Pragmatics - Volume 18, Issue 2, 2008

Taking as a starting point a broad conception of metapragmatics (Lucy 1993), this study describes a wide range of reflexive elements in closing arguments of criminal trials, and on the basis of their habitual use by trial lawyers, it enquires about the general underlying function as part of the sociocultural practice (Bourdieu 1990). The corpus of was collected at twenty-two criminal trials observed and recorded by the researcher. Five kinds of metapragmatic indexes – from the maximally explicit to the implicit – are identified and analyzed in their interactional, situational and societal context: (1) performatives, which count as official acts by the trial lawyer, (2) formulations and other evaluations of speech, (3) descriptions of aspects of the sociocultural practice and allusions to the principles governing the event, (4) strategic descriptions of contextual conditions, which are exploited with group identity and relational effects, and (5) style. The analysis reveals that these metapragmatic features contextualize the communication as expressing a specific social capital, and at the same time, they contribute to define what does not count as legitimate practice. Apart from the specific effects of individual types of indexes, in closing arguments metapragmatic indexes basically function signaling that the social actor and the practice they are engaged in rightfully belong to the social field of the law.

This study is an investigation of a conventionalized ironic marker in spontaneous Cypriot-Greek conversations. Specifically it examines the lexical item siga, which translates variously as “like hell”, “yeah right”, “big deal”. For the analysis of siga, this study will rely on the insights offered by recent work on the interface of grammar and interaction (cf. Ochs, Schegloff and Thomson 1996) in order to analyze the interactional role of siga in the positions where it occurs, by taking into consideration its sequential placement and its position in the turn. Another issue that will be discussed throughout this study is that although there are various translations of siga, its investigation with respect to the positions in which it occurs in a turn reveals that the interactional role of siga is much more complex than a dictionary definition of its meaning suggests. This study will suggest that investigations of irony in context can provide useful insights into the study of verbal communication in general.

Speakers of Kalapalo, a Southern Carib language spoken in central Brazil, use a complex set of grammatical particles to reference epistemic judgments. Using data from narratives, hereditary leader’s ritual communication, ritual songs, conversations, and didactic speech, I use deictic and stance concepts to understand the semantics of this system. A focus on discursive practice illustrates how various intersubjective stance processes are foregrounded by epistemic marking. The paper concludes with discussion of issues requiring further research.

This paper examines how orientation to cultural identities in an Irish language class in the United States is used to negotiate issues of authenticity and linguistic and cultural authority. The data were recorded in a beginning level Irish language class in Southern Califomia, in which the teacher and all but one student were American. The Irish identity of the remaining student was highly salient to the other students and to the teacher, conferring authenticity and linguistic authority on him. The teacher’s evaluations of the students ascribe authenticity and linguistic authority to the Irish student based on perceptions about his identity, in spite of his rejection of such authority. Thus, even when participants do not claim identity based statuses, they may be imposed by others in a way that is consequential for interaction.

A general address term in Communist China, tongzhi ‘comrade’ was appropriated by gay rights activists in Hong Kong to refer to members of sexual minorities. Examining its level of acceptance among non-activist gay and lesbian Hongkongers, this article argues that non-activists’ ideology about sexuality accounts for their rejection of tongzhi and their preference for strategies that leave same-sex desire unspecified. This study demonstrates how the discursive history of a label can both enable and impede its political efficacy. It also sheds light on the internal resistance that representatives of minority groups encounter when introducing new labels for those they supposedly speak for.

In recent cross-cultural studies of pragmatics, we have witnessed a rise in interest in the comparative study of phenomena beyond the level of single and decontextualised utterances encompassing those on the level of speech events such as casual conversations. The underlying premise for such studies is that different cultural groups may have different rules for participation in and interpretation of conversation X that conflicts related to these rules are a major source of cross-cultural miscommunication. This study examines the use of listener responses by Chinese speakers in Chinese Mandarin conversations and by Australians in Australian English conversations. Following X prior framework by Clancy et al. (1996), the study examines similarities and differences in the use of listener responses by these two groups of people in terms of frequency of use, types of listener responses, and the positions of listener responses with respect to transition relevance place. Results show that Australian and Chinese speakers do exhibit quite different conversational styles as evidenced in their use of listener responses. Specifically, while Australians use more listener responses, use a higher percentage of lexical expressions as their listener responses and tend to place their listener responses at a possible completion point, Chinese speakers use fewer listener responses, favour the use of paralinguistic vocalic forms as their listener responses and tend to place their listener responses during a turn. These findings may suggest a culture specific way of turn taking and of what it means to be polite in conversational behaviour.