This paper investigates the interaction between language, culture, body and emotions. It is an aspect of cognitive semantics that discusses the Akan somatic nature of their body and therefore have existing lexical items, idioms and proverbs to comment on “wellbeing”. It is based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Ethnopragmatics by Goddard (2006). A great parts of Akan expressions for “wellbeing” are tapped from body parts through their physical, cognitive, and emotional representations. The nature of the derived semantic patterns and how the Akans consider these somatic expressions, idioms and proverbs as important aspects of their language and culture are discussed. This paper argues that “wellbeing” as an emotion is transitional like a pendulum; one can be enjoying aspects of “wellbeing” for a moment and be in “distress” and “depression” a moment later.1
{"title":"Idioms, proverbs and body part expressions on Yiedie “wellbeing” in Akan","authors":"K. Agyekum","doi":"10.1075/ps.19015.agy","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.19015.agy","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper investigates the interaction between language, culture, body and emotions. It is an aspect of cognitive semantics that discusses the Akan somatic nature of their body and therefore have existing lexical items, idioms and proverbs to comment on “wellbeing”. It is based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Ethnopragmatics by Goddard (2006). A great parts of Akan expressions for “wellbeing” are tapped from body parts through their physical, cognitive, and emotional representations. The nature of the derived semantic patterns and how the Akans consider these somatic expressions, idioms and proverbs as important aspects of their language and culture are discussed. This paper argues that “wellbeing” as an emotion is transitional like a pendulum; one can be enjoying aspects of “wellbeing” for a moment and be in “distress” and “depression” a moment later.1\u0000","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46061894","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}
{"title":"Review of Yus (2022): Smartphone Communication. Interactions in the App Ecosystem","authors":"Tiancheng Chen, Xinren Chen","doi":"10.1075/ps.00061.che","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.00061.che","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42717935","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 article presents a study of participants’ practices for closing buying-selling encounters in retail shops. The study shows how the handing over of a shopping bag with the items purchased serves as a resource for organizing the closing of the encounter. Further, taking its point of departure in the growing societal awareness of the environmental impact of plastic waste, the study investigates how customers’ increasing avoidance of single-use shopping bags contributes to changing their practices for closing a buying-selling encounter, as the bags no longer provide a resource around which the closing can be organized. The article uses ethnomethodological conversation analytic (EMCA) methods to describe how customers and sales assistants create and maintain the local order of the shop and how they, through their multimodal and embodied contributions, bring societal discourses into the buying-selling encounter. The data consists of 22 shopping sequences, recorded in Danish shops in 2018.
{"title":"Would you like a bag for that?","authors":"E. Kristiansen, Gitte Rasmussen","doi":"10.1075/ps.20008.kri","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.20008.kri","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article presents a study of participants’ practices for closing buying-selling encounters in retail shops.\u0000 The study shows how the handing over of a shopping bag with the items purchased serves as a resource for organizing the closing of\u0000 the encounter. Further, taking its point of departure in the growing societal awareness of the environmental impact of plastic\u0000 waste, the study investigates how customers’ increasing avoidance of single-use shopping bags contributes to changing their\u0000 practices for closing a buying-selling encounter, as the bags no longer provide a resource around which the closing can be\u0000 organized.\u0000 The article uses ethnomethodological conversation analytic (EMCA) methods to describe how customers and sales\u0000 assistants create and maintain the local order of the shop and how they, through their multimodal and embodied contributions,\u0000 bring societal discourses into the buying-selling encounter.\u0000 The data consists of 22 shopping sequences, recorded in Danish shops in 2018.","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46260677","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 explores how readers of Chinese mainstream media editorials use disagreement strategies to attack the institutional face of the mainstream media organizations on Weibo. By quantitative and qualitative analysis, the disagreement strategies in Weibo comments were elaborated based on the logos-oriented and ethos-oriented distinction. It was found that logos-oriented disagreements were employed to criticize the content of the editorial, ethos-oriented ad-hominem disagreements were employed to attack the trustworthiness and impartiality of the mainstream media organizations, and ethos-oriented ad-personam disagreements were pure insults to express their negative emotions to the mainstream media organizations. The findings suggested that the online commenting space of Chinese mainstream media editorials is a public sphere of combined deliberation and liberal individualism. This study adds to existing literature the disagreement strategies used in online comments while shedding light on the role of online comments in the public sphere building in the Chinese social media context.
{"title":"Disagreement strategies and institutional face attack in Chinese mainstream media editorial comments on Weibo","authors":"Jie Xia","doi":"10.1075/ps.19016.xia","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.19016.xia","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper explores how readers of Chinese mainstream media editorials use disagreement strategies to attack the institutional face of the mainstream media organizations on Weibo. By quantitative and qualitative analysis, the disagreement strategies in Weibo comments were elaborated based on the logos-oriented and ethos-oriented distinction. It was found that logos-oriented disagreements were employed to criticize the content of the editorial, ethos-oriented ad-hominem disagreements were employed to attack the trustworthiness and impartiality of the mainstream media organizations, and ethos-oriented ad-personam disagreements were pure insults to express their negative emotions to the mainstream media organizations. The findings suggested that the online commenting space of Chinese mainstream media editorials is a public sphere of combined deliberation and liberal individualism. This study adds to existing literature the disagreement strategies used in online comments while shedding light on the role of online comments in the public sphere building in the Chinese social media context.","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44227498","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}
COVID-19 poses a threat to social stability globally, which requires efficacious governance and public cooperation. To handle the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese national news media have mobilized the public to identify and collaborate with the nation. This paper investigates how war, chess, and examination metaphors, nation personification, and metonymies (i.e. the part representing the whole) are utilized in news reports and editorials to achieve the purpose. We adhere to the theoretical framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis and analyze 156 articles that are sourced from Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily from January 22, 2020 to February 13, 2020. Besides demonstrating the specific entailments of these metaphors and metonymies, we also involve scenarios such as the ‘Heroic Fight’ scenario and the ‘Harmonious Family’ scenario. Those framing devices function to evoke patriotism and reinforce national identity by activating collective, historical, and cultural memories and evaluating in-group members positively.
{"title":"Metaphor analysis of the COVID-19 public health emergency on Chinese national news media","authors":"Cun Zhang, Zhengjun Lin","doi":"10.1075/ps.20023.zha","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.20023.zha","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000COVID-19 poses a threat to social stability globally, which requires efficacious governance and public cooperation. To handle the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese national news media have mobilized the public to identify and collaborate with the nation. This paper investigates how war, chess, and examination metaphors, nation personification, and metonymies (i.e. the part representing the whole) are utilized in news reports and editorials to achieve the purpose. We adhere to the theoretical framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis and analyze 156 articles that are sourced from Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily from January 22, 2020 to February 13, 2020. Besides demonstrating the specific entailments of these metaphors and metonymies, we also involve scenarios such as the ‘Heroic Fight’ scenario and the ‘Harmonious Family’ scenario. Those framing devices function to evoke patriotism and reinforce national identity by activating collective, historical, and cultural memories and evaluating in-group members positively.","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42625429","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 study compares the use of interactional metadiscourse in a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, and a British news magazine, The Economist, in reporting on the Brexit referendum. We adopted Hyland’s (2005a: 48–54) framework to analyze hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagements, and self-mentions. One hundred news articles were randomly selected from online archives from February to June in 2016, during which time the debatable issue was discussed ardently. Quantitative and qualitative results of this study revealed both similarities and differences between the newspaper and the news magazine in the use of interactional metadiscourse. For example, quantitatively, the frequencies of boosters in both genres were similar; however, the newspaper used much more engagement markers and self-mentions whereas the magazine used more hedges and attitude markers. Qualitatively, while most self-mentions were the same in both genres, a unique choice of self-mentions was found in the news magazine.
{"title":"One issue, two genres","authors":"Yun Han Chen, J. Huang","doi":"10.1075/ps.19024.che","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.19024.che","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This study compares the use of interactional metadiscourse in a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, and a British news magazine, The Economist, in reporting on the Brexit referendum. We adopted Hyland’s (2005a: 48–54) framework to analyze hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagements, and self-mentions. One hundred news articles were randomly selected from online archives from February to June in 2016, during which time the debatable issue was discussed ardently. Quantitative and qualitative results of this study revealed both similarities and differences between the newspaper and the news magazine in the use of interactional metadiscourse. For example, quantitatively, the frequencies of boosters in both genres were similar; however, the newspaper used much more engagement markers and self-mentions whereas the magazine used more hedges and attitude markers. Qualitatively, while most self-mentions were the same in both genres, a unique choice of self-mentions was found in the news magazine.","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43383195","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}
Neural machine translation (NMT), proven to be productively and qualitatively competitive, creates great challenges and opportunities for stakeholders in both the market and the education contexts. This paper explores how English-Chinese NMT post-editing (PE) is accepted in China from the perspectives of attitude, practice, and training, based on an integrative digital survey with role-specific popup questions for translators and clients in the market setting, and for translation teachers and students in the education setting. Descriptive statistics and correlation analyses of the survey data suggest Chinese stakeholders’ generally moderate view of PE, with outsiders like clients being more optimistic about PE than are insiders like translators. In the market setting, most translators use PE to different degrees in translating primarily informative texts; here, affiliated translators report a more frequent usage, and employ more sophisticated tools than do part-time or freelance translators. Whereas translators, on the whole, fail to notify clients of their own PE usage, or to charge clients for PE and human translation (HT) differently, most clients express their willingness to accept high-quality PE output for the sake of saving cost and time. In the education setting, despite students’ concealed usage of PE to do HT assignments to varying degrees, and their wish to learn PE out of concern for their future career, PE is generally not taught in translation classrooms of Chinese universities in the form of teaching PE as a course or integrating PE content into traditional translation course.
{"title":"Multivaried acceptance of post-editing in China","authors":"Jianwei Zheng, Wenjun Fan","doi":"10.1075/ps.19048.zhe","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.19048.zhe","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Neural machine translation (NMT), proven to be productively and qualitatively competitive, creates great\u0000 challenges and opportunities for stakeholders in both the market and the education contexts. This paper explores how\u0000 English-Chinese NMT post-editing (PE) is accepted in China from the perspectives of attitude, practice, and training, based on an\u0000 integrative digital survey with role-specific popup questions for translators and clients in the market setting, and for\u0000 translation teachers and students in the education setting. Descriptive statistics and correlation analyses of the survey data\u0000 suggest Chinese stakeholders’ generally moderate view of PE, with outsiders like clients being more optimistic about PE than are\u0000 insiders like translators. In the market setting, most translators use PE to different degrees in translating primarily\u0000 informative texts; here, affiliated translators report a more frequent usage, and employ more sophisticated tools than do\u0000 part-time or freelance translators. Whereas translators, on the whole, fail to notify clients of their own PE usage, or to charge\u0000 clients for PE and human translation (HT) differently, most clients express their willingness to accept high-quality PE output for\u0000 the sake of saving cost and time. In the education setting, despite students’ concealed usage of PE to do HT assignments to\u0000 varying degrees, and their wish to learn PE out of concern for their future career, PE is generally not taught in translation\u0000 classrooms of Chinese universities in the form of teaching PE as a course or integrating PE content into traditional translation\u0000 course.","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47744581","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}
{"title":"Review of Betz, Deppermann, Mondada & Sorjonen (2021): OKAY across Languages: Toward a Comparative Approach to its Use in Talk-in-interaction","authors":"T. Pavlidou","doi":"10.1075/ps.00059.pav","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.00059.pav","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44360742","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 purpose of this study is to investigate the linguistic mitigating devices that deaf Jordanian adults use when making requests. To this end, a sample of 52 people (of whom 26 were hearing and 26 were deaf) was collected through a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). It was found that the two groups of participants showed variations in the way they structured their request acts and spelled them out. This was evident in the deaf group’s obvious underuse of certain request mitigation strategies and the lexico-grammatical items mapping them; in the absence of some strategies (i.e., sweetener, promise of reward, hint, and threat); and in the underassessment of social distance, relative power, and degree of imposition. This inappropriate use of requesting acts by deaf participants is attributed to their inadequate linguistic, pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic competence. The study concludes with some suggestions how to improve the Jordanian educational system for the deaf.
{"title":"Mitigating requesting acts by deaf Jordanian adults","authors":"Mohammed Nahar Al-Ali, Salsabeel M. Shatat","doi":"10.1075/ps.20016.nah","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.20016.nah","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The purpose of this study is to investigate the linguistic mitigating devices that deaf Jordanian adults use when making requests. To this end, a sample of 52 people (of whom 26 were hearing and 26 were deaf) was collected through a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). It was found that the two groups of participants showed variations in the way they structured their request acts and spelled them out. This was evident in the deaf group’s obvious underuse of certain request mitigation strategies and the lexico-grammatical items mapping them; in the absence of some strategies (i.e., sweetener, promise of reward, hint, and threat); and in the underassessment of social distance, relative power, and degree of imposition. This inappropriate use of requesting acts by deaf participants is attributed to their inadequate linguistic, pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic competence. The study concludes with some suggestions how to improve the Jordanian educational system for the deaf.","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48310384","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}
Employing Wodak’s discourse-historical approach, this paper examines how Ghana’s independence leader – Kwame Nkrumah – in his creation of the Unite or Perish myth constructed ‘the African people’ in a manner in sync with populist performance. It argues that Nkrumah’s discourse, in its focus on the formation of a Union Government of Africa as the only means of Africa’s peace, progress, security and survival in the post-independence era, can be characterized as a form of populist rhetoric that presupposes an antagonistic relationship between two homogeneous social groups. To this end, the paper analyzes three discursive strategies utilized by Nkrumah in promoting anti-establishment sentiments while celebrating or valorizing ‘the ordinary people’: nomination and predication of social actors and actions, the construction of a man of the people image and the exploitation of familiarity and historical memory. It concludes with a discussion on the implications of the study for political discourse analysis in terms of the interrelationship between political myth and populist performance.
{"title":"Kwame Nkrumah’s construction of ‘the African people’ via the Unite or Perish myth","authors":"M. Nartey","doi":"10.1075/ps.19023.nar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.19023.nar","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Employing Wodak’s discourse-historical approach, this paper examines how Ghana’s independence leader – Kwame\u0000 Nkrumah – in his creation of the Unite or Perish myth constructed ‘the African people’ in a manner in sync with populist\u0000 performance. It argues that Nkrumah’s discourse, in its focus on the formation of a Union Government of Africa as the only means\u0000 of Africa’s peace, progress, security and survival in the post-independence era, can be characterized as a form of populist\u0000 rhetoric that presupposes an antagonistic relationship between two homogeneous social groups. To this end, the paper analyzes\u0000 three discursive strategies utilized by Nkrumah in promoting anti-establishment sentiments while celebrating or valorizing ‘the\u0000 ordinary people’: nomination and predication of social actors and actions, the construction of a man of the people image and the\u0000 exploitation of familiarity and historical memory. It concludes with a discussion on the implications of the study for political\u0000 discourse analysis in terms of the interrelationship between political myth and populist performance.","PeriodicalId":44036,"journal":{"name":"Pragmatics and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47145646","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}