Language & Communication最新文献

The study examines the use of material objects constituting material-bodily actions in explanation sequences in construction-site interactions. Using multimodal Conversation Analysis as a method, it investigates the explanatory role of such actions and their sequential environments, comparing their application with gestural depiction. The analysis demonstrates that material-bodily actions are employed when the matter of explanation requires a focus on the details of prerequisite manual actions and when additional troubles emerge during the explanation. By using material-bodily actions, speakers direct recipients' attention to the salience of spatial accuracy to ensure understanding of the procedural order. The study discusses the interactional differences between gestural depiction and the employment of material objects as explanatory resources.

The English-language Wikipedia article on the airplane states that Clément Ader ‘attempted to fly’, whereas ‘the Wright brothers invented and flew the first airplane’. The French-language Wikipedia, in turn, points to France's pioneering role in aviation – which contrasts with the emphasis placed on Portuguese-speaking aviators in the Portuguese-language entry. Paradoxically, in each language, the airplane has a different inventor. Through online ethnography, this article explores the multilingual landscape of Wikipedia, looking not only at languages, but also at language varieties, and unpacking the intricate connections between language, country, and nationality in grassroots knowledge production online. Advocating for an attention to how multilingualism online involves more than ‘Google Translate-ing’ content, this study challenges conventional views of user-generated content platforms as unproblematically global and multilingual.

Previous studies have identified the use of metaphor and metonymy in contexts of youth-led climate protests and social media activism. In this study, we conducted semi-structured interviews to investigate how secondary school students in England make sense of different creative uses of metaphor and metonymy in a sample of slogans shared on social media for the Global Climate Strikes and #FridaysForFuture. For analysing students' responses, we produced a coding scheme to unpack the relationship between figurative interpretation and narrative. The findings suggest that different creative uses (e.g. twice-true, juxtaposition and personification) prompted different kinds of thinking about climate change and its relevance to students’ personal lives. The study has implications for research on figurative creativity, narrative, and climate change education.

This paper investigates the offerings the concept of interactional space, when it is applied to study the co-present sighted participants’ access to participation in sign language interpreter-mediated deaf-hearing interaction. A multimodal interaction analysis was conducted on empirical data to illustrate how the participants manage access to participation in mobile transitions, i.e. as they move to around to carry out tasks. Two interactional space patterns with differential access to participation are described. The data show that access appears assumed, but fleeting and co-constructed from moment to moment as the participants reconfigure the interactional space. The concept of interactional space is found a valuable tool to systematically and holistically analyse how the participants manage and coordinate participation and access to semiotic resources in interpreter-mediated deaf-hearing interaction.