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Communicative strategies of politicians in interaction.
Lokajová, Jana ; Šaldová, Pavlína (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
Abstract. The aim of this M.A. thesis is to apply on the sample of five transcribed interviews with American politicians the typology of strategies devised by social psychologists P. Bull and K. Mayer (1993) for 'non-replies' of British politicians in the genre of a political interview and to determine whether this typology could be qualitatively correlated to specific linguistic means (the use of passive, pronominal shifts, hedges). The responses of politicians are examined within the CDA method also in relation to the macro-principles of evasion (dissimulation), coercion, legitimation and delegitimation, which are claimed to be valid in political discourse by P. Chilton (2004) in order to discover whether Bull and Mayer's social typology could be related to these principles and to the strategies of face-management (Brown and Levinson 1987). It is expected that politicians will boost their positive image in the interview and coerce the public in the agenda shift (Clayman, Heritage 2002) through every response in the interview. A question which according to Bull and Elliott (1996) consists of face threat is also expected to be attacked; quantitative results are presented which verify this assumption. In addition, as thirty strategies were observed to have been employed by Mrs Thatcher and Neil Kinnock in...
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A contrastive study of hyperbole in Czech and English. A corpus-based study
Macháčková, Anežka ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The aim of this study is to compare and contrast the use of hyperbole or exaggeration in spoken Czech and English language. The research is based on comparative approach to two samples accounting for 100 hyperbolic instances in Czech and 100 instances of hyperbole in English. The Czech sample has been randomly excerpted from the oral part of the Czech National Corpus ORAL2008, whereas the English sample has been randomly excerpted from the "spoken context-govern" and "spoken demographic" sections of The British National Corpus. The two samples are subject to analysis. Firstly, the formal realization of hyperbole is examined. Secondly, the occurrences are classified semantically (quantitative versus qualitative hyperbole) and, thirdly, the lexico-semantics is examined (hyperbolic source domains). By this, the present study tests the hypothesis of universal hyperbolic source domains by examining the situation in Czech and English. Finally, the occurrence of conventionalized instances of hyperbole as opposed to creative instances of hyperbolic nonce-usages is examined. Last but not least, it is the aim of this study to provide the overall frequency figures of hyperbole in both languages.
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Testing English collocations in Czech learners of English
Vaňková, Lenka ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Čermák, Jan (referee)
The present study focuses on English collocations and their testing in Czech learners of English. Since the importance of collocations and phraseology as a linguistic discipline has not been recognised until recently, these concepts are introduced from the general point of view. First, the attention is given to the history of phraseology and its underlying principles as well as to the major approaches to it. Second, phraseological units are described from the point of view of their categorisation and of some influential typologies of these units. The main focus of interest is collocations, particularly major approaches to them as well as criteria commonly used to describe and delimit collocations from other types of prefabricated units and their definition and classification. Previous research on collocations in learner English is also outlined. The analytical part (based on Granger's (1998) study) analyzes the results of testing English collocations in Czech learners of English. The main focus is on whether these results confirm or deny the results of Granger's study, as well as on the learners' knowledge of and ability to use collocations, particularly on their (non)attaining the native "ideal."
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The individual textual profile: a corpus-based study of idiolect
Leško, Marek ; Malá, Markéta (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
- EN The thesis analyzes the idiolect of the then-presidential candidate Barack Obama in the specific speech situation of the televized debates on the background of the utterances of other candidates in the years 2000, 2004 and 2008. The analysis uses corpus-driven methods to compare the Obama corpus with the reference corpus. The comparison is largely based on the analysis of keywords and their use in context, supplemented by the discussion of their collocations and associated clusters. The results of the analysis, i.e. the principal features Obama's idiolect, are presented in a structured summary, divided into specific areas. Keywords: Idiolect, individual textual profile, Obama, keywords, corpus, corpus-driven
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A comparative study of the Czech lexeme "aby" and its English translations in parallel Czech-English texts
Vašková, Petra ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
The present study focuses on functions and English translation counterparts of the Czech lexeme aby. It is a relatively frequent word in the Czech language which is described as a subordinating conjunction expressing purpose, effect, manner, and also as a particle with a number of discourse functions. The current description, however, does not seem complete and this study therefore aims to analyse its use in more detail. Lexicographic and grammatical sources served as a basis for the classification of aby as a conjunction and as a particle. After an analysis of 200 examples it soon became evident that this listing is not complete and the use of aby is more complex than originally expected. The present paper thus treats all the functions of aby and also exemplifies each of them using extracted corpus data. In the study, aby in its conjunction and particle use is firstly treated separately to analyse each of them in more depth. This analysis, consequently, provides basis to point out their common features as well as their differences. The English translational counterparts are another point of interest in the study, in particular, their adequacy, regularity, and lexicalization.
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Lexical coselections in non-native speaker English text
Felcmanová, Andrea ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor)
The research reported in this thesis explores the degree of authenticity of the formulaic language used by NNSs and the extent to which a learner's L1 interferes in the production of different types of multi-word units, namely non-idiomatic recurrent three and four-word combinations (lexical bundles), phrasal and prepositional verbs and collocation. Drawing on Granger's Contrastive Interlanguage analysis (CIA 1996), the investigation is conducted on two different learner sample corpora and subsequently contrasted with a native sample corpus. The study aims to prove that multi-word units pose a challenge for learners for several reasons. In general terms, learners are assumed to operate predominantly on what Sinclair calls the open-choice principle, that is to say their production will be less idiomatic than that of native speakers'. This assumption is independently tested on different types of phraseological combinations. As regards non-idiomatic recurrent word combinations, learners are expected to be more repetitive in their three- and four-word combinations and use less creativity in their writing. Concerning the phrasal verbs, it is highly likely to observe a small number of phrasal verbs in the non-native writing whereas prepositional verbs are considered problematic for learners due to the...
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English back-formation in the 20th and the early 21st century
Stašková, Naděžda ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Kavka, Tomáš (referee) ; Pípalová, Renata (referee)
(Naděžda Stašková) The subject of the present study is a description and analysis of English back- formation in the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. The work mainly focuses on the last part of the given period and aims at highlighting the most typical features of this morphological process today, resulting from its development over the whole century. Based on the analysis of the contemporary situation and on the results of the research of neologisms involved in the process of back-formation, prevailing tendencies for the nearest future have been drawn and possible subjects for further research have been suggested. Investigation of an overall sample of 768 back-formed units has resulted in the following conclusions: Productivity of back-formation remains on the same level as it was in the first half of the 20th century. The most productive process is formation of verbs from action nouns, which has grown significantly. Back-formation of verbs from agent nouns has decreased, formation of verbs from adjectives almost disappeared. Adjectives can be seen as a minor source of back- formed nouns, probably decreasing in productivity. There is a growth in involvement of compounds in this process. The most frequent subtracted suffixes are -ing, -ion/-ation and -er, all of them being involved in the...
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Lexical coselections in non-native speaker English text
Felcmanová, Andrea ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Kudrnáčová, Naděžda (referee) ; Dontcheva Navratilova, Olga (referee)
The research reported in this thesis explores the degree of authenticity of the formulaic language used by NNSs and the extent to which a learner's L1 interferes in the production of different types of multi-word units, namely non-idiomatic recurrent three and four-word combinations (lexical bundles), phrasal and prepositional verbs and collocation. Drawing on Granger's Contrastive Interlanguage analysis (CIA 1996), the investigation is conducted on two different learner sample corpora and subsequently contrasted with a native sample corpus. The study aims to prove that multi-word units pose a challenge for learners for several reasons. In general terms, learners are assumed to operate predominantly on what Sinclair calls the open-choice principle, that is to say their production will be less idiomatic than that of native speakers'. This assumption is independently tested on different types of phraseological combinations. As regards non-idiomatic recurrent word combinations, learners are expected to be more repetitive in their three- and four-word combinations and use less creativity in their writing. Concerning the phrasal verbs, it is highly likely to observe a small number of phrasal verbs in the non-native writing whereas prepositional verbs are considered problematic for learners due to the...
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Linguistic aspects of translating informal/slang expressions in American TV series subtitles
Vaňková, Marie ; Klégr, Aleš (advisor) ; Gráf, Tomáš (referee)
The present study treats the problem of translating American slang and informal vocabulary into Czech. Its aim is to explain why this kind of vocabulary can be difficult to translate and to compare two different approaches to the task. It works with material excerpted from the subtitles of an American TV series, the official and the unofficial version of its translation. The experimental part brings information on the incidence of different types of mistakes and it identifies the main tendencies of the translators in dealing with various problems. The final part characterizes the strategies of individual translators, commenting on their strong and weak points.
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Local Bird Names and Their Standard Name Equivalents
Kos, Petr ; Čermák, Jan (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee) ; Peprník, Jaroslav (referee)
Resumé Práce si klade za cíl provést podrobnou, především synchronní, analýzu pojmenování ptáků v angličtině. Korpus pro analýzu tvoří současná pojmenování ptáků ze tří stylistických a funkčních rovin: standardní pojmenování, užívaná pro oficiální a odbornou komunikaci, lidová pojmenování mající pouze regionální valenci, a žargonová pojmenování užívaná těmi, pro něž se pozorování ptáků stalo zálibou. Zdrojem pro standardní pojmenování je oficiální seznam ptáků The British List kompletovaný Britskou ornitologickou unií. Pro lidová pojmenování je zdrojem publikace The Oxford Dictionary of British Bird Names od W. B. Lockwooda (1993), a pro žargonová pojmenování jsou to internetová fóra určená zájemcům o ornitologii. Korpus pro hlavní analýzu celkem tvoří 884 pojmenování ptáků, z toho je 205 standardních pojmenování, 595 lidových pojmenování a 84 žargonových pojmenování. Těžiště práce leží ve dvou hlavních kapitolách, Motivation a Analysis. V kapitole Motivation rozlišuji tři typy motivace - morfologickou, sémantickou a fonetickou. V rámci těchto motivací se zabývám procesy, které se na vzniku pojmenování ptáků podílejí. V morfologické motivaci se především jedná o kompozici a sufixaci a dále procesy, pro něž je charakteristické krácení slovního tvaru. Mezi procesy sémantické motivace řadím metaforu a...
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