Humour as a multifunctional strategy to communicate propositional meanings in sitcom discourse : a relevance-theoretic account

Accounts differ as to whether will and be going to (bgt) are semantically distinct, whether they encode procedural or conceptual information, whether they are polysemous or monosemous, the differing senses in which they are used to express futurity of an event, and what (if any) conceptual content can ascribed to them. This paper will survey three relevance-theoretic accounts (Haegeman (1989), Klinge (1993) and Nicolle (1997)), as well as other accounts not motivated by Relevance Theory (RT). It will join Nicolle (1997) in asserting that will and bgt are both semantically and pragmatically distinct in the following manner: will encodes procedural information about an irrealis domain of discourse, while bgt encodes some form of conceptual information the hearer is given to accept as being realis. This paper will offer two suggestions about the conceptual information that bgt encodes, while also maintaining that bgt encodes procedural information above and beyond its conceptual meaning. This analysis combines the possible-worlds approach to the intensional semantics of modality (in which modals and bgt act as quantifiers over worlds) with a relevance-theoretic approach to selecting an interpretation of an utterance. Finally, we offer a suggested modification of the relevance-theoretic idea of comparative relevance of a phenomenon.

Cost-benefit analysis of WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) interventions have traditionally focused on two primary benefits: improved health outcomes, usually measured as reduced diarrheal disease incidence, and reduced time burdens from collecting water, treating water, or traveling to open defecation or shared sanitation sites. However, there are also many other important benefits of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions for policymakers and researchers to consider, such as improved nutrition and decreased stunting, improved cognitive development and educational attainment, and quality-of-life improvements for women. Reduced fecal exposure from improved WASH may decrease not only diarrheal disease incidence but also the risk of environmental enteropathy, a condition that reduces the nutritional absorptive capacity of the gut. Environmental enteropathy results in a range of outcomes associated with malnutrition, such as wasting, stunting, and anemia. A growing body of literature has explored the direct relationship between improved sanitation environments and stunting. There are mixed findings from these research studies, suggesting that intervention adherence and baseline sanitation conditions may be important to realizing any potential stunting benefits. The economics literature has documented a strong inverse relationship between childhood stunting and lifetime earnings. Reduced absorptive capacity from environmental enteropathy may also hinder cognitive development in children. Recent research documents a strong relationship between improved sanitation environments and cognitive development in children, though some studies find no relationship. Beyond cognition, improved health from reduced fecal exposure may also affect a child’s ability to attend school, and research shows a relationship between WASH environments and school attendance and enrollment. Monetizing the benefits of improved schooling in a low-income country context is challenging due to high variation in school quality as well as high rates of self-employment. Quality-of-life benefits for women are a third category of benefits that are often omitted from WASH cost–benefit analyses. Mostly qualitative research highlights that poor sanitation and water insecurity is associated with safety, security, privacy, and dignity concerns for women. While these concerns and experiences are difficult to quantify in many cases, they should not be ignored when considering WASH benefits.

Metonymy is a pervasive aspect of spontaneous as well as reflective linguistic performance and its cognitive and communicative role needs to be adequately attended to. The paper aims to offer a new model of metonymy grounded in the relevance-theoretic approach to communication, adopting the view that all comprehension is underlain by inferential processes. First, we present a critical overview of selected existing accounts of metonymy put forward by cognitive linguists, arguing that although they offer valuable observations about the role of metonymy in online meaning construction and bring to light a varied spectrum of different types of metonymic conceptualizations, cognitive linguistic analyses fall some way short of offering a convincing rationale for metonymic uses in verbal communication and do not articulate a psychologically plausible and testable principle that would explain why metonymy arises and how the intended meaning is inferred in context by the recipient. We also critically address the existing relevance-theoretic models, which, while offering a cognitively motivated account of metonymy, likewise suffer from certain inadequacies. In an attempt to remedy these shortcomings, we develop a fully inferential relevance-theoretic account, which assumes that metonymy is a case of tagging the intended referent by a concept literally denoted by the metonymic expression. The real-world contiguity which underlies metonymic usage is postulated to be encapsulated in mental schemas that are indexed by the concept that the metonymic word or phrase provides access to.

Her yaştan bireyin keyifle oynayabileceği bir oyun olan Hemsball, Türkiye’de Murat Altınay tarafından ülkemize kazandırılmıştır. Kapalı ve açık alanlarda rahatlıkla oynanabilen bu oyun bireylerin çok yönlü gelişimlerine katkı sağlamaktadır. Bu araştırmanın amacı tamamen milli olan bu branşın doğrudan yönetiminde görev alan bireylerin görüşleri doğrultusunda Hemsball’u şeffaf bir şekilde tanıtmaktır. Bu doğrultuda Hemsball’un faydalarını, diğer branşlardan ayrılan özelliklerini, hedeflerini, dezavantajlarını ortaya koymak amacıyla nitel bir araştırma yapılmıştır. Araştırmada durum çalışması yöntemi kullanılmıştır ve içerik analizi yapılmıştır. Tümevarımsal bir yaklaşım ele alınmıştır. Toplam 13 katılımcı (7 erkek, 6 kadın) ile görüşmeler yapılmıştır. Verilerin incelenmesi ve analizi Nitel Araştırma Programı MAXQDA ile gerçekleştirilmiştir. Analizler sonucunda Hemsball’un faydaları teması altında; bilişsel, duyuşsal, fiziksel ve fizyolojik, psikolojik yönden faydaları kategorilerine ulaşılmıştır. Yanlış spor politikaları dezavantaj temasını oluşturmuştur. Katılımcıların beklenti ve önerileri kategorisi hedef temasını oluşturmuştur. Sonuç olarak ise avantajları teması altında farklılık kategorisi Hemsball’un diğer branşlardan farklı özelliklerini ortaya çıkarmıştır. Her yaştan sağlıklı ve özel gereksinimli bireyler için bilişsel, duyuşsal, fizyolojik, psikolojik etkilerinin yanı sıra Hemsball spor branşının geleceğine dair hedeflere, ortaya çıkış aşamasında yaşanılan zorluklara kadar süreç anlatılmıştır. Bu bağlamda tüm yaş kategorilerinde araştırmalar yapıldıkça daha fazla etkilerinin ortaya çıkacağı yadsınamaz bir gerçektir. MEB müfredatı içerisinde yer alması gereken Hemsball ile ilgili daha fazla proje ve çalışmaların olması toplumun ilgisini artıracak nitelikte olacaktır.

New Perspectives in Cytomegalovirus After Transplant: The Role of Immunosuppressant Management.

Developmental Transformations (DvT), a practice involving interactive, improvisational play in pairs or groups, has gained international appeal as a therapeutic intervention for different populations in a variety of health, care and recreational contexts. However, a rigorous review of the benefits of DvT has not been conducted. The purpose of this study was to review extant literature for the observed benefits of DvT, identify gaps in the literature and make recommendations concerning future research including identifying possible areas for outcome measurement for preliminary studies. The authors, who each completed training in this approach, conducted a scoping review of English-language, published, peer-reviewed and grey DvT literature through 2021. From an initial 745 records retrieved through databases and a manual search, 51 publications met criteria, which, when analysed using in-vivo and pattern coding, resulted in a total of seventeen categories of observed benefits ascribed to DvT. These included six general categories – relational, emotional, social, cognitive, behavioural and physical benefits – and eleven complex categories of benefits to participants across the lifespan. In addition to benefits for participants, benefits of DvT were also observed and reported for facilitators, therapists, teachers and supervisors engaged in this practice. This review revealed inconsistencies regarding the reporting of practitioner training, frequency, format, population, intended goals, assessment measures and outcomes. Future studies with increased experimental rigor, standardized outcome measures and consistent reporting are recommended.

This paper contributes to the discussion of how free indirect style (FIS) and interpreter's renditions are accommodated in a relevance theoretic approach to communication. Within relevance theory, it has been argued that FIS and interpreting are cases of attributive use: FIS representations and interpreters’ renditions are representations of the author's/interpreter's thoughts about attributed thoughts. We ask whether this approach can accommodate FIS representations and interpreters’ renditions which contain perspective dependent discourse markers, and in particular whether it captures the role played by these expressions in encouraging the reader/hearer to think that s/he has direct access to the thoughts of fictional characters/original speakers. We apply Blakemore's (2010) account of discourse markers in FIS to data from interpreter mediated police interviews where renditions include discourse markers added by the interpreter to develop an alternative relevance theoretic account. This allows us to reconcile the hearer's impression that the interpreter's voice is suppressed with research in interpreting studies which shows that interpreters are in reality both visible and active co-participants in these exchanges.

This paper adopts a relevance theoretic approach to meaning making in theatrical texts and performances. Text-based theatrical performances are collaborative creative events, many of whose participants may never engage directly with an audience member, but all of whom are engaged in making and conveying meaning. Such texts communicate immediately to multiple audiences: readers, actors, directors, producers, and designers. They communicate less directly to the writer’s ultimate audience – the playgoer or spectator – through the medium of performance. But playgoers are not passive receptacles for interpretations distilled in rehearsal, enacted through performance, or developed in study and reflection. Rather, in the framework of communication postulated by relevance theory, the audience is an active participant in making meaning. I will briefly review a range of approaches to meaning making in theatre, and then outline my view of a relevance theoretic account of theatre texts and performances as related but distinct communicative acts. For Weimann (1992), discussing the German playwright, Heiner Müller, “language is first and foremost material with which the audience is expected to work so as to make and explore their own ‘experiences’” (p. 958). By contrast, T. S. Eliot characterised performances as ‘interruptions’ of the relationship between writer and audience; in ‘a true acting play’, he asserted, the actor added nothing (Eliot, 1924, p. 96). Campbell (1981) argues that “the theatre cannot gear its production to actual audiences”, as only the “finest and most appreciative of abstract audiences for that play” (p. 152) can properly grasp its meaning. For him, the disparate capacities, views, and expectations of a given audience present a profound challenge to theatre as communication. Connor (1999) addresses the same issue, pointing out that if readers can disagree about the meaning of a text, then spectators are even less likely to agree on what a given performance means (p. 417). Unlike Campbell, however, she regards this diversity as enriching, concluding that meanings “develop from co-production with spectators as subjects” (p. 426). Relevance theory provides a framework in which to begin to disentangle the overlapping and interacting, but equally vital, contributions of writer, company, and audience in making meanings.

Advancing the proposal that conversationalists frequently engage in humorous communication to convey propositional meanings, the paper aims to employ pragmatic inferential mechanisms specified in a relevance-theoretic framework in order to explicate the viewer’s recovery of additional cognitive effects in sitcom discourse. On this observation, it is assumed that processing of humorous utterances may result in the recipient’s being amused and/ or in making more insightful observations concerning goals a speaker wishes to attain. For example, an interactant would like to communicate a potentially impolite meaning, which is mitigated by means of humour. The corpus is drawn from the American situation comedy Modern Family (2009-2020), created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd. The focus in the paper is on how the viewer can grasp meanings that are (un)intentionally communicated by the production crew while s/he is sitting comfortably in the armchair. The main thrust of the present paper is twofold. First, extra cognitive effects can be best described in terms of propositional meanings they communicate, which in turn necessitates a relevance-theoretic notion of weak communication. Second, I postulate that accessing humorous effects is just the first step in order to fully understand a conversational episode in the sitcom, granted that viewers may be eager to spend more processing effort in exchange for extra cognitive rewards. It is frequently the case that the recipient’s mental representations are strengthened or challenged by the production crew’s (cultural) representations. More specifically, it will be demonstrated that the functions of conveying and/ or challenging of social norms, disclosing character-specific information and providing cultural references aim to strengthen or challenge the viewer’s personal beliefs.

Drawing on the observation that speakers may use jokes as stylistic devices to communicate propositional meanings, this paper offers a relevance-theoretic account of pragmatic mechanisms involved in this kind of communication, dubbed ‘meaningful jokes.’ First, I argue that the comprehension of any joke not only relies on the hearer’s background knowledge, but may also lead to the modification of beliefs. Then I explore selected forms of expression which potentially bear affinity to meaningful jokes, such as fiction, metaphors, allegories, and irony. Finally, I postulate that meaningful jokes rely on a unique propositional attitude and emergent implicatures resulting from the incongruity between the joke’s scenario and a real-life situation in which it was intended to be relevant.