Search results for " concept"
showing 10 items of 1144 documents
Książę Niccola Machiavellego jako przykład zastosowania toposu zakulisowości
2019
Aby wyjaśnić fenomen popularności Księcia Niccola Machiavellego, należy wskazać na osobliwy sposób komunikowania się autora tego dzieła z czytelnikiem. Autor przedstawia siebie jako fachowca z dziedziny sztuki politycznej, za swoich czytelników zaś chce mieć jedynie tych, którzy, jak on, znają się na rzeczy. Charakterystyczny zimny i, z pozoru przynajmniej, nieozdobny styl, jakim posługuje się autor Księcia, podkreśla dodatkowo profesjonalny i nieosobisty stosunek pisarza do przedmiotu jego rozważań. W kategoriach teorii retorycznej taki sposób komunikowania się daje się opisać jako poszukiwanie okrężnych dróg do tego, co Kenneth Burke określał mianem konsubstancjacji retorycznej. Mówca sta…
Prosodic modulation as a mark to express pragmatic values: The case of mitigation in Spanish
2021
Abstract One of the functions of prosody in discourse is to convey pragmatic values that add up to the core semantic meaning of spoken units or segments. Regarding mitigation, Caffi (1999: 890) specifically discusses “the very important prosodic and kinesic means of mitigation, such as changes in pitch prominence, rhythm, speech rate, as well as eye-contact, gaze, gaze aversion, smile, particular postures, etc.” In this paper, I focus on some prosodic factors such as pitch, intensity, duration and speech rate that can be used in European Spanish, in combination with pragmatic meanings. The first aim is to establish a theoretical deliberation on prosody as a clear marker to convey pragmatic …
Recognising mitigation: Three tests for its identification
2020
Abstract Linguistic mitigation is a pragmatic phenomenon that has been profusely treated in the literature, and yet there are few studies dedicated exclusively to offering methodological criteria for its recognition and analysis (but see Albelda, 2010 and Albelda et al., 2014). Consequently, the researcher must infer the methods for its recognition through problems arising during the analysis or through the examples and reflections offered by the authors who have addressed the issue. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, to present some of the main keys for the recognition of mitigation presented by the bibliography, such as the catalogues of mitigation devices, the context, the …
"So you're saying": the interrogation of Jordan Peterson
2021
<p class="p1">In this article, I analyse the infamous Cathy Newman interview with Jordan Peterson on the 16th of January 2018 and subsequent viewer comments on Channel 4's YouTube channel. My first hypothesis is that Newman's frequent attribution of statements to Peterson using the now notorious "so you are saying" gambit (YSG) is what triggered outrage among Peterson's followers, which, in turn, generated media interest. My second hypothesis is that the interview is best understood as a series of Face threats by Newman on Peterson using the YSG. To ascertain if my hypotheses are true, I performed corpus linguistic analyses on the interview and comments to provide objective descriptio…
The Semiotics of Test Design: Conceptual Framework on Optimal Item Features in Educational Assessment Across Cultural Groups, Countries, and Languages
2021
This paper offers a conceptual framework on test design from the perspective of social semiotics. Items are defined as arrangements of features intended to represent information, convey meaning, and capture information on the examinees’ knowledge or skills on a given content. The conceptual framework offers a typology of semiotic resources used to create items and discusses item representational complexity—the multiple ways in which the semiotic resources of an item are related to each other—and item semiotic alignment—the extent to which examinees share cultural experience encoded by items. Since the ability to make sense of items is shaped by the examinees’ level of familiarity with the s…
Taking care of their positive online face? Reasons and strategy development
2020
This paper examines a peer virtual exchange project between students at the University of Cyprus and the University of Latvia. The main purpose of this project is to develop intercultural awareness. Through telecollaborative tasks, students are asked to interact in a common discussion space around elements related to their cultural values. The aim of this paper is to discuss students’ strategies for these online exchanges. The hypothesis this paper seeks to examine is that students do not express themselves freely in the discussion forums in order to protect their personal and national image. We are thus interested in the public self-image of the students, known as ‘face’. Our findings iden…
Integrating self, voice, experience
2018
AbstractThe experience of hearing one’s own voice during the act of speaking is a form of self-awareness and self-reflection that occurs in relation to and in interaction with the flow of experience, including the experience of other selves and their voices. Self-communication is deeply implicated in and necessary for interpersonal communication (Harris 1996). And yet, it is the latter which is generally taken to be the paradigm case of human languaging. The fundamental role of self-communication is neglected in the language sciences. Starting with the important fact that we hear our own voice when we speak (Harris 1996, chap. 11), this paper examines the central role of self-communication …
On the relation of irony, understatement, and litotes
2016
The aim of this paper is to clarify the distinctive and the shared features of the three phenomena: irony, understatement, and litotes. These rhetorical figures have been defined as synonymous, distinct or overlapping in various accounts. This indicates an interrelation but also a need for clearer definitions. Here, each of these rhetorical figures is defined via two jointly necessary conditions. This approach sharpens the categories, enables clear-cut distinctions and helps to explain cases of overlap. German corpus data and examples from the literature as a basis, allow differentiating between cases of understatement as a means of irony, and cases of litotes as a means of understatement. …
Ukrainian culture fansubbed: Challenges of amateur subtitling
2021
The research addresses the issues of rendering culture specific information in amateur subtitling from the Ukrainian into the English language. The fansubbing of proper names, culture-bound common nouns, formulaic sequences, sociolects and songs by the non-professional translators for whom English is a foreign language is the main focus of this study. Thus, the comparative analysis of the Ukrainian filmsChasing Two Hares(1961),Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors(1965) andPrayer for Hetman Mazepa(2001), and their English subtitles reveals the difficulties fansubbers may face, as well as discusses translations strategies and techniques employed. Moreover, the study delves into reasons underlying t…
The Influence of Ambiguity Tolerance on Willingness to Communicate in L2
2017
The main purpose of this chapter is to find empirical evidence for the role of ambiguity tolerance (AT) in shaping one’s L2 willingness to communicate levels in the context of the English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom, in the Polish educational context. As the pyramid model of L2 WTC proposes (MacIntyre et al., 1998), AT’s basis is constituted by the most distal and enduring influences of personality. For this reason, ambiguity tolerance, conceived of as a personality variable (Furnham and Marks, 2013), can have a significant impact on L2 WTC. The complexity of interrelated mechanisms embedded in the foreign language learning context induce ambivalent feelings of being simultaneousl…