Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0228
Xin Dai
{"title":"With or without a purpose? Judges’ appraisal of offenders or their behaviour in six sentencing remarks","authors":"Xin Dai","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0228","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study examines judges’ language use in sentencing remarks in the Crown Courts of England and Wales. Six sentencing remarks were selected from all those available on the UK judiciary website (by October 2016). The cases selected for closer analysis are as similar to each other as possible, so as to ensure that the differences in the discursive features of the sentencing remarks largely reflect the differences in judges’ sentencing practices. It is found that judges selectively use an appraisal strategy – using moralised purposes to invoke judgements of offenders or their behaviour – across the six sentencing remarks. Judges’ use (or non-use) of the appraisal strategy is found to be correlating with their sentencing decisions: i.e., judges opt for the appraisal strategy when their sentencing decisions are below or further above the starting point, but not when the decisions are just a few years above the starting point. The finding reveals that the statutory starting point exercises a binding effect on the judges’ sentencing practices despite the judges having the discretion to disregard the starting point. Such a finding not only provides an insight into the judges’ sentencing practices, but also demonstrates that appraisal analysis is an effective means to get access to sentencing, which seemed so inaccessible to academic research.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"449 - 469"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41617097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0224
Yan Zhou
{"title":"Questioning Chinese government officials on a live broadcast TV program: shifted second-person pronouns and journalists’ stance and identity","authors":"Yan Zhou","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0224","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It has been recognized that Mandarin speakers use the neutral form (ni) and the honorific form (nin) of second-person pronouns to refer to others based on the social distance and power dynamics between the speakers. Drawing on eighteen hours of journalist-government official conversations in live broadcast TV programs, this study shows that the journalists often shift between the two forms of second-person pronouns when referring to government officials and that the shifts in the two directions appear in different sequential environments. Incorporating the stance triangle model and membership categorization devices, the findings reveal that the shifts indicate changes in the journalists’ self-categorization and their evaluative stances toward the officials in the conversation. The shift from nin to ni tends to occur in the main actions where the interviewer has previously displayed a positive stance but shifts to a negative stance while holding the official accountable; the shift from ni to nin is often used rhetorically to help construct the inconsistencies and self-contradictions of the officials, which also indicates a negative stance.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48003490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-08-10DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0211
Yating Yu
{"title":"Representations of “leftover” women and men in the Chinese English-language news media: a keyword analysis of similarities and difference","authors":"Yating Yu","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0211","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although the phenomenon of “leftover” women and men in China has been hotly debated over the past decade, there are few comparative studies investigating similarities and differences underlying media representations of the two groups. To fill this gap, this study employs a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to investigate the discourses of similarities and differences underlying the representations of leftover women and men in the Chinese English-language news media between 2007 and 2017 by building two corpora. The findings indicate a similar discourse surrounding both leftover women and men, which is heterosexual marriage pressure. The findings also reveal two discourses highlighting differences between leftover women and men: while leftover women are represented as A-grade women facing fertility issues, leftover men are represented as D-grade men confronted with the demographic crisis. These discourses have ideological implications for heteronormativity and patriarchy. The study sheds light on non-hegemonic forms of femininity and masculinity constructed by the media in contemporary Chinese society, as well as the usefulness of employing corpus techniques to examine both similarities and differences in gender representations.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"405 - 428"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42724956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-08-04DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0222
S. Iwasaki
{"title":"Stancetaking in motion: stance triangle and double dialogicality","authors":"S. Iwasaki","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0222","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Revealing one’s evaluation towards a shared target of stance will likely set off a chain of reactions among all participants in an interaction. This interactive activity widely recognized as stancetaking has attracted the attention of researchers in a variety of fields of inquiry. This paper intends to enrich this line of research by revealing details of stancetaking as an evolving process. It proposes to do so by recognizing two separate layers relevant for stance progression. The first is the external layer where participants physically exchange utterances in order to negotiate their stances. The second is the internal layer where each participant interacts with his/her own internalized and internalizing knowledge. To demonstrate these points, I will analyze excerpts of English conversations between unacquainted speakers who experienced a common major incident in their daily lives (an earthquake and a false missile alarm incident). I will also use a conversation in Thai to demonstrate how a speaker indexes her changing evaluation toward a third person by alternating different third person pronouns.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42255509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0219
Helen Wan
{"title":"“Hypophora” and “question cascade” in Cantonese political discourse: the stance triangle and the use of rhetorical moves and utterance final particles","authors":"Helen Wan","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0219","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper looks into the specific pragmatic functions of Cantonese utterance final particles (UFPs) employed in a televised political debate, hosted by the Television Broadcasts Limited in 2016. The paper explores the most frequently used UFPs and discusses how they are being manipulated with two prominent questioning strategies, i.e., hypophora and question cascade, to help project negative stance in this highly institutionalized discourse genre. With the aid of the theoretical framework of ‘stance triangle’, I investigate how various stance-taking activities are navigated through the employment of two questioning strategies as well as UFPs to establish dis-alignment among the electoral candidates. The findings show that the most frequently used UFPs are le1 and aa3: these two UFPs are relatively neutral in question design in daily conversation and are used in all types of question such as polar questions, alternative questions, and content questions. The findings demonstrate that these particles serve as a mitigator and softener with the strategic use of hypophora and question cascade. This paper also proposes a revised stance triangle that helps understand how the negative stances are navigated in questioning strategies and realize the stance objects in an explicit manner. Discovering the true stance objects reveals that the question designs are usually oriented to the “remote audiences,”i.e. the voters.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43013679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-07-21DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0225
Don Lee
{"title":"Divergence in uncertainty: the Korean non-committal suffix -(u)lkel","authors":"Don Lee","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0225","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study explores the Korean final suffix -(u)lkel in the context of stance-taking within the framework of stance triangle and the notion of emergent stance. Using data from one hundred 30-minute telephone calls and 15 video recorded conversations totaling 270 min, this study examines the non-committal epistemic function of -(u)lkel from a conversation analytic approach and demonstrates how speakers mobilize this suffix as a divergent alignment stance marker when confronted with a conflicting, yet unclear understanding of information associated with a stance object. Moreover, the high intonational boundary tone associated with -(u)lkel cedes the floor to the recipient where a negotiation of the conflicting information offers an opportunity for a readjustment of positions towards either a converging-diverging alignment or disalignment (i.e., speakers’ abandonment of a shared stance object). As such, this study shows that a grammatical suffix such as -(u)lkel is not simply deployed to mark propositional information but is also utilized as an interactional resource that enables dialogic speech activities such as co-construction of stance.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41768944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-06-15DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0156
Ian Siebörger, Ralph Adendorff
{"title":"Development of a translation device for axiological-semantic density in political news articles: wording and charging","authors":"Ian Siebörger, Ralph Adendorff","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0156","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The concept of axiological-semantic density from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) is extremely helpful in analysing political knowledge-building, as it describes the strength of relations between various people, political stances and moral judgements, enabling these to be positioned in relation to each other. We present a multi-level translation device designed to identify strengths of axiological-semantic density in political news articles from the Daily Sun, South Africa’s most popular tabloid newspaper. This translation device was devised through analysis of selected texts from a corpus of 516 articles published between January and June 2015. It was developed through a collaborative process involving the first author and a team of student research assistants. The final translation device has five tools, of which two, the wording and charging tools, are described in this article, and then illustrated using an example analysis of a Daily Sun political news article. Both tools reveal insights into South African political discourses and ways in which axiological-semantic density can be enacted in future research. Making axiological-semantic density visible using such a translation device also has practical applications in assisting readers to understand the ways in which publications such as the Daily Sun position political parties, enabling them to engage more constructively in discussions on the country’s future.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"43 1","pages":"211 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46120008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-06-13DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0102
Y. Arita
{"title":"Japanese hypothetical enactment as a response to third-party complaint","authors":"Y. Arita","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0102","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study examines Japanese enactment, an interactional phenomenon wherein participants in conversation act out themselves or others by utilizing specific designs of lexis, grammar, and prosody, as well as body movements. While these enactments can often be observed when a speaker depicts what someone said, did, or thought in the past, this article explores hypothetical enactments. Unlike enactments that are designed as representing real utterances and/or body movements performed in the past, hypothetical enactments are designed with linguistic and contextual features that indicate that they are fictitious. The data were drawn from a collection of video-recorded ordinary conversations in Japanese. Employing Conversation Analysis as its analytical framework, this study focuses on how Japanese speakers use hypothetical enactments to respond to co-participants’ complaints about a third party who is absent from an ongoing here-and-now interactional site (i.e., third-party complaints). The findings reveal that complaint recipients may produce hypothetical enactments as jokes or advice. When complaint recipients provide hypothetical enactments as jokes, they depict an improbable situation sarcastically. When complaint recipients provide hypothetical enactment as advice, they often demonstrate taking an alternative approach toward an antagonist. These enacted hypothetical scenarios may or may not be collaboratively extended by other participants, depending on how those participants treat the proposed scenarios.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":"42 1","pages":"801 - 825"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48348936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Text & TalkPub Date : 2022-06-13DOI: 10.1515/text-2020-0217
Mikyung. Ahn, Foong Ha Yap
{"title":"On the face-threat attenuating functions of Korean com: implications for internal and external dialogic processing in interaction","authors":"Mikyung. Ahn, Foong Ha Yap","doi":"10.1515/text-2020-0217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0217","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Pragmatic markers are linguistic resources, many of them highly ubiquitous, that provide speakers with a means to display their stance toward a given proposition and, at the same time, toward their fellow interlocutors and others. Using naturally-occurring spoken data from the Sejong Spoken Corpus, we examine the role of Korean pragmatic marker com as an interactional resource for stance management in conversation. We integrate a ‘stance triangle’ framework and a dialogicality model that involves both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ dialogic processes, and analyze how Korean com is recruited as a face-threat mitigator to attenuate the assertive force of a speaker’s utterance in a variety of conversational contexts. Our findings indicate that the use of com is frequently motivated by sociocultural values, reframed as politeness norms, which prompt speakers to modulate their position in ways that mitigate face-loss for both themselves and others. We thus propose an expanded version of the ‘stance triangle’ for situations involving mitigation acts whereby, in potentially dis-aligning contexts, the speaker’s external positioning toward the stance object often does not directly nor fully reflect their internal evaluation, indicating a frequent desire among fellow interlocutors to preserve solidarity with each other.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46695330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}