1Linguistic research on salience is grounded in an attempt to understand how speakers use various linguistic tools to convey their message to an addressee and the effect that has on audience comprehension. One well-regarded study which examines the role of salience in linguistics is Ariel (2001)’s extensive account of accessibility theory. In her study, Ariel tries to understand the relationship between referential forms and the specific referents they evoke. Among other research goals, Ariel (2001) considers how certain referents become more accessible when they refer to the most salient topic in any given conversation. Ariel (2001) and other research on referents examine tangible language patterns in order to understand how salience is created, understood, and manipulated. Such research is related to an understanding of linguistic choices that speakers might make in any given discourse.
2Many studies on salience have been conducted on written corpora (Falk, 2014). One downside of this is a lack of research on comprehensive salience in discourse analysis. Consequently, it has been noted that there is a need for further linguistic research regarding how “discourse-mediated, ‘linguistic salience’ interacts with situation-mediated salience or ‘perceptual salience’” (Kecskes, 2013 as cited in Falk, 2014). This is to say that there is a need for more studies regarding how different types of salience interact with each other in multi-party discourse. This study is an attempt to fill in that gap, as we will analyze the intersection between language production and comprehension in relation to salience. This study will rely on spoken discourse in the form of TED talks transcripts.
3TED talk transcripts are an interesting analytical arena in which we can study salience in a discursive setting. Because of the presentational discourse set-up and the speech patterns that seem to be present across different TED talks, it is interesting to analyze how TED speakers choose to convey their message to the audience. Both linguistic salience and perceptual salience are relevant topics of exploration in the analysis of TED talks.
4Several speech patterns appear to be consistently employed throughout TED talks given by different speakers. For the purpose of this study, question sequences, which can be defined as two or more consecutive direct questions posed by a single speaker, will be considered one of these discursive strategies. Because of the degree to which these question sequences appear again and again in TED transcripts, it is valuable to try and understand the reason why speakers choose to use question sequences in their presentations and how that choice affects a TED audience.
5The choice of using question sequences may relate to the speakers’ understanding of how important various topics are in their TED presentation. As such, the analysis of question sequences in TED talks relates to previous studies on salience in language production. Concurrently, the audience is on the receiving end of the question sequences and therefore it stands to reason that question sequences play a role in the audience’s comprehension of the speaker’s TED presentation. As a result, the use of question sequences in TED talks relates to the idea of forward-looking salience and the possibility that speakers can deliberately create a sense of anticipation on the part of their addressee regarding the topics that they deem most important to their presentation.
6Through the analysis of question sequences in 18 different English language TED talks, this paper aims to demonstrate how salience plays a role in the dissemination of information in quasi-monologic forums such as live presentations.
7Salience is not a simple term to define. There are many interpretations of what qualifies something as salient. In linguistics, salience may take on several meanings, as we work to understand how speakers and addressees alike understand something to be of increased importance.
8Though there are varied ideas of what classifies something as salient, there seems to be basic agreement that salience is closely related to prominence. Col (2011) explains that, in linguistics, salience is a term which is used to refer to the importance, introduction, or recency of a specific linguistic feature such as a word, syntactic unit, grammatical function, or discourse entity. In linguistics, salience manifests itself at the syntactic, prosodic, and semantic level and is closely related to the “mental operations of the speaker/listener during discourse processing” (Falk, 2014: 3). As Riester et al. (2018) note, salience can be used to try and understand how actively present something is in the mind of a discourse participant. Moreover, salience can be understood as a sort of emphasis given to a certain topic which results in some parts of discourse which are more accessible in memory. Thus, salience is an important notion which can be used to understand how speakers may organize their discourse and the various levels by which an addressee’s comprehension is aligned with speaker intention (Falk, 2014).
9There are several types of salience which have been explored in a variety of previous studies. Landragin (2004) proposes a classification of different kinds of salience through the analysis of the different factors which make something salient in a linguistic utterance or visual scene. The various types of salience which Landragin (2004) describes fall into two different categories: physical salience and cognitive salience. Landragin (2004) explains that physical salience is driven by physical characteristics of the message while cognitive salience depends on a subject’s cognitive procedures. Kecskes (2013) goes on to explain that “linguistic salience describes the accessibility of entities in a speaker’s or hearer’s memory and how this accessibility affects the production and interpretation of language” while “perceptual salience refers to information that is the focus of people’s attention” (Kecskes, 2013:72).
10In addition to the distinction between linguistic and cognitive salience, several researchers focus on forward- vs. backward-looking salience (Chiarcos, 2009; Falk, 2014). Chiarcos (2009) uses the term forward-looking salience to explain how “foregrounding serves to indicate the salience of discourse parts in relation to upcoming discourse” (Falk, 2014:4). Forward-looking salience is manipulated by the speaker in order to communicate to the addressee how important something is relative to upcoming discourse. Falk (2014: 5) explains that forward-looking salience is “exclusive to the speaker’s model of discourse, as he is the only one to know what he is going to mention next.” Alternatively, backward-looking salience is a term that has been used to describe “backward anaphoric relationships in discourse” (Falk 2014: 3). According to Falk, backward-looking salience has dominated the conversation about linguistic salience and is an integral idea in theories of accessibility, including Ariel (2001)’s work on understanding how certain referents are chosen to refer to a given antecedent. While backward-looking salience is related to the predictability of how a speaker may choose to refer to something that was previously evoked in the discourse, forward-looking salience relates to a sense of anticipation regarding how important a topic will become in the upcoming discourse.
11Salience can be difficult to quantify because it is not a simple task to measure how important someone regards a certain topic to be. Nevertheless, linguistic salience has often been measured in terms of its relationship to language production and language comprehension. As such, many studies have tried to understand the relationship between linguistic and perceptual salience in language production and comprehension.
12Salience has been an integral factor in research on language production including studies on referents, syntactic constructions, and prosody. Ariel (2001)’s accessibility theory, which argues against the arbitrary choice of referential forms such as pronouns, relies on discourse salience to explain patterns in the use of specific referents. Ariel (2001) uses salience to determine how accessible a referent is to an addressee and how that affects a speaker’s choice of referent. She posits that speakers use more specific referents to refer to a topic which is less salient in an addressee’s mind while vague referential pronouns can be successfully understood when they refer to more obviously salient entities in the discourse (Ariel, 2001).
13Previous studies on referents demonstrate how speakers make referential choices based on their understanding of what is most salient to their addressee. Other studies focus on how syntactic constructions interact with salience. As Falk (2014) explains, “prominence cues, such as syntactic role and position, noun phrase form and definiteness, syntactic constructions and morphosyntactic marking all contribute to the perception and production of salient discourse units” (Falk, 2014, p. 8). As such, speakers may be able to understand that their use of certain linguistic forms can influence the audience’s understanding of the hierarchical order of importance of discourse topics.
14Intuitively, patterns of stress and intonation in language production are related to how important a speaker regards a certain topic to be. This idea has been explored by Gussenhoven (2007) in relation to how speakers indicate topic and focus through language manipulation. Further studies on pitch accents, such as Baumann and Grice (2006), reveal that prosody does, in fact, affect accessibility and salience. Varying degrees of accentuation are a speaker choice, which certainly has an effect on an addressee. Morphosyntactic and prosodic choices which are determined by the speaker may be understood as related to forward-looking salience because speakers may choose to accentuate a topic to draw the audience’s attention toward it. Such choices in language production result in various levels of language comprehension.
15Speakers produce language in different ways based on their understanding of how easily understood their message will be. In order to understand these choices, several studies have focused on the interaction between salience and language comprehension. Baumann and Grice (2006) investigate the causal relationship between morphosyntax and prosody and backward-looking salience (Falk, 2014). Their study offers an explanation of how choices in language production can affect various levels of comprehensive salience on the part of an addressee. Moreover, studies on word processing work to understand how salience plays a role in language comprehension. Falk (2014) notes that “typically, more frequent or familiar words are processed quicker resulting in shorter naming reaction times” and that this leads “to graded lexical salience which contributes to discourse processing in parallel to contextual aspects” (Giora 1997, 2003, 2012, as cited in Falk, 2014: 14). Thus, choices in language production have a direct effect on language comprehension.
16Because language production and language comprehension are so closely linked, it can be difficult to say whether linguistic or cognitive salience is more important. Though some studies, such as Giora (1997; 2003), claim that “cognitively prominent salient meanings, rather than literal meanings play the most important role in production and comprehension of language,” it has been argued that “salience plays as important a role in language production as in comprehension” (Kecskes, 2013: 1).
17Question sequences are closely related to other linguistic phenomena which have previously been analyzed in studies on salience. Specifically, the study of question sequences relates to previous studies of questions under discussion (QUD) (Ginzburg 1995, 1996), language production and comprehension, discourse structure and planning (von Stutterheim & Klein 1989), patterns in linguistic markers, and prosody.
18Question sequences involve questions under discussion because, although they may contain explicit questions, these questions are often not real requests for information and therefore may hold implicit value which aims to focus and ground the discourse. With question sequences, explicit questions may develop an implicit information-structural dimension when questions are not used in an information-seeking manner. Questions that are not used with the intention of obtaining new information from an addressee therefore relate to broader theories on discourse structure which aim to uncover implicit questions under discussion. Consequently, question sequences are directly related to salience because, as Riester et al. (2018) explain, questions under discussion may “consist of highly salient material” (Riester et al., 2018: 414). Furthermore, on a surface level, the repetitive nature of question sequences may be considered salient because it fits criteria previously explained by Col (2011). In his analysis of salience, Col explains that the isolation of a visual or discursive entity or a break in continuity, such as a change in rhythm, creates salience in the same way that repetition and symmetry can create salience (Col, 2011: 7).
19TED talks are previously planned presentations that are probably rehearsed and consist of highly intentional language on the part of the speaker. As with any live presentation, one might assume that the speaker has thought out what he or she is going to say in advance. Therefore, the order in which the speaker chooses to tell the story is relevant to how the speaker expects the audience to understand and internalize the dialogue. As in any discourse type, speakers usually have a goal which is related to making sure that their message is easily understood by their audience.
20If we accept that speakers use question sequences as a strategy for information exchange, it is relevant to consider different discourse strategies and where they occur throughout the presentation. If they tend to appear at the beginning of the presentation, this will provide evidence to the notion that they might be indicative of forward-looking salience. As Falk (2014: 11) explains, “first elements in discourse segments have a high prominence status and are likely to be retained in the discourse model as they encode information that is important for upcoming discourse.” Speakers may use TED talks to prime the audience for a topic that will be of value further along in their presentation. This also relates to notions of salience regarding a sense of anticipation on the part of the addressee. If speakers deliberately create space between the introduction of an important topic, via a question sequence, and the answer to that question, the audience may be left waiting to hear more about why that topic is important.
21Falk (2014) explains that “the more discontinuous and ‘surprising’ (Givon, 1983) a discourse entity is, the more it signals referential importance” (Falk, 2014: 4). The sequential use of questions in a presentational forum could be considered surprising because it is an example of a dialogic discursive strategy being applied to a single-speaker discourse setting.
22As the speaker is the only one who has the ability to use question sequences or not in their talk, question sequences may be a way to create forward-looking salience. This relates to ideas of language production and how speakers use various strategies to make something more important. Concurrently, there are various ways that the audience might understand the intention behind a speaker’s choice to use a question sequence in a TED talk. The types of questions which make up the sequence may convey different messages to the audience and may create varying levels of salience regarding the topics mentioned in the question sequence. Furthermore, one type of question which may be present in a question sequence is a question posed with a rising intonation. In following with previous studies on how pitch accent relates to topic and focus, questions have the ability to affect salience because of the relationship between questions and prosody.
- 1 A previous version of this paper presented results from a study of 194 question sequences from the (...)
23This study was founded on preliminary research carried out by several researchers working on a project which aims to analyze questions in French and English TED talks. The data from this study is based on a selection of 18 English language TED talks by speakers from a variety of disciplines. The corpus consists of 166 question sequences.1
24 Annotation was conducted on ELAN files which were segmented by question. Each question was analyzed with respect to the preceding and subsequent context of the presentational discourse. As noted in Ginzburg et al. (2019), the study of questions is most valuable when approached from a relational perspective. Thus, the first step in this research was to annotate questions in TED talks from a contextual point of view. In this preliminary methodology, each question was annotated as an individual question, not yet explicitly considering question sequences as one entity. The reason for this annotation was to understand the pragmatic, syntactic, and contextual functions of each individual question. Doing so allows for further analysis of question type within a question sequence and helps to situate the question sequence within the larger context of the presentation. Thus, using segmented transcriptions of the corpus, four categories were considered which aim at identifying how questions relate to the greater discourse context in a TED presentation. The four main annotation categories are as follows:
(1) Relation to preceding context
(2) Relation to subsequent context
(3) Answerhood
(4) Further question
25After all question sequences were identified, the number of questions in each sequence was counted and recorded. Then, question sequences were classified to fit into a classification which aims to explain why speakers use question sequences in TED talks and the effect they have on the discourse. This approach is in addition to the preliminary annotation as previously described. It differs, however, from the original annotation scheme because it treats question sequences as one entity and then considers how the question sequence functions as a unique discourse unit. As such, we may be able to understand how question sequences relate to salience in the same way that other linguistic markers have been studied in relation to salience.
26This classification is based on Ginzburg et al. (2019)’s characterization of the response space in dialogue but was modified to take into consideration the interaction between TED speaker and audience and the use of various visual displays by a speaker during a presentation. Through an analysis of the discursive relation between the question sequence and the previous and subsequent discourse, question sequences were identified as either salient or interactive. The principal difference between the two types of question sequence was the facilitation of implicit or explicit interaction between the speaker and the addressee. Question sequences were therefore classified as either salient or interactive, as demonstrated in the following chart.
Question Sequence Type
|
Number of Occurrences
|
Salience
|
52
|
Interaction
|
114
|
27Once identified as either salient or interactive, question sequences were then further divided into subcategories which correspond to a unique discursive function. Salient question sequences were divided into the subcategories of topic focus, question under discussion, and explanation. Interactive question sequences were divided into the subcategories of stance, anecdote, or engagement. The following chart displays the number of occurrences of each question sequence subcategory as identified in the corpus.
Question Sequence Type
|
Question Sequence Subcategory
|
Number of Occurrences
|
Salience
|
Topic Focus
|
19
|
Salience
|
Question Under Discussion
|
18
|
Salience
|
Explanation
|
15
|
Interaction
|
Stance
|
26
|
Interaction
|
Anecdote
|
39
|
Interaction
|
Engagement
|
49
|
28Interactive question sequences refer to cases in which the audience implicitly or explicitly interacts with the speaker. Question sequences which reveal the speaker’s stance or are used by the speaker to tell an anecdotal or hypothetical story were considered to create implicit interaction. This discourse strategy is similar to that employed by authors in academic writing to create implicit interaction between speaker and addressee, as studied in Hyland (2005). Question sequences which allow the audience to partake in a dialogic exchange with the speaker are examples of explicit interaction, which we call engagement question sequences in this study. Engagement question sequences are indicative of discursive strategies used by speakers in multi-party discourse.
29Question sequences that do not result in implicit or explicit interaction were classified as salient question sequences. These are the focus of this study. The three subcategories of topic focus, question under discussion, and explanation represent specific discursive functions which correspond with different kinds of salience. Let us consider the following examples of salient question sequences to get a better understanding of how question sequences are an agent of salience in TED talk presentations.
- 2 Rick Warren’s 2006 TED talk, “A Life of Purpose”
(1) Why am I here?
What am I here for?
Where am I going?2
- 3 Beau Lotto’s 2009 TED talk, “Optical Illusions Show How We See”
(2) What are you reading?
What are you reading?3
30Examples (1) and (2) were classified as topic focus salient question sequences. These question sequences create forward-looking salience regarding the topics evoked in each question sequence. In (1), we have an elaborative question sequence with three different wh question words. The repetition of the wh-question creates emphasis and indicates that the speaker believes the content of this question sequence should be the most salient part of the discourse. Example (2) is indicative of a salient question sequence which is made up of two repeat questions with no answer provided by the speaker or the addressee. In this example, we have two kinds of repetitiveness which both work to make the topic more salient. On the one hand, we have the repetition of the interrogative form which interrupts the flow of the discourse, thus highlighting the content of the questions. On the other hand, we have the repetition of the content of the question which may have an effect on how the audience processes the information in the repeated question because, as Falk (2014) notes, word frequency has a positive effect on word processing time.
31Examples (3) and (4) were classified as question under discussion question sequences. The main feature of this subcategory of salient question sequences is the metalinguistic introduction of the question:
- 4 Tony Robbins’ 2006 TED talk, “Why We Do What We Do”
(3) I want to know why you do what you do.
What is your motive for action?
What is it that drives you in your life today, not 10 years ago?
Or are you running the same pattern?4
- 5 Clay Shirky’s 2005 TED talk, “Institutions vs. Collaboration”
(4) The bigger question is what do you do about the value down here?
Right?
How do you capture that?5
- 6 In contrast with interactive question sequences, salient question sequences are not specific to mul (...)
32In (3) the speaker explicitly states what he wants the audience to focus on. In this way, the audience is alerted to the importance of the speaker’s questions. Furthermore, (3) features a question sequence in which each subsequent question is a reformulation of the first question. This repetition creates salience regarding the content of the entire question sequence. Similarly, the speaker in example (4) explicitly tells the audience that there is an important question which is essential to the speaker’s discourse at the time of the utterance. Such question under discussion question sequences are similar to discursive devices used by writers in academic discourse and speakers in self-talk.6
33Examples (5) and (6) were classified as explanation question sequences:
- 7 Beau Lotto’s 2009 TED talk, “Optical Illusions Show How We See”
(5) Okay?
Now what does all this mean?7
- 8 Susan Blackmore’s 2008 TED talk, “Memes and Temes”
(6) Now why is this important?
Why is this useful?
Or, what does it tell us?8
34Example (5) is a case of question sequences being used to ask for an explanation of the previous discourse. This explanation request can be understood as an attempt by the speaker to anticipate clarifying questions that the audience might have on their mind but does not have the opportunity to express explicitly, given the single-speaker format of the discourse. In this scenario, the audience is left to consider the importance of the previous utterance. Therefore, example (5) is representative of backward-looking salience. Concurrently, example (6) features an anaphoric referent to ask for further explanation about the previous utterance. In doing so, she explicitly refers to the importance of what she just said. In asking why this is important, why this is useful, or what it tells us, the speaker is indicating that her previous speech act is relevant to the ongoing discourse. She is metalinguistically evoking her own speech act through the use of a question sequence. Therefore, this may be regarded as an instance of backward-looking salience.
35Question sequences may be considered a dialogic discursive tool. However, speakers pose sequential questions even when they partake in single-speaker discourses such as TED presentations. Some question sequences result in implicit interaction which mimics strategies of writers in academic discourse while others result in explicit interaction which mimics dialogic exchanges found in multi-party conversation. Both types of question sequences can be considered to facilitate interaction between the speaker and the addressee. Concurrently, speakers use question sequences to highlight the importance of a certain part of the discourse. In this case, question sequences result in the creation of different kinds of salience. Therefore, speakers use question sequences in TED talks to both elicit interaction between the speaker and the addressee and to create salience.
36 In TED talks, there appears to be a pattern of speakers posing a series of questions throughout their presentations. In the TED setting, where there is one speaker who is entirely responsible for setting the pace of the discourse, questions are used for purposes other than requests for information. However, there are also opportunities for a speaker in a TED talk to create instances of dialogic interaction between the speaker and the addressee. Question sequences are one discursive tool which can be used by speakers to create implicit and explicit interaction between the speaker and the addressee in TED talks. However, when speakers use question sequences in non-interactional ways, the result is the creation of salience. Through an analysis of the relationship between question sequences and previous and subsequent TED talk discourse, it becomes apparent that question sequences are used in different ways by TED talk presenters to facilitate interaction and create various kinds of salience.
37 Often, the use of question sequences results in an immediate and noticeable effect. Specifically, question sequences can be used to create interaction between the speaker and the audience. However, there are also question sequences which do not result in such tangible effects. In these cases, speakers can use question sequences to make a certain topic more salient. This is a difficult notion to quantify, however, because it is hard to understand exactly how someone understands hierarchical importance of different topics in a discourse. Nonetheless, the way that speakers use question sequences in TED talks relates to previous research on language production and theories of salience. Specifically, question sequences mimic other discursive constructions which have been studied in relation to forward- and backward-looking salience.
38 There remains a good amount of research to be conducted on the topic of question sequences and how they might affect salience in a TED talk presentation. Notably, more analysis should be done regarding where question sequences occur in the discourse so we can draw a line between question sequences and studies of salience, prominence, and discourse structure. Furthermore, it would be useful to expand the corpus to consider how speakers of languages other than English use question sequences in TED talks. Such research is currently under way and has the potential to enrich our knowledge of question sequences and salience in language production and comprehension.