Performative Verbs Research Articles

Commissive Modality of International Legal Discourse: An Implicit Mitigation of the Bindingness

This research focuses on the problem of the correlation between discursive modality and illocutionary force - with substantiating variations in illocutionary force as a pragmatic basis for the scale-paradigm of deontic modality, influencing the binding force of international instruments. Guided by the criterion of explicitness and implicitness of illocutionary force markers, as well as their localization in performative or propositional part, the paper categorizes five classes of commissives in relation to speech acts: direct commissives, hedged direct commissives, indirect commissives, indirect implied commissives, hedged indirect implied commissives. Direct commissives when hedged preserve the performative verbs of self-commitment in their illocutionary part, while contain hedge structures and means of generalization in propositional part, scaling down the strength of commissive illocutionary force and associating deontic modality of commitments. Indirect commissives are illocutionary bicomponent acts, combining either expressive-commissive or assertive-commissive illocutionary forces. Indirect implied commissives and hedged indirect implied commissives rank at the penultimate and last levels of the scale of commissive deontic modality. They are devoid of a phrase subject designating the subject of the implementation of obligations. Predicates with the meanings of ‘necessity’ and ‘requirement’ indirectly mark obligations assumed whereas passive structures, nominalization, hedges, generalization, and other markers of decreased illocutionary force and associated deontic modality de-intensify such in international legal discourse.

Exemplification in Chinese English-major MA students' and expert writers’ academic writing: A local grammar based investigation

This study adopts a local grammar approach to investigate exemplification in Chinese English-major MA student writers' and expert writers' academic writing. Using corpora compiled of Chinese English-major MA students' degree dissertations and expert writers’ published research articles in the field of Applied Linguistics as the data, the investigation shows that although the Chinese MA student writers used exemplification as frequently as expert writers to specify abstract superordinate categories, they underused exemplification with regard to aspects such as performative verbs, exemplificatory imperatives, and the strategy of exemplifying by citing relevant studies. The implications of local grammar based investigation into academic writing for EAP writing research and pedagogy are further discussed.

Making Promises in the TV Series <em>Gilmore Girls</em>

This study investigates the speech act of promising found in the first five episodes of the TV series Gilmore Girls (2000). It categorizes utterances containing promises based on the directness strategies. The direct promising strategy is identified using the IFID of the speech act of promising, that is the performative verb promise, while the indirect promising strategy is identified and categorized into 10 types of indirect promising strategy proposed by Ariff and Mugableh (2013): pure promise, discourse conditional, tautological-like expression, body-part expression, self-aggrandizing expression, time expression, courtesy-like expression, swearing expression, adjacency pair, and false promise. The results show that the most commonly used strategy was the indirect promising strategy (94.3%) as the characters in the series tend to make promises casually by not using the performative verb promise. Then, pure promise strategy is the most frequently used type of indirect promising strategy (31.3%). In addition, there are two distinctive types of indirect promising strategies found in the TV series, i.e., hidden promise and sarcastic promise strategies. This finding suggests that there are many other ways to make promises besides using the performative verb, promise and the modal verb will since the context of the conversations sometimes indicates future acts that a speaker commits to doing.

THE FUNCTIONS OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS IN FINDING NEMO FILM

This research focuses on analyzing illocutionary acts in Finding Nemo film. This research uses speech acts theory of pragmatics approach to analyze the meaning of illocutionary acts uttered in the film. This research applies qualitative method. The functions of illocutionary act uttered by the characters in Finding Nemo are declarative, representative, expressive, directive, and commisive. The functions of illocutinary acts in the film are classified on theory of Yule, Word Orders and Performative Verbs as the indicator.

A Corpus-Based Study of the Discursive Construction of Corporate Identities by Chinese and American Banks

Abstract By taking the perspective of Social Constructivism and the Discourse-Historical Approach, and using the corpus linguistic tool Wmatrix, this study compares the discursive strategies adopted by Chinese and American banks in their construction of corporate identities. The research underlines the shared and unique features presented in prominent themes, communication strategies and lexical patterns. It is found that Chinese banks prefer to emphasise their historical development, industrial ranking and organisational structure to positively construct their identity as industry leaders, adopting a corporate ability strategy through the frequent usage of numbers and superlative adjectives. However, American banks tend to stress care for their employees, communities and environment. They prefer to use a corporate responsibility strategy to build their identity as social contributors through the frequent usage of performative verbs to exhibit specific corporate activities. This study may have practical implications for Chinese companies wishing to improve their international communication capability and may offer educational implications for Business English teaching.

Phraséologismes pragmatiques des annonces ferroviaires

The present study investigates human live announcements performed on board of French fast trains TGV. On closer examination, they appear to be highly conventionalised preconstructed texts (text models as described in Gülich & Krafft, 1997). Firstly, the analysis focuses on lexical prefabicated chunks (mostly collocations) embedded in recurrent syntactic patterns the announcements are composed of. Hence, we assume that they should be considered phraseological units at discourse, as well as at syntactic and lexical levels. Further, preconstructed entails constructed: as a matter of fact, these announcements have been built up by institutional authors on purpose, to serve as tools, when uttered by the speaker in professional interactions. Secondly, it is possible to relate particular preconstructed elements to directive speech acts that the speakers have to perform as frontline workers. Given the transactional situation they are involved in, they can hardly use only overt directives, such as imperative constructions or performative verbs. Consequently, preconstructed elements are designed with the aim, on the one hand, of providing the hearer with maximal relevance to quickly grasp implicatures, and on the other, that of improving the relational parameters between interlocutors.

Ei saa me läbi “Pragmaatika” korpuseta. Korpuspragmaatika ja pragmaatikakorpus

Within the project “Pragmatics above grammar: Subjectivity and intersubjectivity in Estonian registers and text types” (PRG341) we are studying the expression of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in different written and spoken registers of modern Estonian. We focus on adverbs that function as discourse markers (e.g. vist ‘maybe, probably’, ilmselt ‘apparently, obviously’, tegelikult ‘actually’), markers that develop from main clauses containing cognition verbs that take sentence complements (e.g. (ma) arvan ‘I think’, usun ‘I believe’, (mulle) tundub ‘it seems (to me), it appears (that)’) as well as modal and performative verbs (e.g. võib (juhtuda) ‘can (happen’, peaks (tulema) ‘should (come)’; kinnitan/väidan (olevat) ‘I affirm/claim’). The analysis combines quantitative corpus-linguistic and qualitative pragmatic approaches, thus belonging to the field of corpus pragmatics. Unlike previous studies of related topics, the project systematically compares the usage of markers in different registers (spoken, online communication, print texts) and text types. The pilot studies performed thus far have revealed several problems with the existing Estonian corpora, important in the study of pragmatics. Firstly, some text types are underrepresented or not represented at all, the text types cannot always be distinguished, and the particular text may not always correspond to the nominal text type (e.g. an academic text may contain quotes from texts of other types). All of this makes it difficult to do comparative statistical analysis of different text types. Secondly, the markers under examination are multifunctional and identifying their (inter)subjective function requires consideration of context broader than a single sentence. However, the public search systems for the existing corpora do not provide this context. For instance, the discourse marker function of cognition verbs is indicated primarily by the fact that the topic of the conversation or text follows through the subordinate clause, not the main clause. Since the available search systems do not provide context larger than a single sentence, the identification of the topic of the discourse, and therefore of the potential discourse-marker function of the verb, is made more difficult. To avoid these problems, the project working group is developing a new “Pragmatics” corpus, being created in the SketchEngine environment. The corpus is made up of 10 subcorpora representing different text types and registers. Each subcorpus contains roughly 500,000 words.

Estetyczne akty mowy jako przedmiot pragmalingwistyki: status, funkcje, formy

Aesthetic Acts of Speech as a Subject of Pragmalinguistics: Status, Functions, Forms. Part 1 In the paper, the status and features of aesthetic speech acts are discussed. They are a research phenomenon at the junction of two disciplines: pragmatics and stylistics. The authors treat aesthetic speech acts as these kinds of speech acts that are produced by the sender with an intention to make the receiver have an aesthetic experience, however, they are not limited solely to the field of literature. No performative verbs can be ascribed to them, therefore they may be categorized as indirect stimulating acts. Moreover, the aesthetic function performed by such speech acts is frequently accompanied by other linguistic functions.

Hashtag as a Linguocognitive Unit of Spanish Political Discourse

The article presents an analysis of the discursive features of the hashtags functioning in the current Spanish political discourse which are retrieved from Spanish government, ministries and bodies web publications dedicated to combating coronavirus infection. The purpose of the research is to understand and treat hashtags as a discursive unit in terms of theoretical linguistics, discourse theory, cognitive science and pragmalinguistics. The paper reveals significant linguo-cognitive parameters of the hashtags functioning in Spanish political communication and determines the impact of their verbal and pragmatic influence as a tool for structuring the political agenda in the interests of the sender and manipulative means influencing the consciousness and behavior of the addressee. The interdisciplinary approach is applied together with a set of systemic linguistic research methods - cognitive, pragmalinguistic, comparative, semantic, contextual and discourse analysis. The article clarifies the status of hashtags as an independent category of discourse, in other words, a unit of meaningful information that seamlessly conveys the designed content in the Internet communication, which includes political discourse. In accordance with the functional criterion, the following taxonomic classification of hashtags is substantiated: hashtags-prototypes of a situation or event, hashtags-concepts, hashtags-metaphors, hashtags-imperatives and hashtags-performatives. Key cognitive-pragmatic and linguistic characteristics of hashtags include: metatext structure, semiotic polycode, hypertextuality, interactive essence, intentionality, manipulative potential, simplified syntax, frequent use of performative and imperative verbs to intensify a call to action, emotionality, empathy, use of a language game mechanism to facilitate memorization of a key message, repetitions, rhythm.

Засоби вираження і відтворення в українських перекладах асертивної ілокуції текстів міжнародного права

The article focuses on the analysis of assertive speech acts in international legal discourse. The main types of assertives are distinguished based on the criterion of presence or absence of markers of assertive illocutionary force. The paper has Identified the following types of acts: direct assertive, marked performative devices of assertive illocution; direct assertives that do not contain a performative verb and assertives with illocutionary force of indirect directives. The peculiarities of translation transformations used during the translation of assertives from English into Ukrainian are revealed

Прагмалингвистические особенности документных текстов информативного типа в военном деловом дискурсе (на материале документов Великой Отечественной войны)

This article describes genre-forming features of informative documentary texts of military discourse, such as communicative goal, author’s image, addressee’s image, event content, factor of the future, and factor of the past. The following terms are studied here: documentary text, speech genre, and informative speech genres. The documentary text is considered as a kind of а speech genre, realized in writing. In the course of the research, the most frequent informative documents of military discourse (Great Patriotic War period) were selected, i.e. summary, dispatch, and report. Having analysed the definitions of the abovementioned speech genres and the corresponding documentary texts, the author was able to determine their communicative goals, single out the main (inform) and additional (ask, suggest) genre-forming intentions. It was revealed that the speech addressee in informative speech genres can be both an executive officer and a group of persons, information about them (detailed or not) being presented in the initial and final formulas of the document. The author’s image in the main texts of documents is either implicit or manifested with the help of performative verbs. The speech addressee is abstract and is only indicated in the initial formula of the document, in most cases by the person’s position. Informative documents should meet the following requirements: impersonal and multi-event nature, presentation of the informative component by events of the past and the present, creation of a futural perspective in texts with incentive intentions. The analysis of the factor of the past showed that the summary and the analytical report are initiative genres of written communication, while the dispatch and the operations report are reactive speech genres. Having studied the factor of the future parameter, the author concluded that informative speech genres underlie other informative and directive genres. For instance, dispatches and reports are created on the basis of summaries, whose main intention is to inform. The texts of dispatches and reports, having additional intentions of asking and suggesting, form the basis for directive documentary texts.

Językowe wykładniki intencji prawodawcy w Kodeksie Działyńskich

Linguistic Exponents of the Legislator’s Intention in the Działyński Code
 The article presents syntactic methods of expressing the legislator’s intentions in the medieval legal document called Kodeks Działyńskich (the Działyński code). The intention is understood by the authors as ‘the goal towards which the action of the legislator is directed’. This type of element of a legislative text does not appear in modern legal texts, apart from the Code of Canon Law. However, in the oldest texts, the purpose of which was to change a functioning custom into binding law, the justification for introducing certain regulations was very important. We also pay attention to the information about the legislator, which is included in the text. The information is expressed by pluralis maiestaticus forms of performative verbs. Three types of syntactic structures serve to express the intention of the legislator: subordinate clauses introduced by the conjunction: aby, participial sentence equivalents based on the verb chcieć, and prepositional phrases with prepositions: na, ku and dla. These structures usually occur in preposition to the superior predicate. The fragments excerpted from the text are characterized by a considerable degree of cohesiveness, not only in terms of meaning but also in structure. A sentence or a participal construction in the semantic relation of the goal functions in a broader context, therefore it becomes necessary to introduce reference indicators and anaphorical elements such as repetitions, pronouns and pronominalization.

ТЕКСТОТВІРНІ ФУНКЦІЇ ІМПЕРАТИВІВ У КАЗАННЯХ ЛЕОНТІЯ КАРПОВИЧА

In this article we study the texts of Leontii Karpovych in the context of a new type of sermon — the baroque sermon of the 17th century. The seventeenth century is notable for the fact that the aesthetics of the Baroque brought Ukrainian religious literature to a qualitatively new level, enriched it with many original compositions. In this context, we emphasize the figure of Leontii Karpovych, as in his work the features of a new type of sermon are beginning to be clearly pronounced, although the first texts date back to 1617. In order to form the views of believers and to enshrine in their minds religious teachings, to convey to them the word of God, the preacher must be able to use language resources skillfully that will help to achieve the goal. We analyze the functions of imperative forms of verbs in Leontii Karpovych’s baroque sermons. The sermon is studied as a communicative act between the preacher and the recipient. In the article we study the peculiarities of the functioning of grammatical categories of person and number in the text of Leontiі Karpovych’s sermon. We put emphasis on the use of imperative forms in accordance with the structural canon of the baroque sermon of the 17th centurу (the structure of the sermon consists of exordium, narration, and conclusion). Also, we investigate the functioning of performative verbs (mental and social) because the sermon, as a genre of religious literature, is based on the act of communication of the preacher with the audience. We analyze the consequences of using certain forms of imperatives (rapprochement with the audience, separation from the audience, the formation of a call to action, the actualization of the role of the preacher as a mentor), and the productivity of these forms.

A Pragmatic Study of Image Restoration via Corporate Apology in Chinese Internet Corporations

With the booming of Chinese internet corporations, various wrongdoings have been frequently exposed to the public, which damages their corporate image. To face the challenge, these companies usually resort to apologies for image restoration. This study investigates how apology strategies are employed by Chinese internet corporations to restore image in the event of wrongdoings. Based on a self-built corpus and by means of textual analysis, we identified different apology strategies characterized by various linguistic features. The results show that “Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs)” and “damage repair” are two of the most frequently used move types which are normally marked by such key linguistic features as personal pronouns, modal verbs, performative verbs and intensifiers. It is also found that IFIDs, “giving account” and “admitting mistakes”, “offering repair” and “inviting further interaction” are often incorporated together to show the company’s sincere apologetic stance which contributes to the ultimate goal --- rebuilding corporate image and regaining the public’s trust. However, direct expressions of “asking for forgiveness” are seldom found in apologies crafted by Chinese internet corporations. This study on apologies in the domain of internet corporations is believed to shed light on research on corporate apology in particular and corporate image restoration in general.

Parliamentary directives in New Zealand and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract The main aim of the present paper is to compare the realization patterns of directive speech acts produced by the Speaker of the House of Representatives of New Zealand and the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The paper focuses on head acts only, disregarding modification. Head acts are analyzed and compared in terms of their explicitness and implicitness, as defined in the framework proposed by Vine (2004a, 2004b). Overall results show that explicit head acts were dominant in both data sets. Furthermore, significant differences were noticed in terms of the findings for certain sub-forms of the explicit head acts, such as the imperative form, which is more frequent in parliamentary directives in Serbian, as are performative verbs. Modal verbs were typical of the parliamentary directives in English. The results are discussed in the context of the findings of previous relevant studies.

SOME OCCURENCES OF NEGATION IN TURKISH

Kutupsallık bilgisel nesnel kiplik çerçevesinde tanımlanmaktadır. Bilgisel kiplik ise konuşucunun bir olay-durumunun gerçekleşip gerçekleşmemesinden emin olup olmadığını kodlamayı sağlamaktadır. Dik bu tanımlamalardan hareketle olumsuzluğun anlambilimsel ve edimbilimsel açıdan ele alınması gerektiğini ve daha kapsamlı bir olumsuzluk türü ölçeği oluşturulması gerektiğini ileri sürmektedir. Buna göre tümce, önerme, yüklemleme, yüklem ve kurucu olmak üzere beş çözümleme düzeyi belirlemiştir. Edimzsözel olumsuzluk, edimsel eylemlerin olumsuzlanmasıyla elde edilmektedir. Önermesel kutupsallıkta, konuşucu bağlamda verilen ya da sezdirilen, olumlu ya da olumsuz bir önermeyi onaylamakta ya da reddetmektedir. Her iki durumda da konuşucu önermenin doğruluğu hakkındaki kişisel değerlendirmesini sunar. Yüklemlemenin olumsuzlanması ise,belli bir olay durumunun gerçekleşmemesinin nesnel olarak sunulduğu bir yapı olarak kabul edilmektedir. Bu tür olumsuzluk yalnızca yüklem üzerinde etkilidir ve eğer bu yüklem bir yüklemlemede kullanılırsa önermeyi olumsuz yapamamaktadır. Olumsuz bildirimlere ulaşmanın çok farklı bir yolu da kurucu olumsuzlama ya da sıfır-niceleme yoluyla olumsuzluktur. Bu ayrımlar göz önünde bulundurulduğunda, çalışmanın amacı dillerdeki olumsuzluk olgusunun İşlevsel Dilbilgisi (Dik 1997) çerçevesinde nasıl açıklandığının ortaya konması ve bu bağlamda Türkçedeki kimi olumsuzluk görünümlerinin açığa çıkartılması olarak belirlenmiştir. Bu amaç doğrultusunda öncelikle olumsuzluğun ne olduğu ve hangi düzlemlerde işlediği ele alınacak, ardından Türkçedeki olumsuzluk incelenecektir. Türkçenin olumsuzluğu Dik’in belirttiği 5 düzlemde de kullandığı gözlemlenmiştir. Ancak Türkçede olumsuzluk üzerine yapılan çalışmaların daha çok {-mE} ve {değil} birimleri üzerine odaklanması özellikle yüklem ve kurucu düzeyindeki olumsuzluğun incelenmesini geri plana itmiştir.

Electronic Communication in the Aspect of Linguistic Politeness (Based on the Material of German Linguoculture)

The article presents major ways of implementing linguistic politeness in electronic communication of the German linguocultural community. Following basic communicative principles of positive politeness, the authors analyze such e-mails speech acts as greeting, appeal, parting, congratulations, wishes, gratitude, that actualize strategies of positive politeness, or strategies of reconciliation in the virtual interaction of communicants. In German linguoculture the communicative strategies of reconciliation are the attention-and-care strategy, the strategy of using in-group identity markers, the strategy of exaggeration, the strategy of giving communicative gifts, the strategy of demonstrating intense interest; their implementation is supported with various means and methods of expressiveness, including contact appeals, adjectives, pronoun viel, modal verb mögen, performative verbs of wishes and gratitude, subjunctive mood, etc. It is stated that the communicative strategies of politeness are aimed at preserving the positive face of the addressee, that is, satisfying the needs of a person to show attention, care, interest, sympathy, love towards the addressee. It should be noted that study of the principle of politeness in email writing is viewed as a priority for German linguoculture, since communication via e-mail is one of the most popular and common ways of virtual written communication both at home and in business.

Performative Verb of Saluh Suh’s Incantation in Simalungun Ethnic: An Anthropolinguistic Study

The aim of this research was to find the types and meanings of performative verbs of Saluh Suh’s incantation in Simalungun Ethnic. This research employed qualitative paradigm. As a qualitative research, this research used the descriptive methodology with interactive model. This research used two methods in collecting the data, they were direct participatory observation and in depth-open-ended interview. The interactive model was applied to analyse the data. Based on the research findings, two types and meanings of performative verbs were found in Saluh Suh incantation, i.e. illocution and perlocution. Of the two types, the perlocution was the more dominant type of performative verb. Besides, there were thirteen numbers of Illocution and perlocution type was found in Saluh Suh incantation. This research presents a new contribution to the government in term of local wisdom in Simalungun ethnic through language. It means that Simalungun language was a source of culture. More clearly, the performative verb in the sentences of Saluh suh incantation is a source of culture that can be used to be a power of language. In the future, Salauh Suh incantation can be used as a local wisdom to help mothers in normal childbirth. Then the significant contribution especially to Simalungun government is that it may become one of cultural properties, that needs to be preserved. Besides, it can increase or be used to change the economic of Simalungun people.

The Meanings of the Discourse Marker Oh Using Performative Verbs

The Meanings of the Discourse Marker Oh Using Performative Verbs

Features of the language of law: A comparative study of Polish, English and Indonesian legal texts

Abstract Researchers studying the language of law agree that there is a number of certain features which are characteristic of the legal genre, regardless of the language of the legal text. Among the most commonly listed features of lingua legis are: conventionalised sentences, performative verbs, Latinisms, euphemisms, and time expressions. The paper provides a discussion of these features, as well as provides examples of their occurrence in Polish, English, and Indonesian legal texts. The analised corpus includes the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, The Constitution of the United States of America with amendments, Polish and Indonesian Civil Codes (clauses concerning obligations), together with a set of parallel texts of rental agreements and real estate sale contracts.