In this introduction to the present special issue, we first define the notion of Small Talk from a pragmatic point of view and interconnect Small Talk with interaction ritual. Following this, we point out why a speech act-based approach is particularly useful to study Small Talk in a rigorous and replicable way. We also introduce the speech act framework used by all the studies in the special issue. Finally, we introduce the contents of the special issue.
在本特刊的导言中,我们首先从实用主义的角度定义了 "小型交谈 "的概念,并将 "小型交谈 "与互动仪式联系起来。随后,我们将指出为什么基于言语行为的方法特别有助于以严谨和可复制的方式研究 Small Talk。我们还介绍了特刊中所有研究都使用的言语行为框架。最后,我们将介绍本特刊的内容。
{"title":"Studying Small Talk from a pragmatic angle: An introduction","authors":"J. House, D. Kádár","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00704","url":null,"abstract":"In this introduction to the present special issue, we first define the notion of Small Talk from a pragmatic point of view and interconnect Small Talk with interaction ritual. Following this, we point out why a speech act-based approach is particularly useful to study Small Talk in a rigorous and replicable way. We also introduce the speech act framework used by all the studies in the special issue. Finally, we introduce the contents of the special issue.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":"23 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139010015","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}
This paper serves as the postscript to the present special issue, in which I briefly report on my impressions of reading the papers. I start with the theoretical models guiding the empirical studies in the special issue. Then, I review the contents of the papers and discuss their findings. Finally, I conclude this postscript with suggestions for future research.
{"title":"Small talk is not small: A commentary on pragmatics studies on small talk (postscript)","authors":"Wei Ren","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00737","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00737","url":null,"abstract":"This paper serves as the postscript to the present special issue, in which I briefly report on my impressions of reading the papers. I start with the theoretical models guiding the empirical studies in the special issue. Then, I review the contents of the papers and discuss their findings. Finally, I conclude this postscript with suggestions for future research.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":"4 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139007895","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}
The current interpretive study aimed to characterize the (non-)ritual, phatic clusters of speech acts that conventionally recur around the opening/closing phases of Persian speaking students' social encounters or occur during the core (or ‘business’) phase of natural interactions as small talk in Persian. The study was conducted in Iran's Persian linguaculture where considerable social-cultural-economic changes have taken place over the last decade or so impacting the form and content of phatic interaction in all sectors of the society. The participants of the study were 97 Persian-speaking university students attending a state-run university located in the southwest of Iran. The students were asked to audio-record their natural interactions in four different social encounters varied based on the standard sociolinguistic parameters of Social Distance and Power (+/−SD, +/−P). We adopted House & Kádár's (2022) pragmalinguistic and speech act-anchored model of phatic interaction to code the (non-)ritual realization patterns of small talks around the opening, closing, and core phases of interaction. The results indicate that small talks which are co-constructed by the Persian interactants at the opening and closing phases of their social encounters are highly ritualized in terms of the speech act types and pragmalinguistic structures employed. Further, interpersonal interchanges which involve differential sociolinguistic P and SD values require more tactfulness and care in adhering to the greeting and parting conventions as more face-threat is potentially implicated. In terms of the medial phase, except for a small number of ostensible realizations of different speech acts such as invites, offers, and apologies, core off-topic phaticity was perceived to be non-ritual and discursive in Persian the interpretation of which heavily relies upon shared sociopragmatic knowledge of the linguaculture.
{"title":"Exploring (non-)ritual patterns of phatic interaction (small talks) at different phases of social encounters in Persian linguaculture","authors":"Zohreh R. Eslami, A. Mirzaei, Maryam Farnia","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00692","url":null,"abstract":"The current interpretive study aimed to characterize the (non-)ritual, phatic clusters of speech acts that conventionally recur around the opening/closing phases of Persian speaking students' social encounters or occur during the core (or ‘business’) phase of natural interactions as small talk in Persian. The study was conducted in Iran's Persian linguaculture where considerable social-cultural-economic changes have taken place over the last decade or so impacting the form and content of phatic interaction in all sectors of the society. The participants of the study were 97 Persian-speaking university students attending a state-run university located in the southwest of Iran. The students were asked to audio-record their natural interactions in four different social encounters varied based on the standard sociolinguistic parameters of Social Distance and Power (+/−SD, +/−P). We adopted House & Kádár's (2022) pragmalinguistic and speech act-anchored model of phatic interaction to code the (non-)ritual realization patterns of small talks around the opening, closing, and core phases of interaction. The results indicate that small talks which are co-constructed by the Persian interactants at the opening and closing phases of their social encounters are highly ritualized in terms of the speech act types and pragmalinguistic structures employed. Further, interpersonal interchanges which involve differential sociolinguistic P and SD values require more tactfulness and care in adhering to the greeting and parting conventions as more face-threat is potentially implicated. In terms of the medial phase, except for a small number of ostensible realizations of different speech acts such as invites, offers, and apologies, core off-topic phaticity was perceived to be non-ritual and discursive in Persian the interpretation of which heavily relies upon shared sociopragmatic knowledge of the linguaculture.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":"37 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138602473","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}
The present study offers a speech-act analysis of the phatic interaction taking place within the ritual frame of casual encounters in the elevator. The corpus consists of 70 encounters that took place in Madrid, Spain, between 2020 and 2023. The analysis draws from Edmondson & House's (1981) originally proposed interactional typology of speech acts, also found in House & Kádár (2021a, 2023) and Edmondson, House & Kádár (2022). The main findings show, among other things, that some acts that are not conceived as phatic in the typology can migrate into the phatic slots, and that the speech-act pattern of this type of encounters can be affected by sociopragmatic variables such as the relational history of the interactants, or the co-created humorous episodes in the encounters.
本研究对电梯中偶遇的仪式框架内发生的肢体互动进行了言语-行为分析。该语料库包括2020年至2023年间在西班牙马德里发生的70次会面。该分析借鉴了Edmondson & House(1981)最初提出的言语行为的互动类型学,该类型学也见于House & Kádár (2021a, 2023)和Edmondson, House & Kádár(2022)。主要的研究结果表明,在类型学中,一些不被认为是言语的行为可以转移到言语的插槽中,这种类型的相遇的言语-行为模式可以受到社会实用变量的影响,比如互动者的关系历史,或者在相遇中共同创造的幽默情节。
{"title":"Elevator small talk in Peninsular Spanish: Phatic speech acts within the ritual frame of casual encounters in the elevator","authors":"Laura Alba-Juez","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00665","url":null,"abstract":"The present study offers a speech-act analysis of the phatic interaction taking place within the ritual frame of casual encounters in the elevator. The corpus consists of 70 encounters that took place in Madrid, Spain, between 2020 and 2023. The analysis draws from Edmondson & House's (1981) originally proposed interactional typology of speech acts, also found in House & Kádár (2021a, 2023) and Edmondson, House & Kádár (2022). The main findings show, among other things, that some acts that are not conceived as phatic in the typology can migrate into the phatic slots, and that the speech-act pattern of this type of encounters can be affected by sociopragmatic variables such as the relational history of the interactants, or the co-created humorous episodes in the encounters.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":"64 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138604986","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}
Zongfeng Xia, Fengguang Liu, Dániel Z. Kádár, Juliane House
Abstract In this study, we examine ritual Small Talk in Chinese, which is a regretfully understudied phenomenon. We investigate recurrent pragmatic features of Chinese Small Talk in an audio-recorded corpus through the lens of speech acts. We interpret the use of speech acts with the aid of interaction ritual theory and linguistic politeness. As a case study, we examine instances of Small Talk taking place in the vicinity of a Chinese primary school where parents and grandparents engaged in casual phatic conversations to kill the time while waiting for the children. The study of our corpus of Small Talk conversations allows us to unearth linguaculturally embedded patterns of language use in a complex participatory setting where parents and grandparents interact in front of a school.
{"title":"Ritual Small Talk in Chinese","authors":"Zongfeng Xia, Fengguang Liu, Dániel Z. Kádár, Juliane House","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00663","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this study, we examine ritual Small Talk in Chinese, which is a regretfully understudied phenomenon. We investigate recurrent pragmatic features of Chinese Small Talk in an audio-recorded corpus through the lens of speech acts. We interpret the use of speech acts with the aid of interaction ritual theory and linguistic politeness. As a case study, we examine instances of Small Talk taking place in the vicinity of a Chinese primary school where parents and grandparents engaged in casual phatic conversations to kill the time while waiting for the children. The study of our corpus of Small Talk conversations allows us to unearth linguaculturally embedded patterns of language use in a complex participatory setting where parents and grandparents interact in front of a school.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135201965","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}
In this paper, we present a contrastive pragmatic analysis of Small Talk in English and Chinese. We use a radically minimal, finite and interactional system of speech acts to study DCTs conducted with U.S. American native speakers of English and native speakers of Chinese. Our analysis points to a number of important differences between Small Talk in the two linguacultures contrasted, such as a reliance on routines in English Small Talk, and an overall reliance on the speech act Remark in Chinese. The influence of the classic sociolinguistic variables Power and Social Distance for the enactment of Small Talk is also shown to be different in English and Chinese.
{"title":"Small Talk in English and Chinese – A contrastive case study","authors":"J. House, D. Kádár, Laura Simoes","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00702","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we present a contrastive pragmatic analysis of Small Talk in English and Chinese. We use a radically minimal, finite and interactional system of speech acts to study DCTs conducted with U.S. American native speakers of English and native speakers of Chinese. Our analysis points to a number of important differences between Small Talk in the two linguacultures contrasted, such as a reliance on routines in English Small Talk, and an overall reliance on the speech act Remark in Chinese. The influence of the classic sociolinguistic variables Power and Social Distance for the enactment of Small Talk is also shown to be different in English and Chinese.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45875006","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}
Sabine Sommer-Lolei, Veronika Mattes, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, W. Dressler
Cognitive processing strategies can explain general word-formation preferences that influence the structures and their developments. They are based on simplicity, transparency, iconicity, salience, and frequency. We present and discuss evidence from our data on first language acquisition for how these cognitively based general preferences can explain the course of development of word formation and how they interact or compete. The analysis is based on the development of distributions of word formations in longitudinal data and panel data of child speech and their input from high and low socio-economic status families. In order to evaluate the productivity of a word-formation pattern in child speech, we applied the mini-paradigm criterion. Age-of-acquisition effects will be presented according to our own processing studies and to literature.
{"title":"Acquisition and processing of word formation in German","authors":"Sabine Sommer-Lolei, Veronika Mattes, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, W. Dressler","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00633","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive processing strategies can explain general word-formation preferences that influence the structures and their developments. They are based on simplicity, transparency, iconicity, salience, and frequency. We present and discuss evidence from our data on first language acquisition for how these cognitively based general preferences can explain the course of development of word formation and how they interact or compete. The analysis is based on the development of distributions of word formations in longitudinal data and panel data of child speech and their input from high and low socio-economic status families. In order to evaluate the productivity of a word-formation pattern in child speech, we applied the mini-paradigm criterion. Age-of-acquisition effects will be presented according to our own processing studies and to literature.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45556383","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}
The study explores the perceptions of small talk shared by the users of a Japanese online community, seeking information on their expected speech and behaviour in small talk and factors contributing to positive/negative evaluations of small talk. The study investigates a discussion thread consisting of 73 responses to a contributor's request for advice on improving small talk capabilities from the perspectives of interaction ritual (Goffman 1967), balancing obligations (Ohashi 2008, 2013, 2021) and typology of speech acts (Edmondson & House 1981; House & Kádár 2022b).
{"title":"Folk conceptualisation of small talk: A view from a Japanese online discussion forum","authors":"Jun Ohashi","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00670","url":null,"abstract":"The study explores the perceptions of small talk shared by the users of a Japanese online community, seeking information on their expected speech and behaviour in small talk and factors contributing to positive/negative evaluations of small talk. The study investigates a discussion thread consisting of 73 responses to a contributor's request for advice on improving small talk capabilities from the perspectives of interaction ritual (Goffman 1967), balancing obligations (Ohashi 2008, 2013, 2021) and typology of speech acts (Edmondson & House 1981; House & Kádár 2022b).","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44047180","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}
In this paper, the results of a large web-corpus study on gender of Russian inanimate indeclinable common nouns are presented. In most cases, neuter is assigned to indeclinables as a default. However, morphophonological and semantic analogy may lead to feminine and masculine gender assignment. An extensive variation is observed in the whole group of indeclinables and for particular words, which is much larger than anything that can be found in indeclinable nouns. These data support the idea that both masculine and neuter genders have a special status in the Russian gender system (Magomedova & Slioussar 2023). Masculine tends to be chosen in case of conflicting gender cues. When there are no strong cues pointing to any gender, neuter is assigned as the default option. The results of the study are hardly compatible with various structural approaches to gender assignment, but can be accounted for in competition-based models.
{"title":"Gender variation in indeclinable inanimate nouns and gender markedness in modern Russian","authors":"Kirill Chuprinko, V. Magomedova, N. Slioussar","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00641","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00641","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, the results of a large web-corpus study on gender of Russian inanimate indeclinable common nouns are presented. In most cases, neuter is assigned to indeclinables as a default. However, morphophonological and semantic analogy may lead to feminine and masculine gender assignment. An extensive variation is observed in the whole group of indeclinables and for particular words, which is much larger than anything that can be found in indeclinable nouns. These data support the idea that both masculine and neuter genders have a special status in the Russian gender system (Magomedova & Slioussar 2023). Masculine tends to be chosen in case of conflicting gender cues. When there are no strong cues pointing to any gender, neuter is assigned as the default option. The results of the study are hardly compatible with various structural approaches to gender assignment, but can be accounted for in competition-based models.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47485296","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}
In this paper, we propose a comprehensive account of the paradigms of Frisian verb-classes. Verb-classes in Frisian are an example of a more general phenomenon of inflectional classes that we encounter in many natural languages across the major word classes. Members of different inflectional classes show different paradigms. Traditionally, inflectional classes have been analyzed using class-features (see e.g., Marzi et al. 2020). However, such features suffer from being ad hoc devices that seem to have no other function in the grammar than to code this difference. In the present analysis we propose that the verb stems from different classes show a difference in size. Using phrasal spell-out, we will show that these stems differ in the amount of morpho-syntactic structure that they may realize, rendering class-features superfluous.
在本文中,我们对弗里斯兰语动词类的范式进行了全面的阐述。弗里斯兰语中的动词类是我们在许多自然语言的主要词类中遇到的屈折类更普遍现象的一个例子。不同屈折类型的成员表现出不同的范式。传统上,屈折类是使用类特征来分析的(例如,Marzi et al. 2020)。然而,这些特性的缺点是它们是特殊的设备,似乎在语法中除了编码这种差异之外没有其他功能。在本文的分析中,我们提出不同类别的动词词根在大小上存在差异。使用短语拼写,我们将展示这些词干在它们可能实现的形态句法结构数量上的不同,从而使类特征变得多余。
{"title":"Inflectional classes without class features","authors":"J. Don, F. Bergsma, A. Merkuur, Meg Smith","doi":"10.1556/2062.2023.00630","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2062.2023.00630","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we propose a comprehensive account of the paradigms of Frisian verb-classes. Verb-classes in Frisian are an example of a more general phenomenon of inflectional classes that we encounter in many natural languages across the major word classes. Members of different inflectional classes show different paradigms. Traditionally, inflectional classes have been analyzed using class-features (see e.g., Marzi et al. 2020). However, such features suffer from being ad hoc devices that seem to have no other function in the grammar than to code this difference. In the present analysis we propose that the verb stems from different classes show a difference in size. Using phrasal spell-out, we will show that these stems differ in the amount of morpho-syntactic structure that they may realize, rendering class-features superfluous.","PeriodicalId":37594,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Academica","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41382251","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}