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Four main informational elements have been suggested and studied as central aspects of narrative discourse: causality, character, location, time. The research that scholars have previously undertaken on these aspects has been primarily on Indo-European languages, and more specifically on the European side of that language family. The linguistic limitations have indicated that character is the aspect of narrative that readers/listeners attend to most closely. However, in examining narrative discourses from non-Indo-European languages, challenges to the presumed primacy of character emerge. In a partial report on field work conducted in Borneo in 2012-2015, I compare and contrast patterns in the rankings of the four main aspects of narrative in three languages, English, Hobongan and Daqan. I also note the strategies by which the languages make their respective rankings clear, including focus particles (Hobongan), specificity of description (each), and amount of information provided about the aspects (each). I suggest that analyses of the patterns and rankings of information in narrative be included in typological categorizations and linguistic descriptions of languages.
Face-to-face communication is multimodal. In unscripted spoken discourse we can observe the interaction of several “semiotic layers”, modalities of information such as syntax, discourse structure, gesture, and intonation. We explore the role of gesture and intonation in structuring and aligning information in spoken discourse through a study of the co-occurrence of pitch accents and gestural apices. Metaphorical spatialization through gesture also plays a role in conveying the contextual relationships between the speaker, the government and other external forces in a naturally-occurring political speech setting.
In “Fern von Aleppo”, the Syrian author Faisal Hamdo, who left his home in 2014 and sought refuge in Germany, tells of his very personal integration experiences. The book represents a kind of intercultural communication. In his book, Faisal Hamdo, who sees himself as a “mediator between the worlds”, tries to give the German reader answers to many questions regarding Syrian culture. From a text linguistic point of view, this book identifies the narrative development that seems to be tailored to the in-tercultural context. Accordingly, the present article raises the following questions: Does the structure of classic narration differ from the structure of narration in an intercultural context? Which intercultural information units are presented in the text? How are they embedded in the narrative text? Which constituents of the narrative structure are suitable for realizing intercultural communication? Which communicative functions do the constituents of the narrative structure fulfill in an intercultural context? The contribution sets itself the goal of analyzing the narrative structure to investigate how intercultural communication comes about through narration, how the intercultural information units are integrated into the constituents of the classic narrative structure so that they fulfill their communicative function, and to developa suitable analysis model.
This reading of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park suggests that the semantic framework of the novels is provided by the contrast between two meanings of the word consequence, the archaic meaning of social or emotional importance and the common and garden meaning of effect of a cause. It also suggests that the narrative structure of the novels is that of a game of consequences, a game that was played at the time of Jane Austen.