Abstract
This paper explores the presence of expressive speech acts in a corpus of e-forum history logs derived from the online collaborative writing activity of three groups of undergraduate and postgraduate students in a tertiary education setting. The macro category of Expressives has been less frequently studied than others such as Directives or Commissives, and even nowadays its in-depth study tends to concentrate on specific subtypes such as Compliments. In computer mediated exchanges, the implicit disembodiment must ensure an outstanding role for expressive uses of language, since non-verbal means are not available as in face-to-face conversation. The study includes a qualitative and quantitative analysis which covers the similarities and differences found across the subcorpora corresponding to each of the three groups of students involved, in terms of subtypes of Expressives and their linguistic realisations. The results suggest that Expressives play a crucial role as rapport building devices in the online interaction, smoothing and complementing transactional language. The analysis also suggests that the variables of linguistic proficiency, group size, age, multiculturality, and method of assessment may have a bearing on the form and use of Expressives in online written interaction in blended learning environments.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The examples with no indications have been constructed by the authors or adopted from a different source from the corpus (indicated in all the cases). The examples cited from the corpus are followed by an indication between brackets of the subcorpus to which they belong.
- 2.
Each of the subcorpora has been named according to the subject the students were doing. The acronyms stand as follows: Pr stands for Pragmatics (evening undergraduate group), D&T for Discourse and Text (morning undergraduate group) and SL for Seminar of Linguistics (master’s group). See the Methodology section for detailed information.
- 3.
The selected texts were the beginnings of “The sisters”, “An encounter” and “Eveline”, three short stories included in James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914).
References
Adolphs, S. (2008). Corpus and context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Austin, J. L. (1975 [1962]). How to do things with words. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Bach, K., & Harnish, R. M. (1979). Linguistic communication and speech acts. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.
Blake, R. J. (2011). Current trends in online language learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 19–35.
Cole, M. (2009). Using wiki technology to support student engagement: Lessons from the trenches. Computers and Education, 52, 141–146.
Dillenbourg, P. (1999). Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and computational approaches. Oxford: Elsevier.
Dillenbourg, P., Baker, M., Blaye, A., & O’Malley, C. (1996). The evolution of research on collaborative learning. In P. Reiman & H. Spada (Eds.), Learning in humans and machines: Towards an interdisciplinary learning science (pp. 189–211). Oxford: Elsevier.
Givón, T. (1982). Evidentiality and epistemic space. Studies in Language, 6(1), 23–49.
Givón, T. (1984). Syntax: A functional-typological introduction (Vol. I). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Givón, T. (1990). Syntax: A functional-typological introduction (Vol. II). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Herring, S. C., Stein, D., & Virtanen, T. (2013). Handbook of pragmatics of computer-mediated communication. Berlin: Mouton.
Kessler, G., Bikowski, D., & Boggs, J. (2012). Collaborative writing among second language learners in academic web-based projects. Language, Learning and Technology, 16(1), 91–109.
Leeming, D. E., & Danino, N. (2012). Breaking barriers: A case study of culture and facebook usage. Journal of Modern Languages and International Studies, 1(1), 52–64.
Maíz Arévalo, C. (2010). Intercultural pragmatics: A contrastive analysis of compliments in English and Spanish. In M. Luisa Blanco Gómez & J. I. Marín Arrese (Eds.), Discourse and communication: Cognitive and functional perspectives (pp. 175–208). Madrid: Dykinson and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The language of evaluation. New York: Palgrave.
Neumann, D. L., & Hood, M. (2009). The effects of using a wiki on student engagement and learning of report writing skills in a university statistics course. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25(5), 382–398.
Nöel, S., & Robert, J.-M. (2004). Empirical study on collaborative writing: What do co-authors do, use, and like? Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing, 13(1), 63–89.
Piaget, J. (1928). The language and thought of the child. New York: Harcourt.
Rühlemann, C. (2010). What can a corpus tell us about pragmatics? In A. O’Keeffe & M. McCarthy (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics (pp. 288–301). London: Routledge.
Searle, J. R. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5(1), 1–23.
Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Storch, N. (2011). Collaborative writing in L2 contexts: Processes, outcomes, and future directions. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31(1), 275–288.
Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in interaction. An introduction to pragmatics. London/New York: Longman.
Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding pragmatics. London/New York: Arnold.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Weigand, E. (2010). Dialogue – The mixed game. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
White, P. R. R. (2003). An introductory course in Appraisal analysis. http://www.grammatics.com/appraisal. Accessed 16 Mar 2009.
Yus, F. (2011). Cyberpragmatics: Internet-mediated communication in context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Carretero, M., Maíz-Arévalo, C., Martínez, M.Á. (2014). “Hope This Helps!” An Analysis of Expressive Speech Acts in Online Task-Oriented Interaction by University Students. In: Romero-Trillo, J. (eds) Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2014. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06007-1_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06007-1_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-06006-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-06007-1
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)