Discursive Behavior Research Articles

Identifying disputants’ attitudinal variations in family mediations: A data mining approach

This article combines linguistic analysis and data mining methods to explore variations in speakers’ evaluative meaning-making in conflict talks. It focuses on conflict style construction through evaluative language, specifically how disputants advance attitudes. The corpus consists of 230 minutes of family mediation talks involving 12 divorcing spouses. The research draws from the Appraisal framework to analyse evaluative meaning-making at a discourse semantics level, capturing both explicit and implicit attitudes, as well as the scaling and dialogic framing of attitudes. Data exploration uses clustering algorithms via RStudio to identify variations in disputants’ discursive behaviour. The findings uncover three conflict styles based on disputants’ preference for attitude advancement formulations, with varying degrees of assertiveness and forcefulness. This study’s contributions include a holistic treatment of evaluative meaning-making, the marriage of digital tools to nuanced linguistic annotation, and a novel interpretation for conflict style. The findings offer fresh insights into disputants’ discursive self-presentation in confrontational exchanges.

Political economy, communications discourse and media policy: The case of online news commenting in Nigeria

This article provides a contribution to knowledge on the growth of online news commenting in Nigeria. Specifically, it accounts for factors that influence the character of the often-fractious online discursive behaviour in evidence and what communication policy understandings might be developed from this. The article innovates by deploying a combined political economy–communication policy approach with two purposes in mind. First, drawing inspiration from the criticality of political economy, it shows how the ‘representational’ role of online news media sets the context for the nature of the discourse in evidence premised on the long-established assertion that media content is not value-free but shaped by ideological positions. Second, underpinned by a recently resurfaced argument espousing the value of a combined utilization of the critical and administrative approaches to communication research, the article puts forward a set of policy-related findings for media change in Nigerian polity often characterized by significant societal disquiet.

Erotic habitus and collapsed masculinity in male-dominated spaces: The case of the no Fap relapse spaces

This paper examines how men in online discourses are constrained by sexual ideals, and use curated discourses in an effort to empower their social selves. Drawing from Adam Green’s work, we speculate that an erotic habitus surrounding sexual ideas allows men who see themselves besieged by porn and masturbation addiction to craft specific male-oriented language. In this paper, we demonstrate how men operationalize this erotic habitus through discursive behaviors. We use thematic analysis to analyze the forum posts of men in the No Fap community, a worldwide association of men who have sworn off masturbation ( n = 610). Particularly, we consider how the men articulate an antagonistic relationship with online pornography, and use an erotic habitus framed in language to note their reaction to perceived adversaries and their own strength to remain abstinent, devoid of humor, or sarcasm. These discourses have underlying elements of a muted relationship with patriarchal ideals, consistent with a collapsed masculinity. However, through the erasure of topics from these conversations, a heterosexist and women-absent conversation still implies a male-centric power.

Language and power

Abstract This article investigates the power dynamics at play in interpreter-mediated discourse interactions in the district courts in Ghana. Using audio recordings of authentic courtroom proceedings, we analyzed the discursive practices performed by court actors, especially interpreters, and the ways in which these practices signal their power or the lack thereof. We also examine the way language is employed by dominant actors to intrude on the liberty of less dominant actors in the courtroom and how this is sometimes resisted by the latter actors. We couch our analyses in Fairclough’s theory of language and power and Obeng’s theory of language and liberty. Our analysis shows that interpreters in Ghanaian courts are tacitly imbued with an inordinate amount of power, which is exercised in the service of the courts. The interpreters in our study employ speech acts such as questioning, scolding and persuading to control the discursive behavior of lay court users (e.g., litigants, witnesses) in order to ensure efficient court proceedings. These acts impinge on the liberty of litigants as they are not free to engage the court in a manner suitable to them. This study raises questions about the interpreter’s neutrality and professionalism and its findings could be useful to those entities interested in improving legal interpreting standards.

Consensus on community guidelines: an experimental study on the legitimacy of content removal in social media

The popularization of social media has led to a considerable increase in the importance of discursive expressions of violence, especially when directed at vulnerable communities. While social media platforms have created rules to regulate such expressions, little information is available on the perception of the legitimacy of these rules in the general population, regardless of the importance of the former for the latter. It is therefore the objective of this study to analyze the perception of the seriousness of such content and the degree to which the population has established a consensus on the withdrawal of restricted discursive behaviour on three major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter). For this purpose, 918 participants were immersed in an experimental paradigm in three different groups (n1 = 302; n2 = 301; n3 = 315). Each was presented with stimuli containing discursive behaviour that is banned by community guidelines. The stimuli were presented differently to each group (i.e., description of the banned behaviour, description and accompanying example, example only). Our experimental data reveals that the degree of consensus on the need to remove content is quite high, regardless of the style of presentation. It furthermore suggests that the behaviour in question is perceived as very serious, due to the harm that our participants presume it to cause. These results have important implications for the debate on freedom of expression on the Internet and its regulation by private actors.

Not All Bots are Created Equal: The Impact of Bots Classification Techniques on Identification of Discursive Behaviors Around the COVID-19 Vaccine and Climate Change

As concerns about social bots online increase, studies have attempted to explore the discourse they produce, and its effects on individuals and the public at large. We argue that the common reliance on aggregated scores of binary classifiers for bot detection may have yielded biased or inaccurate results. To test this possibility, we systematically compare the differences between non-bots and bots using binary and non-binary classifiers (classified into the categories of astroturf, self-declared, spammers, fake followers, and Other). We use two Twitter corpora, about COVID-19 vaccines ( N = 1,697,280) and climate change ( N = 1,062,522). We find that both in terms of volume and thematic content, the use of binary classifiers may hinder, distort, or mask differences between humans and bots, that could only be discerned when observing specific bot types. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Indirect evidentiality and the expression of the speaker’s stance in Romanian

The study aims to emphasize how lexical particles and grammatical constructions express indirect evidentiality and the speaker’s stance in Romanian. As with the other Romance languages, Romanian contains the grammatical means to express the speaker’s knowledge source, such as the Conditional Mood, a prototypical quotative/reportative evidential marking, or the Subjunctive and the Future, which, together with the Presumptive, a modal form specific to this linguistic system alone, function as markers of indirect evidentiality of the inferential type. Additionally, each of these forms can be augmented by a rich lexicalized system of adverbs and particles. For example, pesemne [‘probably’, literally on + signs], poate [‘may be’; a regressive form from the third person singular of the verb a se putea < Late Latin *potere (Classical Latin posse)], probabil [‘probably’, < a borrowing from the Fr. probable and the Lat. probabilis] are lexical particles of inferential evidentiality, and cică [‘supposedly’; a lexicalized form from the expression [se zi]ce că – literally it said that], pasămite [‘apparently’ whose etymology is controversial] and chipurile [‘supposedly’; a borrowing from Hungarian, literally ‘faces’] are means of quotative/reportative evidentiality. This lexical and grammatical system marking indirect evidentiality will be analyzed with respect to their grammaticalization processes, but also addressing the discursive behaviour.

A discourse analysis of teachers' messages in official and unofficial WhatsApp groups

This study explores Jordanian English language teachers' social and discursive practices online. It aims to scrutinize the way Jordanian English language teachers at one of universities in Jordan construct their posts in official and unofficial WhatsApp groups. Employing an ethnographic approach, this paper examines the differences in teachers' discursive behavior in official and unofficial WhatsApp groups. Data generation took place from March 2018 to May 2018. The data were obtained from participants' observation in both official and unofficial WhatsApp groups. 18 English language teachers participated in this study. A total of 817 posts were made throughout the observation period which were included in the analysis. Data generated through participant observations were analyzed using discourse analysis combined with discursive psychology approach. The findings suggest that teachers behave differently in how they talk to their superiors than in how they speak to their colleagues to construct their desired identities. They convey a positive impression to their leaders, and they tend to use persuasive techniques to appear more friendly to others. Exemplification, ingratiation and self-promotion were the impression management techniques used by the participants. This paper concludes that Jordanian English language teachers convey a positive impression to their superiors as they do not want to jeopardize their careers.

Strategies of criticism and disapproval in the academic administrative discourse

This article addresses the problem of communicative strategies for conveying criticism and disapproval in statements of appellative genre issued by presidents of American and British top universities. We claim that discursive representation of university chief leaders who are critically evaluating government decisions and incidents forms a linguistic and sociocultural communicative genre system with a set of effective rhetoric and communicative means. In academic administrative discourse, statements of appellative genre are characterized by dynamic application of positive and negative politeness strategies and regular reproduction of value-centered arguments, which update the system of values of the American and British academic communities. Discursive behavior of university chief academic administrators contains the rhetoric that appeals to logic, addressee’s emotions (pathos) and is based on the arguments to ethos, combining this with lexical and stylistic means that ‘threaten’ addressee’ face. Speakers use strategic tautology to increase the significance of the value system of an academic community. The concepts, themes, tasks, and tactical means, identified in the appellative statements of university leaders, contribute to the formation of the concept sphere of American and British academic communities. The results of this present study detail discursive and genre characteristics of the administrative academic discourse and the strategies of conflict (disapproving) discourse in particular. Communicative behavior of university leaders determined, on the one hand, by the value system and, on the other, by strategic aims of communication, can serve as a model of leadership communication and a resource for improving the competence of modern academic leaders.

Моделирование речевого поведения персонажей в драматургическом тексте: комплексный подход

The article offers the development of the complex methodology for the study of the speech behavior of the intelligentsia characters. The material of the research is the plays and screenplays of the 60–80s of the 20th century by the Soviet authors such as Valentin Azernikov, Alexei Arbuzov, Vladimir Arro, Emil Braginsky and Eldar Ryazanov, Alexander Vampilov, Alexander Volodin and Leonid Zorin, and others. The article considers methodological approaches to the study of the speech behavior of literary characters belonging to the same social group. Patterns of linguistic persona and patterns of speech behavior are analyzed. The main definitions applied within the scope of the approaches are linguistic, speech, communicative, or discursive persona; linguistic, verbal, communicative, or discursive behavior, as well as units of description of speech behavior: speech acts, parameters, actions, steps, speech or communicative strategies and tactics, speech genres, speech acts and speech behavior patterns. The approaches under consideration are discovered to have points of convergence, the prospects of developing the research are outlined. It is concluded to be necessary to conduct a contrastive study, namely, to compare the communicative features of the behavior of the members of different social groups in typical communicative situations and to identify specific patterns of speech behavior, which the authors use in creating the intelligentsia characters of the 60–80s of the 20th century. The prospects of the study include the consideration of various communicative situations with the participation of only intelligentsia members, or an intelligentsia character and a member of another social group; formal and informal communication situations, the status of communicants, communication participants complying with etiquette norms, emotionality and reasonableness of communication, ways of expressing evaluation, influence on the organization of communication, as well as other linguistic and extralinguistic factors, should be taken into account in the study.

Scientific Discourse on YouTube: Motivations for Citing Research in Comments

ABSTRACTYouTube is a valuable source of user‐generated content on a wide range of topics, and it encourages user participation through the use of a comment system. Video content is increasingly addressing scientific topics, and there is evidence that both academics and consumers use video descriptions and video comments to refer to academic research and scientific publications. Because commenting is a discursive behavior, this study will provide insights on why individuals post links to research publications in comments. For this, a qualitative content analysis and iterative coding approach were applied. Furthermore, the reasons for mentioning academic publications in comments were contrasted with the reasons for citing in scholarly works and with reasons for commenting on YouTube. We discovered that the primary motives for sharing research links were (1) providing more insights into the topic and (2) challenging information offered by other commentators.

“Oops! I can’t express this in English!”: managing epistemic challenges by Chinese EFL peer tutors in writing tutorials

Abstract This study focuses on Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) peer tutors’ discursive behavior to manage epistemic challenges in writing tutorials at a local university in China’s Mainland. Based on approximately 24 h of audio-recorded interactions involving eight tutorial groups over six weeks, we searched different types of epistemic challenges to Chinese EFL peer tutors and explored how they managed them discursively. Our findings, in adopting a CA (Conversational Analysis) approach, show that Chinese EFL peer tutors mainly experience two types of epistemic challenges – the language proficiency-based challenges and the resistance-based challenges. They construct different identities to cope with these challenges – EFL learners, careless but competent tutors, and authoritative and trustworthy experts. These practices are realized through valuable pragma-linguistic devices, including advising and assessing speech acts, deontic modality, self-mocking expressions, imperative and assertive tones, narrative discourse, and smiley voice and laughter. These findings highlight the need for writing center instructors to follow tutor training guides suitable for EFL peer tutors instead of following a universal training recipe.

Serial Focus Groups: A Longitudinal Design for Studying Interactive Discourse

Focus group methods specialize in the analysis of interactive discourse, but are only rarely employed as a stand-alone method to study such phenomena, owing to inherent limitations concerning the comparability and generalizability of findings. In this paper, we argue that focus groups undergo three kinds of transformations, involving changes in participants’ cognitive states, social ties, and discursive behavior, which raise both analytic challenges and valuable opportunities for the study of shared meanings and interactive negotiation processes in society. Introducing Serial Focus Groups, we extend familiar focus group designs as a method for studying interactive discourse in a longitudinal perspective, capitalizing on the analytic potentials raised by these transformations. Reviewing the methodological literature and drawing upon two large-scale focus group studies of socially interactive sense-making, we argue that serial focus groups can help overcome some of the limitations of cross-sectional focus groups and offer valuable new opportunities for analysis and validation.

THE EFFECT OF USING REFLECTIVE METHOD IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

The article is devoted to the issue: the use of the reflective method in teaching a foreign language. It is known that teaching foreign language has different types of effective methods and one of them is reflective method. This study advances our understanding of language teaching and reflective method. This study is to analyses the reflective method in the linguistic and discursive behaviour of foreign language students in the process of developing the ability to oral and written foreign language communication. The authors emphasize that it is reflection that helps in assessing students and develops such skills as selfassessment, mutual assessment and interest in the language being studied. Reflection techniques help not only to obtain readymade information, but also to compare new information with previous materials. Lessons where the reflective method is used are remembered by the students and give a good result. This article gives a complete concept of reflection, as well as types of reflection. Students, by reflecting on their actions in the lesson, will be able not only to find out the gaps in their knowledge, but also to answer the question why it was difficult to work and what skills they need to develop. This article is intended for students, teachers.

How to manage cultural space: An agonistic analysis of artistic moral rights

AbstractThis article analyzes the debate between the proponents and opponents of artistic moral rights and, more specifically, the right of integrity as recognized in the Berne Convention, with the aid of agonistic political theory. Envisaging art as a site of antagonistic struggle, the right of integrity is conceived of as a state-backed mandate to claim an inviolable place for artistic work, founded on a Romantic notion of authorship. The plea against the entrenchment of this right is considered a counter-hegemonic response that challenges this notion in favor of an unfettered development of art and its surrounding discourse. As such, this debate seems to revolve around a conflict of alleged interests – those of artists, of art’s public, and of art itself. It is argued that insights into the discursive behavior of rights, and, by extension, into the effect of rights discourses on antagonistic struggle, are needed to foster this debate.

Contrastive Pragmatics in a Diachronic Perspective: Insights from Othello

Abstract The paper provides an overview of the interface of contrastive and historical pragmatics and a case study of Othello’s monologue. The emerging lines of development at the cross-roads of contrastive and historical pragmatics cover, in particular, speech acts, forms of discursive behaviour and stance. In the analysis, German, Swedish, Finnish and Polish translations from different periods are compared to show differences in the above-mentioned features. The illustrations are contextualised in order to show the discursive sensitivity of these linguistic items and their cross-linguistic diversity. The study reveals some tendencies and diachronic developments in translation strategies and underlines the need to include historical analyses in the realm of contrastive research.

El populismo como mecanismo de legitimación empresarial: el caso venezolano de PDVSA

Este artículo ilustra el papel del populismo en la defensa de empresas estatales transgresoras, a partir del estudio del caso de la empresa Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) y su relación con el Estado venezolano durante la era del autodenominado “socialismo del siglo XXI”. Para ello se hace una investigación descriptiva y de sistematización de datos sobre algunos eventos de transgresión socioambiental en los que incurrió la compañía entre 2010 y 2020. Los resultados apuntan al uso continuo de una retórica incendiaria, constituida por el antielitismo, la defensa de la soberanía popular y la consideración de una ciudadanía homogénea y virtuosa. Esto sugiere que el populismo también puede ser utilizado como un estilo discursivo particular para defender la legitimidad de empresas transgresoras subordinadas al poder.

Evidencialidad, conocimientos compartidos y atenuación: El caso de ‘[o] eso dicen’

This paper focuses on analyzing the meaning and pragmatic functions of construction [o] eso dicen (‘[or] so they say’), as well as observing the discursive patterns in which it appears. The departure point is the consideration that this construction conveys indirect evidential meanings of different degrees of accessibility or intersubjectivity (reportative and folklore), and therefore its use could be related to the function of pragmatic attenuation activated by the displacement of the origin of the enunciation. In the empirical part of this work, we analyze 65 examples recovered in the analysis of five oral and one written corpus. The results of the study indicate that most of the uses of this construction fulfill strategic mitigating purposes related to the protection of images. One of the key parameters to describe the discursive behavior of this construction is the level on which it performs: it behaves differently in monological contexts than in dialogical ones.

"Lo que pasa es que la polí­tica se ha puesto farandulera": justificaciones atenuantes de aserciones de opinión en el corpus PRESEEA de Santiago de Chile

En esta investigación se indagó en el comportamiento pragmático-discursivo de las estrategias retóricas que permiten justificar los actos de habla asertivos en el corpus del Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingí¼í­stico del Español de España y de América de Santiago de Chile. Se describen tres estrategias que se emplean para justificar en el español chileno: las justificaciones propiamente tales, las explicaciones y las comparaciones. Se revisó el funcionamiento pragmático-discursivo de los recursos lingí¼í­sticos disponibles para justificar en cada estrategia, esbozando una formalización de los mismos y, finalmente, se da cuenta de cómo operan dichas estrategias en relación con las funciones de la atenuación, en cuyo caso se pudo concluir que las estrategias en estudio operan como autoprotección para salvar la imagen propia y/o como prevención de posibles daños a la imagen del otro.

Values of the English-Language Popular Science Pedagogical Discourse: Linguistic Mechanisms and Linguopragmatic Patterns

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the verbalization of values in the Englishlanguage popular scientific pedagogical discourse. The author provides a definition of this type of discourse, which is a set of communicative practices serving the learning process. The author proceeds from the fact that the result of such communication are texts of a popular science orientation, which in this case are the material of research. A comprehensive linguoaxiological and pragma-discourse analysis of text fragments dedicated to the processes of teaching and learning foreign languages is carried out. Special attention is paid to the axiologically loaded conceptual meanings of popular science pedagogical discourse. It is shown that the discursive behavior of representatives of an educational institution is based on such value-determined concepts as EDUCATION, LANGUAGE and CULTURE. The author of the article dwells on the linguistic mechanisms and methods of actualizing these concepts in discourse, as well as their pragmatic potential. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time, popular scientific pedagogical discourse is considered as a type of discourse that translates its own axiological attitudes. The relevance of the study is due to the need to create conditions, which enable rapid and reliable adaptation of society to the ongoing socio-economic and intercultural processes, as well as the changing criteria and requirements of personal and professional development of a person.