This study considers the use of the multivalent casual Korean lexical item ya in a Korean television drama. Meanings of ya include “hey” and “oh!” and ya can convey a variety of affective connotations ranging from anger to romantic teasing depending on context and intonational contours. Exploring patterns of use of ya, this study highlights how the differences in intonational contour and choice of addressee are linked to valences of “forcefulness” and “failed forcefulness” that are implicated in the construction and performance of diverse youth-associated gendered styles. It argues that heteronormatively desirable masculine and feminine styles are constructed through the strategic use and non-use of ya. Specifically, romantically desirable femininity relies on the performance of failed forcefulness that creates opportunities for masculine-marked performances of paternal care.

The present study investigated the use of strategies by Chinese learners of English and English learners of Chinese in making requests in both Chinese and English. Three factors affecting request strategies were also examined, including social power, social distance and degree of imposition. A total of 12 Chinese-speaking and 12 English-speaking students were recruited to complete Chinese and English versions of an oral discourse completion task (ODCT). Request behaviour was examined in both the subjects’ native and non-native languages. The results show that the learner and native speaker groups performed differently in making Chinese requests but employed comparable strategies in making English requests. Moreover, social distance was found to be more influential than social power and degree of imposition in making Chinese requests. However, the influence of these factors was similar in making English requests. The findings suggest that it was easier for the learners of Chinese to master English requests than for the learners of English to acquire Chinese requests.

Pragmatics: The BasicsBilly Clark (2022)Routledge Press

In this article, I explore how the Chinese-language construction Ni yiwei +X? (Do you think X?) is used as a rhetorical question in interpersonal interactions, which has been overlooked in the literature. I analysed 1,071 interpersonal interactions drawn from the Center for Chinese Linguistics corpus to examine the recurrent rhetorical uses of this construction. The results have revealed that Ni yiwei +X? has a conventionalised role in realising a range of relational acts dominated by expressives (including disagreeing, complaining and belittling), in the contexts where intersubjective or relational discrepancies have been invoked between interactants. Embracing the perspective of metapragmatics, I indicate that the rhetorical question Ni yiwei +X? arguably constitutes a case of metarepresentation where a thought explicitly attributed to the recipient is further embedded within a negative attitude expressed by the speaker towards the attributed thought. It is thus suggested that the rhetorical use of Ni yiwei +X? could be indicative of speakers’ metarepresentational awareness of the intentional states of both self and others, and hence their efforts to counter the relevant problematic situations, by tactfully holding the recipients accountable for the problems.

This study examines the interactional functions of an evidential marker -tay in the Korean language. Despite the frequent use of -tay in everyday interactions, the role of this marker in spoken communication has not been sufficiently explored, compared to other Korean quotative expressions. By analysing telephone conversations, this study shows that -tay conveys not only another’s utterances but also indicates interaction-oriented functions in various contexts: as a marker of presenting evidence, detailing context in telling a story and introducing a new topic. In addition, this paper will discuss how speakers use this marker to facilitate interaction with hearers by incorporating multiple voices into spoken discourse and creating new meanings, including the “voice” of a third party and also speakers’ own “metamessages”.

Second Language Pragmatics Wei Ren (2022)Cambridge University Press

Pragmatics: A Slim Guide by Betty J. Birner (2021)Oxford University Press

Developed by Carol Gray, Social StoriesTM is used to conduct behavioural interventions for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) for the sake of developing and improving their social cognition, understanding, and skills. Existing guidelines for social story writing have been widely used by healthcare professionals. However, learners of social story writing face difficulties in following and comprehending the guidelines. This study aims to enhance understanding of social story composition from a discourse-pragmatic perspective. Drawing upon the framework of genre theory and move analysis, the study reveals and elucidates move structure, communicative purposes and rhetorical devices in Social StoriesTM. The study argues that Social StoriesTM are not narrative but a combination of informative and instructional discourse. This research suggests that genre study of Social StoriesTM supplements and facilitates learning and understanding of social story writing in healthcare professional training.

Subjective falsity, or speaker’s belief that a statement is false, has been argued by philosophers to be the necessary condition for a lie. Results from an empirical study with English (Coleman and Kay, 1981), Arabic (Cole, 1996) and Spanish speakers (Hardin, 2010) support the philosophers’ argument. Indonesians, however, perceive objective falsity as the most important element to define a lie (Adha, 2020). This led us to repeat the investigation with Mandarin Chinese speakers. We wanted to know, first, if the Chinese word huanghuà “lie” covered the three prototypical elements of lie as suggested by Coleman and Kay. And what is the most important element for Mandarin Chinese speakers in a prototypical lie? Secondly, how do Chinese people demonstrate the categorisation and the evaluation of lying compared to the speakers of other languages. We found that Mandarin Chinese speakers also consider objective falsity as the strongest element. However, Mandarin Chinese speakers perceive intention to be a stronger element to determine whether a story contains a lie or not compared to Indonesians.

This study investigates whether the taxonomies of presupposition triggers, as proposed by Levinson (1983) for the English language, are applicable in Chinese-language contexts and whether any Chinese linguistic devices can be found to operate as presupposition carriers that do not easily fit Levinson’s categories. Furthermore, to explore how presuppositions function as implicit tools when it comes to shaping frames of interpretation, we analyse their use in Chinese official press narratives about the Sino-US trade conflict from March to December 2018. Findings demonstrate that most of the English-language triggers are also salient in the Chinese language. Moreover, other specific Chinese presupposition-carrying devices are discussed as well. Above all, the analysis illustrates how presuppositions fulfil various roles in the communication exchange. In a sensitive context, such as the present Sino-US trade conflict, backgrounded information in the guise of presuppositions constitutes a potentially powerful tool to influence audience uptake.