Search results for "Pragmatics"
showing 10 items of 174 documents
Co-occurrence of discourse markers in Catalan and Spanish oral narrative
2009
The analysis of oral narratives in Catalan and Spanish highlights the frequency, variety and importance of co-occurring discourse markers. A detailed study of the formal aspects of co-occurrences leads to differentiating three degrees of integration of markers: juxtaposition, addition and composition. These types can be related to dominant category patterns, positions in the narrative and also functional domains (namely, propositional, structural and modal). The analysis and extensive exemplification suggests that co-occurrences based on the addition and composition of markers behave and contribute to discourse cohesion in a special way.
Word-Formation and Contextualism
2014
While there is, under the heading of “morphopragmatics”, some research on the relation of pragmatics and word-formation, especially with a focus on diminutives, the major theoretical models of word-formation do not account for the word-formation/pragmatics interface in any systematic fashion. Moreover, in recent contextualist approaches to the semantics/pragmatics interface, the typical grammatical unit referred to is the sentence (including words that constitute a sentence), but not word structure or the morpheme. Drawing on morphological data from German, I will show the influence of pragmatic processes and principles on word-formation, arguing that word structures are also units that may…
The Attributive/Referential Distinction, Pragmatics, Modularity of Mind and Modularization
2011
In this paper I deal with the attributive/referential distinction. After reviewing the literature on the issue, I adopt Jaszczolt's view based on default semantics. I relate her view to Sperber and Wilson's Principle of Relevance. I argue in favour of the modularity hypothesis in connection with pragmatic interpretations. I also discuss the issue of modularization a la Karmiloff-Smith in connection with default inferences and, in particular, referential readings of NPs. I reply to some considerations by Cummings and use data from referential/attributive uses of NPs to show that the modularity hypothesis is defensible.
Hidden complexity – The neglected side of complexity and its implications
2015
AbstractLinguistic complexity is the result of the two motivations of explicitness and economy. Most approaches focus on the explicitness-side of complexity (overt complexity) but there is also an economy-oriented side to it (hidden complexity). The aim of the paper is to introduce hidden complexity and to show how it opens new perspectives on central issues of linguistics. It will discuss the following questions: (i) the implementability of hidden complexity for psycholinguistic experiments, (ii) the evolution of linguistic complexity, (iii) its realisation in creole languages and (iv) its consequences for theories on the architecture of grammar. With this aim, the paper is a programmatic …
English as an object and tool of study in classrooms: Interactional effects and pragmatic implications
2005
Abstract This paper analyses classroom discourse in Finnish EFL classrooms where English is the object of study and content-based (Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)) classrooms where non-language subjects are taught in English. The students in both groups are Finnish teenagers. Approaching the data from a discourse-pragmatic perspective, the paper investigates how these two settings compare with each other in terms of local practices of using English. In particular, attention is paid to how both choices between English and Finnish and ways of using English reflect the way participants perceive and construct their social relationships in the classrooms. The findings show differ…
Pragmatic evidence, context, and story design: an essay on recent developments in experimental pragmatics
2012
What is pragmatic evidence? In this contribution, I argue that pragmatic evidence basically is connected with pragmatic intuitions related to a context. The context usually is either given as a story, or is left to the imagination of a judge (a linguist, a reader, a test participant). It is shown that stories not only play an important role in pragmatic argumentation and analysis, but also with regard to story design in experimental settings.
Pragmatic markers in contrast: The case of well
2008
Well is the most frequently analysed discourse marker. However, its meaning still remains elusive. The question explored in this paper is to what extent a contrastive analysis of a pragmatic marker can help identify its meaning and functions. The answer to this question is supported by an analysis of the occurrences of well in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral and their functional equivalents in the Catalan and Spanish dubbed versions. The analysis provides evidence that pragmatic markers such as well exhibit differences in meaning when compared with logical markers such as but. Their meaning is fully pragmatic since it does not refer properly to a propositional content but to structural…
Domestic violence and public participation in the media
2013
Recent research suggests that as a social public problem, domestic violence is sustained in a number of social contexts that naturalize violence against women through gendered discourses and ideologies of male violence. This paper examines domestic violence vis-à-vis public participation in the media. In doing so, it seeks to explore the social public aspects of domestic violence and to investigate whether the gendered discourse of male violence is also sustained through the new electronic spaces of public participation. To this end, a corpus of unsolicited digital comments – a form of ‘citizen journalism’ – to a British online newspaper was compiled and analysed. This paper draws from rese…
Barack Obama's South Carolina speech
2010
Abstract In this paper, I shall analyze US Presidential Barack Obama's South Carolina victory speech from the perspective of pragmemes. In particular, I shall explore the idea that this speech is constituted by many voices (in other words, it displays polyphony, to use an idea due to Bakhtin, 1981 , Bakhtin, 1986 ) and that the audience is part of this speech event, adding and contributing to its text in a collaborative way (in particular, in constructing meaning). As many are aware (including the journalists who report day by day on Barack Obama's achievements), Obama uses the technique of ‘personification’ 1 ( The Economist , December 13th, 2007). When he voices an idea, he does not just …
Tautology as presumptive meaning
2008
Ever since the seminal work of Paul Grice, tautologies such as Business is business have been discussed from a number of angles. While most approaches assume that tautological utterances have to do with the operation of conversational maxims, an integrated analysis is still lacking. This paper makes an attempt at analysing tautologies within the framework of Levinson (2000), who proposes a distinction between three pragmatic levels, namely Indexical Pragmatics, Gricean Pragmatics 1, and Gricean Pragmatics 2. It is shown that observations of Ward and Hirschberg (1991) on the exclusion of alternatives, the claim of Autenrieth (1997) that the second NP in nominal equatives is predicative, and …