Pragmatics - Volume 12, Issue 4, 2002

From a psychological point of view, this study looks at children’s and adult’s comprehension of idiomatic expressions, and most particularly at the underlying cognitive processes needed for comprehension. Idiomatic expressions are expressions where there is a considerable difference between what is said (literal interpretation) and what is meant (idiomatic interpretation). In other words, the meaning of an idiomatic expression depends largely on a convention that relates a given linguistic form to a given meaning. Conducted in this framework, the present study was aimed at determining the role of contextual characteristics and the linguistic convention in the comprehension of idiomatic expressions by 6- and 9-year-old children, and by adults. The subject’s task was to complete stories. Twelve stories were presented in comic strip format by the experimenter, who told the story in the first three frames and then instructed the subject to choose one of the two possible endings. Two features of the stories were varied : The utterance production context (idiomatic vs. literal) and the idiom familiarity level (familiar vs. unfamiliar). Regardless of age, the context had a substantial impact on idiom comprehension: This reinforces the idea of the necessity of taking the context and the extra-linguistic conventions into account in order to explain language functioning, not only in children but also in adults. The role of the linguistic convention began at the age of 9 and was particularly strong in adults: They appear to reconstruct the communication situation solely on the basis of the linguistic convention. The role of familiarity also appeared in the 9-year-olds and continued on into adulthood. These results suggest that the period of adolescence is crucial for the development of certain pragmatic aspects of language.

This paper describes and analyzes a series of paradigmatic oppositions between N’ constructions in the P-Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, Cornish) which serve to code expressive pragmatics of adjectives. The paper considers both paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of these constructions, and shows that asymmetric interaction of constructions in paradigms influences their purely formal syntagmatic interactions. A typology of expressive categories is built to serve as a framework for comparison between constructions. It is argued that a view of grammar that includes both formal and functional dimensions (‘the coding view’) also provides valuable insight in matters of purely formal constructional interaction.

This paper approaches classroom interaction from a pragmatic perspective. More specifically, it concentrates on how pragmatic awareness is reflected in the use of modifying elements of talk by two teachers (both non-native speakers of English), and how their use of modifiers affects the ongoing interaction. The data come from two different classroom settings where English is either the object or the medium of study. The findings reveal an overall tendency towards directness in the teachers’ performance that is affected in complex ways both by the institutional context and the teachers’ status as nonnative speakers. The findings also suggest a need for future research to analyse classrooms as social contexts in their own right and with their own pragmatic constraints which may not correspond to those of everyday discourse in other settings.

This article deals with aspects of interaction between doctors and immigrant users whose native language is not Spanish (immigrant non-native speakers of Spanish: INNSS) in healthcare centers in Spain. The methodological focus is based on institutional conversation analysis following Drew and Heritage’s studies (Drew & Heritage 1992; Heritage 1997; Drew and Sarjonen 1997), and ethnographic research (Cicourel 1992). It is my intention to examine the characteristics and peculiarities -if any- of doctor-patient interaction when the participants are immigrants and non-native speakers of Spanish who are not fluent in the language of interaction, in this case Spanish. The study is based on quantitative and qualitative data which come from surveys and recordings carried out in healthcare centers in northern Madrid, Spain, during 2000 - 2001.