, it would be possible to show if there is an overlap between the Self/the Other confrontation and culture/nonculture in these Persian novels or not, in other words, if Self has been represented as culture and the Other as non-culture or not. Cultural semiotics and Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) have developed the framework of this research. In order to achieve the aims of the research, three novels of the greatest ones written in the first 15 years of the last half-century, including Tangsir by S. Chubak (1963), Savushun by S. Daneshvar (1969) and The Neighbors by A. Mahmoud (1973), and three novels written in the last 15 years, including Kiss the Lovely Face of God (2000), My Bird (2002) and the Event (2010), have been selected and studied. These novels are chosen because the Other has a powerful presence in them. The results research show that in Tangsir, Savushun and the Neighbors, when the Other (Non-Iranian) is an aggressor is deemed to be nonculture but when he is beyond the borders of the Self’s country, he is culture. In these novels there is also no reference to represent the Self as culture, therefore there is no overlap between the two mentioned oppositions, Self/Other and culture/non-culture, and Self is not represented as culture and vice versa. In novel written in last 15 years Self is represented as nonculture. Hence there is overlap between the representation of Self/Other and culture/nonculture.

The primary concern of this study is to understand how curse affects the power of blessing in Genesis 1–11. First, we examine the semantics of blessing and curse in light of their history of interpretation. Second, each blessing (1:22, 28; 9:1–3, 7, 26, 27) and curse (3:14–15, 16, 17–19; 4:11–12; 9:25) that occurs within reported speech in Genesis 1–11 is categorized and examined according to its linguistic pattern and performative character. Third, the role of blessing and/or curse is determined in the development of narrative tension in the various discourse units of Genesis 1–11.
Blessing and curse are shown to be intimately connected to Creation theology: blessing is given to drive Creation toward its intended telos, while curse is pronounced when that telos is threatened. Both are a central part of Yahweh's upholding of the Order of Creation. Curse affects the power of blessing both negatively and positively in Genesis 1–11. Negatively, curse causes hostility and alienation, and can also be held partially responsible for the epidemic of death. But curse does not have the final word. Positively, curse mitigates rebellion by imposing restrictions on the transgressor. Furthermore, curse carries with it a way for life to continue.
The narrative of Genesis 1–11 bespeaks of the power words have in the world. Some create, some commission, some empower; while others punish, others alienate, and others cause death. From the beginning God has intended good for his Creation. Blessings and curses are one way of achieving that end.

Este trabajo se propone abordar el audiovisual titulado "Marking 50 years of Progress", realizado por la United States Agency por International Development (USAID), para celebrar los 50 años transcurridos desde el decreto presidencial que dio nacimiento a dicha Agencia. El objetivo es analizar el audiovisual en tanto elaboración simbólica de un discurso político para acercarse a la forma en que la USAID concibe, piensa y promociona el “desarrollo”.

The book endeavours to show how research based on poststructuralist discourse analysis can yield analytically beneficial and methodologically sound insights. It largely delivers on these promises. Part I provides a lucid explanation of poststructuralist tenets, showing how Otherness drives policymaking as the backdrop against which identities constitute themselves. During the early 1990s, Western identity was so constituted as ‘civilized’ and ‘controlled’ in opposition to the ‘barbarian’ and ‘violent’ Balkans. The elegant presentation of poststructuralist tenets is welcome, given that such writings are often difficult to access for uninitiated readers.

Geoeengineering the climate by reflecting sunlight or extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has attracted increasing attention from natural scientists, social scientists, policy makers and the media. This article examines promotional discourse related to geoengineering from the 1980s to 2010. It asks in particular how this option for dealing with the problems posed by climate change were framed through the use of conceptual and discourse metaphors and whether one can argue that these are metaphors we ‘live by’ or metaphors we might ‘die by’. Findings show that an overarching argument from catastrophe was bolstered by three conceptual master-metaphors, namely The Planet is a body, The Planet is a machine and The planet is a patient/addict, linked to a variety of discourse metaphors, older conceptual metaphors and clichés. This metaphorical landscape began to shift while the article was being written and will have to be closely monitored in the future.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

This study analyzes the language used in the construction of the personal identity of Dr. Heidegger through the labels attached to him, both given by self and by others, and his stancetaking. The researcher applies Discourse Analysis to analyze the main character’s utterances. In addition, the researcher also uses Indexicality Principle by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) as a mechanism to analyze identity. Qualitative content analysis is used to analyze thoroughly and interpret text data to draw inference towards the utterances on the short story.  The result of the study show that Dr. Heidegger is labeled mostly with negative words by others, however, he responded to combat these labels by using re-appropriation or by revaluing the existing labels. Moreover, the stances taken by Dr. Heidegger are found to position himself among others. Together with the labels given by self and others, and his interlocutor(s) in his talk-in-interactions the findings reveal that the he is a strange old man...

In 1955, Jean Cocteau commented on the retrospective exhibition of Hosayn Behzad's works at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris: "Hosayn Behzad is an enchanter of the East of the storytellers. (...) No doubt, in our country (...) there is only one master in the art of miniature painting and that master is Hosayn Behzad, (the) Iranian artist". Supported by an autobiographical testimony of Hosayn Behzad dating from 1953, this paper focuses on the changes that Persian miniature painting underwent in the first half of the twentieth century. At that time, the booming international art market and the increased demand for old miniatures led to several decades of the restoration of Safavid art in Iran before giving birth to a new artistic movement specific to that country, the so-called "New miniature painting," which was initiated by Hosayn Behzad. The context of its emergence and the forms taken by "New miniature painting," will be highlighted.


« Twentieth-Century Mutations of Persian Miniature Painting : A Testimony from the Iranian Miniaturist Hosein Behzad », in Markus Ritter, Ilse Sturkenboom and Fernando Valdéz Fernandéz (eds), Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie, series ed. Ernst Herztfeld Gesellschaft, vol. 5, Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2017, pp. 149-166.

Suspendus aux lèvres d’un conteur, incapables d’interrompre la lecture d’un roman, captivés par un film haletant, nous faisons tous l’expérience quotidienne de ce plaisir apparemment paradoxal que nous tirons de notre insatisfaction provisoire face à un récit inachevé. Bien qu’une mode esthétique et théorique ait tenté de nous convaincre que ce plaisir était honteux, on peut néanmoins avoir l’intuition que le cœur vivant de la narrativité réside précisément dans ce nœud coulant, toujours plus serré à mesure que nous progressons dans l’histoire, qui nous attache à l’intrigue et creuse la temporalité par l’attente impatiente d’un dénouement. Si le récit a quelque chose à voir avec la manière dont nous éprouvons le temps, cette expérience n’apparaît jamais avec autant d’éclat que dans le suspense, la curiosité ou la surprise qui font la force des intrigues fictionnelles. La compréhension des fonctions narratives engage donc non seulement l’analyse littéraire, linguistique et sémiotique, mais aussi l’analyse cognitive et la psychologie des émotions.

This paper investigates the question-and-answer sequence based on data derived from semi-structured interviews which are part of a larger interdisciplinary project on parenthood and kinship –(In)fercit-- vis-à-vis assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and purports to focus on the form and function of questions (cf. Stivers & Rossano 2012) in the frame of semi-structured interviews, which constitute as special genre in conversation analytic studies (Hutchby & Wooffitt 1998).