Pragmatic Judgment Research Articles

“The language is very formal and appropriate”: L2 learners’ in/appropriateness evaluations and metapragmatic judgments in student-faculty emails

The present study examines Greek, EFL learners’ pragmatic judgments and metapragmatic explanations in relation to student-faculty emails. It aims to shed light on their pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic considerations relevant for their perceptions of email in/appropriateness, and to identify email features (linguistic and/or contextual) which are most salient to them and hence influence their pragmatic judgments. Using qualitative and quantitative data from perception questionnaires, the study found that learners demonstrated low sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic awareness when evaluating status-incongruent emails. They were overall unable to acknowledge and balance the importance between email content and email form, as their evaluations focused primarily on email framing devices and formality relevant to forms of address and sign-offs. They paid little attention to the various content moves pertaining to the presence or absence of status-preserving pragmalinguistic strategies, and to sociopragmatic and contextual considerations such as the involved institutional rights and obligations, or the acknowledgement of imposition. Overall, findings indicated that the learners saw the email domain more as a system of structural rules that need to be adhered to through specific framing devices, and less as a system of communication where social relationships are established and maintained though the selection of appropriate content moves.

Quality, not quantity, impacts the differentiation of near-synonyms

AbstractHow much information do language users need to differentiate potentially absolute synonyms into near-synonyms? How consistent must the information be? We present two simple experiments designed to investigate this. After exposure to two novel verbs, participants generalized them to positive or negative contexts. In Experiment 1, there was a tendency across conditions for the verbs to become differentiated by context, even following inconsistent, random, or neutral information about context during exposure. While a subset of participants matched input probabilities, a high proportion did not. As a consequence, the overall pattern was of growth in differentiation that did not closely track input distributions. Rather, there were two main patterns: When each verb had been presented consistently in a positive or negative context, participants overwhelmingly specialized both verbs in their output. When this was not the case, the verbs tended to become partially differentiated, with one becoming specialized and the other remaining less specialized. Experiment 2 replicated and expanded on Experiment 1 with the addition of a pragmatic judgment task and neutral contexts at test. Its results were consistent with Experiment 1 in supporting the conclusion that quality of input may be more important than quantity in the differentiation of synonyms.

A SOCIOPRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE SPEECH ACT OF REQUESTING IN LOCAL ENGLISH COURSEBOOKS

<p>The speech act of requesting is a speech act commonly found and used in daily conversations. It is an intriguing research topic of pragmatics, particularly pragmatics in materials development, which is a sub-topic of language teaching. Earlier studies of pragmatics in language teaching reported that English teachers tend to look down on pragmatic aspects when teaching the language, including being ignorant of sociopragmatic information about language use in English coursebooks. For this reason, this paper discusses the findings of a sociopragmatic analysis in a local English coursebook. A content analysis employing pragmatic and sociopragmatic theoretical frameworks and a pragmatic judgment task by a native speaker of American English was carried out to investigate the sociopragmatic information in the course book. Results indicated that it did not contain an adequate amount of sociopragmatic knowledge indicating sociopragmatic failure. Thus, it implies that the coursebook may not be reliable language input for pragmatic competence improvement. <strong></strong></p>

Effects of instruction on semantic and pragmatic judgment tasks

Sentence judgment tasks are used often in linguistics studies. However, there is no consensus on how significant the effect of instruction is in such tasks: some argue that instruction is trivial, while others argue that they affect the way participants respond. In this study, we investigate different keywords used in sentence judgment tasks and determine which keyword best teases apart speakers' response to semantically and pragmatically licit and illicit sentences. We test this in English and Mandarin, exploring the possibility of cross-linguistic variation on how speakers respond to different keywords. Our results show that the common keywords used in semantic and pragmatic judgment tasks such as 'natural' do distinguish semantic and pragmatic violations for English speakers, but that the common Mandarin translations of these words fail to distinguish between the two types of violations. Our results highlight the need for language- and study-specific norming procedures in sentence judgment tasks.

ACEPTACIÓN DEL VOSEO VERBAL Y PRONOMINAL ENTRE CHILENOS Y APRENDIENTES DE ESPAÑOL COMO LENGUA EXTRANJERA

This study highlights the importance of understanding the forms of voseo in Chile in learners of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) through reflection on the pragmatic use of the language. This understanding is not easy because of the evolutional nature of voseo, and the diversity of functions of this phenomenon. The study aims to compare the pragmatic judgments on the Chilean voseo between natives and learners of SFL, which was carried out based on the didactic potential that implies understanding the voseo uses. A questionnaire allowed us to observe choices related to the acceptance of the voseo in different situations, considering pragmatic variables among Chileans and SFL learners. After comparing the responses of both groups of participants, a disparity was observed in the acceptance levels of native and non-native speakers, though also a tendency to be cautious with voseo among learners who had spent more time in Chile. At the same time, there was a correlation in judgments regarding voseo as a phenomenon that can show both closeness (verbal) and contempt (pronominal)

Bidirectional relationship between L2 pragmatic development and learner identity in a study abroad context

In recent years, the connection between learner identity and learning of L2 pragmatics has received more attention in applied linguistic research. Nevertheless, investigations on this topic have mainly focused on the role of learners' identity in their L2 pragmatic choices. The reverse influence has not been adequately investigated in empirical studies – how learning of L2 pragmatics could potentially foster learners' identity change. This article aims to expand our understanding of the link between identity and L2 pragmatic development in the study abroad context by describing a longitudinal case study which tracked the experiences of four Chinese postgraduate students sojourning in the UK. Data were generated through interviews and online chat over a 12-month period. Findings indicate a bidirectional influence between L2 pragmatics development and learners' sense of self: learners’ pragmatic judgements and preferences are influenced by identity-related factors, such as internalised cultural values and their perceived foreigner and ELF identities; in return, exposure to new L2 pragmatic features can prompt learner reflection on interpersonal relationships and self-positioning, which may then lead to identity development.

Carnap and Quine on Sense and Nonsense

I offer an interpretation of Carnap and Quine’s views on cognitive significance and insignificance. The basic idea behind their views is as follows: to judge an expression is insignificant is to recommend it not be used in or explicated into languages used to express truth-valued judgments in inquiry; to judge an expression is significant is to recommend it be used in or explicated into such languages. These judgments are pragmatic judgments, made in light of purposes for language use in inquiry. For Carnap at least, these pragmatic judgments are non-cognitive. This basic idea is only a roughly correct statement of their views. This is because the details of the scientific languages they recommend for inquiry are necessary to understand their views and the way they understand their own views. Even so, I offer two reasons to suggest that this basic idea is worthy of our consideration today. First, it provides a conception of significance that captures the natural thought that epistemological concerns can lead us to consider expressions to be insignificant without requiring an objectionable form of verificationism. Second, if we appeal also to Carnap and Quine’s pluralistic attitude toward explication, we can make a pragmatic judgment that an expression is insignificant while judging it to be significant on a distinct explication of significance fit for describing and explaining natural language.

Partial Price-Fixing and Semi-Collusion

Many cartels do not directly fix the price of products. Instead, the participants may agree on a starting price for negotiations or the price of a component of the overall price. Antitrust investigations reveal that cartel agreements are also often very imperfectly implemented. Antitrust law in the United States and the European Union has typically taken a robust approach to these practices even where economic analysis might be unable to show that such practices always or almost always harm consumer welfare. The decision of the New Zealand Supreme Court in Lodge Real Estate Ltd. v. Commerce Commission offers a New Zealand perspective on the concept of a price-fixing agreement and imperfect collusion. The Court, this article argues, reached the correct decision in Lodge. The decision, however, evidences a pragmatic judgment, rather than the confident deployment of economic learning or foreign case law within the statutory framework of the Commerce Act 1986. The language of sections 30 and 30A of the Act was borrowed from an Australian statute, which in turn had attempted to capture the state of United States price-fixing law in the 1970s. A more formalistic and pre-Chicago approach to antitrust is evident in the language, much of which was inspired by United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. The case also highlights some of the distinctive features of the competition law in New Zealand. The reluctance to develop to guide in the application of the general provisions of the Commerce Act and requiring a demonstration of an effect on price on the facts may mark a departure from the body of pricing case law in the United States and the European Union and risks undermining the per se prohibition of cartel conduct in the Commerce Act. Without the same depth and breadth of cartel case law, the adoption of a more flexible approach to anticompetitive agreements evident in some decisions in the United States and the European Union could have different effects in a smaller jurisdiction.

Judgment of Pragmatic Abilities: A Story-Based Assessment in Adolescents

Background: Adolescents start to understand nonliteral language and begin to use language to maintain social bonds in varying social contexts. Aim: This study aims to profile pragmatic judgment abilities in typically developing adolescents. Materials and Methods: The present study was conducted on 120 typically developing adolescents across the age range of 10–16 years. The formulated story consisted of 29 multiple-choice judgment questions to assess an adolescent's ability to judge the use of pragmatics skills by different characters in the story. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the groups determined by the one-way analysis of variance (F [5114] =4.83, P = 0.00). Conclusion: With increasing grades, adolescents spend a reasonable time socializing with peers and others, promoting the development of pragmatic skills. As children and adolescents grow, perceptions of others improve, along with their ability to identify the complexity of contentious topics and differing points of view.

Interpreting nonverbal cues to deception in real time.

When questioning the veracity of an utterance, we perceive certain non-linguistic behaviours to indicate that a speaker is being deceptive. Recent work has highlighted that listeners’ associations between speech disfluency and dishonesty are detectable at the earliest stages of reference comprehension, suggesting that the manner of spoken delivery influences pragmatic judgements concurrently with the processing of lexical information. Here, we investigate the integration of a speaker’s gestures into judgements of deception, and ask if and when associations between nonverbal cues and deception emerge. Participants saw and heard a video of a potentially dishonest speaker describe treasure hidden behind an object, while also viewing images of both the named object and a distractor object. Their task was to click on the object behind which they believed the treasure to actually be hidden. Eye and mouse movements were recorded. Experiment 1 investigated listeners’ associations between visual cues and deception, using a variety of static and dynamic cues. Experiment 2 focused on adaptor gestures. We show that a speaker’s nonverbal behaviour can have a rapid and direct influence on listeners’ pragmatic judgements, supporting the idea that communication is fundamentally multimodal.

Peer Victimization and Communication Skills in Adolescents with Down Syndrome: Preliminary Findings.

In this preliminary study, we examined peer victimization in adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) and how it relates to language and communication skills. We modified the Childrens' Social Experience Questionnaire (Crick and Grotpeter in Dev Psychopathol 8:367-380, 1996) to better suit adolescents with DS by simplifying vocabulary and syntax, using two step interview response format. Internal reliability was adequate, and all peer victimization measures were significantly elevated compared to a typically developing sample. Further, peer victimization (especially relational victimization) correlated with speech intelligibility, pragmatic judgment, conversational behavior, and receptive vocabulary. These preliminary data suggest that having DS may put adolescents at risk for peer victimization, but having relatively good language/communication skills may be a protective factor. Further research is warranted on this topic.

Executive Power in the Obama Administration and the Decision to Seek Congressional Authorization for a Military Attack Against Syria: Implications for Theories of Unilateral Action

President Obama’s decision to defer to Congress will not serve as a precedent that constrains future presidents, since it did not resolve any questions about the correct distribution of the constitutional war powers and was a pragmatic judgment rather than a principled one. Previous instances of presidents making analogous decisions had no lasting effect on the overall trend toward increasing presidential discretion in using military force. Presidential unilateralism begets other instances of unilateral action. Furthermore, engaging Congress in what is more commonly an area of unilateral action not only fails to serve as a precedent in the other direction but can also lead to more unilateralism. The process of presidential action could certainly be described as a ratchet process. At the same time, it is unrealistic to expect a single decision to reverse a long-standing historical trend. Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule have little patience with ratchet arguments in any event, insisting that the necessary conditions do not exist and that the term serves as a loose label “often confused with a simple trend or with endogenous but reversible change in some variable that would quickly revert to its original value if other legal or social conditions changed.” If President Obama’s decision will have little long-term effect on the distribution of power, what lessons can be drawn from it? We might reframe the underlying prediction of maximizing discretion as a normative one for which presidents need to be aware that foregoing unilateral action comes with political cost. In 2014, President Obama and his aides concluded that he has not been aggressive enough in asserting the office’s capacity to act as a general matter. Reviewing 2013—which the White House concedes was not a very good year for the President—Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer concluded that the President “too often governed more like a prime minister than a President” and recommended an emphasis on “an executive style of governing that aims to sidestep Congress more often.”108 It was more of a rhetorical shift than a substantive one, since President Obama had hardly shied away from unilateral action earlier in his presidency, with a few exceptions. But it is more consistent with unilateral theory, and it suggests that the President recognizes the risks of passivity and the importance of retaining the initiative.

How should we set consumption thresholds for low risk drinking guidelines? Achieving objectivity and transparency using evidence, expert judgement and pragmatism.

Most high-income nations issue guidelines on low-risk drinking to inform individuals' decisions about alcohol consumption. However, leading scientists have criticized the processes for setting the consumption thresholds within these guidelines for a lack of objectivity and transparency. This paper examines how guideline developers should respond to such criticisms and focuses particularly on the balance between epidemiological evidence, expert judgement and pragmatic considerations. Although concerned primarily with alcohol, our discussion is also relevant to those developing guidelines for other health-related behaviours. We make eight recommendations across three areas. First, recommendations on the use of epidemiological evidence: (1) guideline developers should assess whether the available epidemiological evidence is communicated most appropriately as population-level messages (e.g. suggesting reduced drinking benefits populations rather than individuals); (2) research funders should prioritize commissioning studies on the acceptability of different alcohol-related risks (e.g. mortality, morbidity, harms to others) to the public and other stakeholders; and (3) guideline developers should request and consider statistical analyses of epidemiological uncertainty. Secondly, recommendations to improve objectivity and transparency when translating epidemiological evidence into guidelines: (4) guideline developers should specify and publish their analytical framework to promote clear, consistent and coherent judgements; and (5) guideline developers' decision-making should be supported by numerical and visual techniques which also increase the transparency of judgements to stakeholders. Thirdly, recommendations relating to the diverse use of guidelines: (6) guideline developers and their commissioners should give meaningful attention to how guidelines are used in settings such as advocacy, health promotion, clinical practice and wider health debates, as well as in risk communication; (7) guideline developers should make evidence-based judgements that balance epidemiological and pragmatic concerns to maximize the communicability, credibility and general effectiveness of guidelines; and (8) as with scientific judgements, pragmatic judgements should be reported transparently.

How agroecological farmers develop their own practices: a framework to describe their learning processes

ABSTRACTSupporting farmers through their agroecological transition calls for fostering learning processes that enable farmers to develop practices rooted in their peculiar agroecosystem. We here aim at contributing to the understanding of the learning processes of agroecological farmers. We thus conducted interviews with farmers experienced in conservation agriculture. A qualitative analysis led to a framework grounded in pragmatist philosophy, and consisting in a categorization of learning elements, combined with the evolution of pragmatic judgements. This framework could be applied to a broader range of agroecological farmers, to explain the diversity of their learning processes and help designing ways to better foster such learning processes.

Emergency Arbitrator: Indian Prospects

International commercial arbitration is one of the most favourite mode of dispute resolution in world for resolving commercial disputes. Speed and cost are two important features what makes arbitrationa sought-after mode for dispute resolution because in conventional dispute resolution by courts ‘Remedy becomes worse than malady’ due to delay and cost. Legalism and authoritative courts in Anglo Saxon societies make the justice dilatory and expensive which is termed analogically as a disease of ‘Adversariasis’. Judicial minimalism is encouraged by entrepreneurs and business class of world which results in enhanced thrust on international commercial arbitration. In any arbitration interim measures are sine quo non. The irreparable loss and balance of convenience demands intervention by authoritative body to order and issue processes which can binds parties and third parties. In such cases unless interim measures are sought by municipal national courts no effective and binding interim remedies can be granted to the parties and third parties. The arbitrator once appointed is competent enough to grant interim measures and it can also decide about its jurisdiction based on doctrine of Kompetenz-Kompetenz. However, if before the appointment of arbitrator, the need of urgent interim measures arises then obviously parties have to go to the municipal national courts but this judicial intervention is not the intent of parties as they are seeking judicial minimalism. In such situations the urgent interim measures can be granted by emergency arbitrator. The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 is silent about emergency arbitrator but Delhi and Bombay High Courts have given some pragmatic judgments, making the provision of emergency arbitrator, a reality. The real problem in emergency arbitrator is how one can grant interim relief even without being in existence i.e. when arbitrator itself is non est. ICC, SIAC and LCIA provide for emergency arbitrator. In this paper the author has tried to make an analytical and comparative overview of emergency arbitrator in Indian Perspective.

Contextual Effects on Online Pragmatic Inferences of Deception

ABSTRACTWhere the veracity of a statement is in question, listeners tend to interpret disfluency as signaling dishonesty. Previous research in deception suggests that this results from a speaker model, linking lying to cognitive effort and effort to disfluency. However, the disfluency–lying bias occurs very quickly: Might listeners instead simply heuristically associate disfluency with lying? To investigate this, we look at whether listeners’ disfluency–lying biases are sensitive to context. Participants listened to a potentially dishonest speaker describe treasure as being behind a named object while viewing scenes comprising the referent (the named object) and a distractor. Their task was to click on the treasure’s suspected true location. In line with previous work, participants clicked on the distractor more following disfluent descriptions, and this effect corresponded to an early fixation bias, demonstrating the online nature of the pragmatic judgment. The present study, however, also manipulated the presence of an alternative, local cause of speaker disfluency: the speaker momentarily distracted by a car horn. When disfluency could be attributed to speaker distraction, participants initially fixated more on the referent, only later fixating on and selecting the distractor. These findings support the speaker modeling view, showing that listeners can take momentary contextual causes of disfluency into account.

Familiarity, comprehension and use of Indian English only

Indian English only (IndE-only), e.g. “I’ll meet you here only”, is rejected as poor English by many IndE speakers. In the present study, we used a mixed method to investigate familiarity, comprehension and use of IndE-only in 20 L1 IndE speakers in the US. Participants completed a psycholinguistic task comprising syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic judgments of IndE, standard English, and grammatically or semantically odd control sentences. L1 IndE speakers’ task performance was compared to a control group of 33 American English speakers. Results showed that IndE speakers were familiar with syntactic aspects of IndE-only consistent with the literature, and were able to extract significantly more information about implicatures and conversational contexts compared to the control group. L1 IndE speakers were also interviewed about their attitudes towards IndE and IndE-only. Qualitative results indicated that despite some stigmatization, mostly in the written form, IndE-only exemplifies the emerging identity of L1 IndE.

Exploring Cross-cultural Pragmatic Judgment of Two Groups of EFL Teachers on Formal Written Requests

This study examines the pragmatic judgments made on formal request letters written by adult L2 learners of English by two groups of EFL teachers at a university in Hong Kong. A pragmatic Judgment Questionnaire was completed by each of the sixteen teachers, comprising eight native Cantonese speakers (CSTs) and eight native English speakers (ESTs). Pragmatic judgment was examined by investigating four pragmatic variables -- i.e., politeness, directness, formality and amount of information. Main research findings suggest that there were no significant differences between the two groups of teachers in their pragmatic judgments except for their views on: a) what constituted “unnaturally polite” expressions, b) whether negative words would help achieve the purpose of a message, c) what supporting moves should be avoided, and d) what writing plans they preferred. Qualitative analysis revealed examples of "unnaturally polite" expressions (e.g., “forgive”) and supportive moves (e.g. compensating class teachers) considered appropriate by CSTs only.

Pragmatic inferences and self-relevant judgments: The moderating role of age, prevention, focus, and need for cognition

AbstractThree studies examined the influence of type of scale on self-relevant judgments and the moderating role of age, prevention, focus, and need for cognition. Participants were randomly assigned to a bipolar or a unipolar scale condition in all three studies. Results from study 1 with a representative sample of the adult population of Mexico showed that participants evaluated themselves more positively on a bipolar than a unipolar scale. Age did not moderate this relationship. Results from studies 2 and 3 also showed a significant influence of type of scale on self-relevant judgments. Prevention, focus and need for cognition did not moderate the relationship between type of scale and self-relevant judgments. The theoretical and applied implications of our results were discussed.

Sentence Recognition in Quiet and Noise by Pediatric Cochlear Implant Users: Relationships to Spoken Language.

We investigated associations between sentence recognition and spoken language for children with cochlear implants (CI) enrolled in the Childhood Development after Cochlear Implantation (CDaCI) study. In a prospective longitudinal study, sentence recognition percent-correct scores and language standard scores were correlated at 48-, 60-, and 72-months post-CI activation. Six tertiary CI centers in the United States. Children with CIs participating in the CDaCI study. Cochlear implantation. Sentence recognition was assessed using the Hearing In Noise Test for Children (HINT-C) in quiet and at +10, +5, and 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). Spoken language was assessed using the Clinical Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL) core composite and the antonyms, paragraph comprehension (syntax comprehension), syntax construction (expression), and pragmatic judgment tests. Positive linear relationships were found between CASL scores and HINT-C sentence scores when the sentences were delivered in quiet and at +10 and +5 dB S/N, but not at 0 dB S/N. At 48 months post-CI, sentence scores at +10 and +5 dB S/N were most strongly associated with CASL antonyms. At 60 and 72 months, sentence recognition in noise was most strongly associated with paragraph comprehension and syntax construction. Children with CIs learn spoken language in a variety of acoustic environments. Despite the observed inconsistent performance in different listening situations and noise-challenged environments, many children with CIs are able to build lexicons and learn the rules of grammar that enable recognition of sentences.