Semantics/Pragmatics

This paper sets out to reasess some relevance-theoretic analyses of the English modals, in particular Walton (1988), , and Berbeira Gardón (1996a), and show how a unified treatment of modal verbs is possible within the framework of Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory. Before going through each of these proposals one by one, a summary is offered of the main theoretical assumptions common to all of them.

This paper aims to provide a literature review about the meaning and use of negative polar (yes/no) questions and complete it with some Polish data. Semantic and pragmatic factors will be discussed. Attention will be drawn to the fact that most of research concentrate on interrogatives themselves, neglecting their possible answers, whereas the latter may be very informative about the nature of the former.

The use of language may influence the society both in terms of what is said by the people and about the people. Research in language and gender considers how language impacts upon society. The present study examines most influential theories regarding gender discrimination and compares interruptions in three types of pairs: male to male conversation (MM), female to female conversation (FF) and male to female in mixed sex conversation (MF). Three types of conversation samples were taken from Radio, TV and natural conversations. The multimedia annotator ELAN was used to transcribe and analyze the data. The results indicate that males interrupt more than females. The greater number of interruptions on the part of males has been attributed to male dominancy in conversation. This study also reveals that males interrupt more in male to female (in mixed sex) conversation as compared to male to male conversation. It asserts that in order to take hold of conversational floor, the male interlocutors try to take control of conversation by interruptions.

Language acquisition has strong relation with language awareness which is very important in order to be a good language user, because it is a person‘s sensitivity to and conscious awareness of language and its role in human life. It deals with explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use. Language awareness includes the knowledge about language, a conscious understanding of how languages work, of how people learn them and use them. In English language teaching the use of language in classroom interaction is not only for communication, it is also used to deliver norm through language, meanwhile in Indonesia, most of student is multilingual where they have already acquired languages, including their mother tongue and their national language, the students‘ awareness in learning foreign language such English is a crucial issue to be considered. One of technique that can be used to develop students‘ language awareness is through discovery learning. It is an inquiry-based theory which encourages students to be active agents in their own learning process, including in language learning. Discovery learning in English language teaching allows the students to work on language by having a role in their own learning and developing their activity through the language. So, this paper aims to give an overview how to apply discovery learning in English language teaching to develop student language awareness.

Booklet on the meaning and use of the North Slope Iñupiaq postbase 'niq'. Popular scientific version of MA thesis on the semantics and pragmatics of the North Slope Iñupiaq postbase 'niq'.

The booklet is based on knowledge shared by:
Lollie Hobson
Tuuqłak Diaz
Dr. Edna Ahgeak MacLean
Janie Snyder
Ronald Aniqsuaq Brower
Lucy Ahvaiyak Brower-Richards
Doris Hugo
Uumiñaq
Beverly Faye Aqaŋŋiq Hugo
Etta P. Fournier
Dick Weyiouanna
Fannie Akpik
and two anonymous.

We use language in order to achieve a wide variety of ends. To a good first approximation, pragmatics is the study of the things we do in, or by, using language, together with the facts, knowledge, and abilities that we exploit in order to do those things. Correlatively, pragmatic phenomena are all and only the phenomena that are studied in doing pragmatics. In using bits of language in order to achieve our ends, we rely on various facts about those bits of language, together with knowledge and abilities relating to those facts. For one prominent example, we exploit facts about the meanings of the words that we use, and facts about the meanings of sentences that depend upon the combination of words in them given those words' meanings. To a good first approximation, semantics is the study of facts about the meanings of words and sentences, about the dependence of sentence meaning on combinations of word meanings, and about our knowledge and abilities relating to those facts. Correlatively, semantic phenomena are all and only those phenomena studied in doing semantics. There is no obvious reason, in advance of further inquiry, to suppose that no phenomena fall within the remits of both semantics and pragmatics, and some reason to think that many phenomena fall within both. For example, it is natural to assume that speakers' knowledge of meaning will figure in shaping their use of language, and in the reception of that use. And many philosophers have held that the use of language plays a constitutive role in determining the standing meanings of the words that are so used. However, some theorists appeal to a more restrictive conception of pragmatics-roughly, pragmatics minus semantics-and thereby to force a sort of partition. Nothing turns on this.

Speech acts shape the core of pragmatic competence and their mastery is a prerequisite for successful discourse encounters in an L2. Cross-cultural comparisons, as claimed by Johnstone (2018), are very effective for knowing and acquiring the speech acts. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to compare a limited number of communicative routines in English and Persian within the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) developed by Wierzbicka (1991) and to examine if the words uttered by speakers at the surface level (exterior) would match their thoughts (interior) especially in such routines as compliment, request, and invitation patterns. The participants comprised 21 MA students studying Eng-lish language teaching. The data was obtained by a validated researcher-made questionnaire containing both structured and unstructured items and 10 scenarios on the basis of which the study participants provided comments, appropriate expressions, and responses. For the English routines, the data was obtained from three English plays. The aforementioned communicative routines in Persian were described in terms of their NSM while the metalinguistic components for the English routines were adopted from Wierz-bicka (1991). The results indicated that the NSM provided rich insights into subliminal cross-cultural differences. Since this study makes use of simple cultural scripts (similar to circumlocution) to describe communicative routines in both English and Persian, learners can easily understand differences within the hidden cross-cultural bound interactions. Implications of the study suggest that both EFL teachers and learners can gain more profound insights about the cross-cultural sociopragmatic differences between English and Persian.

For the past few decades, relevance theory has been a significant area of study within the fields of pragmatics and semantics. It proposed a new line of thinking about communication; it took into consideration the cognitive aspect of communication, with the underlying assumption that communicators draw attention to what they deem as most relevant in a given context. In their relevance theory, Sperber and Wilson laid emphasis on the fact that the code model of verbal communication is hugely limited and stressed the importance of context for understanding and interpretation of utterances. The following paper will summarise Sperber and Wilson’s take on the code and inferential models of verbal communication, and present the ostensive-inferential model devised by them.

It is a somewhat vexed question whether presuppositions are always accommodated into the global context of utterance of the sentence, or whether they may sometimes be accommodated into a local context - the context of some subsentential constituent. Von Fintel (2008) argues that there is no local accommodation. He shows that presuppositions in the scope of universally quantified sentences, which have traditionally been handled via local accommodation (eg Heim 1983), can be accounted for by assuming that conversational participants select a domain of quantification such that every relevant element of it has the property required by the presupposition in the scope. It is shown that this domain selection mechanism cannot account for a related set of data involving presupposition triggers in the restrictor rather than scope of the universal. We also discuss the relationship between quantified sentences and conditionals, and general consequences for the theory of presupposition accommodation.

This book deals with discourse markers in the sociolinguistic context of Sicily (Italy). Proposing a broad sociolinguistic approach, two items are taken into account, 'arà' and 'mentri'. These elements are treated synchronically at first, to describe their functional and formal properties, then diachronically, to show how the discourse-marking uses have developed, and eventually from a sociolinguistic perspective, to account for how they are involved in language contact in the bilingual repertoire and how they acquire socio-symbolic value in the community. By integrating the structural, the historical, and the social perspectives, this book allows for a deeper understanding of discourse markers.

Forest fire causes serious damage to the Flora and fauna of a country. This is one of major environmental concern. Early prediction of fires saves large number of Flora and fauna and prevents the ecosystem. By predicting the area burnt we can also classify whether the fire into small or big. The key motivation for this prediction is to help fire management team in proper resource allocation and to help the fire-fighters in a best possible way. The meteorological conditions of the forest are the key factors of the forest fire. These climatic data can be obtained using the local sensors which are incorporated in the nearest meteorological stations. This research proposes various Machine learning approaches such as Naïve Bias, Decision Trees, SVR, Random forest, Stochastic Gradient Descent and Bagging for predicting the amount of land burnt in the forest. Here the predictive model is build using the outbreaks of fire caused in the northeast region of Portugal.

The rapid development of information Meme comics are the example of famou distinguish meme comics from any oth comics. Furthermore, the various top sociopragmatics approach. Pragmatic eq Moreover, the similar method is also ap on its form of utterance, meme comics words and taboos are often found. Furth this comic only appropriate for adult re simple pictures and words. The researc topics include sex, gender, law, technolo things which happen in daily life. Event from the mistakes in life. Consequently live a better life.

The argument in this paper strives for a more detailed study on Latin-American ‘piropos’ and English ‘pick up lines’ since very limited studies have been reported. Thus, my emphasis is to analyze the Piropo and the Pick up Line in both Spanish and English discourse as a speech act and as cognitive metaphor.
At this point, I will use Achugar’s definition for Spanish piropos:
“Piropos are compliments with an amorous or sexual expressive tone, usually said by men to women. The setting is usually the street where the participants do not know each other and can remain anonymous. Participants are anonymous to their interlocutors but they usually perform for an audience of peers” (Achugar, 2001, p.127).
Likewise, I present the definition for English pick up line:
“An expression that is used to meet another people, usually of the opposite sex, a pick up line is only as useful as the conversation that follows it”.
“Pick up Lines are usually humorous and witty and some of them fail to generate useful conversation” (Montoya, 1996, p.1)
Given those definitions, Achugar (2001), claims that piropos are seen as reflections in language of the traditional roles of men and women in Spanish speaking cultures. The roles of men and women as depicted in the analysis of piropos shows a very defined place for each sex in these societies. Women are constructed as passive recipients and reactive, men as active producers and initiators.
In addition, this paper will strive for a more conceptual analysis of metaphor in order to understand the nature of how these expressions are being constructed and why. My assumption is not to look at syntactic structures or morphology as indicators to learn, understand and use piropos and pick up lines, but to derive a taxonomy that will map the concepts behind the expressions used in each language and observe whether or not concepts overlap in both piropos and pick up lines which are metaphorically constructed. This will allow seeing the similarities and differences in their meaning given the fact that metaphorical expressions syntactically do not reflect formulas, but my argument is that the concepts and the structure of the metaphor will allow a better understanding of their meaning and function. Given this, I will use the taxonomy for categorizing metaphors as those devised by Achugar (2001) and Perea (1999) in order to further analyze and develop the understanding of metaphor in the uses of piropo and pick up lines. Further, this paper will be based on some rationales as postulated by Kövecses & Szabó (1996) in their study of cognitive semantics in regard to idioms and metaphors.

The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis holds that language plays a powerful role in shaping human consciousness, affecting everything from private thought and perception to larger patterns of behavior in society—ultimately allowing members of any given speech community to arrive at a shared sense of social reality. This article starts with a brief consideration of the philosophical insights that inspired the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis or the “principle of linguistic relativity,” as it is more often known today. Toward the end of the article current empirical research is reviewed. This explores everything from human universals to the cross-cultural differences in the construction of gender, color, space, and other creative practices associated with language, such as storytelling, poetry, or song.

The aim of this paper is firstly to put metaphors within the right scope; that is because some respectable tradition views metaphor as a central semantic process and that it does not involve pragmatics at all, and secondly, to investigate how metaphors are yielded in both English and Arabic languages, recognized from other figures of speech/tropes, and interpreted pragmatically.
In order to put metaphors within the right scope, it is necessary to cover the main issues revolving around the main semantic theories, namely the comparison and interaction theories, and to establish the need for pragmatic interpretation taking into account the context and cultural elements to reach the full meanings lurking in the background of the figurative language and to truly appreciate the metaphorical force.

The first chapter overall accounts for the pragmatic need when dealing with the interpretation of metaphors, because the semantic traditions according to many linguists and scholars including Stephen C. Levinson, John R. Searle, and Wilson and Sperber, fail to give a proper account of metaphors.
The second chapter, however, is devoted to the application of those approaches and affirms that they should work simultaneously for a full understanding of metaphors. Two of the most impressive writings of the Iraqi poet Al-Sayyab were adopted to analyze some of the metaphorical expressions they abound with.

Since human beings interact and communicate to each other, the means of communication to express the message of language should be met. The verbal communication has intended to convey what the speaker's feeling and cognitive structures. In verbal jokes in which indicated as the best way to start build a good relationship; utterances from the speaker's thought which influence the effects of incongruity, illogicality, and ambiguity of speech can produce a punch line, the highlighted funny item. Hearer or audience will laugh felicitously if he / she expend less processing effort to understand what speaker intends to say. Jokes is the ability of someone to show humorous sense but it cannot be funny anymore if the goal of jokes success to offense the hearer in which he / she is not the part of the superior community. This paper tends to clarify how jokes are good to build intimacy and also to decay the interrelation between the speaker and the hearer. This paper begins to clarify the implicatures from the speakers in sitcom " How I Met Your Mother ". The popular culture is used because this literary genre closes to recently natives' language of America in their common life in New York. Since the analysis use the Sperber and Wilson's cognitive principle of relevance in such propositions which the truth-value indication; the qualitative data has intended to be taken from the scripts involving jokes. There is no mean to analyze the linguistic constructions to find the objectivity but the contexts in certain spoken discourse in which the laugh is produced.

The aim of this paper is to re-examine the notions of indirectness and politeness as applied to requests. It is argued that (contrary to current theories of politeness) the two notions do not represent parallel demensions; indirectness does not necessarily imply politeness, The relationship between the two was examined in a series of experiments designed to tap native speakers' perceptions of politeness and indirectness in Hebrew and English. The results indicate that the two notions are perceived as different from each other: The most indirect request strategies were not judged as the most polite. The strategies rated as the most polite, on a scale of politeness, were conventional indirect requests ('on record' indirectness); the strategies rated as the most indirect, on a scale of indirectness, were. hints used fom requests ('off record' indirectness).

The third volume of the “Intercontinental Dialogue on Phraseology” series is a continuation of the project, which was inspired by the symposium "Phraseology 2009" organised by Professor Katsumasa Yagi at Kwansei Gakuin University in Nishinomiya, Japan. Thanks to the participation of scholars from Europe and Asia, the symposium enabled an intercontinental exchange of views on phraseology. The present volume is a result of a two-year cooperation of phraseologists from Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. The volume starts with the section titled "Dialogue on Phraseology", which contains two papers by eminent phraseologists: Elisabeth Piirainen and Włodzimierz Wysoczański. Elisabeth Piirainen is an internationally recognised specialist in the field of phraseology, focussing on widespread idiomatic expressions, which are also discussed in her paper “Widespread idioms in Europe and beyond: New insights into figurative language". Włodzimierz Wysoczański does research on idiomatic stock of Slavic languages, who takes a special interest in cross-linguistic studies on similes. His paper, "Integralność we współczesnych badaniach frazeologicznych", deals with problems of contemporary analyses of phraseology. The section is followed by five parts, containing topically arranged papers. The first part, "Lexicography, Corpus Linguistics & Phraseology", contains five papers. Kaoru Akasu’s contribution, "On the Three Editions of the Kenkyusha’s Dictionary of English Collocations: A Comparative Analysis", contains a discussion on different editions of Kenkyusha dictionary of English collocations. The paper "Japanese idioms in corpus data and in dictionaries " by Priscilla Ishida offers an analysis of Japanese idioms in corpora and dictionaries. Outi Lauhakangas in her paper "On M. Kuusi’s database, type system and its challenges" presents Matti Kuusi database. Two papers deal with problems of lexicographic description: Alenka Vrbinc focuses on the inclusion of the dictionary presentation of meanings of fixed expressions in her paper titled "Phraseological units and the meaning: How is semantic information included in online dictionaries?", while Joanna Szerszunowicz, in her contribution "Cultural connotations of winged words in bilingual dictionaries", reflects on the place of cultural connotation in bilingual dictionaries. The second part, "General Linguistics & Phraseology", is composed of eight papers. In the paper “Wikipedia at its best – phraseological neologisms in Wikipedia discussions", Sabine Fiedler focuses on neologisms observed in Wikipedia discussions. The paper by Sergiusz Griniewicz, titled "Терминологические аспекты фразеологии", discusses the terminology. Elise Lopez dwells on an important problem occurring in a contrastive perspective: faux amis in phraseology. Her paper titled "A Study of Emic Proportions: Contextualising Phraseological False Friends" discusses the phenomenon in the emic perspective. Munzhedzi James Mafela’s contribution, "On the Phraseology of Tshiven da Idioms", contains a presentation of various aspects of idiomatic expressions used in the Tshivenda language. The paper by Ewa Młynarczyk, "Nazwy narzędzi jako podstawa metonimicznego obrazowania w przysłowiach i w swobodnych połączeniach wyrazowych", discusses the names of tools as a basis of metonymic imagery in proverbs and loose word combinations. Irina Naumova’s interest in the English Influence on Russian is reflected in her paper, titled "English Influence on Russian Phraseology (in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries)", which contains an analysis of its selected examples of this impact. Magdalena Olejarnik analyses fixedness in mixed languages: her paper "Does phraseology exist in mixed languages? – A comparative study of verbal idioms in Standard Swahili and Sheng (a Swahili-English intertwined language)" contributes to the studies on the specifics of their phraseology. Makoto Sumiyoshi offers a in-depth analysis of the phrase Don’t ‘yes, sir’ me in his paper titled "Phrases, grammatical non-compositionality and functions in use: An analysis of Don’t ‘yes, sir’ me!”. The third part, "Ethnolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics & Phraseology", contains eight papers. In the paper "Traffic Metaphors in the Slovenian Language" Sasa Babić discusses how traffic-related issues are reflected in language, especially in fixed expressions. In her contribution "Woman in Estonian phraseology", Anneli Baran analyses how the woman is presented in the phraseological units of the Estonian language. Paola Capponi’s paper, "Forms of Threatening: Variants and Invariants", focuses on the threat as a linguistic phenomena. Elena V. Carter’s article “With An Open Heart: Somatic Idioms In Nikita Khrushchev’s Political Discourse In America" deals with somatic phraseology in N. Khruschev’s speeches delivered during his stay in the USA. The paper by Renata Dźwigoł, titled "Types of laughter – based on the analysis of Polish phraseological units and proverbs", contains a discussion of Polish fixed expression with a view to determining how different kinds of laughter are depicted. In the paper titled "Better working hard than yelling aloud: proverbs, metaphors and slogans in Chinese political discourse", Mariarosaria Gianninoto discusses Chinese formulaic language. Karolina Makowska’s article, titled "Analiza modyfikacji stałych połączeń wyrazowych w wypowiedziach Violetty Kubasińskiej z serialu BrzydUla", contains an analysis of the idiolect of a sitcom character who uses many modifications of fixed expressions. The phraseology of modern media are discussed by Jadwiga Tarsa who analyses Russian phraseological units in her paper titled "Фразеологизмы в Интернете – смесь традиции и современности". Four papers are included in the fourth part titled "The Contrastive Linguistics, Translation & Phraseology". The one by Edyta Koncewicz-Dziduch, "Deskryptywno-wartościujący charakter związków frazeologicznych z nazwami roślin w języku polskim, chorwackim, serbskim", aims to analyse the descriptive and evaluative character of phraseological units containing plant names in three languages: Polish, Croatian and Serbian. A contrastive analysis of a group of idiomatic expression is also presented by Laura Pinnavaia. In her paper "We are what we eat: Analyzing food and drink idioms in English, French, German, and Spanish", she discusses food and drink idioms in four languages. Sunil Sharma’s contribution also offers an insight into a problem of contrastive phraseology. His article "Kontrastive Untersuchung der Phraseologismen mit Gesichtsteilbezeichnungen im Deutschen und Hindi" contains an analysis of somatic phraseological units two languages: German and Hindi. Elena Zinovieva and Aleksiej Alyoshin focus on fixed comparisons in Russian and Swedish languages. Their paper titled "Русские и шведские устойчивые сравнения, характеризующие манеру речи человека" contains the analysis of the ones characterizing a person’s speech manner. The fifth part, "Cultural Studies, Language Teaching/Acquisition & Phraseology", comprises five papers. In the first article titled "Proverbial expressions and cultural context in archive materials" Liisa Granbom-Herranen shares her observations and remarks on using data for paremiography, especially in linguo-cultural analyses of proverbs. Three papers deal with problems from the sphere of language teaching and acquisition. In her paper "Phraseology and foreign language learning", Erla Hallsteinsdóttir offers a discussion on the role and place of phraseology in foreign language learning. Shin’ichiro Ishikawa’s paper analyses the use of phraseological units in oral and written texts produced by Asian students who learn English as a foreign language. The article by Krystyna Nikołajczuk "Najwyższy czas na frazeologię. Nauczanie polskich frazeologizmów o znaczeniu temporalnym w środowisku ukraińskojęzycznym", is devoted to teaching phraseology to learners of Polish as a foreign language in Ukraine. In his paper titled "Realia Nusantary w świetle indonezyjskiej frazeologii", Przemysław Wiatrowski discusses how the realia of a given ethnic community – in this case the Indonesian one – are reflected in phraseological stock.

Se pueden identificar palabras cargadas de emoción
en un grupo de clase, debido a la construcción
social que dichas palabras han obtenido a
través del uso cotidiano, de manera coloquial. En
el lenguaje se dan palabras que contienen una
carga emocional, debido a una construcción social
previa que le ha dotado de una significación entrelazada
con emociones (Peñuelas, 2017). Así,
se tendrán palabras específicas del registro coloquial
de un grupo de clase, por ejemplo, “hostia”,
“chido”, “chévere”, “está guay”, etc. que tendrán
aceptación dentro de ese grupo particular de clase
que las utiliza, y evocarán en ellos una respuesta
emocional a través de la circunstancia
en que se use la palabra.

News-media unequivocally shape political discourse and thought. Broadcast-media have the largest audience for any single news source and sources of political or politically oriented material (Pew 2012). Crawford says, “It is a truism that no human institution is more potent for the good or the evil of society, than the press” (1969 p. vii). The prevalence of corporate control of huge sectors of the market is unparalleled in other forms of publication (Lazere 1987). Therefore these media entities mold human discourse and political life globally on an incomparable scale.
This thesis uses an interdisciplinary approach to overview major problems in journalism and how they are manifested; especially the psychological phenomena in play and employed by writers of news media. The following questions are addressed: (1)How are theories of propaganda and public opinion/relations actuated through the media (purposefully or not)? (2)How can journalists’ interpretation of current events affect our judgments? (3)How do the choices of wording affect the general public? (4)What premises are assumed (entailed or presupposed) by wording in news? (5) Can common abuses in journalism be attributed to conscious motivations?
This thesis examines the discourse and implications in coverage of the Iraq war in CNN’s coverage. The analysis focuses on how news agencies construct the war. The applicability of accepted propaganda models as related to Iraq war coverage will be tested. The history of propaganda and public relations are covered for context; how is propaganda actuated through language behavior?
A concordance analysis is used to chart word frequency, finding a markedly different frequency per million in a data-set using News Night with Aaron Brown and Breaking News Reports from March of 2003. Specific modals and other words indicating speculation are charted, showing problematic coverage.

Il s’agit de développer, d’approfondir et d’élargir le champ de la pragmatique linguistique actuelle attelée au discours benveniste. Pour cela, nous développons une théorie pragmatique fondée sur la notion d’ancrage, l’ancrage hic et nunc du sujet existant à son univers intérieur et extérieur et l’expression de cet ancrage dans un langage dit pragmatique. Donc, l’espace pragmatique est un espace d’ancrage direct, et le langage pragmatique doit dire cet ancrage. La notion d’ancrage est corrélative au temps d’ancrage (le présent d’actualité), au sujet qui s’ancre, aux objets d’ancrage, aux modes d’ancrage (perceptif, réceptif, déictique etc.), et à l’ensemble des présupposés et intentions qui motivent cet ancrage. Il s’agit d’une théorie pragmatique qui vise à élargir le champ de la pragmatique linguistique traditionnelle d’obédience benveniste et l’horizon d’attente des récepteurs, évidemment. La première partie consiste à revisiter les fondements de la pragmatique linguistique moderne, notamment, son ancrage à la linguistique benveniste du discours. La seconde partie introduit la notion d’ancrage et ses postulats. Dans la troisième partie, nous élaboration notre théorie pragmatique d’ancrage et ses conséquences dans l’interprétation des énoncés.

An essay is presented on rhetorical strategies used to create relationships between people. It offers the views of a cultural outsider observing waitresses at a Southern United States Waffle House restaurant, where staff often use the epithet "honey" when speaking to customers. The author describes a shift in power where the restaurant staff are in control rather than the customer and the psychological implications, sexual aspects, and relationship defining results of his being called "honey" by the waitstaff.

Assertion is here approached as a social practice developed through cultural evolution. This perspective will facilitate inquiry into the questions what role assertion plays in communicative life, what norms it is subject to, and whether every viable linguistic community must have a practice of assertion. Our evolutionary perspective will, further, enable us to ask how assertion relates to other communicative practices such as conversational implicature, indirect speech acts, presupposition, and, more broadly, the kinematics of conversation. It will also motivate a resolution of debates between conventionalist and intentionalist approaches to this speech act by explaining how those who make assertions can embody their intentions to perform an act of a certain kind. We will close with a discussion of how assertoric practice can be compromised by patterns of malfeasance on the part of a speaker and by injustice within her milieu.

This chapter aims to analyze the metaphor of ‘struggle against oneself’ as elaborated in the classic Orthodox Christian book Unseen Warfare. The purpose of the analysis will be to provide a contribution in three domains: (1) cognitive linguistics, where I attempt to show that the metaphor in question is better explicable by applying the tenets of the Conceptual Blending Theory than by using the Conceptual Metaphor Theory alone; (2) cognitive science—where I attribute the emergence of this metaphor to a specific instance of double-scope blending, one which may have occurred with the advent of Christianity in the early centuries AD; (3) theology—where I discuss the problem of causality behind this changed ‘warfare’ concept, claiming that it may not have been merely a consequence of cognitive pressure, but may also have emerged from deeper ontological human needs.

Theoretical and procedural diverseness is a feature characterising the study of argumentation. The common core in all perspectives is to examine a type of discourse which attempts to convince another party of the acceptability of one’s view(s) through a set of arguments, but what differs, to a larger or lesser extent, is the theoretical apparatus through which discourse is scrutinised. The present paper offers a general account of the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation. Expatiating on the principal theoretical and methodological lines on which the theory proceeds, the paper aims at delineating the analytical tools provided in this paradigm to handle the intricacies of argumentative discourse.

The paper looks into the characteristics of teenage discourse based on the main characters of two authors, British and American, who work in the field of bibliotherapy (the fictional text provides healing by means of reading; that is, inspiring young people to overcome difficulties). We examine the genre and stylistic features of a teenage discourse, such as lexical, semantic, phonetic and graphic characteristics of the rural British English, the Northern English dialect depicted in the language of a male teenager in THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN by David Almond. In this novel the thematic component is represented by the following recurrent concepts or frames: EDUCATION, NATURE OF THE "SELF", COMING OF AGE, ADAPTATION TO CHANGE, RELATIONS BETWEEN OPPOSITES (LIFE AND DEATH, PAST AND FUTURE, REALITY AND FICTION). The expressive lexis, for example, metaphors, teenage slang and collo-quialisms, illustrate youth in crisis and the challenges of growing up. The other novel we analyze is CHASING REDBIRD by Sharon Creech; here we examine the discourse features of a female teenager, including the thematic components of Themes such as FAMILY, OVERCOMING DEPRESSION, and TEENAGE ROMANCE. The analysis of the conversations of fictional characters created by British and American authors is used to build generalizations about the characteristics of language and style of teenagers. The stylistic and genre components highlight the colloquial style used to depict the personal life of a male and female teenagers , who confront the evils of society, including corruption, unkindness, and family issues.

Co-authored with Sandra Thompson. We examine a set of supposedly " biclausal " constructions in natural conversations in English and German, and argue that: (1) these constructions are not biclausal, since the second " clause " is typically not a clause but an indeterminate stretch of discourse without a consistent syntactic structure; (2) the first " clause " functions to strongly project this upcoming discourse segment; (3) in certain of the allegedly biclausal constructions even the first part is not really a clause but is instead a fixed sequence with limited lexical choices. We suggest that these apparently " biclausal " constructions should be analyzed as single, partly formulaic clauses deployed by speakers in managing interactional discourse. This analysis accounts for a number of previously unnoticed restrictions on the grammatical and prosodic form the formulaic clauses take, as well as for their projective properties.

La omisión de objetos puede definirse como una propiedad presente en algunas lenguas por la que un objeto directo puede (o debe) no ser pronunciado en ciertos contextos. El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar cómo se determina la referencia de un set de objetos nulos del español desde el paradigma de la Teoría de la Relevancia (TR), como fue formulada por Dan Sperber y Deirdre Wilson.

Interjections that are formally diminutives through the -ie/-y suffix (and plural  -ies) have been mentioned briefly in passing but have not been previously studied, particularly as to their main pragmatic meanings and uses. On the basis of a corpus taken from the microblogging service Twitter, this study suggests the non-serious and emotive features of ‘diminutive’ interjections (DIs). The paper claims that DIs are not merely ‘response cries’, but serve as items employed by users on Twitter to convey various emotions and fulfil many functions depending on the context. It is argued that DIs can be considered forms of diminutives based on the notion that diminutives do not necessarily have to convey smallness (cf. Schneider 2003; Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 2001) but rather the feature of ‘non-seriousness’, which could be labelled as metaphorical smallness.

Lying at the intersection of translatology, cognitive science and linguistics, this book provides a comprehensive framework for studying, investigating and teaching English-Russian/Russian-English non-literary translation. It provides a holistic perspective on the process of non-literary translation, illustrating each of its steps with carefully analyzed real-life examples. Readers will learn how to choose and process multidimensional attention units in original texts by activating different types of knowledge, as well as how to effectively devise target-language matches for them using various translation techniques. It is rounded out with handy and feasible recommendations on the structure and content of an undergraduate course in translation. The abundance of examples makes it suitable not only for use in the classroom, but also for independent study.

This paper suggests that reference to phenomenal qualities is best understood as involving iconicity, that is, a passage from sign-vehicle to object that exploits a similarity between the two. This contrasts with a version of the ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ that takes indexicality to be central. However, since it is doubtful that phenomenal qualities are capable of causally interacting with anything, indexical reference seems inappropriate. While a theorist like David Papineau is independently coming to something akin to iconicity, I think some of the awkwardness that plagues his account would be remedied by transitioning to a more inclusive philosophy of signs.

A new approach to numerically measure the semantic distances between lexical units (words and collocations) based on the geometric analogies and analytical calculations, is put forward. Having considered the cases of equal and different weights of semes, we obtained exact algebraic formulas describing different levels of the meanings proximity, ranging from absolute synonymy to full antonymy. It was emphasized that absolute synonymy arises when the compared units contain equal numbers of semes that fully coincide and have equal weights in the corresponding pairs. Calculation of the semes weights helps to locate the unit more precisely on the semantic sphere. It was shown that the level of synonymy and antonymy decreases if different semes are accentuated, while the semantic distance between the units without identical semes cannot be influenced by seme boosting. It was observed that depending on the context, a word may wander over this sphere, thus modifying its lexical semantic relations with other units. As the proposed approach contributes to formalization of the units comparison procedure, it is advisable for relevant automatic tools, particularly for WordNets and FrameNet. The obtained results may be useful for various linguistic and associated studies including automatic text analysis and processing, computer lexicography, information search and retrieval, machine translation and other NLP applications that are related to the artificial intelligence problem.

A speaker's use of a declarative sentence in a context has two effects: it expresses a proposition and represents the speaker as knowing that proposition. This essay is about how to explain the second effect. The standard explanation is act-based. A speaker is represented as knowing because their use of a declarative in a context tokens the act-type of assertion and assertions represent knowledge in what's asserted. I propose a semantic explanation on which declaratives covertly host a "know"-parenthetical. A speaker is thereby represented as knowing the proposition expressed because that is the semantic contribution of the parenthetical. I call this view parentheticalism and contend that it better explains knowledge representation than alternatives. As a consequence of outperforming assertoric explanations, parentheticalism opens the door to eliminating the act-type of assertion from linguistic theorizing.

The category of insults comprises disparaging qualifying terms, derogatory epithets, racial/ethnic slurs and participle-like expletives. All of them channel speakers' (negative) psychological states, so they are considered expressives. Despite the enormous interest that they have aroused, research has not duly addressed whether all types of insults communicate in the same manner, partake of the same nature and make a similar contribution to communication. This paper ventures some answers from a relevance-theoretic perspective. Relying on the showing-saying continuum and on the conceptual-procedural distinction, it argues that some insults merely show speaker meaning, others encode some conceptual load enabling them to communicate by saying and others communicate by an admixture of both. It also contends that some insults encode conceptual content and processing instructions, but others encode instructions alone. Their output, however, is complex, as it may trigger lexical-pragmatic processes adjusting the encoded conceptual load or psychological-state representations.

In the dominant view of verbal irony, spearheaded by Elizabeth Camp (2012), one says the opposite of what one means. I think this view fails to account for all the linguistic data. Instead, I offer a purely pragmatic approach to irony, where an ironic utterance flouts sincerity conditions on speech acts, which prompts a quasi- Gricean (1975) inference by the hearers.

A framework for pragmatic analysis is proposed which treats discourse as a game, with context as a scoreboard organized around the questions under discussion by the interlocutors. The framework is intended to be coordinated with a dynamic compositional semantics. Accordingly, the context of utterance is modeled as a tuple of different types of information, and the questions therein -modeled, as is usual in formal semantics, as alternative sets of propositions -constrain the felicitous flow of discourse. A requirement of Relevance is satisfied by an utterance (whether an assertion, a question or a suggestion) iff it addresses the question under discussion. Finally, it is argued that the prosodic focus of an utterance canonically serves to reflect the question under discussion (at least in English), placing additional constraints on felicity in context.