Theory Of Language Use Research Articles

Proper names as speech acts

Abstract In this paper, I question the idea that proper names are merely used to refer to things or individuals. However, I am not going to use predicativism to prove this point. I will somehow look at things from the point of view of scholars like Frege or Kripke. I consider that this idea (that proper names are merely used to refer, at least when they are in argument positions) stems from a view of language that does not throw proper light on contextuality as discussed by Mey, Jacob. 2001. Pragmatics. Oxford: Wiley. From the very beginning, I argue that the issue can be seen in a better light through a theory of language use that considers language games as embedded in a society and a culture. I accept the idea that there are norms for introducing names in society and for using them in an appropriate way. Even if, for most philosophers, referring is the basic function of proper names, I propose that in a number of cases proper names are not essentially used to refer (although it is possible that the name allows a combination of referring and other functions). The referring function of names broadly correlates with the assertive function of the utterance in which the name occurs or with speech acts whose aim is to modify reality and, therefore, persuade, modify, create, promote, destroy, etc. objects or individuals (often referred to with proper names). However, there are other types of speech acts where proper names are not only used to refer, but, instead, to call someone (another case is scolding someone or a dog). Intentions clearly emerge in context. The same utterance may have more than one function, from the illocutionary point of view, but a proper name, as situated in different contexts, may have more than one perlocutionary function. I argue that while the speech act of referring is always a diagonal speech act, the speech act of calling someone (by the use of a proper name) is not a diagonal speech act but a self-sufficient, autonomous, primary speech act. Hence there is a clear difference between referring through an assertion and referring as part of calling, where referring is incorporated into the main speech act as part of the explicit illocutionary force of the speech act. In an assertion, referring is a prerequisite to providing a referent about which a property is asserted. Predication and reference are intertwined. In a speech act other than an assertion, there need not be a predicate, and referring and calling (or some other speech act) are connected. I propose that the learning of the speech act of calling by the use of a name requires certain syntactic considerations, that prima facie contradict Chomsky’s binding theory. I then put forward the view that learning one’s name requires, at some stage, knowledge of the semantics of de se structures.

The various guises of translanguaging and its theoretical airstrip

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the necessary complementarity between a translanguaging and named language-perspective by critically examining risks of ‘overshooting’ when a translanguaging view is theoretically posited as the ultimately superior (sociolinguistic) theory of language use and learning in today’s multilingual world.

Good conversations: Grounding, convergence, and richness

We apply three communication theories (the collaborative theory of language use, communication accommodation theory, and media richness theory) to aspects of conversational structure (openings, closings) and communicative setting (audiovisual, written) in order to make predictions about how people will feel about conversational interactions. We distinguish between two sources of information that interlocutors use to evaluate conversations: conversational outcomes and subjective conversational experience. We propose that positive subjective conversational experience comes about when interlocutors reach common ground with one another and do so with the least required effort possible (collaborative theory of language use), converge on their language use and communicative behaviors (communication accommodation theory), and select the appropriate medium for their conversation to take place (media richness theory). This positive subjective conversational experience is an important component of good conversations.

Determining Illocutionary Act with VARIES Models

Research on the use of language is growing over time as many theories of language use are found. Language is no longer just for communicating but identifying something either implicitly or not. This paper discusses the language use to identify the act of utterance by knowing the context and social background in panel discussion conducted by descriptive qualitative approach with content analysis method and focused on language use based on the phenomenon of the panel discussion. The data in this study was in the form of utterance containing lexical items which is used to refer to speakers’ language uses in conveying social background and action. This research applied sociopragmatic approach to analyze speakers' social background using VARIES Model theory and speakers's meaning using Illocutionary Act theory through language use. The result of this study shows that vocational language can determine acts such as representative, expressive, directive speech act; age language to directive speech act; religion language to representative, directive and expressive speech act; informality language to representative, expressive and declarative speech act; education background to representative, directive, expressive, commissive speech act; sex language to representative, directive, commissive, expressive and declarative speech act

When redundancy is useful: A Bayesian approach to "overinformative" referring expressions.

Referring is one of the most basic and prevalent uses of language. How do speakers choose from the wealth of referring expressions at their disposal? Rational theories of language use have come under attack for decades for not being able to account for the seemingly irrational overinformativeness ubiquitous in referring expressions. Here we present a novel production model of referring expressions within the Rational Speech Act framework that treats speakers as agents that rationally trade off cost and informativeness of utterances. Crucially, we relax the assumption that informativeness is computed with respect to a deterministic Boolean semantics, in favor of a nondeterministic continuous semantics. This innovation allows us to capture a large number of seemingly disparate phenomena within one unified framework: the basic asymmetry in speakers' propensity to overmodify with color rather than size; the increase in overmodification in complex scenes; the increase in overmodification with atypical features; and the increase in specificity in nominal reference as a function of typicality. These findings cast a new light on the production of referring expressions: rather than being wastefully overinformative, reference is usefully redundant. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

EMPTY CATEGORIES IN TRANSFORMATIONAL RULES

There are three theories that are always developed in any study of language, namely theory of language structure, theory of language acquisition, and theory of language use. Among those three theories, theory of language structure is regarded as the most important one. It is assumed that if someone knows the structure of language, he/she can develop theories about how language is acquired and used. It makes Chomsky interested in developing the theory of language structure. Chomsky introduced a theory of grammar called Transformational Generative Grammar or Transformational Syntax. Transformational Syntax is a method of sentence fomation which applies some syntactic rules (or also called transformational rules). Transformational rules consist of three types, namely movement transformation, deletion transformation, and substitution transformation. When those transformational rules are applied in a sentence, they will leave empty categories. Empty categories can be in the form of Complementizer (Comp), Trace, and PRO. This article will elaborate those empty categories; their appearance in the transformational rules; and the characteristics of each empty category.

Ekins on Groups and Procedures

Richard Ekins’s argument, developed in his The Nature of Legislative Intent, rests on four pillars: a socio-ontological conception based on a theory of how groups act; a theory of language use; an explanatory attempt, namely, a descriptive account of the nature of the legislative process; and, finally, a normative account of a legislature’s authority. In this paper, we will focus on Ekins’s socio-ontological perspective and argue that, though Ekins’s use of socio-ontological tools to address the nature of legislative intent is undoubtedly innovative, his approach in this regard does not necessarily bring him to the conclusion he argues for. In the first part of the paper, drawing on John Searle and Raimo Tuomela, we will show that a socio-ontological approach to legislatures does not necessarily entail that the nature of legislatures is best accounted for in terms of groups. In the second part of the paper, drawing on Michael Bacharach’s group-centered approach to game theory, we will argue that a different socio-ontological approach works better on explanatory grounds. Hence—this will be our conclusion—Ekins’s socio-ontological assumptions, taken alone, cannot do the work they are assigned.

Metapragmatics of normalcy: Mobility, context, and language choice

Drawing on data from Iranian Azerbaijani migrants, I propose the notion of chronotopization to understand how perceptions of normative social behavior are dynamically constructed and organized with respect to time, space, and the people involved in the interaction. The differently scaled chronotopes of normalcy (re-)constructed and enregistered in these processes, I argue, guide social actors' sociolinguistic behaviors and normative judgments. Through an analysis of participants' metacommentaries on appropriate language choice, I discuss how chronotopic and scalar understandings of normalcy can offer us a broader theory of language use and can be applied to a wide array of sociolinguistic phenomena beyond language choice.

Bringing the Nonlinearity of the Movement System to Gestural Theories of Language Use: Multifractal Structure of Spoken English Supports the Compensation for Coarticulation in Human Speech Perception.

Coarticulation is the tendency for speech vocalization and articulation even at the phonemic level to change with context, and compensation for coarticulation (CfC) reflects the striking human ability to perceive phonemic stability despite this variability. A current controversy centers on whether CfC depends on contrast between formants of a speech-signal spectrogram—specifically, contrast between offset formants concluding context stimuli and onset formants opening the target sound—or on speech-sound variability specific to the coordinative movement of speech articulators (e.g., vocal folds, postural muscles, lips, tongues). This manuscript aims to encode that coordinative-movement context in terms of speech-signal multifractal structure and to determine whether speech's multifractal structure might explain the crucial gestural support for any proposed spectral contrast. We asked human participants to categorize individual target stimuli drawn from an 11-step [ga]-to-[da] continuum as either phonemes “GA” or “DA.” Three groups each heard a specific-type context stimulus preceding target stimuli: either real-speech [al] or [a], sine-wave tones at the third-formant offset frequency of either [al] or [aɹ], and either simulated-speech contexts [al] or [aɹ]. Here, simulating speech contexts involved randomizing the sequence of relatively homogeneous pitch periods within vowel-sound [a] of each [al] and [aɹ]. Crucially, simulated-speech contexts had the same offset and extremely similar vowel formants as and, to additional naïve participants, sounded identical to real-speech contexts. However, randomization distorted original speech-context multifractality, and effects of spectral contrast following speech only appeared after regression modeling of trial-by-trial “GA” judgments controlled for context-stimulus multifractality. Furthermore, simulated-speech contexts elicited faster responses (like tone contexts do) and weakened known biases in CfC, suggesting that spectral contrast depends on the nonlinear interactions across multiple scales that articulatory gestures express through the speech signal. Traditional mouse-tracking behaviors measured as participants moved their computer-mouse cursor to register their “GA”-or-“DA” decisions with mouse-clicks suggest that listening to speech leads the movement system to resonate with the multifractality of context stimuli. We interpret these results as shedding light on a new multifractal terrain upon which to found a better understanding in which movement systems play an important role in shaping how speech perception makes use of acoustic information.

Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction.

Signers and speakers coordinate a broad range of intentionally expressive actions within the spatiotemporal context of their face-to-face interactions (Parmentier, 1994; Clark, 1996; Johnston, 1996; Kendon, 2004). Varied semiotic repertoires combine in different ways, the details of which are rooted in the interactions occurring in a specific time and place (Goodwin, 2000; Kusters et al., 2017). However, intense focus in linguistics on conventionalized symbolic form/meaning pairings (especially those which are arbitrary) has obscured the importance of other semiotics in face-to-face communication. A consequence is that the communicative practices resulting from diverse ways of being (e.g., deaf, hearing) are not easily united into a global theoretical framework. Here we promote a theory of language that accounts for how diverse humans coordinate their semiotic repertoires in face-to-face communication, bringing together evidence from anthropology, semiotics, gesture studies and linguistics. Our aim is to facilitate direct comparison of different communicative ecologies. We build on Clark’s (1996) theory of language use as ‘actioned’ via three methods of signaling: describing, indicating, and depicting. Each method is fundamentally different to the other, and they can be used alone or in combination with others during the joint creation of multimodal ‘composite utterances’ (Enfield, 2009). We argue that a theory of language must be able to account for all three methods of signaling as they manifest within and across composite utterances. From this perspective, language—and not only language use—can be viewed as intentionally communicative action involving the specific range of semiotic resources available in situated human interactions.

Thinking of feeling: Hasan, Vygotsky, and some ruminations on the development of narrative sensibility in children

ABSTRACTThe late Ruqaiya Hasan was an enthusiastic but exacting reader of Vygotsky: she reproached him for lacking a theory of language use, for using an asocial model of education without class variation in semantic code, and above all for using an atomistic unit of analysis, namely lexical word meaning. In this paper, I take up these criticisms and argue that Vygotsky was aware of them and working to overcome them when he died. I then use the more holistic methods suggested by his late lectures, Hasan’s criticisms, and Halliday and Matthiessen’s work on systemic-functional semantics to show development of narrative in Korean school children. In accordance with Hasan’s criticism, there was no obvious difference at the level of lexical word meanings. But there was a significant increase in embedding, in mental over material processes, and in ‘internal’ over ‘external’ cohesion, all of which suggest what Vygotsky calls the development of ‘inner perezhivanie’ at school age.

Learning and Development of Second and Foreign Language Pragmatics as a Higher‐Order Language Skill: A Brief Overview of Relevant Theories

AbstractThe development of effective second and foreign (L2) language learning materials needs to be grounded in two types of theories: (a) a theory of language and language use and (b) a theory of language learning. Both are equally important, insofar as an effective learning environment requires an understanding of the knowledge, skills, and abilities that are being targeted as well as an idea of how learner development progresses. Although the author and colleagues have previously provided a theoretical basis for the construct of L2 pragmatic ability, and thus a theory of language use, the current paper focuses on learner development, particularly on the theoretical orientation towards L2 pragmatic learning. Given this superordinate goal, the paper will briefly review different theoretical paradigms that have been employed in adult L2 pragmatics development research. In the first part of the paper, I will provide an overview of the cognitive, socially oriented, and emergentist perspectives used in research on L2 pragmatic development. Then, based on the different ontological perspectives, I will discuss the affordances and challenges of applying a theoretical perspective to designing L2 pragmatic learning environments, drawing upon the example of the cognitively oriented information processing theory.

Relevance theory: pragmatics and cognition.

Relevance Theory is a cognitively oriented theory of pragmatics, i.e., a theory of language use. It builds on the seminal work of H.P. Grice(1) to develop a pragmatic theory which is at once philosophically sensitive and empirically plausible (in both psychological and evolutionary terms). This entry reviews the central commitments and chief contributions of Relevance Theory, including its Gricean commitment to the centrality of intention-reading and inference in communication; the cognitively grounded notion of relevance which provides the mechanism for explaining pragmatic interpretation as an intention-driven, inferential process; and several key applications of the theory (lexical pragmatics, metaphor and irony, procedural meaning). Relevance Theory is an important contribution to our understanding of the pragmatics of communication.

Notas sobre el dialogismo de Mijail Bajtin en 'El problema del texto en la lingüística, la filología y las ciencias humanas' (Annotations on Mikhail Bakhtin's Dialogism in 'The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences')

This is an annotated Spanish translation of Mikhail Bakhtin's essay Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis, from Speech Genres and Other Essays. Bakhtin's reflections on dialogism are related to other accounts of literary communication, especially from the field of narratology, and also to interactional and pragmaticist theories of language use, such as Austin's and Goffman's, as well as Schleiermacher's hermeneutics. The question of address in literature (narrators, implied authors, implied readers) is given particular prominence in the commentary.

Semantics and pragmatics.

The fields of semantics and pragmatics are devoted to the study of conventionalized and context- or use-dependent aspects of natural language meaning, respectively. The complexity of human language as a semiotic system has led to considerable debate about how the semantics/pragmatics distinction should be drawn, if at all. This debate largely reflects contrasting views of meaning as a property of linguistic expressions versus something that speakers do. The fact that both views of meaning are essential to a complete understanding of language has led to a variety of efforts over the last 40 years to develop better integrated and more comprehensive theories of language use and interpretation. The most important advances have included the adaptation of propositional analyses of declarative sentences to interrogative, imperative and exclamative forms; the emergence of dynamic, game theoretic, and multi-dimensional theories of meaning; and the development of various techniques for incorporating context-dependent aspects of content into representations of context-invariant content with the goal of handling phenomena such as vagueness resolution, metaphor, and metonymy. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:285-297. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1227 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Information status relates to production, distribution, and comprehension

MacDonald's (2013) paper makes two strong contributions to the psycholinguistics literature, in my opinion. First, it calls for a serious consideration of how cognitive pressures affect production processing, which is a necessary step for the development of mechanistic theories of language use. A second major contribution of the PDC is that it provides a theoretical explanation for the body of evidence showing that language comprehension is affected by the user's experience, for example where frequent structures and words are processed more easily than less frequent structures and words. The boldest portion of this proposal is that processing constraints on production are the primary source of typological distributions, which in turn affect comprehension biases. This is exactly the kind of theoretical claim that helps the field move forward, by being clear, simple, and far-reaching. At the same time, I argue that the PDC would benefit from greater consideration of information status. Language production is not primarily the retrieval of words and structures. Instead, these activities serve the speaker's goal, which is to communicate a meaning to the addressee. Likewise, linguistic meanings consist of more than identifying who did what. An important part of communication involves linking the utterance to information in the world and the linguistic context. Information varies across dimensions such as given vs. new, and topic vs. focus (for a review see Arnold et al., 2013). Information status is critical to understanding the PDC's proposed mechanisms, for two reasons. First, it is intimately related to the memory/attention cognitive mechanisms that are central to the reasoning behind the PDC. Second, these correlations highlight an important challenge for the PDC, which is to specify the distributional patterns that comprehenders use. I will illustrate these points with evidence of how information status is related to both (1) acoustic prominence and disfluency, and (2) syntactic structure and animacy.

Grounding in Instant Messaging

In two experiments, we investigated predictions of the collaborative theory of language use (Clark, 1996) as applied to instant messaging (IM). This theory describes how the presence and absence of different grounding constraints causes people to interact differently across different communicative media (Clark & Brennan, 1991). In Study 1, we document how IM changes as users increase in expertise. In Study 2, we compare adaptations across telephoning and IM with a focus on multitasking.

Dynamics and Languaging: Toward an Ecology of Language

We introduce the second of 2 special issues of Ecological Psychology that present papers from a conference, “Grounding Language in Perception and (Inter)action,” held at Gordon College in June 2009. The articles in this issue situate the study of language use in two kinds of context that are central to an understanding of “languaging” activities in the social settings in which they occur. The first is the context of dynamical systems theory. Wallot and Van Orden show how a dynamical systems approach can illuminate language use as the intentional and creative activity that it is. Cowley and Thibault illustrate the distributed language approach. Cowley follows Gibson (1979/1986) in comparing language understanding to picture perception. Thibault illustrates the wholly embedded nature of language use in an evocative example of 2 boys offering a description of aliens they have learned about in a story. All of the contributors emphasize language as embodied social action deeply embedded in the social contexts of talking. The articles in this issue and its predecessor, Ecological Psychology 22(4), offer valuable insights for development of an ecological theory of language use.

Ambient affiliation: A linguistic perspective on Twitter

This article explores how language is used to build community with the microblogging service, Twitter (www.twitter.com). Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL), a theory of language use in its social context, is employed to analyse the structure and meaning of ‘tweets’ (posts to Twitter) in a corpus of 45,000 tweets collected in the 24 hours after the announcement of Barak Obama’s victory in the 2008 US presidential elections. This analysis examines the evaluative language used to affiliate in tweets. The article shows how a typographic convention, the hashtag, has extended its meaning potential to operate as a linguistic marker referencing the target of evaluation in a tweet (e.g. #Obama). This both renders the language searchable and is used to upscale the call to affiliate with values expressed in the tweet. We are currently witnessing a cultural shift in electronic discourse from online conversation to such ‘searchable talk’.

Staying on the same wavelength: Talking about talking in paediatric speech and language therapy sessions

Participants in speech and language therapy sessions engage in talk about talking to accomplish different social actions: identifying and explaining linguistic concepts; correcting language use; and repairing misunderstanding. Different traditions in interaction research have examined the practices of topic management, correction, and repair in instructional and mundane conversation, but the need to disentangle the common thread of ‘language’ that runs through these practices in speech and language therapy interaction has not been recognized. This paper examines three short extracts from transcripts of clinical interaction involving school‐aged children with language disorders in order to see how they manage communication about metalinguistic topics, in face of the significant difficulties that can arise in the interaction. The analysis builds on the method, techniques, and discoveries made by research in conversation analysis, and, using Clark's theory of language use, proposes an explanatory model of how therapists and children manage their talk about talking.