Pragmatic Knowledge Research Articles

Lexical priming in humorous satirical newspaper headlines

AbstractSatire is a type of discourse commonly employed to mock or criticize a satirical target, typically resulting in humor. Current understandings of satire place strong emphasis on the role that background and pragmatic knowledge play during satire recognition. However, there may also be specific linguistic cues that signal a satirical intent. Researchers using corpus linguistic methods, specifically Lexical Priming, have demonstrated that other types of creative language use, such as irony, puns, and verbal jokes, purposefully deviate from expected language patterns (e.g. collocations). The purpose of this study is to investigate whether humorous satirical headlines also subvert typical linguistic patterns using the theory of Lexical Priming. In order to do so, a corpus of newspaper headlines taken from the satirical American newspaperThe Onionare analyzed and compared to a generalized corpus of American English. Results of this analysis suggest satirical headlines exploit linguistic expectations through the use of low-frequency collocations and semantic preferences, but also contain higher discourse and genre level deviations that cannot be captured in the surface level linguistic features of the headlines.

Phatic Language in a Specific Culture Perspective in the Context of Internationalization of the Indonesian Language

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“Stop doing this at once!”: The preferred use of modality for advice-giving by English language learners

Abstract This study seeks to explore (1) how English Language Learners (ELLs) of Chinese, German and Brazilian backgrounds develop their pragmatic knowledge of modality use for advice/suggestion-giving in English, and (2) if they demonstrate some common or diverse pattern(s) of its use. For that purpose, a dataset was developed by analyzing 270 advise-giving ELLs’ essays from the EF-Cambridge Open Language Database for the use of modal devices by learners at elementary, intermediate and advanced proficiency levels; from China, Germany, and Brazil. Three main statistical analyses were performed: MANOVA, VanValen’s test, and Discriminant Function Analysis. The results of this study indicate that the development of pragmatic knowledge of modality use is not a linear process; and that ELLs demonstrate common patterns of modality use regardless of the sociocultural background they belong to.

Pragmatics of English Speech Acts: Compliments Used by Macedonian Learners

This study investigated the pragmatic knowledge and competence of the Macedonian learners of English, i.e. Macedonian high school English students’ views on and perceptions of pragmatics, their pragmatic competence in the speech act of complimenting, and the language learning strategies employed in the process of acquiring pragmatic knowledge.Although “student-oriented” and “evaluation-oriented”, the teaching methods currently used do not sufficiently develop students’ communicative competence in the process of English teaching and learning. Many students lack pragmatic knowledge of how to use the foreign language in specific settings and how to interpret certain utterances used by native speakers of the other language.Despite all the efforts made to improve the English language education in Macedonia, yet greater emphasis should be put on students’ linguistic and pragmatic competence in the English teaching and learning process. This area is the focus of the current study that analyses the English speech act of complimenting and its use by the Macedonian learners of English.

Съвместна употреба на кирилица и латиница в български текст –защо и кога

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Interlanguage Pragmatics: Deviant Patterns of Negative Responses to English Negative Yes/No Questions by L1 Thai Speakers

This study investigated the potential cause of L1 Thai speakers’ persistent deviations from target-like negative responses to negative yes/no questions in L2 English context based on the theory of interlanguage pragmatics, particularly pragmatic transfer. L1 Thai undergraduates were categorized into two groups according to their level of L2 English linguistic proficiency. A discourse completion task (DCT), which required the participants to complete their turns in a conversation under different situations, were used to elicit their negative responses. The results revealed that negative pragmatic transfer, influenced by differences in linguistic action patterns of negative responses to negative yes/no questions between Thai and English, occurred in the performance of L1 Thai speakers in both lower and higher L2 English proficiency groups. However, the overall results suggested that the lower proficiency group tended to rely more on their L1 Thai pragmatic competence and showed higher tendency of negative pragmatic transfer than the higher proficiency group. The research indicated that negative transfer from the speakers’ different L1 Thai pragmatic influence from L2 English could make an impact on their non-target-like performance. Moreover, their level of L2 English linguistic proficiency and degree of reliance on their L1 Thai pragmatic knowledge could affect their production to diverge from L2 English pragmatic norms.

Trudności i zagrożenia wynikające z angażowania wolontariuszy w działania pomocowe

The article is a voice in the discussion on difficulties and threats related to the involvement of volunteers in assistance activities. It presents theoretical definitions of basic issues as well as practical conclusions from the observation of voluntary activities. The stages of engaging volunteers in cooperation with non-governmental organizations or other institutions have been analyzed in detail. At any stage of the activity, problems may arise that require immediate reaction. The implications of diagnosing these adversities are the basis for more effective planning and development of volunteer activities in the sector. The subject matter is a contribution to complementing the fragmented pragmatic knowledge of voluntary activity in Poland. Bearing in mind that volunteering by providing individual human capital of volunteers favors the multiplication of general social capital, the signaled topic should be the subject of further inquiries.

Pragmatic Failure in Interpreting Some Proverbs found in SMAN 1 Lubuk Alung

Phenomenon of using proverb in academic environment particularly school is usual right now. Not only using Indonesian proverb but also using English proverb, students are interested to apply them. The trend to use English as the L2 in presenting good philosophy of life is one method to help students to master and acquaintance with English. In term of English proverb, it is usually used to present condition of school environment, students, and the regulation of school which are managed systematically. Particularly, most of the English proverbs in SMAN 1 Lubuk Alung are applied to boost motivation of the students. In fact, there are some of them are misled in transferring the meaning from the real receptor language. The translation of the proverbs were dull and were not appropriate to English sense as receptor language. Learners are unaware of the pragmatic knowledge that a proverb has because they do not recognize the purpose of the communicative act that a proverb has socio-pragmatically. I conclude that the proverbs which were taken from Senior High School No. 1 Lubuk Alung, West Sumatera tends to the incorrect translation so that the students have a problem called pragmatic failure. The process of applying the English proverbs to represent the Indonesian proverbs is not suitable in the Receptor Language (RL), English. There is misleading of choosing word and also the arrangement/ structure of those words. The effort of delivering similar message in another language was failed since they did not know how to transfer knowledge about linguistic, cultural, and social information about the target language.

Slaying my own ghosts: My process into action research

In this article, I explain how I broke with the epistemological tradition in which I had been trained, in a process I call “Slaying my own ghosts.” I took this step when I was deciding on the approach of my action research dissertation. I explain the breaks with five ideas: there are diverse ways of generating knowledge; the researcher constructs knowledge through interpretation; context matters; the action researcher alters the process for good; action research produces academic and pragmatic knowledge. The article is written in the first person because it is associated with a personal process that I needed to resolve in order to develop the approach of my thesis. My analysis of this personal process highlights the indissolubility of the relationship between the researcher and the person as well as the difficulty and complexity of processes of change. I believe it may be of help to both researchers who have decided to develop action research dissertations and those who have to lead processes involving profound changes in people.

The relationship between English proficiency and humour appreciation among English L1 users and Chinese L2 users of English

AbstractHumour appreciation involves split second detection and resolution of cultural and pragmatic incongruities. Second language (L2) users may need more time and effort to understand and appreciate L2 humour. Previous studies have mostly used decontextualized verbal jokes and reported a linear relationship between L2 proficiency and humour appreciation. The present study strives for more ecological validity by using audiovisual-based, multimodal humorous stimuli. A total of 272 Chinese L2 users of English and 94 English L1 users rated the funniness and the ease of understanding of two short video extracts and then completed an English vocabulary size test, LexTALE. The findings suggest that L2 users need to reach a certain threshold in L2 linguistic, pragmatic and sociocultural knowledge before a positive linear relationship emerges between proficiency and appreciation of multimodal humorous stimuli. Also, advanced L2 users demonstrated similarities with English L1 users in humour processing.

Crossing power and knowledge boundaries in learning and knowledge sharing

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the crossing of knowledge and power boundaries within a bureaucratic organization by using enterprise social media (ESM). (Carlile’s 2002) boundary crossing framework is used to guide this research.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews and observations in a large Norwegian public sector organization.FindingsThe authors find that investigating crossing knowledge and power boundaries by using ESM is problematic at syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels. ESM is used predominantly for sharing, storing and retrieving explicit knowledge, which is a display of crossing the information-processing boundary. Hence, the possibilities of shifts in formal power positions where all employees can participate on equal terms is not achieved. On the contrary, as shared meaning on how to use EMS, taking the perspective of other on how to share knowledge and thus creating new knowledge practices in EMS by overcoming these knowledge barriers is not evident. Therefore, examples of crossing the semantic and pragmatic knowledge boundaries are rarely found.Research limitations/implicationsThe framework could be applied to a variety of contexts to further explore the role of ESM in learning and knowledge sharing and its ability to cross power and knowledge boundaries.Originality/valueThis paper addresses a gap in the literature around discussions of power, trust, boundary crossing and the use of ESM for knowledge sharing and learning.

Education in the 21 st Century: Acquisition and Application of Knowledge versus Certificate

Education has always been an important factor that brings about national development in human capital, science and technology. The central goal of education is to develop citizens to be self-reliant with a critical thinking ability, decision making and source of solution to life problems while applying the knowledge acquired. This paper examines education in the 21st Century with a specific focus on acquisition and application of knowledge versus certificate. Literature was reviewed in the area under examination and the work revealed that the world is changing as a result of emerging technological and professional trends. This has resulted in the need to down play on the celebrated certificate and encourage the application of knowledge orientation to keep abreast of the 21st century demands of the society. The paper emphasizes the importance of pragmatic knowledge over certification, the skills, abilities and learning dispositions that have been identified as being required for success by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies in organizations and society. It concludes by giving clues on the creation of niche, that is, individuals with their own brand in career and business. This will therefore relegate certificate consciousness and increase the relevance of knowledge application for creativity, innovation and invention.

The Errant Method as a ‘Children’s Art Theatre’

The article is focused on the most recent developments of the artistic research that Chiara Guidi has cultivated since the nineties with the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, conceiving original forms of theatre for and with children.Guidi’s works, inspired by childhood, are preparatory processes for a radical experience of theatre, shaped around a direct relation between actors and children, midway between the origins of the creative act and an educational intent, ruling out any kind of mystification or cultural mediation.This long-standing research, which began with the Experimental School of Childhood Theatre (1995-1998) and grew over the years with performances conceived around the ties between childhood and the voice, along the lines of fables, culminated in the Errant Method, on which the article focuses.Guidi, in a dialogue with the theatre critic Cristina Ventrucci, tells how the Errant Method brings into play both sides of representation, action and reception, including as part of the scene both the children’s gaze and their tendency to spontaneously take the initiative. The starting point is to build a relation between actors, educators and children within the field of the performing arts, in order to invert, erring, a dynamic of teaching that goes from the known to the unknown. In this way, theatre adheres to the kind of inventive and pragmatic knowledge exercised by children, rejecting stereotypes of infantile imagination and taking up the primitive procedure of a tactile gaze.Art invites us to rethink reality and nourishes itself with specific questions in today’s context of widespread entropy and degradation of the image. The fable’s underlying compositional principles transform us and redirect our gaze, altering it and calling on us to find a different awareness of our thought; calling for an oblique and maieutic gaze that becomes concrete within a relation.

Processing English Formulaic Expressions in Situation-Bound Utterances: Strategies Used by Francophone ESL Learners in Thailand

In examining how English as a second language (ESL) learners process English formulaic expressions in a nonnative English context, this study aims to investigate the strategies that learners use and how first language (L1) culture and conceptual knowledge could influence the use of the strategies. This study is guided by the research question of how francophone ESL learners in Thailand process formulaic expressions in situation-bound utterances (SBUs). Three Francophone Cameroonian learners of English in a university in Thailand (served as the experimental group) and two native English speakers (as the control group) participated in this study. Oral Discourse Completion Task (DCT) was employed to elicit data and evaluated based on 4 categories: (1) Native-like English; (2) Towards Native-like English; (3) Francophone English; and (4) Irrelevant English. The result showed that among the three francophone participants in the study whose native languages were French, 60% DCT responses were Towards Native-like (TNE), 30% were Francophone English (FE), 10% were Native-like English (NE). There was no response from the DCTs, according to the analysis, that was irrelevant English. A further analysis of the three categories revealed that the learners primarily used simplification, verbosity, literal salience, and L1 cultural transfer strategies in processing formulaic expressions. This study corroborates the seemingly weak connection of English linguistic proficiency and sociolinguistic competence in ESL learner’s pragmatic knowledge, as well as the reliance on L1 conventionalized conceptualization in processing English formulaic expressions. Implications for teaching formulaic expressions in a nonnative English as a foreign language (EFL) context in general, and Thai context in particular are also discussed.

Guess What? Comparing Ad-hoc and Scalar Implicatures in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Guess What? Comparing Ad-hoc and Scalar Implicatures in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Hypoverbalisation as a Principle of Meaning Construction in Short Literary Texts

The authors consider short prose, an intensively developing multifaceted genre of both traditional and digital literature. There are no strict limitations as regards its volume, so it may vary from a number of pages to a sentence. To function, texts with high levels of “hypoverbalisation” (intentional scarcity of verbal representation) rely on the assumption that readers share some common core knowledge and life experience, including knowledge of other literary texts, with the author and are capable of logical analysis and reflection. Thus, in short prose, the reader in fact becomes a co-author, reconstructing the facts and events of the text, and an interpreter, structuring and shaping the space of the text. The main methods to compress the text are references to the reader’s life experience, background pragmatic and scholarly knowledge, and precedent phenomena. The paper focuses on the particularly interesting phenomenon of discourse transformation. A text created by author-1 as a non-literary text is perceived by reader-1 and identified as a text with literary value; in this case, reader-1 becomes author-2 and presents a text residing on another level to the reader. The public’s attention to this kind of literature has given rise to a number of websites that publish quotes from real emails, text messages, forums, chats, life stories, short philosophic essays, and comments on events. Such quotations often include metalinguistic humour, which may indicate users’ increased interest in transformational processes in the contemporary Russian language. It is also a demonstration of their linguistic creativity, reflected in the coining of new lexical units, providing existing words with new meanings, and the innovative use of graphics.

Investigating The Development Of Pragmatic Knowledge Awareness Of Iraqi EFL University And Its Effect On Students' Performance

Investigating The Development Of Pragmatic Knowledge Awareness Of Iraqi EFL University And Its Effect On Students' Performance

MALE AND FEMALE STUDENT’S LINGUISTIC POLITENESS IN SPEAKING CLASSROOM

<p>Communicative competence emphasizes that the knowledge of grammatical rules is not sufficient to communicate comprehensively, therefore it needs pragmatic knowledge. Without pragmatic understanding, there will be many failures in communication for example is misunderstanding. Besides, one important aspect of pragmatic competence is politeness. Many researches have been conducted in this field, however only few that specifically revealed the differences between male and female linguistic politeness in speaking classroom, whereas its primary data are utterances. It becomes a consideration of this research to be conducted in the speaking classroom of university student, especially international relations major students. The observation is conducted based on the adaptation from DCT by Bacha, Bahous & Diab (2012). Furthermore, the data are analyzed using some politeness theories. The result showed that in general, female students are more polite compared to male students. At last, teachers should understand this fact by do not expecting male students to be as polite as female, basically they are unique their way.</p><p> </p><p> </p><center><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" rel="license"><img src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" rel="license">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a></center><p> </p>

TEACHING PRAGMATICS IN THE EFL CLASSROOM: CHALLENGES, LACUNAS, AND SUGGESTIONS

Within the last few decades, interlanguage pragmatics research has risen to its due prominence under the influence of Hymes and the subsequent models of Communicative Competence (CC). Among different components of CC, a large number of L2 studies have attended to the construct pragmatic competence, which deals with both pragmalinguistic knowledge and sociopragmatic knowledge. As such, interlanguage pragmatics research is interested in the pragmatic competence and pragmatic performance of L2 learners; however, teaching pragmatics to Non-native Speakers (NNSs), especially EFL learners, is a thorny issue. As a result, pragmatic competence has been noticeably absent from ELT curricula, despite the fact that it has an assured place in different models of CC. The reasons for this neglect lie behind the obstacles to teaching and learning pragmatics in the ESL/EFL classroom settings. Thus, drawing on the published literature, this very paper primarily aims at discussing challenges and lacunas in teaching and learning pragmatics within the confines of EFL classrooms. Subsequent to this, the paper enlists suggestions to overcome these obstacles. To this end, the paper focuses on four broad areas: the EFL context, ELT materials and resources available to L2 learners in the EFL context, teacher education, and assessment of pragmatic knowledge.

Some Notes on Atomicity and Distributivity in Japanese

We re-examine the semantic relation between atomicity and distributivity, which are considered relevant to the floating numeral quantifier construction (FNQ) in Japanese. It is shown that FNQ interpretation, distributive or non-distributive, may be to a large extent determined by pragmatic factors (including intonation) and real world knowledge shared by the speaker and hearer, rather than syntactic factors alone. This paper attempts the following three things: (i) it claims that there is a particular FNQ construction in Japanese, which is “NP-related” (unlike the normal FNQ construction which gives rise to a distributive reading, which is “VP-related”). (ii) It claims that this particular construction gives rise to a special focus reading. (iii) It offers a semantic/pragmatic account of this non-distributive reading.