University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2018 Towards A Typographical Linguistics: The Semantics-Pragmatics Of Typographic Emphasis In Discourse Jefferson Maia University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Maia, J.(2018). Towards A Typographical Linguistics: The Semantics-Pragmatics Of Typographic Emphasis In Discourse. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/4922 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TOWARDS A TYPOGRAPHICAL LINGUISTICS: THE SEMANTICS-PRAGMATICS OF TYPOGRAPHIC EMPHASIS IN DISCOURSE by Jefferson Maia Licentiate of Arts Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2012 Master of Arts Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2013 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2018 Accepted by: Robin Morris, Major Professor Anne Bezuidenhout, Committee Member Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva, Committee Member Shelia Kennison, Committee Member Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Jefferson Maia, 2018 All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION I dedicate this work to My moM, Iraci, who went through hell and back to raise me as a single mother in the face of extremely liMited resources in a developing country; you are the strongest person I know, and I thank you for instilling in me the love of learning ever since I can remember. I also dedicate this to my grandmother, Presciliana; at 95, she never forgets to ask when I will come back to visit. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must start by sincerely thanking Joseph Ammer for supporting me emotionally, academically, and financially at the end of my graduate studies. When nobody else seemed to care whether I would be able to see my degree through to coMpletion, you did, and I aM forever indebted to you for all you have done for me. Special thanks to Robin Morris for encouraging me to find my voice and research identity: thank you for believing in my ideas, for helping me become a better reading researcher, and for your never-fading enthusiasm about this project. On the academic side, I would also like to thank Anne Bezuidenhout, Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva, and Shelia Kennison, who have generously donated their time to serve on my committee; and Elaine Chun and Tracey Weldon, who have been such inspirational instructors. My gratitude also goes to the hundreds of voluntary participants I recruited at the University of South Carolina, without whom I would have no reading data. Finally, I acknowledge the following for their help and/or friendship over these last five years: Alcione Gonçalves, Andréa Melo, Angélica Ferreira, Anna Feliciano, Carol Sunderman, Caroline Mosser, Cláudia Brandão, Danielle Fahey, Gretchen Meyer, Henning Liese, Henrique Pinto, Ildeu Braga, Isabel Meusen, Jonathan Rann, Koren Salajka, Mariana Mendes, Matheus Rufino, Michele Reis, Nadia Rodríguez, Peter Nelson, Raphael Campos, Shinichi Shoji, Simone Gomes, Thaís de Sá, and Wei Cheng. Thank you! iv ABSTRACT The standard view of the effects of typographic emphasis in English is that type styles (e.g., capitals, italics) enhance Memory for emphasized information to the detriMent of reading speed and without contributing semantically or pragmatically meaningful information to the text. Fewer emphasis studies that have concerned themselves with reference questions offer off-line evidence that typography interacts with linguistic variables and, More specifically, that it adds a modulatory or a contrastive layer of meaning to the interpretation of referential expressions. No study to date has investigated, however, whether typographic emphasis can bring a referent into discourse focus and consequently affect the processing of co-referential expressions (e.g., repeated names, pronouns). This study provides on-line evidence for the visual- emphatic, contrastive, and discourse focus effects of typographic emphasis during normal silent reading in English by means of two eye-tracking experiMents manipulating capitals and italics in cohesive pieces of discourse. A data-driven case is Made that typographic emphasis is a visible carrier of content that serves a linguistic function in the text. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ........................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. iv Abstract ................................................................................................................................v List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures ...................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: The Psycholinguistics of Typographic Emphasis ............................................. 10 Chapter 3: Reference Processing ...................................................................................... 30 Chapter 4: Experiment 1 ................................................................................................... 58 Chapter 5: Experiment 2 ................................................................................................... 92 Chapter 6: General Discussion ........................................................................................ 116 References ...................................................................................................................... 135 Appendix A: Experimental Materials .............................................................................. 152 Appendix B: ExperiMent 1 Statistics (Unabridged) ......................................................... 159 Appendix C: ExperiMent 2 Statistics (Unabridged) ......................................................... 165 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Overview of Typographic Emphasis Devices ....................................................... 7 Table 4.1 Sample StiMuli for Experiment 1 ...................................................................... 59 Table 4.2 First Fixation and First Pass on the Target and Competitor .............................. 76 Table 4.3 Early Measures on the Anaphor........................................................................ 77 Table 4.4 Early Measures on the Verb .............................................................................. 80 Table 4.5 Total TiMe on the Target and Competitor ........................................................ 83 Table 4.6 Regressions In on the Target ............................................................................. 83 Table 4.7 Total TiMe in Sentence 2 ................................................................................... 85 Table 5.1 Sample StiMuli for Experiment 2 ...................................................................... 94 Table 5.2 First Fixation and First Pass on the Target and Competitor .............................. 97 Table 5.3 Early Measures on the Anaphor...................................................................... 100 Table 5.4 Early Measures on the Verb ............................................................................ 103 Table 5.5 Total TiMe on the Target and Competitor ...................................................... 105 Table 5.6 Total TiMe in Sentence 2 ................................................................................. 108 Table 5.7 Regressions In on the Anaphor ....................................................................... 109 Table A.1 Stimuli Set for Experiments 1 & 2 (Plain Condition) ....................................... 152 Table B.1 Linear-Mixed Model Results on the Target .................................................... 159 vii Table B.2 Linear-Mixed Model Results on the Competitor ............................................ 160 Table B.3 Linear-Mixed Model Results on the Anaphor ................................................. 161 Table B.4 Linear-Mixed Model Results on the Verb ....................................................... 162 Table B.5 Linear-Mixed Model Results at End of Sentence ............................................ 163 Table B.6 Simple Effects per Measure and Interest Area ............................................... 164 Table C.1 Linear-Mixed Model Results on the Target .................................................... 165 Table C.2 Linear-Mixed Model Results on the Competitor ............................................ 166 Table C.3 Linear-Mixed Model Results on the Anaphor ................................................. 167 Table C.4 Linear-Mixed Model Results on the Verb ....................................................... 168 Table C.5 Linear-Mixed Model Results at End of Sentence ............................................ 169 Table C.6 Simple Effects per Measure and Interest Area ..............................................