Journal of Pragmatics最新文献

Pragmatic variation across the New Englishes 新英语的语用变化

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-17 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.015

Foluke Unuabonah , Ulrike Gut

{"title":"Pragmatic variation across the New Englishes","authors":"Foluke Unuabonah , Ulrike Gut","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.015","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.015","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Special Issue brings together and illustrates innovative approaches to investigating pragmatic variation in the ‘New’ varieties of English that have developed around the world, including Nigerian English, Ghanaian English, Kenyan English, Ugandan English, Namibian English, South African English, Sri Lankan English and Indian English. These Englishes are each spoken in unique postcolonial contexts, where specific cultural and linguistic settings interact with speakers' pragmatic choices. Focussing on a wide range of pragmatic items, the papers showcase the use of (comparative) corpus-based approaches to studying pragmatic variation in New Englishes. In particular, the papers introduce the new method of Postcolonial Corpus Pragmatics, a corpus-based approach that combines quantitative and qualitative analyses, sophisticated multifactorial analysis methods for discovering the combined effects of various factors on pragmatic choices as well as an innovative method of designing a tool for researching pragmatics in postcolonial contexts, which demonstrates both a solid theoretical foundation as well as a specific focus on the postcolonial community of practice under investigation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"243 ","pages":"Pages 1-5"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144072735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Refusals in Japanese parliamentary deliberations 在日本议会的审议中遭到拒绝

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.014

Chen Huiling, Liu Yiting

{"title":"Refusals in Japanese parliamentary deliberations","authors":"Chen Huiling, Liu Yiting","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.014","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.014","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study focuses on the typical communication case of ‘refusal to answer’ in Japanese parliamentary deliberations, examining the grammatical structure, meaning, and function of refusal discourse and their interlinkages from the microscopic perspective of local grammar. By deconstructing the discourse of Japanese politicians, this study reveals the essence of their linguistic wars. The analysis identifies 6 functional labels within refusal discourse: “Refuser”, “Refused item”, “Refused reason”, “Refused action”, “Hinge”, and “Situation/degree”, and the subsequent analyses identified 16 basic local grammar patterns of refusal, which are categorized into four major types. Among these patterns, those consisting of two to three functional labels, which represent substantive content of refusal, are the most frequently used and are most effective in fulfilling the communicative function of refusal. The more complex and rigorous these patterns are, with functional labels stacked on top of each other and the same construct repeated over and over again, the stronger the refuser's intention to deflect and evade. While these linguistic forms of refusal appear respectful and polite and fulfill the original communicative function of refusal on the surface, they may ultimately become tools of defense or attack. In the end, there is a higher risk of losing the nation's trust.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 237-250"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143947098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Impoliteness reciprocity online 网上不礼貌互惠

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-09 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.011

Jonathan Culpeper, Vittorio Tantucci, Eleanor Field

{"title":"Impoliteness reciprocity online","authors":"Jonathan Culpeper, Vittorio Tantucci, Eleanor Field","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Principle of (Im)politeness Reciprocity stipulates that (im)politeness is balanced across participants in an interaction. However, although it was claimed to be applicable to both politeness and impoliteness, there is little evidence to support the latter. This paper aims to rectify that situation. Specifically, it explores whether and how impoliteness reciprocity might work in online interactions. It is often claimed that online interactions are predisposed towards impoliteness. This paper examines whether that is true, and more particularly how impoliteness is distributed online compared with face-to-face. Is impoliteness matched by impoliteness? What is the role of third parties? How long do tit-for-tat impoliteness chains run for? Are there distinct characteristics of impoliteness online? Its method involves very carefully matched datasets, extensive coding of that data, and network analyses. The results reveal little difference in the general occurrence of impoliteness in online versus face-to-face data, and the Principle of (Im)politeness Reciprocity is found to be just as applicable to impoliteness as politeness in both datasets. Furthermore, the results show significant differences in the way that impoliteness is distributed, including the role of third parties, the way impoliteness escalation occurs, and the role of sarcasm and resonance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 216-236"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143921999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The beauty of communication. Corpus analysis of adverb categories in comments on communication activities in Polish (in light of comparative data from other languages) 沟通之美。波兰语交际活动评论中副词类别的语料库分析（结合其他语言的比较数据）

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-08 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.009

Celina Heliasz-Nowosielska , Paulina Rosalska , Joanna Bilińska-Brynk

{"title":"The beauty of communication. Corpus analysis of adverb categories in comments on communication activities in Polish (in light of comparative data from other languages)","authors":"Celina Heliasz-Nowosielska , Paulina Rosalska , Joanna Bilińska-Brynk","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Currently, linguistic studies on (im)politeness from a first-order perspective constitute a fruitful alternative to classical second-order perspective attempts. However, information about (im)politeness is not solely derived from first-order perspective reports on interactions. Thus, the main purpose of this research was to discover the variety of adverbs that express assessments of both behavior in general and particular communication activities in first-order perspective reports, as well as to attempt a semantic typology of these adverbs, considered in the background of comparative data from other languages. Therefore, the study utilized two corpora of Polish: the National Corpus of Polish (NKJP) and the Corpus of Narration about Communication (KNOK).</div><div>As a result, the analysis of the NKJP corpus showed that the adverbs co-occurring with the verb <em>zachow(yw)ać się jakoś</em><sub><em>i</em></sub> as its semantic complement form a set of diverse meanings. The semantic analysis enabled the assignment of each adverb to one of 18 semantic categories.</div><div>Moreover, the KNOK corpus analysis indicated that the adverbs <em>ładnie</em>, <em>pięknie</em>, and <em>elegancko</em>, which imply esthetic evaluation, were dominant in interaction reports. They were used together twice as often as the adverb <em>grzecznie</em>, which implies politeness. Additionally, overall, adverbs indicating the speaker's positive attitude toward the observed actions had a higher frequency than those indicating negative evaluation.</div><div>In conclusion, it was found that Polish language users tend to evaluate communicative activities in esthetic categories. This tendency was also observed in the Slovenian corpus but not in the English and Dutch corpora, suggesting that it may be specific to Slavic languages.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 199-215"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143916387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

What would you do if you could narrate your wonder years?: Interactional pragmatics of voice-over narration 如果你能讲述你的神奇岁月，你会怎么做？：画外音叙述的互动语用学

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-06 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.010

Marta Dynel

{"title":"What would you do if you could narrate your wonder years?: Interactional pragmatics of voice-over narration","authors":"Marta Dynel","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the participant structure and interactional dynamics of voice-over film narration. First, the voice-over narrator is defined in the light of previous literature on film, narration and the pragmatics of fiction. Second, interactional pragmatic concepts are applied to explore how the extradiegetic narrator's turns are structured and positioned in the context of the diegetic characters' exchanges. The postulates emerge from a systematic analysis of <em>The Wonder Years</em>, a series revolving around the discourse of an extradiegetic homodiegetic voice-over narrator reporting on the diegetic world, in which his younger self lives and from which he is spatio-temporally removed. This positioning of the narrator generates compelling interactional patterns shaped by participant statuses and turn configurations. The focus of the study is on the production end (the narrator's speaker role compositions encompassing the diegetic and extradiegetic selves), the reception end (the narrator's seemingly addressing diegetic characters or viewers through verbally breaking the fourth wall), and the voice-over narrator's “diegetic quasi-participant” status. The findings reveal the voice-over narrator's role in shaping the ultimate form of interactions on two fictional communication levels and provide a platform for further inquiries into the pragmatics of film narration.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 156-174"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143908235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-06 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.013

Rong Chen

引用次数: 0

Recent changes of now as a discourse marker in spoken English 英语口语中now作为语篇标记的最新变化

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-06 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.012

Inji Choi

{"title":"Recent changes of now as a discourse marker in spoken English","authors":"Inji Choi","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the evolving role of <em>now</em> in spoken English using data from two distinct corpora complied in the 1990s and 2010s. Analyses of randomly selected tokens distinguish occurrences of <em>now</em> as either a temporal adverb or a discourse marker (DM), with a focus on positional patterns, social factors (age and gender), functional distribution, and co-occurrences with other DMs. Findings reveal that while the DM <em>now</em> predominantly appears in turn- or utterance-initial positions, its occurrence in utterance-medial positions has notably increased, reflecting broader pragmatic development. The DM <em>now</em> is increasingly used for textual and affective functions, such as shifting topics, marking contrasts, or indicating stance, beyond its time-referential role. In terms of speaker demographics, the rise in DM <em>now</em> usage is largely driven by younger speakers, indicating a generational shift from two decades earlier; gender, however, does not significantly affect overall frequency. Analysis of DM co-occurrences shows that additive patterns are most frequent, whereas compositional and juxtaposed forms are less common. Overall, these results underscore the growing versatility of <em>now</em> in contemporary English, reflecting broader trends in discourse structuring, interaction management, and generational language shift.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 175-194"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143908266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Social meaning in reverse: Expectations of English role noun use based on speaker identity 反过来的社会意义：基于说话人身份的英语角色名词使用期望

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-06 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.008

Benjamin Weissman

{"title":"Social meaning in reverse: Expectations of English role noun use based on speaker identity","authors":"Benjamin Weissman","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Insights from pragmatics and sociolinguistics have informed theories of social meaning, inferences about a speaker's identity that a hearer draws based on utterance properties such as lexical choices. One example is the use of a gender-neutral role noun (<em>salesperson</em>) rather than a gender-marked form (<em>saleswoman/salesman</em>); choosing this form can serve as an index of a speaker's progressiveness (Papineau et al., 2022). This study investigates social meaning in reverse, exploring to what extent hearers expect speakers to use these role noun forms based on their beliefs about the speaker's beliefs. In two experiments, participants meet fictitious characters, introduced as having either a conservative or progressive ideology. Experiment 1 finds that participants predict gender-neutral forms at a significantly higher rate for progressive speakers than for conservative speakers, taken as evidence that a hearer's beliefs about a speaker motivate expectations related to markers of social meaning. Experiment 2 finds no significant reading time effects regarding the form of the noun and the ideology of the speaker, suggesting the pattern from Experiment 1 does not manifest in real-time language processing. Experiment 2 does find a significant hearer-speaker ideological alignment effect whereby participants who were ideologically aligned with the character read significantly faster than those who were not.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 141-155"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143908284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Defending speaker intention in a model of the hearer's meaning 在一个听者意义的模型中捍卫说话者的意图

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-05 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.007

Yueyuan Li , Chaoqun Xie

{"title":"Defending speaker intention in a model of the hearer's meaning","authors":"Yueyuan Li , Chaoqun Xie","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Hansen and Terkourafi present a compelling challenge to traditional models of meaning that privilege speaker intention as the primary determinant of communicative success. Their proposed alternative model, which centers on the hearer's interpretation while rendering speaker intention theoretically redundant, offers a valuable corrective to intention-centric approaches. While we concur with Hansen and Terkourafi's general critique of traditional models of meaning as overly reliant on speaker intention, we identify three limitations in their argumentation. First, their critique relies on an unnecessarily restrictive conceptualization of intention as an opaque and inherently inaccessible mental state. Second, existing research in both psychological and cultural studies provides robust counterevidence to claims about intention's inaccessibility. Third, the very evidence they cite regarding the indeterminacy of speaker intention in distinguishing “what is said” from “what is meant” can be reinterpreted to underscore the significance of speaker intention. Furthermore, we maintain that speaker intention plays a crucial role in shaping the hearer's interpretation, particularly when it comes to accounting for conversational roles. In conclusion, we argue that a comprehensive model of meaning needs to integrate both the speaker’s and the hearer’s roles, recognizing their interdependence in the communicative process.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 126-140"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143903330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

When veracity is in the balance: Requests for reconfirmation as preliminary information receipts 当准确性处于平衡状态时：作为初步信息收据的重新确认请求

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-05-05 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.004

Marit Aldrup

{"title":"When veracity is in the balance: Requests for reconfirmation as preliminary information receipts","authors":"Marit Aldrup","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Responding to new information is a recurrent task in ordinary conversation. In contrast to alternative information receipts, such as change-of-state tokens (e.g., <em>oh</em>), evaluative appreciations (e.g., <em>wow</em>), or assessments (e.g., <em>that's nice</em>), newsmark-type responses (e.g., <em>really</em>) are preliminary in the sense that they invite the informer to, at a minimum, reconfirm their previous statement, making a more definite response contingent upon the informer's reaction. As expressions of ‘ritualized disbelief’ (Heritage, 1984), newsmarks proper do not simply take the information provided at face value but question the veracity of the prior statement in a pro-forma manner to highlight its news- or noteworthiness. However, reconfirmation-seeking turns are also regularly used to genuinely call the validity of a prior statement into question and treat it as problematic.</div><div>This interactional-linguistic study investigates the whole spectrum of reconfirmation-seeking responses, alternatively referred to as ‘requests for reconfirmation’ (RfRCs), and reveals that different instances of these preliminary information receipts fall on a continuum between newsmark-like and problem-indicating RfRC uses. Through detailed sequential and multimodal analyses of reconfirmation sequences from video recordings of informal German and English face-to-face conversations, it also shows how sequential context and turn design contribute to action disambiguation and the contextualization of different epistemic, evaluative, and affective stances towards the information in question across the two languages under investigation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 108-125"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143903331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0