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This article deals with the problem of using declarative speech acts in an advertising discourse. The introduction of the "speech act" notion has caused the necessity of classifying utterances according to their communicative function, taking into account the illocutionary content of utterances, that is, the speaker's communicative intention; the type of the speaker's exposure and the way the speaker expresses his intention. The usage of the declarative speech act is aimed at changing the state of affairs. The author notes the polyintentional nature of the declaratives, paying attention to the role of situational context that refers to every non-linguistic factor and the meaning of a phrase. Linguistic pragmatics and the theory of speech acts are regarded as a research method being effective for analyzing communicative intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies show that social cues are processed preferentially by the human visual system and that perception of communicative intentions, particularly those self-directed, attracts and biases attention. However, it is still unclear when in the temporal hierarchy of visual processing communicative cues exert impact on perception and whether their effects are automatic or volitional. Therefore, in the present study, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the pattern of neural activity associated with processing communicative and individual gestures. Participants (N = 24) were shown animations depicting either biological (BM) or scrambled motion (SM) and were asked to categorize them accordingly. Additionally, BM depicted either communicative or individual actions. The results showed that while early components (N1, N2) are sensitive to differences between BM and SM, the differentiation of neural activity related to the type of action performed by point-light agent (individuals vs. communicative) is observed only for late components such as posterior late positive potential (>500 ms). The findings of the current study show that even in the absence of any top-down effects, social intentions produce long-lasting attentional effects at the later stages of stimuli processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Human emotions can be complex to interpret as they have multiple sources and are often times ambiguous, for example, when the signals sent by different channels of communication are inconsistent. Our study investigates the interaction of linguistic and facial expressions of emotions. Methods: In two experiments, participants read short scenarios in German containing a direct utterance with positive or negative emotive markers, in combination with different facial expressions as still images of the speaker (i.e., the protagonist in the story). They answered questions about their perception regarding the intensity of the emotions (e.g., happiness, sadness), the properties of the expresser (e.g., honesty, warmth, likeability) and their relation to the addressee (e.g., closeness), as well as the expresser intention (e.g., irony, joke). Results: The findings suggest that facial expressions have a more dominant role in the emotion perception in comparison to emotive markers. Furthermore, consistent and inconsistent combinations of emotive markers and facial expressions convey distinct social meanings and communicative intentions. Conclusion: This research points to the importance to consider emotive markers in the emotional context that they occur in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those in the Gricean tradition take it that successful human communication features an audience who not only arrives at the intended content of the signal, but also recognizes the speaker’s intention that they do so. Some in this tradition have also argued that there are yet further conditions on communicative success, which rule out the possibility of communicating by luck. Supposing that both intention-recognition and some sort of anti-luck condition are correctly included in an analysis of human communication, this article asks what the value of events satisfying these conditions is. I present a puzzle concerning the value of intention-recognition which is analogous to the Meno Problem in epistemology, but ultimately argue that this puzzle is solveable: the signaling-relevant value of intention recognition can be vindicated. However, I argue that the version of this puzzle that concerns the further proposed luck-proofing conditions on communication can not be answered. I argue therefore that communication, as analyzed by many, is no more valuable qua signal than a proper subset of its conditions. Human communication is then not a uniquely valuable signaling event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ostensive-inferential model is a model of communication, an alternative to the code model of communication, based on pragmatic competence: it explains human communication in terms of expression and recognition of informative and communicative intentions, founding comprehension on the distinction between literal meaning and the speaker's meaning. Through informative intentions we try to make evident the content of a message to a receiver, or to make evident what we want to communicate to him/her: communicative intentions are used to make evident the very fact that we intend to communicate. One hypothesis is that ostensive-inferential communication is what makes human language possible. Since an extensive literature has highlighted the role of the Theory of Mind in ostensive-inferential communication, this hypothesis fits with the idea that a mechanism for mentalizing underlies human communication. The aim of the present paper is to stress the role of lower-level mechanisms, specifically of motor simulation, in the recognition of informative and communicative intentions, in order to outline an embodied account of ostensive communication. Specifically, the hypothesis is that this process is involved in language acquisition during development, and that it plays a role in the associative learning process involved in language acquisition during childhood. To this aim, in future research it may be useful to test the involvement of motor simulation (specifically, phono-articulatory and semantic) in the recognition of informative and communicative intentions in toddlers. Since some models of language evolution focus on the role of motor simulation, a supplementary goal is to deepen its role in the biological evolution of language, focusing on the specific link between motor simulation and intentions in the framework of ostensive-inferential model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines persuasion and communicative intentions in Pentecostal sermons in Nigeria. Notwithstanding the high scholarly inputs in religious discourse, no single work has examined the devices employed to achieve persuasion and conviction as well as communicative intentions in Pentecostal sermons in Nigeria. This work examines twelve sermons of selected Pentecostal preachers in Nigeria by drawing insights from rhetoric and pragmatic act to account for persuasion and communicative intentions in the data. Findings reveal that preachers strategically deploy rhetorical question; direct address and direct command; metaphor; repetition and structural parallelism; and they develop convincing arguments through logic/reason. It is also revealed that preachers share experiences with their listeners and they assume divine role by speaking authoritatively to convince their listeners into accepting their propositions. Preachers perform pragmatic acts of asserting/stating, encouraging, assuring, directing, commanding, praising, etc. The study has further confirmed that Pentecostal sermons can be used for public mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using speech to communicate pragmatic functions is challenging among individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Given the role language plays in developing everyday skills, we traced the unique pragmatic profile of early words, seeking comparison to typically developing (TD) toddlers at similar lexical stages. Twenty-four mother-toddler dyads participated (9 ASD and 15 TD). Dyads were video recorded when toddlers reached a productive lexicon of 40–70 words. These recordings were captured three times during naturalistic interaction and at two consecutive visits with a 2-month interval. Seven thousand three hundred seventy-six productions were analyzed and classified into four communicative intentions (Declaratives, Requests, Objections, and Non-Communicative speech). ASD toddlers were delayed in the emergence of words compared to TD toddlers, with a greater within-group variability (median 28 months, IQR 24.5–35, median 17 months, IQR 17–18, respectively, p < 0.001). In both groups, the most common communicative intention was Declarative. However, the percentage of Declaratives was higher among TD toddlers across visits compared to ASD toddlers. In both groups, most productions were directed toward the communicative partner, but ASD toddlers used Non-Communicative speech more often than TD peers. Non-Communicative speech gradually decreased over time. We conclude that while TD toddlers begin to talk with an already-established knowledge of the main communicative functions of words, ASD toddlers seem to have only a partial understanding and gradually improve communicative use as they expand their lexicon. These findings bear theoretical and practical implications for early intervention in ASD. We suggest that communicative profiles are affected by individual characteristics and by the interaction style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents syntactic methods of expressing the legislator’s intentions in the medieval legal document called Kodeks Działyńskich (the Działyński code). The intention is understood by the authors as ‘the goal towards which the action of the legislator is directed’. This type of element of a legislative text does not appear in modern legal texts, apart from the Code of Canon Law. However, in the oldest texts, the purpose of which was to change a functioning custom into binding law, the justification for introducing certain regulations was very important. We also pay attention to the information about the legislator, which is included in the text. The information is expressed by pluralis maiestaticus forms of performative verbs. Three types of syntactic structures serve to express the intention of the legislator: subordinate clauses introduced by the conjunction: aby, participial sentence equivalents based on the verb chcieć, and prepositional phrases with prepositions: na, ku and dla. These structures usually occur in preposition to the superior predicate. The fragments excerpted from the text are characterized by a considerable degree of cohesiveness, not only in terms of meaning but also in structure. A sentence or a participal construction in the semantic relation of the goal functions in a broader context, therefore it becomes necessary to introduce reference indicators and anaphorical elements such as repetitions, pronouns and pronominalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of the norm is not a claim, but a fundamental communicative intention of the linguistic personality. Our ability to express ourselves and to be understood, to understand others as they express themselves is a function of language proficiency and its norms and stays as a proof of this. The culture of our linguistic consciousness means mastering literary norms. Definitiveness is a grammatical phenomenon that requires a profound and categorical analysis which to become a methodology of linguistic consciousness. The science of language should here most of all answer the question “why?” Answers to the questions “what” and “how” we are using noun determiner are not sufficient for the linguistic personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observing others' gaze is most informative during social encounters between humans: We can learn about potentially salient objects in the shared environment, infer others' mental states and detect their communicative intentions. We almost automatically follow the gaze of others in order to check the relevance of the target of the other's attention. This phenomenon called gaze cueing can be conceptualized as a triadic interaction involving a gaze initiator, a gaze follower and a gaze target, i.e., an object or person of interest in the environment. Gaze cueing can occur as "gaze pointing" with a communicative or "social" intention by the initiator, telling the observer that she/he is meant to follow, or as an incidental event, in which the observer follows spontaneously without any intention of the observed person. Here, we investigate which gaze cues let an observer ascribe a social intention to the observed person's gaze and whether and to which degree previous eye contact in combination with an object fixation contributes to this ascription. We varied the orientation of the starting position of gaze toward the observer and the orientation of the end position of a lateral gaze shift. In two experiments participants had to infer from the gaze behavior either mere approach ("the person looked at me") vs. a social ("the person wanted to show me something") or a social vs. a private motivation ("the person was interested in something"). Participants differentially attributed either approach behavior, a social, or a private intention to the agent solely based on the passive observation of the two specific gaze cues of start and end position. While for the attribution of privately motivated behavior, participants relied solely on the end position of the gaze shift, the social interpretation of the observed behavior depended additionally upon initial eye contact. Implications of these results for future social gaze and social cognition research in general are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to David Olson's The World on Paper, in an oral exchange of information the communicative intention is actualized through non-verbal means and situational contexts; in mature literacy this intention begins to be regained through various formal procedures (graphic design, style, composition, plot elements, etc.). Prejs examines and builds on Olson's argument with reference to early modern genre studies. A writer's mere choice of genre does not always reveal his or her actual communicative intention, and can serve as a camouflage. This is not the case with the breaking of genre conventions, which usually serves to suggest a hidden intention. To highlight this phenomenon Prejs presents the Baroque anti-laments, i.e. texts that have no justification in intertextual relationships to Jan Kochanowski's Laments (Treny). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory of Mind (ToM) is a neurocognitive system that allows the perceiver to attribute mental states, such as intentions, beliefs, or feelings, to others' actions. The aim of the present work is to analyse the engagement of the ToM system in communication, in particular, in communicative intention processing. To this aim, we propose an Intention Processing Network (IPN) with its own principles and mechanisms, that is, a brain network differentially engaged according to the complex intertwining of the context, goal, and action involved. According to our IPN model, a set of brain regions of the ToM system (i.e. left and right temporoparietal junction, precuneus, and medial prefrontal cortex) are differentially involved in comprehending different types of intention, such as private or social intentions. We provide independent and convergent evidence on the role of the IPN model in communicative intention processing and we show that the engagement of the IPN does not depend upon the communicative means used, that is, written language, auditory language, or gesture. Evidence deriving from different experimental paradigms, including neuroimaging, lesion, neurodegenerative, and brain stimulation studies are discussed. In our view, this evidence establishes a link between ToM and pragmatics studies and suggests the role of intention processing as a core feature of human communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the pragmatic comprehensibility of indirect reporting. The research problem is to determine how Russian EFL learners (linguists and non-linguists) are able to turn original utterances expressing the intentions of native speakers of American English in direct speech into indirect reports to a third party. Two major issues are analyzed: adequacy of semantic content and preservation of pragmatic enrichment. The study was carried out employing the framework of Kecskes' Socio-Cognitive Approach (2008, 2010, 2014, 2017). Twelve stimulus-utterances belonging to three communicative types (statements, questions, commands/requests) were video-recorded. Qualitative and quantitative analyses revealed that the participants met with some difficulties preserving the speaker's intention while interpreting attached pragmatic enrichment and perlocutionary effect. Both cohorts of Russian EFL learners were able to preserve the semantic content relatively efficiently, but encountered substantial difficulties inferring a complex pragmatic content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication in archaeological artifacts is usually understood in terms of signs or signals, fleshed out under many guises. The notions of signs or signals that archaeologists employ often draw from Saussurean or Peircean semiotic theories from philosophy and linguistics. In this article I consider the consequences of whether we understand archaeological signals in terms of the Saussurean or Peircean framework, and highlight the fact that archaeologists have not always been precise in their use of relevant philosophical machinery. I will argue further that interpretation of archaeological artifacts should be supplemented by a notion of meaning that goes beyond signals and leads us to understand meaning in terms of a specific creator's communicative intention-which may deviate from how some signal was ordinarily used. This is what I call speaker meaning, drawing from philosophy of language. I then present specific examples from Egypt circa 1300 BC and 3500 BC and from France circa 12,000 BC that I argue are best treated with the proposed notion of speaker meaning. In the course of this discussion I consider questions that arise for current accounts of signals and metaphor in archaeology. Finally, I conclude by considering how my proposal relates to our understanding of decoration and style, humor, the advent of spoken language, and the nature of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the analysis of non-chunked communication (affirmative, negational, interrogative, directive, emotional, evaluative and metacommunication) that express a wide range of communicative intentions in Ukrainian-Romanian discourse, namely intentions of affirmation and negation, intentions of request and motivation, emotional and evaluative and metacommunicative intentions. The article also states that these constructions possess a distinct pragmatic nature, since they set the required tone of the dialogue, stimulate and focus the interlocutor's attention, establish verbal contact between speakers and the act as a component of a successful communication comprising a natural part of verbal communication of both Ukrainians and Romanians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Didasc@lia: Didáctica y Educación is the property of Universitaria de Las Tunas, Centro de Estudios de Didactica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The investigation of the ability to perceive, recognize, and judge upon social intentions, such as communicative intentions, on the basis of body motion is a growing research area. Cross-cultural differences in ability to perceive and interpret biological motion, however, have been poorly investigated so far. Progress in this domain strongly depends on the availability of suitable stimulus material. In the present method paper, we describe the multilingual CID-5, an extension of the CID-5 database, allowing for the investigation of how non-conventional communicative gestures are classified and identified by speakers of different languages. The CID-5 database contains 14 communicative interactions and 7 non-communicative actions performed by couples of agents and presented as point-light displays. For each action, the database provides movie files with the point-light animation, text files with the 3-D spatial coordinates of the point-lights, and five different response alternatives. In the multilingual CID-5 the alternatives were translated into seven languages (Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, and Polish). Preliminary data collected to assess the recognizability of the actions in the different languages suggest that, for most of the action stimuli, information presented in point-light displays is sufficient for the distinctive classification of the action as communicative vs. individual, as well as for identification of the specific communicative gesture performed by the actor in all the available languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare a number of influential approaches to human communication with the aim of understanding what it means for interpersonal communication to be a form of social action. In particular, we discuss the large-scale social normativity advocated by speech act theory, the view of communication as small-scale social interaction proper of Gricean approaches, and the intimate connection between communication and cooperation defended by Tomasello. We then argue in favor of a small-scale view of communication capable of accounting for the normative effects of communicative acts; to this purpose, we introduce the concept of interpersonal normativity and analyze its relationship with communicative intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship between the concepts of interpersonal responsibility and communicative intention. It defines interpersonal reality in relation to relationships of interpersonal responsibility. It also analyzes several special configurations of interpersonal responsibility and examines the notion of joint commitment.

Copyright of Forma y Funcion is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Communication involves a pair of behaviours—a signal and a response—that are functionally interdependent. Consequently, the emergence of communication involves a chicken-and-egg problem: if signals and responses are dependent on one another, then how does such a relationship emerge in the first place? The empirical literature suggests two solutions to this problem: ritualization and sensory manipulation; and instances of ritualization appear to be more common. However, it is not clear from a theoretical perspective why this should be the case, nor if there are any other routes to communication. Here, we develop an analytical model to examine how communication can emerge. We show that: (i) a state of non-interaction is evolutionarily stable, and so communication will not necessarily emerge even when it is in both parties' interest; (ii) the conditions for sensory manipulation are more stringent than for ritualization, and hence ritualization is likely to be more common; and (iii) communication can arise by a third route, when the intention to communicate can itself be communicated, but this may be limited to humans. More generally, our results demonstrate the utility of a functional approach to communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten years after the publication of Discourse Pragmatics (Moeschler & Reboul), a retrospect of its principles, contributions and results seems to be necessary. In this respect, the paper highlights the ideas of the research program proposed by Moeschler and Reboul: (i) the model that seeks to capture discourse interpretation must be a pragmatic one; (ii) pragmatics must be understood as inferential pragmatics; (iii) pragmatics must integrate notions such as: global intention and anticipatory hypothesis; (iv) the identification of discourse relations (for instance, temporal reference calculus) is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient condition for discourse interpretation; (v) a pragmatic theory of discourse must be able to predict the conditions that underlie the speaker's coherence judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied if and when people detect the beginning of a gesture, in our case a sign in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN), by presenting movie fragments consisting of sequences of rest positions, fidgets, and signs to deaf signers, hearing signers and non-signers. Participants were instructed to respond as soon as they saw that a SLN sign had begun. All participants showed themselves highly capable of responding to sign beginnings. Signs that are two-handed, performed in signing space, have a highly marked hand shape, and contain path movement were discriminated best. Considering a sign as having a preparation, a stroke, and a recovery, response times showed strong clusters around 500 milliseconds after the beginning of sign preparation, or 200 ms after the onset of the stroke. The non-signers needed more time before responding; deaf signers took more time than hearing signers. Response time was influenced by three factors (shorter for signs that have a highly marked hand shape, are one-handed, and are preceded by fidgets). The results show that it is possible for people to discriminate fidgeting and signs based on appearance, even if one does not know sign language. No single feature of the movement appears necessary to detect the beginning of a sign. In most cases visual information available up to an early stage of the stroke is sufficient but in some cases the information in the preparation is enough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research provides further data regarding non‐literal language comprehension following right hemisphere damage (RHD). To assess the impact of RHD on the processing of non‐literal language, ten participants presenting with RHD and ten matched healthy control participants were administered tasks tapping humour appreciation and pragmatic interpretation of non‐literal language. Although the RHD participants exhibited a relatively intact ability to interpret humour from jokes, their use of pragmatic knowledge about interpersonal relationships in discourse was significantly reduced, leading to abnormalities in their understanding of communicative intentions (CI). Results imply that explicitly detailing CI in discourse facilitates RHD participants' comprehension of non‐literal language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is centered on the forms of realization of communicative question evasion tactics in scientific discourse. In total, 12 tactics are singled out and analyzed (ignoring the question, explicit refusal to answer, criticism of the question, rephrasing of the question, topic switching, etc.). The analysis of the tactics results in defining the communicative pragmatic factors that account for the specificity of their realization in scientific communication: the responder's epistemic state, his/her situational communicative intensions, etc. The author shows that the participants' communicative behavior in the situation of question evasion on the whole complies with common communicative conventions governing scientific discourse (the demands for cooperation, politeness, tolerance) and conforms to its fundamental communicative intentions, including joint search for verity and the elaboration of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is a pragmatic interpretation of utterances. In particular, the analysis aims at apprehending illocutionary intention, as understood by Bach and Harnish (1979), in George W. Bush's speeches and statements. I also investigate how the speaker carries his discourse during the time period analysed. Here, I point to Scollon and Scollon's (2000) discussion of the theory of anticipatory discourse (the four variables — rapport with the audience, hostility towards the enemy, positive self-presentation of the government and the speaker and rapport with the people of Iraq — measured in the course of the analysis and illustrated in the figures make the problem in question clear). Additional comments are also made concerning some distinctive features of the speaker's discourse strategies which belong to the area of rhetoric as broadly understood. The time period chosen, covering Bush's principal speeches and statements, enabled me to investigate the communicative action of the speaker during the recent conflict between Iraq and the US. I analysed altogether some 44 speeches and statements delivered during the given time period. That makes up for the 2,229 communicative acts identified for the total of 2,203 sentences analysed. The framework used for the analysis is the one proposed by Bach and Harnish (1979), i.e. the intention and inference approach, according to which communicative acts are classified in terms of the kind of attitude each act expresses. Thus, each utterance was classified as a particular subtype of the four broad types of communicative illocutionary acts. Finally, I conclude by trying to gather and comment on the crucial entities found in Bush's speeches and statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous studies great apes have shown little ability to locate hidden food using a physical marker placed by a human directly on the target location. In this study, we hypothesized that the perceptual similarity between an iconic cue and the hidden reward (baited container) would help apes to infer the location of the food. In the first two experiments, we found that if an iconic cue is given in addition to a spatial/indexical cue – e.g., picture or replica of a banana placed on the target location – apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas) as a group performed above chance. However, we also found in two further experiments that when iconic cues were given on their own without spatial/indexical information (iconic cue held up by human with no diagnostic spatial/indexical information), the apes were back to chance performance. Our overall conclusion is that although iconic information helps apes in the process of searching hidden food, the poor performance found in the last two experiments is due to apes' lack of understanding of the informative (cooperative) communicative intention of the experimenter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]