bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Modularity and pragmatics
Authors: Pléh Csaba
Published: February 2015

The modular approach to language in its career of 30 years had alternating and rivaling views regarding the place of pragmatics. A first approach basically is the one outlined by Fodor (1983) that would pack pragmatic aspects of language use under the rubric of the mushy General Problem Solver component of the architecture, thus extracting it from considerations of modularity altogether. The rival Massive Modular approaches such as Dan Sperber’s would be willing to treat pragmatic aspects as one crucial module as part of a general architecture with modularity all over the place.

The paper after summarizing the theoretical interpretations calls for a less dedicated distributed processing and representation system where modularity rather than a simple starting point might be seen as the result of a process of modularization. Three types of empirical data are surveyed. First, studies that seem to support a specialized pragmatic module are discussed, namely from right hemisphere damaged populations and brain imaging data that imply a strong involvement of right hemisphere in a variety of pragmatic aspects from emotional stress to understanding non-literal language. A second line of data comes from developmental neuroscience considerations. Studies with autistic and other cognitively challenged populations suffering from a presupposed overall architectural deficit indicate the crucial role of a Theory of Mind not only in tasks of second order representation, in attributing a sophisticated Belief-Intention system to others, but in language processing as well. One interpretation of these data is to postulate a module of social and psychological cognition, that would be a driving source of language use. The primacy of language use should be left open as an option. It is possible that language use itself and thus language pragmatics in different intentional contexts is partly responsible for the development of the seemingly encapsulated system of mentalization. This would correspond to the general idea of early prepared systems being modified during an interface buildup process in development that roughly corresponds to an overall use of language for metacognitive purposes.

A third line evidence calling for a balanced treatment of the modularity issue comes from theories of Paleobiology. Theories like the ones proposed by Donald, Mithen, Wilkins and Wakefield should also be considered in this regard. According to these theories human language may actually have resulted from a loosening of boundaries between encapsulated modules, rather then from strengthening them. This line of reasoning is especially interesting since it supports the idea that human language emerges by necessity as the result of an interaction between different “intelligences’“, together with elementary societal organization and a social mind.
Piropos as metaphors for gender roles in Spanish speaking cultures
Authors: Achugar Mariana
Published: February 2015

This paper analyzes the piropo in Spanish discourse as a speech event and as cognitive metaphor. This form of indirect speech act represents a Spanish discourse tradition that is still present in today’s discourse practices of Spanish-speaking cultures. These piropos are seen as reflections in language of the traditional roles of men and women in Spanish speaking cultures. The roles of men and women as depicted in the analysis of piropos shows a very defined place for each sex in these societies. Women are constructed as passive recipients and reactive, men as active producers and initiators.
The reproduction of culture through argumentative discourse
Authors: Shi-xu  , Kienpointner Manfred
Published: February 2015

Discourse and communication approaches to culture have traditionally been concerned with the role of language in (mis)representing cultures. But how text and talk reproduce and transform cultures is just beginning to be understood. Proceeding from the view that cultural creation, development and transformation are constituted in and through situated discursive practice, this study explores the interconnections between argumentative discourse and cultural reproduction. The research is based on multinational and multilingual data of journalistic communication on Hong Kong’s historic transition. It is shown that the causes of Hong Kong’s economic success, as an important cultural feature, are used as arguments to undermine contrary claims. It is also revealed that the future development of Hong Kong is being constrained by the argument ad baculum. In addition, it is observed that Hong Kong’s identities are used as bases for prescribing desired course of action. Finally, these argumentative strategies are re-examined in their broader historical and cultural context in order to show how Hong Kong’s past, present and future are cultural realities bound up with Western desire and power.
Definiteness and reflexivity
Authors: Laury Ritva
Published: February 2015

This paper examines the use of definite and indefinite noun phrases in everyday conversations in Finnish and English to establish meaning and to alter and build context in interaction. The paper shows that participants in conversation use the formal contrast between definite and indefinite NPs not only to express identifiability and non-identifiability of the referent to their addressees, but that they also use it dynamically to make claims about socially shared reality, to create referents in discourse and to build a novel identity for existing referents, to actively construct frames and create roles within them, and to reorganize the participant structure of a speech event.
Everyday interactions and the domestication of social inequality
Authors: Keating Elizabeth
Published: February 2015

This article examines the distribution of relationships of power and authority as an activity in gossip sessions among members of a community in Pohnpei, Micronesia. The position of Bourdieu, that the interactionist approach cannot elucidate important aspects of the sharing of power in society, is used as a starting place to examine ways in which interactants in everyday conversations manipulate and organize gendered identities and the entitlements of certain classes of individuals to particular types of power.
Effects of Spanish pragmatic and lexical constraints in the interpretation of L2 English anaphora
Authors: Finney Malcolm A.
Published: February 2015

This study examined the interpretation of English anaphora by native Spanish speakers and potential transfer of Spanish pragmatic and lexical requirements into English. It further evaluated whether appropriate contextual information might prime the preferred English interpretation of such constructions. Pragmatic and lexical rules governing co-indexation in Spanish and English anaphora constructions differ substantially and operate quite differently in the two languages. Spanish pragmatic rules require obligatory disjoint reference for subject pronominals in finite complement subjunctive clauses and pre-posed adjunct clauses. The lexical properties of verbs and anaphora in reflexive, reciprocal, and intransitive constructions in Spanish require obligatory retention of the anaphora element. English has no such pragmatic or lexical requirements. The study appraised the effects of the different pragmatic co-indexation requirements and different lexical requirements on the interpretation of English anaphora by native Spanish speakers. An act-out task, a corresponding written task, and a grammaticality judgement task in English were administered to adult native English speakers and adult native Spanish speakers categorized as intermediate and advanced learners of English. Subjects were instructed to match pronominals with appropriate referents in English subjunctives and pre-posed adjuncts. They were further required to judge the acceptability of sentences containing anaphora elements in English reflexives, reciprocals, and intransitives. Results indicated that subjects in general ignored pragmatic and lexical requirements of the first language in favour of the second language requirements governing anaphora. Less proficient subjects apparently encountered some processing difficulty when interpretation of sentences with anaphora was required within limited time constraints. The use of contextual information was also evident in the interpretation of some constructions.
“Tu es dans la lune”
Authors: Laval Virginie , Bernicot Josie
Published: February 2015

From a psychological point of view, this study looks at children’s and adult’s comprehension of idiomatic expressions, and most particularly at the underlying cognitive processes needed for comprehension. Idiomatic expressions are expressions where there is a considerable difference between what is said (literal interpretation) and what is meant (idiomatic interpretation). In other words, the meaning of an idiomatic expression depends largely on a convention that relates a given linguistic form to a given meaning. Conducted in this framework, the present study was aimed at determining the role of contextual characteristics and the linguistic convention in the comprehension of idiomatic expressions by 6- and 9-year-old children, and by adults. The subject’s task was to complete stories. Twelve stories were presented in comic strip format by the experimenter, who told the story in the first three frames and then instructed the subject to choose one of the two possible endings. Two features of the stories were varied : The utterance production context (idiomatic vs. literal) and the idiom familiarity level (familiar vs. unfamiliar). Regardless of age, the context had a substantial impact on idiom comprehension: This reinforces the idea of the necessity of taking the context and the extra-linguistic conventions into account in order to explain language functioning, not only in children but also in adults. The role of the linguistic convention began at the age of 9 and was particularly strong in adults: They appear to reconstruct the communication situation solely on the basis of the linguistic convention. The role of familiarity also appeared in the 9-year-olds and continued on into adulthood. These results suggest that the period of adolescence is crucial for the development of certain pragmatic aspects of language.
Orderly affect
Authors: Manning Paul
Published: February 2015

This paper describes and analyzes a series of paradigmatic oppositions between N’ constructions in the P-Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, Cornish) which serve to code expressive pragmatics of adjectives. The paper considers both paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of these constructions, and shows that asymmetric interaction of constructions in paradigms influences their purely formal syntagmatic interactions. A typology of expressive categories is built to serve as a framework for comparison between constructions. It is argued that a view of grammar that includes both formal and functional dimensions (‘the coding view’) also provides valuable insight in matters of purely formal constructional interaction.
Teacher talk reflecting pragmatic awareness
Authors: Nikula Tarja
Published: February 2015

This paper approaches classroom interaction from a pragmatic perspective. More specifically, it concentrates on how pragmatic awareness is reflected in the use of modifying elements of talk by two teachers (both non-native speakers of English), and how their use of modifiers affects the ongoing interaction. The data come from two different classroom settings where English is either the object or the medium of study. The findings reveal an overall tendency towards directness in the teachers’ performance that is affected in complex ways both by the institutional context and the teachers’ status as nonnative speakers. The findings also suggest a need for future research to analyse classrooms as social contexts in their own right and with their own pragmatic constraints which may not correspond to those of everyday discourse in other settings.
Class and parenting in accounts of child protection
Authors: Slembrouck Stef
Published: February 2015

In this paper, the idea of ethnograpies of hegemony is taken up as a reflexive orientation in research which addresses the complexity of forms of domination in late modern society also by trying to come to terms with the situatednes of interactionally-established interview data. Following a number of methodological remarks on the establishment of a ‘native point of view’ as well as a number of observations on the data trajectories (tribulations and triangulations) which mark this particular discursive ethnography, the analysis goes on to concentrate on the ways in which case categorisation is ‘spoken’ through social class in one particular account of child protection. As an exercise in ‘classifying the classifiers’ (Bourdieu 1992: 242) 2, the analysis highlights how professional and private talk about social problems is implicated in class-based subjectivities and involves (displaced) representations of class? However, much depends here on what we mean by ‘class’ when referring to a contemporary context such as the Flemish/Belgian field of child protection. If hegemony then counts as a historicising interpretative move which highlights  the interwovenness of domain - and profession-based discourses of social problems with discourses of class and  the contextualisation of particular sense-making repertoires, then it is just as much about the situational contingencies under which class and domination becomes speakable in a particular way. This, I suggest, is where ethnography becomes all-important - as an investigative strategy and as an epistemology of dialogic engagement with social theory and contemporary analyses of the late modern world.
Political cross-discourse
Authors: Alvarez-Cáccamo Celso , Prego-Vázquez Gabriela
Published: February 2015

Through the analysis of political rallies and parliamentary speech in Galiza, it is shown how conversationalized forms of political discourse enter into ideological manipulation and hegemony-building by professional politicians. The overall resulting phenomenon,cross-discourse, draws from habitual, daily and traditional forms of speech. Political cross-discourse consists of the tactical texturing of traditional political oratory templates through select informal conversational forms and themes. Three main forms of cross-discourse found in the data are exemplified. Cross-discourse indexes and constructs social spaces and networks at several levels of generality: From those of daily interactions to an imaginary supranetwork of common citizens. This form of cross-discursive circulation (from daily speech to politics) gives the illusion of fluidity between social fields in formal democracies, while it hides the very unequal nature of the distribution of discursive resources.
The shift from lexical to subjective readings of Spanish prometer ‘to promise’ and amenazar ‘to threaten’. a corpus-based account
Authors: Cornillie Bert
Published: February 2015

The Spanish verbs amenazar ‘to threaten’ andprometer ‘to promise’ do not only have a lexical reading but can also yield a subjective one, whereby the likelihood of the event expressed in the infinitive receives a negative, resp. a positive, evaluation. Three hypotheses are being tested: 1) as an outcome of the illocutionary force and the subject commitment attached to lexical prometer, the subjective readings of the latter may be expected to score high on the probability scale, whereas the event introduced by subjective amenazar will score low, in line with the lack of illocutionary force and weak subject commitment in lexical reading of this verb. 2) The viewpoint substantiated by the two verbs also differs: Whereas amenazar renders an event-oriented evidential reading from an internal point of view, prometer projects an external viewpoint leading to a more speaker-oriented subjective reading. 3) As a result of (1) and (2), prometer should easily combine with negatively oriented complements, whereas amenazar should resist taking positively oriented ones. The corpus research fully corroborates the first two hypotheses. The data, however, fail to unequivocally sustain the third one, especially because amenazar displays more flexibility than expected.
Constructing ethnic identity through discourse
Authors: Kang M. Agnes
Published: February 2015

In this paper, I demonstrate how Korean American camp counselors locally construct ethnic identity through the practice of self-categorization in discourse. Self-categorization, or the identification of oneself in terms of ethnic identity, serves to position counselors in terms of Korean ethnicity and to associate that identity with one’s personal goals in participating in the Korean camp. Using videotaped data of counselors’ meetings, I show that while debating their views on what a Korean camp should be and their motivations for participating in the camp, counselors make relevant their ethnic identities by describing themselves as more ‘American’, more ‘Korean American’, or more ‘Korean’. In addition, the counselors discuss whether the teaching of Korean heritage or the mentorship of the campers should be the primary objective of the camp. This opposition between ‘heritage’ and ‘mentorship’ is cast as a source of tensions that map onto ideologies of identity, whereby ‘Korean American’ identity acquires the local meaning of being linked to the importance of mentorship over Korean heritage. In this way, counselors construct their ethnic identities as a means of classifying themselves relationally within a field of oppositions, at the same time indexing a particular stance about what a Korean camp should be.
Ideologies of legitimate mockery
Authors: Chun Elaine W.
Published: February 2015

This article examines a Korean American comedian’s use of Mock Asian and the ideologies that legitimate this racializing style. These ideologies of legitimacy depend on assumptions about the relationship between communities, the authentication of a speaker’s community membership, and the nature of the interpretive frame that has been “keyed”. Specifically, her Mock Asian depends on and, to some extent, reproduces particular ideological links between race, nation, and language despite the apparent process of ideological subversion. Yet her use of stereotypical Asian speech is not a straightforward instance of racial crossing, given that she is ‘Asian’ according to most racial ideologies in the U.S. Consequently, while her use of Mock Asian may necessarily reproduce mainstream American racializing discourses about Asians, she is able to simultaneously decontextualize and deconstruct these very discourses. This article suggests that it is her successful authentication as an Asian American comedian, particularly one who is critical of Asian marginalization in the U.S., that legitimizes her use of Mock Asian and that yields an interpretation of her practices primarily as a critique of racist mainstream ideologies.
Reel to real
Authors: Shankar Shalini
Published: February 2015

Diasporic media, though widely discussed theoretically and occasionally ethnographically, are seldom explored with explicit attention to language. “Bollywood” films - feature-length movies produced and distributed in Bombay (Mumbai), India - are an excellent media source through which to examine linguistic anthropological topics of indexicality, bivalency, and identity in diasporic communities. In this paper, I analyze the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films - created in Hindi and subtitled in English - among South Asian-American (desi) communities in both Silicon Valley, CA and Queens, NY. Bollywood films are watched in family and peer groups, and portions of the films’ songs and dialogue become incorporated into everyday speech practices. I present and analyze instances of Hindi film dialogue interwoven into conversational exchanges between desi teens in ways that impact negotiations of style and identity. For many teens, the films provide narrative frameworks, prescripted dialogue, and socially recognizable registers and varieties of affect through which they enact their own dynamics of humor, flirting, conflict, and other types of talk. Drawing on ethnographic and sociolinguistic data, I contrast how these processes vary between these two diasporic communities.
Japanese epistemic sentence-final particle kana
Authors: Matsugu Yuka
Published: February 2015

The Japanese language is known for its sentence-final particles (SFPs hereafter) that express modality. Although modality would seem to be inseparable from context, only a limited number of studies have explicated the nature of SFPs based on data from conversations.

This paper discusses the functions of SFP kana, based on 272 occurrences of the particle from over 7 hours of recorded conversation. I propose that kana, which is commonly defined as a doubt marker, frequently functions as a mitigation marker. My investigation also explores how speakers use this function beyond the sentence level. It suggests that traditional descriptions of the syntactic environments in which SFPs occur are not always substantiated by how kana is actually used. Yet, seemingly unsystematic uses of kana are quite systematic in terms of its semantic and pragmatic aspects. These findings suggest that in studying Japanese sentence-final particles, it’s important to study naturally occurring conversations.
A cross-linguistic study on the linguistic expressions of Cantonese and English requests
Authors: Lee Cynthia
Published: February 2015

This study investigates the cross-linguistic devices of requests written by native English-speaking (NSE) and native
Cantonese-speaking (NCS) respondents in an academic context on the basis of 197 discourse completion tests. Both groups asked in a
direct sequence accompanied by a different proportion of syntactic and lexical devices to reduce directness. NES used a higher
frequency and a wider range of syntactic downgraders than NCS. NCS, however, used a higher frequency of lexical downgraders and a
greater number of combinations of lexical devices than NES. The cross-linguistic comparison of the linguistic features
of Cantonese and Engish requests demonstrates how the distinctive linguistic properties of each language and social factors
combine to constitute a request. Further investigation could be made between idealized and authentic English and Cantonese
requests for a range of age groups and contexts, or to compare the linguistic forms of requests made by NCS in English with the
linguistic forms of requests made by NES in Cantonese.
Discourse in a religious mode
Authors: Chang Gordon C. , Mehan Hugh B.
Published: February 2015

This study of the politics of representation illustrates the Bush Administration’s use of a religious mode of representation to make sense of the 9/11 events, to legitimize military actions against the Taliban, Afghanistan, and terrorism in general. The religious mode of representation is enabled by the construction and application of what we call the “War on Terrorism script,” which is grounded in the institution of “American civil religion.” We demonstrate the unique power of this mode of representation to create a coherent account at a time of national crisis, to establish connections between the 9/11 perpetrators, the Taliban, and the Afghanistan government. By comparing the Bush Administration’s discourse with those voiced by dissenters and critics using intellectual, rational, and legal representations and modes of argumentation in the post-9/11 contexts, we demonstrate how the institutionalization of a particular mode of speaking influence a particular mode of thinking and a particular mode of acting. We also argue that the convention governing political discourse have significant implications in determining the legitimacy of definitions and interpretations of political situations as well as of political actions.
Politeness in compliment responses
Authors: Ruhi Şükriye
Published: February 2015

This paper analyses a corpus of compliment responses in Turkish according to the conversational maxim approach (Leech 1983, 2003) and the face-management approach (Brown and Levinson 1987) with a view to extending the conceptualisation of self-presentation in theorising on politeness. It observes that the two theories ground politeness on consideration for alter and give precedence to politeness in the sense of displaying deference and solidarity at the expense of self-politeness, described in the present study as speaker need for display of competence, self-confidence, and individuality in interaction, besides the need for non-imposition.

Regarding the maxim approach, the paper argues that conversational implicatures triggered by a variety of responses ultimately tie to the Tact Maxim and more specifically to the Sympathy Maxim in the Turkish context. The analysis reveals that compliment responses may override the Politeness Principle, that self-presentational concerns are crucial motivating factors, and that face concerns need to be incorporated into the model. From the perspective of the face-management approach, the study supports the claim in O’Driscoll (1996) and Spencer-Oatey (2000) that the notions of positive and negative face as need for community and autonomy need to be disentangled from the theory’s conceptualisation of face as public self-image. With the incorporation of a number of self-politeness strategies, the face-theoretic analysis builds on this distinction and integrates it with the concept of interactional imbalance by extending an analytic framework adapted from Bayraktaroğlu (1991). The paper concludes with suggestions on how the two theories may complement each other.
Locutions in medical discourse in Southwestern Nigeria
Authors: Odebunmi Akin
Published: February 2015

The paper examines the pragmatic roles that locutionary acts play in understanding the communication between doctors and patients in Southwestern Nigeria. Working within John Austin’s locutionary acts, with restrictions to the lexical occurrences and lexical relationships observed in the discourse, it got data through tape recordings of doctor-patient conversations and interviews of both doctors and patients (and/or their relations).The findings revealed that two categories of locutions were engaged in hospital interactions, namely, locutions intended to be understood by non-professionals and locutions not intended to be understood by non-professionals. The paper observes that locutions in medical discourse in Southwestern Nigeria bring standard lexical choices and local linguistic initiatives of medical practitioners into a pragmatic union. It therefore concludes that the pragmatic engagement of these choices displays the tact the practitioners use in dealing with patients, and it recommends the need for the practitioners to master the locutions and their pragmatic adaptation for effective management of patients.
Laughter in the film The third man
Authors: O’Connell Daniel C. , Kowal Sabine
Published: February 2015

Two types of laughter were investigated in both the English- and the German-language versions of the film noir The third man (Korda, Selznik, & Reed 1949, 1962): ha-ha laughter and laughter overlaid on spoken words. The present authors’ transcripts constituted the database of the investigation. These were compared with other available versions: In English, the original novel (Greene 1950), the screenplay (Greene 1984), and a www.geocities.com transcript; in German, the novel in translation (Greene 1962) and a partial transcript (Timmermann & Baker 2002). Very little laughter is noted in any of these other versions, and what does occur is innocuous (embarrassed, ironic, humorous, or pleasant) laughter. The authors’ transcripts in both the English- and German-language versions, however, reveal abundant negative (cynical, hypocritical, or mendacious) laughter on the part of the criminal characters: The first (Baron Kurtz), the second (Mr. Popescu), and above all, the third man (Harry Lime). This laughter constitutes a notable change from both the medial and conceptual literacy of the novel and other written versions to the medial and conceptual orality of the film itself as a portrayal of spontaneous spoken dialogue. Laughter always reveals the personal perspective of the laugher and is used deliberately and skillfully as a rhetorical device. With the help of the villain’s sardonic laughter, the third man’s evil character is established in less than twelve minutes of dialogue. Such laughter is a far cry from the “instinctive, contagious, stereotyped, unconsciously controlled” ha-ha laughter described by Provine (2004: 215), from his “curious hybrid” (ibid.: 216) thereof (laughter overlaid on spoken words), and from the nonseriousness of laughter postulated by Chafe (2003a).
FromHóyéétoHajinei
Authors: Webster Anthony K.
Published: February 2015

This paper examines the use of co-switching in Navajo written poetry. I look specifically at the use of code-switching from English dominant poems to Navajo. I outline three general semantic domains that are most commonly code-switched from English to Navajo: 1) emotions; 2) mythic characters; and 3) traditional place-names. I suggest that this has to do with a general linguistic ideology that understands these domains as incommensurate with English. I argue that such code-switches are “emblematic identity displays.” I conclude by discussing the relationship between “folk” orthographies and “standard” orthographies. I argue that an over-reliance on “the standard” and a diminishing of “folk” orthographies limits the potential for creativity and subtly undermines notions of incommensurability when Navajo poets are limited to “the standard”, a standard that many Navajos do not know.
Principles we talk by
Authors: Davies Bethan
Published: February 2015

This paper takes two behavioural principles which have been suggested as explanatory models for human conversation, and tests them on a corpus of task-oriented dialogues (the HCRC Map Task Corpus). The principles chosen are Clark’s Collaborative Theory and Shadbolt’s Principle of Parsimony, which are both interested in notions of effort although they come from entirely different subfields of linguistics. The aim of the study is to compare the explanatory power of each of these principles when they are applied to real language data.

Each of the principles was converted into a set of representative hypotheses about the types of behaviour which they would predict in dialogue. Then, a way of coding dialogue behaviour was developed, in order that the hypotheses could be tested on a suitably sized dataset. In particular, the coding system tried to distinguish between the levels of effort which participants used in their utterances. Finally, a series of statistical tests was undertaken to test the predictions of the hypotheses on the information generated by the coding system.

The strongest support was found for the Principle of Parsimony and its associate Principle of Least Individual Effort, at the expense of the Collaborative Principle and the Principle of Least Collaborative Effort. There is certainly evidence that speakers try to minimise effort, but this seems to be occurring on an individual basis – which can be to the cost of the overall dialogue and task performance – rather than on a collaborative basis.
Metapragmatics in a courtroom genre
Authors: Carranza Isolda E.
Published: February 2015

Taking as a starting point a broad conception of metapragmatics (Lucy 1993), this study describes a wide range of reflexive elements in closing arguments of criminal trials, and on the basis of their habitual use by trial lawyers, it enquires about the general underlying function as part of the sociocultural practice (Bourdieu 1990). The corpus of was collected at twenty-two criminal trials observed and recorded by the researcher. Five kinds of metapragmatic indexes – from the maximally explicit to the implicit – are identified and analyzed in their interactional, situational and societal context: (1) performatives, which count as official acts by the trial lawyer, (2) formulations and other evaluations of speech, (3) descriptions of aspects of the sociocultural practice and allusions to the principles governing the event, (4) strategic descriptions of contextual conditions, which are exploited with group identity and relational effects, and (5) style. The analysis reveals that these metapragmatic features contextualize the communication as expressing a specific social capital, and at the same time, they contribute to define what does not count as legitimate practice. Apart from the specific effects of individual types of indexes, in closing arguments metapragmatic indexes basically function signaling that the social actor and the practice they are engaged in rightfully belong to the social field of the law.
“Plaza ‘góó and before he can respond…”
Authors: Webster Anthony K.
Published: February 2015

This article suggests that much of the use of the Navajo language in contemporary Navajo written poetry, especially English dominant poetry, serves as an icon of proper Navajo usage. It is a purist view of the Navajo language. Navajo poetry is implicated, even if tacitly, in a discourse of linguistic purism that is tied to an oppositional linguistic ideology that sees Navajo and English as discrete and distinct “objects.” Navajo poetry erases the contemporary sociolinguistic diversity - including bilingual Navajo - on the Navajo Nation. And in so doing, it closes off parts of Navajo sociolinguistic realities and in its stead creates an imagined Navajo language community.
Interrogative allo-repetitions in Mexican Spanish
Authors: Dumitrescu Domnita
Published: February 2015

This article is a contribution to discourse analysis from the viewpoint of recent developments in the study of verbal (im)politeness in the Spanish-speaking world. It analyzes the discourse functions of interrogative allo-repetitions in a corpus of oral Mexican Spanish from the perspective of both their conversational role as repair mechanisms and as linguistic strategies to convey politeness or impoliteness in interaction. The main findings of this research are that interrogative allo-repetitions fulfill different politeness (i.e. face-saving, face-flattering, or face-threatening) strategies depending not only on their conversational function (true vs. fictitious repair mechanisms), but also – and most importantly – on the type of verbal interaction and cultural settings in which they take place, as well as the relationship between participants.
Impoliteness in institutional and non-institutional contexts
Authors: Kaul de Marlangeon Silvia
Published: February 2015

The analysis of impoliteness has mainly concentrated on the relation between text and context itself rather than on the differences between types of contexts. The aim of this study is to compare impoliteness in both institutional and non-institutional contexts. The institutional contexts to be dealt with are: A)face-to-face political debateand B)army recruit training. The selected non-institutional contexts are C) theTango lyrics of the 1920’sand D) theinteraction among lower middle-class people who speak River Plate Spanish. In a previous paper (Kaul de Marlangeon 2005a), I proposed the category offustigation impolitenessbyrefractorinessorexacerbated affiliationwhere refractoriness and exacerbated affiliation function as counterparts to Bravo’s categories of politeness, autonomy and affiliation.In the present paper and within the theoretical and methodological framework for the study of fustigation impoliteness, I deal with three of the above mentioned contexts A) , B) and C), and the type of fustigation impoliteness that characterises each of them. In my analysis I show that in face-to-face political debate and military recruit training impoliteness is public, bi-directional in the former and unidirectional in the latter. In the Tango lyrics of the 1920’s fustigation impoliteness is private and unidirectional. Finally in the context ofinteraction among lower middle-class people who speak River Plate Spanish,impoliteness is chronic, intra-group, private and multi-directional. For this kind of impoliteness the concepts of refractoriness and exacerbated affiliation do not apply because this impoliteness is about the relationship between an individual versus another individual within the same group rather than an individual versus the group.
Mutual understanding mechanism in verbal exchanges between carers and multiply-disabled young people
Authors: Bocerean Christine , Musiol Michel
Published: February 2015

The present article describes a study in which conversation analysis was used to investigate the verbal interactions between carers and profoundly multiply disabled young people. We examine the cognitive processes that come into play in conversations, and describe and analyze the interactional effects of pathologies on the cognitive processes involved in comprehension. We identify the rationality and reasoning processes to which the disabled person is susceptible, that is to say, that person’s cognitive efficiency, and the communication strategies employed by the “normal” interlocutor.
The corpus, which was gathered at a specialist institute in France, consists of video recordings of interactions between a multiply disabled young person and one or more carers. In total, thirteen conversations involving six different young people were recorded. Analysis of the characteristics of the conversational exchanges revealed that conversational exchanges are based on two very precise modes of interaction that foster the mutual understanding process.
Learning outcomes: These two modes of interaction represent exchange structures that favor the emergence of mutual understanding and that reveal the multiply disabled person’s cognitive efficiency in the conversation. We highlight the role of repetition as a conversation repair and we discuss the relationship between the carer and the disabled person.
Address strategies in a British academic setting
Authors: Formentelli Maicol
Published: February 2015

The English system of address constitutes an exception among the European languages, in that it does not have a grammatical distinction between a formal pronoun of address and an informal one. Rather, English speakers exploit lexical strategies (i.e. nominal vocatives). This study aims to shed light on the address strategies used by students and members of the teaching staff in academic interactions, with reference to the University of Reading (UK). Data from semi-structured interviews and video-recordings outline an unmarked pattern of asymmetry between the parties, in which students mainly employ formal vocatives towards lecturers (title+surname, honorifics), while lecturers frequently use first names and other informal expressions. Reciprocal informal vocatives, by contrast, emerges as a marked practice, which is resisted or delayed in time. This asymmetrical distribution of forms questions classical models and previous research on address and calls for the necessity of new components for the understanding of the phenomenon.
Doing (Bi)lingualism: Language alternation as performative construction of online identities
Authors: Tsiplakou Stavroula
Published: February 2015

The purpose of this paper is to examine practices of language alternation in email communication among native speakers of Greek and to argue that such practices are a facet of the performative construction of an ‘online’ communicative identity. In the slowly-growing body of literature on linguistic practices in computer-mediated communication (CMC) or computer-mediated discourse (CMD) it is emerging that concomitant aspects of linguistic performance relate to the construction of particular sociolinguistic identities relevant to the medium, or, to adopt a less radical perspective, that sociolinguistic identities typical of face-to-face or written interaction are mediated by the social/communicative practices and norms relevant to, or accruing to, types of CMD. Language alternation features prominently among the mechanisms used in constructing such novel linguistic/social-performative identities. In this context, the research presented in this paper examines the performance of a group of six native speakers of Greek, who are also part of a relatively closely-knit social network. The analysis reveals extensive code-switching between Greek and English, both inter- and intra-sentential, with English covering around 20% of the total of words used. The qualitative analysis shows that expressions of affect and evaluative comments are mostly in English, while Greek is reserved for the transmission of factual/referential information. The data further reveal that extensive style- or register-shifting and mixing is a favored strategy among members of the group; such mixing includes shifting among dialects or sociolects of Greek, the use of other languages, and, notably, the use of constructed words and structures with humorous overtones. This complex type of language play is an overarching feature of the group’s (socio)linguistic performance in asynchronous electronic communication, which may single them out as a localized community of practice. The data highlight the theoretical and methodological necessity for fine-grained accounts of specific types of CMD, which can be tackled not in terms of overarching macro-contextual linguistic and extralinguistic variables, but as dynamic reflexes both of specific participant constellations and of the negotiation of emerging generic norms within localized communities of practice. The paper also presents and discusses a quantitative study of views and attitudes on language alternation expressed by subjects who code-switch systematically on email, in an attempt to gauge the types of metalinguistic awareness involved. It emerges from the quantitative study that users abstract away from ‘phobic’ attitudes towards the use of English and that they treat language alternation as a manifestation of balanced or functional bilingualism, which is furthermore situation-specific and ‘genre’-appropriate.
Social beliefs for the realization of the speech acts of apology and complaint as defined in Ciluba, French, and English
Authors: Mulamba Kashama
Published: February 2015

Most cross-linguistic studies of speech acts have dealt mainly with two languages, a native language and a second or foreign language (Carrell and Konneker 1981; Castello 1981; Blum-Kulka 1982; Daikuhura 1986; Eisenstein 1986; Wieland 1989; Chen Rong 1993, 2001; Sifianou 2001; Lee 2004, 2005). Neither have they dealt with an African language as the first language. The present study investigates a multilingual situation where the native speakers of Ciluba, French, and English are compared to the trilingual speakers of the three languages in terms of the realization of the speech acts of apologizing and complaining. It considers the social beliefs of the subjects of the four language groups for the realization of the two speech acts. The study is part of a larger study that was designed to discover the norms of the three languages under investigation and to see how people speaking a second and a foreign language, with different levels of fluency in each, can participate in the activity of the speech communities of the two languages without violating their socio-cultural norms, and what impact, if any, their knowledge of these languages has on each of the languages they speak. Data for the larger study was collected by means of a written questionnaire, role plays, and direct observation.

The data and results presented and discussed in this paper come from the written questionnaire administered to the monolingual English and French speakers and trilingual speakers native in Ciluba; and from the same version of the questionnaire administered orally to the monolingual Ciluba speakers. It was found that for the realization of the speech acts of apologizing and complaining, Luba socio-cultural beliefs were different from those of English and French, which are similar. In contrast to French and English, in Ciluba social distance and relative power between the participants play an important role in deciding whether the speech acts can be performed or not. The results also revealed that, despite the difference which exists between Ciluba and the other two languages, i.e., French and English, some subjects from the group of Ciluba monolingual subjects showed some similarities with the groups of French and English monolingual subjects in their responses to some items in the questionnaire. This deviation of some of the native speakers of Ciluba from their social beliefs was hypothesized to be a result of their contact with an urban environment and its mixed culture.
Vernacular style writing
Authors: Suzuki Satoko
Published: February 2015

This paper shows that some Japanese non-fiction writers are using various structural characteristics of spoken discourse in their writing. Their written discourse includes non-canonical word order and long sentences that are produced by combining a series of clauses. Their sentences may lack case or topic marking particles, but they may contain clause-final particles. Their discourse looks like it may have gone through a dynamic, on-going formation process because it includes reformulation and changes in the structure in midstream.

It is proposed that writers who adopt such an approach are deliberately blurring the boundary between speech and writing for multiple reasons. They may be exhibiting their creativity and innovation as well as their anti-establishment ideology. Vernacular style writing may also be an attempt to engage, involve, and connect with their readers. Further, they may be reflecting as well as expressing contemporary society in which orality is viewed favorably and as a result, writing in general has become increasingly more casual than before. The phenomenon discussed in this paper may be viewed as a reflection of erosions and shifting of traditional genres.
Rapport management in Thai and Japanese social talk during group discussions
Authors: Aoki Ataya
Published: February 2015

According to Hofstede’s (2003) often quoted survey, Japanese and Thai cultures rank high on the collectivist scale and both cultures attach the greatest importance to group harmony. Accordingly, we should see similar characteristics in Japanese and Thai speakers during discussions within their respective social groups. However, this is not the case. This paper examines social talk during the task-oriented interaction of Japanese and Thai speakers. The analysis focuses on how the speakers of Japanese and Thai present themselves and construct rapport in casual group talk. Using the concept of consciousness deployed in ‘idea units’ (Chafe 1980, 1994) and some semantic considerations, I identify three major differences in rapport construction between Japanese and Thai speakers. First, Japanese participants prefer to build common ground through discussion of communal topics and through dealing with the comprehensiveness and the orderliness of the situation, whereas Thai participants incline toward Individual-oriented topics and independent styles of talk. Second, the Japanese show a preference for using softening devices and conventionalized expressions in group discussion while the Thais tend to use intensifiers and spontaneous expressions to indicate involvement and create a friendly and fun atmosphere. Third, the Japanese like to demonstrate the minimization of self and the relevancy between the self and the collective whereas the Thais value the capitalization of the self and the strengthening of personal relationships. Japanese and Thai communicative styles can be viewed as reflection of the different way the two cultures conceptualize the notion of rapport and the self. With regard to the component of rapport management (Spencer-Oatey 2000), the Japanese place more emphasis on the observation of sociality rights, while the Thais incline toward the management of face. This suggests that rapport construction in collectivist cultures may possess totally different characters.