Pragmatic Markers Research Articles

Videos to study Interactions in AGEing (VIntAGE)

The Videos to study Interactions in AGEing (VIntAGE) corpus aims to investigate the complex relationship between language, cognition, and aging, focusing on verbal and non-verbal pragmatic markers in older persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This multimodal and longitudinal corpus incorporates an analysis of gestural and verbal markers in discourse, aligned with neurolinguistic models. It provides a rich dataset for analyzing how aging impacts communicative competence in individuals with MCI. The VIntAGE corpus comprises approximately 18 hours of video recordings from 36 face-to-face interviews conducted by a close acquaintance of each of the nine women, all over 75 years old. Five participants were selected for in-depth analysis due to significant changes in their cognitive status. The participants underwent a series of semi-structured interviews over 15 months. The data were processed using transcription tools (for verbal discourse) and annotation tools (for gestures) and then subjected to Principal Component Analyses to manage each individual's diverse dataset and discursive modalities. The corpus includes the annotation of 6,351 verbal pragmatic markers (VPMs) and 8,044 non-verbal pragmatic markers (NVPMs). The data reveal an average decrease in MoCA scores from 23/30 to 20/30 over one year, highlighting cognitive decline's effects on verbal and non-verbal communication.

Digitising a Card Game for Teaching Pragmatic Markers

Most language learning applications focus on pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar of a language. However, learning the pragmatics enables learners to interpret contextual meanings of specific words uttered by native speakers during conversations. An educational card game called Mind You! was developed for non-native English-speaking international students in Australia to help them learn English pragmatic markers. The card game was designed to encourage social constructivism and situated learning, where learners construct their own sentences based on their combined interpretations of pragmatic markers, images and scenarios displayed on cards to answer hypothetical questions. A mobile application of the card game is being developed as a supplementary resource when face-to-face or in-person learning is neither possible nor practical. Learners can listen to audios of pragmatic markers in sentences and type or record their own sentences based on their interpretations of the cards and share them online with other learners. This provides a platform for distance collaborative learning between other language learners where they share sentences based on different interpretations of different card combinations. The objective of the mobile application is to train learners in using pragmatic markers for English conversations outside the game. This work-in-progress manuscript outlines how the card game can be digitised into a mobile application.

HISTORICAL VARIATION OF THE EXPRESSIVE PERFORMATIVE SPEECH ACT OF APOLOGY IN THE GERMAN-LANGUAGE DIALOGIC DISCOURSE OF THE XVXXI CENTURIES

The article is devoted to the study of the historical dynamics of expressive speech acts of performative forms in the German dialogical discourse and defining diachronically permanent and variable characteristics of expressive performative acts. Historical changes in expressive performative speech acts include performative verbs and their pragmatic markers. In the discourse of the XX-XXI centuries, the number of explicit performative verbs and markers with the semantics of apology decreases, while the frequency of implicit expressive performatives and expressive performative speech acts of apology in the metacommunicative function increases.

Pragmatic acts of humour in family discourse in selected Maryam Apaokagi's comedy skits

Humour plays a crucial role in family discourse as it fosters emotional connection, diffuses tension, and promotes open communication by providing a light-hearted and relatable atmosphere. Extant studies on family discourse have focused on (im)politeness strategies and pragmatic markers. However, scant attention has been paid to the communicative functions of humour in family discourse. This study was, therefore, designed to investigate humour in Maryam Apaokagi’s comedy skits, to identify the types, their pragmatic functions, and how they contribute to the overall meaning of the discourse. Jacob Mey’s Pragmatic Acts Theory served as the theoretical framework. Data for the study comprised eight selected Maryam Apaokagi’s comedy skits, produced in Nigeria. The selection is based on their humorous reflections of family issues and subjected to pragmatic analysis. Findings reveal that pragmatic acts exist in four interlocutory contexts among family members: couple (husband-wife) relationship; sibling(s)-relationship; mother-child relationship; and distant-family relationship. The contexts are indexed by eight pragmatic acts and functions which underpin expressions of humour: warning to threaten the husband, promising to raise hopes, requesting to make a mockery of the elder brother, ordering to deliberately disrespect the elder sister, questioning to persuade and apologise indirectly, scolding to condemn a child’s inappropriate actions, exaggerating to boast and show off, speculating to impress the mother and indict the child. Employed with wit to avoid serious conflicts, these humorous acts were largely foregrounded by conversational, psychological and physical acts, and underscored by such contextual factors as inference, reference, relevance, and shared situation knowledge to humorously depict how family issues are variously handled.

Pragmatic Markers in Political Discourse in Trudea’s Speech

The employment of pragmatic markers can be used to convey politeness, emphasis, contrast, hesitancy, uncertainty, or assurance. In the realm of political discourse, pragmatic markers can be employed for manipulative goals, such as altering the perception of the audience, concealing or distorting information, constructing an advantageous or unfavourable image of oneself or others, or evading duty or accountability.

Pragmatic Markers in Spoken Discourse

The roles, functions, and effects of pragmatic markers (PMs) in spoken discourse are explored in this study, with a focus on how language learners’ comprehension skills, classification and interpretation abilities, and interactions between verbal and non-verbal PMs are affected. A combination of quantitative and qualitative procedures was employed in this investigation. To evaluate how well PMs in spoken discourse were identified and understood, level 4, English Language Unit, Preparatory Studies Centre fifty participants from the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Salalah, the Sultanate of Oman completed fifteen quick audio samples with a range of pragmatic characteristics, five additional filler audio segments, and pre-and post-test questionnaires. The study discovered that learners' comprehension of PMs—which regulate discourse structure, convey speaker purpose, and manage conversation flow—improved dramatically with targeted instruction. It emphasized the significance of PMs in the development of communication skills as well as the problems with categorizing PMs due to a lack of a standardized framework.

The Use of English Pragmatic Markers by Learners of English from Different Linguacultural Backgrounds

Abstract This study compared the uses of the textual and interpersonal functions of English pragmatic markers (PMs) by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from three different linguacultural backgrounds in two spoken genres. Thirty Chinese, 30 Thai and 30 Indonesian EFL learners were recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews and dyadic conversations. Significant differences in the ways in which the participants used textual and interpersonal functions in the two spoken genres were found, whereas there were significant differences in the use of textual functions by speakers from different linguacultural backgrounds. The spoken genres and the linguacultural backgrounds mainly affected the more frequently used functions, and had no effect on the functions that were used less frequently. Furthermore, the spoken genre had a greater effect on the different uses of the functions of English PMs than did the linguacultural backgrounds.

L2 pragmatic development by early teenagers in study abroad and foreign language settings: a focus on pragmatic markers

ABSTRACT Second Language Pragmatics (L2 pragmatics) research focused on the study abroad (SA) context points out the benefits of this context for second language (L2) pragmatic development while also illustrating the non-linearity of this development, as it is shaped by different contextual factors and individual differences. Nevertheless, this research has primarily focused on adult learners, and little is known about how children and adolescents learn L2 pragmatics in SA. The present study investigates how pragmatic markers (PMs) develop in young English language learners in two learning contexts: SA and at home (AH). More particularly, the study examines differences in the frequency and type of PMs across these contexts. Thirty-four Catalan/Spanish girls aged 12, learning English at home (n = 16) and in an SA context in Ireland (n = 18), participated in the study. Participants were interviewed before and after their SA experience, and the results revealed no statistically significant differences from pre- to post-test in the AH group, with only one observed in the SA group. Only one significant difference was found between the two groups in favour of the SA group. Hence, the study sheds more light on the complexity entailed in the phenomenon of L2 pragmatic development during SA.

On the Functional Convergence of Pragmatic Markers in Arizona Spanish

Tags, compared to other types of pragmatic markers (PMs), are typically considered as separate yet related phenomena and are usually differentiated by their syntactic positions and discourse functions, among other factors. The current work explores this differentiation utilizing 36 sociolinguistic interviews with Spanish-English bilinguals in southern Arizona, USA. Standard language variation and change (LVC) methodologies were used in the extraction, coding, and statistical analyses of this dataset (n = 591), with four PM variants identified for study through an exploratory methodology: the tags no and qué no and the discourse markers (DMs) you know and saber. The results of our analyses indicate that, while utterance position, self-reported gender, and length of residence were all significant in the multivariate analysis, discourse function was dropped from the statistical model. Therefore, we interpret this finding as an indication that functional differences between these two pragmatic resources have been levelled through grammaticalization, demonstrating that for Arizona Spanish, tags and DMs belong in the same functional category of PMs. Furthermore, an analysis of codeswitching behavior triggered by the incoming variant you know demonstrates that it is becoming incorporated into the Spanish pragmatic system, patterning similarly to its counterpart saber in terms of function and position, without attrition of the native variant.

A Multimodal Approach to Catalan Pragmatic Markers: An Exploratory Study

This exploratory study aims to investigate the co-occurrence of Catalan pragmatic markers that fulfill an interactive function and multimodal cues, such as manual gestures, adaptors, head gestures, and eye gaze. To do so, we utilized spontaneous face-to-face conversations between ten different dyads, all of whom were undergraduate students discussing movies that they had recently seen. We processed the data with descriptive quantitative statistics, specifically employing exploratory multifactorial statistical visualization techniques, including multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and cluster analysis. The results showed that pragmatic markers generally co-occur with multimodal cues. Although the multimodal system works independently, when pragmatic markers are uttered, both systems tend to harmonize in accordance with general communicative tasks, particularly turn management, alignment, and social affiliation.

The Development of Pragmatic Markers in English as a Second Language: Do Age and Learning Context Matter?

The present study explores the development of pragmatic marker (PM) use by children and adult L2 English learners in two learning contexts: study abroad (SA) and at home (AH). The study involved a group of 35 Catalan/Spanish girls (aged 11 to 13) learning English AH (n = 16) and abroad in Ireland (n = 19), and a group of 16 adult students aged 19–31 learning English in the UK and Ireland (n = 10) and at their home university in Barcelona (n = 6). To test their pragmatic development, the use of PMs was prompted through pre-test and post-test semi-structured interviews. The results indicated an effect of both age and context on PM development. Children in the SA context increased their use of some PMs, whereas their peers who remained at home did not show any development. Regarding the adults, both SA and AH participants increased their use of specific PMs. These findings shed some light on a topic that has not received scholarly attention in the field of L2 pragmatics: the development of PM use by children. Additionally, they contribute to the very small body of longitudinal studies on the development of PM use during SA.

Well, maybe you shouldn’t go around shaving poodles: collostructional semantic and discursive prosody in the go (a)round Ving and go (a)round and V constructions

Abstract This article presents a corpus-based study of the go (a)round Ving- and go (a)round and V-constructions in American English. More specifically, it addresses the possibility of the constructions serving as pragmatic markers of stance through the collocational phenomenon of semantic prosody. It is argued that the notions of internal and external constructional properties from the early days of construction grammar as well as the corpus-linguistic idea of association patterns would be beneficial to usage-based construction grammatical descriptions of phenomena such as semantic prosody. Drawing on a 248,145,425-word portion of the Corpus of Contemporary American English, both simple collexeme analysis and distinctive collexeme analysis are applied to generate output that feeds into semantic-prosodic analysis. Moreover, standard distinctive collexeme analysis and multiple distinctive collexeme analysis are applied at the level of semantic prosodies in the collexemic fields (i.e., distinctive semantic-prosodic analysis), at the level of verbal category colligations (i.e., distinctive colligational analysis), and at the level of speech act functions of usage-events of the two constructions (i.e., distinctive speech act analysis) as a type of trial balloon. The purpose is to expand semantic-prosodic analysis from focusing merely on lexemes to exploring how other linguistic and pragmatic phenomena may be at play.

Pragmatic Markers in Kwéyòl Donmnik, French, & English: Language Contact & Creole Emergence through the Lens of Powerful Little Words

Pragmatic markers (PMs) are multifunctional elements that allow language users to organize and coordinate discourse and to express their attitudes and cognitive states. This study compares the discourse-pragmatic functions and distributional features of four PMs in Kwéyòl Donmnik (konsa ‘so’, èben ‘well’, papa/Bondyé ‘papa/God’, la ‘there’) with those of their etyma in French, Kwéyòl’s lexifier ((ou) comme ça, (eh) ben, bon Dieu, là), and with their counterparts in English, the colonial source language with which it has been in contact for more than two centuries (so, well, oh my God, there). The properties of the Kwéyòl PMs are determined through a corpus analysis and are then compared to descriptions of the French and English PMs in previous studies. Each of the four Kwéyòl PM’s has functions in common with its French etymon and its English counterpart as well as its own unique functions. In addition, English so performs functions in the Kwéyòl data that are unique to Kwéyòl konsa ‘so’, suggesting that so is being integrated into Kwéyòl. This study expands the limited body of work on Kwéyòl and deepens our understanding of language contact and Creole emergence at the discourse-pragmatic level, particularly in cases involving a second, non-lexifier colonial source language.

Comparative Analysis of the Functional Roles of Pragmatic Markers in Documenting the Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabakh Conflicts

Comparative Analysis of the Functional Roles of Pragmatic Markers in Documenting the Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabakh Conflicts

Интерфейсы новейшей поэзии: смена коммуникативного хода и множественная адресация

The characteristic feature of contemporary poetry is an increased attention to the prag­matics of the message. The Internet influences the activation of the communication function, and metalinguistic reflection in poetry manifests itself through the violation of grammatical norms, the graphic highlighting of pragmatic markers, and the representation of computer interface elements such as messengers, social networks, etc. At the same time, the media inter­face creates a multiplicity of addressing and influences the strategies of indirect subjectivation that manifest themselves as a result of several shifts (deictic, functional, etc.), allowing us to deal with the updating of the communication parameters of a poetic utterance. This modifica­tion involves bringing the communication channel to the fore, as well as explicating the turn-taking indices in its non-conventional function. Thus, at the present stage, the poetic message is supplemented by new (linguistic and media) means, including interfaces, pseudo-dialogue models characteristic of online correspondence, conversational patterns, and discourse mark­ers used in online communication. The article analyzes the peculiarities of the functioning of pragmatic markers as indicators of subjectivity and addressing on the Internet.

On general extenders in literary translation and all that stuff

Abstract The present article focuses on strategies for translating general extenders (GEs) from English into Romanian. Starting from the generally accepted definition of GEs as structures that extend utterances that are otherwise grammatically complete and that are placed in phrase- or clause-final position, I analyze samples of literary text and their respective (multiple) versions and investigate patterns in which these structures are translated. Since, as pointed out in the literature, GEs can fulfill more than one function in the text, and since in literary texts they tend to be repeatedly and meaningfully employed, the article investigates to what extent a Romanian translator can render this type of pragmatic marker into the target language in a fluid manner. This question is intriguing for at least two reasons: (a) Romanian seems to employ GEs in a more restricted manner than English and (b) repetition seems to be a stumbling block in translation. In order to solve this problem, a translator resorts to lexical variety, compensation, and omission.

Japanese subtitling and dubbing of English expressions of ‘love’: Meaning/sense-making in audiovisual translation

The current study investigates discourse-pattern borrowings in Japanese audiovisual translation (AVT). To date, English expressions of affection (e.g., ‘I love you’) have been examined as a pragmatic marker (e.g., to signal the end of a conversation) in studies of spoken and written communication (Fiedler, 2017) and AVT (Gottlieb, 2012). When used to fill ‘discourse gaps’ (Mišić Ilić, 2017), however, such borrowings generate ‘meaning-making’ options and result in potentially enhanced ‘sense-making’ on the part of receiving culture audiences (Guillot, 2023, 2020a). Pedersen's (2005) taxonomy of Extralinguistic Culture-bound References is applied to a quantitative corpus analysis of 50 movies to assess the degree to which English expressions of ‘love’ (e.g., ‘I love you’) in Japanese subtitling and dubbing are oriented to either the source-language (SL) or the target-language (TL). Analyses reveal an overall significant use of SL oriented strategies in both subtitling and dubbing and a difference in use based on relationship type. The function of SL oriented forms in AVT is discussed as a marker of ‘otherness’ and the effect of relationship type and situational factors (e.g., developing story line) in guiding and enriching the meaning/sense-making process which underlies the use of such strategies is considered.

Pragmatic determination ofas if(akoby)in ego-related contexts

AbstractThe impetus to write this paper was an analysis of the expressionas if(akoby) as a component of the “equivalence” principle and the determination of its legitimacy as a component of the “behavior” principle. The study is focused on the search for further connections between the verbal behavior of the speaker and the linguistic aspects ofas if(akoby) because it is used as a manifestation of motivated, ego-related and assertive verbal behavior.As if(akoby) can be viewed as: (a) a component of the principle of verbal behavior that attributes an egocentric meaning to the speaker’s behavior; (b) an egocentric expression of the hypotaxis with an implicit speaker and the semantics of circumstantial and characteristic contexts; (c) a pragmatic marker of the speaker’s ego-related interpretation of facts. Interpretation, which is grasped at the following two levels, is the methodological framework of the monitored aspects: (i) in the sense of the ego-related evaluation of a fact or event by the speaker, i.e. in the sense of participatory interpretation, and (ii) in the sense of explaining the verbal behavior of the speaker, i.e. in the sense of searching for the motives, intentions and goals that form the preconditions for his/her verbal behavior.

Eh Across Englishes: A Corpus-Pragmatic Analysis of the Corpus of Global Web-Based English

This paper presents an analysis of the pragmatic marker eh, which is typical of spoken discourse, in written online discourse from nine varieties of English using the Corpus of Global Web-based English. The analysis focuses on sentence-final eh and considers variation in terms of variety, punctuation, text type, and function. This paper also includes a variationist analysis of eh in contrast to huh. Although there are cross-variety differences, eh is used across all nine varieties in similar ways. Eh is mostly combined with a question mark, it is more frequent in blogs than in general websites, and emphatic functions dominate over narrative and interrogative uses. A qualitative analysis of the indexicalities demonstrates that eh mainly signals orality and informality in online writing but also has specific local meanings. The variationist analysis shows that eh is preferred over huh in the Canadian and New Zealand components. This preference is even more pronounced for the British and Philippine components. In contrast, huh dominates in the US component. These results show that eh is well integrated into online writing and can be characterized as a translocal pragmatic marker as it is used globally but has developed local characteristics.

Living with polypharmacy: a narrative interview study with older Pakistanis in East London

BackgroundPolypharmacy is a growing and major public health issue. It can be burdensome and risky for patients and costly to healthcare systems. Older adults and those from ethnic minority backgrounds are disproportionately affected by polypharmacy. This study focuses on medication practices among Urdu-speaking Pakistani patients, a significant ethnic group in the UK. Most existing research on medication practices within South-Asian communities centres on adherence, leaving the social and moral dimensions of polypharmacy unpacked. Understanding how British Pakistani patients understand and manage polypharmacy in the context of their daily lives is crucial to avoiding harmful polypharmacy.MethodsIn-depth narrative interviews were conducted with 15 first-generation Pakistani patients using the Biographical Narrative Interview Method. Participants were recruited from GP practices in East London. All participants were prescribed ten or more regular medications (a pragmatic marker of ‘higher risk’ polypharmacy) and were aged over 50. Interviews were conducted with a bilingual researcher at home and were designed to elicit narratives of patients’ experiences of polypharmacy in the context of their biographies and daily lives.ResultsPolypharmacy is enacted through networks of interpersonal and socio-material relationships. The doctor-patient relationship and the family network held particular significance to study participants. In addition, participants described emotional bonds between themselves and their medicines, identifying them as ‘forces for good’—substances which allowed them to maintain their health through the intercession of God. Meanings attributed to medicines and enacted through these social, emotional, and spiritual relationships contributed to emerging and sustaining polypharmacy.ConclusionsPatients make sense of and manage treatments in culturally specific ways. Developing an understanding of how medication practices in different communities are enacted is important for informing meaningful and effective conversations with patients about their medicines. Our findings contribute to enabling the integration of culturally sensitive approaches to prescribing.