{"title":"Towards a multimodal approach for analysing interpreter's management of rapport challenge in onsite and video remote interpreting","authors":"Dries Cavents, July De Wilde, Jelena Vranjes","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.12.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.12.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recently, interpreters' management of rapport is increasingly being investigated. Yet little attention has been directed towards the role of the interpreter's non-verbal behaviour when managing rapport and to the influence of video mediated forms of interpreting on the use of non-verbal behaviour. Therefore, this study proposes a multimodal micro-interactional framework for analysing interpreters' management of rapport challenge in both onsite (OSI) and video remote interpreting (VRI) interaction. The paper introduces a multimodal coding scheme based on Spencer-Oatey's Rapport Management Theory (2008), which is then applied to a dataset of video recorded interpreter-mediated interactions to examine how interpreters employ verbal, paraverbal, and non-verbal resources to multimodally address rapport challenge. Data were collected from simulated interactions involving professional public service interpreters and role-players adopting the role of primary participants in a reception centre for asylum seekers. The findings reveal that in OSI interpreters use a wide range of non-verbal resources when conveying rapport challenges, whereas VRI imposes constraints on non-verbal communication, often necessitating more disruptive verbal strategies to manage rapport. The study underscores the importance of a multimodal approach to interpreting research, highlighting how non-verbal behaviours significantly contribute to the management of interpersonal relations in interpreter-mediated talk.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"235 ","pages":"Pages 220-237"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175994","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}
{"title":"Beyond sentence grammar: Persian directives in interaction","authors":"Reza Kazemian , Mohammad Amouzadeh , Bernd Heine , Hadaegh Rezaei","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.12.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.12.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines Persian directives through the lens of interactive grammar, aiming to categorize and explore their various types. While the existing model provides valuable analytical tools, it falls short in explaining the plethora of directive data examined in this study. As an initial stride towards broadening the cross-linguistic applicability of interactive grammar, particularly in the realm of directive categorization, this study proposes a more elaborate classification. The Persian directives are categorized into two main groups: primary and secondary, with the latter further subdivided into imperative-derived, adverb-derived, vocative-derived, and nominal directives. Additionally, a fresh perspective is cast on the Persian double-verb imperative, transcending the traditional view of serial verb constructions and elucidating its unique features and functions. The taxonomy of Persian directives posited in this study not only enhances the granularity of the overarching model but also paves the way for its expanded cross-linguistic utility. This detailed classification opens avenues for corpus-based studies to glean deeper insights and aids in the development of more explicit annotation schemes, empowering researchers with some clear-cut categories of directives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"236 ","pages":"Pages 40-59"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143132453","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}
{"title":"A corpus-based analysis of (im)politeness metalanguage and speech acts: The case of insults in Shakespeare's plays","authors":"Samuel J. Oliver","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In response to calls for first-order approaches to (im)politeness from scholars such as Watts et al. (2005 [1992]) and Eelen (2001), Oliver (2022) developed a corpus-based method for inductively locating (im)politeness metalinguistic items, wherein a total of 234 (im)politeness metalinguistic forms such as <em>civil</em>, <em>kind</em>, and <em>villainous</em> were located across 4023 instances in a corpus of Shakespeare's plays. Some scholars (e.g. Haugh, 2007:302; Haugh and Culpeper, 2018:216–217) have observed that the discursive perspective to (im)politeness precludes generalisation across encounters, and therefore quantitative corpus-based analysis. This study deviates from the discursive perspective by testing a corpus-based analysis of the relationship between (im)politeness metalanguage and speech acts, via insults, in the <em>Enhanced Shakespearean Corpus</em>. While the results reveal methodological challenges with a corpus-based approach to identifying and comparing both phenomena, the approach nonetheless locates 11 conventionalised formulae for insulting encompassing 1447 instances. A sample of these insults are explored to examine their relationship with (im)politeness metalanguage, enriching an understanding of the use of (im)politeness metalanguage and insults in Shakespeare's plays generally. For example, it reveals that instances where (im)politeness metalanguage follows an impolite event tend to be when that event has a high impact on the events of the play.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"235 ","pages":"Pages 132-144"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143177098","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}
{"title":"Is low-arousal laughter a reliable cue for irony? Individual differences in integrating speech and laughter meanings","authors":"Chiara Mazzocconi , Caterina Petrone , Maud Champagne-Lavau","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Irony can be cued by a variety of verbal and non-verbal markers, all sufficient, but none necessary to identify irony. The current study investigated the impact of low-arousal laughter in irony identification in interaction with verbal context. Participants (N = 119) listened to short stories including a brief context and a final target utterance which they evaluated as ironic or not. We manipulated the degree of incongruity between the context and the target utterance (No/Weak/Strong Incongruity) and the Presence/Absence of laughter before the target utterance. Overall, contextual incongruity with the target utterance was the strongest predictor of ironic interpretations regardless of laughter. Laughter had a significant effect only in the Weak Incongruity condition when considering individual variability. A cluster analysis revealed the emergence of three patterns of performance reflecting different laughter and speech semantic integrations: for some subjects, laughter cued towards ironic interpretations; for others, laughter reduced the probability of an ironic interpretation; while for a small group, laughter did not influence responses. This study demonstrates the importance of going beyond a speech-centered approach and including non-verbal behaviors when modeling language processing, as well as considering individual variability when exploring pragmatic processes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"235 ","pages":"Pages 164-181"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175996","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}
{"title":"Superman or Homelander? The pragmatic features and argumentative potential of online victimhood narratives of Israeli-Palestinian conflict","authors":"Thulfiqar Hussein Altahmazi , Raith Zeher Abid","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.013","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.013","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Drawing mainly on cognitive pragmatics, supplemented by insights from positioning theory, the paper aims to identify the pragmatic features and highlight the argumentative potential of the victimhood narratives propagated online. The paper analyzes a corpus of approximately 130,000 user-generated comments discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Conceptualizing frames as relevance establishers priming tendentious implicated premises, various corpus linguistic techniques are used to identify the frame-evoking elements of the storyline advanced by commenters. The analysis shows that frames can license conclusions potentially influencing the audience's epistemic attitude towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making a particular victimhood narrative looks more relevant and more coherent. The argumentative potential of a given victimhood narrative lies in its ability to prime cognitive and affective effects that optimize relevance and activate emotional procedures making the audience more epistemically vulnerable to manipulation. The paper provides fresh insights as to how cognitive pragmatics can account for manipulative political discourse in online public sphere. The paper also demonstrates the efficacy of corpus linguistic techniques in identifying frame-evoking elements in large corpora.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"235 ","pages":"Pages 206-219"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143176477","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}
{"title":"Marked intonation as a phonological metaphor: A systemic functional approach","authors":"Wei Xu, Chengyu Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Robert Veltman interpreted marked intonation as a phonological metaphor, drawing an analogy to the grammatical metaphor. However, since then, the concept of phonological metaphor has not received significant scholarly attention. In this context, based on Gerard O'Grady's stratification model where intonation is located at the content plane, and notional comparison of “Unmarked/marked” and “Congruent/metaphorical”, the current paper examines whether and how marked intonation works as a metaphor. It argues that marked intonation parallels grammatical metaphor with the functional mechanism of inter-stratal tension as it carries metaphorical properties of “poly-form” (i.e. one meaning maps to more than one form) and “poly-seme” (i.e. one form maps to more than one meaning) when seen respectively from above and below. The paper further demonstrates the use of marked tone within a conservation video, illustrating how it conveys interpersonal meanings akin to the grammatical metaphor of mood. In conclusion, marked intonation serves as a phonological metaphor at the content plane. This study explores the emerging area of phonological metaphor and probably contributes to expanding the framework of metaphor in Systemic Functional Grammar which addresses a core issue in the interplay between form and meaning.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"235 ","pages":"Pages 145-163"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175995","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}
{"title":"Pragmatic functions and phonetic reduction: Cioè and cè in contemporary spoken Italian","authors":"Daniela Mereu , Silvia Dal Negro","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.12.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.12.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the phenomenon of phonetic reduction of the reformulation marker <em>cioè</em>, a very frequent lexical item in spoken Italian. This word has attracted both scholarly attention and popular interest over the years because of its multifunctionality and ability to convey a variety of social meanings. On top of this, the recent appearance of the reduced form <em>cè</em> has also been observed to have become increasingly frequent even in informal written usages.</div><div>This contribution aims at exploring the validity of informal observations that have been made about the distribution of <em>cè</em> and <em>cioè</em>. This is achieved by providing an acoustic analysis of the occurrences of this lexical item within a corpus of conversational spoken Italian, as well as by relating the phonetically full and reduced forms of these items to the main functions they perform. The results of the analysis conducted in this paper confirm the prevalence of phonetically reduced types over full forms, as well as the functional specialization of the unreduced form, two facts which seem to support the thesis that an ongoing change in formal and functional terms is happening.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"236 ","pages":"Pages 1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143132460","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}
{"title":"The processing of fictional characters: A synthesis of Culpeper's and Pettersson's models","authors":"Nino Tevdoradze","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the last few decades, fictional characterisation has become an issue of an exceptionally big interest in cognitive science. Among many other important works in this area of research, Jonathan Culpeper's cognitive stylistic model is a particularly worthy contribution, which provides pragmatic and cognitive explanations for various insights regarding fictional character processing. This paper proposes that there is a way of further elucidating the picture of characterisation by bringing into Culpeper's model Anders Pettersson's perspective on characterisation, emerging from his cluster conception. The explanation of how this perspective can be added to Culpeper's work will be provided in terms of similarities and differences between their models. My chief aim is to provide an interdisciplinary synthesis of the two models and apply the ideas coming from two different research directions to Sherwood Anderson's story \"Mother\" from the <em>Winesburg, Ohio</em> cycle.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"235 ","pages":"Pages 88-98"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143177008","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}
{"title":"Moderate versus extreme interpretations of political slogans","authors":"Lelia Glass","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.12.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.12.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper surveys 451 Americans about how they view and interpret three semantically indeterminate progressive political slogans: <em>#BelieveWomen, #DefundThePolice</em>, and <em>#FreePalestine</em>. In each case, most people who agree with the slogan interpret it to express a moderate position, while most people who disagree take it to describe a more extreme position – which is indeed endorsed by a minority of those who agree with the slogan. These results show that online political discourse can foment both false controversy and false consensus. Because liberals tend to interpret these slogans moderately, while conservatives are more likely to interpret them as extreme, these results further suggest that people may choose their interpretation of a slogan to foreground the issues that they see as problems, and/or to justify their preexisting attitude towards the movement it champions. This paper brings together linguistics and political science to illuminate miscommunication in public discourse.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"236 ","pages":"Pages 25-39"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143132459","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}
{"title":"The effects of negation on discourse structure","authors":"Eva Klingvall, Fredrik Heinat","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In five sentence continuation studies we investigated how different forms of negation (negative quantifier, clausal negation, lexical negation) impact discourse structure in Swedish. We looked at what set of referents (the reference set for which some property holds, or the complement set, for which the property does not hold) speakers considered most noteworthy (speaker salient), and what form they used to refer to this set (reflecting its givenness status, i.e. hearer salience) in their sentence continuations. Most continuations targeted the complement set when the prompt included a negative quantifier. When negation was in the form of clausal negation, the reference set was targeted. Having a lexically negated verb in addition to the negative quantifier as subject mattered only when speakers were not prompted to make one of the sets the sentence topic. In this case, reference set continuations were also common. The conclusion is that although the types of negation convey similar negative meanings, they give rise to differences in discourse structure, and crucially the lexical properties of the predicate can influence the strong tendency of negative quantifier to focus the complement set.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"235 ","pages":"Pages 115-131"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175997","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}