Language and Dialogue - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2018

Abstract

The paper explores the rhetorical strategies Donald Trump employed during the 2016 U.S. presidential primary campaign. The study shows that Trump aimed at garnering public support by defining himself as an anti-politician or anti-political establishment candidate. His rhetorical strategies were aimed at building the depiction of his character as a successful businessman who came from outside the political realm to save America and restore it to its former greatness. He denounced the traditional rules of politics, avoided calculated, logical and politically correct utterances, and modeled himself as the only candidate who was fit for the presidency. The analysis reveals Trump’s prominent rhetorical strategies, and shows how each one of them fulfilled what I refer to as the ultimate “Anti-Political Rhetorical Strategy”, from an anti-politically correct strategy, which is by nature anti-political, to more common strategies such as negativity, simplicity, repetition and hyperbole.

Abstract

The present paper aims to investigate the main argumentative uses of definitions in various communicative contexts of the parliamentary discourse, on the basis of two sets of data, selected from the British and the Romanian Parliaments. Relevant categories of argumentative definitions are identified and described, by taking into consideration their linguistic structure and rhetorical features, as well as their current association with other types of arguments and pragmatic strategies. The cross-cultural and comparative perspective allows us to grasp to what extent the institutional forms, procedural rules and cultural models can actually influence the argumentative choices and reasoning patterns in the specific cases of the British and the Romanian Parliamentary discourse.

Abstract

The current study adopts a variational pragmatic approach to compare the dialogic sequence of the directive speech act of request and its reaction of consent versus refusal in Egyptian and Saudi Arabic. To this end, 413 Egyptian and Saudi undergraduate students completed a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). Data analysis indicated more differences between Egyptian and Saudi Arabic in request consent strategies than refusal strategies. Among the noted differences in consent strategies were Egyptians’ stronger preference for direct strategies and elaborate responses than Saudis who displayed more varied combination patterns and exhibited stronger gender differences. In refusal strategies, however, a general similarity between Egyptians and Saudis was obvious at the level of strategies, combination patterns and the influence of social factors.

Abstract

The paper develops an ethnomethodological, conversation-analytic and multimodal approach of the theatrical rehearsal, examining how participants collaboratively read, understand and embody the script. After examining the spatial organization of the setting, the paper focuses on the following interactional practices: (1) from the participants’ perspective, the script appears as a written sequence of lines to connect with their knowledge of social interaction; (2) participants understand the script through their sequential and contextual readings; (3) they collaboratively connect the utterance of written lines with embodied behavior through the check-reading, and (4) by coordinating the lines with pauses and gaze directions. The analysis relies on video-recordings in French and Japanese collected at an Art center in Japan.

Abstract

First of all, I would like to make clear that this paper is meant as a response to the attack against the Mixed Game Model (Weigand 2010) launched by Harrissians in their articles of the Special Issue of this journal (2018, 1). When I became aware of the fact that against their dogmatic position no argument can take effect, I decided not to take part directly in such a pseudo-debate but to respond in a discussion article in the next issue (see the preface of the special issue). I am writing this discussion article not in the futile hope of changing the minds of Harrissian hardliners, but because I feel obliged to the other contributors of the Special Issue who made a plea for the MGM. Moreover, I feel obliged to the readers of this journal to defend my position regarding basic issues of linguistics. I’ll focus on central points and refer to my book on “Dialogue: The Mixed Game” for details.

Abstract

In Language and Dialogue 8:1 (2018), Peter Jones wrote a critical article dealing with dialogical theory in the context of language and communication. His article covered several theoretical and methodological frameworks dealing with concepts of dialogue, here interpreted from the point-of-view of Roy Harris’s integrationism. Edda Weigand (this issue) has written a comprehensive discussion article which mainly focuses on Pablé (2018) and Orman (2018) as well as Harris’s original work. In my present response to Jones I deal almost exclusively with my own version of “extended dialogism”, which was included among his targets. I argue that extended dialogism is actually a form of moderate integrationism. I demonstrate that Jones’s contribution has several interesting points, but that it also contains a number of misguided interpretations.

This article reviews Cultural Linguistics978-90-272-04127

This article reviews Language and Culture at Work