Pragmatic Analysis Research Articles

Grounds for Exemption from Criminal Liability? How Forensic Linguistics Can Contribute to Terrorism Trials

Drawing on Brown and Fraser’s (in: Giles, Scherer (eds) Social markers in speech, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 33–62, 1979) framework for the analysis of communicative situations and Fuentes Rodríguez’s (Lingüística pragmática y Análisis del discurso, Arco Libros, Madrid, 2000; in Estudios de Lingüística: Investigaciones lingüísticas en el siglo XXI, 2009. https://doi.org/10.14198/ELUA2009.Anexo3.04) model of pragmatic analysis, this paper examines three home-made recordings featuring some of the members of the terrorist cell responsible for the 2017 vehicle-ramming attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils weighted as evidence during the trial held between November 2020 and May 2021 in the Spanish National High Court. The aim of this qualitative analysis is to test whether the linguistic evidence available supports the allegation that the participation in these recordings by one of the accused, Mohamed Houli Chemlal, had been planned by his interlocutors. Results show, first, that the exchanges analyzed present features indicative of both spontaneity and (limited) planification. Second, that Houli makes key contributions to the unfolding of the interactions shown in the recordings and that he does so in a cooperative and apparently relaxed manner, which could at best provide only partial support to his allegations. It is claimed that forensic linguistic analysis can generate valuable insights within terrorism-related legal proceedings.

A pragmatic analysis of students’ complaints and professors’ responses to complaints: A case study of an Egyptian private university

A pragmatic analysis of students’ complaints and professors’ responses to complaints: A case study of an Egyptian private university

A pragmatic and discourse analysis of hate words on social media

Abstract This paper studies some pragmatic and discursive properties of hate words employed in the comment chains of two Italian right-wing politicians’ social media accounts. The analysis focuses on hate speech directed towards two ethnic groups – African migrants and the Chinese – and an individual, the former minister of Agriculture Teresa Bellanova. Hate words are divided into two macrocategories: slurs and insulting epithets. Slurs are expressions that are consistently associated with derogatory attitudes against a group of people based on their origin/descent; insulting epithets are either offensive terms that do not attack specific identity traits or neutral words that, in certain contexts, can be offensive. Data indicate that the use of hate words is guided by pragmatic factors and discursive elements, and it changes according to the individual(s) or the groups being attacked. Hate speech on social media occurs mainly through insulting epithets, thus allowing the authors to avoid moderation and any responsibility for their utterance. The results support the idea that hate speech is a complex speech act that aims not only at derogating or expressing negative emotions but works within the framework of racist discourses as a means of creating and reinforcing political polarisation and in-group values.

Pragmatic Strategy Analysis of Humorous Language in I Can I BB from the Perspective of Politeness Principle

I can I BB, a debate talk show, seeks to discover the "most talkative people" in the world of Chinese discourse, those with distinctive perspectives and exceptional eloquence, in order to integrate a topic close to life and a fresh and diverse language style, thereby attracting the affection of a large number of youthful audiences. This paper examines the pragmatic principles reflected in the debate discourse of the I can I BB by beginning with pragmatics theory. Using the politeness principle of American philosopher Leech, this paper analyses I can I BB from the perspective of violation of the principle, and uses the actual corpus reported by the programme to analyse its specific reflection in the debate strategy.

Intentionally Encouraging or Assisting Others to Commit an Offence: The Anatomy of a Language Crime

Since at least as far back as the infamous Derek Bentley case of the 1950s in which an unarmed 19-year-old was convicted and executed for murder based on his alleged uttering of the words let him have it to his gun-wielding accomplice, the issue of incitement has been positioned firmly as an object of interest for forensic linguists. An example of a language crime—i.e. an unlawful speech act (as reported by Shuy in Language crimes: The use and abuse of language evidence in the courtroom, Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken, 1993) the features of incitement—formalized as intentionally encouraging or assisting others to commit an offence in the law of England & Wales under section 44 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2007/27/contents)—have been widely debated by linguists and legal scholars alike. This paper draws on two webinars hosted by The Hunting Office in August 2020, which were subsequently leaked by the Hunt Saboteurs Association. Featuring senior figures from the hunting community addressing a nationwide audience of hunt masters, the webinars led to a police investigation and subsequent prosecution and conviction of one of the main speakers, Mark Hankinson, for encouraging or assisting others to commit an offence under the Hunting Act 2004. In this paper I explore what, linguistically, is meant by encouraging or assisting. Through corpus-assisted pragmatic and discourse analyses I interrogate the webinars to address the question of how precisely Hankinson implied his encouragement of illegal hunting with dogs. The phenomena of collocation and semantic prosody are crucial for understanding how such meanings came to be attached to the contributions Hankinson makes to the webinars. Moreover the paper will examine the contributions of other speakers and demonstrate that the same incriminating linguistic patterns in Hankinson’s talk are also evident in that of those who were not prosecuted.

STYLISTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LINGUISTIC ABSTRACTS: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY

While the genre of research abstract has recently gained much attention in the field of English for Academic Purposes, there is an acute need for more profound research into its ever-changing stylistic conventions, particularly in the area of linguistics. The purpose of the present study was to determine the stylistic features of modern Englishlanguage abstracts based on a corpus of 300 abstracts from leading journals in the field of linguistics, published in 2020 to 2023. The methodology integrated corpus methods (frequency and collocation analysis) with qualitative methods (contextual and pragmatic analysis) to determine the rhetorical and communicative strategies correlating with the identified linguistic devices. Relying on previous relevant studies, we primarily focused on the grammar categories of tense and voice. It was found out that present tense is predominant in the sample, though quite often authors choose to alternate tenses within one abstract, restricting past tense to the description of methodology and results. In these sections, it is also more common for authors to shift to passive voice, while the introduction, conclusion and implications are written mostly in active voice. Abstracts written entirely in passive voice are extremely rare in our corpus, which has important pedagogical implications. Also, we revealed that linguists are prone to non-personal use of active voice via self-referential nominals such as the study investigates, the results show. Thus, they diminish their own agency as researchers and reinforce the impression of scientific objectivity. Another stylistic aspect that we addressed is referring to previous research in the field. While it is mostly associated with the opening rhetorical move (introduction/background), we demonstrate that authors frequently refer to other studies in the field in later stages of an abstract to situate their research within the global landscape. It is becoming common for linguists to indicate in the abstract the studies they have drawn upon and the studies that their outcomes agree or disagree with. This finding should also be taken into consideration in English academic writing courses for researchers in linguistics.

HEGEMONY OF SOCIAL IRREGULARIT (CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT JOKO WIDODO'S SPEECH RELATED TO THE PROHIBITION OF HOUSES OF WORSHIP)

This research aims to uncover the social irregularities behind President Joko Widodo's speech on 17/01/2023 entitled "Remarks by President Joko Widodo at the Opening of the National Coordination Meeting of Regional Heads and Forkopimda throughout Indonesia in 2023" related to the prohibition of the establishment of houses of worship. By using the qualitative model of Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis method to uncover social injustice sourced from primary data websites, videos, and literature. Using data collection techniques of free listening and note-taking techniques. The researcher is an instrument of planning, implementing data collection, data analysis, interpretation, and reporting findings. The results of the lexical pragmatic text analysis found social irregularities of rejection and destruction of houses of worship which represent that the applicable constitution can not be implemented, disobeyed, disobeyed, denied, trivialized, and the existence of resistance to the constitution. It was found that there were obstacles to handling social irregularities in the form of consensus (agreement) of community groups in the form of counter-hegemony and the application of regulations in the realization of contradictions between the 1945 Constitution and PBM Number 9 and 8 of 2006. This shows that there are social irregularities that are deliberately perpetuated so that the apparatus and instruments of state power work. So it is necessary to apply intellectual hegemony to apply the constitution, ideology and power. So it concludes that the government to overcome social irregularities must use total hegemony (integral) without violence, using the constitution and the state ideology apparatus, so that power can regulate the order of worship and religion in Indonesia.

Book Review - SALVATORE ATTARDO, The Linguistics of Humor. An Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, 465 p.

Salvatore Attardo is one of the most important scholars for linguistic approach to humour. His books and articles have been highly influential since the early 1990s: “Script Theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model” (1991, with Victor Raskin), Linguistic Theories of Humor (1994), Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis (2001), to mention only a few. He also edited The Encyclopedia of Humor Studies (2014) and The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor (2017). His 2020 book, The Linguistics of Humor. An introduction, is written with a pedagogical aim (as claimed by the author in the Preface), for both students and scholars interested in humour but lacking the linguistic background.

Small Talk in English and Chinese – A contrastive case study

AbstractIn this paper, we present a contrastive pragmatic analysis of Small Talk in English and Chinese. We use a radically minimal, finite and interactional system of speech acts to study DCTs conducted with U.S. American native speakers of English and native speakers of Chinese. Our analysis points to a number of important differences between Small Talk in the two linguacultures contrasted, such as a reliance on routines in English Small Talk, and an overall reliance on the speech act Remark in Chinese. The influence of the classic sociolinguistic variables Power and Social Distance for the enactment of Small Talk is also shown to be different in English and Chinese.

Russian Proverbs in the Individual Communication Space of the Model [A<B

The article is devoted to the study of proverb models, thanks to which communication participants can indicate their intentions in a speech event. Within the declared communicative space, the models [A < B] can be updated as an argument in direct interaction (icon <) of the speaker (A) with the listener (B) – a person, on the one hand, playing a secondary role in a speech event, and on the other hand, affecting the result planned by the speaker. Communicative and pragmatic analysis of the proverbs of the model [A < B] will identify the boundaries of the possible use of sayings in a specific communication situation; classify them in the process of monologue or hidden dialogue, respectively, of the present model, including in terms of the degree of impact, taking into account possible options for solving the problem through in our case proverbs-arguments acting as semantic synonyms for the main proverb in the context of the work or as independent microtexts of a particular speech event.

Perspectives on training in obstetrics and gynaecology during the COVID-19 pandemic: Thematic analysis of trainee responses from a pan-European survey.

Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has affected many aspects of the lives of medical professionals. Postgraduate training has also been affected and mitigation plans are still ongoing. To understand the perspectives of trainees in obstetrics and gynaecology (ObGyn) during the pandemic. A cross-sectional exploratory survey conducted electronically from 20th of April 2020 to 1st July 2020. The original questionnaire comprised of 40 questions and a free-text option. The free-text questions covered five main domains: effect of the pandemic on training, worries about training, acquisition of skills during the pandemic, training period and extensions and responsibilities outside training during the pandemic. The responses to these questions in the survey were analysed using pragmatic thematic analysis. Trainees felt there was lack of training as well as training opportunities. Some took the pandemic as an opportunity to gain new skills. Trainees were also worried about time in training and uncertainty about extensions. Lastly, many had concerns pertaining to patient care, an inability to contribute to departmental organisation, and dissatisfaction with the implemented policies. The difficulties in Obstetrics and gynaecology training due to the pandemic need to be mitigated. When planning for reshaping the training programmes to accommodate for the discrepancies caused, trainers need to consider the perspectives of trainees and actively involve them in the decision making, designing and executing future plans. Efforts are currently underway to address the training time lost during the pandemic in Europe. Recognising the paramount importance of providing exceptional care for women and children across the continent, it becomes imperative to consider the valuable perspectives and insights offered by those who represent the future generation of specialists in the field.

A Pragmatic Analysis of Flouting Maxim Performed by The Main Characters of Radium Girls Movie

A movie becomes a big source for both entertainment or education. Radium Girls is a play written by D. W. Gregory, to be filmed and released in 2018. It is an interesting movie because the story is based on a historical true story that happened in the 1920s. Radium Girls is analyzed by exploring the flouting maxim which appears in the dialogues between the characters of the play and to find out the implicit meaning of the flouting maxim. To find out the flouting maxim uttered by main characters (the girls) in this Radium Girls movie based on the stages found in a narrative circle in this study, the researcher used a descriptive qualitative method. There are 71 utterances employed by the main characters of the Radium Girls movie. They were distributed in flouting maxim of quality; three data, flouting maxim of quantity; thirty-five data, flouting maxim of relation; twenty-one data, and flouting maxim of manner; twelve data. The speech act is used to describe what utterances are intended to do. Declaratory can be used to flout maxim of quantity and maxim of manner. Expressive speech act can be used to flout maxim of quality, maxim of quantity, maxim of relation, and maxim of manner. Assertive can be used to flout all type of maxim while commissive can be used to flout maxim of quantity and maxim of relation. The last, directory can be used to flout maxim of quantity and maxim of relation.

On cosmic injustices: Critical thinking, outer space, green values, and capitalist ideologies in a planetary age

It may seem obvious that the interests of social justice should always align with environmental justice on a limited planet Earth. Unfortunately, this is far from the case in practice, even in the Anthropocene. This essay provides a new cognitive mapping of how ideologically charged discourse splits the interests of people and planet. It offers a pragmatic, semantic, and spatial analysis of how arguments for planetary protection can infelicitously turn into justifications for broadening social inequalities (and the inverse). As such, it presents an implicit critique of holist theories. In striving to demonstrate the fundamental unity of society and the environemnt risk, holistic thinking leaves critics with an impoverished critical toolbox incapable of differentiating between transparently fraudulent greenwashing and scientifically supportable, but ideologically charged, claims. This text is focused on the spatial dimension of Anthropocene ideology. It places a particular focus on the growing place and rhetorical function of outer space within the Anthropocene economy. It illustrates that the promise of extraterrestrial growth, at least when this growth is contextualized against a zoned extraterrestrial space, has emerged as a potent means of justifying inequality in the name of planetary well-being, and so also of justifying the gospel of growth despite our increasing awareness of the limits of our planet.

An Offensive Pragmatic Analysis of “不然呢” in Spoken Chinese

This article takes real cases as the starting point to explore the reasons why “不然呢” leads to impolite feelings. Firstly, the pragmatic function and historical origin of the relationship between “不然呢” and “不然” are discovered. Then, by comparing “你说呢” and “不然呢” horizontally in the same context, it is concluded that in addition to the language structure of “不然呢” itself, offensive speech acts in conversation are influenced by factors such as the social identity of both parties, kinship, and language sensitivity of the recipient. Finally, it was found that “不然呢” has a trend of being widely used in spoken language, with its meaning becoming blurred and its function in expressing emotions and tones greatly strengthened.

AN ANALYSIS OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS USED IN AKEELAH AND THE BEE MOVIE

AN ANALYSIS OF ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS USED IN AKEELAH AND THE BEE MOVIE

Latin American Perspectives on Parenthood and Disability: Vulnerability, Risk, and Social Inclusion

Despite the growing recognition and acceptance of disabled people’s sexuality, there are barriers to parenthood anchored in metaphors of vulnerability and risk. The social inclusion of disabled parents seems both desirable and risky, making disabled parenthood one of the current frontiers of inclusion for the disabled body. The interest in disabled parenting in Anglo-Saxon academic literature has barely been considered related to Latin American production. This article aims to address this gap by exploring the Latin American scientific community’s understanding of parenthood and disability. To do so, we conduct a pragmatic discourse analysis of Latin American scientific articles in Web of Science (in English) and RedALyC and SciELO (in Spanish). Our findings show how the Latin American scientific community draws on different models of disability—in some cases introducing an intersectional perspective—that reproduce metaphors of vulnerability/risk regarding parenthood. We conclude by highlighting the importance of establishing dialogues between critical perspectives on disability from the Anglo-Saxon and Latin American contexts to address the complexities of the reproduction processes of disabled people. These dialogues can contribute to problematising the metaphor of vulnerability/risk currently associated with disabled parenthood.

Netizens at Odds with the Education Department: Analysis of Impoliteness Strategies on an Online Platform

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the Philippines, along with other nations, to restructure its educational framework to meet the evolving needs and challenges of the time. Consequently, this reorganization has led to changes in the learning delivery modalities (LDMs). The Philippine Department of Education (DepEd) has faced significant criticism on social media regarding issues related to preparation, flawed materials, and implementation. By employing a pragmatic analysis approach based on Culpeper's theory of impoliteness strategies, this study examines fifty Facebook comments criticizing the said department and its new LDMs. The findings reveal that critics employed various impoliteness strategies, including bald-on-record impoliteness, positive impoliteness, negative impoliteness, off-record impoliteness, withhold politeness, and impoliteness meta-strategy. The study's outcomes suggest that analyzing impoliteness strategies in online comments can provide insights into how such remarks serve as social actions. Researchers working with these textual forms, as well as those specializing in the study of genres and languages, can benefit from the findings of this study. The implications of the findings are discussed for policymakers, educators, and students within the Philippine education system.

A pragmatic analysis of ostensible lies in high-context cultures

A pragmatic analysis of ostensible lies in high-context cultures

Cyberbullying on Social Media in Indonesia and Its Legal Impact: Analysis of Language Use in Ethnicity, Religious, Racial, and Primordial Issues

This study aims to reveal the phenomenon of cyberbullying in Indonesia targeted group of people and its legal impact based on pragmatics analysis. It mainly focused on issues that are related with ethnicity, religion, race, and intergroup on social media activities. The lingual data are the expressions by defendants on social media. They were collected from the copies of six court verdicts for such cases that have been settled between 2018 and 2020. The study employed a qualitative method with a forensic linguistic approach as a framework to reveal, trace, and show the phenomenon of cyberbullying on social media and the legal impact caused by the action. The results show that cyberbullying on social media in Indonesia not only targets individuals but it also targets certain group of people. Based on the pragmatics analysis, the illocutionary speech acts by defendants includes expressive, directive, assertive, and commissive. The utterances of cyberbullying aim to insult, humiliate, harass, slander, threaten/warn, accuse, and spread hatred on certain groups of community based on Ethnicity, Religious, Racial, and Primordial issues. The legal implication of cyberbullying is that the defendants can be charged based on the Law of the Republic of Indonesia, Article 28 paragraph (2) in conjunction with Article 45A paragraph (2) Law Number 19 of 2016 on Information and Electronic Transactions.

Implementation of a multicomponent family support intervention in adult intensive care units: study protocol for an embedded mixed-methods multiple case study (FICUS implementation study)

BackgroundThe implementation of complex interventions is considered challenging, particularly in multi-site clinical trials and dynamic clinical settings. This study protocol is part of the family intensive care units (FICUS) hybrid...