Sociopragmatic Factors Research Articles

Subtitling profanity into Malay: Balancing formal and creative taboo expressions

Introduction: Translation of swearwords has unceasingly gained traction in audiovisual translation. In subtitling, swearing does not only warrant linguistic consideration but other multimodal elements, such as intonation and body movement. Apart from subtitling technicalities, the difficulties of swearword translation are also impeded by their explicit and implicit forms, as well as the linguistic-cultural differences in source-target texts. This study aims to deliberate on the Malay translation of English swearwords of ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ in two episodes of Netflix TV series The History of Swearwords.Methods: To this end, it employs a comparative and descriptive analysis by developing a parallel corpus by utilising AntConc and AntPConc software. The selection of Netflix posits no local law or policy restrictions and censorship.Results: The comparative analysis found a linkup between creative and formal subtitling of the swearwords, which signals a prevalent pragmatic and cultural foundation in the translation, especially vis-à-vis the deletion and neutralisation procedures. The study also raises other notable concerns, such as the identification and semantic comprehension of swearwords by the series subtitlers.Conclusions: Overall, the study posits that the socio-pragmatic factors, among others are still central for the English-Malay translation strategies of the swearwords in maintaining both linguistic accuracy and cultural appropriateness for target audience

The Sociopragmatic Aspects of Literary Discourse

This abstract is intended as an overview of the sociopragmatic aspects that influence artistic discourse. The paper examines the relationship between language, culture, and society in the context of literary creation. The literature review focuses on research in linguistics, literary studies, and sociology to identify the influence of sociopragmatic factors on artistic discourse. Various phenomena such as the use of different linguistic means to convey sociocultural norms, images, and stereotypes, the influence of characters’ social status on their linguistic behavior, and the specificity of the dialogic nature of a literary text are analyzed. The work also involves a review of methodological approaches to the analysis of sociopragmatics in fiction, as well as a critical reflection on the results obtained and possible directions for further research in this field. The abstract has been prepared with the aim of presenting the importance of studying sociopragmatic aspects in the context of fiction discourse and identifying.

Sociopragmatic Study of Javanese Oral Discourse in Big City Communities as an Effort to Maintain Indigenous Language

This research delves into the sociopragmatic intricacies of Javanese oral discourse within urban communities, focusing on the role of language in preserving the indigenous Javanese language amidst the pressures of urbanization and language shift. As urbanization accelerates, traditional languages like Javanese face the risk of diminishing usage and cultural significance. This study aims to elucidate how urban Javanese speakers employ their native language in various communicative contexts, examining the sociopragmatic factors that influence language choice and language use patterns. The findings of this research contribute to the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and language preservation. By shedding light on the sociopragmatic dimensions of language use, the study provides a nuanced understanding of how urban Javanese speakers navigate linguistic diversity and negotiate their cultural identity. This research emphasizes recognizing and supporting indigenous languages within urban settings as communication vehicles and cultural heritage and identity repositories. Ultimately, the study's outcomes can inform language revitalization initiatives and policy-making efforts to foster the enduring presence of Javanese within the rapidly changing landscape of urban communities.

A Sociopragmatic Study of Verbal Bullying in the Novel: “Matilda”

Bullying is a social phenomenon characterised by interactions that are viewed as negative, repetitive, persistent, and directed towards one or more individuals. The problem of this study is manifested in how to analyse verbal bullying linguistically, relate it to pragmatic theories, and identify some of the social scales related to it. The study aims at Describing and identifying the speech act of bullying. Identifying what impoliteness strategies and functions are employed in bullying performance. Showing the sociopragmatic factors which affect the speech act of bullying and identifying the impolite language used by those who bully. The study concluded that verbal bullying in its most basic form can be an insult that comes with an impolite function and power differences. Bullying is associated with using power to gain or increase the bully's benefits from the situation. Bullies use verbal bullying to force people to do things using their social power.

The Syntactic and Discourse Properties of Second Person Singular Forms of Address inPaisaSpanish

AbstractIn this study we examine the linguistic complexity and lexical properties of the discourse associated with second person singular forms of address (2PS) in the Spanish spoken in Medellín, Colombia. This Spanish variety exhibits the use of a tripartite system of 2PS, in whichvoseo,tuteo, andustedeoare used, and sometimes interchanged, according to sociopragmatic factors. By means of a discourse completion task (DCT), 672 responses were collected from 38 informants. Data was parsed and tagged using UDPipe to train an annotation Spanish model. Syntactic and lexical properties were extracted automatically in Python. Results revealed the syntactic properties and the existence of collocations significantly associated with each 2PS. The discourse associated withvosdiffers in terms of the predicate structure, DCT response length, pragmatic function, and use of colloquial speech markers. Results of this work shed further light on the variable use of 2PS in this intriguing Spanish dialect.

Request realisation strategies in Italian: The influence of the variables of Distance and Weight of Imposition on strategy choice

AbstractResearch in the fields of pragmatics has highlighted important differences in speech act realisation strategies and the perception of contextual variables across lingua-cultures. This particularly applies for requests, which are potentially face-threating acts and important expressions of cultural behaviour, as their performance is influenced by culturally-embedded perspectives on rights and obligations. Although some languages have been widely investigated in terms of request realisation, such as English, little research has been done on Italian. This study examines request realisation strategies in Italian, in terms of Head Acts and request perspective, and the impact of the sociopragmatic factors of social distance and weight of imposition of the request on strategy choice amongst eight Italian speakers, by means of open-ended roleplays. The data was analysed by using a coding scheme based on Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) and revealed that the Italian speakers where more influenced by social distance, which in turn impacted on the choice of request perspective. They were shown to prefer using hearer-orientation, which reflected in the verb conjugation of the Head Acts, since this perspective allows them to do relational work with the hearer, by either addressing the recipient with the familiartuor with the formallei.

Neural correlates of Japanese honorific agreement processing mediated by socio-pragmatic factors: An fMRI study

Socio-pragmatic factors, such as social roles and language experience, could be key variables influencing language processing. However, little is known regarding the neural correlates of syntactic processing mediated by socio-pragmatic factors. Honorific agreement in Japanese is well-suited for the investigation of this issue. Japanese honorifics are governed by socio-pragmatic and syntactic rules. Lower social status speakers are expected to address higher social status counterparts in accordance with these rules. This linguistic skill is typically developed through language experience accrued in social contexts. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated the neural correlates of the honorific agreement processing mediated by socio-pragmatic factors. Thirty-three native Japanese speakers performed a socio-pragmatic judgment task containing sentence conditions manipulated by conventionality (i.e., conventional vs. unconventional) and speaker (lower-status vs. higher-status). The lower-status conditions elicited significantly more activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), bilateral insula, and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex than the higher-status ones, irrespective of conventionality. This suggests that social cues (i.e., speaker social status) trigger computation of honorific agreement via the left IFG. Furthermore, the conventional conditions significantly enhanced activation of the bilateral anterior temporal lobes (ATLs), compared with the unconventional conditions. Finally, the listener's experience with honorific use in the workplace was positively correlated with activation of the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) during comprehension of conventional honorific utterances. Our findings demonstrate the importance of socio-pragmatic factors in Japanese honorific agreement processing, which involves the ATLs and IPL. • Speaker-related social cues mediate neural processing of Japanese honorific agreement. • Left IFG, dmPFC, and insula are jointly involved in processing Japanese honorific agreement. • Language experiences of honorific use influence left IPL activity.

СОЦИАЛЬНО-КОММУНИКАТИВНАЯ СРЕДА АНГЛОФОННОГО СООБЩЕСТВА В ОТРАЖЕНИИ СОВРЕМЕННОГО АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

The article is devoted to the changes occurring in the social and communicative environment of the modern English-speaking community that are caused by the phenomena of the extralinguistic plan and are verbalized through neologisms of the English language. As a research material, the new vocabulary is used, which is gradually entering the English-language discourse and is not currently recorded in the English monolingual explanatory or encyclopedic dictionaries. The cases of the emergence of new vocabulary in the zone of integration of social and communicative spheres are investigated. Sociopragmatic factors of the English language development are revealed. The socio-communicative spheres serving as «donors» of the modern English language are determined.

A Grammar of Authority?

Abstract Directive Speech Acts (dsas) are a major feature of historical pragmatics, specifically in research on historical (im)politeness. However, for Classical French, there is a lack of research on related phenomena. In our contribution, we present two recently constructed corpora covering the period of Classical French, sermo and apwcf. We present these corpora in terms of their genre characteristics on a communicative–functional and socio-pragmatic level. Based on the observation that, both in sermo and apwcf, dsas frequently occur together with terms of address, we analyse and manually code a sample based on this co-occurrence, and we compare the results with regard to special features in the individual corpora. The emerging patterns show a clear correspondence between socio-pragmatic factors and the linguistic means used to realise dsas. We propose that these results can be interpreted as signs of an underlying “grammar of authority”.

Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

In German, gender is a strongly grammaticalized category and has the function of indicating grammatical agreement between syntactic units. Usually, each noun is assigned one of three grammatical genders. In standard German, nouns denoting women are typically feminine. However, Luxembourgish and some German dialects show a peculiarity: here, the gender of female first names and other parts of speech (e.g. pronouns) referring to women can be both feminine and neuter, depending on the nature of the interpersonal relationship between the speaker and the female referred to. In these varieties, gender assignment is governed by sociopragmatic factors. Sociopragmatic gender assignment is a result of de-grammaticalization, which is reflected in both syntagmatic and paradigmatic gender variability. The study shows that there is considerable diatopic variation in the use and function of gender in references to women. In some dialects, the neuter has become the default gender of female first names; this is a case of re-grammaticalization.

I withdraw and apologise but…: Ghanaian parliamentary apologies, the issue of sincerity and acceptance

Employing a corpus-assisted discourse studies approach, this paper investigates apologies in a parliamentary context, using as data Hansards of the Parliament of Ghana (2005–2018). It identifies various apologetic expressions in the data, examines the display of (in)sincerity and apology acceptance as well as socio-pragmatic factors influencing the acceptance of the apologies. The apology terms identified include apology, (be) sorry, regret, forgive, pardon, excuse, did not mean to, (it is/was not my/I have no) intention to and the newly identified term withdraw. The paper shows that parliamentarians display sincerity by combining the following elements of sincerity in different ways: acknowledgement of the offence, show of remorse or regret, acceptance of responsibility for the offence, offer of repair, and expression of forbearance, without any ifs, buts or any manner of undoings, obfuscations, among others. It is found that sincerity can be compromised by giving a caution/warning/justification, giving a condition, throwing a challenge, showing superficiality and giving an explanation. The study also reveals that several contextual variables account for the acceptance, or otherwise, of an apology. It concludes that in the parliamentary context, sincerity is not a necessary condition for the acceptance of apologies.

Information and communication technologies and the formation of cross-cultural communication skills in a foreign language environment

The article discusses the various possibilities of using ICTs in teaching Russian as a foreign language at the University of Pisa and the methods of working with a modern virtual educational environment. A brief description of the modern educational environment (and, more broadly, ecosystem) that has developed under the influence of informatization, computerization and digitalization of society in the late XX — early XXI centuries is proposed. The paper also focuses on the ways in which the Blended learning approach as an integration of classroom and online learning is put in practice by using the E-learning system and Moodle tools. Particular attention is paid to the methodology of working with the multimedia corpus of the Russian language MURCO in teaching grammar. In particular, it is demonstrated that the use of the corpus allows developing pragmatic language competence and mastering adaptation mechanisms for the adequate implementation of communicative intentions within any social scenario. In language teaching, the recognition of the need to study pragmatics using corpus data is due to the fact that the design of the verbal-semantic and linguo-cognitive levels of the secondary language personality is not enough to form a stable communicative skill. Reaching the third and the highest, i.e. pragmatic level of functioning of the secondary language personality, which allows to realize communicative-activity needs, is impossible without immersion in the environment (which can be artificially recreated) of the language being studied. In particular, it will be demonstrated how the analysis of micro-dialogs from the MURCO corpus, illustrating imperative speech acts, allows not only to describe the elements of the “expanded” semantics of the imperative mood in the Russian language, but also to reveal the socio-pragmatic factors of its use.

Polarization and the Emergence of a Written Marker. A Diachronic Corpus Study of the Adnominal Genitive in German

This article investigates the diachrony of the adnominal genitive in written German by analyzing its usage in a diachronic corpus of sermons from the Upper German dialect area spanning the time from the 9th to the 19th century. The wide temporal scope allows for a better assessment of the events relating to the genitive’s disappearance from spoken German in Early New High German and the successive rise of its adnominal form in written German. Sermons make it possible to study the phenomenon over a long time because they provide a relatively consistent data basis in terms of genre and region. At the same time, as a genre that has characteristics of both spoken and written language, sermons show signs of changing stylistic trends, which makes them valuable for gaining insights in the divergent development of genitive use in spoken and written German. In order to characterize this divergence better, I use the concept of polarization, which describes the differentiation of linguistic usage between disparate contexts such as speech and writing. It becomes clear that the changes in genitive use found in the corpus cannot be viewed independently of sociopragmatic factors and their impact on the stylistic shape of the texts.*

Origen y evolución de las fórmulas de saludo con besar en español

The aim of the paper is to analyse two Spanish greeting formulas derivated from the atelic predicate besar las manos (y los pies) ‘to kiss the hands (and feet)’, which, despite their apparent formal resemblance, came to codify totally opposite socio-pragmatic values. Through the systematic search in epistolary texts until the beginnings of the 20th century we will try to find (i) the socio-pragmatic factors that play the most important role in each type of greeting; (ii) the paradigmatic origin of each formula, and (iii) their sociocultural distribution.

‘I will not put this request at the very beginning’

Pragmatic (in)felicity in requests refers to the (in)appropriateness and (im)politeness of one's language use. It has been a great challenge to L2 learners, as they are likely to compose grammatically correct but pragmatically infelicitous requests. Such infelicity could be associated with pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic factors, yet whether L2 learners are aware of those factors has been underexplored. To understand the effects of power, imposition, and modifications on email perception, we designed a matched guise test for 224 Chinese L2 learners, who were instructed to rate from 1 (very inappropriate/impolite) to 5 (very appropriate/polite) on four email requests (Power±; Imposition±). We found that (1) learners are highly aware of pragmalinguistic factors because they perceive requests mitigated by internal and external modifications as more appropriate and polite (p < .05), (2) learners have limited awareness of power difference as they rank direct form as inappropriate in peer-to-peer interaction, and (3) learners cannot realise fully the sociopragmatic factors involved in high-imposition situations. The awareness of pragmatic (in)felicity among learners seems to be underdeveloped as regards degree of power and imposition. The findings could have some implications in language pedagogy.

Sociopragmatic factors and melodic patterns: Spanish vocatives and imperatives compared

AbstractDue to their addressing nature, vocatives and imperatives have been said in multiple occasions to have the same function and similar phonological characteristics. The aim of this paper is to examine the intonational link between these two kinds of sentences in Peninsular Spanish considering sociopragmatic and situational factors like the level of formality and the degree of insistence. In order to do so, twenty-eight native speakers of Peninsular Spanish produced isolated names and verbs in formal and informal settings followed by insistent productions. The phonetic and phonological analyses of 1232 one-word productions indicate that both speech acts share multiple contours; namely L* H%, L + H* HL%, L + H* !H%, L + H* L%, L + H* H%, L + H* LH%. Nevertheless, L + H* L% was the most used contour for both speech acts regardless of the sociopragmatic and situational factors. Interestingly, speakers modified the phonetic properties of intensity and F0 depending on the situation since informal and insistent productions had a higher F0, wider pitch excursions and more intensity than their formal and non-insistent counterparts. As alternatives, L* L% contours were attested in formal imperatives while L + H* LH% and L + H* HL% were more common in informal ones. After L + H* L% contours, L + H* HL% and L* H% were the preferred options in formal vocatives but the latter was hardly attested in informal ones.

Explicit intervention for Spanish pragmatic development during short‐term study abroad: An examination of learner request production and cognition

The present study examined the impact of pedagogical intervention on students’ request performance during short‐term study abroad (SA). Prior to departure, students received explicit instruction about requests. During their time abroad, they were given tasks to strategically develop their pragmatic competence. Requests were assessed with a discourse completion task. Results indicated that over time the students improved their request performance, as rated by two native Spanish speakers. Examination of the students’ requests revealed that their use of strategies also improved. Retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) performed after the posttests indicated that during second language (L2) Spanish request production, the students attended to politeness, task outcome, and past experiences. In addition, the RVRs indicated that specific sociopragmatic factors and pragmalinguistic strategies targeted during the pragmatic intervention informed learners’ cognition during request planning and production. Findings suggest that when combined with pedagogical intervention, SA has the potential to facilitate students’ L2 pragmatic development.

Learner–Learner Interaction During Collaborative Pragmatic Tasks: The Role of Cognitive and Pragmatic Task Demands

AbstractPrevious task complexity studies have suggested that learners produce more negotiation of meaning opportunities during complex tasks than simple tasks (Robinson, 2011). The present study builds on the existing task complexity literature by examining the impact of task complexity and pragmatic situational demands on the number of learning opportunities for request‐making expressions. Forty‐nine Korean junior high school learners of English as a foreign language were randomly assigned to participate in either simple‐ or complex‐ collaborative pair writing tasks, which included different levels of pragmatic situational demands. The interactions were transcribed and analyzed for the frequency of pragmatic related episodes (PREs; Kim & Taguchi, 2015) as well as the number of turns within each PRE. The results showed that task complexity played an important role in facilitating PREs by targeting sociopragmatic factors and not pragmalinguistic forms, regardless of the level of pragmatic task demands. Results are discussed in light of promoting interaction‐driven learning opportunities for pragmatics using collaborative tasks.

Grammatischer Wandel im (Mittel-)Neuhochdeutschen – von oben und von unten. Perspektiven einer Historischen Soziolinguistik des Deutschen

Abstract The present contribution addresses the phenomenon of grammatical change using a historical sociolinguistic approach, which is based on the principle that systematic language change can only be described and explained by accounting for sociopragmatic and variational factors of language use. The approach is illustrated by an empirical investigation of the change of selected morphological and syntactic features in (Middle) New High German, using Labov’s distinction between ‘language change from above’ and ‘language change from below’ as a starting point of analysis. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that the historical sociolinguistic approach not only complements other methods of historical linguistics, but may also lead to results and findings that could perhaps not be achieved by other methodological approaches. Moreover, it is considered central to the description and explanation of the development of language varieties in periods of language standardisation.

Socio-pragmatic influence on opening salutation and closing valediction of British workplace email

This paper reports the findings from a study into the variation of (in)formality of opening salutation and closing valediction in the emails of a group of British professionals. Drawing on both the literature and data used in this research, a number of socio-pragmatic factors were identified for exploration in terms of their influence on the (in)formality of opening and closing formulae. With the use of multivariate regression analysis, 387 emails were examined, 2 discrete models built, and 24 independent variables investigated. Results revealed 13 of the independent variables as significant in terms of their impact upon the (in)formality of opening and closing forms. Greater formality of both opening salutation and closing valediction was driven by external communication, and the social distance between parties. Preference for informality of opening salutation was driven by conversational progression, and the use of politeness markers. Preference for informality of closing valediction was driven by conversational progression, and time elapsed between successive email turns. Contrary to the idea that closing and opening forms constitute optional elements of email composition, the results indicated that such devices were not used as mere skeuomorphs of earlier epistolary communication but served deeper socio-pragmatic concerns.