In face-to-face interaction movements of the head and body can carry meaning that is as important as the words. Yet in the analysis of talk, this is seldom acknowledged or methodically handled. Dawn Knight's clear and persuasive account of how such movements can be systematically recorded and analyzed achieves a major step forward for both discourse analysis and corpus linguistics.

- Professor Guy Cook, Centre for Language and Communication, The Open University, UK,

This is an important book documenting the move from mono-modal to multi-modal corpora of spoken language. It brings the reader into the exciting new world of multimodal corpora which capture much more fully the realtime context of spoken interactions, from the prosodic, to the behavioural and the situational, whereby the corpus moves from being a one-dimensional to the multidimensional repository of spoken interaction. Anyone who is interested in corpora should read this book.  Based on data from the Nottingham Multimodal Corpus (NMMC), the book very clearly illustrates the process of building a multimodal corpus and it focuses on its potential for indepth research, the scale of which would not have previously been possible. The level of detail on how to build a multi-modal corpus is invaluable, including key information on recording, mark-up and coding of the data. The clear writing style and the frequent use of screenshots greatly enhance the presentation of these details making it accessible to readers who do not have a high level of technical knowledge about corpus building.  The analysis of headnods from the NMMC is the main analytical focus of the book and this provides a glimpse of the potential of the new world of multi-modal corpora. It provides fascinating quantitative results and correlations on when headnods are used and when they are not. In addition, it provides a functional analysis of headnods based on the data sample. The analysis of headnods is testimony to the enormous potential of this exciting new research tool.

- Anne O'Keeffe, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland,

This book proposes the use of multimodal corpora in order to examine spoken discourse more effectively and with greater accuracy. Current corpora are invaluable resources for generating accurate and objective analyses of patterns of language use. However, spoken corpora are effectively mono-modal, presenting data in the same physical medium - text. The reality of a discourse situation is lost in its representation as text. Using multimodal data sets when conducting corpus-based pragmatic analyses is one solution. This book looks at multimodal corpora in some depth, using backchanneling as the conversational feature to be analyzed. It provides a bottom-up study of multimodal corpora; their physical construction and a methodology for the analysis of specific linguistic phenomena across their multiple streams of data. Dawn Knight also looks at possible directions in the construction and use of multimodal corpus linguistics. Furthermore, the collaborative and cooperative nature of backchannels is highlighted and the book presents an adapted pragmatic-functional linguistic coding matrix for the characterization of backchanneling phenomena. Corpus linguistics provides the methodology to extract meaning from discourse. Taking as its starting point the fact that language is not a mirror of reality but lets us share what we know, believe and think about reality, it focuses on language as a social phenomenon, and makes visible the attitudes and beliefs expressed by the members of a discourse community. Consisting of both spoken and written language, discourse always has historical, social, functional, and regional dimensions. Discourse can be monolingual or multilingual, interconnected by translations. Discourse is where language and social studies meet. "The Corpus and Discourse" series consists of two strands. The first, Research in Corpus and Discourse, features innovative contributions to various aspects of corpus linguistics and a wide range of applications, from language technology via the teaching of a second language to a history of mentalities. The second strand, Studies in Corpus and Discourse, is comprised of key texts bridging the gap between social studies and linguistics. Although equally academically rigorous, this strand will be aimed at a wider audience of academics and postgraduate students working in both disciplines.
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Taking as its starting point the fact that language is not a mirror of reality but lets us share what we know, believe and think about reality, this book focuses on language as a social phenomenon, and makes visible the attitudes and beliefs expressed by the members of a discourse community.
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Part I: A Brief History of Corpus Linguistics; 1. Introduction; 2. Monomodal Corpus Linguistics; 3. Multimodal Corpus Linguistics; Part II: Communication 'Beyond the Text'; 4. Language and Gesture; 5. Backchannels; 6. Analysing Language and Gesture in Multimodal Corpora; 7. A Coding Matrix for Backchanneling Phenomena; Part III: The Future of Multimodal Corpus Linguistics; 8. Semi-Automated Gesture Tracking; 9. Ubiquitous Corpora; Bibliography; Index.
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Proposes the use of multimodal corpora in order to examine spoken discourse more effectively and with greater accuracy.
Utilizes a sub-corpus of 56,000 transcribed words of dyadic multimodal conversational episodes.

Language is ubiquitous. As never before, it is now commonly understood how crucial language is for human interaction, for negotiating and shaping our material and ideational reality. In the digital age, the speed, scale and diversity of forms of communication and language use have grown rapidly. The increasing amount of language data that influences attitudes, decision-making and relationships highlights how the methodology of corpus linguistics together with the explanatory power of discourse analysis are indispensable for deciphering the world around us.

Situated at the interface of corpus linguistics and discourse studies, the Corpus and Discourse series publishes innovative research where humanities and social sciences come together to understand the relationship between discourse and society in an increasingly digital world.

Series Editors: Michaela Mahlberg (University of Birmingham, UK) and Gavin Brookes (Lancaster University, UK)

Consulting Editor: Wolfgang Teubert (University of Birmingham, UK)

Editorial Board
Paul Baker, Lancaster University, UK
Frantisek Cermák, Charles University, Prague
Susan Conrad, Portland State University, USA
Matteo Fuoli, University of Birmingham, UK
Maristella Gatto, University of Bari, Italy
Dominique Maingueneau, Université de Paris XII, France
Christian Mair, University of Freiburg, Germany
Alan Partington, University of Bologna, Italy
Charlotte Taylor, University of Sussex, UK
Elena Tognini-Bonelli, University of Siena, Italy
Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University, UK
Ruihua Zhang, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, China
Feng Zhiwei, Institute of Applied Linguistics, Beijing, China

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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781441167231
Publisert
2011-12-15
Utgiver
Continuum Publishing Corporation
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
272

Forfatter

Biografisk notat

Dawn Knight is Research Assistant (CRAL) and Part-time Tutor at the University of Nottingham, UK.