Pragmatic Act Research Articles

A Pragma-Logical Analysis of Manipulation Strategies Used by American and Arabic Attorneys in Selected Criminal Trials

This study is devoted to investigate the defense of American and Arabic attorneys from a pragma-logical perspective. It is hypothesized that manipulation is a dangerous pragmatic act which is practised by them when defending their clients in criminal trials. Therefore, this study aims to prove that their defense contains arguments which do not agree with the proof standard of criminal cases. Such a proof requires them to present logical evidences beyond a reasonable doubt to persuade the members of the jury that their clients are innocent, or at least they have logical reasons which led them to commit their murders. To achieve the aims of the study, six arguments are chosen for analysis. The first three are advanced by the American defense attorney Robert Rogers. The next three are advanced by the Arabic defense attorney Mustafa Ramadan. Their defense is analyzed qualitatively and tested according to the pragma-logical criteria discussed below. The results show that they both resort to different argumentation schemes, different logical components, and different logical fallacies. These differences indicate that their arguments are fallacious and serve a pragmatic manipulative intention.

Women in the Mix: A Critical-Pragmatic Study of the Gender Representation in Nigerian Hip-hop Music

Hip-hop music has become a popular trend in Nigeria, as it enjoys a high level of acceptance among the Nigerian youths. Thus, this study examines the representation of female gender in hip-hop music and the messages the music conveyed about female gender; it also unravels the hidden pragmatic meanings behind the content of the music. Nine (9) data from the lyrics of selected hip-hop music were randomly selected and analysed using Mey's (2001) pragmatic act theory. This paper adopted a qualitative approach which is due to the nature of the data that was analysed and the approach that was used in analysing it. Findings revealed a dominant portrayal of slangy expressions suggesting sexual overtones, female as mere edibles, women as sexual stimulants, seductive dance steps, and indecent dressing in the lyrical contents sampled. The paper also revealed that the implicit practs of exposing, seducing, luring and proposing were used in the data to show the role females play as characters in hip-hop music videos. The paper concludes that the use of vulgar expressions in the description of these female characters portrayed them mainly as sex commodities and sex workers, this questions the dignity of the African woman and the virtues she is expected to project to her fellow female folk, home and abroad.

Pragmatic Acts in Characters’ Utterances in Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu

Studies on Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu have examined the use of lexical choices and discourse markers in the drama text neglecting the choice of meaning negotiation in characters’ utterances. This paper, therefore, undertook a pragmatic investigation of how meanings and actions are generated in a play text using Femi Osofisan’s Women of Owu. Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Act theory was used alongside implicature and presupposition as elements of pragmatics to analyse five (5) purposively selected extracts from the play. This is done to critically bring to the fore the practs performed in the utterances, the maxims obeyed and those flouted and the type of presupposition made. Findings revealed that the practs of informing, explaining, stating, naming, and influencing were used in the text unveil the thought pattern of the audience. The paper also revealed that the pivotal role context plays in decoding the exact meaning(s) conveyed in each of the extracted utterances. Context is instrumental to the performance of certain acts. From this, the paper concludes that in order to do things with words and to use characters to communicate effectively in any given context, especially in tradition based plays like Women of Owu, a writer needs to have the knowledge of grammar as well as the knowledge of how to use language from a functional perspective in the contextual and traditional backgrounds.

Birth Congratulation Messages on Facebook in Jordan: A Sociopragmatic Analysis

This study examines online congratulation messages for childbirth as expressed in Facebook users’ comments on birth announcements in Jordan. The principal aim is to study the congratulatory strategies and their pragmatic functions. To this end, a total of 1206 comments on six birth announcements were analyzed within the framework of Mey’s (2001) pragmatic act theory. The analysis revealed that congratulation messages can be classified into seven distinct categories, with the congratulation act being the primary means of conveying congratulations. Other supportive strategies include expressing good wishes, expressing happiness, complimenting, using protection formulas, using non-verbal language, and welcoming the newborn. When these strategies are examined within social, cultural and contextual parameters, they perform various pragmatic acts such as congratulating, blessing, well-wishing, advising, praising, and welcoming. This study concludes that birth congratulations given on Facebook in Jordan are typically influenced by religious and socio-cultural norms and conventions. Keywords: Congratulation, Newborn, Context, Pragmatics, Strategy

Pragmatic Implications of Contextual Constraints and Delivery Styles in Selected Academic Sermons

Academic sermons (preaching tests) which depend largely on pragmatic choices, are used to determine the preachers’ quality and qualification for theological certification. Previous studies on religious discourse have not recognised the influence of delivery constraints on the overall output of academic sermons. This study, therefore, examined the pragmatic implications of the preachers’ choices. The study adopted aspects of pragmatic act theory. Stratification and purposive sampling methods were used to select three seminaries from which data were gathered. The penultimate year student-pastors were purposively selected for data collection and data were subjected to pragmatic analysis. Four performance contexts and six delivery styles with eight strategies demonstrated training-induced delivery constraints, which conditioned preachers’ pragmatic designs and determined their level of compliance to training in the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminaries. The perfect orientation to narrative and prescriptive styles suggested compliance to training, but the partial orientation and complete disorientation to analytical, invocational, affiliative and professing styles implied pragmatic misadjustment and professional deficiencies with implications for pastoral competence.

Pragmatic Acts in the Language of Alms Begging in Southwest Nigeria

The meaning of language is tied to the context where it is used. This study examines the different pragmatic acts performed by beggars across Southwest Nigeria while soliciting alms. The aim is to establish the role of language as a tool in perpetuating this age-long profession of soliciting alms from members of society. The study employs Jacob Mey’s Pragmatic Act theory as its theoretical springboard while data for the study was obtained by closely observing the activities of the subjects across selected locations within the study area. This is done with the consent of the subjects. The study discovered beggars often employ nine pragmatic goals in achieving their objective, that is, soliciting, hailing, praying, directing, informing, assuring, requesting, pleading and inquiring, with the pragmatic goal of pleading to account for the highest percentage of the occurrence. The study also identified a linguistic adaptation where the research subjects conform to the situational context in their linguistic choices, including a manifestation of shared situational knowledge between the research subjects and their addressees.

A critical-pragmatic study of the representation of female gender in Nigerian Hip-hop music

Hip-hop music has become a popular trend in Nigeria, as it enjoys a high level of acceptance among the Nigerian youths. Thus, this study examines the representation of female gender in hip hop music and the messages the music conveyed about female gender; it also unravels the hidden pragmatic meanings behind the content of the music. Nine (9) data from the lyrics of selected hip hop music were randomly selected and analysed using Mey's (2001) pragmatic act theory. This paper adopted a qualitative approach which is due of the nature of the data that was analysed and the approach that was used in analysing it. Findings revealed a dominant portrayal of slangy expressions suggesting sexual overtimes, female as mere edibles, women as sexual stimulant, seductive dance steps, and indecent dressing in the lyrical contents sampled. The paper also revealed that the implicit practs of exposing, seducing, luring and proposing were used in the data to show the role females play as characters in hip-hop music videos. The paper concludes that the use of vulgar expressions in the description of these female characters portrayed them mainly as sex commodities and sex workers, this questions the dignity of the African woman and the virtues she is expected to project to her fellow female folk, home and abroad.

Generic structure and pragmatic acts in Yoruba traditional weddings in Southwestern Nigeria

This paper investigates the generic structure and pragmatic acts (practs) in Yoruba traditional weddings from southwestern Nigeria. Three purposively selected weddings are qualitatively analysed, using the Generic Structure Potential and a modified form of the pragmatic act theory. The study reveals that the practs of praying, instructing, pleading and counselling are deployed within nine structural elements. These practs incorporate psychological and non-verbal acts as well as contextual features such as reference, metaphor, shared situational and cultural knowledge. The paper shows that the generic structure and pragmatic functions of utterances offer valuable insights into the procedure and discourse of Yoruba traditional weddings.

A Semiotico-Pragmatic Analysis of President Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo’s Address on Ghanaian Economy

This study analyzed President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo first official address on the Ghanaian economic crisis. It is qualitative study and explicit content analytical method was employed. Applying concepts from semiotic model and pragmatic act, the study revealed different semiotic elements and practs through which the presidents effectively communicated to his audience on government’s plans and initiatives towards ameliorating the escalating inflation and the resultant economic hardship Ghanaians were experiencing. The findings revealed that semiotic elements such as the coat of arm, the president’s outfit, the national flag, the microphone and the outfit of the sign-language interpreter effectively acts as a signifier and immensely contributed to meaning. Again, the findings showed that the president employed several practs in his address such as informing (47.06%), tasking (13.37%), cautioning (7.45%), sympathizing and recounting (3.16%), promising (16.01%); pleading/praying, reporting, and instructing (2.11%) each, saluting (9.06%), suggesting and urging (1.05%) each. The paper therefore concludes that through shared situational knowledge, reference and inference, Ghanaians were able to understand what the president wishes to communicate.

Pragmatic Acts in Selected Sermons of Bishop David Oyedepo: A Jacob Mey’s Approach

This study carried out a review of selected sermons of Bishop David Oyedepo in order to highlight the contexts and pragmatic acts deployed in the sermons, as no scholarly work has been done on Oyedepo’s sermons using Jacob Mey’s pragmatic act theory. The objectives are to ascertain the underlying contexts of the themes in the selected sermons and to examine the pragmatic acts performed. Using exclusively Jacob Mey’s pragmatic act theory as a theoretical framework, the methodology is qualitative in its approach. The design is content analysis. From an average of eleven thousand eight hundred and eight sermons, four sermons spanning varying human endeavours are purposively selected. Data was sourced and collected online, employing the top-down analytical approach to revealing the context and pragmatic acts deployed. Findings reveal the contextual constraints of history and war employing the practs of assuring, informing, and re-enlightening. The summary of the findings reveals that ten excerpts were analysed from the data, two pragmatic contexts were established, and three practs were classified, all interjected with pragmatic tools of REL, INF, REF, SSK, VCE, M and conversational acts which runs through the entire data. Through this study, a framework has been provided for the interpretation of Bishop Oyedepo’s sermons which religious scholars and teachers would find a veritable tool for advancing pedagogical skills in mission schools and churches. The study recommends further studies on the phonological acts performed in sermons.

Rationalizing impoliteness: Taking offence and providing vicarious accounts in mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflict mediation

Research on impoliteness is witnessing an increasing interest in recipients’ understanding of impoliteness, shifting from the speaker ‘causing offence’ to the listener ‘taking offence’. Although taking offence can be productively theorised as a pragmatic act which is invariably situated with respect to particular activity types, relatively few studies have explored the role of third parties in framing the taking of offence in conflict mediation contexts. Based on data from Chinese mediation between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, this study addresses this gap by exploring how offence can be taken and rationalized on behalf of others through third-party mediation in the Chinese family context. Examination of mediation discourse indicates that mediators often deploy ‘vicarious accounts’ in their remedial work through which they exercise agency in holding the mothers-in-law less accountable for their offensive acts. Mediators’ rationalisation of mother-in-law's offensive behavior is shown to be motivated by two Chinese culture-specific moral codes—filial piety (xiao 孝) and ‘harmony is paramount’ (he wei gui 和为贵). These findings have important implications for understanding the interrelationship between impoliteness and taking offence, mediation and morality.

Discursive-manipulative strategies in scam emails and SMS: The Nigerian perspective

Abstract Cyber scam, a subculture in Nigeria, especially among youths, has been under-investigated from the linguistic perspective. This study thus explores discursive-manipulative strategies in scam emails and SMS/messages in Nigeria, drawing samples from a corpus of over 200 emails and 50 SMS documented between 2018 and 2022. With insights from Brown and Levinson’s face, Mey’s pragmatic act and McCronack’s information manipulation theories, it is observed that discursive manipulative strategies such as positive and negative false alarm, self-denigration, formulaic, and evocation of theistic and religious context project the Nigerian realities in scam emails and SMS. Embedded in these manipulative strategies are face-saving and face-threatening acts strategically woven round the violation of the maxims of quality and quantity.

Measuring Video Game Dedication: The Development and Validation of Casual Hardcore Assortment Scale

This paper investigates the pragmatic expression of attitudes by Twitter users in children related discourse in Nigeria. Data comprised 80 children-centered Nigerian-tweets, involving individuals and bodies, were screenshots from Twitter between July-August, 2019. These were analyzed through aspects of appraisal theory and pragmatic act theory. Findings showed that Nigerian-tweets on children manifest 85% of negative appraisal and 15% positive appraisal within the socio-cultural context. These affirm that Nigerian-Twitter users circulate more negative children issues than positive as shown in their language use that is characterized by lamenting, rebuking, condemning and commending. The paper concludes that Nigerian-Twitter users in different perspectives have continued to condemn social factors that affect children and advocate good welfare packages to ameliorate their suffering to reposition them for a better future.

Metadiscourse of impoliteness, language ideology, and identity: offense-taking as social action

AbstractThis study investigates the interwoven relationship between the metadiscourse of (im)politeness, language ideologies, and identity. It examines YouTube comments on a video recording of a controversial incident in Taiwan in which a Taiwanese American, J, insulted a bus driver in English, a marked language choice in the local context. It was found that J’s abusive language and his language choice being English were the top sources of offense as expressed in the comments, and four main strands of language ideologies are identified accordingly. We see the taking of offense in the critical comments as social actions in two senses: each comment is an individual pragmatic act sanctioning a perceived moral transgression, while, collectively, the comments serve as a discursive space where language ideologies are shaped, contested, and reinforced. We further explore how various identities, such as “foreigner”, “ABC”, and “Taiwanese” are discursively constructed in the process of impoliteness assessment and how the perceived attack on the driver’s social identity face is motivated by J’s perceived identities and presumed language proficiency. We argue that the shift in focus to the evaluativity of (im)politeness makes it possible to bring (im)politeness research and sociolinguistics closer to each other.

Complaining, teasing, and meme-framing

AbstractThis article explores the pragmatic act of complaining on WeChat Moments (henceforth Moments) focusing on the following question: When complaints are made in a social context where ratified viewers are hard to define, how are such acts constructed and construed? The multimodal data under study come from a project designed to address the under-examined issue of indirect complaints in Chinese social media. Drawing on the conceptualization of frame analysis in pragmatic studies and informed by a conversation analytical approach, this article proposes the concept ofsocial complaints, accounting for how Moments users employ it performatively to deal with serious matters, to socialize and to manage rapport with people in their social networks. Teasing, it is found, is often performed in both complaints and responses to the complaints, which manifests Moments users’ flexible positioning strategies in handling interpersonal relations.

Pragmatic Study of Photo Captions on the Amotekun Security outfit of South West Nigeria

Communication is central to human existence and this is made possible by employing not only verbal language but also visual images as both are mediums of information dissemination. This study investigates the pragmatic elements in photo captions on the Amotekun security outfit of Southwest, Nigeria in tandem with the pragmatic act theory of Mey (2001) and complemented with Hoye’s and Kaiser’s visual act theory (2007). Data for the study were judgementally selected from the social media platform, Twitter, in January 2020. Fifteen photos were originally sampled but only eight met the objective of this study. Data was subjected to a qualitative interpretation and the result of findings revealed that five (05) of the sampled data were assertive allopracts, two (02) expressive allopracts and one (01) a directive allopract. The paper concluded on the note that the Amotekun is a welcome development in the region as the result of findings revealed but cautioned that the major objective for the creation of the outfit should not be for personal gratification or to achieve political goals by Governors of the region rather it should be for the protection of lives and properties of people in the six states that make up the region.

A pragma-rhetorical study of selected Pentecostal sermons in Nigeria

This study examines persuasion and communicative intentions in Pentecostal sermons in Nigeria. Notwithstanding the high scholarly inputs in religious discourse, no single work has examined the devices employed to achieve persuasion and conviction as well as communicative intentions in Pentecostal sermons in Nigeria. This work examines twelve sermons of selected Pentecostal preachers in Nigeria by drawing insights from rhetoric and pragmatic act to account for persuasion and communicative intentions in the data. Findings reveal that preachers strategically deploy rhetorical question; direct address and direct command; metaphor; repetition and structural parallelism; and they develop convincing arguments through logic/reason. It is also revealed that preachers share experiences with their listeners and they assume divine role by speaking authoritatively to convince their listeners into accepting their propositions. Preachers perform pragmatic acts of asserting/stating, encouraging, assuring, directing, commanding, praising, etc. The study has further confirmed that Pentecostal sermons can be used for public mobilisation.

Conflict-motivated acts in the open letters of two former Nigerian presidents

Abstract This study investigates conflict-motivated pragmatic acts employed in the open letters exchanged by two former Nigerian presidents (Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan). The data are analysed using Mey’s pragmatic act theory. The findings reveal that while Obasanjo employs pragmatic acts of warning, appealing, and praising in order to counsel Jonathan, Jonathan employs pragmatic acts of acknowledging, boasting, correcting, and reminding in order to defend himself. However, they both employ the pragmatic acts of insulting, complaining, accusing, and requesting. These acts are influenced by nationalist and anti-ethnic ideologies as well as the context of the open letters, i.e., conflict among political leaders in Nigeria.

A Pragmatic Act Analysis of English Postproverbials on Twitter

Abstract Postproverbiality, the novel perspective to studying proverbs, has focused mainly on the radical revision of African proverbs. However, this phenomenon is not only found in African proverbs, but also in many other languages as already suggested in literature. Therefore, this study investigates postproverbiality in English proverbs as used on social media, particularly Twitter. Twitter is especially known for people’s display of radical ideologies, opinions, and idiosyncrasies; therefore, it serves as a useful source for such radical revision of English proverbs. The analysis was done using Jacob Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Acts as theoretical framework. The data was purposively gathered using five standard English proverbs to search for postproverbial versions; a total of thirty postproverbials were discovered on Twitter. The analysis revealed ten practs and allopracts which include affirming, insisting, informing, counselling, warning, instructing, and encouraging. These were projected through contextual features of shared situational knowledge, voicing, inference, metaphor, and socio-cultural knowledge. The interaction among the textual and contextual features and the allopracts shows that cultures and occurrences in public affairs affect such cultural indices as proverbs and language use and this interaction increases through the internet and social networks which link the world into a global community.

Interactive Alignment and Lexical Triggering of Code-Switching in Bilingual Dialogue.

When bilingual speakers use two languages in the same utterance, this is called code-switching. Previous research indicates that bilinguals’ likelihood to code-switch is enhanced when the utterance to be produced (1) contains a word with a similar form across languages (lexical triggering) and (2) is preceded by a code-switched utterance, for example from a dialogue partner (interactive alignment/priming of code-switching). Both factors have mostly been tested on corpus data and have not yet been studied in combination. In two experiments, we therefore investigated the combined effects of interactive alignment and lexical triggering on code-switching. In Experiment 1, Dutch-English bilinguals described pictures to each other in a dialogue game where a confederate’s code-switching was manipulated. The participants were free to use either Dutch, English, or a combination of Dutch and English in describing the pictures, so they could voluntarily code-switch or not. The pictures contained a cognate [e.g., roos (rose)], a false friend [e.g., rok (skirt, false friend with rock)], or a control word [e.g., jas (coat)]. Participants code-switched more often when the confederate had just code-switched (indicating interactive alignment). They also code-switched more often when cognates were involved, but only when the confederate had just code-switched. This indicates that lexical triggering is driven by interactive alignment. False friends did not enhance the likelihood of code-switching. Experiment 2 used a similar dialogue game with participants from the same population but focused specifically on how to account for interactive alignment of code-switching. Rather than aligning on their dialogue partner’s pragmatic act of code-switching, bilinguals aligned on the language activation from the utterance produced by their dialogue partner. All in all, the results show how co-activation of languages at multiple levels of processing together influence bilinguals’ tendency to code-switch. The findings call for a perspective on bilingual language production in which cross-speaker and cross-language processes are combined.