Pragmatic Relevance Research Articles

What is agentic about the Spatial Agency Bias? How pragmatic relevance contributes to the spatial representations of actions

AbstractThe mental imagination of (social) actions has been shown to follow a left‐to‐right trajectory, with the thematic agent associated with the left position (Spatial Agency Bias, Suitner & Maass in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 53, 2016, p. 245–301). For example, individuals asked to choose a picture that visualizes the sentence “Tom kicks George” tend to choose an image where the agent, Tom, is positioned on the left‐hand side rather than on the right‐hand side. However, as an alternative to the thematic role of the agent, such findings may reflect a mental representation following pragmatic relevance. Specifically, a pragmatic perspective holds that word order and syntactic functions are strategic devices to communicate that the element is important for the sentence. Thus, positioning in the described picture‐matching task may actually reflect the agent's pragmatic relevance instead of agency per se. As a test, we vary whether sentences are written in the active versus the passive voice. Results from five studies indicate that the passive voice results in the tendency to place the agent on the right‐hand side rather than on the left‐hand side of a picture. Instead, the acted‐upon person is positioned on the left‐hand side of a picture. A sixth experiment reveals that for the passive voice, the agent is still seen as more agentic than the receiver, but is considered less relevant. The findings are congruent with the proposed pragmatic relevance account. Implications for the Spatial Agency Bias as well as for building mental representations in general are discussed.

Лингвокреативная специфика кинодискурса и дискурса детской литературы: лексический уровень

The research aims to develop the method of contrastive analysis of linguistic creativity in discourse. The present study attracting two typologically different discourses, the cinematic discourse and the discourse of children's literature, demonstrates the 5-stage algorithm of contrastive frequency and contingency analysis of linguistic creativity parameters in all language levels, phonological, morphological, word building, lexical, syntactic and graphic. The algorithm helps distinguish between discourse creative and non-creative use of linguistic means, with the basic criterion of pragmatic relevance serving to make the decision between the two. The procedure is applied to the discourse data sets which amount to 104,543 text signs of two cinematic comedies and four children's humorous short stories; to assess the pragmatic relevance of linguistic creativity parameters, we relied on the humorous effect produced with the use of linguistic means. The main research focus of the study is the parametric activity and parametric distribution within the lexical level of the discourses contrasted. Apart from the general parametric results contrasting all the parameters of linguistic creativity within the lexical level, we present the results of two distinct parameters, socio-communicative register shifts and professional code shifts, which clearly specify the differences in their discourse creative and non-creative use in the cinematic discourse and the discourse of children's literature. The results show that enhanced general parametric activity is not contingent with discourse creative parametric activity as the pragmatically relevant modifications of parameter use display diversity in two discourse types. The developed method of contrastive analysis and the results obtained will stimulate further research in cross-discourse studies of linguistic creativity, which might disclose new dimensions in discourse construal and discourse productivity.

Functions of intertextuality in English press releases

The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the implementation of the category of intertextuality in English press releases. Analyzing intertextual inclusions, it was found that their use increases the argumentation of the text. It was determined that in addition to performing their basic communicative and pragmatic functions (authoritative confirmation functions, functions of the object of critical consideration, illustrative and aesthetic functions), intertextual means are also used to create a figurative effect, thus perform a stylistic function. Performing the functions of informing and influencing, the media text widely uses citation to give credibility and expressiveness to the transmitted information. Based on the analyzed material, we distinguish three main pragmatic functions: substitution, illustration, and argumentation, which allows making the object of study both direct and indirect citations, which differ with a graphic sign of the presence or absence of quotation marks. It is believed that the main task of press releases is to inform. Quotations in the press release are characterized by communicative and pragmatic relevance and the importance of reference situations and phenomena. With the help of quotation inclusions, an interpretive outline of the event is created, which sets the vector of interpretation of what is happening. Thus, the ways of including quotations in the text, their logical and semantic connections with introductory words, author’s comments, and context indicate that quotations in the texts of the press release are designed not only to inform but also to influence, forming a certain attitude to reported information. The analysis of the practical material revealed a significant manipulative potential of the citation language, which is the possibility of its use to assess and interpret reality. The pragmatics of quotation language is not only the transmission of some factual information but also implicitly the author’s attitude to the information being reported.

Cognitive Covert Traffic Synthesis Method Based on Generative Adversarial Network

In the intelligent era of human‐computer symbiosis, the use of machine learning method for covert communication confrontation has become a hot topic of network security. The existing covert communication technology focuses on the statistical abnormality of traffic behavior and does not consider the sensory abnormality of security censors, so it faces the core problem of lack of cognitive ability. In order to further improve the concealment of communication, a game method of “cognitive deception” is proposed, which is aimed at eliminating the anomaly of traffic in both behavioral and cognitive dimensions. Accordingly, a Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network of Covert Channel (WCCGAN) model is established. The model uses the constraint sampling of cognitive priors to construct the constraint mechanism of “functional equivalence” and “cognitive equivalence” and is trained by a dynamic strategy updating learning algorithm. Among them, the generative module adopts joint expression learning which integrates network protocol knowledge to improve the expressiveness and discriminability of traffic cognitive features. The equivalent module guides the discriminant module to learn the pragmatic relevance features through the activity loss function of traffic and the application loss function of protocol for end‐to‐end training. The experimental results show that WCCGAN can directly synthesize traffic with comprehensive concealment ability, and its behavior concealment and cognitive deception are as high as 86.2% and 96.7%, respectively. Moreover, the model has good convergence and generalization ability and does not depend on specific assumptions and specific covert algorithms, which realizes a new paradigm of cognitive game in covert communication.

FUNCTIONAL-STYLISTIC PECULIARITIES OF FORMATION AND INTERPRETATION OF NON-STANDARD EXPRESSIVE-EFFECTIVE FORMS OF SPEECH INTERACTION (ON THE MATERIAL OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING MILITARY DISCOURSE)

The article deals with the analysis and description of expressive-figurative means of original or occasional expression in functional-semantic and structural aspects.The pragmatic relevance of the formation of expressive forms of professional communication lies in the linguistic-creative expression of military team members' communicative need to overcome the stylistic neutrality of professional discourse terms. In so doing, they create a linguistic-cultural space for the self-realization of the personality in a specific professional environment. The fixed uniformity of linguistic rules establishes the sustainable order of their formal and content expression. The possibility of associative variation of the standard and creative components in the semantics of words results in the emergence of forms differing from the system of word formation, spelling and orthoepic norms. Structurally, owing to homonymy, polysemy, and homonymity, the constituent elements of the puns can be words as well as phrases. The phonetic-graphical coincidence or divergence of the kernel components of homophrasal puns and the nature of their formal expression creates various semantic forms. Moreover, the stylistic resource for the creative use of the language play includes intentional parody assimilation of paronymic lexemes, contextual identification of explicit and implicit homophones and their punning perception, simultaneous objectification of direct and associativefigurative meanings in specially built contextsdue to the semantic ambiguity of lexemes, the deliberate mispronunciation of foreign toponyms, the insertion of occasional expressive elements into the word structure, the phonographic and content reduction and combination of initial motivational forms and, as a consequence, the formation of pun-based contaminated units.

The Pragmatics of Coronavirus Motivated Humour on the Social Media

Humour, an established means of reducing stress and tension, has attracted scholarly attention over the years. In the Nigerian discourse context, studies on Coronavirus-Motivated Humour (CMH) are relatively new. This paper investigates humour that reflect the social, economic and health challenges in Nigeria shared through the social media in order to identify CMH as a form of humour through which real-life experiences of other people can be understood. Insights are drawn from Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Acts Theory to analyse a total of seven purposively selected humour on Coronavirus from social media, specifically Whatsapp and Facebook. The study found out that the pragmatic relevance of CMH is embedded in its social functions as it serves as an indicator of the sense of citizens’ freedom and a pract of warning to the corrupt and inefficient leaders in Nigeria, particularly on health facilities in the country. Also, the context of CMH construction presents it as a satire of the social, economic and health experiences of the people as it reduces and reinforces status differences as well as strengthens the feeling of connectedness among people. This is achieved through the practs of informing, satirizing and mocking. The paper concludes that humours do not only make people laugh, but also comment on certain societal maladies that finger the minds of Nigerian citizens. Keywords: Coronavirus, Humour, Social Media, Pragmatics and Lockdown.

On Some Pragmatic Effects of Event Metonymies

ABSTRACT In the literature, event metonymies have been used to explain how language users produce and interpret utterances in which certain events are understood in terms of their sub-events or the overall/complex events they are a part of. This paper attempts to discuss some pragmatic effects of event metonymies which, to the best of our knowledge, have not been explored to date. The first section deals with how certain expressions based on SUB-EVENT FOR EVENT metonymies can be considered synonymous for others in real communicative terms. We, therefore, show how a sound theory of synonymy could not only benefit from the incorporation of referential metonymies but also from the inclusion of SUB-EVENT FOR EVENT metonymies. The second section focuses on how EVENT FOR SUB-EVENT mappings have proven useful to achieve certain pragmatic relevance and mitigation/euphemistic contextual effects which have never been described in the literature. In order to do so, we analyzed a collection of more than 60 expressions (obtained from a study with two native speakers of English) to observe how they can qualify as event metonymies.

Echoic Communications and Pragmatic Relevance of COVID 19 Memes in Nigeria’s Social Media Space

There are greater possibilities for a language utterance to have more meanings than what is stated. It is also possible for the hearers/audience to interpret what the speaker has in mind beyond what the speaker has put out in words. These meanings derived in this form are echoic and they are arrived at by choosing meanings that contextually relevant involving the least effort. How echoic relevant definitions are achieved has been studied using different language instances. Still, none in the researchers' knowledge has investigated how the COVID 19 social media memes, as used by Nigerians, communicate deeper meanings that are contextually relevant and how the echoic interpretations reveal the users' attitude. On this basis, therefore, the present study investigated the echoic nature of COVID 19 related social media memes as used by Nigerians. The study used Sperber and Wilson (1986) relevance theory as the theoretical framework and qualitatively analyzed Ten (10) purposefully selected memes. In the end, the study found out that interpretations of memes are significantly linked with the shared cognitive background knowledge which the speaker/meme creator and the hearer/audience have. Also, memes could echo the attitude of concern, disdain and fear while also harboring deeper meanings that contextually relevant and implicit.

Predementia Neurocognitive Disorders in the Elderly

Impairments to neurocognitive functions are among the main signs of brain damage, and are particularly manifest in the elderly. A significant proportion of elderly people consistently show “age-related” changes in cognitive functions within the age norm and not leading to social maladaptation, while other cases show increasing cognitive deficit resulting in loss of the ability to work, followed by domestic dependence – this is dementia. However, loss of mental faculty does not develop instantaneously – it is preceded by a longer or shorter transitional period, during which cognitive disorders are beyond age norms but have not yet reached the extent generally associated with the concept of dementia. Nonetheless, the onset of signs of dementia over prolonged periods of time provides a criterion for the main illness predominantly apparent as cognitive impairments. The need for earlier diagnosis led to the concept of “moderate cognitive disorder” (MoCD). Studies to date allow MoCD to be regarded as a constituent part of the complex structure of overlapping syndromes (“pre-dementia cognitive disorders”), whose identification may have not only theoretical, but also purely pragmatic relevance, on the one hand allowing series of clinical trials with different therapeutic targets to be planned and, on the other, rational approaches to the management of patients in clinical practice to be constructed.

Focused Topics in Hungarian: Reconsidering the Pragmatic Relevance of the Structural Focus Position1

AbstractIn this paper, a specific syntactic construction of Hungarian is investigated in which the preverbal constituent filling the structural Focus position functions as the topic of the sentence on the pragmatic level. Focused topic constructions are commonly used in Hungarian, especially in copular sentences. The core motivation of their use is the following: the placement of the topic into Focus position gives rise to the implicature that the topic referent is the only referent the predicate of the sentence holds for. This complex topicalization strategy can be accounted for by means of an alternative‐based concept of focus in the spirit of Rooth (1992), É. Kiss (1998) and Krifka (2008): the focusing of the aboutness topic indicates the presence of potential alternatives, and the referent of the topical expression placed into the structural Focus position functions as an exhaustive topic.

On pragmatism, assemblage and ANT: Assembling reason

In geography the key theoretical registers of assemblage theory and Actor Network Theory have been psychoanalytic-semiotic, materialist and vitalist (emphasising affect). In contrast, this paper indicates the original influence and continued relevance of philosophical pragmatism’s action-oriented approach for assemblage and ANT. It suggests how a pragmatist understanding of human experience, situation and reason offers a different perspective on the nature of emergent and relational space in assemblages and networks. This perspective extends existing pragmatist work in geography to explore the distinctive, hyper-relational spatialities of human activity in a world of acting things, suggesting wider implications for progress in human geography.

Interlanguage Pragmatics, Communicative Competence, Nigeria’s L2 Classrooms

In Nigeria, much attention has been given to the teaching and learning of grammatical forms and sound sequences with emphasis on their accuracy and correctness (linguistic competence). This has reflected in the selection of course syllabi, curriculum, instructional materials and methods in our classrooms. A lot studies have been carried out by scholars on the non-native speakers’ use and acquisition of linguistic action patterns in a second language. Though such studies, dubbed interlanguage pragmatics, have all been carried out in Europe and America with focus on speakers of English as a Foreign language (EFL). This area of enquiry has not been adequately explored in Africa in general or Nigerian L2 learners of English as the focus. Thus, little or seldom attention has been given to pragmatics and appropriateness in language use (Communicative competence). This study is therefore, a consciousness - raising effort to highlight the relevance and advantages of teaching pragmatics and the development of pragmatics awareness in our classrooms. This is against the backdrop of the fact that the linguistic competence of most learners of English as a second language is not usually at par with their pragmatic competence. This study foregrounds the need for L2 learners of English to develop a concomitant degree of pragmatic awareness in the use of the language. They must learn how to combine form, meaning, force and context. They need, for example, to learn how to say what they want to say with the required formality or politeness, directness or indirectness, e t c, as required by a given situation or sometimes, to even keep quiet and still communicate intention. The study, domesticating the findings of some current researches in instructed pragmatics, discussed and suggested some classroom activities that could be adopted as part of the methods of teaching pragmatics, and by so doing, highlighted the enormous advantages and usefulness of teaching pragmatics and acquiring pragmatic competence in Nigeria’s L2 classrooms.

Quantifying Medical Resident Perceptions Regarding the Utility of High‐fidelity Patient Simulation using Q‐methodology

High‐fidelity patient simulation (HFPS) combines sophisticated patient manikins and realistic, immersive environments to safely train physicians at an early stage of their medical careers. However, little is known about the distinct patterns of medical resident perceptions who experienced HFPS during their undergraduate medical education (UME). Q‐methodology obtains first‐person, qualitative viewpoints from participants about a specific topic of interest using a quantitative inverted factor procedure and was used to answer the research question: How do medical residents perceive the utility of, and satisfaction with, HFPS experienced during their UME? Since Q‐methodology is an exploratory, systematic research technique that does not attempt to hypothesize existing relationships, a priori hypotheses were not developed for this research question. Graduates were sampled from Indiana University Bloomington School of Medicine (IUSM‐B) classes of 2015, 2016, and 2017 because HFPS was integrated into their UME. Of the 58 medical residents contacted, 12 were recruited for this study. The residents were asked to electronically sort 37 validated statements relative to each other into a bipolar, inverted quasi‐normal distribution based on their subjective opinions. Two open‐ended questions at the end of the sorting procedure allowed participants to elaborate on their choice of the highest and lowest ranked statements. The final solution consisted of three factors, one unipolar factor (Factor 1) and one bipolar factor (Factor 2a and Factor 2b), that explained 45% of the total variance in the data, with eleven participants (91.7%) mapping onto one of the three factors. Seven residents were grouped into Factor 1 and were labeled ‘Practical Skeptics' given their pattern of finding value in the pragmatic relevance of HFPS, but had difficulty suspending their disbelief of the simulated patient manikin. Three residents were clustered into Factor 2a characterized as ‘Simulation Enthusiasts' and demonstrated a pattern of embracing the HFPS experience, could suspend their disbelief, and found value in interprofessional education simulations with nursing students. Factor 2b included one resident described as an ‘Anxious Supporter’ because this individual embraced the use of HFPS but captured the stress and anxiety that some feel while participating in simulations that was not seen with the other two factors. This study discovered three distinct perceptions regarding HFPS among residents who attended IUSM‐B and may aid in tailoring HFPS strategies to more fully meet the needs and expectations of future physicians.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Implicaciones pragmáticas del discurso teológico

Al ser existencial, el discurso teológico posee unas implicancias sobre los modos de ser y de vivir y, por tanto, sobre las prácticas cristianas. Este artículo pretende abordar el asunto de la relevancia pragmática como condición de posibilidad para la significación del discurso teológico. Primero plantea las exigencias prácticas que recibe la teología en el debate público actual. En segundo lugar plasma las bases de esta comprensión teológica, que se hallan en el Dios revelado como palabra y como acto. En tercer lugar, desarrolla las características discursivas y prácticas de la teología. Finalmente, esboza los desafíos que surgen de la reflexión teológica sobre la fe como práctica cotidiana dirigida a un Dios que es amor misericordioso, liberador, transformador.

Understandings of tourism theory

PurposeThis paper explores perceptions of tourism theory and its usefulness to the professional practice of tourism management as identified by the two major stakeholder groups – academics and tourism practitioners.Design/methodology/approachData for this study were collected through the use of two electronically administered surveys with tourism academics teaching on undergraduate tourism programmes of study and tourism professionals, both based in the UK.FindingsFindings suggest that tourism theory is important in understanding tourism itself. But at the same time it has pragmatic relevance, facilitating researchers and others to make sense of the real world and contributing to successful practice in tourism.Originality/valueThis is the first study to provide empirical data from both academic and practitioner perspectives into often contested debates about the nature and uses of tourism theory.

Te lo tengo dicho muchas veces. Resultatives between coercion, relevance and reanalysis

AbstractThis paper deals with the question of how and why resultative constructions change into anteriors. This discussion will be based on synchronic data concerning tener + past participle, a resultative construction used in modern Spanish. One of the latter's most frequent is te lo tengo dicho 'I have (already) told you'. This is remarkable since decir 'to tell' is a non-transitional verb; te lo tengo dicho thus violates the requirement that resultatives should only combine with transitional verbs. In the literature, such mismatches between the semantics of a given construction and the meaning of its lexical filler have been claimed to normally trigger coercion, i.e. an inferential repair mechanism giving rise to special meaning effects. Thus, coercion - despite being conceived as a purely synchronic mechanism - is a prime candidate for an explanation of the change from resultative to anterior. In line with this hypothesis, occurrences of te lo tengo dicho are attested in my corpus where the latter is specified by quantifying adverbials such as muchas veces 'many times'. However, speaker judgements indiacte that even te lo tengo dicho muchas veces is not an iterative anterior construction, but still a resultative. Based on synchronic data taken from the CREA-corpus, it will be shown that in the vast majority of its occurrences, te lo tengo dicho is part of an dialogal discourse pattern where certain argumentative effects based on its resultative meaning are highly relevant. Crucially, therefore, in such "strong" uses a coercive shift towards an anterior meaning is excluded. On a more abstract level, it will be shown that coercion is controlled by pragmatic factors; in the case of te lo tengo dicho muchas veces, conceptual/semantic plausibility is systematically overridden by pragmatic relevance.

Performing gesture

Abstract This article focuses on a signed performance by a deaf Nepali man who communicates in natural sign, which is similar to home sign but with greater cross-signer conventionality. The signer skillfully employs pantomimic (“gestural”) and lexical (“linguistic”) repertoires for distinct pragmatic purposes. In the narrative frame, he uses pantomime to vividly enact his morning routine; in the metanarrative frame, he utilizes lexical signs to directly address the audience. By examining the two repertoires’ formal characteristics and their relationship to different frames, this analysis showcases the signer’s communicative competency, demonstrates the relevance of pragmatics and genre to studies of all signed communicative modes, and challenges the idea that gesture is what language leaves behind.

EL papel de la prosodia en la expresión de la ironía en español

Cuando la ironía verbal, fenómeno intrínsecamente polifónico, forma parte de un discurso oral, a menudo va acompañada de una entonación, de un tono y de un acento particulares (Ruiz Gurillo 2009, Becerra Valderrama 2011). Por lo tanto, la prosodia llega a formar parte significativa de la información paralingüística en una conversación real (Poyatos 1994, Couper-Kuhlen 2000), desempeñando no pocas veces el papel decisivo para el reconocimiento y la correcta interpretación de la ironía verbal por parte del interlocutor. En español hay pocos patrones sintácticos que posibiliten el enunciado irónico (p. ej. la anteposición del adjetivo según Haverkate 1985), de ahí que el papel de la entonación, posiblemente el fenómeno lingüístico más influyente en la comunicación oral, merezca más atención, aunque su estudio no se ha considerado siempre prioritario.Este trabajo tiene como objetivo, primero, mostrar la relevancia pragmática de la prosodia en la producción de los enunciados irónicos y, segundo, observar los factores que determinan la entonación irónica en español, examinando su funcionamiento en ejemplos concretos del discurso oral. Para este objetivo se han comparado ejemplos de enunciados irónicos con no irónicos, especialmente grabados para esta ocasión y analizados con ayuda del programa informático Praat. La comparación, cuyo principal objetivo ha sido determinar el papel de la prosodia en el reconocimiento de la intención irónica sin o con el contexto situacional, se ha realizado a través de un experimento con treinta estudiantes de máster del departamento de lengua y literatura españolas de la Facultad de filosofía y letras de la Universidad de Ljubljana.

Empirical and pragmatic adequacy of grounded theory: Advancing nurse empowerment theory for nurses' practice.

To draw on the findings of a grounded theory study aimed at exploring how power is exercised in nurse-manager relationships in the hospital setting, this paper examines the empirical and pragmatic adequacy of grounded theory as a methodology to advance the concept of empowerment in the area of nursing leadership and management. The evidence on staff nurse empowerment has highlighted the magnitude of individual and organisational outcomes, but has not fully explicated the micro-level processes underlying how power is exercised, shared or created within the nurse-manager relationship. Although grounded theory is a widely adopted nursing research methodology, it remains less used in nursing leadership because of the dominance of quantitative approaches to research. Grounded theory methodology provides the empirical and pragmatic relevance to inform nursing practice and policy. Grounded theory is a relevant qualitative approach to use in leadership research as it provides a fine and detailed analysis of the process underlying complexity and bureaucracy. Discursive paper. A critical examination of the empirical and pragmatic relevance of grounded theory by (Corbin & Strauss, , ) as a method for analysing and solving problems in nurses' practice is provided. This paper provides evidence to support the empirical and pragmatic adequacy of grounded theory methodology. Although the application of the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions of grounded theory is challenging, this methodology is useful to address real-life problems in nursing practice by developing theoretical explanations of nurse empowerment, or lack thereof, in the workplace. Grounded theory represents a relevant methodology to inform nursing leadership research. Grounded theory is anchored in the reality of practice. The strength of grounded theory is to provide results that can be readily applied to clinical practice and policy as they arise from problems that affect practice and that are meaningful to nurses.

Explicit focus on meaning

Against the backdrop of discussions in instructed SLA concerning form-focused versus meaning-focused L2 instruction, a framework we refer to as Mindful Conceptual Engagement (MCE) is proposed as a feature of Vygotskian concept-based instruction. In this paper, specific attention is given to the pragmatic relevance of ser/estar in Spanish discourse. The implementation of the MCE approach to teaching concepts starts with the development of pedagogical materials for the teaching of communicative issues, in this case, normativity. It also requires active engagement by learners in reflective activities, such as the creation of their own conceptual representations as a learning tool to understand ser/estar through the notion of normativity. Data from beginning L2 Spanish learners are presented to illustrate how engaging them in the production of different kinds of graphic representations and verbalizations promotes the internalization of complex grammatical concepts with practical functionality in L2 communication. It is argued that by promoting active reflection and engagement with communicative issues using the concept of normativity, MCE enabled learners to begin to appreciate the pragmatic significance of the concept as expressed in ser/estar.