Pragmatics - Volume 33, Issue 1, 2023

Little attention has been given to the role of metadiscoursal devices in non-academic discourses with an overtly persuasive component such as political discourse. We address this gap by analysing the presence and function of evidentials and boosters in the 2016 campaign debates on the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum (also known as the Brexit referendum). In this vein, our objectives are first, to analyse the evidentials and boosters most frequently used in these debates and relate them to the speakers’ goals, and second, to contrast the use of these devices with the results of the referendum. Data were quantitatively analysed with METOOL, a tool specifically developed to detect metadiscoursal strategies. The results showed how the strategies identified here tended to work in combination towards the representation of a credible self, challenging opposing views on the same issue. Finally, conclusions were drawn.

While extensive research has been done on pragmatic identity construction in various contexts by various social groups, little is known about how and why university student advisors may dynamically construct their pragmatic identity in their interaction with their students. Based on the analysis of naturally-occurring data about 5 student advisors’ consultation, this article explores the various pragmatic identities constructed by Chinese university student advisors as well as their underlying motivations. It finds that the identities constructed by the student advisors can be non-professional (such as a student, an individual, a friend, and a family member) and professional (such as an administrator, a tutor and a teacher). It suggests that their pragmatic identity construction may signify their effort to balance their various communicative needs in the educational contexts. Such balance may serve to meet their goal of constructing a new type of Chinese advisor-student relation characterized by equality, democracy, and harmony.

Fluent L2 English speakers frequently use discourse markers (DMs) as a speech management strategy, but research has largely ignored how this develops across different proficiency levels and how it is related to immersive experiences. This study examines the developmental patterns of three DMs – well, you know and like – in the speech of learners at A2-C1 in CEFR with and without immersive experiences in target language environments. The fluency-rated LINDSEI corpus (173 learners) and a parallel native corpus (50 speakers) provided approximately 350,000 tokens and 3,395 instances of the analyzed DMs. Overall, DM frequency (especially with well and you know) among C1 speakers increases with rising fluency levels up to almost native-like levels. Immersive experience correlates positively with overall and individual DM frequency (except for like). As the skillful use of DMs results in more fluent speech production, the didactic implications for L2 instructors should be developed.

This paper aims to explore the generalization of address terms in online discourse, a largely unheeded pragmatic phenomenon. Taking the generalized Chinese kinship term “son” (érzi) as an example, it analyzes its referents and functions. The analysis was based on a sizable data set collected from WeChat, and interviews with some WeChat users. It demonstrates that the address term “son” (érzi) conveys its faithful meaning when referring to the male child of (a) parent(s) but virtual meaning when referring to the addresser’s friends, classmates or pets. It is also argued that the generalized use of the address term “son” (érzi) can function to enhance relationships, make jocular abuse, and express emotions. These functions suggest the users’ identity avoidance and relating needs in a virtual community. This study attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the virtualization of address terms and rapport management in online discourse.

This paper investigates participants’ reflections on power relations embedded in the cultural-pragmatics of unsourced evidentials in Persian texts. Using Fairclough’s (2013) critical discourse analysis, we adopted Hanks’ (2018) ethnography of referential practices and Foucault’s (1980) power dynamics to analyse 16 Persian texts through follow up interviews and focus group discussions on two opposing pairs of texts – one pair on Iranian national identity versus Persian literature, and another on Iranian politics versus religion. Our analysis revealed that unsourced evidentials appear in Persian predominantly due to censorship and sometimes due to deliberate use by authors (e.g., for winning an argument). Text consumers often overlook unsourced evidentials while reflecting on politico-religious referents, such as inequalities and bigotry. This has roots in Persian literature, religion, and politics of power embedded in the culture, and the participants’ attention to inequalities and discriminations has roots in referential practices in current Iranian discourse.

This study explores the use of content-oriented questions in British and Montenegrin university lectures. It examines their formal realisation, their frequency and their contextual functions, as well as the differences and similarities related to these questions between British linguistics lectures taken from the standard British corpora, and a specially compiled corpus of Montenegrin linguistics lectures. Compared to previous studies on content-oriented questions, one modified and five new functions are revealed, alongside one new formal realisation. The main differences between the corpora include the greater frequency of content-oriented questions in the Montenegrin lectures and a new questioning realisation, found only in the Montenegrin corpus, which is potentially attributable to differences between academic cultures. The major similarities relate to the use of the four most common question forms, which perform the same contextual functions. This contrastive study thus provides insights into the additional communicative functions and forms of content-oriented questions in university lectures.