Pub Date : 2025-07-16DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.009
Aino Koivisto
This article relates to the research on discourse particles in the field of pragmatics. More specifically, it discusses the different uses of a Finnish construction that consists of a verb repeat of the previous turn and the questioning discourse particle vai (e.g. on vai be-3 PRT). Although syntactically a question, previous studies have repeatedly characterized [verb repeat + vai] as a responsive action, that is, a newsmark or an assertion of ritualized disbelief. This study shows that [verb repeat + vai] is involved in a variety of related actions that differ with respect to whether they treat the prior talk as delivering (unexpected) news or whether they foreshadow problems of acceptability and thus function as initiations of repair. The important parameters are the action [verb repeat + vai] responds to (whether it is a piece of news or something else) and the speakers’ epistemic positionings with respect to the matter at hand. The data are in Finnish with English translations. The method is Conversation Analysis.
{"title":"Finnish [verb repeat + vai]: Its use as a newsmark and a challenge","authors":"Aino Koivisto","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article relates to the research on discourse particles in the field of pragmatics. More specifically, it discusses the different uses of a Finnish construction that consists of a verb repeat of the previous turn and the questioning discourse particle <em>vai</em> (e.g. <em>on vai</em> be-3 PRT). Although syntactically a question, previous studies have repeatedly characterized [verb repeat + <em>vai</em>] as a responsive action, that is, a newsmark or an assertion of ritualized disbelief. This study shows that [verb repeat + <em>vai</em>] is involved in a variety of related actions that differ with respect to whether they treat the prior talk as delivering (unexpected) news or whether they foreshadow problems of acceptability and thus function as initiations of repair. The important parameters are the action [verb repeat <em>+ vai</em>] responds to (whether it is a piece of news or something else) and the speakers’ epistemic positionings with respect to the matter at hand. The data are in Finnish with English translations. The method is Conversation Analysis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Pages 90-107"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144657119","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 : 2025-07-15DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.010
Annalisa Federici
This article investigates the use of politeness strategies in online peer communication within a support group focused on anxiety and depression. Although health communication has been widely studied across various platforms, the application of (im)politeness theory to health-related Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) remains relatively unexplored. Using Brown and Levinson's framework alongside the relational work model, the study shows that potentially face-threatening acts such as seeking and offering support or advice are frequently softened through politeness strategies like hedging, indirectness, and claiming common ground. Self-disclosure emerges as a key discursive practice that allows individuals to express vulnerability and request help/advice without overt imposition, while those offering responses often convey empathy and guidance through personal storytelling. Advice is commonly delivered indirectly – using declaratives or interrogatives – even when no explicit request is made, reflecting the importance of relational work in these interactions. Through close analysis of selected forum threads, the study illustrates how participants use brief personal narratives to foster solidarity, express emotional and informational support, and navigate the complexities of advice-giving/seeking in ways that minimise threat to self and others. These findings contribute to ongoing discussions on CMC in healthcare by showing how politeness strategies underpin interactional norms in online mental health communities. By combining linguistic and discourse-pragmatic perspectives, the study highlights the role of language in shaping supportive environments and managing relational dynamics in non-clinical, peer-driven settings.
{"title":"The pragmatics of online healthcare communication: Politeness strategies in an anxiety and depression support community","authors":"Annalisa Federici","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article investigates the use of politeness strategies in online peer communication within a support group focused on anxiety and depression. Although health communication has been widely studied across various platforms, the application of (im)politeness theory to health-related Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) remains relatively unexplored. Using Brown and Levinson's framework alongside the relational work model, the study shows that potentially face-threatening acts such as seeking and offering support or advice are frequently softened through politeness strategies like hedging, indirectness, and claiming common ground. Self-disclosure emerges as a key discursive practice that allows individuals to express vulnerability and request help/advice without overt imposition, while those offering responses often convey empathy and guidance through personal storytelling. Advice is commonly delivered indirectly – using declaratives or interrogatives – even when no explicit request is made, reflecting the importance of relational work in these interactions. Through close analysis of selected forum threads, the study illustrates how participants use brief personal narratives to foster solidarity, express emotional and informational support, and navigate the complexities of advice-giving/seeking in ways that minimise threat to self and others. These findings contribute to ongoing discussions on CMC in healthcare by showing how politeness strategies underpin interactional norms in online mental health communities. By combining linguistic and discourse-pragmatic perspectives, the study highlights the role of language in shaping supportive environments and managing relational dynamics in non-clinical, peer-driven settings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Pages 74-89"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144632041","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.011
Xingsong Shi, Yiran Hou
Social media has revolutionized corporates’ approach to self-promotion, yet the multimodal construction of corporate discourse on social media has hardly been fully explored from either linguistic or intercultural perspectives. To explore how corporates use routine social media posts as dynamic sites of international branding, this study conducts an intercultural pragmatic investigation on how New Energy Vehicle (NEV) giants Tesla (U.S.) and BYD Auto (China, hereafter BYD) employ multimodal metadiscourse to navigate their corporate communication on X. The study extends Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse framework into the multimodal realm, integrating multi-semiotic modes such as text, pictures, emojis, hashtags, @mentions. In addition, by constructing a more inclusive multimodal metadiscourse framework, the study innovatively conducts frame-by-frame dissection of videos presented by the companies on X. Through examining the dynamic visual-textual interplay in 600 posts (300 per company), this study uncovers the profound influence of cultural values on the corporates’ patterns of deploying multimodal metadiscourse strategies. Among various differences observed, BYD’s preference for visualized pictures and videos reflects China’s high-context culture, whereas Tesla’s frequent use of emojis and other-mention pronouns aligns with the individualistic, low-context and low power distance cultural orientations in the U.S. The unignorable pragmatic functions of dynamic multimodal metadiscourse markers are scrutinized and highlighted, and the theoretical and pragmatic implications are discussed.
{"title":"A cross-cultural study of the dynamic multimodal metadiscourse used by American and Chinese NEV corporates on X","authors":"Xingsong Shi, Yiran Hou","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social media has revolutionized corporates’ approach to self-promotion, yet the multimodal construction of corporate discourse on social media has hardly been fully explored from either linguistic or intercultural perspectives. To explore how corporates use routine social media posts as dynamic sites of international branding, this study conducts an intercultural pragmatic investigation on how New Energy Vehicle (NEV) giants Tesla (U.S.) and BYD Auto (China, hereafter BYD) employ multimodal metadiscourse to navigate their corporate communication on X. The study extends Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse framework into the multimodal realm, integrating multi-semiotic modes such as text, pictures, emojis, hashtags, @mentions. In addition, by constructing a more inclusive multimodal metadiscourse framework, the study innovatively conducts frame-by-frame dissection of videos presented by the companies on X. Through examining the dynamic visual-textual interplay in 600 posts (300 per company), this study uncovers the profound influence of cultural values on the corporates’ patterns of deploying multimodal metadiscourse strategies. Among various differences observed, BYD’s preference for visualized pictures and videos reflects China’s high-context culture, whereas Tesla’s frequent use of emojis and other-mention pronouns aligns with the individualistic, low-context and low power distance cultural orientations in the U.S. The unignorable pragmatic functions of dynamic multimodal metadiscourse markers are scrutinized and highlighted, and the theoretical and pragmatic implications are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Pages 54-73"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144611873","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 : 2025-07-11DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.008
Manuel David González Pérez
Spatial communication has been at the forefront of recent research in the linguistic, anthropological and cognitive sciences. Independently, a great deal of attention has been devoted to linguistic resources, including spatial language, deployed to structure and organise discourse and conversation. Demonstrative systems are relevant to both lines of enquiry because they can express spatial meanings to locate referents in the real-world (aka exophoric uses) whilst at the same time exhibiting discourse-structuring functions that help speakers and hearers keep track of what has been said (aka endophoric uses). Situated at the intersection between both paradigms, the present article presents novel empirical data on Phola geophysical deixis with a twofold focus. After providing extensive multimodal evidence that Phola demonstratives encode elevation contrasts in a polysemous and pragmatically flexible manner, the discussion turns to their discourse-structuring functions, which are typologically rare. In particular, ke55 ‘that down(hill)’ is found to exhibit article-like uses indexing referents that are already identified, that are easy to identify, or whose exophoric identity is irrelevant. Both the spatial underspecification of Phola geophysical demonstratives and their discourse–interactional properties shed new light on the interplay between exophoric and endophoric uses and the fluidity between spatial cognition and more abstract cognitive processes.
空间交流一直是语言学、人类学和认知科学研究的前沿。另外，语言资源（包括空间语言）也被用于构建和组织语篇和对话。指示系统与这两种研究方向都相关，因为它们可以表达空间意义，以定位现实世界中的指涉物（即外指用法），同时展示话语结构功能，帮助说话者和听者跟踪所说的内容（即内指用法）。位于两种范式之间的交叉点，本文提出了具有双重焦点的Phola地球物理指示的新经验数据。在提供了广泛的多模态证据，证明Phola指示语以多义和灵活的语用方式编码提升对比之后，讨论转向它们在类型学上罕见的话语结构功能。特别是，ke55 ‘ that down(hill) ’被发现表现出类似文章的用法，索引已经确定的，容易确定的，或者其外部身份无关的指示物。Phola地球物理指示语的空间不规范及其话语相互作用特性为外显和内显使用之间的相互作用以及空间认知与更抽象的认知过程之间的流动性提供了新的视角。
{"title":"From elevation to identifiability: Topography as discourse-cognitive signposting","authors":"Manuel David González Pérez","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Spatial communication has been at the forefront of recent research in the linguistic, anthropological and cognitive sciences. Independently, a great deal of attention has been devoted to linguistic resources, including spatial language, deployed to structure and organise discourse and conversation. Demonstrative systems are relevant to both lines of enquiry because they can express spatial meanings to locate referents in the real-world (aka exophoric uses) whilst at the same time exhibiting discourse-structuring functions that help speakers and hearers keep track of what has been said (aka endophoric uses). Situated at the intersection between both paradigms, the present article presents novel empirical data on Phola geophysical deixis with a twofold focus. After providing extensive multimodal evidence that Phola demonstratives encode elevation contrasts in a polysemous and pragmatically flexible manner, the discussion turns to their discourse-structuring functions, which are typologically rare. In particular, <em>ke</em><sup><em>55</em></sup> ‘that down(hill)’ is found to exhibit article-like uses indexing referents that are already identified, that are easy to identify, or whose exophoric identity is irrelevant. Both the spatial underspecification of Phola geophysical demonstratives and their discourse–interactional properties shed new light on the interplay between exophoric and endophoric uses and the fluidity between spatial cognition and more abstract cognitive processes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Pages 14-53"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144604388","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 : 2025-07-11DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.006
Laurence R. Horn
This study focuses on two variably stigmatized constructions in non-mainstream English and the implications for social pragmatics of how these constructions and their users are assessed. Unlike non-standard constructions broadly viewed as “bad English”, non-polarity anymore(Gas is really expensive anymore) and personal datives (I need me a new phone) are not stigmatized within the relevant core speech communities. When noticed by out-group speakers, however, such constructions are typically judged as incorrect and their users as illiterate or uneducated. Such expressions and constructions function as both positive and negative markers of group identity. In-group speakers are sensitive to the contempt and inauthenticity of out-group “elitist” politicians and recording artists who impersonate the non-standard speakers they view as uneducated hicks. The divergent social meanings assigned to a given usage in different contexts parallel the distinct social meanings carried by ethnic and gendered slurs based on who “owns” the expressions in question and on power and status asymmetries. Extending Nunberg 2018, it is argued that the derogation associated with both slurs and appropriated constructions arises as a Manner implicature illustrating “ventriloquism”, a practice by which speakers affiliate themselves with a like-minded community of bigots and linguistic profilers.
{"title":"The stigma enigma: When the personal (dative) is political","authors":"Laurence R. Horn","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study focuses on two variably stigmatized constructions in non-mainstream English and the implications for social pragmatics of how these constructions and their users are assessed. Unlike non-standard constructions broadly viewed as “bad English”, non-polarity <em>anymore</em> <em>(Gas is really expensive anymore)</em> and personal datives <em>(I need me a new phone)</em> are not stigmatized within the relevant core speech communities. When noticed by out-group speakers, however, such constructions are typically judged as incorrect and their users as illiterate or uneducated. Such expressions and constructions function as both positive and negative markers of group identity. In-group speakers are sensitive to the contempt and inauthenticity of out-group “elitist” politicians and recording artists who impersonate the non-standard speakers they view as uneducated hicks. The divergent social meanings assigned to a given usage in different contexts parallel the distinct social meanings carried by ethnic and gendered slurs based on who “owns” the expressions in question and on power and status asymmetries. Extending Nunberg 2018, it is argued that the derogation associated with both slurs and appropriated constructions arises as a Manner implicature illustrating “ventriloquism”, a practice by which speakers affiliate themselves with a like-minded community of bigots and linguistic profilers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"246 ","pages":"Pages 1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144595661","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 : 2025-07-07DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.007
Mark Hoff , Scott A. Schwenter
English wait and Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese espera/pera/peraí ‘wait (there)’ are derived from imperatives that signal physical waiting. Using examples from tweets, text messages, and spoken interactions, we offer an exploratory investigation of the metadiscursive functions of these wait-forms as discourse markers that signal the need to pause and adjust interlocutors' mental discourse models of the common ground (CG) before proceeding.
We show that wait-forms appear in dialogues and monologues, to signal misalignment with an interlocutor or with one's own expectations, and can be triggered by both linguistic and non-linguistic material in the CG or a speaker's own mental model. Wait-forms introduce expressions of surprisal, challenge presuppositions, refer back to unresolved discursive material, and convey sarcasm—all of which share the core pragmatic effect of initiating repair of a perceived misalignment in speakers' mental models of the ongoing discourse. Tests of pragmatic function show that these wait-forms are constrained to refer to content assumed to be part of the CG (Wait, didn't you hear the news?) and that their removal results in loss of an important pragmatic cue that relates the upcoming modification to existing CG content.
Our analysis contributes to the body of pragmatic-typological literature on the cross-linguistic uniformity of discursive repair strategies. It goes beyond this research, however, in highlighting the role that discourse markers can play in CG management in dialogues, and furthermore demonstrating their capacity to indicate self-initiated misalignment of a speaker's mental model in monologues, despite the origins of these forms as addressee-oriented imperatives.
{"title":"Wait, espera, peraí: Signalling discourse model misalignment in English, Spanish, and Portuguese","authors":"Mark Hoff , Scott A. Schwenter","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>English <em>wait</em> and Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese <em>espera</em>/<em>pera/peraí</em> ‘wait (there)’ are derived from imperatives that signal physical waiting. Using examples from tweets, text messages, and spoken interactions, we offer an exploratory investigation of the metadiscursive functions of these <em>wait</em>-forms as discourse markers that signal the need to pause and adjust interlocutors' mental discourse models of the common ground (CG) before proceeding.</div><div>We show that <em>wait-</em>forms appear in dialogues and monologues, to signal misalignment with an interlocutor or with one's own expectations, and can be triggered by both linguistic and non-linguistic material in the CG or a speaker's own mental model. <em>Wait</em>-forms introduce expressions of surprisal, challenge presuppositions, refer back to unresolved discursive material, and convey sarcasm—all of which share the core pragmatic effect of initiating repair of a perceived misalignment in speakers' mental models of the ongoing discourse. Tests of pragmatic function show that these <em>wait-</em>forms are constrained to refer to content assumed to be part of the CG (<em>Wait, didn't you hear the news</em>?) and that their removal results in loss of an important pragmatic cue that relates the upcoming modification to existing CG content.</div><div>Our analysis contributes to the body of pragmatic-typological literature on the cross-linguistic uniformity of discursive repair strategies. It goes beyond this research, however, in highlighting the role that discourse markers can play in CG management in dialogues, and furthermore demonstrating their capacity to indicate self-initiated misalignment of a speaker's mental model in monologues, despite the origins of these forms as addressee-oriented imperatives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"245 ","pages":"Pages 119-139"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144571637","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 : 2025-06-27DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.002
Jueyun Su
Previous empirical studies have revealed variation in speech act realization. A common methodological approach involves coding strategy and modification types used in particular scenarios to quantify variation at the actional level. This study adopts a novel approach by focusing on first-order style labels rather than particular speech acts, speaker types, or contexts to investigate style-specific patterns in speech act realization. Specifically, style markers related to speech act realization, including internal lexical modifiers and semantic formulas, are identified through concordance analysis of keywords and key clusters generated by comparing a target corpus of style-specific speech with a reference corpus of other styles. This style marker analysis is applied to examine sajiao (‘act cute’), a widely practiced and culturally significant communication style in (Mandarin) Chinese associated with cuteness, childlikeness, and femininity, yet sometimes evoking negative perceptions. The case study found internal lexical modifiers that align with previous research on sajiao, as well as semantic formulas that have received limited attention. These formulas appear in requests, refusals, emotives of longing, complaints, and compliments. The sajiao style indexes an in-group relationship, positioning the addressee as a caregiver. Alongside self-serving sajiao usage, corpus data also revealed: 1) strategic uses of sajiao for altruistic purposes, and 2) sajiao actors' obligation to reciprocate through expressions of appreciation and affection. Sajiao was also strategically used to reduce social distance with out-group members. The study suggests three key aspects of speech act realization: formal-level variation, the synergistic effects of co-occurring forms, and stylistic choices that deviate from dominant norms.
{"title":"Style markers in speech act realization: A corpus-based analysis of the cute style sajiao in Chinese","authors":"Jueyun Su","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous empirical studies have revealed variation in speech act realization. A common methodological approach involves coding strategy and modification types used in particular scenarios to quantify variation at the actional level. This study adopts a novel approach by focusing on first-order style labels rather than particular speech acts, speaker types, or contexts to investigate style-specific patterns in speech act realization. Specifically, style markers related to speech act realization, including internal lexical modifiers and semantic formulas, are identified through concordance analysis of keywords and key clusters generated by comparing a target corpus of style-specific speech with a reference corpus of other styles. This style marker analysis is applied to examine <em>sajiao</em> (‘act cute’), a widely practiced and culturally significant communication style in (Mandarin) Chinese associated with cuteness, childlikeness, and femininity, yet sometimes evoking negative perceptions. The case study found internal lexical modifiers that align with previous research on <em>sajiao</em>, as well as semantic formulas that have received limited attention. These formulas appear in requests, refusals, emotives of longing, complaints, and compliments. The <em>sajiao</em> style indexes an in-group relationship, positioning the addressee as a caregiver. Alongside self-serving <em>sajiao</em> usage, corpus data also revealed: 1) strategic uses of <em>sajiao</em> for altruistic purposes, and 2) <em>sajiao</em> actors' obligation to reciprocate through expressions of appreciation and affection. <em>Sajiao</em> was also strategically used to reduce social distance with out-group members. The study suggests three key aspects of speech act realization: formal-level variation, the synergistic effects of co-occurring forms, and stylistic choices that deviate from dominant norms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"245 ","pages":"Pages 101-118"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144489897","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 : 2025-06-26DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.005
Yi Shan , Weiwei Chu
This study investigates the prosody-pragmatics interface of the Mandarin Chinese discourse marker (DM) fanzheng in spontaneous conversation, focusing on how prosodic features contribute to its functional differentiation at the left and right peripheries of utterances. Using data from the CABank Mandarin CallFriend Mainland Corpus, we conducted a comparative analysis of 322 tokens of fanzheng, examining their distribution, prosodic characteristics, and pragmatic functions. Our findings reveal a significant distributional asymmetry, with 82 % of tokens occurring at the left periphery and 12 % at the right periphery. This asymmetry correlates with distinct functional roles, supporting the concept of functional asymmetry in DMs. Prosodic analysis across multiple variables (duration, tempo, intensity, and pause duration) showed significant differences between left- and right-periphery tokens. Based on these differences, we constructed a prosody-periphery model that achieved 97 % accuracy in classifying fanzheng tokens, demonstrating the potential of prosodic features in disambiguating DM functions. The study contributes to the growing body of research on the prosody-pragmatics interface by providing empirical evidence for the role of prosody in disambiguating DM functions and offering a replicable methodology for investigating other DMs. Our findings align with previous research on DM prosody across languages while also highlighting language-specific factors that influence DM usage. This research has implications for language pedagogy, natural language processing, and future studies in discourse analysis. It underscores the need for further cross-linguistic research to explore potential universal patterns in the prosody-pragmatics interface of DMs and calls for investigating the intentional exploitation of prosodic ambiguity in communication strategies.
{"title":"Prosodic disambiguation of the Mandarin discourse marker Fanzheng (“anyway”): A corpus-based study of functional asymmetry at utterance peripheries","authors":"Yi Shan , Weiwei Chu","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the prosody-pragmatics interface of the Mandarin Chinese discourse marker (DM) <em>fanzheng</em> in spontaneous conversation, focusing on how prosodic features contribute to its functional differentiation at the left and right peripheries of utterances. Using data from the CABank Mandarin CallFriend Mainland Corpus, we conducted a comparative analysis of 322 tokens of <em>fanzheng</em>, examining their distribution, prosodic characteristics, and pragmatic functions. Our findings reveal a significant distributional asymmetry, with 82 % of tokens occurring at the left periphery and 12 % at the right periphery. This asymmetry correlates with distinct functional roles, supporting the concept of functional asymmetry in DMs. Prosodic analysis across multiple variables (duration, tempo, intensity, and pause duration) showed significant differences between left- and right-periphery tokens. Based on these differences, we constructed a prosody-periphery model that achieved 97 % accuracy in classifying <em>fanzheng</em> tokens, demonstrating the potential of prosodic features in disambiguating DM functions. The study contributes to the growing body of research on the prosody-pragmatics interface by providing empirical evidence for the role of prosody in disambiguating DM functions and offering a replicable methodology for investigating other DMs. Our findings align with previous research on DM prosody across languages while also highlighting language-specific factors that influence DM usage. This research has implications for language pedagogy, natural language processing, and future studies in discourse analysis. It underscores the need for further cross-linguistic research to explore potential universal patterns in the prosody-pragmatics interface of DMs and calls for investigating the intentional exploitation of prosodic ambiguity in communication strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"245 ","pages":"Pages 84-100"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144489896","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 : 2025-06-24DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.05.009
Misao Okada
This paper shows how short or longer formats of instruction (i.e. phrases, clauses, or multi-unit turns) emerge in the face-to-face boxing activity of ‘mitt-hitting’: a coach presents a mitt as a target with verbal instructions and the instructed boxer hits it, as they practice one type of punch after another. In this activity, different turn-sizes in the coach's verbal instruction, (e.g. phrases, clauses, or multi-unit turns) are tied to whether or not the participants orient to immediate initiation of the targeted punch proper around when the coach's mitt position is complete and ready. When the participants orient to immediate initiation of the targeted punch proper upon the completed target, the coach's verbal instructions are often short, e.g. noun phrases. In contrast, the instruction formats can be clauses or multi-unit turns, in addition to phrases, when the participant(s) walk or step before the initiation of the punch proper and thus orient to the non-immediacy of initiation of the punch proper vis-à-vis the completed targets. Their walking or stepping allows the coach to produce those longer formats before the punch initiation. Thus, based on multimodal analyses of embodied activity, this study shows that grammatical units are inseparable from the multiple participants' moving bodies, which are directed as a gestalt toward the local implementation of punch initiations.
{"title":"Phrasal or clausal grammatical formats of instructions in a boxing ‘mitt-hitting’ activity","authors":"Misao Okada","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.05.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.05.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper shows how short or longer formats of instruction (i.e. phrases, clauses, or multi-unit turns) emerge in the face-to-face boxing activity of ‘mitt-hitting’: a coach presents a mitt as a target with verbal instructions and the instructed boxer hits it, as they practice one type of punch after another. In this activity, different turn-sizes in the coach's verbal instruction, (e.g. phrases, clauses, or multi-unit turns) are tied to whether or not the participants orient to immediate initiation of the targeted punch proper around when the coach's mitt position is complete and ready. When the participants orient to immediate initiation of the targeted punch proper upon the completed target, the coach's verbal instructions are often short, e.g. noun phrases. In contrast, the instruction formats can be clauses or multi-unit turns, in addition to phrases, when the participant(s) walk or step before the initiation of the punch proper and thus orient to the non-immediacy of initiation of the punch proper vis-à-vis the completed targets. Their walking or stepping allows the coach to produce those longer formats before the punch initiation. Thus, based on multimodal analyses of embodied activity, this study shows that grammatical units are inseparable from the multiple participants' moving bodies, which are directed as a gestalt toward the local implementation of punch initiations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"245 ","pages":"Pages 65-83"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144366648","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 : 2025-06-23DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.001
Rosario Neyra , Kobin H. Kendrick , Merran Toerien
This paper explores the intersection between institutional identity and recruitment practices in craft workshops. It argues that students orient to both their own identity as students in need and to the instructor's institutional identity as assistance-provider as a key resource for obtaining assistance. The analysis is organised into three main analytic sections: instructors self-selecting to assist without being explicitly addressed, students selecting instructors as providers of assistance, and students pursuing assistance when an initial attempt is not immediately successful. Across these practices, students rely on the instructor's category-bound activity of providing assistance and their own identity as students. Through the analysis of a corpus of video recordings from a range of craft workshops, this study demonstrates how institutional identity and the category-bound activity of providing assistance are procedurally consequential in recruitment, highlighting the omnirelevance of the identity of the instructor in workshops. The data are in English.
{"title":"How students get help: Institutional identities as a resource for recruitment","authors":"Rosario Neyra , Kobin H. Kendrick , Merran Toerien","doi":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.pragma.2025.06.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the intersection between institutional identity and recruitment practices in craft workshops. It argues that students orient to both their own identity as students in need and to the instructor's institutional identity as assistance-provider as a key resource for obtaining assistance. The analysis is organised into three main analytic sections: instructors self-selecting to assist without being explicitly addressed, students selecting instructors as providers of assistance, and students pursuing assistance when an initial attempt is not immediately successful. Across these practices, students rely on the instructor's category-bound activity of providing assistance and their own identity as students. Through the analysis of a corpus of video recordings from a range of craft workshops, this study demonstrates how institutional identity and the category-bound activity of providing assistance are procedurally consequential in recruitment, highlighting the omnirelevance of the identity of the instructor in workshops. The data are in English.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":16899,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pragmatics","volume":"245 ","pages":"Pages 50-64"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144365098","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}
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