User:Mr0960a/sandbox

Constructed Action

 * The content present on the page all seems to be relevant, but there is nothing in the talk pages, which tells me that a very few amount of people have actually worked on this page, and is overall underdeveloped and out-dated as a result.


 * I do think that the information present is neutral, and is able to highlight the idea of constructed action from the orally speaking and signing communities to a relatively equal degree.
 * It seems that the citations present are reliable, but they do not seem to be properly implemented due to statements that use information from another writer are merely put into references instead of getting their own citation.

Potential references and why:


 * 1) Ferrara, L., & Johnston, T. (2014). Elaborating Who’s What: A Study of Constructed Action and Clause Structure in Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Australian Journal of Linguistics, 34(2), 193–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2014.887405
 * 2) This is talking about the importance of constructed action in Australian sign language in reference to the social aspects of how people decide to sign. It is made clear that the constructed action practiced is not necessary to get the information to someone else, but is what has been learned and implemented by the community

Even in Sign languages across the world constructed action is used in a similar way, but is limited in the sense that communication must be continued with the individual's hands. Those who use sign language will still have their hands telling the story, but the rest of their body and face will be expressing the actions of another individual in the story. Often the constructed action is said to start with a break in eye contact and then the shifting of the signer's body. The constructed action in sign language also adds more information to the story being told in the sense that the words being signed will give a part of the story while the rest of the body and face will tell a reaction or some other component about the individual the story is about. Due to the added meaning from these bodily movements, constructed action is described as symbolic in sign language.


 * 1) BEAL-ALVAREZ, J. S., & TRUSSELL, J. W. (2015). Depicting Verbs and Constructed Action: Necessary Narrative Components in Deaf Adults’ Storybook Renditions. Sign Language Studies, 16(1), 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1353/sls.2015.0023
 * 2) This article focuses on American sign language users, and how regardless of how or when they learned ASL, they all conveyed a picture storybook in ASL in a very similar manner in regards to the constructed action, which was found to help give information and keep everyone on the same page.

Those who have learned American Sign Language show similar physical motions when using constructed action despite the differences in their education, as well as constructed action not being taught as a standard component in the sign language.


 * 1) Quinto-Pozos, D. (2007). Why Does Constructed Action Seem Obligatory? An Analysis of “Classifiers” and the Lack of Articulator-Referent Correspondence. Sign Language Studies, 7(4), 458–506. https://doi.org/10.1353/sls.2007.0027
 * 2) This article suggests that constructed action often is used in sign language seperate of upper body movements, but sometimes will have both occur based on the topic that is being covered to get the most descriptive information to the other person in a situation.

Signers do not always define their extra body motions as constructed action, but the similarities to the term's definition as well as the function of the movements connects the two ideas together. The constructed actions are able to convey information in a faster and more efficient way than if they were to be signed out, and are useful for faster relay in information. Because of this constructed action is seen as a way to overcome the impairment that deaf individuals face, and simply streamline their communication much like people attempt to in spoken language.

Professor's document posted in talk page:

Stories are constructed dialogue by themselves, because there is still the act of retelling the story which means it will be altered to some degree by the story teller. So, written stories are all constructed dialogue unless the exact words were recorded in some median and transcribed into written language.

Overall, I would like to expand to a more intricate usage of constructed action in communication forms, because of the simplicity of the information so far. While it is a greta base to start off from, the phenmoena of constructed action takes on much more meaning and importance in communication than it is currently given.

= Discourse Evaluation =

Evaluating Content:

 * The only major thing that jumped out to me was the reference to the DSM IV because the most current rendition is the DSM 5 which was released about six years ago now and could lead to a very different interpretation to the data presented.


 * I think that this Wikipedia article is a bit too ambitious to try and include then entire topic of discourse in every single one of its meanings in a single page, and may benefit from a separation of the different variations which would allow for a more structured evaluation that is more pertinent to different fields based on the definitions being used.

Evaluating Tone:

 * It seems that the only primary definitions offered are the ones from a philosophical standpoint or the semantics side of linguistics attempting to trace the origin of the world in the sense of language evolution.
 * All other topics get a brief mention or are implied to be included in an etcetera.

Evaluating Sources:

 * From what I can tell, I would say that the sources seem to be from reputable sources as well as ones that seem beneficial to the information being portrayed. However, there are not many references to outside resources, so I would suggest that writers should make it a priority to bring in more supportive information relevant to the topic to increase its quality.

Talk Page:

 * It seems that there is a common thread of not really knowing what a functional definition of discourse is that is able to encompass all of the fields and ideologies that use the term often. This makes me feel that my request to perhaps fracture discourse into several different pages with varying focuses on the field that the article is addressing.
 * This is a C class article and belongs to the Wiki Projects: Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology and Linguistic / Applied Linguistic.
 * In class we have merely refferenced discourse as an ongoing discussion over a central topic, which seems to be some what paradoxical since our discourse is about literal words used in discourse sometimes.