Since, to a large extent, the audience determines the way in which a message is conveyed, it is plausible to think that art blogs represent a form of popularised communication and art announcements a form of specialised communication. As a matter of fact, the present analysis bears that out and allows an insight into the qualitative level. Each practice is briefly introduced, accompanied by the most frequent expressions it entails. Each significant lexical item is retrieved in the two corpora and, using the software R, the calculations of the chi-square test and Yule’s Q are made. Table 4.2 summarises the strategies.
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Practice of Popularisation Expressions associated
Denomination or designation “in other words”, “meaning”, “called”, “so-called”,
“known as”, “aka”
Definition no single expression
Reformulation or paraphrase “that is”, “that is to say”, “i.e.”, “in other words”
Analogy “as”, “like”, “similar to”, “not different from”, “the
same as”
Generalisation no single expression
Exemplification “for instance”, “for example”, “an example is”,
“e.g.”
Table 4.2 Practices of popularisation identified by Calsamiglia and Van Djik (2004)
The practice of denomination or designation introduces new objects, events or terms, for instance with neologisms or metaphors. This strategy often combines with expressions like “in other words”, “meaning”, “called”, “so-called”, “known as”
(Calsamiglia and Van Dijk 2004), “aka”. “In other words” can be used both to designate and to reformulate what has already been said. All the expressions show a higher frequency in the ABC than in the E-flux.
The practice of definition, used to define terms, cannot be parsed into single expressions.
The practice of reformulation or paraphrase can produce a text with the same meaning but easier to understand. The paraphrase is often accompanied by expressions such as “that is”, “that is to say”, “i.e.”, “in other words” (the same expression as for the practice of denomination or designation.
Table
Figure Expressions linked to the practice of denomination or designation
The practice of analogy or association comprises comparisons in the forms of similes or metaphors which can be formulated, for example, using “as”, “like”, “
Figure 4.1 Expressions linked to the practice of denomination
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Expression Frequency in the ABC
Frequency in the E-flux
P-value Yule’s Q
In other words 36.9 per million 12.8 per million 2.2e-16 -0.5381382 Meaning 34.4 per million 22.7 per million 1.659e-06 -0.2744943
Called 267.0 per million 88.0 per million 2.2e-16 -0.5579559
So called 13.6 per million 2.2 per million 5.665e-14 -0.7509396
Known as 90.4 per million 38.3 per million 2.2e-16 -0.4653565
Aka 17.8 per million 8.8 per million 1.113e-06 -0.4020674
Table 4.3The practice of denomination or designation
The strategy of analogy or association comprises comparisons in the forms of similes or metaphors which can be formulated, for example, using “as”, “like”,
“similar to”, “not different from”, “the same as”. The adverbs “like” and “as” are difficult to disambiguate, since the automatic annotation is not accurate enough.
The practice of definition, used to define terms, cannot be parsed into single expressions and therefore was not taken into account in the present study.
The strategy of reformulation can produce a text with the same meaning but which is easier to understand. The paraphrase is often accompanied by expressions such as
“that is”, “that is to say”, “i.e.”, “in other words” (the same expression as in the practice of denomination). The expression “that is” in the ABC in particular almost doubles in the E-flux.
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Figure 4.2. Expressions linked to the practice of reformulation Figure 4.2. Expressions linked to the practice of reformulation Expression Frequency in the
ABC
Frequency in the E-flux
P-value Yule’s Q
that is 534.6 per million 229.9 per million 2.2e-16 -0.4596712 that is to say 10.3 per million 2.7 per million 3.108e-08 -0.6290843
i.e. 23.7 per million 18.9 per million 0.006943 -0.1844918
Table 4.4. The practice of reformulation
The practice of analogy comprises comparisons in the forms of similes or metaphors which can be formulated, for example, using “as”, “like”, “similar to”,
“not different from”, “the same as”. The adverbs “like” and “as” are difficult to disambiguate, since the automatic annotation of the corpora is not reliable. “Similar to”, “not different from” and “the same as” are much more frequent in the ABC than in the E-flux.
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Figure 4.3. Expressions linked to the practice of analogy Expression Frequency in the
ABC
Frequency in the E-flux
P-value Yule’s Q
Similar to 29.0 per million 15.7 per million 1.049e-08 -0.3645061 (not) different from 26.0 per million 8.7 per million 1.88e-15 -0.5543853 the same as 20.8 per million 2.2 per million 2.2e-16 -0.8303328 Table 4.5 The practice of analogy
The strategy of generalisation, which extends the validity of a proposition to all members of a set, is not necessarily accompanied by a particular expression.
The practice of exemplification substitutes a general proposition with one or more propositions often introduced by expressions such as “for instance”, “for example”,
“an example is”, “e.g.”. “An example” is to be found so seldom that it is unreasonable to run a test.
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Figure 4.4. Expressions linked to the practice of exemplification Expression Frequency in the
ABC
Frequency in the E-flux
P-value Yule’s Q
for instance 63.5 per million 29.0 per million 2.2e-16 -0.4351562 for example 144.8 per million 59.3 per million 2.2e-16 -0.4784358
e.g. 17.6 per million 16.3 per million 0.1675 -0.1102167
Table 4.6 The practice of exemplification
All the results are significant, except for “e.g.”, which has a p-value of 0.1675, which is not significant, if we take the commonly used cut-off point of p = 0.05. The effect size in every case was small. Thus the ABC shows a clear tendency for practices of popularisation, and these practices are much more frequent than in the E-flux. Only expressions linked to practices of denomination, reformulation, analogy and exemplification could be automatically retrieved, while practices of definition and generalisation could not be detected through an automatic analysis.