Linguistic Mechanisms Research Articles

The Dynamics of Using Euphemisms Related to Sexual Activity in Indonesian Online Social Media

This paper aims to explore the dynamics of using euphemisms related to sexual activity in Indonesian online social media reporting from 2022 to 2024. The unit of analysis consists of sentences containing expressions referring to sexual activity bersetubuh ‘intercourse’. The results show that reporting on topics related to sexual activity in Indonesian online social media is dominated by the use of dysphemism rather than euphemism. In this context, the dysphemistic style is realized through five linguistic mechanisms, resulting in 48 (56.4%) patterns or variations of expressions. The euphemistic style is realized through four linguistic mechanisms, resulting in 32 (27.2%) patterns or variations of expressions. Meanwhile, the orthophemistic style is realized through two linguistic mechanisms, resulting in 5 (5.8%) patterns or variations of expressions. This indicates that the drive for politeness in reporting taboo sexual topics is outweighed by the urge to show a highly critical attitude towards unlawful sexual acts, in addition to sensational motives. The orthophemistic style is also used to reveal the actual (unambiguous) events.

When TCM debate meets Covid-19 discourse

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed medical discourse to the forefront of everyday communication, but limited scholarly attention has been given to its intersection with social-mediated language use in the Chinese context. From a corpus-pragmatic view, we examined textual data collected from Zhihu, the most popular Chinese community question-answering site. Our analysis focused on the linguistic mechanism of evidential expression in social-mediated debates on Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Within the realm of medical scientific discussion, we identified a prevailing epistemic stance of doubt and uncertainty towards the efficacy of TCM, emphasising its socio-political significance. We also demonstrated how the ‘source of knowledge’ value and the ‘speaker commitment’ value of evidentiality interact at the semantic-pragmatic interface. Our findings shed light on a promising research trajectory for sociolinguistic intervention in the formal, descriptive line of evidentiality research, thus, advancing existing corpus pragmatics literature on evidentiality and epistemics in social-mediated communication.

Degrees and Limits of Adverbial Transposition of Nouns in the Russian Language (Based on Formations with the Semantics of the Season and the Day)

The article presents a comprehensive semantic-grammatical analysis of the stages (degrees) and limit of adverbial transposition of nouns such as spring, summer, morning, day in the Russian language. The relevance of the study is due to the increased attention in modern linguistics to the problems of interaction between the grammatical and lexical in the structure of linguistic units that undergo various transposition processes, including adverbialization. The object of the study is the linguistic mechanism of adverbialization of nouns, producing adverbs and transitional, syncretic formations that have moved away to varying degrees from the original class of words and have come closer to adverbs; The subject of consideration is the stages (stages, degrees) of functional adverbialization of substantive word forms, reflected in typical contexts from the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The novelty of the approach is associated with the use of the technique of oppositional analysis (and the adverbial transposition scale), aimed at identifying the degrees of adverbialization of nouns. As a result of the study, semantic and grammatical features of core and peripheral nouns, peripheral adverbs and intermediate, hybrid structures were identified; criteria have been established for the differentiation of functional homonyms – non-prepositional forms of the instrumental case of nouns and adverbs formed on their basis.

Uh and um in autism: The case of hesitation marker usage in Dutch-speaking autistic preschoolers.

English-speaking autistic children use the hesitation marker um less often than non-autistic children but use uh at a similar rate. It is unclear why this is the case. We employed a sample of Dutch-speaking children from the Preschool Brain Imaging and Behavior Project to examine hesitation markers in autistic and non-autistic preschoolers with the aim to 1) make a crosslinguistic comparison of hesitation marker usage and 2) examine hypotheses regarding the underlying linguistic mechanisms of hesitation markers: the symptom hypothesis and the signal hypothesis. We found initial group differences in all hesitation markers but these results were rendered insignificant after controlling for age, sex and nonverbal cognition. We found significant correlations between hesitation marker usage and expressive and receptive language, but not autism traits. Lastly, we show interesting cross-linguistic differences in hesitation marker usage between Dutch-speaking participants and previously described English-speaking participants, such as a preference for um over uh.

The alternation of stem-internal а and о: Can we say that it is determined by pragmatics

This article critically examines the hypothesis regarding the emergence of the sound [o] in the place of the expected [a] (and, accordingly, in written form, the occurrence of о in the place of the expected а) is a regular mechanism marking the informality of a word (its association with slang, colloquial language, and other non-standardized areas of the language). It shows that externally similar phenomena conceal completely different linguistic mechanisms. In particular, quite often the appearance of о is a side effect of the shifted stress in word inflection. The examples considered confirm a general principle of spell checking: slang and colloquial words cannot be used for checking. It is claimed that this principle should be taken into account in spelling guides and references.

Precedent texts as linguistic mechanisms for creating an attractive newspaper headline in the Internet media discourse

The article examines newspaper headlines produced using precedent phenomena, and thereby they act as effective linguistic mechanisms for creating media text attractiveness. The research material is comprised of newspaper headlines obtained from the online versions of "Rossiiskaya Gazeta" texts for 2023 and 2024. We used cognitive discourse analysis in conjunction with a comprehensive methodology for examining active processes in language. We assume that headlines convey certain information about the text content and can perform text-forming and evaluative functions. The study analysed the sources of headlines based on precedent phenomena, types of precedent text transformation, functions of using precedent texts to create newspaper headlines in the modern Internet media language. The research shows that precedent text sources in the headings are well-known works of literature and art, phraseological units and proverbs, the so-called catchphrases, other set expressions and clich  es. Structural-semantic, semantic proper, and pragma-semantic models for transforming original precedent texts were identified. The paper also characterises such functions of using precedent text in headlines as the informative, text-forming, persuasive, expressive, evaluative, and attraction functions. We conclude that the considerable persuasive, attractive, and evaluative potential of precedent phenomena in headlines is most often realised in transformed precedent texts. This is associated with the foregrounding of cultural information known to readers due to its link to a specific precedent phenomenon. New information relevant to a particular author in a particular text is superimposed on the familiar cultural information in a figurative, playful form.

Evolution of word production errors after typicality-based semantic naming treatment in individuals with aphasia

ABSTRACT Background The Complexity Account for Treatment Efficacy (CATE) has been applied to semantic typicality in aphasia naming therapy, i.e. training atypical items of a category would improve naming of typical untrained-related items. However, most aphasia treatment studies have implemented a binary scoring system to measure response accuracy, which may not thoroughly reveal linguistic mechanisms underlying aphasia recovery. Aims The current study investigated the evolution of error patterns following typicality-based Semantic Features Analysis (SFA) treatment in individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Methods & Procedures Thirty individuals with chronic aphasia participated in a typicality-based SFA treatment, and ten individuals with chronic aphasia served as controls. The treatment participants and controls completed a naming screener before and after either a treatment period or a no-treatment period, respectively. Responses were coded using an error coding scale and analyzed with mixed-effects models. Outcomes & Results Treatment participants demonstrated significant treatment and generalization effects, as captured by significant improvements on the error coding system for both trained and untrained items. However, the group-level analysis did not reveal significant generalization from training atypical items to untrained typical items. Subgroup analyses based on participants’ performance in treatment showed significant gains in naming untrained typical items from training atypical items in responders, but improved naming of untrained atypical items from training typical items in nonresponders. Conclusions These findings suggest different linguistic mechanisms underlying aphasia recovery and highlight the importance of investigating treatment and generalization effects using a fine-grained error coding system as a complement to a binary scoring system.

Linguistic mechanisms of creating a humorous effect in the poetry of H. Erhard

Linguistic mechanisms of creating a humorous effect in the poetry of H. Erhard

From Irony to Post-Irony: Means of Expressing “New Sincerity” in the Magazines The Rules of Life and The New Yorker

The relevance of the study is determined by the demand for “new sincerity” that has emerged in society. Reflecting modern trends, mass media highlight the urgency of research into this phenomenon from various angles. The purpose of the work is to describe mass media potential for the use of irony and post-irony as means of expressing “new sincerity”. The analysis is carried out on the material of modern intellectual periodicals The Rules of Life (formerly Esquire) and The New Yorker, which represent a striking example and an integral part of postmodern culture, create and communicate its values. The novelty of the study lies in the integrated approach that enabled the authors to describe the linguistic mechanisms of transforming irony to post-irony and to prove the capability of the “new sincerity” concept extrapolation to the sphere of mass media through determining the characteristic features of irony and post-irony that reflect new communicative strategies. An empirical study identifies lexical, syntactic, stylistic, graphic means of post-irony expression in modern intellectual periodicals and allows to conclude that it is represented in pathos and categoricity reduction, explicit criticism and sarcasm elimination, as well as transition from the irony of rejection to the post-irony of sensitivity, frankness and sympathy. Post-irony is shown to constitute the style of intellectual periodicals while the magazines themselves are noted to be the bearers of the “new sincerity” philosophy.

Дискурсивная специфика компьютерных игр

The present paper refers to the current problem of semiotic signs’ specifics in the context of gaming discourse based on texts from action first-person shooter game Ultrakill developed by Finnish creators. The problem is relevant due to the influence that computer games have on people’s mind – in particular on the minds of the younger generation. Moreover, the study will help to understand the linguistic mechanisms of the impact of video games on players. The study used methods of semantic analysis, semiotic analysis, observation and description techniques. As a result, the research revealed that developers use intertextual units to create patterns that are familiar to the player, but which at the same time have new characteristics. While 66% of all intertext is universally known, obscure allusions play an important role in creating associations for the recipient as well, which proves the importance of intertext in video game discourse. Well-known allusions play a role in creating semantic images in the game, while the lesser known intertext has easy to understand semes that could provoke the player to action in game. The research identified the following types of intertext: allusions to songs, music albums, other games, myths, the Bible and literature. The synthesis of intertext and author’s text in level names gives the player an idea of the upcoming challenges without informing of the level context, and in some cases even intriguing the player. The combination of borrowings and original semiotic units in the names of characters creates images that are familiar to the player, but at the same time, it creates properties that are specific to this particular game. Dialogues are mainly inherent in this genre, but the conversations also have deviations from this genre, which is also done in order to affect the player – the author gives the recipient a familiar behavior pattern in order to replace it afterewards, causing cognitive dissonance to the player. Conclusions are drawn about the discourse mechanisms in video games, how they affect the player and for what purpose the developer uses one or another linguistic technique.

Deconstructing racial code words

AbstractRacism has become more covert in post-civil rights America. Yet, measures to combat it are hindered by inadequate general knowledge on what “colorblind” race talk says and does and what makes it effective. We deepen understanding of covert racism by investigating one type of discourse – racial code words, which are (1) indirect signifiers of racial or ethnic groups that contain (2) at least one positive or negative value judgment and (3) contextually implied or salient meanings. Through a thematic analysis of 734 racial code words from 97 scholarly texts, we develop an interpretive framework that explains their tropes, linguistic mechanisms and unique roles in perpetuating racism, drawing from race, linguistic and cultural studies. Racial code words promote tropes of White people’s respectability and privilege and Racial/Ethnic Minorities’ pathology and inferiority in efficient, adaptable, plausibly deniable and almost always racially stratifying ways, often through euphemism, metonymy and othering. They construct a “colorblind” discursivity and propel both “epistemic racism” (racism in knowledge) and systemic racism (racism in action). We further strengthen applications of Critical Race Theory in sociolegal studies of race by presenting a “racial meaning decoding tool” to assist legal and societal measures to detect coded racism.

A Phono-stylistic Analysis of Utterance Stress in Steve Harvey's talk show

patterns of utterance stress in discourse direct attention to specific themes and reactions, controlling the flow and coherence of conversation. this study examines the utterance stress in Steve Harvey's selected episodes from a phono-stylistic perspective. this study is hoped to improve understanding of linguistic mechanism in talk show communication, highlighting the importance of phonetic features in transmitting meaning and increasing broadcast conversation participation. the researcher concentrates on the types of focus functions of utterance stress of some episodes available on YouTube. to conduct the analysis, the researcher adopts (Carr, 2013; Davenport& Hannahs 2005) to analyze utterance stress and Leech and Short (2007) to examine the stylistic features of the data selected. based on the adopted model, the study concludes: the study utilizes utterance stress, focus and content. while stylistic features include syntax, vocabulary, narrative viewpoint, politeness, impoliteness and cultural references.

Role of Language in Emotions and Bias: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective of Affective Political Media in the US

In todays digital era, where emotions are central to journalism and information disseminates rapidly, the role of language in transmitting emotions, stereotypes, and biases has become a subject of debate and study. The use of language in news media can be argued, as it may prioritize sensationalism over accuracy to tap into peoples feelings under new business models and the attention economy. While journalism ethics aim to minimize bias, journalism consistently incorporates emotions to captivate the audience and create an experience of involvement. This is significant because language, consumed from diverse media news channels, is integral to cognition. Research in cognitive linguistics demonstrates that human beings view the world in metaphoric terms, and language defines and constrains communication, thinking, and sense-making. This article explores linguistic mechanisms such as metaphors of flood and aliens, agenda setting, selectivity, framing, and expectancy bias, through which emotions, perspectives, and affectivity are sustained and propagated in political news reporting. It considers the impact of stereotypes and biases, particularly in the media portrayal of undocumented immigrants and different framings in the description of the War in Gaza. The article highlights that language is seldom neutral and is intertwined with motives, emphasizing the importance of understanding the persuasive power of words. In conclusion, this paper reveals the role of language in shaping perceptions of message receivers and contributes to enhancing linguistic justice, informing more ethical approaches to journalism and media production. It emphasizes the need for an editorially conscious and intelligent use of language to create engaging, empathetic content.

Языковые средства создания образа страны в англоязычном научно-популярном дискурсе (на материале издания “Gerald & Lee Durrell in Russia”)

The paper studies the means of linguistic representation of Russia in the book “Gerald & Lee Durrell in Russia” by the famed naturalist G. Durrell. The paper aims at analyzing the position of the author towards Russia and the realia described on the level of content and linguistic means employed in the text. Scientific originality of the study involves identification of the linguistic mechanisms of positive image construction and its dominant features in popular scientific discourse. The analysis has demonstrated that the material under consideration presents a highly positive appraisal of what Gerald & Lee Durrell explored in the vast Russian nature reserves. Evaluative vocabulary is concentrated in such conceptual blocks as “characteristics of the country, flora and fauna”, “profiles of the staff of natural reserves”, “environmental protection”. The material contains the frequently used lexical units that verbalize the semantics of love for the nature and animals, commitment to the cause, the importance of environmental protection, which contributes to the humanization and positivization of the perception of Russia and its people.

Grammatical Type of Stepwise Transposition of Nominal Word Form ‘ryadom’ [near] into Subclass of Manner Adverbs

The relevance of the study is determined by the necessity of a systematic analysis of the linguistic mechanism of transposition, which produces a vast range of peripheral and hybrid formations in speech. The investigation of degrees of adverbial transposition of nouns has revealed certain regularities in the interaction of semantic and grammatical aspects within the structure of adverbialized word forms. Using the example of the word form ‘ryadom’ [near], different stages of adverbialization of instrumental case forms have been demonstrated, indicating the degree of deviation from nouns and convergence with adverbs. By employing the methodology of oppositional analysis (with a scale of transitivity) and indexing, it has been established that within the periphery of the adverbial class, there are proper grammatical (functional) adverbs that do not disrupt the semantic identity of the original lexemes and represent a distinct (adverbial) type of usage. The analysis of the syncretic structure of the peripheral adverb ‘ryadom’ [near] has shown that it exhibits 4% correspondence to the differential features of the core noun ‘ryadom’ (‘row’ in the instrumental case) and 64% correspondence to the differential features of the core adverb ‘ryadom’ [near]. These findings can be utilized in further exploration of intercategorical transposition and syncretism of linguistic units, as well as in the development of a transpositional grammar for the Russian.

Ambient identity construction via massive anonymous danmu comments

This article contributes to the scholarship on digital identity work by examining the linguistic mechanisms of ambient identity construction in fully anonymous online environments. It investigates how video viewers construct textual personae by leaving massive anonymous comments in danmu, a viewing-and-commenting system that synchronously posts comments onto a video screen as it plays. Drawing on the sociological concept of homophily and the linguistics-informed Appraisal framework, this study systematically tracks the patterns in the attitudinal orientations among massive anonymous comments left over a high-profile Chinese video featuring a teacher's home visit. The article argues that the technological affordances of danmu lead to the inherent collectiveness of anonymous digital identity construction. It reports two attitudinal meaning-making mechanisms through which massive anonymous comments converge into a homogeneous mass and describes the viewers' collective ambient identities revealed in their comments. This project brings clarity to the dynamics of ambient digital identity construction by deploying computational tools to linguistic analysis and has practical implications for marketing research, social media monitoring, and community building.

Rhythm in the Kingdom: a variationist analysis of speech rhythm in Tongan English

This article presents an analysis of speech rhythm in Tongan English, an emergent variety spoken in the Kingdom of Tonga. The normalised Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI-V) is used to classify the variety and determine the social and stylistic constraints on variation in a corpus of conversational and reading passage data with 48 speakers. Findings reveal a greater tendency towards stress-timing in speakers of the emergent local elite, characterised by white-collar professions and high levels of education, and those with a high index of English use. Variation is discussed as a consequence of proficiency, language contact and L1 transfer. An acoustic analysis of vowels in unstressed syllables of eight speakers confirms that lack of vowel centralisation (higher F1) is an underlying linguistic mechanism leading to more syllable-timed speech. Stark interspeaker variation was identified, highlighting the need to proceed with caution when classifying L2 Englishes based on speech rhythm.

Processing dissociations between raising and control in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract Generative approaches to syntactic control have traditionally viewed it as a distinct component of the grammar, one that governs the interpretation and distribution of the empty category (EC) PRO. However, the Movement Theory of Control (MTC) proposes that control should instead be conceived of as a form of raising, with both sentence types involving the EC DP/NP Trace. In addition to theoretical arguments, some behavioral research on antecedent reactivation has demonstrated that different ECs reactivate their antecedents to different degrees and at different points in the time course of comprehension. In this study, we used a cross-modal repetition priming paradigm to examine antecedent reactivation in Brazilian Portuguese. We found significantly greater activation at the gap position in raising sentences and in those with overt pronouns as compared to (exhaustive) control sentences, consistent with the standard account of raising and the traditional view of control as involving a distinct EC. Additionally, we found some evidence for a differentiation between exhaustive and partial control structures. Overall, our results suggest that 1) similar linguistic mechanisms are employed in the processing of sentences that involve overt pronouns and DP/NP traces, and 2) different mechanisms are employed in the processing of raising and control structures, a finding we view as inconsistent with the MTC.

Ризома как механизм манипуляции в немецкоязычном журналистском тексте

The research focuses on the pressing issue of contemporary political discourse – the technologies of manipulation in the media space, specifically the linguistic mechanisms for transmitting pragmatic attitudes and value orientations in journalistic texts. These processes directly correlate with the phenomenon of increasing entropy in the text and, as the study has shown, largely arise from the rhizome - the nonlinear nature of organizing integrity. The research aim is to identify the linguistic mechanisms underlying the rhizomatic structure of media text. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time, using a specific info-cause as an example, the rhizome is examined as a mechanism for implementing manipulative strategies in the modern German-speaking media space; the conditioned technologies of modeling pragmatic attitudes by the rhizome are revealed; the explicit and implicit mechanisms of implementing this process are described. The obtained results have shown that in journalistic texts, the rhizome manifests itself as multi-vectorial and the contradictory transmission of information, greatly enhancing the possibilities of interpretations inherent in the language structure, becoming a significant mechanism for implementing manipulative strategies.

Symptoms of ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder Interactively Predict Children’s Verbal Fluency

Objective: Verbal fluency, the capacity to generate words from a designated category, predicts myriad cognitive and life outcomes. The study investigated verbal fluency in children with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and comorbid ADHD and ASD, to understand how ADHD- and ASD-related symptoms individually and jointly predict verbal fluency, and the underlying linguistic and cognitive substrates. Method: Thirty-three school-aged children with ADHD, 27 with ASD, 25 with comorbid ADHD and ASD, and 39 with typical development, were assessed for ADHD and ASD symptoms and completed a semantic verbal fluency task. Results: Findings indicated that ADHD and ASD symptoms, especially ADHD hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms and language-related ASD symptoms, interactively predicted verbal fluency across diagnostic groups. Conclusion: The study implicated the potential cognitive and linguistic mechanisms underlying verbal fluency differences in ADHD and/or ASD, and clinical practices on enhancing verbal fluency in these clinical groups.