Discourse Processes最新文献

{"title":"Pinning down the interaction between animacy and syntactic function in the interpretation of German and Italian personal and demonstrative pronouns","authors":"Markus Bader, Jacopo Torregrossa, Esther Rinke","doi":"10.1080/0163853x.2023.2252699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2023.2252699","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates how animacy in interaction with the syntactic function of a referent’s antecedent determines the interpretation of different types of pronouns and demonstratives in German and Italian. The results of a sentence continuation task conducted in both languages show that Italian null pronouns and German p-pronouns have a strong tendency to refer to a preceding subject, but only if its referent is animate. With inanimate subjects, both forms tend to refer to the animate referent in object position, showing that animacy enhances a referent’s accessibility more than the syntactic function of its previous mention. Demonstratives in German and Italian generally tend to refer to object antecedents, a tendency that is also influenced by the animacy of the referent, especially in German. The cross-linguistic comparison reveals that the effect of animacy is overall stronger in German than in Italian, suggesting that across languages, different forms may show a different sensitivity to syntactic function and animacy.","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135895815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How literary text reading is influenced by narrative voice and focalization: <i>evidence from eye movements</i>","authors":"Lijuan Chen, Xiaodong Xu, Hongling Lv","doi":"10.1080/0163853x.2023.2260247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2023.2260247","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTA fictional story is always narrated from a certain narrative voice and mode of focalization. These core narrative techniques have a major impact on how readers interpret the narrative plot and connect with the characters. This study used eye-tracking to investigate how classic narrative reading is affected by narrative voice and focalization. The results showed that the third-person narrative voice was read more slowly than the first-person narrative voice, especially when the narrative was presented with internal focalization. Importantly, the transition from a first-person to a third-person narrative voice generally resulted in longer reading times, whereas a switch from a third-person to a first-person narrative voice only yielded limited benefits in terms of reduced reading time. These findings provide direct evidence to support the assumption that there is a distinction between the first-person narration and the third-person narration and demonstrate the important role of narrative voice and focalization in understanding narrative texts. AcknowledgmentsWe are grateful to Professor Jie Zhang for his invaluable support in conducting this study. We are also grateful to Tianyue Wang and Yiyi Lu for their assistance in collecting and analyzing the data. We are thankful to the reviewer for prompting us to consider this important question.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis study was supported by the Jiangsu Social Science Fund (Grant No. [23YYB010]), the Grand for the Social Science Foundation of the Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. [2021SJA0086]), the High-quality Research Project on the Application of Social Science in Jiangsu Province (Grant No. [22SWB-17]), and the National Social Science Foundation of China (Key Program: Grant No. [18AYY010]; Major Program: Grant No. [21&ZD288]).","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135898308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Epistemicity and communicative strategies","authors":"Alexandra Lorson, Hannah Rohde, Chris Cummins","doi":"10.1080/0163853x.2023.2255494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2023.2255494","url":null,"abstract":"When communicating, interlocutors negotiate knowledge by proposing propositional content to be added to their shared common ground. The way in which speakers put forward propositional content – expressing more or less confidence in its truthfulness – may affect the way in which other interlocutors react to such content. This article examines speakers’ production choices and hearers’ interpretations of the formulations believe/know/bare assertion to test how (maximal) certainty is expressed and inferred, whether speakers adjust their production choices depending on their communicative goals and whether hearers are able to adjust their interpretations correspondingly. For this purpose, we created two scenarios – one with a cooperative interlocutor and one with a potentially uncooperative interlocutor. The results suggest that know is epistemically the most powerful formulation – stronger than the bare assertion – but that the bare assertion may still be preferred over know for expressing maximal certainty in cooperative scenarios. Our findings also suggest that believe is used to hedge the assertive strength of statements in cooperative settings. Whereas speakers and hearers agree in the relative epistemic ordering of the formulations (believe < bare assertion < know), when inferring the speakers’ degrees of belief hearers to not appear to consistently take into account that speakers’ communicative goals may shift as a function of context.","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134958351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Non-gendered pronoun processing: an investigation of the gender non-specific third person singular pronoun ‘TA’ in Chinese","authors":"Jordan Gallant, Kerry Sluchinski","doi":"10.1080/0163853x.2023.2255075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2023.2255075","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study investigated the processing of the Chinese nongendered third-person singular pronoun, “TA,” in a series of self-paced reading experiments. We begin by investigating the perceived appropriateness of TA using a novel implementation of the modified maze task. We then contrasted reading latencies for TA and male- and female-gender pronouns in reference to antecedents with varying stereotypical gender (e.g., occupation terms) and definitional gender (e.g., kinship terms). In our analysis, we assessed several means of operationalizing stereotypical gender information. Optimal model performance was achieved with a continuous measure that accounted for individual differences in gender perception, suggesting the involvement of a probabilistic component. Results for reading latencies and perceived appropriateness of TA support previous findings from discourse analysis that TA is not entirely gender-neutral but rather has nuanced contexts of use in modern Chinese written discourse.","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135203397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Structural repetition in responses to indirect requests","authors":"Katherine Chia, Ashley A. Edwards, Christopher Schatschneider, Michael P. Kaschak","doi":"10.1080/0163853x.2023.2255508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2023.2255508","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTWe report three experiments that assess whether structural priming in a question–answer dialogue context is affected by the use of direct requests, conventional indirect requests, and nonconventional indirect requests. In Experiments 1 and 2, experimenters made phone calls to businesses and asked either Can you tell me (at) what time you close? (conventional indirect request) or May I ask you (at) what time you close? (nonconventional indirect request). Structural priming was demonstrated by participants’ greater tendency to produce a preposition in their response (At 9 vs. 9 o’clock) when the question had a preposition than when it did not. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that priming is not statistically different across request types. In Experiment 3, we compared priming for the conventional indirect requests to priming for direct requests ([At] what time do you close?). Again, priming did not differ across question types. We conducted a final analysis that included data from all three experiments plus a large dataset collected using the same procedure. The larger analysis (n > 43,000) confirmed that priming did not differ across sentence types. AcknowledgmentWe thank the many research assistants who assisted with these studies: Rebecca Applebaum, Samirah Artiste, Haley Barash, Mia Carter, Alathea Fairweather, Matthew Gomes, Karina Guenin, Alex Gutowski, Victoria Kolev, Elizabeth Lacy, Mollie Londot, Jordan Madsen, Jennifer Mast, Casey Oberdick, Maria Ribeiro-Siqueira, Kayla Sizemore, Lindsey Summerlin, Kristen Tinnerman, Jeremiah Townsend, Richard Valencia, Olivia Wentworth-Buchanan, Alyssa Westmoreland, Rachel White, Jordan Wiener, and Ashlyn Young.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. We analyzed the data with the following model: Dependent Variable ~ Question Type × Sentence + (1 + Question Type | Experimenter).2. Confidence intervals computed using the confint() function in R, based on the model specified in footnote 1.3. The designation “responded to the direct component of the indirect request” should only apply to the conventional and nonconventional indirect requests. However, there were a small number of cases where participants responded to What time do you close? (a direct request) by saying Sure! We close at 9 (or something similar). These were coded as “1” because the participant provided a yes or no answer before responding to the request for information (even though the question did not include a yes or no component).","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135203604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"<i>Demo</i> “but”-prefaced responses to inquiry in Japanese","authors":"Yuki Arita","doi":"10.1080/0163853x.2023.2255501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2023.2255501","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis conversation analytic study investigates the use of the Japanese contrastive marker demo “but” as a preface to responses to polar questions. Demo-prefaced responses are one type of nonconforming answers, that is, responses that provide (dis)affirmation to preceding questions without yes/no-tokens. This study explores how question recipients treat the preceding questions with their demo-prefaced responses. The data analysis is twofold: this research first examines the turn-initial demo to scrutinize basic properties of demo-prefacing in responses to polar questions; then the study explores how the basic properties are in effect with a + demo-prefacing (i.e., demo-prefacing preceded by the turn-initial particle a), the largest set of combined turn-beginning elements involving demo in the database. This study reveals that demo-prefacing fundamentally serves to proffer qualification upon implied affirmation. When used with a, demo registers question recipients’ implied acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the question’s presupposition while projecting disaffirmation of the inquired proposition. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Appendix 1Transcript symbolsTableDownload CSVDisplay TableAbbreviationsTableDownload CSVDisplay TableNotes1. The English translation for demo is provided in the title of this article for the benefit of readers with no Japanese language background. It is not the author’s intention to suggest an absolute correspondence between demo and but.2. A similar function has been reported for the English but as well. Schiffrin (Citation1987) identifies but as a point-making device. She observes that speakers use but to return to a prior concern that had been interrupted, misunderstood, and/or challenged during activities of storytelling or argument building. See also Choe and Reddington (Citation2018), who examine the use of but-prefacing as a practice of refocusing on the main course of action in public discourse.3. As discussed later, however, certain properties of demo-prefacing to disagreeing turns which Mori (Citation1999) documents are also observed in demo-prefaced question responses in this study.4. Iya is one of the Japanese disaffirming tokens. Kushida (Citation2005) points out that while iya can be translated into “no,” iya cannot be used as a free-standing particle and thus has functions broader than those of the English “no.” Kushida further shows that iya can preface both conforming and nonconforming responses to polar questions. In the present study, iya + demo-prefacing always introduces nonconforming responses (n = 7). The possible interactional correlation of demo-prefacing with iya-prefacing should be investigated with more examples.5. The particle n (or un, nn) is an informal form of an affirmation particle hai “yes.” The affirmation particle n is typically pronounced with a falling pitch. On the contrary, the particle n placed before demo is elongated and p","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135203609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The role of social status in sarcasm interpretation: evidence from the United Kingdom and China","authors":"Ning Zhu, Ruth Filik","doi":"10.1080/0163853x.2023.2252695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2023.2252695","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135877983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring the spatial gradient effect in narratives","authors":"Emily R. Smith, R. B. Lea, E. J. O'Brien","doi":"10.1080/0163853X.2023.2245313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2023.2245313","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The current set of experiments was designed to explore the processing of spatial information during reading, specifically the spatial-shift effect and the spatial-gradient effect. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when participants were presented with text alone (i.e., without prior map memorization, virtual environments, task demands, or prior knowledge of the spatial information), the spatial-shift effect does emerge. Using the time to name a spatial location as a measure of spatial activation, participant naming times were faster for the original spatial location when the protagonist had moved a smaller distance relative to when the protagonist had moved a larger distance. Further, Experiment 3 provided evidence to support that a spatial gradient of activation is evident; this was done by adding an additional point of spatial distance in which the protagonist did not move from the initial location. The results are discussed within the context of the memory-based view of text comprehension.","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45352440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Emotional shifts, event-congruent emotions, and transportation in narrative persuasion","authors":"Marie-Luise C. R. Schmidt, Julia R. Winkler, Markus Appel, Tobias Richter","doi":"10.1080/0163853x.2023.2252696","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853x.2023.2252696","url":null,"abstract":"Emotional shifts in stories are assumed to contribute to narrative persuasion by enhancing engagement with the story. This effect might depend on the congruency of audiences’ emotional experience to the emotions implied by the story. In two experiments with wellcontrolled story manipulations, we compared the persuasive effect of stories with shifts in valence (from positive to negative to positive) to continuously positive story versions and examined moderating influences of event-congruent emotions and narrative transportation. The positive story versions were consistently more persuasive than the versions with emotional shifts. Transportation increased the persuasive effect of the stories, but only in audiences that listened to the shifting stories. In both emotional story trajectories, event-congruent emotional experience enhanced persuasion. We discuss our findings in terms of boundary conditions of the effect of emotional shifts in narrative persuasion.","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135745924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Politeness and the communication of uncertainty when breaking bad news","authors":"Harry T. Clelland, M. Haigh","doi":"10.1080/0163853X.2023.2245310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2023.2245310","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Uncertain language can be used to express genuine uncertainty but can also be used to manage face (e.g., by softening bad news). These conflicting motivations can create ambiguity in health communication. In this preregistered two-part experiment, participants assumed the position of a health specialist and wrote a letter communicating either a certain or an uncertain medical diagnosis. This was addressed to either a patient (high face threat) or the patient’s family doctor (low face threat). Letters written under high face threat contained more words and more dispreferred markers (e.g., sorry, unfortunately) than those written under low face threat. The number of explicit hedges (e.g., possibly, maybe) did not differ as a function of face threat. Time taken to write the letters was elevated only in the condition where face threat was high and the diagnosis was uncertain, suggesting that the joint pressures of communicating uncertain information in a tactful way increased the task demands. Our data demonstrate that participants spontaneously produced dispreferred markers (but not explicit hedges) to manage face and that face management is more taxing under uncertainty. Ratings from a second set of participants indicate that face management strategies did not affect the perceived meaning or manner of the message. For open materials, data, and code, see https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZU2AN.","PeriodicalId":11316,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Processes","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49502914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}