Language and Dialogue - Volume 7, Issue 3, 2017

This paper discusses about twenty approaches to the study of dialogue or interaction. The literature shows different foci in and understandings of these phenomena. There is a basic distinction between dialogue – in the sense of overt exchanges of sequentialised utterances or contributions by two or more participants who are co-present in particular situated encounters – and dialogicality, which is taken to be a more general capacity that enables individuals or constellations of individuals to make sense in and through interactions with others, artefacts and environments. There are also “interactivity” approaches that appear to broaden the scope to encompass more of non-linguistic and often material aspects of human sense-making.

This paper details aspects related to the “face” – one’s social standing, reputation, and dignity – during interactions between interviewers and interviewees (both politicians and nonpoliticians) in more than 5,000 questions posed during three different broadcast interview programs aired throughout 2012–2013 in Japan. The interactions between interviewers and interviewees are also considered as a dialogic phenomenon in which interlocutors are actors who act and react. By examining the toughness of questions posed in these programs the paper explores their extent of threat to face of the interviewees and the facets associated with this threat, including features related to the interviewees themselves. The results indicate strong evidence of socio-cultural norms and values that affect interviewers’ relationship with politicians and other sources.

This paper addresses the language and pragmatic strategies used by Akan herbal drug sellers to persuade would-be-buyers. It adopts the theoretical framework of Weigand’s Mixed Game Model (MGM) and defines persuasion as a variable of competence-in-performance, and language use as the basis of dialogic interaction. It investigates how sellers employ politeness, honorifics, humour, digression, personification, proverbs, metaphors and hyperbole in dialogic action games. The herbal drug sellers are grouped into three: (a) those normally plying on Ghana’s major roads and at bus stations, (b) those who are on radio and TV and (c) those who advertise on radio and TV. We will discuss excerpts of five recordings in the Akan language and translated into English.

The present study examined the compliment response behaviour of Egyptian Arabic-English bilinguals in both spoken Egyptian Arabic and English. A total of 433 undergraduates completed the Arabic and English versions of a Discourse Completion Task comprising 12 imaginary situations that varied in topic and in the relation between the interlocutors. The results revealed the participants’ preference for agreement and additional response types in both Arabic and English to varying extents while non-agreement responses were rarely used. Significant differences were noted for language type, gender, social distance, social dominance and topic while exposure to the foreign language resulted in minimal differences. Results are interpreted within a pragmatic and sociolinguistic framework and implications are proposed.

This study addresses the issue of politeness in compliment responses (CRs) among Iranian female university students. Using naturally occurring talk, 235 compliment-response exchanges were recorded during focus group interviews. The findings revealed that to mitigate impoliteness the interviewees displayed five extreme culture-specific politeness strategies as (1) tarof, (2) shekasteh-nafsi, (3) hyperreciprocation, (4) sha’n, and (5) double positive response. In female-female CR exchanges, interviewees attempted to foster a good impression by resorting to politeness strategies of tarof, hyperreciprocation, and double positive response whereas in male-female CR exchanges, interviewees tried to undermine the appraised impression imposed by the opposite-sex compliments through politeness strategies that are anchored in sha’n and shekasteh-nafsi. This article concludes that Iranian women respond diversely to compliments by virtue of interaction among integrated components: the compliment topic, the complimenter’s sex, and cultural burdens.

Freud’s canonical account portrays the birth of psychoanalysis as the result of an inner observation of oneself located beyond the reach of social requirements. Yet an account of psychoanalytic theory that locates it in the context of the relationships in which it is used shows that the image of the intrapersonal relationship created by this theory, is actually a transposition of an interpersonal relationship: the portraying of an intrapersonal relationship thus offers a way to define a situation of interaction between social partners. This transposition allows different strategies of actions, which organize interactions by gauging them against norms of modern ‘contractual’ societies. In this way, the situational and dialogical account developed here locates psychoanalysis in its historical and social context.