This course will be a reading and discussion seminar covering key texts and papers on discourse analysis, with an emphasis on health communication. Each topic will cover both linguistic background and current computational applications. Topics covered will include: rhetorical, formal, and linguistic models of argumentation (applications: health rhetoric models, persuasive language technologies); computational discourse models (applications: text summarization, information extraction; automated annotation of text corpora.
Participants will be expected to read widely and in-depth. There are no formal requirements other than interest in the topic and ability to read and analyze technical material. Some background in Linguistics or Computational Linguistics (e.g., CS784/886 Human Language Technologies) as a prerequisite would be helpful.
Grading will be based on class participation (40% for presenting summaries of the readings and leading discussions; 20% for participating in discussions) and a term paper on a topic of your choice (40%). Auditors are welcome but will be expected to lead at least one discussion and to participate regularly in discussions.
Note: If you are interested in this course and would like to do some background preparation on your own, the following textbook is recommended:
Daniel Jurafsky and James H. Martin
Speech and language processing: An introduction to natural
language processing,
computational linguistics and speech
recognition
Prentice Hall, 2009 (second edition)
Wednesday May 5 3:30-4:30
Davis Centre 2306C (Artificial Intelligence Lab Conference Room)
The readings we will cover will include:
Wednesday May 12 3:30-5:00
Thursday May 13 3:30-5:00 ***Note date
Teun A. van Dijk
Discourse as structure and process (vol. 1)
Sage Publications
1997
Chapter 1: The Study of Discourse (background only)
Chapter 3: Discourse Semantics
Chapter 5: Discourse Styles
Chapter 6: Rhetoric
Wednesday May 19 3:30-5:00
Wednesday June 2 3:30-5:00
Judy Segal
Health and the rhetoric of medicine,
Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
Wednesday June 9 3:30-5:00
Christopher W. Tindale
Acts of arguing: A rhetorical model of argument
State University of New York Press
1999
Introduction: The Case for Rhetorical Argumentation
Chapter 3: Contexts and Arguments: An Introduction to the
Rhetorical Perspective
Stephen E. Toulmin
The uses of argument
Cambridge University Press
Second edition, 2003
Chapter III The Layout of Arguments
Wednesday June 16 3:30-5:00
Thursday June 17 9:00-10:30 ***Note date and time
Livia Polanyi
"A formal model of the structure of discourse"
Journal of Pragmatics, Volume 12 (5-6), 1988
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca
The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation
University of Notre Dame Press
1969
TBA
Wednesday June 23 3:30-5:00
Glenn F. Stillar
Analyzing everyday texts: Discourse, rhetoric, and social
perspectives
Sage Publications, 1998
Chapter 2 Discourse Analysis
Chapter 3 Rhetorical Theory
William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson
"Rhetorical structure theory:
Toward a functional theory of text organization"
Text, Volume 8(3), 1988
Thursday June 24 3:30-5:00 ***Note date
Wednesday June 30 10:30-12:00 ***Tentative***
Wednesday July 7 3:30-5:00
Graham Wilcock
Introduction to linguistic annotation and text analytics
Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2009
Eduard Hovy
Paper on Machine Reading (TBA)
Thursday July 8 3:30-5:00 ***Note date
B.J. Fogg et al.,
Mobile persuasion: 20 perspectives of the future of behavior
change,
Stanford Captology Media, 2007.
Wednesday July 28 3:30-5:00
Thursday July 29 3:30-5:00 ***Note date
Chrysanne DiMarco
University of Waterloo, DC 1308
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
519 888 4443
email: cdimarco@uwaterloo.ca