Pragmatics - Volume 23, Issue 1, 2013

Research in the pragmatics of Nigerian humor is almost nil. This article, therefore, highlighted the major pragmatic strategies used by Nigerian stand-up comedians to involve their audiences in the creation of the interactional context of humor. Data comprised fifteen randomly-sampled extracts from the video compact disc recordings of the routines of five stand-up comedians. Analysis revealed the saliency of linguistic coding, stereotyping, formulas, call-and-response, self-deprecation, and shared experiences which not only involved both comedian and audience in humor production and consumption but which additionally reduced the stage authority of the comedian to the barest minimum. It was concluded that Nigerian stand-up comedy’s interactional tenor could be uniquely hinged on linguistic coding, essentially the code-alternation of Nigerian Pidgin (especially) and English Language.

The purpose of this study is to show that direct speech in narratives introduced by “von wegen” (‘like’) and “nach dem Motto” (‘along the lines of’) can be analyzed as a powerful means to transform a stretch of talk into a massive “stance index” which transcends the boundaries between the narrator’s world and the narrated world in terms of narrative metalepsis. “Von wegen” and “nach dem Motto” are non-canonical reporting frames which are syntactically flexible and semantically facilitate a transformation of direct speech into a “category-animation”. For these reasons, they can be employed spontaneously in spoken talk-in-interaction and make it possible to shape a stretch of direct speech creatively in order to position oneself, other discourse participants and narrated characters as committed or non-committed to what is seen to be a relevant normative point of reference. The way direct speech introduced by “von wegen” and “nach dem Motto” can be used to construct positions in order to evaluate discourse participants and narrated characters can be grasped schematically by means of a slightly revised and extended version of Du Bois’ “stance triangle”.

This paper discusses how the first person pronouns ‘I’ and ‘We’ and the two proper nouns ‘the Education Bureau [EDB]’ and ‘the Government’ were used strategically by government officials in an attempt to delineate the level of involvement and commitment of the officials themselves, the EDB and the Hong Kong Government in the course of implementing and fine-tuning the medium-of-instruction policy in Hong Kong’s secondary schools. The data comprises the speeches delivered at various formal educational occasions and the documents issued and distributed to various stakeholders of the secondary education in Hong Kong. The clauses having these pronouns and proper nouns as either the Agent or Beneficiary were identified and examined in order to find out: (1) the level of commitment of the officials/administrative entities with reference to the process types used; (2) the level of commitment of these officials/administrative entities with reference to the modality level chosen; (3) the power status of the officials/administrative entities; and (4) the specific role, if any, played by the officials/administrative entities. Systemic functional grammar was the framework being drawn upon in undertaking the analysis.

The aim of this article is to complement and refine Ellen Prince’s well-known taxonomy of given/new information (Prince 1981, 1992), which distinguishes between discourse-related and assumed familiarity-related newness/givenness. What we suggest is that a new category should be added to the existing hearer new, hearer old, and inferrable information categories, so as to include cases where the informational status of an entity or a propositional content cannot be determined with certainty. We call this new category ‘the (hearer) indeterminables’, and we justify its existence through a case study on nonrestrictive, relevance-oriented constructions (appositive relative clauses, non-restrictive pre-modifiers, apposition). We also argue that it is possible for speakers/writers to simulate informational statuses for politeness considerations, and that such simulation should be included in the definition of assumed familiarity.

In this article we combine a concern with speech play and language ideologies to investigate contemporary Navajo terminology development. This article presents some recent cases of lexical elaboration in context, and argues that neologisms in Navajo are often fleeting, shifting, or humorous practices that reflect and recreate individual agency, intimate grammars, and local language ideologies. They also reflect an unexpected continuity in what is considered to be a context of rapid language shift. Such practices are one form of resistance to English and should be seen as a sociocultural, rather than purely referential, phenomenon.

Vamos con todo is a mixed-genre entertainment programme transmitted in Ecuador on a national television channel. The segment of the programme that we examine in this paper focuses on gossip and events surrounding local/national celebrities. Talk as entertainment is central to this segment which is structured around a series of ‘news’ stories announced by the presenters and mostly conveyed through (pre-recorded) interviews. Extracts of these interviews are ingeniously presented to create a sense of confrontation between the celebrities concerned. Each news story is then followed-up by informal ‘discussions’ among the show’s 5-6 presenters who take on the role of panellists. While Vamos con todo incorporates various genres, the running thread throughout the programme is the creation of scandal and the instigation of confrontation. What is of particular interest, however, is that no sooner the scandalous stories are presented, the programme presenters attempt to defuse the scandal and controversy that they contributed to creating. The programme thus results in what viewers familiar with the genre of confrontational talk shows in Spain, for example, may regard as an emasculated equivalent. In this paper we explore linguistic and other mechanisms through which confrontation and scandal are first created and then defused in Vamos con todo. We consider the situational, cultural and socio-political context of the programme as possibly playing a part in this disjointedness. The study draws on the literature on television discourse, talk shows and (im)politeness in the media.

This paper looks at the phenomenon of extensive clause combining in written Japanese discourse. Extensive clause combining, in which multiple clauses are combined to make an extremely long sentence, is usually associated with spoken discourse. However, some contemporary writers use it in their writing along with other features of spoken language. By examining novels targeting young adult readers, I observe that writers are using sentences with extensively combined clauses to describe a lengthy process in which each step is closely connected to another. Interconnectedness is expressed iconically with chained clauses. Writers may also use sentences with extensively combined clauses to convey heightened emotion. Successive chaining of clauses is appropriate for presenting continuous thoughts/emotions appearing in an unorganized manner.

During the last few years, mobile phones and social networks have deeply changed relationships and, insidiously, the use and representations of languages in Vanuatu. In spite of being very recent, it seems that new ways of communication imply changes regarding the various ways of using and adapting languages, amongst which are code-switching and language-shifting. Bislama, the national local lingua franca, is becoming more and more used in phone conversations. Internet and especially social networks (such as Facebook) are revealing new language strategies in social intercourses. This article examines interactions of languages that are mediated through social networks and mobile phone exchanges. More specifically, this paper discusses different language ideologies that are manifest in and deployed over forms of telecommunication.