Speaker Roles Research Articles

The evidential dimension of implicitly conveyed disagreement in political debates

Abstract The idea that manipulation relies more heavily on implicit than on explicit communication has been the plank of several earlier and recent debates on argumentation and speaker roles in interactions. The present contribution will inquire into the selective nature of the use of implicit communication in political discourse; notably, analyzing the distribution of presuppositions and implicatures in two political debates, it will be argued that the use of these two implicit communicative devices – and, particularly, that of presupposition – is likely to correlate with the expression of disagreement, notably through aggressive and blasting contents, more often than with other content types. This tendency will be accounted for by considering the evidential meaning presuppositions and implicatures add to an utterance, which contributes to modulating both speaker’s commitment to truth and source identification on the part of the receiver. Data also show that, when face-threatening contents are exchanged, presuppositions epitomize by far the most preferred strategy in both debates.

Channel-Aware Decoupling Network for Multiturn Dialog Comprehension.

Training machines to understand natural language and interact with humans is one of the major goals of artificial intelligence. Recent years have witnessed an evolution from matching networks to pretrained language models (PrLMs). In contrast to the plain-text modeling as the focus of the PrLMs, dialog texts involve multiple speakers and reflect special characteristics, such as topic transitions and structure dependencies, between distant utterances. However, the related PrLM models commonly represent dialogs sequentially by processing the pairwise dialog history as a whole. Thus, the hierarchical information on either utterance interrelation or speaker roles coupled in such representations is not well addressed. In this work, we propose compositional learning for holistic interaction across the utterances beyond the sequential contextualization from PrLMs, in order to capture the utterance-aware and speaker-aware representations entailed in a dialog history. We decouple the contextualized word representations by masking mechanisms in transformer-based PrLM, making each word only focus on the words in the current utterance, other utterances, and two speaker roles (i.e., utterances of the sender and utterances of the receiver), respectively. In addition, we employ domain-adaptive training strategies to help the model adapt to the dialog domains. Experimental results show that our method substantially boosts the strong PrLM baselines in four public benchmark datasets, achieving new state-of-the-art performance over previous methods.

On improvising, contextualizing and active listening. A Dialogue with John Forester

On 14 November 2022, John Forester gave a lecture at the Department of Architecture of the University of Naples Federico II, focused on 'Improvisation, Context-responsiveness, Practices of Listening'. The historical setting of Palazzo Gravina hosted a diverse audience of students, researchers, and lecturers. Despite the conventional lecture hall setup, configured for a traditional frontal presentation, John orchestrated a close interaction with the attendees, through improvisation, transforming the back wall of the room into an expansive board and transcribing issues as the discussion unfolded, so to invert the conventional roles of speaker and audience. This embodied the transformative power not only of altering planning methodologies but also of changing the language and modes through which ideas are articulated. Such interplay is intrinsically tied to the art of listening. This article reports some reasoning solicited by the encounter with John Forester and it is developed in three sections. The first one synthetizes the main issues coming from an interview lead by Gilda Berruti and Cristina Mattiucci, which had place before the lecture. John Forester was asked about the relationships between planners and changes in contemporary complex contexts, to update the methodological statements developed along the years. Forester's answers are reported after an argued description of the questions. The second and third sections are the critical arguments to the main topics of John Forester's speech, focusing on context-responsiveness and practices of listening. They are authored by Enrico Formato and Laura Lieto, invited as discussants to the lecture. The texts deal with the perspectives of urban planners engaged respectively in making plans and in the local government1.

Turn taking in Ghanaian judicial discourse

Turn construction and turn allocation in social interactions have been studied from different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the most important and debated ones being conversation analysis and (critical) discourse analysis. Even though turn taking has been studied in informal conversations in Ghanaian languages, nothing has been done on turn taking in Ghanaian judicial discourse. This paper examines turn taking management in Ghanaian Western-based judicial interaction. Working within the conversational analytic framework and language and power, the paper investigated how speaker turns were managed, especially, how turn allocations were shaped by speaker roles and identities in judicial domains. Data for the study consisted of transcripts of nine hours of naturally occurring tape-recorded Ghanaian courtroom interactions comprising civil and criminal cases. The data were recorded in Accra and Koforidua between November 2018 and February 2019 and consisted of sixteen court proceedings and seventy-three speakers. Results indicated that turn allocation was managed mostly by the judges with the other court participants, especially the attorneys and interpreters, occasionally self-selecting or selecting others, mainly, the disputants. Also identified was that not all linguistic resources for turn taking were equally accessible to all participants. In conclusion, the identities and roles of the court actors determine and constrain the available linguistic and pragmatic tools needed for effective turn taking management.

In conversation, answers are remembered better than the questions themselves.

Language is used in communicative contexts to identify and successfully transmit new information that should be later remembered. In three studies, we used question-answer pairs, a naturalistic device for focusing information, to examine how properties of conversations inform later item memory. In Experiment 1, participants viewed three pictures while listening to a recorded question-answer exchange between two people about the locations of two of the displayed pictures. In a memory recognition test conducted online a day later, participants recognized the names of pictures that served as answers more accurately than the names of pictures that appeared as questions. This suggests that this type of focus indeed boosts memory. In Experiment 2, participants listened to the same items embedded in declarative sentences. There was a reduced memory benefit for the second item, confirming the role of linguistic focus on later memory beyond a simple serial-position effect. In Experiment 3, two participants asked and answered the same questions about objects in a dialogue. Here, answers continued to receive a memory benefit, and this focus effect was accentuated by language production such that information-seekers remembered the answers to their questions better than information-givers remembered the questions they had been asked. Combined, these studies show how people's memory for conversation is modulated by the referential status of the items mentioned and by the speaker's roles of the conversation participants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Gender representation in the Central Surgical Association: A call to action

BackgroundOrganizations such as the Central Surgical Association are important for promulgating advances in general surgery, but diversity and inclusion profoundly affect what is presented and discussed. The objective of this study was to evaluate gender representation trends at the Central Surgical Association and its annual meetings over the past 13 years. MethodsPublicly available Central Surgical Association meeting proceedings from 2010 to 2022 were reviewed for society leaders, new members, invited speakers and moderators, and contributors to scientific sessions (first authors, senior authors). Gender identity was assessed through professional online platforms. The 2017 and 2021 meetings were conjoined with the Midwest Surgical Association. Incomplete data were obtained from 2013 and 2020–2022. ResultsA total of 2,158 individuals were reviewed, 554 (25.7%) of which were women. The overall trend of the absolute proportion of women participation increased by 1.8% per year (R2 = 0.7, P < .01). For leadership roles, 42/205 (20%) were women, with a 2.4% per year increase (R2 = 0.45, P = .02). For speaker roles, 82/384 (21.4%) were women, with a 2.2% increase per year (R2 = 0.6, P < .01). For scientific contributions, 253 first (35.9%) and 136 (19.3%) senior authors of 704 were women, with 1.5% (R2 = 0.4, P = .02) and 1.3% (R2 = 0.4, P = .03) increase per year, respectively. ConclusionThere has been a positive trend in women's involvement at Central Surgical Association meetings for leaders, speakers, and scientific authors. Diversity allows variate experiences to contribute to surgical advancements; thus, measures by the Central Surgical Association to ensure adequate representation should continue.

Students’ Perception of Using Podcasts to Improve Listening Skills at the 3rd Semester Students of English Department at Universitas Bandar Lampung

The process of developing listening skills involves capturing the speaker's words, grasping their intended message, and encompassing the roles of both speaker and listener, along with the auditory aspect. This study aims to investigate how students perceive the use of podcasts for enhancing listening skills among 3rd semester students in the English Department of Universitas Bandar Lampung. Employing qualitative methods, the research was conducted with a participant group of 34 students from the university's English Department. Data collection encompassed surveys and interviews involving 5 students. The collected data was analyzed by merging insights from both the surveys and interviews. The findings demonstrate noticeable enhancements in students' listening skills through the integration of podcasts as a learning medium. Consequently, students' viewpoints regarding podcast utilization for improving listening skills exhibited advancements in effectiveness and distinctiveness. Students expressed appreciation for the captivating and informative nature of this learning medium.

L’activité phatique et régulatrice dans la conversation en fulfulde-funangeere : aspects interactionnels et relationnels

Phatic and Feedback Activity in Conversation in Fulfulde-Funangeere: interactional and relational aspects&#x0D; This article focuses on the collective construction of discourse through the prism of phatic and feedback activity. The empirical framework is the informal conversation in Fulfulde. The aim of the analysis is to describe the linguistic materials used by the participants to perform the roles of speaker and addressee, respectively. The analysis focuses on the processes of establishing and maintaining communicative contact on the one hand, and on the markers of the addressee's commitment on the other. The empirical data used are the result of a sociolinguistic survey carried out through non-participant observation, a questionnaire, and the recording of five conversations in Fulfulde-Funangeere in the city of Maroua, Cameroon. The study is based on the hypothesis that phatic and backchannel activities are involved in the interactional mechanisms of synchronization of exchanges, but also have relational functions. The analyses take advantage of interctionist epistemology, notably conversational analysis (Sacks et al, 1974, Traverso, 2011) and the interpersonal relationship in discourse in interaction (Goffman, 1974; Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1992, 2005). The results of the study underline the polyfunctional character of the linguistic units mobilized by the interactants to maintain contact and mark their socio-cognitive commitment to the exchange. It also emerges that the linguistic units identified provide both interactional and relational microfunctions, confirming the basic hypothesis. In fact, the importance given to speech in the interaction forces the participants to engage emotionally, cognitively, and socially in the interaction. The interaction then becomes the place par excellence where the socio-affective stakes are played out: appearing benevolent, suitable, highlighting one's good education, showing deference and altruism, maintaining and consolidating interpersonal ties. In short, this study of the phatic and feedback activity contributes to shed light on some aspects of the conversational style of the peoples of the Sudano-Sahelian area of the Far North of Cameroon.

Dentistry and Gender Gap: An Overview of the Italian Situation.

Recently, the issue of the gender gap in dentistry and in the leadership in the dental field has placed new challenges on dental profession representatives and politicians. Indeed, the inequity between genders in healthcare workforces represents a limit to the progression of those in the professions, inhibiting talented colleagues from accessing high positions in the academic world and not providing adequate role models to inspire future generations. The Italian population practicing dentistry in 2021 was composed of 74% males and 26% females. The aim of this study is to analyze the level of the gender gap in the dental field in Italy by focusing on the gender distribution of professional leaders in institutional category associations and invited speakers at dental conferences accredited for the Continue Education in Medicine program. The search strategy considered three different fields in the national dentistry scene: the dental committee boards, the union category associations, and the cultural field. The roles in the dental boards were retrieved from the website of the National Medical and Dental Committee from 2018 to 2022; the roles in the union category associations at the provincial, regional, and national levels were retrieved from the related web pages, considering the period from 2018 to 2021; and the information about the speakers at national conferences from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2021 was retrieved from the National Agency for Regional Health Services (Agenzia nazionale per i servizi sanitari regionali (AGENAS)) websites. The extracted data were grouped and examined using descriptive statistics (frequency), and due to the categorical nature of the data, non-parametric tests (chi-square tests) were used to assess any differences between the two genders. The null hypothesis was that there were no statistical differences between the two genders' distributions. A p-value was considered significant when <0.05. In addition, aiming to understand the representation of male and female dentists, a comparison of the distributions of males and females in the dental boards with the percentages of female and male dentists operating in Italy in 2021 was performed using a binomial test. The analysis of the data regarding the composition of the dental boards and of the union category association boards revealed a statistically significant difference in the distribution of the roles between the two genders at the regional and local levels, with a p-value of <0.05, and a significantly low representation of the women practicing dentistry (p < 0.05). In Italy, women practicing dentistry are underrepresented in dental organizations and in cultural events, given the low numbers of female dentists in leadership and/or speaker roles in the years 2018-2021. Even though the glass ceiling effect continues to affect Italian female dentists, initiatives and political measures have been taken to improve this condition and reach gender equity.

Representation of Female Speakers at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meetings Over Time.

In the United States, women comprise 16% of orthopaedic surgery residents, 4% of fellows, and 6% of practicing orthopaedic surgeons. The underrepresentation of women in surgical subspecialties may be because of lack of early exposure to female mentors. Conference speaker roles are important for visibility. This study aims to evaluate the representation of women in speaker roles and responsibilities at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) meetings over time. The names of speakers and session titles at the annual AAOS meetings were obtained from conference programs for the years 2009, 2014, and 2019. Each speaker was classified based on sex and role. Sessions discussing scientific or surgical topics were classified as technical and those that did not were classified as nontechnical. Descriptive statistics are provided, as well as individual-year odds ratios (ORs) and confidence intervals (CIs) examining sex versus technical session status and sex versus speaker role; combined results controlling for year are calculated using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel method. Overall, 3,980 speaking sessions were analyzed; 6.8% of speaking sessions were assigned to women. Women were more likely than men to participate in nontechnical speaking roles (OR 3.85; 95% CI, 2.79 to 4.78). Among talks given by women, the percentage that were nontechnical increased (25.5% in 2009, 24.3% in 2014, and 44.1% in 2019). Among moderator roles, the percentage assigned to women increased (4.5% in 2009, 6.0% in 2014, 14.5% in 2019). Our findings demonstrate an increase in female speakers at AAOS meetings from 2009 to 2019. The percentage of female moderators and nontechnical sessions given by women increased since 2009. A need for a shift in the distribution of speaker role exists, which promotes inclusivity and prevents professional marginalization. Representation of women as role models increases visibility and may address the leaky pipeline phenomenon and paucity of women in orthopaedics.

Gender representation in leadership & research: a 13-year review of the Annual Canadian Society of Otolaryngology Meetings

BackgroundThe gender disparity in surgical disciplines, specifically in speakers across North American medical and surgical specialty conferences, has been highlighted in recent literature. Improving gender diversity at society meetings and panels may provide many benefits. Our aim was to determine the state of gender diversity amongst presenters and speakers at the annual Canadian Society of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (CSO) meetings.MethodsScientific programs for the CSO annual meetings from 2008 to 2020 were obtained from the national society website. Participant name, role, gender, location, and subspecialty topic were recorded for all roles other than poster presenter. Gender (male or female) was determined using an online search. The total number of opportunity spots and proportion of women was then calculated. Gender differences were analyzed using chi-square test and logistic regression with odds ratios.Four categories were analyzed: Society Leadership, Invited Speaker Opportunities, Workshop Composition (male-only panels or “manels”, female-only panels, or with at least one female speaker), and Oral Paper Presenters (first authors).ResultsThere were 1874 leadership opportunity spots from 2008 to 2020, of which 18.6% were filled by women. Among elected leadership positions in the society, only 92 unique women filled 738 leadership opportunity spots. 13.2% of workshop chairs, 20.8% of panelists and 22.7% of paper session chairs were female. There was an overall increase in the proportion of leadership positions held by women, from 13.9% of leadership spots in 2008 to 30.1% in 2020. Of the 368 workshops, 61.1% were led by men only, 36.4% by at least 1 female surgeon, and 2.5% by women only. “Manels” have comprised at least 37.5% of workshops each year.ConclusionsThe proportion of women in speaking roles at the annual CSO meetings has generally increased over time, particularly among panelists, leading to fewer male-only speaking panels. However, there has been a slower rate of growth in the proportion of unique women in speaker roles. There remains an opportunity to increase gender/sex diversity at the major Canadian otolaryngology meeting.Graphical

„Mér nem mondod magyarul?” Diaszporizáció és nyelvi ideológiák

The field of research on linguistic ideologies goes back more than four decades. However, research on language ideologies, which has pointed to the mediating link between forms of social existence and forms of speech, has only recently begun to address the issue of diasporization. My ethnographically informed critical sociolinguistic research combines these two research themes. In this paper, therefore, I explore the linguistic ideologies that permeate the processes and practices of diasporization. To do so, I draw on my doctoral research among Hungarians in Catalonia and its fieldwork experiences. Sociolinguistic research on migration and diasporization traces the dynamic and local processes through which diasporic identities are constructed, asserted and even transformed in particular interactions. Thus, I look at ideologies and identities (including diasporic identities) from a social constructivist perspective, i.e. I focus on how they become relevant and salient in a given interaction, and how they are endowed with additional meanings in the perspectives of speakers, rather than on their given characteristics. In this paper, I analyze an excerpt from a conversation in which participants construct different ideological positions and identities along the lines of nationality, regionality, language, age and gender. In this conversation, the two research participants met each other for the first time, and such interactions help the researcher to adjust to what are the language issues that really matter to the speakers, as here the participants engage in different negotiations to construct and maintain their speaker roles. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that speakers are simultaneously surrounded by multiple linguistic ideologies that become reflected to different degrees, but a linguistic analysis that is sensitive to social functions cannot ignore these. This also requires the researchers-fieldworkers to take account of their own role in the data generation processes.

Multifunctionality of Epistemic Stance Markers: Variation across Disciplines and Speaker Roles in Classroom Discourse

Abstract This study investigated the communicative functions of ‘I think’ and ‘I guess’ in classroom discourse and intra-register variation in their use. Building on research into the multifunctionality of epistemic stance markers, a coding scheme was developed and iteratively applied to a corpus, revealing five macro functions: epistemic stance, softening, personal perspective, discourse organizing, and deciding in real time. The frequency of each macro function differed between the two markers, as did the observed subfunctions. Statistical analyses comparing instructors and students in three disciplines indicated intra-register variation, linked to situational differences. ‘I guess’ was most frequent in student language, and ‘I think’ was most frequent in the humanities. Different patterns were also noted in the use of certain communicative functions. The results suggest the importance of accounting for register variation when describing epistemic stance markers.

Understanding and characterizing speaker roles within naturalistic task-based communications: The fearless steps APOLLO-11 corpus

Naturalistic team based speech communications requires specific protocols/procedures to be followed to allow for effective task completion for distributed team members. NASA Apollo-11 was the first manned space mission to successfully bring astronauts to the moon and return them safely. Mission specialists roles within NASA Mission Control (MOCR) are complex and reflected in their communications. In this study, we perform speaker clustering to identify speech segments uttered by the same speaker from recently recovered Fearless Steps APOLLO corpus (CRSS-UTDallas). We propose a pretrained network to obtain speaker embeddings and use a framework that builds on these learned embeddings which achieves a clustering accuracy of 73.4%. We also track/tag key speakers-of-interest across three critical mission phases and analyze speaker roles based on speech duration. NASA communication protocols dictate that information be communicated in a concise manner. In automated communication analysis, individuals higher in trait dominance generally speak more and gain more control over group processes. Hence, speaker duration of primary- versus -secondary speaker and speaker turns are metrics used to determine speaker role. This analysis provides greater understanding of communications protocol and serves as a lasting tribute to the «Heroes Behind the Heroes of Apollo» as well as preserve “words spoken in space.”

CSDM: A context-sensitive deep matching model for medical dialogue information extraction

Medical Dialogue Information Extraction has attracted increasing attention due to its great potential for application in electronic medical record generation, automatic disease diagnosis, etc. Recent methods have achieved considerable success but still suffer from two inherent limitations. On the one hand, a medical dialogue is composed of multiple utterances from two speaker roles, i.e., doctor and patient. Existing methods often ignore the transition and interaction of speaker roles. It makes the model unable to handle personal pronoun ambiguity. On the other hand, traditional methods have a weak ability to capture the information of multi-turn dialogue and lack the guidance of global context. In this paper, we propose a novel Context-Sensitive Deep Matching model for medical information extraction in multi-turn dialogue, dubbed CSDM. Specifically, we first introduce a multi-view aware channel, which exploits multiple mask templates to capture different information in dialogues. Thus, the transition and interaction of speaker roles are considered in the model. Second, we utilize a bi-directional attention mechanism to assess the relative importance of different contexts. Therefore, the proposed model can perceive information of multi-turn dialogue. Extensive experiments on a public benchmark dataset show that our method achieves new state-of-the-art performance, which demonstrates the effectiveness of CSDM.

POLİTİK EPİSTEMOLOJİDE EPİSTEMİK ADALETSİZLİK VE HİBRİT KÖTÜLÜK

This study claims that Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice can be extended in two ways. First, the excess of credibility can be evaluated as an epistemic injustice. Fricker suggests that a deflated level of credibility causes epistemic injustice. However, practices such as forcing false statements result from excess credibility and cause epistemic injustices especially during war and detention processes. In some hierarchical situations, social actors’ hearer and speaker roles may turn into a hegemonic relationship by suggesting that the speaker has knowledge. This kind of relationship motivates exclusion, marginalization and alienation due to identity bias. Then, it can be argued that not only the lack of credibility but also its excess is an epistemic injustice. In this study, the excess of credibility is accepted as the situation faced by “people who are interrogated with the claim of having knowledge.” Second, epistemic injustice can be defined as a hybrid evil. It refers to instances of evil that contain complex motivations such as political evil, since it can neither be reduced only to the character nor to the environmental conditions. Fricker’s proposal for resolving epistemic injustice is hybrid virtues such as intellectual and reflexive critical-social sensitivity. Therefore, while individuals’ situations and context provide reflexive thinking, they also support a normative critical attitude. Fricker offers hybrid virtues for the solution while she does not define the problem as hybrid. Thus this paper proposes to extend Fricker’s concept in two ways: first, including excess of credibility within the scope of the epistemic injustice, and second, defining such injustices as political hybrid evils. Then this expansion will give political epistemology an opportunity to reevaluate given theories of politics, ethics and epistemology and increase its normative contribution to them.

Interaction and meaning making in basic adult education for immigrants the case of Swedish for immigrants in Sweden (SFI)

In this article, focus is on students’ oral production in two classrooms in Swedish for immigrants (SFI). The study focuses on practices with interaction patterns where students are involved in negotiation of meaning. Theoretical basis is the importance of interpersonal interaction for language development, with a focus on students’ use of varied speaker roles and speech actions. Data were obtained through observations, field notes, and audio and video recordings. The examples presented here demonstrate that students were involved in the negotiation of meaning and had space to try different speaker roles and speech actions, such as (among others) initiating, agreeing, dissenting, arguing, interrupting, and taking the floor. These examples only constituted a restricted part of class time, and most of the teaching was of a type where little oral or written interaction took place. Overall, we think that SFI education could be improved by developing teaching that stimulates and allows for negotiations of meaning and language production and also allows for use of different types of digital media, both for oral and written interaction.

Functions of Russian verb-derived discourse markers slušaj and smotri from the perspective of information management and interpersonal regulation

While a significant amount of research related to discourse markers in the Russian language has been devoted to particles, very few scholars have focused on verb-derived discourse markers such as slušaj (‘listen’), smotri (‘look’), znaeš’ (‘y'know’), ponimaeš’ (‘d'you understand’), and vidiš’ (‘d'you see’). In this paper, I focus on slušaj and smotri, exploring their functions of information management and interpersonal regulation in talk-in-interaction. Based on data collected from YouTube interview videos, I examine the features of slušaj and smotri in terms of speaker roles, position in utterances, utterance structure, and lexical co-occurrence. A qualitative analysis supported by quantitative results shows how slušaj and smotri perform their information management and interpersonal functions in requesting/providing information, reformulating utterances, establishing contact, and indicating empathy. Considering the similarities and differences observed from the analysis, the results of this study suggest that slušaj is likely to be an interpersonal marker typical of response utterances, while smotri is an information-oriented marker leading a hearer to understand an utterance.

Epistemic independence and speaker roles: Highlighting the role of second speaker and mitigating the role of first speaker

Definitions of attenuation tend to place their emphasis on different aspects of the communication process, especially facework, propositional content, illocutionary force and the roles of speech participants. This paper concentrates on the latter of these aspects. Although studies mention the possibility that attenuation applies to more than one participant, the analysis of particular examples within those studies shows that authors tend to refer mostly (or even only) to the speaker's role (e.g., Briz, 1998, 2003; Briz and Albelda, 2013; Villalba Ibáñez, 2016). This study explores the possibility that attenuation of the role of another participant (i.e. a participant other than the speaker who is attenuating) might be rightfully considered a type of attenuation. To do so, it focuses on examples where one speaker (S1) sets forward an idea and the respondent (S2) intensifies the content while at the same time diminishing S1's role in the conceptualization of the idea. Finally, it is argued that attenuating or highlighting speakers' roles can serve different facework-related purposes.

Footing and Speech Acts in the Qurʼanic Dialogue of Allah and Iblīs: A Pragmatically Enhanced Approach

This study seeks to examine the interface potentially holding between footing and the speech acts performed in the main Qurʼanic dialogue of Allah and Iblīs (Q15:32-43). The study utilizes a synthetic approach that combines two theoretical strands: (i) Erving Goffman’s (1979, 1981) interaction model of footing as orchestrated by the speaker roles of animator, author, and principal; (ii) Searle’s (1976) classification scheme of illocutionary acts and their felicity conditions. Crucially, the pragmatically enhanced footing analysis of the Qurʼanic speech event that binds Allah and Iblīs has demonstrated how the two participants perform illocutionary acts that determine their theologically felicitous speaker roles as animator, author, and/or principal. Five categories of illocutionary acts have been identified in the overall participation framework of the dialogue: expressives, directives, declarations, representatives, and commissives. Based on these categories, both Allah and Iblīs have performed acts as authors, whose utterances are animated via the reportorial style of the Qurʼanic text; further, the perlocutions of certain acts have manifested the discursive positions of each participant in a way that reflects his manipulating speaker role in the speech event..