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Language and Dialogue - Volume 3, Issue 3, 2013
Volume 3, Issue 3, 2013
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Facework strategies and the achievement of multiple goals in a court martial cross-examination in the film A Few Good Men
Author(s): Maria Milagros del Saz-Rubio and Carmen Gregori-Signespp.: 341–370 (30)More LessFollowing recent trends of research into television and film language that is being undertaken in various sub-disciplines of linguistics (Piazza et al. 2011), this article describes the nature of the interaction that takes place in the cross-examination of Colonel Jessep in the film ‘A Few Good Men’. The dialogue is from the last scene of the film and it exemplifies how the attorney manages to get the truth out of an uncooperative witness. It is not, however, only the outcome of the interaction itself that is of interest, but the process through which this is reached. By analyzing in detail the facework strategies enacted by the participants in the interaction towards themselves and others (Goffman 1967; Penman 1990), as well as the conspicuous intrusions of social factors, such as power and social status, into language structure (Brown and Levinson 1987, 179), we hope to have proved that there is more to this type of discourse than the mere exchange of information (Lakoff 1989). This is partly due to its confrontational nature and to its being multifunctional with regard to goals. Underlying the analysis is the intention to illustrate how the careful and crafted use and manipulation of language is context- and goal(s)-dependent and lies at the heart of the negotiation of our communicative goals. The dialogue analyzed illustrates how a miscalculated assessment of one’s rights and obligations in a specific type of communicative activity (Levinson 1992) can prove fatal and negatively influence our own portrayal as (in)competent speakers.
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Rhetoric in times of crises: How financial institutions try to restore confidence
Author(s): Stefanie Molthagen-Schnöringpp.: 371–387 (17)More LessIn the current climate of financial crisis many people do not trust banks anymore. In reaction to this financial institutions change marketing techniques and try to convince their shareholders that their money is well invested. This article examines an advertising spot by the Commerzbank and the editorial by the CEO of the Commerzbank in the annual report 2012. The main focus of the analysis lies on the communicative strategies used to build or rebuild trust. Therefore, the model of the Dialogic Action Game as developed by Weigand is used as a theoretical foundation as it allows a comprehensive view on communication embedded in its cultural environment.
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Dialogue in second language learning and teaching: Directions for research and practice
Author(s): Gergana Vitanovapp.: 388–402 (15)More LessThe paper contextualizes the concepts of dialogue and dialogism, as outlined by Bakhtin’s framework, in the fields of second language acquisition and applied linguistics. Specifically, it shows how dialogism could be applied to three distinct, but interconnected contexts: the context of immigrant second language learners, second and foreign language teacher education, and the increasingly important area of English as an international language. The paper argues that viewing language learners’ and their teachers’ identities as dialogic constructions and, particularly, the texts they produce as examples of active dialogic activities can help researchers and practitioners understand the active, agentive nature of the process of language acquisition better.
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Dialogue features in football articles over a period of fifty years
Author(s): Barbro Lundinpp.: 403–421 (19)More LessIn this diachronic study of dialogic features in football, articles from three different sports events have been focused: The World Cups 1958, 1974 and the Euro Cup 2004. This period of almost 50 years distinguishes itself as a time period when new channels for communication have emerged: television, Internet, computer-mediated communication. This has made it possible to bridge the gulf between the communicators. Dialogue features such as questions, directives, addressing the readers with you (second person singular) and using an inclusive we are numerous in the football articles studied. The articles show an increasing tendency to address the readers with you in the articles from Euro 2004. Moreover, the sports writers refer to given responses from readers in the articles from 2004.
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Epistemic modals: A cross-theoretical approach
Author(s): Zoltán Vecseypp.: 422–436 (15)More LessIn recent years, the standard account of epistemic modal discourse has been criticized from two directions. Expressivists and dynamic semanticists argue that simple epistemic modal sentences should be understood as non-truth-conditional. Relativists hold that the truth values of epistemic modal sentences are determined by the features of their contexts of assessment. I argue below that one can integrate the core insights of these critical stances without falling into contradiction.
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One man’s norm is another’s metaphor: Patrick Hanks: Lexical analysis. Norms and exploitations
Author(s): Geoffrey Sampsonpp.: 437–456 (20)More LessPatrick Hanks sees linguistic approaches to word meaning as divided between two unattractive extremes. Generative theories, such as were pioneered by Katz and Fodor (1963) and pursued recently e.g. by Wierzbicka (1996), attempt to capture meanings with an apparatus of quasi-mathematical rules and universal semantic primitives which is unequal to reflecting the messy realities revealed by empirical corpus studies. On the other hand, the doctrine of linguistic creativity advanced by Sampson (1980, 2001) is unduly defeatist in denying the possibility of scientific analysis. Hanks argues that theoretical linguistics and practical lexicography should both embrace an intermediate position which distinguishes between high-frequency “norms” of usage and rare “exploitations”. This allows linguists and lexicographers to produce scientific lexical description while nevertheless acknowledging messy variability.
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Pragmatics re-established on its feet: Weigand’s Mixed Game Model 2010
Author(s): Alain Trognonpp.: 457–476 (20)More LessThe “Mixed Game Model” as a linguistic theory conceptualizes the natural ability of human beings: “competence-in-performance”. The theory rests on a holistic view of language and dialogue that takes into account the physically and socially complex and more or less chaotic universe we live in. Competence-in-performance is thereby rooted in human biology. This ability enables people to communicate in an extremely context-sensitive manner. It rests on the subtle integration of three fundamental registers of human mental functioning in dialogic communication: perception (including emotional perception), cognition, and natural language. This explains why the theory is called the Mixed Game. The Mixed Game defines language as dialogue, conceptualizing the components of natural language along action and reaction. The book gives us a new foundation to the pragmatics of the human communication system, a rigorous systematic methodology to study all kinds of dialogues, from the simplest to the more sophisticated, from the most informal to the most institutional or professional. This book also suggests various theoretical and practical developments. It is useful not only for linguists, but also for all researchers in psychology, sociology, and more generally in all the human sciences.
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