Conversational Pragmatics Research Articles

Apologizing for Intergroup Criticism Reduces Rejection of Public Health Officials’ Pro-Vaccine Messages

ABSTRACT Compared to other medical experts, public health officials face added scrutiny of their pro-vaccine messages due to distrust of the US federal government. We consider reactions to such critical messages through the lens of conversational norms. Conversational pragmatics suggest that polite communication is essentially cooperative in nature, avoiding criticism of the other or excessive praise of the self. Applied to intergroup communication, this suggests that critical messages from outgroups will be viewed as impolite. Distrusted outgroup sources (such as government officials) are particularly expected to be uncooperative and impolite, increasing message rejection. Importantly, this perspective suggests that apologizing for the norm violation should mitigate these effects. Applying this reasoning to scientific messaging, we demonstrate that a message critical of the under-vaccinated is more likely to be rejected if made by a US federal public health official than by a private medical expert. However, this effect is reduced if the public health official apologizes in advance for violating the norm against criticizing other groups. Improved perceptions of the apologizing source’s motives and reduced message threat were associated with higher vaccination intentions. Practical and theoretical implications for intergroup communication are discussed.

O ensino eficaz do Português como Língua Estrangeira na educação infantil: estratégias comunicativas, mediadores pedagógicos e realia

This work discusses didactic strategies - based on the Communicative and Competency – based Approach – and the use of authentic materials to promote the Meaningful Learning of Portuguese as Foreign Language in early childhood to stimulate the development of the Intelligence Quotient and the Executive Functions. Considering the contributions of Sociocultural Constructivism and Conversational Pragmatics, we propose playful collaborative activities based on the use of webtools and realia to expose students to authenticity of the language and encourage the zone of proximal development, fundamental in the process of learning a foreign language.

THE REPRESENTATION OF THE IDEAL SUNDANESE, ACCORDING TO KANG DEDI MULYADI YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Celebrity, including politicians, is often seen as the epitome of one specific culture. Dedi Mulyadi attempts to present himself as an ideal Sundanese for his viewers through his YouTube channel. With almost 4 million subscribers, the politician has become an internet sensation as his Sundanese characteristics reach many viewers. This article tries to elaborate on the idea of being Sundanese according to Dedi Mulyadi's YouTube Channel. There are many ways to elaborate on this idea; this article focuses on his utterances in interacting with certain people. Thus, the pragmatic approach covering mixing code, speech act, and the representation issue is applied in this article to break down the selected conversation. Eventually, the findings show that Dedi Mulyadi uses conversational pragmatics to represent himself as an ideal Sundanese. According to his videos, the caring, compassionate, yet assertive leader is what it means to be an ideal Sundanese.

Commitment Phrase: Linking Proposition to Illocutionary Force

This article provides empirical support for the projection of a Commitment Phrase (CommitP) in the field that maps the conversational pragmatics at the periphery of clauses. Krifka (2015, 2019, 2020) proposes CommitP as a projection that maps the speaker’s commitment to act on the proposition insofar as the speaker has evidence for the truth condition or expects the addressee to produce and commit to such evidence. CommitP replaces Ross’s (1970) idea that the speaker/addressee is related to the proposition by a speech-act predicate such as declare. Krifka argues for the alternative approach primarily on theoretical grounds. This article verifies and validates this proposal on the basis of Japanese sentence-final particles and Romanian speechact particles. We extend our analysis beyond these languages that overtly mark CommitP to English, which does not, by proposing an analysis of so-called biased questions that incorporates CommitP.

Conversational pragmatics: memory reporting strategies in different social contexts.

Previous studies in conversational pragmatics have showed that the information people share with others heavily depends on the confidence they have in the correctness of a candidate answer. At the same time, different social contexts prompt different incentive structures, which set a higher or lower confidence criterion to determine which potential answer to report. In this study, we investigated how the different incentive structures of several types of social contexts and how different levels of knowledge affect the amount of information we are willing to share. Participants answered easy, intermediate, and difficult general-knowledge questions and decided whether they would report or withhold their selected answer in different social contexts: formal vs. informal, that could be either constrained (a context that promotes providing only responses we are certain about) or loose (with an incentive structure that maximizes providing any type of answer). Overall, our results confirmed that social contexts are associated with different incentive structures which affects memory reporting strategies. We also found that the difficulty of the questions is an important factor in conversational pragmatics. Our results highlight the relevance of studying different incentive structures of social contexts to understand the underlying processes of conversational pragmatics, and stress the importance of considering metamemory theories of memory reporting.

Rule is a dual character concept

Recent experimental work revealed that rule violation judgments are sensitive to morality. For instance: when someone blamelessly violates a rule's text, about half of the participants say that the rule was violated, with the remainder saying that it wasn't. Why is that so? Current evidence is compatible with three distinct explanations. According to the pragmatic view, rule violation judgments pragmatically imply judgments of blame. Hence, the results don't tell us anything about the concept of rule itself. Instead, they are simply caused by conversational pragmatics. On the other hand, the mixed character view states that the concept of rule simultaneously combines text and purpose into a single criterion. Finally, the dual character view states that the concept of rule is similar to the concepts of scientist and father. These concepts have two distinct sets of criteria, each sufficient to determine one sense in which the concept applies. One of the criteria is descriptive, while the other is normative. In this paper, we report the results of four studies designed to adjudicate between these alternatives. Studies 1A and 1B find results that are incompatible with the pragmatic view, while Study 2 shows that the concept of rule behaves in a way that is notably different than some mixed character concepts on a linguistic test. Finally, Studies 3–5 support the idea that the concept of rule has a dual character. We consider the jurisprudential implications of each alternative.

To see as a marker of contextual salience in romance languages : evidence from Acadian French and Brazilian Portuguese

This paper discusses constructions found in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and Acadian French (AF), in which the equivalents of to see accompanies a second verb in imperative utterances. In these constructions in BP and AF to see emphasizes the command expressed by the other verb. The BP construction can also have an additional interpretation, in which ve ‘seeimperative,2,singular’ has the meaning ‘to verify’. It is proposed that BP constructions can be associated to two different structures. The constructions with the ‘to verify’ meaning are treated as biclausal structures in which the verb ver ‘to see’ selects for a CP headed by the complementizer se ‘if’. As for the analysis of the emphatic order meaning associated to the BP and AF constructions, we adopt the proposals put forth in Speas & Tenny (2003) and Hill (2007, 2014) according to which conversational pragmatics is encoded in syntax as a predicative structure (Speech Act Projection - SAP) above CP. Following these ideas, we analyze BP and AF emphatic order constructions as monoclausal structures, where ve in BP and voir in AF are injunctive pragmatic markers that are externally merged into the SA head in order to encode a pragmatic relation.

Deliberative process in sharing information with different audiences: Eye-tracking correlates.

Research on conversational pragmatics demonstrates how interlocutors tailor the information they share depending on the audience. Previous research showed that, in informal contexts, speakers often provide several alternative answers, whereas in formal contexts, they tend to give only a single answer; however, the psychological underpinnings of these effects remain obscure. To investigate this answer selection process, we measured participants' eye movements in different experimentally modelled social contexts. Participants answered general knowledge questions by providing responses with either single (one) or plural (three) alternatives. Then, a formal (job interview) or informal (conversation with friends) context was presented and participants decided either to report or withdraw their responses after considering the given social context. Growth curve analysis on the eye movements indicates that the selected response option attracted more eye movements. There was a discrepancy between the answer selection likelihood and the proportion of fixations to the corresponding option-but only in the formal context. These findings support a more elaborate decision-making processes in formal contexts. They also suggest that eye movements do not necessarily accompany the options considered in the decision-making processes.

LINGUO-PRAGMATIC AND SEMANTIC MEANS OF IMPLEMENTING THE PERSUASION STRATEGY IN ENGLISH POLITICAL DISCOURSE

In modern society, linguistic sciences pay close attention to political discourse, since there exists a strong relationship between language and politics, which makes their separate existence impossible. That is why professional teams of philologists, imagemakers and PR specialists work on politicians’ speeches. The relevance of the study is explained by the fact that a multifaceted analysis of politicians’ verbal behavior, communicative strategies, tactics and techniques they use to implement intentions in public affairs contributes to a clearer understanding of political discourse and efficiency determination in the impact of politicians’ speeches on the mass addressee. The article deals with the consideration of political discourse and politicians’ verbal behavior peculiarities (based on a case study of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speeches). The authors give a brief overview of Russian and foreign scientists’ works on communicative strategies and tactics. Most of the focus is on the ways to persuade the audience. The persuasion strategy is viewed as a macro strategy implemented with the help of an argumentation sub-strategy. The paper provides a classification of tactics that explicate an argumentation strategy, as well as the pragmalinguistic means used by politicians to manipulate public opinion and audience behavior are examined. The purpose of the study is to describe the macro strategy of persuasion in British political discourse, as well as the tactics for its implementation. The results obtained can be used for lectures on the theory of linguistic manipulation, semantics and pragmatics of conversation, imageology.

Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!

The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter.

Endorsement and assertion

AbstractScientists, philosophers, and other researchers commonly assert their theories. This is surprising, as there are good reasons for skepticism about theories in cutting‐edge research. I propose a new account of assertion in research contexts that vindicates these assertions. This account appeals to a distinct propositional attitude called endorsement, which is the rational attitude of committed advocacy researchers have to their theories. The account also appeals to a theory of conversational pragmatics known as the Question Under Discussion model, or QUD. Hence, I call the theory the EQUD model. Motivating this account is a recognition that the speech act of assertion has two roles to play in research contexts. The first is the advocacy role, in which researchers assert a theory in order to advocate for it. The second is the evidential role, which is used to add to the common stock of information available to a field of inquiry. The EQUD model provides an account of warranted assertion for both these roles in research contexts. This success provides support for the theory of endorsement. It also provides support for information updating accounts of assertion.

Assessment of conversational pragmatics: A screening tool for pragmatic language impairment in a control population of children aged 6–12 years

Pragmatics can be defined as the way in which language is used to communicate in a given social context. Although there is a lack of a standardized assessment, healthcare professionals find themselves confronted with pragmatic language skill impairments in children with neurodevelopmental disorders or brain injuries. The characterization of language use causes problems in social interactions, which has clinical implications in daily life. However, this is still underestimated because there is currently no quick, easy-to-use screening device to rank these deficits. We have developed a pragmatic deficits screening chart that has been tested on a control population of children aged 6–12 years. The chart comprises 26 items exploring seven areas of pragmatics (intentionality, governance of exchange, organization of information, adaptation strategies, conversational implicit language, nonverbal skills, and paralinguistic aspects). Parents select one of four possible answers to describe how frequently their child demonstrates each type of behavior (“never, rarely, sometimes, often”). We distributed 1666 charts; 760 were returned, of which 552 could be analyzed. Internal consistency as measured with Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.88) was satisfactory. There was no influence of age on total score, nor of the department/type of schooling. The population distribution was non-Gaussian so the results are presented in percentiles. We propose a first-line screening tool that is quick and easy to complete by family, which facilitates referral to specialists for further investigations into the etiological implications of pragmatic language impairment.

Epistemic Activities, Schooling and Parenting Styles: A Case Study in French Guiana Rural Contexts

Based on an eco-systemic approach, this article presents the results of an experimental survey among parents and children of four ethnic and cultural French Guiana minorities. Moving from questioning the existence of a correlation between interactive parenting styles and the schooling achievements of young children in French Guiana, we propose two hypotheses: (1) family interactions are visible manifestations of parents’ educational ideologies; a large gap between family and school interactions could influence the child’s school adaptation; (2) parenting interactive styles may vary depending on the nature of the interactions: daily versus learning interactions. Our sample concerned 16 family dyads belonging to four distinct groups: the Teko, Aluku, Laotians and Haitians of French Guiana. Data collection was performed by in-situ observations (to explore the first hypothesis) and video recordings (for the second hypothesis). We used coding and data analysis tools belonging to both conversational pragmatics and the anthropological methodological tradition. The results, based on the interactive styles model proposed by Ailincai & Weil-Barais (2007), suggest that parents’ educational styles are influenced by the socio-cultural ecosystem and that parental behavior, especially when it is related to school success, is profoundly influenced by “globalized” logics, strategies and educational ideologies. The interactional context influences the interactive parental style: as such, the daily interactive styles appear as very mixed between the observed communities, whereas the interactive epistemic styles (related to the learning situations) seem to mobilize the same behavioral categories in all the groups we studied.

'Ver' como marcador pragmático em português brasileiro

Este trabalho discute construções ambíguas do português brasileiro com o verbo ver em que esse verbo pode ser um verbo pleno com o signifcado de verifcar ou pode ser um marcador pragmático. A hipótese defendida no trabalho é a de que essas leituras estão associadas a duas estruturas sintáticas distintas: as sentenças em que ver tem sentido de verifcação são bioracionais, ao passo que as sentenças em que ver funciona como marcador pragmático são mono-oracionais. Com base nas propostas de Speas e Tenny (2003) e de Hill (2007, 2014) acerca da existência de uma projeção associada ao ato de fala (denominada Speech Act Phrase – SAP) e visível para a computação sintática, propomos que, quando funciona como um marcador pragmático, ver é uma expressão que sofreu um processo de mudança linguística denominado pragmaticalização (Erman e Kotsinas 1993; Dostie 2004; Dievald 2011) e, em consequência disso, é inserido diretamente no núcleo de SAP, projeção que faz a interface da sintaxe com a pragmática conversacional.

Promoting responsible gambling via prevention messages: insights from the evaluation of actual European messages

Prevention messages are short sentences supposed to broadcast preventive intentions. Three types of messages are noticeable: messages correcting erroneous beliefs, messages informing about the risks and messages promoting responsible gambling. While the results in the literature about messages promoting results are alerting, they are frequently used in European prevention campaigns. The present study relied on language and semantics models to evaluate the communicative and preventive values of 14 messages: 7 were actual European prevention messages and 7 messages were created for the study. Overall, 339 participants answered an online questionnaire in which they evaluated the communicative value of one of the messages and then ranked all the messages according to their preventive level. Results showed that messages informing about the risks and messages correcting erroneous beliefs have a higher level of communicative value than messages promoting responsible gambling. Indeed, the latter are judged as more ambiguous and as less preventive than the two other types of messages. As models of conversational pragmatics suggest that ambiguous messages convey at least two interpretations, the article discusses the possibility that individuals comprehend these messages as incentives to control their impulses (prevention) and incentives to control the game (promotion).

Holy Shit: Taboo Speech Acts as Self-Consumption

AbstractThis paper addresses the scarcely scrutinized topic in the consumer culture literature regarding how a social actor consumes himself through speech acts. More specifically, by introducing a new type of speech act, viz. the taboo speech act, and by effectively differentiating it from expletives, slang, and swearing words and expressions, I outline how subjectivity appropriates and individuates its systemic underpinning asotheror linguistic system (Saussure) and wall of language (Lacan) in linguistic acts of transgression. Taboo speech acts do not merely express emotions, such as anger and frustration. They also seek to contain a linguistic system as an ideational totality of acts of parole in aprimus affectivusthat is incumbent on the inverse sublimation of epithets and cultural symbols standing synecdochically in apars pro totorelationship for the limits of what is culturally/linguistically sanctioned. The subject consumes/annihilates and institutes itself at the same time in taboo speech acts whose mission may not be fully accounted for through conversational pragmatics, insofar as they perform at a more foundational level a social ontological function. The offered analysis aims at contributing to the extant literature in consumer cultural theory, applied linguistics, and social theory.

Rethinking relevance: Repetition priming reveals the psychological reality of adaptive specializations for reasoning

Abstract Theories advanced to explain conditional reasoning range from those that invoke inference systems that evolved for specific domains (such as social exchange, precautions, or deontic regulations) to relevance theory, a relatively domain-general account that invokes conversational pragmatics. The present research utilized a novel extension of repetition priming, in conjunction with the Wason selection task (a widely known and used task to test people's conditional reasoning), to evaluate alternative theories of human reasoning. Across five experiments, testing over 600 participants, consistent priming across selection tasks was demonstrated. The pattern of priming effects supports models of human reasoning based on specific evolved reasoning abilities, and was inconsistent with general conditional reasoning models such as relevance theory. These results also converge with neurological and clinical evidence of divided psychological processes for reasoning about relatively specific domains, based on functionally distinct inference systems.

Holy Shit: On the Consumption of Oneself through Taboo Speech Acts

This paper addresses the scarcely scrutinized topic in the consumer culture literature regarding how a social actor consumes oneself through speech acts. More specifically, by introducing a new type of speech act, viz. the taboo speech act, and by effectively differentiating it from expletives, slang, swearing words and expressions, I outline how subjectivity appropriates and individuates its systemic underpinning as Other or linguistic system (Saussure) and wall of language (Lacan), in linguistic acts of transgression. Taboo speech acts do not merely express emotions, such as anger and frustration, but seek to contain a linguistic system as ideational totality of acts of parole in a primus affectivus that is incumbent on the inverse sublimation of epithets and cultural symbols that stand synecdochically in a pars pro toto relationship to the limits of what is culturally/linguistically sanctioned. The subject consumes/annihilates and institutes itself at the same time in taboo speech acts whose mission may not be fully accounted for through conversational pragmatics, insofar as they perform at a more foundational level a social ontological function. The offered analysis aims at contributing to the extant literature in consumer cultural theory, applied linguistics and social theory.

Pritchard, Revisionism and Warranted Assertability

Against contextualism, Duncan Pritchard has argued that conversational pragmatics give rise to an argument in favour of invariantist neo-Mooreanism. More specifically, he argues that when we conjoin a Moorean view with a warranted assertability manoeuvre, we can satisfy our pre-theoretical intuitions (which are decidedly invariantist), whereas contextualists cannot. In the following paper, I challenge Pritchard’s argument and contend that he is too quick to declare victory for invariantism, for not only does the WAM he employs appear to be ad hoc vis-a-vis DeRose’s plausible criteria, but it also seems to have very implausible pragmatic implications when subjected to close scrutiny.

Hyper Structure for Korean “-Kes Kath-ta” Constructions*

The purpose of the paper is to explore the viability of employing Speech Act Phrase structure to explain “-kes kath-ta” constructions in Korean. Based on the argument that interfacing between syntax and conversational pragmatics is established through a functional predicative structure which is projected through the syntacticization of speech act features, we suggest that the speech act layer for “-kes kath-ta” constructions is needed as a predicative structure encoding the conversational set-up to interpret the utterance compositionally.