Journal of Pragmatics最新文献

While previous studies on ostensible speech acts mainly concern ostensible invitations, ostensible refusals or ostensible compliments, few have touched upon ostensible criticisms. To fill the knowledge gap, this study collected online data through Baidu search engine to examine criticisables and functions of ostensible criticisms in Chinese contexts, and discusses the underlying sociocultural factors. The findings reveal that (1) the criticisables are “good shortcomings” that can range from addressee's being overworking to absentee's being too showy. (2) such ostensible criticisms can function to express implicit flattery, construct positive image or convey humblebrag; and (3) factors such as conflicting communicative needs, belief in Confucian doctrines of “lǐmào” (politeness) and “héxié” (harmony), and face sensitivities may underlie the performance of ostensible criticisms in Chinese context.

Joint actions like everyday conversations feature the use of speech particles like back-channels or discourse markers to coordinate transitions from one part of the action to another. Transitions can be either horizontal (within tasks or subtasks; i.e., moving from one step to the next in a task) or vertical (between tasks or subtasks). In English, okay is typically used to coordinate vertical transitions. In institutionalized joint actions, okay is used especially by institutional representatives to manage the joint action. Little is known about these uses of okay in other languages, or about when okay may have diffused into those languages. We investigated the use of okay as a vertical coordination marker in Swiss German research interviews and Swiss French job interviews. Okay was consistently used as a vertical transition marker in both settings, especially by interviewers. Younger participants used okay more often than older participants. The findings suggest that okay may have diffused into other languages not only as a marker of agreement, but also as a marker for coordinating transitions.

This study examines the usage of the English politeness marker please on a Chinese microblogging platform, focusing on its functional adaptation and the motivations for its borrowing. The findings reveal that please, as a pragmatically borrowed item (i.e., a pragmatic borrowing), differs from both its English etymon and Chinese equivalents. While it retains the preference for clause-final positions and the politeness-enhancing function of its English etymon, it has become predominantly used with imperatives on the public social media platform, often accompanied by features that indicate a strengthened requesting force. Additionally, please has acquired a new function of marking in-group identity and positive politeness among Chinese youth on social media, a function absent in the native equivalents. This study suggests that the unique function of please motivates its adoption by Chinese young people who seek to balance closeness and politeness in peer communication. The functional adaptation undergone by please exemplifies a common pattern in pragmatic borrowings that compete with native equivalents.

Despite increasing attention to rapport building or management in police discourse, existing research on how and why particular types of police units such as traffic police officers manage rapport with civilians is still in its infancy. This study draws on a revised model of rapport management to scrutinize a veteran Chinese traffic police officer's discursive management of rapport with civilians during traffic law enforcement. It finds that the officer almost invariably seeks to maintain or enhance rapport with respect to diverse rapport bases through various discursive practices. It is argued that the officer's predominant positive rapport management may signify his effort to meet the requirement of civilized law enforcement in contemporary China. The findings contribute to the rapport-relevant studies in the police discourse through identifying more rapport bases managed by a veteran Chinese traffic police officer, and offering a socio-cultural account of positive rapport management.

This study provides a framework for assessing doctors' verbal engagement during medical consultations. It quantifies doctors' degrees of resonance (Du Bois, 2014), a form of interactional alignment (Pickering and Garrod, 2021) that occurs when speakers imitate and re-use words and constructions uttered by their interlocutors. Resonance often involves creativity and active participation in others’ speech, overtly signalling that what they said is relevant for continuing the interaction (Tantucci and Wang, 2021). We looked at Chinese naturalistic consultations and explored whether resonance produced by Chinese doctors with a background in Western medicine (WM) differs from Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) doctors. Our data includes 60 online medical consultations and shows that TCM doctors’ resonance is remarkably higher. This reflected stronger involvement in patients’ speech in combination with other interactional indicators of engagement such as sentence peripheral markers of intersubjectivity (Tantucci, 2021) and strategies of relevance acknowledgement (Tantucci, 2023). The pragmatics of TCM doctors is also characterised by a more directive language geared towards a healthy lifestyle, whereas WM doctors favour etiological assessment, with a predominant use of assertive speech acts.

This study explores self-deprecation within the context of Korean reality TV shows, examining its multifaceted functions, recipient responses, and interactional consequences. Through analysis of excerpts from two Korean TV shows, Infinite Challenge and I Am Solo, various uses of self-deprecation emerge: as a defense mechanism, self-blame tactic, means of reprimand, and even as an accusatory tool. The findings illustrate the complexity of acts with self-deprecation, diverging from previous studies where self-deprecation is the main action for all participants. Participants may overtly acknowledge self-deprecating actions, yet these actions can also be layered with other interactional goals such as defense, reprimand, or accusation. Consequently, misinterpretations of self-deprecation can lead to tension or unintended outcomes. This study underscores the contextual and contingent nature of self-deprecation, emphasizing its role as a dynamic “communication practice” (Speer, 2019) in human interaction. By delving into the intricate interplay between self-deprecation and other interactional goals, this research contributes to a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon in social contexts.

Demonstrative forms in Cebuano are highly versatile and, as often seen crosslinguistically, can serve discourse deictic, discourse marking, and placeholding functions. Some of the demonstratives have also developed into speaker stance markers. Using data from spontaneous conversations, this paper examines how Cebuano demonstratives, especially the form kanάng, have extended their use from the referential domain to the non-referential (in particular, pragmatic) domain. The demonstrative form kanάng, spoken with a tone of uncertainty, is often used as a repair marker and filler, as a topic marker and mental staging device for upcoming information, as well as a hedge when a speaker is dealing with sensitive or awkward topics. This study also compares kanάng with other stance markers, in particular negation markers and interjectory particles that are likewise recruited in clause-initial position to mark varying stance intensities, with results indicating that kanάng expresses the mildest stance, hence its frequent use as a politeness marking device.

Discourse markers are critical for maintaining discourse coherence. This study investigated the regional and gender variations of discourse markers zhege and nage in spoken Chinese. In this study, the interactive conversations were collected from native Chinese speakers in Taiwan and Chinese mainland, including 36 males and 50 females in each group. Regarding the influence of region, both groups used a higher number of nage than zhege. And they used zhege and nage in similar conversational situations (i.e., zhege was more often used as resumptive opener than nage, while nage was more frequently used as pause filler than zhege). However, the significant differences in the frequency of zhege and the preference of ‘only use zhege’ were observed between the two groups. Regarding the impact of gender, there existed significant differences in the frequency of zhege and the preference of ‘only use nage’ between Mainland males and females. Also, these differences were found between Mainland and Taiwanese males. By contrast, Taiwanese males and females used zhege and nage in similar ways, as do Mainland and Taiwanese females. It means that region is a more influential factor than gender on the use of zhege and nage.

This article scrutinizes how speakers in multi-party conversations on visual art use the Swedish connective för att ‘because’ in conjunction with their embodied behavior to elaborate on their prior contributions that have not received sufficient uptake by their recipients. The present multimodal interactional analysis demonstrates that the general interactional motivations for the use of turn-expanding practices with för att are to manage not fully affiliating responses or a complete lack of uptake. The connective för att operates discursively and marks the upcoming talk as an explanation of some sort. The för att-prefaced contribution serves as a justification and a warrant for a first action, as well as elaborating on or merely reformulating it. The speakers also signal with embodied cues that they are prepared to elaborate on their first contribution. After having deployed depicting or pointing gestures during their first contribution, the speakers do not retract to a full embodied rest position, but halt in an intermediate body position alongside or directly after the syntactic completion of the first contribution. Thus, the speakers treat the transition space multimodally as optional slots for further talk, depending on the recipiency that the initial contribution accomplishes.