Pragmatics and Society - Volume 15, Issue 2, 2024

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to examine condolence strategies and the sociocultural norms underlying the realisation of the speech act of condolence in Persian. To achieve this, a three-layered data collection methodology including two focus group interviews (FGIs), field notes, and a discourse completion task (DCT) were used. FGIs and field notes were utilised to shed light on the cultural norms as well as any variables affecting the expressions of condolence. The DCT, on the other hand, was administered to explicate the form and frequency of condolence strategies in Persian. Results indicate that, influenced by six sociocultural variables, 20 distinct condolence strategies are used in Persian. Furthermore, findings show that, while these strategies are used with varying degrees of frequency in different situations, when expressing condolence, Persian speakers place high importance on empathising with the bereaved interlocutor.

Abstract

Different from previous linguistic studies on rhetoric, which primarily concern the ideational semantics and the logic of sentences, this article attempts to deal systematically with the interpersonal semantics of rhetoric by drawing on the comprehensive appraisal framework of systemic functional linguistics (Martin and White 2005) and explores the mechanism of rhetorical persuasion in science communication via appraisal through a case study of the gene-modification (GM) debate in China. It first examines the rhetorical appeals of the subsystems of appraisal and then based on a self-constructed and coded corpus of GM debate discourses, it compares how institutional (the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and the Greenpeace Organization) and individual stakeholders (Cui Yongyuan and Fang Zhouzi) of different ideological interests in the GM debate mobilize the interpersonal semantic resources to rhetorical effects to persuade the audience of the safety/danger of the GM technology and products. The analysis reveals that while the opinion leaders choose ‘soft’ persuasion by heavily using affect and judgement resources, the institutions opt for ‘hard’ persuasion by utilizing more appreciation resources. The four parties all prefer contracting resources over expanding resources of engagement, which restricts the space of negotiation. Their communicative motives are interpreted through the lens of the rhetoric theory, and the implications and consequences for science communication in the post-truth era are discussed. Theoretically, the paper contributes to understanding the persuasion mechanism of appraisal and to understanding the science vs. society, and government vs. citizens relationship.

Abstract

This paper is a reanalysis of the Turkish evidential markers as Common Ground management tools. Based on conversational data from Turkish National Corpus and a real-life example from the media, I demonstrate how the traditional description of these markers fails to account for their dialogic uses. The data presented in this paper show that Turkish speakers alternate between these markers in order to mark their epistemic relation to the utterance content relative to their addressee. The relevant pragmatic notions marked with the Turkish evidential system are asymmetric and symmetric epistemic relation of the speaker and addressee, resulting in the speaker’s evaluation of epistemic primacy and shared information, respectively. Turkish also has another symmetric position where the speaker abstains from primacy claim without specifying the addressee’s epistemic relation. These observations lead to the conclusion that Turkish evidentiality is in fact an intersubjective epistemic category in the pragmatic component of language where intersubjectivity is defined as the speaker’s evaluation of the interlocutors’ differential perspectives.

Abstract

Previous research has investigated aspects of deontics, epistemics, and resistance in medical settings. However, few have focused on deontics and how resistance shapes the responses of deontic authority (Stivers and Timmermans 2020), especially in online medical counseling. Utilizing the data collected from online medical consultation and adopting a discursive approach, this study investigates how doctors deploy deontic authority to resolve caregivers’ deontic right-based resistance. It is found that caregivers’ deontic right-based resistance comprises two major categories: strong deontic right-based resistance and weak deontic right-based resistance. Accordingly, doctors tend to use strong deontic authority to resolve caregivers’ strong deontic right-based resistance and mitigated deontic authority to resolve weak one. Because doctors’ deontic authority is particularly vulnerable in online contexts, it is proposed that doctors value their deontic authority in the decision-making of a treatment plan, which they manifest by protecting their deontic authority when their deontic territory is invaded.

Abstract

There has been ongoing research contrasting online vs. Face-To-Face (FTF) interactions for more than a decade. This study fills the gap in the literature considering FTF vs. online contexts by comparing the norms and patterns of complimenting in Persian and explores the complimenting strategies, syntactic patterns, and internal and external modifiers used in each setting. The corpus included 366 FTF compliments related to the topic of appearance. Findings demonstrated that in both settings explicit and formulaic compliments are used more frequently than implicit and non-formulaic ones. However, implicit compliments in FTF interactions were less prevalent than those in online settings. FTF compliments did not show the same level of creativity as the online ones did and a more diverse set of adjectives were used in online vs FTF compliments. Finally, the paper provides implications for further research.

This article reviews Complimenting Behavior and (Self)Praise across Social Media. New Contexts and New Insights978-90-272-07579