Thoughts

Observing the Maxim of Quality: Examining an Autistic Doctor’s Conversations in an American Television Series, The Good Doctor

Ratchadaporn Tharearum, Pattrawut Charoenroop — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0700

Studies of Autism Spectrum Disorder have focused exclusively on how the Gricean Maxims are violated in persons with autism. Investigators typically draw the plausible conclusion that individuals with ASD are deficient in pragmatic ability and theory of mind, communicating in patterns that deviate from the norm. A few studies have investigated how autistic people observe the Maxim of Quality when examining communication difficulties of individuals with ASD. This study thus examines conversations involving Shaun—the main character with ASD in "The Good Doctor"—and his observance of the Maxim of Quality. Data came from the eighteen episodes of Season One. Results show that the Maxim of Quality is a dominant feature of the communication patterns of individuals with ASD. Shaun’s observance of the Maxim of Quality has four distinctive features, in that he: (1) responds without concern for the listener’s face, (2) asks inappropriate questions, (3) asks lengthy questions, and (4) interrupts.

An Investigation of L2 English Article Substitutions by L1 Chinese Learners

Yuhan Huang, Nattama Pongpairoj — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0700

This study investigated L1 Chinese learners’ English article substitutions and analyzed possible causes. The participants were 60 Chinese speakers divided into an intermediate and an advanced group, 30 participants each. The instruments were a Fill-in-the-Blank Test, a Grammaticality Judgment Task, and an interview. The instruments were conducted based on the nominal contexts in the English article system, i.e., the [+def, +spec] context, the [-def, +spec] context, and the [-def, -spec] context (Ionin et al., 2004). Results from the tasks showed that both groups had problems of English article substitutions. Both L1 transfer and L2 related factors, i.e., complexity of English articles and false concepts hypothesized played important roles in L1 Chinese learners’ English article substitutions. The results contributed to second language acquisition and provided some pedagogical implications.

Structural Patterns of Research Article Titles: An Exploratory Study in Five Branches of Linguistics

Naruthai Surapongraktrakool — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0700

This study explores the constructions of research article titles in five branches of linguistics by examining two key aspects: title length and syntactic structures. Data from 15 specialized journals covering language teaching, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and stylistics were analyzed. The findings reveal that, on average, computational linguistics titles are the shortest at nine words while titles in other branches tend to be 12–13 words long. Total of 12 types of title structures were identified, with single-unit titles, especially single phrases, being most common in computational linguistics and multi-unit titles, specifically phrase/phrase structures, being more frequent in other branches. Independent clauses are found most often in psycholinguistics titles. This study provides useful guidelines for researchers seeking to craft titles in these main branches of linguistics and encourages instructors in English for Academic Purposes to incorporate the structural patterns of titles into their lessons.