Un caz de interferență între o interogație retorică și o prolepsă în discursul parlamentar

Author(s): Cezar Bălăşoiu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 69/2020

The rhetorical question and the prolepsis are part of the "toolkit" of any speaker, both of which have a pronounced agonistic character. The speaker uses a rhetorical question in order to make his opponent mentally recognize the obviousness of the implicit answer and accept its validity; at the same time, through prolepsis he anticipates a possible counterargument and offers an answer. These rhetorical devices help the speaker to control the communication flow both upstream and downstream. This concern, however, may produce interesting interference, such as that in which a rhetorical question merges with a prolepsis, giving rise to a hybrid figure, which may create problems of encoding and decoding illocutionary force, with direct effects on the argumentative configuration of the discourse.

Jonathan Culpeper, Impoliteness: using language to cause offence (seria Studies in interactional sociolinguistics 28), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011

Author(s): Mihaela-Viorica Constantinescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 63/2014

Uses, Functions, and Frequency of Rom. păi and Engl. well in Professional Spoken Interaction

Author(s): Cristina Andreea Stan / Language(s): English,Romanian Issue: 70/2021

This paper analyses the uses and functions of the Romanian discourse maker păi and the English well, based on two comparable corpora of professional spoken interaction, CIVMP and ITICMC, trying to point out their possible equivalence. We have analysed these two discourse markers in an attempt to see their uses and functions and to record in statistics the number of occurrences and the frequency of păi and well in this type of discourse. In addition, according to corpus analysis, it could be said that speakers seem to constantly adapt to the conditions imposed by the interactional, social, ideological, and cultural requirements of the context.

Changes in the Classroom Discourse: Negative Politeness and Impoliteness

Author(s): Mihaela Beschieru / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The paper focuses on changes identified in the classroom discourse in terms of the teacher–student relations. While traditional classroom relations relied on teacher’s authority and control in the classroom, the current situation indicates a shift in the power relations existing in the class. The paper aims to analyse some of these changes by studying politeness and ways of expressing negative politeness and impoliteness. It starts by defining politeness as conflict-free communication, and then moves to negative politeness and impoliteness, applying these two concepts in the interpretation of the classroom discourse. The data used for the analysis were collected during English and history classes in a high school in Romania.The paper draws on Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson’s (1987 [1978]) concept of negative politeness and on Derek Bousfield’s (2008) impoliteness theory. The data reveal that the most common negative politeness strategies in the classroom discourse use indirect speech acts, questions and hedges, minimizing the imposition and impersonalizing. I argue that while teachers use mainly politeness strategies, students use impoliteness strategies as a way of claiming power. Thus, they can be disruptive and show lack of interest; they interrupt or take the floor at a wrong time; they sometimes dismiss, contest, or refuse the teacher’s indications and often challenge the teacher’s authority; at times, they are also rude towards their own peers in trying to demonstrate their superiority.

In the Footsteps of Graphicons: Tracing Parameters and Pragmatic Strategies in Graphicon Usage

Author(s): Ina Vishogradska / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The textual intercourse in computer-mediated communication is intertwined with graphicons of various forms, gaining new meanings and functions. They are part of the online culture and, specifically, part of the communicative skills in digital environment. In many cases, graphicons are used not as signs of emotion but rather as indication of the illocutionary force of the textual utterances that they accompany. The current work endeavours to reveal the specific aspect of language use where iconoid objects “take over” and substitute textual utterances. The paper also attempts to trace to what extent pragmatics could be applicable in the analysis of the visual representations (i.e. graphicons) embodied in computer-mediated communication as means of communicative acts. The different graphicon forms and the dynamics in the usage carry additional challenge for the interpretation of the “visual” act. However, it is possible to systematically trace a pattern in the occurrence of the graphicons – their use as a complementary to a written statement, and their use as a single communicative act.

Pojam obilježenosti u jeziku u kontekstu pragmalingvistike i teorije relevantnosti

Author(s): Nikolina Palašić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2022

Markedness, a term whose beginnings in linguistics are usually associated with Nikolai Trubetzkoy and Roman Jacobson, and their approaches to phonological questions, is still very often considered from the perspective of such a binary approach. In such a classical, dichotomous context, markedness is considered a characteristic that defines a group of at least two units, one of which possesses a certain characteristic and the other does not. However, markedness, i.e. its absence, can be viewed from other perspectives and can be related to the concept of less effort, which is one of the key concepts in the theory of relevance. In this paper, we will try to clarify how the original notion of markedness can be interpreted if the context and users of the linguistic sign are included in the consideration, so we will look at it from the perspective of pragmalinguistics and relevance theory.

Struktura i funkcje komunikacyjne postscriptum w polskojęzycznych wiadomościach przesyłanych na kartach pocztowych

Author(s): Daniel Dzienisiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 09/2022

The aim of this article is to analyse the components of the addi􏰀onal notes contained in Polish- language messages sent on postcards in the second half of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. The conducted examina􏰀on is intended to identify the elements cons􏰀tu􏰀ng the structure of the addi􏰀onal notes (i.e. the speech acts used most commonly there) and to determine the func􏰀ons fulfilled by the individual components of the postscript. The s􏰀mulus for taking up this type of inves􏰀ga􏰀ons was the fact that no research on correspondence sent on postcards had been carried out before. Overall, the analysis covered more than 2,600 postscripts separated from postcard messages. The study proves that consta􏰀ve statements as well as ini􏰀a􏰀ve and reactive speech acts are frequently found in the addi􏰀onal notes. It also points to the numerous func􏰀ons the postscript or its individual components might play in a postcard le􏰁er. The polite and pha􏰀c func􏰀ons come to the foreground, but the informa􏰀ve and emo􏰀onal func􏰀ons are also among the important ones.

Opozycja swój ͵ obcy w wizualno-werbalnych metaforach publicystycznych

Author(s): Bartłomiej Maliszewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 10/2022

Based on covers of weekly magazines, it is easy to notice that the focal point of mass media isconflict situations. Their comments lead to the polarisation friend – foe, which is expressed bythe visual and verbal presentation of the world of politics.Despite the fact that the visual and verbal repertoire, which allows the positive evaluation offriends and negative evaluation of foes, is quite plentiful, clean paƩ erns in portraying individualsare noticeable. Foes are aggressive, unpredictable, menacing, rapacious, dishonest and, at thesame time, determined to build their positive image in order to attract new voters. Friends,in turn, are the victims of stalkers and their actions (the target of their aƩ acks) and the long-awaited (true) saviours.Magazine covers evidence social divisions and simultaneously consolidate and developthem, being an element of a relentless struggle to win audience and voters. This is because themarketing (attracting readers’ attention) and political (uniting the audiences against specifiedantagonists and around the figure of the depicted hero) aspects are of great importance here.

Foundations of pragmatic legal linguistics

Author(s): MARCUS GALDIA / Language(s): English Issue: 51/2022

In this review essay, I describe some basic problems in the research into the legal language that are methodologically connected to linguistic and philosophical pragmatics. I call this area of knowledge pragmatic legal linguistics. Pragmatic legal linguistics deals with the processes that are constitutive of the emergence of meaning in law. Its basic concepts are coined in the course of developments in linguistic and philosophical pragmatics. It applies pragmatic theoretical approaches to clarify the functioning of the legal language and discovers new areas of pragmatic relevance in the research into the legal language. The final goal of pragmatic legal linguistics is to re-formulate our laws in accordance with linguistic findings about the use of language.

LES CONTRADICTIONS SYSTEMIQUES COMME SOURCES D’ACCESSIBILITE DIFFICILE DU LANGAGE JURIDIQUE

Author(s): Ivo Petrů / Language(s): French Issue: 50/2022

Legal language is presented in the form of texts which are not easily accessible to the uninitiated persons. Yet some of these texts, such as the texts of laws, are of general use and concern everyone. Dependent on major works dealing with legal theory onlegal uncertainty and with French law-making practice, the paper tries to search for the systemic sources of this paradoxical situation using examples taken mainly from the French Civil Code. Stating that these contradictions which manifest themselves at language level are immanent to any legal order, from the opposition between precision and ambiguity of legal terms and concepts, through the conflict between their traditional or modern side, to the divergence between intelligibility and technicality of legal texts, the paper tries to identify the main systemic contradictions responsible for the limited accessibility of legal language at the level of both legal vocabulary and legal discourse.

Sprachliche Formelhaftigkeit in parlamentarischen Abgeordnetenreden

Author(s): Agnieszka Poźlewicz / Language(s): German Issue: 11/2022

The paper deals with German pragmatic phrasemes, i.e. routine and conversational formulas, used in parliamentary speeches as “texts of public debate” (Klein 2009:2115). The aim of the article is to investigate what formulas are typical of parliamentary speeches and what function they perform. Thus, the article aims to provide an insight into linguistic formulaicity manifested in this text type. The empirical basis consists of 40 parliamentary speeches made by MPs in German Bundestag. The qualitative analysis of the research material was performed using MAXQDA software.

Thank you, sorry and please: English politeness markers in Polish

Author(s): Katarzyna Lach Mirghani / Language(s): English Issue: 03 (38)/2022

The aim of this study is to analyse the use of the English politeness markers thank you, sorry andplease in Polish.My initial hypothesis was that the politeness markers have already been incorporated intothe mental lexicon of Polish speakers, and are thus understood and accepted by them, but they do not havethe prospect of replacing their Polish equivalents because they lack the necessary pragmatic force. Previousstudies (Terkourafi 2011; Peterson &Vaattovaara 2014) show that pragmatic borrowings are unlikely todo so. However, this corpus study finds a context in which a borrowing is used increasingly, namely sorryin the collocation with ale (ʻbutʼ). It seems to have started replacing its Polish equivalents in this context,as it constitutes 25% of all collocations of apologetic behaviour with ale in the National Corpus of Polish.However, the majority of the occurrences of the analysed politeness markers in the corpus are restrictedto Internet-mediated communication.

Studying Small Talk from a pragmatic angle: An introduction

Author(s): Juliane House,Dániel Zoltán Kádár / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

In this introduction to the present special issue, we first define the notion of Small Talk from a pragmatic point of view and interconnect Small Talk with interaction ritual. Following this, we point out why a speech act-based approach is particularly useful to study Small Talk in a rigorous and replicable way. We also introduce the speech act framework used by all the studies in the special issue. Finally, we introduce the contents of the special issue.

Exploring (non-)ritual patterns of phatic interaction (small talks) at different phases of social encounters in Persian linguaculture

Author(s): Zohreh R. Eslami,Azizullah Mirzaei,Maryam Farnia / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

The current interpretive study aimed to characterize the (non-)ritual, phatic clusters of speech acts that conventionally recur around the opening/closing phases of Persian speaking students' social encounters or occur during the core (or ‘business’) phase of natural interactions as small talk in Persian. The study was conducted in Iran's Persian linguaculture where considerable social-cultural-economic changes have taken place over the last decade or so impacting the form and content of phatic interaction in all sectors of the society. The participants of the study were 97 Persian-speaking university students attending a state-run university located in the southwest of Iran. The students were asked to audio-record their natural interactions in four different social encounters varied based on the standard sociolinguistic parameters of Social Distance and Power (+/−SD, +/−P). We adopted House & Kádár's (2022) pragmalinguistic and speech act-anchored model of phatic interaction to code the (non-)ritual realization patterns of small talks around the opening, closing, and core phases of interaction. The results indicate that small talks which are co-constructed by the Persian interactants at the opening and closing phases of their social encounters are highly ritualized in terms of the speech act types and pragmalinguistic structures employed. Further, interpersonal interchanges which involve differential sociolinguistic P and SD values require more tactfulness and care in adhering to the greeting and parting conventions as more face-threat is potentially implicated. In terms of the medial phase, except for a small number of ostensible realizations of different speech acts such as invites, offers, and apologies, core off-topic phaticity was perceived to be non-ritual and discursive in Persian the interpretation of which heavily relies upon shared sociopragmatic knowledge of the linguaculture.

Elevator small talk in Peninsular Spanish: Phatic speech acts within the ritual frame of casual encounters in the elevator

Author(s): Laura Alba-Juez / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

The present study offers a speech-act analysis of the phatic interaction taking place within the ritual frame of casual encounters in the elevator. The corpus consists of 70 encounters that took place in Madrid, Spain, between 2020 and 2023. The analysis draws from Edmondson & House's (1981) originally proposed interactional typology of speech acts, also found in House & Kádár (2021a, 2023) and Edmondson, House & Kádár (2022). The main findings show, among other things, that some acts that are not conceived as phatic in the typology can migrate into the phatic slots, and that the speech-act pattern of this type of encounters can be affected by sociopragmatic variables such as the relational history of the interactants, or the co-created humorous episodes in the encounters.

Folk conceptualisation of small talk: A view from a Japanese online discussion forum

Author(s): Jun Ohashi / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

The study explores the perceptions of small talk shared by the users of a Japanese online community, seeking information on their expected speech and behaviour in small talk and factors contributing to positive/negative evaluations of small talk. The study investigates a discussion thread consisting of 73 responses to a contributor's request for advice on improving small talk capabilities from the perspectives of interaction ritual (Goffman 1967), balancing obligations (Ohashi 2008, 2013, 2021) and typology of speech acts (Edmondson & House 1981; House & Kádár 2022b).

Ritual Small Talk in Chinese

Author(s): Zongfeng Xia,Fengguang Liu,Dániel Zoltán Kádár,Juliane House / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

In this study, we examine ritual Small Talk in Chinese, which is a regretfully understudied phenomenon. We investigate recurrent pragmatic features of Chinese Small Talk in an audio-recorded corpus through the lens of speech acts. We interpret the use of speech acts with the aid of interaction ritual theory and linguistic politeness. As a case study, we examine instances of Small Talk taking place in the vicinity of a Chinese primary school where parents and grandparents engaged in casual phatic conversations to kill the time while waiting for the children. The study of our corpus of Small Talk conversations allows us to unearth linguaculturally embedded patterns of language use in a complex participatory setting where parents and grandparents interact in front of a school.

Small Talk in English and Chinese – A contrastive case study

Author(s): Juliane House,Dániel Zoltán Kádár,Laura Simoes / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

In this paper, we present a contrastive pragmatic analysis of Small Talk in English and Chinese. We use a radically minimal, finite and interactional system of speech acts to study DCTs conducted with U.S. American native speakers of English and native speakers of Chinese. Our analysis points to a number of important differences between Small Talk in the two linguacultures contrasted, such as a reliance on routines in English Small Talk, and an overall reliance on the speech act Remark in Chinese. The influence of the classic sociolinguistic variables Power and Social Distance for the enactment of Small Talk is also shown to be different in English and Chinese.

Small talk is not small: A commentary on pragmatics studies on small talk (postscript)

Author(s): Wei Ren / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2023

This paper serves as the postscript to the present special issue, in which I briefly report on my impressions of reading the papers. I start with the theoretical models guiding the empirical studies in the special issue. Then, I review the contents of the papers and discuss their findings. Finally, I conclude this postscript with suggestions for future research.

The agential qualities of silence in post-observation feedback sessions

Author(s): Anna Bąk-Średnicka / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2024

This study explores silence in a corpus of university supervisors’ (USs) utterances in the context of post-observation feedback conferences (POFCs) with their Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) supervisees. The USs’ utterances and corre­sponding silences were divided into educative, supportive and evaluative conversational frames (Long et al. 2013), with a view to discovering the extent and nature of the silent spells within these frames. It appears that silent spells within the educative frame type were a powerful means of communication comparable to reflection hubs, which could be allocated to increased “wait time” (Rowe 1972) or “slow-time” (Bruneau 1973) and could also be considered examples of social or commission silences. The agential quali­ties of this silence, though, can in certain cases be disempowered due to a tutee’s close-mindedness towards what happened during their lessons. Conversely, silent moments in the evaluative frame served to recall the observed lessons and included examples of empirical silence or omissive silence that the USs failed to use. This ethnographic research on USs’ silence is an extension of previous studies on USs’ POFCs discourse, and the self-analysis is a self-awareness-raising-tool in order that USs may become more cognizant of the ways POFCs are managed.