Communicative Resources Research Articles

Of Image Repair Strategies in Online Crises

In contemporary society, social media plays an ever-increasing role. The frequency and impact of crises, particularly online, are escalating, posing economic and reputational threats to organizations. Although much research on crisis communication and management has emerged, the field still lacks a general theory or paradigm. This research deficiency has reached a point where it is necessary to limit the inclusion of new theoretical elements but instead concretize practical applications of existing theory. Organizations often struggle with inadequate or rhetorically insufficient crisis responses, leading to stakeholder dissatisfaction and subsequently loss of resources. In this article, I have addressed this problem. By examining to what extent, it is possible to create a new theory for selecting an image repair strategy that can be used both during crises and as an analytical tool in retrospect. Thus, proposing a new theory, the Model of Image Repair Selection (MIRS), and proposals for integrating the theory into crisis management efforts, offering practical solutions to the complexity of crises. Thus, this work proposes a new theory, the Model of Image Repair Selection (MIRS), along with recommendations for integrating the theory into crisis management efforts, offering practical solutions to address the complexity of crises. With this, MIRS has the potential to help organizations navigate and lessen the effects of crises. MIRS accommodates both the complex and dynamic dimensions of crises without excluding combinations with other approaches to crisis communication. By integrating the six major rhetorical strategies in crises into a model based on four parameters—risk, transparency, attitude, and communicative resources—MIRS enhances theoretical understanding and provides organizations with a valuable instrument for crisis management

Translingual Practice as a Communicative Resource in the Discourse of Foreign Language Teaching Researchers

AbstractThis paper reports on a self‐examination of two researchers’ translingual practices while working on a study. The researchers’ translingual practice emerged in the cross‐cutting area of different factors: The first author (Hayriye) was born to Turkish parents and grew up in Germany until the age of 19 before moving to Turkey. Living in Turkey for 32 years, Turkish became her dominant language. The second author (Stefan) is a German native speaker who had lived in Turkey for 22 years. He had acquired Turkish in Turkey without receiving formal instruction. The research site was a Turkish state university. Hayriye was assistant professor in the department of German language and literature, Stefan assistant professor in the English language teaching department. This paper's results are based on the discourse Hayriye and Stefan had while analyzing two German as a foreign language coursebooks. The transcribed discourse was analyzed using code‐switching as the theoretical framework to identify juxtapositions of the three languages used by the researchers (German, Turkish and English), language frequencies and directions as well as syntactic integration, thereby detecting patterns in the researchers’ translingual practices. Also, conversation analysis was employed to identify functions of code‐switches. The results show distinct patterns of each speaker and identified functions that document how language alternation serves as a communicative resource to co‐construct knowledge. Besides, instances of translingual practices can be connected to specific factors of the discourse context, and evidence is provided for multilingual speakers’ awareness of languages as separable systems.

Power Relations in Older Adults’ Cognitive Interaction in Clinical Setting: A Multimodal Pragmatic Perspective

Abstract This study explored the construction of power relations in the cognitive assessment of older adults within the Chinese clinical context. Data is derived from audio and video recordings that nine older adults produced in the cognitive assessment of the Chinese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment-Basic (MoCA-B), which were then annotated and analyzed from a multimodal pragmatic perspective. The study reveals that examiners and older adults employed various speech acts to achieve distinct communicative goals, with power relations between them being reflected through these speech acts. Examiners tend to claim high power, utilizing discourse strategies such as request, interruption, evaluation, rhetorical questions, and directive speech acts. In contrast, older adults assert high power through directive speech acts, rhetorical questions, and interruptions. Both parties also exhibit low power by using confirming questions and explanations. Additionally, gestures, smiles, prosody features, and other non-verbal communicative resources are synergistically employed to exercise power. The interactive mechanism of constructing power relations reveals that age affects older adults’ power relations construction even in a professional setting of the Chinese context. The negotiation between the advanced age of older adults and the expertise of examiners jointly shapes power relations in their interactions.

Social capital: trust and public participation (case study of Tyumen Region)

The study presents findings of an investigation into the growing potential factors of public activity based on regional sociological surveys. It demonstrates dynamics and structures of institutional and generalized trust in the Tyumen region from 2013 to 2023. Comparative interregional assessments of institutional and generalized trust, as well as the potential for growth of public activity across seven Russian regions in 2023, are offered, too. The analysis addresses contradictions in the interrelationships among key social capital resources. A typology of public participation – categorized into “active,” “political participants,” “public activists,” and “passives” – was developed using the example of the Tyumen region residents and subsequently used to evaluate its connection to social capital. The study illustrates increasing public activity levels, primarily linked to generalized trust and communicative resources. Barriers to the growth of engagement in socially beneficial activities are identified.

The Royal Touch Under Neoliberalism: The Swedish King’s Consecration of ‘Leadership’ through World Scouting

In this paper, I examine how the formally powerless Swedish King consecrates neoliberalism by promoting the idea of ‘leadership’ in his role as the Honorary Chairman of the World Scout Foundation, a global organization dedicated to educating and fostering young people all over the world. ‘Leadership’, which stresses people’s individual responsibility, entrepreneurship, activity and productivity, and positive thinking, is a critical component of neoliberalism and the market-based society, regarded both as a political ideology, and a way of life. The paper has two contributions to sociology: First, I manifest the status of monarchs as contemporary elites, that is, powerful actors with unproportionate access to economic, social, cultural, communicative and organizational resources. Second, I propose how elites’ consecration is not only limited to sanctifying certain groups of people/classes in contemporary society, but include the social and moral elevation of ideologies, ideas and human capabilities as well.

Maximizing students’ content and language development: The pedagogical potential of translanguaging in a Chinese immersion setting

BackgroundRecent studies highlight the benefits of translanguaging for emergent bi/multilinguals (EMLs), enhancing their understanding of academic content in a new language. Despite the growth of Chinese immersion programs in the U.S., research on translanguaging and its impact on teacher and student experiences in this context remains scarce. AimsThis study aims to explore how Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers implement pedagogical translanguaging to support students’ learning in academic content and language within a Chinese immersion context in the U.S., and to understand the perspectives of teachers and students on translanguaging. SampleParticipants were two Chinese CLIL teachers and six of their students from a Chinese immersion school in the U.S. MethodsUsing a participatory design research methodology that combines ethnographic methods with multimodal conversation analysis, we documented the use of pedagogical translanguaging and triangulated data from field notes, classroom artifacts, and interviews. ResultsFindings reveal teachers utilized diverse communicative resources and exercised translanguaging shifts to enhance students’ grasp of advanced vocabulary and academic concepts, facilitating complex idea articulation in Chinese. Both teachers and students valued these strategies for deepening subject understanding and supporting their learning of the Chinese language. ConclusionsThe study highlights the importance of continuous professional development for CLIL teachers to effectively implement pedagogical translanguaging, supporting students’ learning in an immersion setting.

Communication in the Mirror of Social Semiotics

Introduction. The subject of this article is communicative resources, which are selected by partners from a huge variety of linguistic means, functional styles, rhetorical techniques, and subject activities, and through which a common semantic space between individuals is generated.Methodology and sources. As a methodological platform we propose the principles of praxis-oriented social semiotics. Being one of the relatively late trends of semiotic research, social semiotics focuses attention not so much on signs or sign systems as on social signifying practices as regular, repetitive, recognisable types of actions: the actions of communication participants are endowed with the properties of sign systems through which relations between individuals are discovered, made visible and meaningful. The mechanisms of meaning production, from the point of view of the participants of the event, are analysed using the concept of ‘discursive practices’, understood as speech actions in order to solve a variety of practical interpersonal tasks.Results and discussion. As an individual learns a variety of interpersonal discursive practices, different relational systems become available to him/her. Specific discursive practices allow individuals to present different versions of their self, justify their actions, maintain dominance and/or subordination relations, thus demonstrating mastery of the communicative situation. Following the principles of praxis-oriented social semiotics, it can be argued that interpersonal relationships involve what can be called a discourse of trust, personal involvement in relationships, intimacy/closeness.Conclusion. The described symbolic regulators allow not only to semiotically comprehend the social positions of interacting parties, but also to offer self-control procedures and an arsenal of communicative actions to the participants of interpersonal communication as means of behaviour management in situations of interpersonal communication.

Deixis and dementia: Insights from phenomenological philosophy

This article provides an overview of the relevance of deixis in dementia from the perspective of phenomenological philosophy with an inter- and transdisciplinary scope. A key objective is to integrate existing approaches and develop hypotheses for future research. The paper seeks to explore the potential of deixis to enhance interaction and communication in the most common form of dementia, Alzheimer's disease. The paper prepares the ground for three sub-goals: (1) Developing a general taxonomy of deixis, differentiating between verbal deixis (e.g., pronouns), corporeal deixis (e.g., pointing gestures), and medial deixis (e.g., arrows). (2) Investigating the diagnostic, therapeutic and care applications of deixis in Alzheimer's disease in the face of the progressive loss of higher cognitive skills. (3) Pinpointing the desiderata emerging from the relation between deixis and dementia at both conceptual and empirical levels. This paper argues for viewing deixis not solely as a deficit-indicator but also as a resource-indicator. Deixis in dementia can serve on two interconnected yet distinct levels: one for diagnosis, and another for therapy and care. On the one hand, verbal indexicals have a deficit-indicating function for the loss of higher cognitive skills, such as language, orientation and memory. This function is relevant for linguistically shaped dementia diagnosis and a holistic interpretation of key symptoms. On the other hand, all three kinds of deixis, the verbal, the corporeal, and the medial, do have a resource-indicating function. The threefold deixis helps us to advance orientation, communication and interaction in both private and institutional living environments. For example, the corporeal deixis is an important communicative resource, which helps to navigate and maintain attention, intention, and emotion. Finally, the paper proposes an index-ability scale to identify personalized communication resources for individuals with dementia.

Following the sounds of children’s “voices”: A researcher’s portfolio

Herein, I explore the meanings of the oft-used phrase “children’s voices.” The phrase is seldom defined in the literature on children’s language, oral and written. And yet, studying those voices has been fronted as a key methodological tool allowing insights into concerns about equity and the erasure of “nonmainstream” children’s communicative resources. Thus, this essay examines the professional use of “children’s voices” by taking readers on a voice-filled journey through time and space as I consider literally how this unstable but valuable phrase (e.g., “children’s voices”) is used to index some quality of children’s language use, especially their multimodal composing. First, I report on a literature analysis, focused on a relatively recent decade of articles from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)’s journal focused on children, Language Arts (the decade beginning in 2010). Although it proved to be a relative rarity to identify an author defining “children’s voices,” this project phase was invaluable for developing a taxonomy of non-rigidified but still differentiated categories for the meaning of “children’s voices.” Next, to clarify this unstable but useful taxonomy, I examined my ethnographic reports written over 46 years of studying children’s talk and writing, selecting excerpts from four chronologically organized reports, which were undergirded by different stances toward “children’s voices.” Together they illustrate how going deeper into children’s voices meant expanding the nature of the sociopolitical and cultural worlds enacted, sustained, or interrupted by children’s contextualized voices. As Hymes said many years ago, to understand voice and how it figures into equity issues in education, one needs ethnographic context. I aim to suggest why clarity about voice matters theoretically, politically, and pedagogically if we are to understand children’s composing of both texts and themselves as participants in a shared world.

‘There are no restrictions on me’: a netnographic approach to amateur subtitling from the perspective of translanguaging

ABSTRACT Amateur audiovisual translation is experiencing an increase in both prominence and scholarly attention, rejuvenating studies into audiovisual translation by shifting focus to earlier overlooked aspects of intralinguistic, interlinguistic, and intersemiotic translation activities, often sidelined in favour of monolingualism. Drawing on the netnographic data from the self-subtitling vlogger @成员外 on the popular Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili.com, this study examines how and why the vlogger utilises multiple communicative resources to perform subtitling in amateur online settings through the lens of translanguaging. The results reveal that the translator employs source languages, local vernaculars, internet buzzwords, trans-registers, trans-modalities, and trans-discourses in his subtitling activities. These manipulative boundary-transcending transcreations not only enhance accuracy and expressiveness but also facilitate cultural mediation, and ultimately, foster the co-construction of an affinity space configured by a spirit of participation, collaboration, and mutual understanding. This study, as an attempt at the interdisciplinary study of applied linguistics and translation studies, sheds light on the production of audiovisual content in the media localisation industry and provides a solid foundation for future inquiries and explorations in this burgeoning field.

Students’ stance towards translanguaging in an EFL oral productive assessment task

ABSTRACT Albeit the growing plurilingual research due to the new sociolinguistic realities in education and a reaction to the dominant monolingual bias, few studies have focused on plurilingual assessment and students’ ideologies towards using their plurilingual competence and resources such as translanguaging. A total sample of 36 undergraduates who completed a five-month EMI or ESP course in Catalonia, Spain, participated in our study. We examined their stance-taking discourse on a speaking assessment task in which they could draw upon all their communicative resources if they felt that it would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their message. Findings suggested that, rather than two clear extreme positions, there is a continuum of positions in favour and against the legitimacy of using their whole plurilingual repertoire. Moreover, our results also showed the dominance of a deeply-ingrained monolingual mindset among the learners which leads them to implicitly or explicitly resist the possibility of translanguaging.

ADAPTATION PROBLEMS OF ETHNOLINGUISTIC MINORITIES FROM SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIETAL PERSPECTIVES

ABSTRACT: Aim: The aim of this article is to present adaptation problems faced by bilingual representatives of ethnolinguistic minorities – from a socio-psychological perspective. Methods: This text is a review of literature on the subject matter under discussion. Results: Referring to the results of research conducted in the field, attention is paid to the most common adaptation problems from a socio-psychological perspective experienced by representatives of various ethnolinguistic minorities in bilingual education. The text also discusses issues related to the concept of bilingualism as well as its typology, outlining the differentia specifica existing between additive bilingualism and subtractive bilingualism. Conclusion: Bilingual education is an active, creative process that draws on linguistic, communicative and cognitive resources of the developing child (F. Genesee 2003). For that reason, quite a few studies have been carried out on simultaneous acquisition of two languages; equally interesting would be research results conducted among representatives of ethnolinguistic minorities in trilingual or quadrilingual language acquisition. Originality: The issues described are important for practical applications in the second language acquisition process. Keyword: bilingualism, immersion, submersion, biculturalism, ethnolinguistic minorities, adaptation problems

Mobility-in-place: how to keep privilege by being mobile at work

Abstract In this paper, we explore the notion of mobility as a dynamic process of keeping oneself in a privileged position through the mobilisation of linguistic, communicative, and semiotic resources. It is a proposed construct that troubles our understanding of the two dominant paradigms in the study of language in globalisation: the sociolinguistics of distribution (study of language-in-place) and the sociolinguistics of mobility (study of language-in-motion) (Blommaert and Dong 2007. Language and movement in space. Working Papers in Language Diversity. University of Jyväskylä). We examine the professional life story of Andrew and Juanito to map out the inventive manner by which they move around within their workplaces through their deployment of language, and English in particular. While there has been substantial work dedicated to unpacking elite language and how it enables the mobility of speakers, our paper departs from it by constructing an understanding of how such privilege is organized in terms of people’s ability to shift between linguistic and stylistic choices in order to mobilize their own privileged mobility within their chosen workplaces. What we see here is the mobilisation of ‘language-in-motion-in-place’ -- or broadly, mobility-in-place -- which erases the conceptual dichotomy between the two dominant paradigms in the study of language and globalisation: while the speakers are in place, they are also mobile.

Night Sweats

Abstract This article focuses on film noir as a place of visual representation of character embodiment, including most prominently sweat, but also pain, exertion, and addiction. This embodiment provides a way in for the viewer, a connection based upon a shared felt affect that situates emotional engagement and understanding at a more basic level. Noir films use indicators of character embodiment as a communicative resource for viewers to understand character experience and narrative situations, especially those that are unfamiliar and thematically prominent in the canon, such as paranoia, fear, anxiety.

Material Engagement Shaping Participation of Children on the Autism Spectrum: Embodiment and Subjectivity in Small-Group Learning.

This study investigated the material engagement and their affordances for participation of children on the autism spectrum (AS) in small-group learning. Framed by a methodology called Idea Diary that fosters social interactions in classroom environments, our focus was on understanding how and when the construction and manipulation of the diary supported children's participation and knowledge construction in small groups. This investigation was guided by the intersection of the theory of subjectivity developed by Fernando González Rey and enactive accounts of cognition. This framework provided the view of the singularity in the communicative process of children on the AS and the necessary support for examining the mechanisms of engagement that led to children's participation. We present two case studies of 9-10-year-old boys. Data consists of the diaries produced and used by children and video recordings of children's interactions during small-group discussions. Our analytical approach included a qualitative semiotic analysis of the materials and a micro-analysis of the social interactions. The results showed, first, that children on the AS continuously engaged in the construction of the diary, expressing elements of their subjectivity-experiences, ideas and the system through which they interact with the world. Repetition framed children's productions and signalled engagement. Second, material engagement enabled participatory sense-making, which in this study appeared in creating new communicative resources between the child on the AS and their peers and in adapting the narratives, approximating children's perspectives in conversations. Although contextualised within a specific pedagogical practice, the study contributes to advancing our understanding of the role of material engagement in social participation in learning situations involving children on the AS, particularly relevant in educational psychology and education.

A study of the propensity for communicative aggressiveness in cadet pilots

The article presents a model of personal resource of a civil aviation pilot and the experience of studying one of the components of this model – a communicative resource. The article analyses the results of a study of the propensity for communicative aggressiveness of the 5th year cadets of the Ulyanovsk Institute of Civil Aviation named after the Chief Marshal of Aviation B.P. Bugaev who are studying in the field of “Organization of flight work”. 83 people participated in the study. V.V. Bojko’s questionnaire “Determination of integral forms of communicative aggressiveness” was used as a diagnostic tool. This technique is designed to assess a person’s predisposition to aggression in various situations and contains 11 parameters of explicit and hidden forms of aggressive human behaviour. The article substantiates the relevance of studying communicative aggressiveness as a professional destruction of civil aviation pilots. The analysis of the average group and personal values of various parameters characterising the respondents’ propensity to aggressive manifestations was conducted. Recommendations are given on the development of emotional intelligence of future civil aviation pilots in the conditions of their higher professional education. The experience of the Ulyanovsk Institute of Civil Aviation in the prevention and correction of educational and professional stress of participants in the educational process is presented.

Gaze and tactile sense

Background: Visual and hearing impairments are common co-morbid conditions for Down syndrome (DS). Combined sensory loss can present major communication challenges, which affect the opportunities for equal participation, learning, and development. This article focuses on facilitating social interaction. Method: The study uses conversation analysis based on video recordings of naturally occurring interaction during various activities in school. The sample consists of five children with DS and combined sensory loss and their teachers. Results: The results indicate that the pupils use gaze and vision actively in interaction with adults and respond actively to the other’s communicative use of gaze. Gaze is an important resource for the pupils and is strategically used to regulate, orient, and establish attention, but also to express interest and intention. Discussion/conclusion: Despite the pupils’ visual impairment, eye contact plays an important role in their communication. To optimize meaning-making and communicative participation, it is important to have knowledge of the individual child’s specific sensory and communication challenges as they occur in social interaction. This will increase the opportunity to uncover pupils’ communicative strategies, resources, and tactile preferences, which in turn are prerequisites for the facilitation of participation, learning, and development.

Epistemic Reciprocity Through a Decolonial Crip Literacy in Accommodated Language Education for Adults

Abstract This linguistic ethnography was conducted in accommodated language education in Sweden, aimed at adult learners with deafness, hearing impairment, post-traumatic stress disorder, migration stress, or intellectual disability, here, focusing on the latter group, who attended Swedish language learning courses. We empirically investigate a decolonial crip literacy, by connecting language education to epistemic reciprocity. The decolonial lens is understood with regard to the marginalized and dis-abled body, under-represented in Applied Linguistics. More specifically, we focus on teacher positionality and ethical stance-taking among three of the teachers, to contribute an in-depth and situated account of a decolonial crip literacy, as counteracts of ableism and linguicism, and an orientation toward epistemic justice. Based on our linguistic ethnographic data, we suggest that the decolonial crip literacy project engages with disability-as-difference, positioning the dis-abled body as knower, via epistemic reciprocity, which is communicated through a multiplicity of communicative resources, materialities, and creativity. The paper contributes both to the theorizing of injustice in language education and to alternatives in pedagogical practice.

Organizational Voicing Architecture in the Age of Social Media – a Case Study in Professional Service Organizations

ABSTRACT Digital communication technologies, particularly social media, enable members of organizations at all levels and across all functions to communicate with external stakeholders. This has required organizations to rethink and restructure their strategic communication management, especially the orchestration of their communicative human resources. Using a qualitative case-study approach, this article examines how professional service organizations create and maintain their stakeholder relations in the contemporary media landscape through the orchestration of employee voice and enactment as organizational spokespersons. The findings show that organizations have created structural architectures that they use as a basis for strategic communication management. Based on these findings, the study introduces a novel concept of organizational voicing architecture, which refers to the conceptual structure and overall logical arrangement of organizational spokespersons who act as organizational representatives in the corporate communication system. Additionally, by integrating the findings related to the voicing architecture with existing knowledge about organizational listening, the study broadens understanding of the mechanism with which organizations strategically orchestrate their stakeholder relationships, and hence contributes to the strategic and corporate communication and public relations literature.

Communicating through Protocols: The Case of Diplomatic Credential Ceremonies

Abstract This study questions to what extent state agents invest efforts in building interpersonal relations with their counterparts. It is based on data collected during two years of ethnographic fieldwork at the Israeli president’s residence, where we observed credential ceremonies involving ambassadors from twenty-three states and interviewed the president’s advisors. We consider the credential ceremony an extreme case study regulated by highly formalized protocol, including the strictest guidelines existing in the world of diplomacy. We assume that if relation-building between statespersons takes place in the most unexpected spaces of international politics, we can detect it in all sites of diplomacy. Adopting a relational practice approach, we identified two methods of positive signaling for relationship building: preplanned by the organizers “from above,” directed at the individual-as-state-representative, and conveyed by participants “from below,” targeting the individual-as-guest/host. We conclude by discussing the implications of the prevalence of interpersonal relation-building in international politics, the role of diplomatic protocols as a communicative resource that affects the diplomatic environment, and how the concept of affordances provides a fresh look at one of the most fundamental debates in the field of IR: the relationship between agency and structure.