Pragmatics and Society - Volume 11, Issue 4, 2020

Abstract

Japanese honorifics used by younger generations are dynamic sites of tensions and discrepancies due to disagreeable conceptions and interpretations among different generations and social groups. It has become a social issue in modern Japanese society often described as keigo no midare ‘disorder in honorific’. This article examines the increased use of ssu by young Japanese speakers as a substitution of the polite form copular desu. This honorific expression plays a role as a relatively new polite form to convey ambivalent emotions to express respect and concurrently their desire to seek affinity and engagement. By analysing Japanese fictions, popular cultures and online-blog comments on the use of ssu, we demonstrate diversity in the social perception of this new honorific.

Abstract

This article studies the speech act criticism and its function as a means of social control in the Javanese Arek Cultural Community (JACC) in East Java, Indonesia. Its goal is to understand how criticism is expressed in various contexts based on ±Power (±P), ± social Distance (±D), ±Public (±Pu), and to understand the criticism strategies appropriate for use in these contexts. The data was collected through Discourse Completion Tasks and interviews. The results show that the contexts for expressing criticism in the JACC are determined by parameter ±D. Based on this parameter, it can be discovered which contexts tend to be preferred and less preferred. In the use of strategy, the Indirect Criticism (IC) is more commonly used than the Direct Criticism (DC). Nevertheless, in preferred contexts, the DC is still regarded as something that is natural and customary.

Abstract

A number of pragmatic studies have reported on gender variations in compliment-responding linguistic behavior. However, how people of different gender roles react to compliments was rarely compared. The earlier literature reported that men and women’s values and priorities are incompatible, something which can have a significant impact on their reactions to compliments. The present study, therefore, investigates how people of different gender roles pragmalinguistically respond to different kinds of compliments, such as on appearance, ability, possessions, or personality traits. A discourse completion test, designed to elicit people’s compliment-responding patterns under different scenarios, was then distributed to 600 male and female adult informants. The results showed that the respondents’ reactions to compliments were mostly conditioned by their own gender roles. In addition, the male and female participants’ preferential compliment-responding behaviors were manifestations of the social expectations on masculinity and femininity in their particular speech community.

Abstract

Although there are growing attempts to equip learners with strategies in the ESL/EFL classroom, there has not been much effort to implement strategies to assist learners in the learning of speech acts (e.g., Cohen & Ishihara, 2005). This study investigated the impact and effectiveness of instruction on EFL learners’ use of speech act strategies. A group of 131 Iranian undergraduate students were instructed through deductive consciousness-raising (C-R), inductive C-R, and L1-based C-R tasks for seven weeks. The results obtained through Cohen and Ishihara’s (2005) speech act strategy inventory indicated that instruction had a significant impact on participants’ utilization of speech act strategies. It also came to light that the learners were generally receptive to deductive and L1-based pragmatic C-R tasks. The findings suggest that pragmatic C-R tasks and especially L1-based tasks are effective means for applying strategies to supporting learners in the acquisition of speech acts.

Abstract

In dialogic reading during inquiry learning in primary school, pupils read, think and talk together about text fragments for answering their research questions. This paper demonstrates from a conversational analytic perspective, how the shared activity of text selection is constructed in a goal oriented conversation and how text selection proposals are used. Two main practices are identified depending on the situation: (1) when all participants are reading the text for the first time, a text selection proposal is constructed with reading-out-loud fragments, and (2) when only one of the participants is reading the text, a text selection proposal is constructed with an indexical text reference and indicative summary of the topic. In both practices, a separate utterance that functions as a proposal is required to accomplish the complete text selection proposal turn.

Abstract

The traditional simplistic understanding of legal genre as homogeneous texts of legalese is recently confronted by researches focusing on the contextual aspects of legal communication, i.e. the production, circulation, and consumption of legal genres in diverse institutional contexts (Candlin and Maley 1997; D’hondt and Van Der Houwen 2014). It is, according to these researches, more reasonable to think of legal genres as a hybrid combining the operation of different heterogeneous discourses. This article takes the broad contextual perspective, draws on the theory of critical genre analysis (Bhatia 2016) and attempts to explore the discursive heterogeneity in one of the Chinese legal genres – the lawyers’ defense opinions. Both textual and interpretative analysis are conducted in order to identify specific discourses that underline Chinese lawyers’ preparation of defense opinions, and to look at how Chinese lawyers linguistically construct the different discourses to fulfill the ultimate purpose of justifying the defendant’s actions.

Abstract

This study aims to examine the metaphors used to describe Syrian refugees in Jordanian politico-economic discourse, adopting a Critical Metaphor Analysis Approach for data analysis. I compiled a specialised corpus containing political and economic articles from two daily Jordanian newspapers. The data was analysed using WordSmith Tools (Scott 2012), which is compatible with Arabic data. The data analysis reveals that several metaphors are used to describe Syrian refugees in Jordanian politico-economic discourse. The majority of metaphors employed have negative connotations in the contexts in which they are used, especially in the years 2015 and 2016 compared with 2012. The metaphors used reflect the internal struggle of Jordanians in relation to whether Syrian refugees should stay or leave. The struggle stems from deeply-entrenched Arab traditions, which make receiving guests perceived as a duty on the one hand, and the economic struggle of Jordanians living in a fragile economy, on the other.

This article reviews The Construction of ‘Ordinariness’ across Media Genres978-90-272-6197-7

This article reviews Exploring Politeness in Business Emails: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

This article reviews Patient-Subject Constructions in Mandarin Chinese: Syntax, semantics, discourse978-90-272-0340-3