Communicative Intentions Research Articles

Back to the Future: Uncovering Deeper Meanings in Historical Newspaper Texts

Keeping in mind the recent COVID-19 pandemic, this paper builds on a study that examined how a major twentieth century South African newspaper utilised outbreaks of bubonic plague to propagate racial stereotypes in Johannesburg. The data were gathered from the Rand Daily Mail archive database and analysed thematically. Recent years have seen the emergence of new disciplines, such as historical pragmatics, along with calls for historians to move beyond collecting documentation into textual analysis. Thus, the researchers reanalysed selected data using systemic functional grammar to discover how the communicative intention was achieved. The research follows a descriptive qualitative method. It was found that the newspaper played a major role in the promotion of racial segregation. However, at times its reporting was nuanced. Understanding how past media made use of events and discourses to influence the public and achieve political goals can serve to inform the present and illuminate the future.

자유놀이 상황에서 초기 언어발달단계 자폐범주성장애 아동과 어머니의 의사소통 특성

Herein, we aimed to characterize the communicative intentions between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the early stage of language development and their mothers. The participants included six children with ASD and their mothers, and six typically developing and language-age matched children and their mothers. Spontaneous speech during free play was collected. Therefore, (1) types of communicative intentions, mode of communication, and types of turn-taking showed a significant difference between the children’s groups, (2) The types of communicative intentions and number of turn-takings demonstrated a significant difference between the mothers’ groups. Our results will aid us in understanding the characteristics of the communicative acts performed by children with ASD in the early language development stage and their mothers.

Is strong more vulnerable? An empirical investigation of psychological contract formation, violation, and customer reactions

The authors combine the psychological contract theory with the cognitive appraisal theory of emotions to systematically examine how psychological contract breach affects customer reactions to service failures. In service encounters, customers may perceive a discrepancy between what the brand has promised and what they have received, leading to breach that could potentially evoke feelings of violation and result in retaliatory behaviors. Two online scenario-based experiments reveal that 1) breach and subsequent feelings of betrayal mediate the impact of the strength of psychological contracts on anger in response to service failures, and that 2) breach, betrayal, and anger mediate the impacts of the strength of psychological contracts on partner quality inferences and negative word-of-mouth communication intentions, with the effects being moderated by the reason for the failure (customer fault versus brand fault). These results indicate that managing psychological contracts can help mitigate negative reactions to service failures.

О полифункциональности знаков препинания в современном немецком языке (на примере тире)

The article analyzes the functions of the dash in literary German-language texts. The purpose of the study is to clarify and describe the various functions of the dash, to determine its role in the transmission of the communicative intention of the author of the written text. It is established that the dash is a multifunctional punctuation mark which complicates and specifies its functions depending on the contextual conditions of its use and the communicative situation. Two main groups of functions were identified and described: structural-semantic and expressive. Within the framework of structural and semantic functions, the dash is an indicator of logical relations in an utterance – causal and contrast ones. Being a means of a written text division, the dash performs compositional functions: it signals the transition from one type of speech transmission to another, to a new microtheme, a change of the addressee-addresse r of speech. The dash is a graphic means of creating expressiveness, marking expressive syntactic constructions (inserts, separations, introductory structures, attachments, parentheses), pauses in a character’s speech, contributing to the compression of the utterance, the effect of emotional tension, the incompleteness of the utterance. The dash is one of those punctuation marks that have a vivid stylistic potential and are widely used by the authors in order to create a special artistic effect. This applies both to cases where the current punctuation rules allow one to choose between a dash and another character, and when the rules do not require any character at all. The choice of the dash depends on the author’s communicative intention and can be explained based on the context, or by the predominant use of the dash, which is one of the elements of the author’s style.

Developing Pedagogical Applications for Teaching Politeness Strategies in Advanced English as a Foreign Language Classrooms

The field of English as a foreign language (EFL) strives to promote students' proficiency by equipping them with proper grammatical and lexical skills. However, EFL textbooks often neglect the teaching of pragmatics which can lead to cross-cultural communication failures for EFL learners. EFL learners often struggle with traditional language teaching approaches that prioritize grammatical development over pragmatic skills. This paper aims to address this gap by focusing on promoting the use of politeness strategies among EFL learners in cross-cultural communication, particularly in email correspondences with college professors. The proposed teaching activities are based on the Linguistic Theory of Politeness and the 3Ds framework within the context of the Communicative Repertoire Approach. This paper aims to assist advanced EFL learners in effectively employing politeness strategies when writing email requests to college professors, by offering practical pedagogical applications that enhance EFL learners' ability to express their communicative intentions clearly and avoid any potential misunderstanding or misinterpretation by their college professors.

Early triadic interactions in the first year of life: a systematic review on object-mediated shared encounters.

Infants' early interactions with adults and everyday objects are key to socio-communicative development, but their emergence and development are still under debate. Aiming at describing the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches on triadicity during the first year of life, we conducted a systematic and qualitative review of recent literature. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we explored the scientific production of recent decades on triadic interactions up to 12 months of age. We initially screened 1943 items from which we obtained a final sample of 51 publications. Studies are usually conducted in laboratory settings, while ecological research is becoming increasingly common, especially in home settings. According to a thematic analysis of the data, we discussed the different perspectives on the origin and conceptualization of triadic interactions, and how they contribute to structuring and facilitating other developmental phenomena, such as the children's communicative gestures and uses of objects. Prior to the origin of intentional communication, adults facilitate early forms of triadicity based on fostering opportunities for infants' communication and engagement with both adults and materiality. However, there is a need for further research that explore the potential of early triadic interactions for parenting and early childhood education practises.

Do you read me?

This paper argues that there are three separable but related dimensions that are important to the legal notion of consent. One is a consenting state of mind, the ‘going along with’ a plan of action, which may or may not be communicated or even reflected upon, but which certainly can be. A second is displaying behaviour which reveals or is an expression of consenting. Another is intentionally communicating consent. I illustrate how the communicative act is often vitally important as evidence of an underlying consenting state, but the underlying consenting state has to be postulated and brought to the fore since consensual actions (e.g. sexual intercourse) can, and more often than not do, take place without the communicative acts, and the communicative acts might for various reasons be made in the absence of the genuinely consenting state of mind. The arguments I put forward offer a reframing of cases in which an apparent intentional communication of consent was treated as consent, rather than as a piece of evidence which may or may not be indicative of a consenting state of mind. This paper emphasises that we must not allow the importance of something as evidential to eclipse the underlying phenomenon, which is itself, however hard to access otherwise, the thing of primary legal importance.

Стратегия дискредитации как инструмент антироссийской пропаганды в речах немецких политиков

The study aims to characterise the linguistic means of implementing the strategy of discrediting Russia and Russian foreign policy activities in the speeches of German politicians. The paper discusses speech techniques for the implementation of communicative intent, which consists in deliberately discrediting Russia’s foreign policy and purposefully creating an image of the enemy, and also analyses their influencing potential from the standpoint of functional pragmalinguistics. The scientific novelty of the study lies in an attempt to systematise the linguistic means used by German politicians to form a negative attitude of the audience and to justify their influencing power. As a result of the study, the author finds that the discrediting strategy is implemented in the following tactics: the dehumanisation tactics, the accusation tactics and the intimidation tactics. These tactics imply the use of a set of speech techniques the influencing power of which is aimed at creating a negative image (dehumanisation) of the object of discrediting, as well as at accusing this object of criminal actions and instilling a sense of fear of the scale of emerging threats and the consequences of the actions carried out by the object of discrediting.

Predictors and Outcomes of Help-Seeking Behaviors: A Longitudinal Investigation in Mental Illness

ABSTRACT Millions of people around the world are affected by mental illness, yet a substantive portion of individuals with mental illness do not regularly seek help from medical professionals or utilize mental health services. Help-seeking involves an individual’s communicative intention and behaviors to solicit advice and/or treatment and thus is essentially a communicative process. This manuscript reports a longitudinal study that examined predictors and outcomes of help-seeking in mental illness contexts. Three-wave data from 223 participants clinically diagnosed with one or more mental illness conditions were collected and analyzed. Results indicated that expected outcomes of help-seeking from counselors were significantly associated with participants’ communication efficacy and target efficacy at Wave 1, which subsequently influenced motivation to seek help and actual help-seeking behaviors at Wave 2. Actual help-seeking behaviors predicted post-traumatic growth and cognitive reappraisal at Wave 3. Importantly, communication efficacy and target efficacy interacted in their effects on help-seeking motivation and behaviors. Theoretical implications for help-seeking communication processes and practical implications for mental health help-seeking are discussed.

Shared Knowledge in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

According to the Theory of Natural Pedagogy, object-directed emotion may provide different information depending on the context: in a communicative context, the information conveys culturally shared knowledge regarding the emotional valence of an object and is generalizable to other individuals, whereas, in a non-communicative context, information is interpreted as a subjective disposition of the person expressing the emotion, i.e., personal preference. We hypothesized that this genericity bias, already present in infants, may be a feature of human communication and, thus, present at all ages. We further questioned the effects of robotic ostensive cues. To explore these possibilities, we presented object-directed emotions in communicative and non-communicative contexts under two conditions: adult participants (N = 193) were split into those who underwent the human-demonstrator condition and those who underwent the robot-demonstrator condition, i.e., a human actor or a robot displayed object-directed emotions, respectively. Questionnaires further assessed the participants’ attachment style and mentalization ability. The results showed that (1) Natural Pedagogy Theory applies to humans across the lifespan; (2) Shared knowledge depends on the contexts (communicative vs. non-communicative) and who is sharing the information (human or robot); and (3) robotic ostensive cues trigger participants’ attention, conversely, in their absence, participants do not turn the robot into a communicative partner by not assigning it a communicative intention due to a difficulty in reading the robot’s mind. Taken together, our findings indicate that robotic ostensive cues may ease the human-robot interaction (HRI), which is also biased by the human attachment style. The study has been preregistered in Open Science Framework, OSF on September 9, 2021 (Registration DOI https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/9TWY8).

Primary care engagement in health system change: a scoping review of common barriers and effective strategies

BackgroundThe complexity of health systems necessitates coordination between a multitude of stakeholders to enact meaningful change. Primary care physicians are a crucial partner to engage, as their investment and participation are critical to the success of any system-level initiative. The aim of this scoping review is to identify common barriers and effective strategies when engaging primary care physicians in designing and implementing health system change.MethodsA scoping review was performed. A literature search was performed in March 2020 using five databases. 668 unique articles were identified and underwent a title and abstract review. 23 articles met criteria for full text review and 10 met final inclusion criteria. A backward citation analysis identified two articles. 12 articles underwent data extraction and thematic analysis.ResultsSeveral barriers to engagement were identified including a lack of trust between primary care physicians and decision-makers, strong professional physician identity, clinically irrelevant and complex proposals, and a lack of capacity and supports. Described strategies to overcome these barriers included building trust and relationships, contextual engagement strategies, working with physician leadership, enabling open and intentional communication channels, designing clinically relevant and straightforward initiatives, and considering financial incentives.ConclusionsBarriers to primary care engagement should be addressed with contextually designed strategies and a focus on relationship building, collaborative efforts, and implementing relevant and feasible initiatives. Further research should explore how to best develop relationships with primary care, working with collective voices of primary care physicians, and to better understanding the impact of financial incentives on engagement.

Exerting power through interruptions: A case study of arbitrators’ discourses in Chinese Arbitral Tribunals

Applying conservation analysis, this article explicates the specific ways in which interruptions are strategized to adjust power relations in arbitration discourse. By analyzing the transcriptions of 18 authentic recordings of arbitration cases in Chinese mainland, this article ascertains the frequency and classification of interruptions, and further explains the discursive features of interruptions related to power. The analyses reveal that arbitrators in Chinese arbitral tribunals alternatively adopt the conflicting, conciliatory and emotional interruptions with/without discourse markers to represent variant degrees of arbitral power, satisfy the pragmatic needs of communication, and promote the arbitration proceedings. Discourse markers function as signals of interruptions and regulators of arbitral power, which are jointly adopted with interruptions by arbitrators to convey different communicative intentions. This study puts forward a new model of arbitrators’ interruptions and power which can be applied in the further studies of other professional domains, and the findings may have some important implications for arbitration discourse study in terms of the relationship between language and power.

A Case Study of a Hungarian-English Bilingual Girl’s Code-switching Practices between the Ages of Three and Eleven

The paper investigates a Hungarian-English bilingual child’s Sarah’s second language acquisition (SLA) with a special focus on how she integrated English (L2) into her speech to convey the intended meaning and negotiate the multiple identities she developed in her bilingualism in various social contexts. An ethnographic single-case study research seemed to be a relevant method of giving an exploratory, interpretive, and in-depth description of my single participant’s language development (Creswell & Creswell, 2018, Duff, 2007). The applied qualitative data collection comprised the participant’s everyday interactions, semi-structured retrospective interviews, and her own spontaneous reflections. The findings indicate that Sarah used L2 as a complementary set of linguistic forms to differentiate meaning and as a social site for negotiating and gauging her own and her interlocutor’s conduct and language use. Use of L2 expanded her linguistic repertoire, conveyed communicative intentions, and shed light on her transitory bilingual roles. The various feedback she received from her social environment shaped her self-concept and called for discussing and revisiting her own language competence. What she thought about peer feedback exerted a powerful impact on her self-image. The study might provide incentive for teaching English to young learners in home settings and might underpin the relevance of investigating single-case scenarios.

Implementation of a human‐aware robot navigation module for cooperative soft‐fruit harvesting operations

AbstractIn the last decades, robotic solutions have been introduced in agriculture to improve the efficiency of tasks such as spraying, plowing, and seeding. However, for a more complex task like soft‐fruit harvesting, the efficiency of experienced human pickers has not been surpassed yet by robotic solutions. Thus, in the immediate future, human labor will probably be still necessary for picking tasks while robotic platforms could be used as collaborators, supporting the pickers in the transportation of the harvested fruit. This cooperative harvesting strategy creates a human–robot interaction (HRI) that requires significant further development in human‐aware safe navigation and effective bidirectional communication of intent. In fact, although agricultural robots are considered small/medium size machinery, they still represent a risk of causing injuries to human collaborators, especially if people are not trained to work with robots or robot operations are not intuitive. Avoiding such injury is the aim of this work which contributes to the development, implementation, and evaluation of a human‐aware navigation (HAN) module that can be integrated into the autonomous navigation system of commercial agricultural robots. The proposed module is responsible for the detection and monitoring of humans working around the robot and uses this information to activate safety actions depending on whether the human presence is considered at risk or not. Apart from ensuring a physically safe HRI, the proposed module deals with the comfort level and psychological safety of human coworkers. The latter is possible by using an explicit human–robot communication strategy that lets both know of the other's intentions, increasing the level of trust and reducing inefficient pauses triggered by unnecessary safety actions. The proposed HAN solution was integrated into a commercial agricultural robot and tested in several situations that are expected to happen during cooperative harvesting operations. The results of an usability assessment illustrated the benefits of the proposal in terms of safety, efficiency, and ergonomics.

Communicative Pathways

Testimony and witnessing require sentiency, not humanity. Sentiency is distinguished here as the capacity to experience energetic coalescing between elements/entities/presences and to derive a response from such encounters. Taking as its focal point the kincentric ecology and lifeworld of Yanyuwa Country in the south-west Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia, this paper strives to expand the conceptual roots for a discussion of testimony and witnessing through the principle of “unflattening.” Unflattening is a commitment of orientation, one that counteracts the type of narrow, rigid thinking that is flatness, a condition in which humans are often unable to see past the boundaries of current frames of mind, the limits of our existence, our ontology, epistemic and moral habit (Sousanis, Unflattening (Harvard UP, 2015)). In a settler colonial context such as Australia, these are conditions which reflect a dominant epistemic tradition of the West, which relies upon certain ontological habits, reflective of a capitalist, modern, neo-liberal and individualistic tendency. But this is not the only Law and way of knowing that exists across the great landmass of Australia, mapped as it is by the languages and Laws of diverse Indigenous language groups. In Yanyuwa Country, communication between multifarious agents is common, ranging from those between humans, deceased kin who reside as “old people” in Country, Ancestral Beings which have become the embodiment of Country, non-human animals, elements, objects and places. Each and all are capable of communicating; be it as expressions of recognition of one another, revelation of emotional states, health or disorder, responsivity to the presence of others, Law and local empiricism. Drawing on my ethnographic encounters with Yanyuwa families, I aim, throughout this paper, to unflatten on three fronts: first, expand the relational scope of potential communicative pathways to take in sentient presence as a catalyst for relationality (carried forth by responsiveness to and between presences), second, examine the multidimensional nature of testimony and third, expand our vision of the enactment of witnessing – to consider who, what and when. I consider Indigenous, specifically Yanyuwa, relational ontologies as they bond and unify the human and non-human across a field of sentiency and communicative intention, shifting the focus or primal orientation to either side of and all around the human.

Breaking the Silence: Examining the Role of Parent Involvement and Concussion Knowledge on Sports-Related Concussion Conversations

The current study investigates the role of parents’ concussion knowledge, value-relevant involvement (VRI), outcome-relevant involvement (ORI), and impression-relevant involvement (IRI) on their intentions to communicate with their children about recognizing and reporting sports-related concussions (SRC) symptoms. Among 249 parents of youth athletes between the ages of 9 and 15, SRC knowledge, VRI, and ORI were positively associated with parents' SRC communication intentions, while IRI was a negative predictor. Contrary to our hypotheses, parents with higher IRI were less likely to report SRC communication intentions as knowledge increased. Similarly, as knowledge increased, parents with higher ORI were also less likely to report intentions to communicate with their child about the importance of reporting a SRC. Additionally, parents with lower SRC knowledge were more likely to seek information about communicating with their child about SRCs. The study highlights the importance of considering the interplay between parental involvement and SRC knowledge, as well as underlying factors of SRC parent-child communication. Future research should identify specific goals for SRC communication to optimize educational intervention efforts and maximize the potential impact of communication on SRC reporting rates in youth sports.

Measuring Communicative Intentions and Capabilities: Learners’ English Proficiency as a Supplement to Willingness to Communicate

In this study, we attempted to measure English learners’ communicative intentions and capabilities (CIC) by adding their English proficiency to their willingness to communicate (WTC) as a predictor of the learners’ English use. In the context of communicative language teaching (CLT), learners’ WTC is considered the key to linking important learner factors such as self-perceived competence, anxiety, and motivation. Given that WTC only accounts for learners’ communicative intentions, we hypothesized that learners’ communicative capabilities (i.e., language proficiency) would be a meaningful addition to measuring overall CIC. To test this hypothesis, we collected a total of 67 samples (N = 17,811) and conducted an analysis using a metaanalytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) approach. The results indicated that the learners’ overall CIC successfully predicted their English use, with a significant path coefficient (β = .525, p = .02). Furthermore, we found that the size of the direct contributions of perceived competence and motivation became non-significantly marginal (ps > .05), indicating that adding learners’ proficiency to the WTC to measure the overall CIC can improve the overall explanatory power of the MASEM model to predict learners’ English use.

Effect of sustainability perception on consumer purchasing behaviour

Purpose- The aim of the study is to determine how sustainability perception affects electronic word-of-mouth communication and purchase intention. The perception of sustainability consists of waste utilisation and minimisation, climate change concerns, contributing to environmental protection and recycling. Consumer behaviour is addressed with the dimensions of electronic word-of-mouth communication and purchase intention. Methodology- The data were collected from consumers who use white goods by online survey method and SPSS statistical programme was used to test the relationships. The population of the study consists of consumers who use white goods. Considering that it is not practically possible to reach the universe, sampling was used. Since it is not foreseen to make a generalisation about the population, convenience sampling method, one of the non-random sampling methods, was used. Accordingly, the participants of the study consisted of 517 people. Findings- In the study, sustainability perception positively affects electronic word-of-mouth communication and purchase intention. Moreover, sustainability perception components together positively affect electronic word-of-mouth communication and purchase intention. Conclusion- In recent years, negative impacts on natural ecosystems have increased the importance of the concept of sustainability. Consumers have an important role in ensuring sustainability. Consumers' increasing awareness of sustainability and parallel to this, increasing concerns affect their purchasing behaviour. Perceptions of sustainability strongly influence consumer purchase intentions, which in turn encourage positive online word-of-mouth marketing more effectively than traditional marketing tools. Keywords: Sustainability perception, electronic word-of-mouth, purchase ıntention, consumer behavior, environmental sustainability JEL Codes: M30, M31, M39

Design and implementation of an electronic opioid management plan to support consistent communication of opioid analgesia prescribing intentions to patients and general practitioners

AbstractOpioid prescribing requires careful planning to minimise the risk of serious adverse outcomes. However, documentation of discharge opioid plans for patients and their general practitioners (GPs) is inconsistent, particularly when opioids are commenced in the emergency department or after surgery. We describe an initiative to promote consistent discharge opioid plan communication by implementing an opioid management plan (OMP) in our hospital's electronic medical record. Completion of an electronic form by the prescriber generates an OMP note in the medical history, which is used by the pharmacist to provide tailored opioid patient education. The OMP also populates the discharge summary that is sent to the GP and the Australian national digital health record platform, My Health Record. Preliminary evaluation shows incorporating OMP documentation into routine workflows has assisted prescribers to consistently document the plan for supplied opioids, supporting continuity of care. Workflow optimisation is ongoing to further improve discharge summary documentation and provision of patient‐friendly written information. This study was conducted as a quality improvement project and audits conducted as part of the project were approved by Austin Health's Office for Research (Project No: LNR/18/Austin/155). Informed patient consent was not required by Austin Health.

Identifying and interpreting euphemisms and dysphemisms in RFL classes (the case of political discourse)

This article is devoted to the issue of the need to include in the course of Russian as a foreign language the work on the analysis of Russian-speaking political discourse, the issues of identifying and interpreting euphemisms and dysphemisms in the political discourse, in particular. Euphemisms and dysphemisms are widely used by Russian speakers in a variety of communication situations and speech genres, including political discourse, which makes the research devoted to the systematic description of their functioning in modern Russian-language communication and their place in the Russian language picture of the world urgent. The relevance of the present study is due to the need to integrate the results of cognitive and pragmatic research into the purposeful activities of the teacher of Russian as a foreign language to form the linguistic personality of a foreign student, capable of educational and professional activities in the conditions of multicultural dialogue. The paper deals with the formation of foreign students’ skills and abilities of discursive analysis of the Russian text, identification and interpretation of speech tactics and strategies, the strategy of dominance and resistance, implemented in speech through the use of euphemisms and dysphemisms, in particular. At high levels of proficiency in Russian as a foreign language B2-C1 these skills are a necessary element of the professional competence of humanities professionals. The choice of political texts as the material for the analysis is connected with the fact that for professionals in the humanities, in the field of international relations, in particular, political discourse is a significant sphere of official communication and professional interaction. The aim of the present study is to analyze the theoretical foundations for describing euphemisms and dysphemisms for linguistic and pedagogical purposes, and to develop an approach to creating learning materials aimed at building the skills and abilities of foreign students to recognize hidden meanings and tools of indirect communication in Russian political discourse. The use of the proposed approach helps to develop in foreign students the ability to analyze political discourse and to identify the author’s key and secondary intentions, as well as to improve the skill of operating political terminology and the selection of lexical and verbal means in accordance with the communicative situation and the communicative goals and intentions pursued. The authors relied on the works of domestic and foreign linguists and methodologists in their research. The sociocultural, competence and systemic approaches were used in the research, and the method of complex text analysis and descriptive method were applied.