Pub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-28DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.006
Ming-Yu Tseng
The reversal of the deep-rooted life is a journey metaphor is not commonly heard in everyday language, and as a result has received little attention. This study addresses the phenomenon in which a journey is life appears to be embedded within, or co-exists with, life is a journey in text. This study argues that this phenomenon constitutes a meta-metaphor – a metaphor about a metaphor – which can set free and extend familiar metaphorical thought and instigate life–journey interactions in ways that the familiar metaphor alone cannot achieve. This paper proposes a multilevel view of the literal-metonymic-metaphorical continuum, which considers the possibility that literalness, metonymy and metaphor are located at different levels involving language, experience (physical action) and belief systems (faith and knowledge). This multilevel lens, underpinned by cognitive and socio-pragmatic forces, further explains why life–journey interactions can occur.
{"title":"“Then journeys are like life itself, rarely straight”: Towards a meta-metaphorical perspective on life–journey interactions","authors":"Ming-Yu Tseng","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The reversal of the deep-rooted <span>life is a journey</span> metaphor is not commonly heard in everyday language, and as a result has received little attention. This study addresses the phenomenon in which <span>a journey is life</span> appears to be embedded within, or co-exists with, <span>life is a journey</span> in text. This study argues that this phenomenon constitutes a meta-metaphor – a metaphor about a metaphor – which can set free and extend familiar metaphorical thought and instigate <span>life–journey</span> interactions in ways that the familiar metaphor alone cannot achieve. This paper proposes a multilevel view of the literal-metonymic-metaphorical continuum, which considers the possibility that literalness, metonymy and metaphor are located at different levels involving language, experience (physical action) and belief systems (faith and knowledge). This multilevel lens, underpinned by cognitive and socio-pragmatic forces, further explains why <span>life–journey</span> interactions can occur.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Pages 152-167"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144913538","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-25DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.008
Chiara Ghezzi
Linguistic variants have a ‘social’ value if alternants are “easily parsed, extracted, and recombined-taken off the shelf” (Eckert, 2019: 755). In this process indexicality is central as it connects (linguistic) signs to social occasions, anchoring language use into social patterns. Discourse markers, central elements within pragmatics, display formal and functional properties which make them ideal for identity construction and negotiation of social meaning. This contribution considers how social meaning aligns with the prototypically pragmatic meaning of discourse markers through the exemplar development of Italian cioè ‘that is’ from 1976 to today. Basing the analysis on spoken corpora and questionnaires on speakers' attitudes, the study shows that the social meaning of cioè is anchored in linguistic practices of social groups, which entail uses in different structural contexts, positions, and with different scopes. It also links the pragmatic development of cioè to the evolution of its social indexicalities. Lastly, it discusses the role of discourse markers, and of pragmatic variables, in the development of social personae and in the relationship of social meaning with indexicality. If the latter is the use of linguistic correlations to do social work, the former is its outcome in particular instances.
如果语言变体“很容易被解析、提取和重组——从货架上取下来”,那么它就具有“社会”价值(Eckert, 2019: 755)。在这个过程中,索引性是中心,因为它将(语言)符号与社会场合联系起来,将语言使用锚定在社会模式中。话语标记语是语用学的核心要素,它表现出形式和功能特征,使其成为身份建构和社会意义协商的理想选择。这一贡献通过1976年至今意大利语cioè ‘ that is ’的范例发展,考虑了社会意义如何与话语标记的原型语用意义保持一致。通过对口语语料库的分析和对说话人态度的问卷调查,研究表明cioè的社会意义根植于社会群体的语言实践中,需要在不同的结构语境、位置和范围内使用。它还将cioè的实用主义发展与其社会指数性的演变联系起来。最后,讨论了话语标记和语用变量在社会人物发展中的作用,以及社会意义与指标性的关系。如果后者是使用语言相关性来做社会工作,那么前者就是它在特定情况下的结果。
{"title":"“Off-the-shelf” features and pragmatic trajectories: The years of cioè in Italian","authors":"Chiara Ghezzi","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Linguistic variants have a ‘social’ value if alternants are “easily parsed, extracted, and recombined-taken off the shelf” (Eckert, 2019: 755). In this process indexicality is central as it connects (linguistic) signs to social occasions, anchoring language use into social patterns. Discourse markers, central elements within pragmatics, display formal and functional properties which make them ideal for identity construction and negotiation of social meaning. This contribution considers how social meaning aligns with the prototypically pragmatic meaning of discourse markers through the exemplar development of Italian <em>cioè</em> ‘that is’ from 1976 to today. Basing the analysis on spoken corpora and questionnaires on speakers' attitudes, the study shows that the social meaning of <em>cioè</em> is anchored in linguistic practices of social groups, which entail uses in different structural contexts, positions, and with different scopes. It also links the pragmatic development of <em>cioè</em> to the evolution of its social indexicalities. Lastly, it discusses the role of discourse markers, and of pragmatic variables, in the development of social personae and in the relationship of social meaning with indexicality. If the latter is the use of linguistic correlations to do social work, the former is its outcome in particular instances.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Pages 120-138"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144896666","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-11DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.012
Ping Liu , Linlin Yang
This study investigates ostensible offence, a distinctive form of mock impoliteness that couples apparently offensive elements with underlying affiliative intent. Although mock impoliteness has received considerable scholarly attention, ostensible offence within the hybrid institutional context of Chinese state-affiliated live streaming commerce (LSC) remains underexplored. Drawing on 5476 min of transcribed LSC interactions, this study identifies four recurring types of mixed messages: (1) criticizing + reinforcing consumer trust, (2) complaining + highlighting product features, (3) relation-threatening + fostering community solidarity, and (4) staging embarrassment + facilitating cultural socialization. To explain how ostensible offence functions in this context, we propose a three-step pragmatic mechanism. First, mismatch occurs when incongruent interpersonal messages generate evaluative dissonance between surface offence and affiliative intent. Second, collaborative resolution emerges through institutional hybridity in identity, interactional framework, and communicative goals. Third, strategic recontextualization fulfills institutional functions, including enhancing credibility, sustaining engagement, and supporting cultural messaging. The findings demonstrate how strategic language use in LSC serves both commercial and sociocultural goals, contributing to pragmatic research on mock impoliteness in digital institutional discourse.
{"title":"“Do you have a conscience?”: Ostensible offence in hybrid interactions of live streaming commerce","authors":"Ping Liu , Linlin Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates ostensible offence, a distinctive form of mock impoliteness that couples apparently offensive elements with underlying affiliative intent. Although mock impoliteness has received considerable scholarly attention, ostensible offence within the hybrid institutional context of Chinese state-affiliated live streaming commerce (LSC) remains underexplored. Drawing on 5476 min of transcribed LSC interactions, this study identifies four recurring types of mixed messages: (1) criticizing + reinforcing consumer trust, (2) complaining + highlighting product features, (3) relation-threatening + fostering community solidarity, and (4) staging embarrassment + facilitating cultural socialization. To explain how ostensible offence functions in this context, we propose a three-step pragmatic mechanism. First, mismatch occurs when incongruent interpersonal messages generate evaluative dissonance between surface offence and affiliative intent. Second, collaborative resolution emerges through institutional hybridity in identity, interactional framework, and communicative goals. Third, strategic recontextualization fulfills institutional functions, including enhancing credibility, sustaining engagement, and supporting cultural messaging. The findings demonstrate how strategic language use in LSC serves both commercial and sociocultural goals, contributing to pragmatic research on mock impoliteness in digital institutional discourse.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Pages 57-77"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144810255","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-27DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.003
Madeleine Wirzén
This article examines the interactional functions of hypothetical direct reported speech (HDRS) in Swedish adoption assessment interviews. Drawing on 36 h of recorded conversations between social workers and prospective adoptive parents, the study uses conversation analysis to explore how HDRS is employed to accomplish institutional tasks. The analysis shows that both social workers and applicants use HDRS to navigate the moral, emotional, and relational complexities of the assessment process. Social workers use HDRS to challenge assumptions, introduce alternative perspectives, and mitigate the face-threatening nature of advice-giving. Applicants, in turn, use HDRS to construct parenting identities, demonstrate child-centered reasoning, and express emotional commitment. Rather than functioning merely as a rhetorical device, HDRS emerges as an interactional practice that enacts institutional expectations, facilitates perspective-taking, and renders parenting approaches evaluable. By performing rather than simply describing future actions, participants make their positions more vivid and credible. This study contributes to research on institutional interaction and reported speech by demonstrating how HDRS supports both evaluative and pedagogical goals in adoption interviews, thereby highlighting the hybrid nature of the activity.
{"title":"‘If they say “there's a photo ban and any clothes you can forget about taking them”’: Interactional functions of hypothetical direct reported speech in adoption assessment interviews","authors":"Madeleine Wirzén","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines the interactional functions of hypothetical direct reported speech (HDRS) in Swedish adoption assessment interviews. Drawing on 36 h of recorded conversations between social workers and prospective adoptive parents, the study uses conversation analysis to explore how HDRS is employed to accomplish institutional tasks. The analysis shows that both social workers and applicants use HDRS to navigate the moral, emotional, and relational complexities of the assessment process. Social workers use HDRS to challenge assumptions, introduce alternative perspectives, and mitigate the face-threatening nature of advice-giving. Applicants, in turn, use HDRS to construct parenting identities, demonstrate child-centered reasoning, and express emotional commitment. Rather than functioning merely as a rhetorical device, HDRS emerges as an interactional practice that enacts institutional expectations, facilitates perspective-taking, and renders parenting approaches evaluable. By performing rather than simply describing future actions, participants make their positions more vivid and credible. This study contributes to research on institutional interaction and reported speech by demonstrating how HDRS supports both evaluative and pedagogical goals in adoption interviews, thereby highlighting the hybrid nature of the activity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Pages 139-151"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144908531","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-13DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.015
Sofia Navarro Beck
The present study examines a sample of the grooming chat-logs provided by the Perverted Justice Foundation (PJF) using a digital Conversation Analysis (CA) approach. I argue that many previous studies on online grooming discourse based on the PJF dataset have routinely overlooked key contextual and interactional features of these conversations. This is mainly due to the tendency to focus only on the groomers' utterances, while sytematically ignoring the decoys' contributions. In this study I demonstrate how by including both the groomers' and decoys’ utterances it is possible to provide a more comprehensive understanding of groomer-decoy dynamics. By focusing specifically on the use of the discourse marker lol (laughing out loud), this study reveals that the decoys are active in shaping the entire interaction with the groomers, and that their use of lol plays a significant role in managing the conversation.
Recent years have seen an increase in the prevalence of vigilante so-called ‘pedo-hunter’ groups and their use of decoys to catch offenders worldwide. This study serves as a proof of concept, underscoring the relevance of examining the PJF data by applying microanalytic principles offered by CA. The article thus advocates for future sequential analyses of authentic grooming data to further advance our understanding of digital sexual offenses.
{"title":"“im embarrassed 2 say lol”: The functions of lol in online groomer-decoy interactions","authors":"Sofia Navarro Beck","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.015","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.015","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The present study examines a sample of the grooming chat-logs provided by the Perverted Justice Foundation (PJF) using a digital Conversation Analysis (CA) approach. I argue that many previous studies on online grooming discourse based on the PJF dataset have routinely overlooked key contextual and interactional features of these conversations. This is mainly due to the tendency to focus only on the groomers' utterances, while sytematically ignoring the decoys' contributions. In this study I demonstrate how by including both the groomers' and decoys’ utterances it is possible to provide a more comprehensive understanding of groomer-decoy dynamics. By focusing specifically on the use of the discourse marker <em>lol</em> (laughing out loud), this study reveals that the decoys are active in shaping the entire interaction with the groomers, and that their use of <em>lol</em> plays a significant role in managing the conversation.</div><div>Recent years have seen an increase in the prevalence of vigilante so-called ‘pedo-hunter’ groups and their use of decoys to catch offenders worldwide. This study serves as a proof of concept, underscoring the relevance of examining the PJF data by applying microanalytic principles offered by CA. The article thus advocates for future sequential analyses of authentic grooming data to further advance our understanding of digital sexual offenses.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Pages 89-102"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144829865","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-29DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.004
Felicia Oamen
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has dominated Nigeria's political space since 2015. However, Peter Obi's emergence as the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in 2022 challenged the hegemony of APC. This study, therefore, critically examined the pragmatic features of Obi's world press conference speeches, which were produced to contest Bola Ahmed Tinubu's (the APC presidential candidate) victory in the 2023 presidential election. Specifically, the paper analysed the pragmatics of stance-taking to examine the ideological framing of resistance in Nigeria's political discourse. Data comprised three media speeches delivered by Obi after Tinubu's victory. The study adopted Mey's (2001) critical pragmatics, notions from van Dijk's approach to critical discourse analysis, and Hyland's (2005) stance theory, with focus on the metaphorical characteristics, speech acts, implicatures, presupposition and politeness norms deployed to represent self as the ideal leader. The representations were achieved through strategies of victimisation, delegitimisation, blame allocation, subtle criminalization of others, and self-glorification. The study concluded that stance taking by Nigerian politicians is moderated by speaker's background knowledge of the country's restive democratic environment.
{"title":"A critical pragmatic study of stance in peter Obi's world press conference speeches","authors":"Felicia Oamen","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The All Progressives Congress (APC) has dominated Nigeria's political space since 2015. However, Peter Obi's emergence as the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in 2022 challenged the hegemony of APC. This study, therefore, critically examined the pragmatic features of Obi's world press conference speeches, which were produced to contest Bola Ahmed Tinubu's (the APC presidential candidate) victory in the 2023 presidential election. Specifically, the paper analysed the pragmatics of stance-taking to examine the ideological framing of resistance in Nigeria's political discourse. Data comprised three media speeches delivered by Obi after Tinubu's victory. The study adopted Mey's (2001) critical pragmatics, notions from van Dijk's approach to critical discourse analysis, and Hyland's (2005) stance theory, with focus on the metaphorical characteristics, speech acts, implicatures, presupposition and politeness norms deployed to represent self as the ideal leader. The representations were achieved through strategies of victimisation, delegitimisation, blame allocation, subtle criminalization of others, and self-glorification. The study concluded that stance taking by Nigerian politicians is moderated by speaker's background knowledge of the country's restive democratic environment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Pages 168-178"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144913539","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-09-01DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.007
Seyed Mohammadreza Mortazavi , Hamed Zandi
{"title":"Corrigendum to ““#HaveYouNoShame”: Unraveling the pragmatics of impolite political hashtags” [J. Pragmatics 235 (2025) 238–253/12]","authors":"Seyed Mohammadreza Mortazavi , Hamed Zandi","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Page 179"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144925554","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}
Pub Date : 2025-10-01Epub Date: 2025-08-14DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.018
Guangyuan Yao , Zhaoxia Liu
This study investigates whether generative AI (represented by ChatGPT) can simulate or even emulate the stance expressed by human authors in the specific genre of academic book reviews. Through a comparative analysis of ChatGPT-generated reviews and human-authored reviews, this study focuses on the use of interactional metadiscourse markers (e.g., hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mention) to reveal current AI's capabilities and limitations in handling complex evaluative discourse and interpersonal interaction. The findings indicate that ChatGPT overall employs interactional metadiscourse markers more frequently than human authors, due to its significant overuse of attitude markers. However, it underuses hedges and self-mention significantly, suggesting a reliance on explicit evaluative language while lacking nuanced caution and authorial presence. These results highlight that current AI's simulation of human writing is genre-sensitive but incomplete, particularly in achieving the balance of caution, conviction, and authorial presence, which is typical of human reviewers. The distinct metadiscoursal patterns identified may serve as linguistic fingerprints for distinguishing AI-generated reviews from human-authored ones. The study also offers pedagogical implications, emphasizing the need for educators and students to recognize current AI's limitations in modeling nuanced stance and fostering authentic authorial voice in evaluative genres.
{"title":"Can AI simulate or emulate human stance? Using metadiscourse to compare GPT-generated and human-authored academic book reviews","authors":"Guangyuan Yao , Zhaoxia Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.018","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.07.018","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates whether generative AI (represented by ChatGPT) can simulate or even emulate the stance expressed by human authors in the specific genre of academic book reviews. Through a comparative analysis of ChatGPT-generated reviews and human-authored reviews, this study focuses on the use of interactional metadiscourse markers (e.g., hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mention) to reveal current AI's capabilities and limitations in handling complex evaluative discourse and interpersonal interaction. The findings indicate that ChatGPT overall employs interactional metadiscourse markers more frequently than human authors, due to its significant overuse of attitude markers. However, it underuses hedges and self-mention significantly, suggesting a reliance on explicit evaluative language while lacking nuanced caution and authorial presence. These results highlight that current AI's simulation of human writing is genre-sensitive but incomplete, particularly in achieving the balance of caution, conviction, and authorial presence, which is typical of human reviewers. The distinct metadiscoursal patterns identified may serve as linguistic fingerprints for distinguishing AI-generated reviews from human-authored ones. The study also offers pedagogical implications, emphasizing the need for educators and students to recognize current AI's limitations in modeling nuanced stance and fostering authentic authorial voice in evaluative genres.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"247 ","pages":"Pages 103-115"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144829866","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}