{"title":"The pragmatic use of ‘sort of’ in TV forums","authors":"Grace Zhang","doi":"10.1075/JAPC.00021.ZHA","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/JAPC.00021.ZHA","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study discusses the pragmatic functions of four Chinese equivalents of the English ‘sort of’ based on a\u0000 Chinese TV forum corpus: youdian (有点),\u0000 yidian (一点),\u0000 youyidian (有一点),\u0000 keyishuo (可以说). It finds that the\u0000 Chinese ‘sort of’ tends to cluster with verbs or adjectives rather than nouns. ‘Sort of’ is infrequent in the formal setting of\u0000 this study and serves three pragmatic functions: mitigation, approximation and evasion, with the first two functions being much\u0000 more frequent than the last one. ‘Sort of’ performs more of an interpersonal than an informational function. This study highlights\u0000 the elasticity of ‘sort of’ in Mandarin Chinese in the form of fluidity, stretchability and strategy, contributing a fresh account\u0000 of pragmatic markers. This study implies that elastic language use is a natural part of linguistic competence (particularly\u0000 pragmatic competence) and forms a strong bond with effective linguistic communication.","PeriodicalId":43807,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Pacific Communication","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58704956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Acknowledgements","authors":"","doi":"10.1075/japc.00026.ack","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00026.ack","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43807,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Pacific Communication","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43818013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dániel Z. Kádár. (2017). Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral Order in Interpersonal Interaction","authors":"Lili Gong, Yongping Ran","doi":"10.1075/JAPC.00024.GON","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/JAPC.00024.GON","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews Politeness, Impoliteness and Ritual: Maintaining the Moral Order in Interpersonal Interaction 978-1-107-05218-5.","PeriodicalId":43807,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Pacific Communication","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58705110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vagueness and Elasticity of 'Sort of' in TV Discussion Discourse in the Asian Pacific","authors":"","doi":"10.1075/japc.29.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.29.1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43807,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Pacific Communication","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48298986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pragmatic functions of ‘sort of’ in Persian","authors":"Vahid Parvaresh, Sayyed Amir Sheikhan","doi":"10.1075/JAPC.00022.PAR","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/JAPC.00022.PAR","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 It goes without saying that as a pragmatic phenomenon, vagueness\u0000 has over the past few years been a topic of extensive research. However, a huge\u0000 gap still exists when it comes to the investigation of how vagueness is\u0000 expressed across different languages and cultures. In the present study, we have\u0000 put under scrutiny the pragmatic functions of ‘sort of’, a vague expression, in\u0000 Persian conversation with a view to making cross-linguistic comparisons between\u0000 different languages possible. Besides confirming the fact that the vague item\u0000 ‘sort of’ enables interactants to fulfil a wide variety of functions in\u0000 interactional settings, particularly in face-to-face interactions, the current\u0000 study reveals that the expression in question can also serve to signal ‘a moment\u0000 of awkwardness’ as well as the presence of ‘inferable information’. With the\u0000 former function, ‘sort of’ signals that the speaker is experiencing a feeling of\u0000 inconvenience and embarrassment. When used as an inferable information signal,\u0000 however, ‘sort of’ indicates that the utterance has been inferred from the\u0000 previous or current exchange.","PeriodicalId":43807,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Pacific Communication","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42435977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comparative rhetoric and emic approaches to Chinese persuasive strategies in hotel discourse","authors":"Donghong Liu","doi":"10.1075/JAPC.00029.LIU","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/JAPC.00029.LIU","url":null,"abstract":"Many studies concerning culture and rhetoric have been restricted to the binary distinction of cultures or to etic perspectives by using western theories as framework to point out the weakness of Chinese rhetoric. Taking comparative rhetoric and emic approaches, this paper focuses on logical appeal and ethical appeal to discuss the cultural values reflected in the hotel discourses. In this study content analysis was used to encode the English and Chinese hotel introductions; quantitative method was used for data comparison and an interview for investigating the persuasiveness of the Chinese rhetorical strategies. The relation between cultural values and persuasive strategies was explored. It is concluded that cultural specificity at deep level is still an indispensable factor determining rhetorical strategies despite the globalization.","PeriodicalId":43807,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Pacific Communication","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58705187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Language and social change in China: Undoing commonness through\u0000 Cosmopolitan Mandarin by Qing Zhang","authors":"Ke Zhang","doi":"10.1075/JAPC.00016.ZHA","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/JAPC.00016.ZHA","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43807,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Pacific Communication","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2018-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47637862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}