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- Volume 11, Issue 1, 2020
Pragmatics and Society - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2020
Volume 11, Issue 1, 2020
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Discourse markers as indicators of connectedness between expositive illocutionary acts
Author(s): Etsuko Oishipp.: 1–23 (23)More LessAbstractThere has been consistent interest in discourse makers over the past couple of decades, and various proposals have been put forth regarding their functions. The present paper analyzes discourse markers in general as indicators of types of connectedness between expositive illocutionary acts (Austin [1962]1975), which bring about illocutionary effects in discourse. The discourse marker well in particular indicates a gap between the preceding expositive illocutionary act and the present one, signaling the present expositive illocutionary act is of a non-committal type. This gap is analyzed, depending on the types of the preceding and present expositive illocutionary acts, as divergence, hesitancy, a transition from one expositive illocutionary act to another, or a boundary between them.
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What makes a good story?
Author(s): Charlotte Petersenpp.: 24–44 (21)More LessAbstractPeople do things with words, but words also touch people. Aiming to analyze socially preferable linguistic characteristics, the present study exemplifies and explicates the text-linguistically salient characteristics in a narrative most frequently evaluated as ‘appropriate’ by the majority of a Danish population. Asked what is appropriate or inappropriate in a narrative context, the background population repeatedly explained “coherence”, “fiction” and “details” as contextually appropriate (Appendix 1). Salient in the preferred narrative was the use of co-textual enhancement, in which one clause enhances the meaning of another one by qualifying it in various ways. In particular, meaning was enhanced by having cause and effect rationally explicated by subordinating specifications prompting coherence, cohesion, and details. Additionally, a considerable level of social realism was salient in this narrative, while the background population’s preference for fiction may allude to the socio-contextual recognizability that made the narrative easily imaginable as a possible world.
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Extraordinary emergencies
Author(s): Daniella Rafaely and Kevin A. Whiteheadpp.: 45–69 (25)More LessAbstractThis report uses audio recorded telephone calls and textual data from an emergency medical services call center to examine the interactional practices through which speakers produce what we call “extraordinary emergencies”, treating the events concerned as requiring moral, as well as medical, attention. Since one of the overarching institutional aims of emergency call centers is to facilitate the efficient provision of medical services, call-takers typically treat reported emergencies as routine events. However, in some instances speakers produce practices that do not contribute toward the institutional agenda of providing medical assistance, thereby treating them as extraordinary cases. These practices occurred recurrently in calls involving reports of emergencies relating to child sexuality, including sexual assaults against children and obstetric emergencies where the mother was particularly young. We discuss the implications of these findings for the situated reproduction of particular moral norms, especially with respect to the category of the child in society.
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An emergent English-mediated identity and a Chinese variety of WE
Author(s): Asha Tickoopp.: 70–95 (26)More LessAbstractThis paper will document an English-learning influenced transformation of self, as a shared experience amongst a community of its Chinese users. The study examines 84 English narratives on the English language learning (ELL) experience of undergraduate L1 speakers of Mandarin at three proficiency levels: Year II, Year III and Year IV. Identity, expressed in learners’ positioning on ELL, is assessed in its explicit, propositionally represented form, and its linguistically marked implicit counterpart. Implicit positioning is examined at the macro-discoursal level by acknowledging the choice of the narrative configuration, and therefore the perceptual mould, adopted for the capture of the ELL experience. It is also assessed at the micro-discoursal, sentential level in (1) the registered sense of agency over the learning, (2) the assumed responsibility for statements about the learning, and (3) the character of definition given to the learning. The cross-proficiency level assessment will show that overt and implicit positioning are in consonance in capturing a gradual adoption of an English-mediated access to the world, with resulting altered affiliations, affinities, and sense of being. The study traces the emergence of a Chinese community uniquely defined, in its own perception, by the use of the English language; hence its significance to the World Englishes enterprise.
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Metonymic and metaphoric meaning extensions of Chinese FACE and its collocations
Author(s): Zhengjun Lin and Shengxi Jinpp.: 96–123 (28)More LessAbstractThis paper studies the extension of conventional meanings of Chinese FACE expressions in their collocations as well as the collocations themselves through metonymy and metaphor. The data with five FACE expressions included are sampled from the corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics at Peking University. The conventional meaning of these five FACE expressions is ‘the surface of the front of the head from the top of the forehead to the base of the chin and from ear to ear’. The conventional meaning of FACE in its collocations is metonymically extended to ‘facial expression, emotion, attitude, person, health state, affection, sense of honor, etc.’, and metaphorically to ‘the front space or part of something, a part, a side or an aspect of something, the surface or the exposed layer of something, the geometric plane in math or scope/range of something, etc.’. When Chinese FACE is collocated with other words, its meanings are also extended through metonymy-metonymy chains, metonymy-metaphor continuums and metonymy-metaphor combinations. The meanings of Chinese FACE collocations (phrases) are mainly metonymically extended when used in certain contexts.
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When lying is more than deceiving
Author(s): Xin Li and Yumeng Yuanpp.: 124–148 (25)More LessAbstractLying is a common but controversial verbal phenomenon in human society. This paper aims to uncover the motivation and mechanism of lying as regards its definition, classification and operation by analyzing both the speaker’s production and the addressee’s interpretation process. The Relevance-Adaptation Model is adopted as its theoretical framework. Lying cases, retrieved from an American TV drama Lie to Me, are analyzed from different perspectives to provide concrete evidence for the theoretical assumptions.
The findings are two-fold: Theoretically, this paper formulates a working diagram of the Relevance-Adaptation Model with some modifications to the original to be better applied to the field of lying. Empirically, it supports the claim that the presumption of relevance motivates both the speaker and the addressee to lie or to process lying in the first place. Then, both communicators will enter a relevance-adaptation phase through making structural choices inter-adapt with relevant contextual correlates. An optimal lie is one which is maximally relevant and maximally adapted to the context to benefit the speaker and/or the addressee.
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A cognitive-pragmatic study of non-scalar implicatures
Author(s): Yanfei Zhang and Shaojie Zhangpp.: 149–163 (15)More LessAbstractWhether or not non-entailment relations generate scalar implicatures is a cutting-edge issue in linguistic pragmatics. The present study intends to argue that, based on the Cognitive Grammar paradigm, non-scalar implicatures generated by non-entailment relations are manifested as cognitive defaults which are conventionally incorporated into symbolic units in schema-instance complexes. Conventions provide a shortcut for the hearer to infer non-scalar implicatures in an unconscious, effortless and automatic way. We maintain that, contrary to neo-Gricean pragmatics, non-entailment relations cannot generate (scalar) Q-implicatures.
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Charles Goodwin, Co-Operative Action
Author(s): Kristian Mortensen and Spencer Hazelpp.: 164–169 (6)More LessThis article reviews Co-Operative Action
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