Pragmatics - Volume 21, Issue 1, 2011

This article reproduces an archived and previously unpublished paper by Bronislaw Malinowski entitled “The anthropological approach to language” which he delivered to a meeting of the elite Monday Night Group in the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University in November 1941. The social “context of situation” of Malinowski’s seminar presentation is reconstructed together with a brief consideration of his contribution to linguistic theory. A commentary on his paper refers to Malinowski’s relationship with several of his peers, including discussion of the critical reception given to the second volume of his last monograph on the Trobriand Islands, Coral Gardens and their Magic. Finally, the “biographical context of situation” describes Malinowski’s lethally busy schedule six months before his death, referring to his other public presentations during the months of October and November 1941.

Any conversational exchange can be informational or phatic. Occasional exchanges are of no lesser importance than the informative content of dialogue. One needs to establish the channel of communication by setting up a social environment conducive to the exchange of ideas among the participants. Such a strategy of showing politeness is intended to avoid face-threatening acts through the use of compliments and non-verbal gestures. Mistranslating the function of a given phatic communion expression might lead to problems ranging from the disruption of mundane daily small talk such as the break up of a courtship dialogue to grave consequences as the failure of crucial peace talks among belligerent nations. The paper explores the effect of misinterpreting culturally divergent phatic communion formulae in an English-Arabic context. Other sociolinguistic parameters such as topic, setting, age, sex and social status will be considered.

This article deals with the question of the diglossic code-switching in the Arabic spoken language and especially in learned discourses. I aim to explain the rhetorical inherent value in the diglossic code-switching in the Arabic spoken language and I will attempt to show through a series of examples drawn from an Aljazeera episode, how the juxtaposition of standard Arabic and colloquial Arabic can be a vehicle for messages that bear rhetorical / metaphorical values.

This article investigates the use of German forms of address in different national and regional varieties of German, as perceived by speakers of those varieties. For particular domains such as the workplace, informants report significant regional and national differences in use not only of pronominal address but also of nominal address and linguistic structures linked to addressing such as greetings. The data also confirm differences in information about and sensitivity for different national varieties between speakers of the dominant and of non-dominant varieties characteristic for asymmetrical pluricentricity.

This article analyzes how employees in a global business organization talk about their colleagues in other countries. Employees were asked to discuss their work practices in focus group settings, and give examples of how they experience ‘the other’. Using Discursive Psychology and Politeness Theory as the analytic approaches, the article analyzes pieces of discourse to disclose social psychological phenomena such as group identity, intergroup differentiation, and stereotypes. The analyses show that talking about ‘the other’ is potentially face-threatening, and mitigating discourse features are used repeatedly to soften the criticism. We also see how uncovering stereotypes is a mutual accomplishment in the group, and how group members gradually move from relatively innocent to blatantly negative outgroup stereotypes. The analyses also show that participants engage in meta-reflections on the nature of stereotypes, which may serve as another mitigating device, and that talk about ‘the other’ is used to create intergroup differentiation. Finally, the article discusses the implications of these findings for cross-cultural communication and work practices in organizations.

This paper presents a genre analysis of 73 letters of leniency, which were obtained in two United States federal district courthouses. The primary objective of this type of genre is to persuade a judge to be lenient during the sentencing of a defendant, such as by reducing or commuting the defendant’s sentence. This paper examines how writers of this genre structure their letters and use discursive features, in particular linguistically-realized politeness and appeals to the judges’ faith, to make a request for leniency. The findings of this study show that the rhetorical and discursive features of letters of leniency follow the conventions of the court, which demands the observance of the judge’s face through the use of politeness. This study also shows how the notion of faith is exploited in this type of genre to make a persuasive request or, more often, to follow-up a request (post-request) for leniency.

This paper presents the analysis of two school administrators’ discourse whereby they relate their experiences with deviant high school students. Analysis of interview data revealed that interviewees positioned themselves as caring and inclusive educators, who understood deviant students’ circumstances. They positioned students as victims of overwhelmingly negative environments, and portrayed school as a warm and welcoming space. Through this positioning strategy, they accounted for decisions not to suspend deviant students from school. The findings suggest that the administrators equated performance of caring identity with professional competence, which is a desirable membership category in educational discourses.

This article examines how humor works in the code-mixed advertising campaigns of the Spanish airline company Vueling. Drawing on the fetishism approach to multilingual advertising (Kelly-Holmes, 2005) and the theory of incongruity (Raskin, 1985), this paper explores three main types of humorous deviations in Vueling campaigns: structural, phonetic, and visual. The analysis confirms that humor in Vueling ads is produced by deviations at the formal rather than semantic level of language, specifically through the insertion of foreign languages (mainly English and French) into Spanish colloquial expressions. These foreign elements are partially “domesticated” into local Spanish frames by creative code-mixing mechanisms that serve to break readers’ expectations and trigger a comical reaction. Another finding of this analysis is that in most Vueling ads, humor works according to an incongruity-resolution pattern since the subtle humor of many rhymes, puns, and plays on words is only appreciated by a Spanish audience who knows some English and French and is familiarized with certain cultural references and sayings used in Spain.