Pragmatics - Volume 29, Issue 4, 2019

In this paper, we utilize negative polarity tag questions in order to assess to what extent discourse-pragmatic variables are susceptible to language contact induced changes. Based on a comparison of forms and functions of negative tags in the varieties spoken by Portuguese-Spanish bilinguals in a community on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border with the one spoken by monolinguals in the Uruguayan capital, we aimed at assessing to what extent any differences in this variable behavior may be affected by contact with Portuguese. Our results indicate that, despite the high permeability of discourse-pragmatic features in contact situations attested in the literature and the presumed tendency for cognate languages to converge, the forms and functions of negative tags in bilingual Spanish did not radically differ from the monolingual variety. We found, instead, an intricate pattern of convergences and divergences that challenges the presupposed assumptions about extreme permeability of cognate discourse pragmatic systems in contact.

The current study examined the realization of the speech act of criticizing by university teachers in their talk with students. To this end, role-plays were conducted with 60 university teachers (30 males and 30 females) at a private Saudi university which is characterized by its multicultural academic staff, and, hence, where English is used as a lingua franca. Recordings were transcribed and analyzed using an adapted version of Nguyen’s (2005, 2013) model of criticism strategies. The results showed the teachers’ preference for indirect over direct criticism strategies and their minimal use of modifiers, particularly internal ones. It was also found that the influence of the teacher’s gender or years of teaching experience was small while the severity of the situation was a critical factor in the choice of appropriate strategies. The results were interpreted in relation to the existing literature and the theoretical model of politeness.

The article deals with the features of impolite responses of YouTube Arab viewers of political TV talk shows. YouTube comments are written discourse of live commentary, a new genre of computer-mediated communication. Based on data from comments of Arabic viewers of political TV talk shows on YouTube, the article argues that impolite responses appear to be a common feature in Arabic comments in political talk shows on YouTube. Identity and power are reconsidered in this paper as variables that trigger impoliteness in Arabic online responses in political talk shows on YouTube. It argues that obscuring identity online incites the use of conventionalized impoliteness to exercise power on the TV presenter or the TV episode’s guest. The article also shows how communication variables such as context, commentator’s identity and models of communication influence the realization of impolite responses in those online interactions. The study draws on Spencer-Oatey (2007) to correlate identity, power, and impoliteness. It also utilized Culpeper’s (2011) bottom-up model of impoliteness triggers.

This study investigates the use of an ethnic term in news discourse from linguistic, discursive, and social-cultural aspects. A more rigorous computational procedure than hitherto used is employed to measure the collocational strength of collocates in news corpora. The results indicate diversified distributions of the collocates regarding their frequency, distance, and semantic connections. The findings enhance the meaning specificity of the term by revealing the characterized reference of this ethnic group, the trends in the choice of news topics, and the ideological representation of this ethnic group in a wider social-cultural context. The findings deepen an understanding of news discourse as the representations of the minority ethnicity in the news media are analyzed through three layers – the linguistic, the discursive, and the social-cultural context. A more precise method of analyzing news texts uncovers ideological effects brought about by media, in turn implying different construal of newsworthiness in news discourse.

The focus of this paper will be placed upon the methods people use to interact in second language learning settings, discussing interactional aspects of language use in the ongoing production of classroom events. The extracts selected for analysis were drawn from Portuguese language lessons (for beginner and advanced students) in a Chinese university. The results show how L2 classroom participants secure joint orientation and mutual understanding of the categorial pairs (such as ‘teacher-student’ and ‘native-non-native’) being invoked in the sequential organization of the utterances. In other words, when classroom members show orientation to a categorial pair, their subsequent moves will exhibit predicates (actions) of that pair, which will be available to the analyst as phenomena to be explored. This suggests that the sequential elements of the interaction and the membership categorization work carried out by the participants require attention for praxiological enquiries.

This article compares variation in the use of address practices across languages (Swedish, Finnish) and national varieties (Sweden Swedish, Finland Swedish). It undertakes quantitative and qualitative analyses of three sets of transcribed medical consultations. In Sweden Swedish, address pronouns which lower social distance overwhelmingly dominate. In Finnish, both address forms reducing social distance and practices maintaining greater distance are found, with age and level of acquaintance revealed as the most salient factors. Finland Swedish is located somewhere between Sweden Swedish and Finnish, displaying a stronger tendency than Finnish to use informal direct address forms to reduce social distance, but also showing similarities with Finnish in the use of direct formal address and indirect address. The differences can be related to larger socio-cultural patterns which, however, form a continuum rather than a fixed set keeping the two languages and countries completely apart.