Pragmatics and Society - Volume 16, Issue 4, 2025

Abstract

In HIV counselling, giving advice is the core activity to help people living with HIV (PLHIV) make positive behaviour change. Malay nurse counsellors, however, face considerable challenges in eliciting information on patients’ sexuality and sexual behaviour, due to the socio-cultural context in which well-defined attitudes about sexuality and precise ideas of accepted sexual practices prevail. Against this backdrop and drawing primarily from Conversation Analysis, this paper examines how Malay nurse counsellors and PLHIVs manage advice-giving sequences on the delicate issues of safe sex. The analysis highlights the intricacies of advice-giving in Malay and strategies used by nurse counsellors to ensure advice uptake while managing institutional constraints and cultural sensitivities. It shows how strategically sequenced questions are used to introduce delicate topics, while possible threats are managed using hypothetical and implicit advice and the use of the inclusive ‘we’ in Malay.

Abstract

By examining a popular Japanese TV commercial as an archetypal example of discursive practice, this paper shows that quotidian discourse is poetically organized and achieved through multimodally accumulated preferences in order to maximize appeal for anticipated recipients. Building on this assumption, a linguistic anthropological approach, called ‘ethnopoetics’, is adopted and modified to elucidate the cultural norms and assumptions embedded in layered ‘texts’. Specifically, focus is given to verbal, visual, aural, and somatic elements in the commercial, and an attempt is made to elucidate the multi-layered coordination of these semiotic resources, which eventually evokes an underlying social configuration, called ‘interactional text’.

Abstract

Ritual is an intrinsic aspect of human life. Moreover, it is transformational. Ritual performers are engaged in behavior that alters the emotional, mental, and sometimes the physical state of participants in the ritual. In order to create this transformation, ritual performers must have a clear set of pragmatic communication techniques to engage participants and move them through the ritual process. Participants enter a ritual frame, engage in a set of processual experiences and emerge in a different state than when the process began. In this discussion, I examine the pragmatic techniques by which participants are guided from stage to stage through the ritual process. I propose that the principal mechanism for this movement are ‘pragmemic triggers’ that signal processual advancement from stage to stage. These can be verbal, gestural, behavioral or symbolic. For pragmemic triggers to be effective, first, ritual ‘frames’ within which ritual transformation takes place must be established. Second, performers guiding the ritual activate the pragmemic triggers that move participants from stage to stage in the process. Following these pragmemic triggers results in participants becoming engaged in a state of ‘flow’ that separates participants from everyday reality and propels them through the performative ritual process; and third, ritual performers ratify the transformation of participants at the completion of the ritual. I demonstrate the workings of this process in several Asian performance forms, represented in this discussion by an analysis of Japanese kagura.

Abstract

The present paper describes the language- and culture-specific communicative practices in Japanese facilitated by the grammaticalized honorific system in the study of societal pragmatics (Mey 2001). The description develops existing descriptions by showing how the use of an honorific or a plain form functions in interaction as a societal action which situates the interaction within the societal norms of seniority, acquaintance/affiliation and (in)formality. The analysis in the framework of Austin’s ([1962]1975) effect-based speech act theory is illustrated using several examples which show that there is an interplay between performing an illocutionary-act type and performing a societal action: illocutionary and perlocutionary effects are reinforced when the illocutionary-act type and the societal action are compatible; but mitigated illocutionary and perlocutionary effects result when they are incompatible.

Abstract

The present study seeks to reconsider popular assumptions regarding the dynamics of power in interpersonal interactions in light of data from an historical North American speech community. Specifically, I examine directive and commissive speech act formulations in colonial Spanish Louisiana data, both in terms of the level of directness employed in their head acts as well as the degree of tentativeness which accompanies them. The corpus for the study consists of 200 institutional letters composed in two settlements of the Louisiana territory between 1778 and 1802. Study findings reveal that speakers in Spanish Louisiana showed a clear preference for directly formulated speech acts, but that the level of tentativeness used in this period was highly dependent on the relative power of the speaker in the interaction. The results thus call into question traditional notions of the ‘rights’ speakers possess to issue certain types of speech acts.

Abstract

Adopting proximization theory as its analytical framework, this article examines the feminist discourse of controversial Chinese talk show performer Yang Li. Yang’s talk show is known for her incisive and sarcastically humorous remarks on men, and her speeches have aroused widespread controversies. Our analysis finds that by positioning herself and other women as the inside deictic-centers (IDCs) within her constructed discourse space, Yang tactically presents the spatial, temporal and axiological proximization from the outside deictic-centers (ODCs) mainly composed of men. Yang’s version of the controversial feminism has revealed gender inequality and conventional patriarchy in contemporary society; but the reliance on male- and class-based gender stereotypes and the imagery projected from past incidents to create gendered or even men-hating discourses has begot controversies and backlashes. This study also discusses how Yang’s controversial feminist discursive patterns are influenced by the platformization of daily life, and the commodification and entertainmentization of gender issues against the backdrop of contemporary Chinese society where neoliberalism, market, capital and convention coexist.

Abstract

Virtual collaborations via video-conferencing applications may enable international groups to develop ideas and explore synergies in creative ways. This article presents a case study that unveils how students in a group involved in a virtual simulation game, in which English as a lingua franca was used, navigate a highly intercultural environment, orient to team building through cooperative practices, and gradually develop their own team culture. The game was inserted in two online university courses in tertiary institutions in Germany and Finland. In the game, students performed several tasks that require collaborative work in the development plan of a fictitious city. The data for the study comprise video-recorded game interactions and students’ learning journal entries. This article is centered on the multimodal analysis of the interactions taking place during the kick-off session of the game and showcases successful multimodal strategies that aided the development of an inclusive and positive atmosphere in the group.

This article reviews Pragmatics, (Im)politeness, and Intergroup Communication: A Multilayered, Discursive Analysis of Cancel Culture9781009184373