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- Volume 23, Issue, 2013
Pragmatics - Volume 23, Issue 3, 2013
Volume 23, Issue 3, 2013
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Silent and semi-silent arguments in the graphic novel
Author(s): Silvia Adlerpp.: 389–402 (14)More LessThis study focuses on the iconographic channel of the graphic novel as a particular occurrence of silence. In Comics, images provide not only the data required for the development of narration; they also render available the concrete circumstances of the enunciation and often orient the reader towards the identification of language in action, or towards the selection of a particular communicative intention, a process which coincides with Saville-Troike’s silences carrying illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect (1985), or with Kurzon’s silences – intentional signifiers alternating with an utterable signified. Through the analysis of concrete scenes taken from three graphic novels dealing with sociopolitical contexts of conflict – Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000), Folman and Polonsky’s Waltz with Bashir (2009) and Sacco’s Palestine (2007) – we identify two different sets of arguments: (1) semi-silent arguments resulting from the interplay between verbal and visual language & (2) silent arguments emerging within an entirely visual, extra-linguistic scene, where images alone regulate the quantity or the quality of information given at a certain point of narration with the aim of leading the addressee to a certain tacit conclusion.
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What’s in a name? Names, national identity, assimilation, and the new racist discourse of Marine Le Pen
Author(s): Jonathan Cliftonpp.: 403–420 (18)More LessDespite the fact that the link between names, national identity, and the (non)assimilation of immigrants into a host country’s culture is often assumed, little research investigates how this link is discursively achieved as an in situ members’ accomplishment, nor does this research describe what the link between assimilation and naming achieves as social practice. Using membership categorisation analysis (MCA) as a research methodology and transcripts of a televised news interview and subsequent news forum comments as data, this paper investigates how national identity is discursively negotiated in political debate in the public sphere. It thus points out how boundaries are drawn around national identity so as to either exclude or include immigrants with ‘foreign-sounding’ names and so investigates how new racism is achieved, or resisted, in political debate. Findings indicate that new racism is achieved through the functioning of adversarial standard relational pairs (SRPs) which make relevant difference rather than similarity.
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Analyzing equivalences in discourse
Author(s): Sigurd D’hondtpp.: 421–445 (25)More LessFacing a crucial leap from political philosophy to empirical analysis, the approach to discourse analysis that arose in the aftermath of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and that is currently known as the Essex school of discourse theory (DT), has in recent years repeatedly been accused of suffering from a methodological deficit. This paper examines to what extent membership categorization analysis (MCA), a branch of ethnomethodology that investigates lay actors’ situated descriptions-in-context as practical activity, can play a part in rendering poststructuralist DT notions such as articulation and equivalence analytically tangible in empirically observable discourse. Based on a review of Laclau and Mouffe’s foundational text as well as on Glynos and Howarth’s recent exposition of the framework (2007), it is argued that MCA empirically substantiates many poststructuralist claims about the indeterminacy of signification. However, MCA consistently falters - and willingly so - at the point where DT would articulate emerging equivalences between identity categories as part of a second-order explanatory concept, such as Glynos and Howarth’s notion of political logic. Nevertheless, MCA also contains the kernel of an “endogenous” notion of the political that comes fairly close to DT’s all-pervasive understanding of the concept. To support these arguments, a variety of empirical sources are mobilized, ranging from the transcript of a political talk show, a newspaper report regarding a discrimination case in a dance class, to data drawn from earlier research on the way that minority members are treated by the Belgian criminal justice system.
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The distribution and characteristics of Japanese vocatives in business situations
Author(s): Tamaki Kitayamapp.: 447–479 (33)More LessThis paper aims to analyse the types of Japanese vocatives used in business situations, and demonstrate the characteristics of their distribution with different politeness levels as shown in films on human relationships in large traditional corporations in and around Tokyo. The discussion builds on the theory of “discernment or social indexing politeness” (Hill et al. 1986; Ide 2006; Ide et al. 1986; Kasper 1990; Geyer 2008), and positions that of “strategic or volitional politeness” (ibid.) with the variables of “power” and “distance” proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987). In a society of collectivism under a vertical structure with seniority system, people have their own ba (‘place’) (Nakane 2005) where they are expected to choose socially accepted language and behaviour according to whom they address; namely, seniors or juniors, and uchi (‘in-group’) or soto (‘out-group’) members. The use of vocatives is fixed based primarily upon “power” (age and status) and “distance” (in- or out-group), and is hardly flexible to changes in form in business or private situations. “Power” prevails in addressing in-group members; whereas “distance” determines the choice of vocatives used between out-group people. Within a group, indirect polite forms are used to address superiors, whilst direct familiar forms are chosen when speaking to subordinates, which presents a nonreciprocal use of terms; power downwards and reserve upwards. The intentional individual use of last name+-san (‘Mr./Ms.’) is also argued here as it has dichotomous aspects of politeness; sounding more polite to address a subordinate, and less polite when used with a boss. To out-group members, people tend to choose more of polite forms to each other. These vocative choices reflect the relative position of the Japanese interdependent “self” (Morisaki & Gudykunst 1994; Gudykunst et al. 1996; Spencer-Oatey & Franklin 2009) with “other- and mutual-face” (Ting-Toomey & Oetzel 2002), which follows social norms, striving to meet expectations made by groups it belongs to and identifies itself with.
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Direct reported speech as a frame for implicit reflexivity
Author(s): Minerva Oropeza-Escobarpp.: 481–498 (18)More LessBy articulating the notions of reflexivity and participant roles in the context of direct reported speech, the present study aims to contribute to a better understanding of discourse and interaction in storytelling events. Direct reported speech, I find, counts as a reflexive resource not only because it re-presents other speech, but also because it frames the activity of the metanarrator, as attested by the embedding of overtly reflexive elements (instances of direct reported speech, indirect reported speech and performative verbs) and the display of implicitly reflexive processes such as word search, repair and lexical choice. I arrive at the conclusion that those explicitly reflexive resources -such as metanarrative comments- which involve the momentary suspension of the reporting speech, occur only in extreme cases in which the audience’s understanding of the narrative is in risk from the teller’s perspective. Otherwise, the tendency prevails to keep direct reported speech consistent with the position and point of view of the corresponding figure.The narratives analyzed here were recorded in Spanish among bilingual Totonac-Spanish storytellers from three different villages of the Mexican State of Veracruz.
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Teaching oral requests
Author(s): Eleni Petraki and Sarah Bayespp.: 499–517 (19)More LessResearch in English language teaching has highlighted the importance of teaching communication skills in the language classroom. Against the backdrop of extensive research in everyday communication, the goal of this research was to explore whether current discourse analytic research is reflected in the lessons and communication examples of five English language teaching textbooks, by using spoken requests as the subject of investigation. The textbooks were evaluated on five criteria deriving from research on politeness, speech act theory and conversation analysis. These included whether and the extent to which the textbooks discussed the cultural appropriateness of requests, discussed the relationship of requests and other contextual factors, explained pre-sequences and re-requests and provided adequate practice activities. This study found that none of the coursebooks covered all of the criteria and that some coursebooks actually had very inadequate lessons. The results of the textbook analysis demonstrate that teachers using these five coursebooks and designers of future coursebooks must improve their lessons on requests by using pragmatics research and authentic examples as a guide.
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Constructing a proposal as a thought
Author(s): Melisa Stevanovicpp.: 519–544 (26)More LessDrawing on fifteen video-recorded planning meetings as data, and on conversation analysis as a method, I examine the interactional import of the common Finnish practice of constructing a proposal as a thought. As a point of departure, I consider two different types of conditional utterances in which a speaker presents a plan: (1) ‘asking conditionals’ (jos ‘what if’ prefaced declarative conditionals and interrogative conditionals) and (2) ‘stating conditionals’ (declarative conditionals). While asking conditionals mark the plan as contingent on the recipient’s approval and involve a straightforward request for the recipient to engage in joint decision-making about the proposed plan, stating conditionals are regularly treated as informings about plans in which the recipients have actually no word to say. However, when asking and stating conditionals are prefaced with references to the speakers’ thoughts (mä aattelin et ‘I was thinking that’), the projected responses and sequential trajectories are more open-ended: The participants have the opportunity to share the responsibility, not only for what is to be decided with respect to the proposed plan, but also for what is to be jointly decided upon in the first place. Constructing a proposal as a thought seems thus to be a practice with which participants may enable the symmetrical distribution of deontic rights at the very beginning of joint decision-making sequences.
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Imperatives and commitments in Romanian academic meeting interactions
Author(s): Adina Ioana Veleapp.: 545–564 (20)More LessRomanian imperatives may include different constructions that do not necessarily entail an imperative verb, such as the subjunctive and the indicative mood, interjections or elliptical formats. This study focuses on the ‘bare’ imperative turns-at-talk by applying the methodology of conversation analysis on a corpus consisting of naturally occurring academic meeting interactions. It shows how the imperative expresses actions that display no contingency or difficulty in managing them due to the existence of mainly prior explicit commitments (suggestions, proposals, agreements, previous allocated tasks) that entitle the speakers to use the imperative form in order to direct their recipients. Moreover, it shows how the turn including an imperative verb may also represent a simultaneous commitment, more explicitly an offer that accounts for the lack of contingencies and makes relevant the use of the imperative form within the context of Romanian academic meeting interactions.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 35 (2025)
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Volume 34 (2024)
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Volume 33 (2023)
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Volume 32 (2022)
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Volume 31 (2021)
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Volume 30 (2020)
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Volume 29 (2019)
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Volume 28 (2018)
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Volume 27 (2017)
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Volume 26 (2016)
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Volume 25 (2015)
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Volume 24 (2014)
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Volume 23 (2013)
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Volume 22 (2012)
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Volume 21 (2011)
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Volume 20 (2010)
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Volume 19 (2009)
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Volume 18 (2008)
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Volume 17 (2007)
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Volume 16 (2006)
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Volume 15 (2005)
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Volume 14 (2004)
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Volume 13 (2003)
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Volume 12 (2002)
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Volume 11 (2001)
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Volume 10 (2000)
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Volume 9 (1999)
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Volume 8 (1998)
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Volume 7 (1997)
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Volume 6 (1996)
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Volume 5 (1995)
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Volume 4 (1994)
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Volume 3 (1993)
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Volume 2 (1992)
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Volume 1 (1991)
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