Journal of Pragmatics最新文献

Deciphering the electrophysiological signature of discourse connectives

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-25 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.009

Cecile Larralde, Ira Noveck

{"title":"Deciphering the electrophysiological signature of discourse connectives","authors":"Cecile Larralde, Ira Noveck","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The discourse connectives <em>but</em> and <em>so</em> trigger specific kinds of inferences, which are characterizable as contrastive and causal, respectively. Inspired by Diane Blakemore’s notion of procedural meaning, we carry out two studies while relying on a paradigm we developed in previous work, in which 1) connectives are part of thematically bare sentences presented as a word-finding game, e.g. <em>There is a B but there is no T</em>, and; 2) these two connectives are compared to the less informative conjunction <em>and</em>. Experiment 1 instantiated our behavioral paradigm while imposing the kind of constraints one finds in an EEG study (e.g., the discourse connective is isolated and presented for a predetermined duration). The results from Experiment 1 replicated our previous behavioral findings, confirming the design's reliability. Experiment 2, an ERP study based on this modified paradigm, yielded three main findings. 1) relative to <em>and</em>, the discourse connectives <em>but</em> and <em>so</em> trigger a more pronounced P200 followed by Positive Slow Waves (PSW) of greater amplitude. These data point to extra inferential processing triggered by <em>but</em> and <em>so</em> relative to <em>and.</em> 2) the higher amplitude of the P3b component linked to negated segments following <em>but</em> indicates that these were anticipated more than those that follow <em>and</em> or <em>so</em>. 3) post-connective affirmative segments were, surprisingly, linked with a more pronounced P600-like component in <em>and</em>-trials relative to the <em>but</em>- and <em>so</em>-trials. Overall, this study allows one to more deeply appreciate the inferential processing linked to discourse connectives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"241 ","pages":"Pages 144-163"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143874162","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

Different ways of deriving majority judgements: An experimental study of Chinese dabufen

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-23 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.005

Yuli Feng, Lei Chu

{"title":"Different ways of deriving majority judgements: An experimental study of Chinese dabufen","authors":"Yuli Feng, Lei Chu","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study experimentally investigates the interpretations of the Chinese majority expression <em>dabufen</em>, testing competing approaches to majority quantification. Majority expressions are typically analyzed as generalized quantifiers or superlative adjectives. However, our corpus-based investigation reveals that neither analysis can fully account for certain properties of <em>dabufen</em>, particularly its ability to associate with proportions below 50%. To address this gap, we propose a comparative approach, deriving majority judgements through comparison with a standard that can be contextually sensitive.</div><div>The findings from our experiment further validate the comparative approach while highlighting the inadequacy of the existing approaches. Specifically, our experiment reveals a population split among native speakers: the “Rigid Cluster”, which adheres to the above-50% interpretation, and the “Flexible Cluster”, which accepts below-50% uses across various contexts. Within the Flexible Cluster, we further identify subclusters that use <em>dabufen</em> to express superlativity relativized to the whole partition or to compare with a contextually salient proportion. The inter-cluster differences reflect the participants’ varying ways of determining the standard of comparison.</div><div>By uncovering the interpretational variability of <em>dabufen</em>, this research expands the understanding of majority quantification in natural language. It demonstrates that the conceptual category of ‘majority’ can be realized in diverse ways—both within a single language and across languages—and underscores the theoretical value of experimentally exploring majority expressions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 12-35"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143864256","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

Beyond stereotypes: Cognitive abilities underlying social meaning

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-22 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.014

Inbal Kuperwasser , Einat Shetreet

{"title":"Beyond stereotypes: Cognitive abilities underlying social meaning","authors":"Inbal Kuperwasser , Einat Shetreet","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.014","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.014","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>‘Social meaning’ refers to a relation between social identity and linguistic features, and often concerns stereotypical knowledge. In this study, we propose this relation can also be mediated by cognitive abilities, as these are affected by social context and are required in meaning processing. As a case-study, we tested the negative effects of social outgroup (through political affiliation) and Theory of Mind skills (ToM) on the processing of a highly-regularized pragmatic phenomenon (scalar implicatures) in Hebrew and English speakers. First, we replicated previous findings showing a decrease in the rates of pragmatic responses for an outgroup speaker compared to a control speaker with no group affiliation. More importantly, we showed that this effect is associated with ToM abilities, such that individuals with lower baseline ToM abilities in the outgroup condition were less likely to give pragmatic responses than individuals with similar ToM abilities in the control condition. This suggests a role for ToM in mediating the negative effect in the outgroup condition, therefore supporting the expansion of social meaning to more general, non-stereotype-specific, cases where social characteristics affect pragmatic interpretation, through the mediation of social cognition abilities. Our results highlight that social meaning is ingrained in pragmatic processing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"242 ","pages":"Pages 1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143860673","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

Grammaticalization and social meaning in the Japanese causative-benefactive construction: Celebrities crafting connections with their audience

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-22 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.012

Kimiyo Matsui

{"title":"Grammaticalization and social meaning in the Japanese causative-benefactive construction: Celebrities crafting connections with their audience","authors":"Kimiyo Matsui","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines how semantics and pragmatics interact in the process of grammaticalization to generate social meaning in the Japanese causative-benefactive construction, <em>-(s)ase-te</em> <em>itadak-u</em>. The construction’s original meaning is that one humbly receives permission from a respected party (a specific causative benefactor) to do something beneficial to oneself. It has, however, grammaticalized to develop synchronic, contextual variation, as shown in the data for this study, taken from a celebrity TV talk show. From the perspective of interpersonal pragmatics, this study argues that celebrities in this talk show employ the construction to express involvement with their audience when they describe their own actions and, thereby, project a positive celebrity persona. This social meaning of involvement stems from two aspects of grammaticalization: semantic generalization, which decreases the specificity of the original causative benefactor to various degrees, and semantic persistence, which maintains the speaker’s sense of humility and benefit. In the most prominent use of the construction in the data, this allows speakers to involve their audience as non-specific, highly generalized senses of benefactors who somehow facilitate the speaker’s actions and to express humility concerning these actions and gratitude for the opportunity to perform them.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"241 ","pages":"Pages 130-143"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143855999","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

Egyptian advice in casual conversations: A deep dive with corpus-based insights

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.002

Rania Al-Sabbagh

{"title":"Egyptian advice in casual conversations: A deep dive with corpus-based insights","authors":"Rania Al-Sabbagh","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent studies suggest that Egyptians perceive advice-giving as social cooperation and solidarity, deeply rooted in their collectivist culture. These studies indicate that Egyptians tend to employ direct advice more frequently than individuals in individualistic cultures, where advice-giving is often regarded as face-threatening. However, these conclusions have primarily been drawn from role-play scenarios and multiple-choice questionnaires, which may not fully capture the cultural and linguistic nuances of Egyptian Arabic. This study builds on previous research by analyzing the CALLHOME Egyptian Arabic corpus, a collection of unscripted phone conversations among friends and family, to provide a more nuanced understanding. The findings confirm previous conclusions, revealing that direct advice constitutes 58.3 % of cases, with no significant influence from interlocutors' social status or advice level of imposition. Notably, 15.5 % of this direct advice consists of emotionally supportive phrases such as “don't worry” and “take care” rather than practical guidance. A distinctive form of hedged advice also emerged, marked by hedging imperatives, such as “try” (e.g., “try to find reasons” instead of “find reasons”). Additionally, the corpus highlights how indirect advice is embedded within other speech acts, including requests, prayers, opinions, questions, and wishes. The results, which align with prior conversation analysis research on advice in British and American cultures, suggest that Egyptians exhibit similar behaviors when giving advice. This indicates that conversational expectations, beyond the collectivist-individualist cultural dichotomy, play a critical role in shaping advice-giving strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"241 ","pages":"Pages 116-129"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143851490","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 : 2025-04-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.015

Christina Hodeib

引用次数: 0

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.04.003

Matteo Di Cristofaro

引用次数: 0

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-08 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.007

J. César Félix-Brasdefer

引用次数: 0

Explicit positive assessment as a compliment in one-on-one language teaching

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-05 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.011

Yoshiyuki Hara

引用次数: 0

Social meaning as Hearer's Meaning: Integrating social meaning into a general theory of meaning in communication

IF 1.8 1区文学

Journal of Pragmatics Pub Date : 2025-04-02 DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.010

Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen

{"title":"Social meaning as Hearer's Meaning: Integrating social meaning into a general theory of meaning in communication","authors":"Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.03.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper addresses P. Eckert's call to incorporate social meaning into a more general theory of meaning. The notion of social meaning can be defined in both a narrow and a somewhat broader sense, the latter of which forms the basis for the paper. I review recent research showing how social meaning may impact on pragmatically central aspects of utterance interpretation, including lexical access, ambiguity resolution, reference assignment, presupposition projection, implicature derivation, and truth value assessment, as well as the hearer's expectations regarding future interaction with the speaker. Conversely, pragmatic features of linguistic expressions may facilitate the use of those same expressions to convey social meanings. I argue that, being fundamentally speaker-centered and reliant on intention-recognition, mainstream theories of meaning in communication are poorly equipped to integrate social meaning, due to the latter's often unintentional, indexical and/or multimodal nature. I suggest instead that Hansen & Terkourafi's recent model of Hearer's Meaning is intrinsically well-suited to the task, and I present that model in more detail, focusing however on those aspects of it that are of most direct relevance to integrating social meaning, viz. its conceptual anchoring in Peircean semiotics, and its explicit incorporation of hearers' assumptions about the identities of speakers, as well as about their social relationship with the speaker.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"241 ","pages":"Pages 81-91"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143746187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0