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This article addresses e-mail communications between university students and their lecturer in the Czech Republic. Politeness strategies employed in 200 Czech students' e-mail apologies sent to a lecturer were analysed. Students use multiple strategies to create a positive self-image of a committed and reliable student, combining direct expressions of apology, explanations, and acknowledgement of responsibility. The most frequent strategies were direct, prototypically performatives or hedged performatives. The high level of direct forms is consistent with findings of previous research on Slavic cultures. Nearly half of the e-mails included structures with directive illocution (request for information), which shifts responsibility to an authority; however, this could be interpreted as a form of politeness because students show that they value their lecturer's opinion and are willing to follow their advice. Although students primarily employ strategies based on negative politeness, which is perceived as unmarked in an institutional setting, the closing sections of the e-mails contain positive politeness in complimentary closings, and thanking is prevalent. • Politeness in Czech students' e-mail apologies sent to a lecturer was analysed. • Students use multiple strategies to create a positive self-image. • The most frequent strategies were direct, including performatives. • Nearly half of the e-mails include structures with directive illocution [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper investigates interviewer effects on speakers' use of full, reduced or coalesced variants of negative tags, e.g. it's a nice day , isn't it/int it/innit ? Using a corpus of North East English containing interviews with a range of participants and interviewers, I examine whether speakers use more phonetically-reduced variants when interviewed by someone who is more familiar to them and speaks a variety of English more similar to their own. Quantitative variationist analysis reveals that these interviewer effects do have an impact on the variation and apply in addition to linguistic and social constraints. When speakers use more full variants, this is characteristic of either a more careful speech style or, in some contexts, so-called "foreigner-directed speech", both of which typically have less lenition and contraction than the vernacular. The findings of this study emphasise that through proper consideration of the effects that interviewers have on the data they collect, we can gain a more comprehensive, reliable interpretation of linguistic variation. Highlights • The phonetic reduction of negative tags is subject to interviewer effects. • Speakers tend to use more reduced tags with an interviewer who speaks their dialect. • Speakers tend to use more reduced tags with an interviewer who is more familiar. • Negative tags are sociolinguistic markers, varying socially and stylistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores lecturer perceptions of im/politeness and in/appropriateness in student–lecturer e-mails written in English at a Norwegian university, specifically focusing on framing and content moves and broader contextual issues influencing perceptions. While the data was collected in three stages, including authentic student e-mails, questionnaires and interviews, the main source of data was the interviews. With regard to framing moves, opening sequences influenced the im/politeness and in/appropriateness perceptions of most participants, whereas closing sequences, including expressions of gratitude and leave-taking, appeared to affect perceptions to a lesser degree. As for content moves, the level of directness and internal modification of request head acts as well as the content of grounders were perceived as important for the lecturers’ overall evaluation of the e-mails. Broader contextual considerations were found to affect the interviewees’ perceptions to a greater extent than the questionnaire respondents’ views. These considerations included the specificity of e-mail as a medium, challenges of institutional e-mail communication for L2 learners and the fact that the communication, although in English, took place in the Norwegian university context. These three factors often interacted in complex ways to produce more positive perceptions of what otherwise might have been considered instances of sociopragmatic failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the intonation of other-initiation of repair in Standard Vietnamese and provides an analysis of its interaction with lexical tone at the word level. Results from both single-word and multi-word utterances show that speakers make predominant use of a rising pitch contour to mark other-initiation of repair, a contour that has been found in a large number of languages. This rise occurs consistently at the right edge of utterances and may be analysed as a phonetic reflex of a high boundary tone that can overlap, partially or completely, with the lexical tone of an utterance-final word. Further, the study demonstrates the application of talk-in-interaction to the study of the relation between lexical tone and intonation in tone languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study focuses on the metapragmatic negation bushi +(S)+V+(NP) as a rapport-oriented mitigating device in Chinese interpersonal interaction. After a review of the literature about metapragmatics and Searle''s (1969, 1976) categories about speech acts, a classification is made about this construction in terms of the verb force. Some features are found and contextual functions are explored at both explicit and implicit levels. Interpersonal constraints or pragmatic motivations are then discussed so as to explain why the construction is considered a rapport-oriented mitigating device, helping reduce or lessen the negative illocutionary forces or unwelcome effects of what follows in interpersonal interaction. Negation is found sentential in a standard way and metapragmatic in a nonstandard way. This study is about the latter which cannot be treated as negation per se although there is a negation marker bushi ‘not’, it pragmatically implies “it is not S that V (NP), but (because) …” as a conventionalized speaker meaning. On the meta level, the speaker is making an explicit statement of “I’m not performing the speech act of V” or “it''s not I/we/he who V (you/him)”. However, it cannot be treated as a standard negation in terms of the performative force. The initiated speech act of this construction expresses the speaker''s intent of doing V or V-ing, such as “blaming”, “criticizing”, “abusing” or “threatening”, what follows or precedes the construction is quite offensive or face-threatening for the hearer in context, by so doing interpersonal purposes are implied. Thus, I call this a metapragmatic construction, which is a non-denial of speaker intention, and consider it a rapport-oriented mitigating device in terms of its interpersonal purposes since it helps to manage interpersonal relationship in interaction. It is a literal violation of the Gricean Maxim of Quality since it shows on an explicit level that ‘saying is doing its opposite’ but the flouting or violation does not create implicatures in the Gricean sense (Grice, 1975) that have important communicative functions, and to some degree this challenges the ‘saying-is-doing’ claim made by Austin (1975). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Two experiments and a corpus-based study test the hypothesis, falling out of the Graded Salience Hypothesis (Giora, 1997, 2003), that addressees’ attention to meanings low on salience may be drawn by explicit marking (the low-salience marking hypothesis). In the experiments, participants were presented context-less sentences, followed by a 7-point scale. They were asked to rate the proximity of the interpretation of the sentences to those instantiated at the scale''s ends. Items were identical except for the inclusion or exclusion of a marker. Results show that ratings of items including a marker received lower scores compared to items not including a marker, thus confirming that the markers prompted low-salience meanings. The corpus-based study looked at naturally occurring examples in which concepts appeared with a specific marker (double entendre, in Hebrew). It tested the 2-fold prediction that (a) the tested marker does not draw attention to meanings equally salient and (b) that when appearing within context the environment of concepts marked by this marker will resonate with their low-salience meaning. Results show that in the absence of the marker, concepts have a preferred (salient) meaning and that the environments of these concepts, when marked, resonate with their low-salience meanings, indicating that, within context, the marker drew attention to these low-salience meanings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Speaker meaning is defined as a speaker''s communicative intention about what his or her utterance means in context. However, if we regard speakers’ communicative intentions as individual-level cognitive phenomena, we end up focusing on individuated processes as the basis of speaker meaning that do not account for the achievement of communication. The claim here is that there is, and theoretically must be, a shared, impersonal, basis for forming, implementing, and recognizing speakers’ communicative intentions. This does not subsume speakers’ personal communicative intentions but is intertwined with them to create a duality of speaker meaning. On one hand there is the speaker''s personal communicative intention, and on the other, the communicative intention anyone from the speaker''s and hearer''s community would have in producing that utterance in that context, not just that speaker in particular. What is interesting is when the two sources of communicative intention diverge, the personal and the impersonal, and the generic speaker meaning of an utterance is not one that the speaker stands behind or endorses. This creates a variety of phenomena that only exist because of this divergence. This includes the occurrence and detection of understanding troubles and self-initiated self-repair when the divergence happens by accident, and the social reality of deception, insincerity, sarcasm and joking when the divergence is deliberately produced. Naturally occurring data are examined in which speakers observably attend to the communicative intention of a generic speaker of their utterance with which the utterance credits them. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Speaker meaning is generally defined in pragmatics in terms of the speaker''s intentions. The received view is that a speaker means something by intending that the hearer recognise what is meant as intended by the speaker, thereby grounding speaker meaning in a presumed cognitive reality. In this paper it is proposed that speaker meaning can also be conceptualised from a social, deontological perspective where the speaker is held accountable to the moral order for what he or she is taken to mean in interaction. Speaker meaning in this sense encompasses moral or ethical concerns such as rights, obligations, responsibilities, permissibility, and thus is a real-world, consequential concept for participants in interaction. One result of this real-world consequentiality is that the degree of accountability for speaker meanings can be observed to be disputed by participants in both institutional and everyday talk. A second consequence is that the degree of accountability for speaker meanings can be modulated through various meaning-actions that either increase or decrease a speaker''s level of accountability for particular meanings. The practice of not-saying is argued to be one relatively neglected meaning-action through which speakers may decrease their level of accountability in interaction. It is concluded that work remains to investigate whether a deontic conceptualisation of speaker meaning can be reconciled with the received view. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Inaugural speech as the first formal presentation of a new president plays highly persuasive and ideological functions in the political scene of a country. This study adopted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to investigate the typical discursive characteristics underlying the inaugural address. To this end, second term and first term inaugural speeches were analyzed to explore the potential ideologies signaled by the discursive strategies and rhetorical devices which these presidents employed to express their political views. The results revealed that the speakers possessed a rich repertoire of discursive mechanisms such as the positive self and negative other-presentation strategies for influencing the addressees. The findings also attested the intricate relationships existing between language, power and ideology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: When participants in joint decision-making approve each other''s proposals they typically make action declarations (“yea, let''s take it”) and/or positive evaluations (“yea, that''s good”). This paper focuses on the prosodic features of such ‘approval turns’. Drawing on video-recordings of Finnish workplace interactions, I consider the interactional import of three prosodic patterns. Approval turns that are delivered with a (1) dynamic prosody (increased loudness, excessive pitch movement) establish new decisions, no matter whether the turns are action declarations or positive evaluations. In contrast, approval turns with a (2) flat prosody (decreased loudness, minimal pitch movement) do not—alone—suffice for new decisions to emerge. However, when speakers signal their approval with a (3) flat-stylized prosody (stylized figure, embedded in flat prosodic features), new decisions emerge just like with dynamic approval turns. I argue that the similarity of the sequential consequences of the dynamic and flat-stylized approval turns is related to the fact that in both cases the speakers display a clear emotional stance toward the matter at hand—even though the “valences” of these stances differ from each other. The paper seeks to elucidate the impact of prosodic events in joint decision-making, and the role of emotion as an interactional resource. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper I discuss the historical change of the Japanese question particle ka and argue that its development goes in the opposite direction to the one assumed under the view named ‘subjectification’. ka has been used as a direct question marker since Old Japanese, but it evolved an indirect question use in Middle Japanese. This change is characterized as a loss of speaker-oriented meanings since direct questions are more speaker-oriented than indirect questions, as can be shown by scope relations. The loss of speaker-orientedness can also be observed in the development of indirect question use of ka. In its early stage, ka entails the speaker''s uncertainty, inherited from direct questions. However, it does not exhibit that uncertainty in its later stage, used in contexts where the speaker knows the answer of the embedded question. Since speaker-orientedness is a defining property of ‘subjectivity’ and the changes exhibited by ka are considered to be a natural process of language change, those changes of ka constitute a significant piece of counter-evidence to the hypothesis of ‘subjectification’. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The world of professional communication includes so many innovative practices that a 25-century-old typology on repetition like Aristotle''s or even a 40-year-old theory on relevance like Grice''s might seem obsolete or hardly appealing for today''s lecturers. This research aims to examine and illustrate the interdependence between relevance and repetition in current lecturing by firstly reviewing the main communicative strategies used to indicate relevance in this genre, highlighting the essential role of repetition when understanding and processing relevant information. After providing an account of the most frequent repetition mechanisms lecturers currently employ, a corpus of business lectures in English is analysed to detect their ‘Relevant Information Units’ (RIU) and to account for the rhetorical mechanisms used to repeat these units. This work provides evidence that classical rhetorical strategies remain up-to-date and indispensable in effective lecturing today, also underlines the particular role of Grice''s maxims and Relevance Theory in this context where relevance and repetition are inter-reliant and mutually supporting communicative entities which need to be jointly defined and applied. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article contributes to the recently arising CA-for-SLA (Conversation Analysis for Second Language Acquisition) inquiry by demonstrating how an understanding of interactional practices may inform our understanding of language learning. The target interactional practice examined in this article is a set of referential practices, particularly for establishing initial recognitional reference of a third person or object when the name or a relevant lexical item for the target referent is not available to the speaker. Based on close examination of sequential organization of a set of practices for achieving mutually understood reference in casual conversations between L1 and L2 English speakers, the study shows how structural opportunities for language learning are generated in interaction, which serves to broaden our understanding of the relationship between certain interactional practices and learning opportunities afforded in such practices. The issue of participants’ orientation to such sequential environments as learning opportunities is also discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper investigates cases in which the recipients’ affiliation with the speaker''s affect in telling a complaint story is not (or not only) expressed through assessments or shorter comments or response cries but (also) through tellings of a complaint story of their own. After first complaint stories, next speakers may continue with similar or contrasting second or subsequent stories, in order to accomplish affiliation with the prior speaker''s story and affective stance. Similar stories are contextualized as such with similar footings or similar embodiments; contrasting stories are contextualized as such with other footings and/or other embodiments. Nevertheless, not all subsequent stories are receipted as affiliative: the study of a deviant case shows how a subsequent story can be produced and treated as disaffiliative. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study investigates student usage (and non-usage) of honorifics (keego) in Japanese conversations with professors. The main data consist of 12 conversations with 22 native speakers participating. It was found that, even though the relative social status of the participants remains the same, honorific usage, including addressee honorifics (desu/masu), varies greatly within the same discourse, as well as among individuals. Unlike what could be predicted from the recent reports that young Japanese speakers rarely use honorifics, a substantial number of the college students in the study did use them, and there was variation in the types of referent honorifics used. Also discussed are referent honorific avoidance strategies used by students. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the causes of frustration, and how speakers display their frustration in conversational arguments in terms of interactional organization, linguistic features, paralinguistic features, and embodied actions based on the method of discourse analysis. The expression of emotion is co-constructed by verbal cues, non-verbal vocal cues, and bodily behavior. The data presented here reveals two broad types of frustration. In the first type, verbal and non-verbal expressions of frustration are combined. In the second, frustration is displayed through non-verbal expression alone. This work seeks to uncover if they are associated with special types of linguistic and paralinguistic features, as well as interactional organization and embodied actions. The findings suggest that combined use of verbal and non-verbal expressions of frustration is displayed directly by linguistic features in conjunction with paralinguistic features and embodied actions. However, non-verbal expression of frustration displayed by embodied actions alone is a stronger emotional display than combined uses of verbal and non-verbal expressions of frustration. Moreover, the paper proposes that embodied action is a significant part of the interactional organization of a conversation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: I discuss two recent articles (Pinker, Steven, Nowak, Martin, Lee, James, 2008. The logic of indirect speech. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (3), 833–838, and Lee, James, Pinker, Steven, 2010. Rationales for indirect speech: the theory of the strategic speaker. Psychological Review 117 (3), 785–807), in which the authors dissociate off-record indirect speech from politeness and propose an alternative explanation for it in terms of payoffs for the speaker and the listener, and the digital nature of language interpretation. I suggest that, contrary to their claims, on closer scrutiny, the authors’ examples still rely on a narrower sense of locutionary cooperation, and that their discussion of uses of indirect speech when deniability is not required could be expanded by taking into account instances of off-record indirectness between intimates or members of different social groups, where indirect speech may serve to underline the interlocutors’ common ground and/or to construct the speaker''s identity. Finally, I propose that a multi-component theory of indirect speech may offer a more productive way of accounting for off-record indirectness as the outcome of several different, sometimes opposing, motivations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper reveals how intercultural communication can be examined from the perspective of cultural conceptualisations using the analytical tools of ‘cultural schemas’ and ‘cultural categories’. It focuses on an analysis of miscommunication between speakers of Aboriginal English and Australian English, miscommunication which has often disadvantaged Aboriginal speakers in educational, legal and other settings. This miscommunication largely occurs due to a discrepancy in the ways in which speakers of the two dialects conceptualise experience. Many Aboriginal people operate on the basis of conceptualisations that embody their spiritual worldview. It is observed that even everyday English words such as ‘sing’, ‘smoke’, and ‘medicine’ may be used by Aboriginal people to instantiate their spiritual schemas and categories. This paper provides examples of such usage through the analysis of excerpts from oral narratives produced by several Aboriginal speakers. The analyses presented in this paper clearly show the strength of the approach of cultural conceptualisations in studies of intercultural communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper attempts to show that a cognitive perspective of the Gricean concept on the conversational maxims opens new perspectives on two problems which have not been dealt with in detail in the original model and in most successive work on conversational implicature: speaker activity and a cognitive underpinning of the maxims of conversation. As pinpointed in section, the first problem is the need for a shift in focus towards the actual production of linguistic utterances fulfilling or flouting the maxims in particularized conversational implicature. The second problem is explaining how the adherence or non-adherence to the maxims can be conceptually accounted for on the basis of some general cognitive principles. While section is devoted to a cognitive re-evaluation of the speaker''s perspective, section will discuss some recent pragmatic developments, such as Levinson''s notion of pragmatic marking in generalized implicature, which can be applied to particularized conversational implicature and fruitfully underpinned by more general cognitive principles. Section will present an outline of some basic cognitive principles involved when speakers fulfill or flout the maxims. In the course of the paper it becomes clear that both current pragmatic research and cognitive analysis contribute to a new understanding of Grice''s ideas. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Using an 8 million-word corpus together with introspected examples, this paper examines the concessive cancellative discourse markers nevertheless, 1 [1] My use of nevertheless includes its allomorph nonetheless. still and yet. In a sequence P – DMcancellative – Q, a cancellative marker provides an instruction as to what aspect of information in the form of a derivable assumption from the prior discourse, P, either globally or locally, is to be canceled by the current message Q. In a concessive relationship, this assumption is a potential consequence derivable from the prior discourse. A concessive cancellative marker both concedes the truth of the prior discourse and signals the cancellation of the potential consequence derivable from the prior discourse segment. The corpus yielded 254 tokens of nevertheless/nonetheless, 802 tokens of discourse marker yet and 262 tokens of discourse marker still. 2 [2] The figures here refer to occurrences of still and yet as discourse markers and exclude other non-marker occurrences of still and yet such as temporal adverbs, adjectives or nouns, etc. These markers are distinguished according to three interconnected criteria: variability of scope, speaker perspective, and degree of concession. Variability of scope refers to the range to which a marker signals the hearer/analyst to search the previous discourse for a consequence of P that is canceled in Q. Nevertheless, still and yet constitute a cline of scope with nevertheless having the most limited scope and yet having the largest scope. Speaker perspective refers to whether the speaker perceives P from the perspective of Q, or Q from the perspective of P. The point of view of a speaker who uses still is located in Q, that of a speaker who uses yet is located in P, and the point of view of a user of nevertheless is neutral, neither located in P nor in Q. With regard to the degree of concession, nevertheless, still and yet are again considered in terms of a cline with nevertheless signaling the strongest degree of concession and yet the weakest. It is no coincidence that the clines of scope and concession are inversely related: the more vague the instruction carried by a concessive marker, the greater its ability to operate globally and conversely, the more detailed the instruction, the less its ability to operate globally. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The goal of this paper is to provide evidence that lie, steal, and cheat are the only concepts that share membership in a specialized semantic category which has a specific set of prototypical features that separates them from other kinds of misdeeds. Findings show that lie, cheat, and steal can be reduced to similar weighted semantic features and that in testing the relevance of these primitives, we find experimental results that reveal that lie, cheat, and steal have parallel prototype effects establishing the same kinds of gradient membership in all three concepts. It is this scalar membership that leads to the mismatch between speakers’ definitions of the concepts and their application of the categories to actual examples of lying, cheating, and stealing. The second purpose of this study is the development of category models that take into account the gradient membership and the variability of concept use as well as culturally inspired ideas about what lying, cheating, and stealing entail. The ultimate goal of this project is to discover the greater implications category structures by constructing a mega-model that only includes the concepts lying, cheating, and stealing and accounts for their exclusive membership in a larger concept field. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the phenomenon of ‘laugh particles’ interpolated within words and their role in interaction. It starts with an overview of the phenomenon, suggesting that it is less analytically presumptive to consider ‘interpolated particles of aspiration’ (IPAs). IPAs: (a) are objects that may but often do not accompany stand alone laughter; (b) are discrete and targetable objects; (c) are not propositional; (d) can be used with little disruption of delivery (order and timing). A series of examples are used to illustrate two uses of IPAs. First, they can be used to mark one or more lexical items as having some problem or insufficiency. Second, they can be used as a resource for action formation, inserted into words to modulate the nature or strength of the action. In both cases, the use of IPAs does not cancel the use of the words it is interpolated into. In both cases IPAs are designed as markers or flags of trouble. Alternative accounts for the use of IPAs (that they mark quotation, that they mark a word as inapposite) are critically explored and limitations of the idea that they mark the speaker''s stance on the action are outlined. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This research tested the linguistic relativity theory in relation to the conceptual domain of manner of motion. Nineteen English and 19 Italian native speakers completed two tasks involving the use of 26 triads of video-clips showing motion events. The participants underwent first a non-linguistic trial consisting of a forced-choice similarity judgement task performed during speech shadowing. Subsequently, they were asked to verbally describe the same stimulus material used for their similarity judgements. Congruently with the findings of , an analysis of the verbal descriptions showed that English speakers provided much more information about the manner in which some motion occurs than Italian speakers. However, in contrast to the significant difference found across the two linguistic groups in the verbal task, the scores regarding the non-linguistic performances were close to identical: when visually attending to the motion events displayed in the video-clips, English and Italian speakers exhibited the same differential attention for manner vs. path of motion. The results of this study provide evidence against Whorfian effects on non-linguistic cognition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article examines the ways of initiating self-repair in the ongoing turn-constructional unit in conversation. The data come from a wide variety of interactions in Finnish, comprising some 600 instances. In the data, speakers use both non-lexical and lexical devices for marking that they have initiated a self-repair. The initiators focused on are the prosodic cut-off and the particles eiku, tai and siis. Eiku consists of the negation word (ei) and the conjunction/connector ku(n) (‘as’, ‘while’, ‘when’ in its other usages). Tai is used in other contexts as a disjunctive conjunction (‘or’) and siis as a marker of inference (‘so’, ‘then’, ‘therefore’, ‘since’). The devices differ from each other in how explicitly they indicate that a repair is initiated and what kind of repair will follow. As in many other languages, cut-off is the most frequent self-repair initiator in the data: it can initiate any kind of a repair operation. By contrast, eiku projects that the speaker is going to replace or abandon something she has just said. We have not encountered a similar type of particle in other languages. Tai projects that the speaker is going to replace something just said, yet the element replaced may still remain as an alternative. Siis projects that the speaker is going to specify or explain something. There may be languages that almost exclusively deploy prosodic means to index a repair initiation within a turn-constructional unit, whereas other languages, including Finnish also make use of lexical means. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Research in conversation analysis has shown that speech rhythm is a relevant parameter for turn-taking amongst native speakers of British English. Not only is individual participants’ speech rhythmically structured, but rhythmic patterns also continue across speaker transitions. Participants employ such rhythmic integration as an interactional resource. By rhythmically integrating next turns into prior turns they display conversational alignment with previous speakers, whereas non-integration is treated as noticeable and non-default. British English has a tendency towards stress-timing, that is, stressed syllables occur at roughly regular intervals in time, with great variation in syllable duration. This paper investigates whether cross-transitional speech rhythm also occurs when speakers of primarily syllable-timed languages, whose syllable duration is less varied, are in conversation with speakers of primarily stress-timed languages. Do speakers of syllable-timed backgrounds integrate their turns rhythmically into the stress-timed pattern? If so, how are those continuations realised? The data show that rhythmic patterns are indeed continued across speaker transitions, however, only in up to half of all turn transitions, and predominantly only for the first stressed syllable of the turn. This suggests that incoming speakers of the syllable-timed language initially comply with the tendency towards rhythmic alignment before continuing ‘in their own time’. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Using Spencer-Oatey''s (2005) rapport-management approach, this paper studies the expression of sympathy by Peruvian Spanish speakers, in a situation exhibiting both power differential and social distance between participants. Results show that participants observed their behavioral expectations in this context expressing empathy, involvement and respect. They also respected the interlocutor''s identity and respectability face, which, is argued here, reflected positively on their own identity and respectability face. Their interactional goals were strongly relational and, although there was a short transactional goal interspersed in the interaction, it only reflected and emphasized their interdependent self-construals of self (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). Gender differences showed females favoring the expression of empathy while males favored the expression of respect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Using an eight-million word corpus made up of one-million words each of academic writing, newspapers, and fiction, and five-million words of spoken English, together with non-randomized data this paper examines 147 tokens of mind you, and its elliptical form mind, hereafter MY. The data confirm the relative infrequency of MY in general and especially its lack of use in formal written contexts. The data also confirm its much wider use in British as opposed to American English. MY is described as operating in two ways. First, MY operates in its original source meaning as an attention marker which summons the hearer''s attention through its imperative form to a repetition of, or elaboration on, information already presented in the discourse. In this use, the speaker wants to be sure that the hearer understands the full import of the highlighted information. However, this was a very infrequent use of MY yielding just 5 instantiations. Second, in its most frequent occurrence (142 tokens), MY is used as a mainly non-concessive cancellative discourse marker. In this function, MY often abruptly shifts the focus of the discourse away from the ideational content of the discourse onto the process of discourse construction itself by making overt the speaker''s own meaning making processes and his or her shifting commitment to previous arguments. In this way, the use of MY suggests unplanned, spontaneous meaning making. It is also argued that the way MY signals cancellation or a weakening of an aspect of information derivable from the previous discourse is often achieved through self-deprecation. The whole process of laying bare those inner workings, and especially the use of self-deprecation fosters interactive warmth by promoting intimacy and solidarity between the speaker and hearer. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper compares two styles of communication used by fire-fighters during breathing apparatus (BA) rescue operations. BA rescue is a risky business and while performing a BA rescue operation, effective communication is essential for the operation to be successful. This communication involves information sharing, coordination, safety, and so on. How this communication is supposed to be carried out is not regulated. To study the establishment and maintenance of common ground between fire-fighters, communication in two pairs of BA fire-fighters was analyzed. One pair did well, while the other performed less successfully. The pair that performed better communicated using a three-step procedure: step I was an informative utterance by speaker A; step II was a confirmation by speaker B of step I; and step III was an acknowledgment by speaker A of B''s confirmation. The less successful pair seldom communicated using more than two steps. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study purports to clarify the nature of hiniku (a quasi-equivalent of irony in the Japanese language). First, after reviewing Utsumi''s (2000) implicit display theory of iron, I will propose the concept of ‘communicative insincerity’: verbal or non-verbal expressions made in a non-serious or distorted manner. Then I will present a framework explaining the communication of irony: an ironic remark is accompanied by communicative insincerity and alludes to the speaker''s failed expectation; through this process, the speaker''s negative emotion or evaluation is expressed (the communicative insincerity theory). I will analyze the use of hiniku based on 362 examples from novels, newspaper or magazine articles, etc. These examples are categorized into 12 groups: Reversals in Assertives, Reversals in Non-assertives, Infelicitous Questions, Unrealistic Assumptions, Juxtaposition of Two Events, Various Interpretation of Situations, Rhetorical Techniques, Inappropriate Style, Replacement, Echoing, Non-verbal Techniques, and No Insincerity. These groups can be hierarchically arranged. While the examples of hiniku are diversified in verbal and non-verbal features, most of them can be shown to be consistent with the above-mentioned theory. Finally, hiniku will be compared with English irony and sarcasm. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the analysis of two types of identity construction in a corpus of 40 professional speeches, namely: institutional identity (of the company) and professional identity (of the speaker). Since the corpus under study is rather large, two of the most interesting speeches were selected on the basis of a quantitative pronoun analysis. A further, qualitative discourse analysis of this subcorpus revealed the complexity of the techniques used to build the two types of identity. On the basis of this qualitative analysis, it is hypothesized that there is a very clear division between the two complementary identities: institutional identity stresses the achievements of the company, while professional identity emphasizes the speaker''s thoughts and critical attitude. This hypothesis is tested and corroborated by the quantitative analysis of the dichotomy between agentive and epistemic self-references, the former reflecting institutional, the latter professional identity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Over the past several decades, extensive reading research has shown the beneficial role that contextualization markers play in written text comprehension. However, far less is known about their effects on L2 spoken text comprehension. The few studies concerning the effects of markers on L2 listening comprehension failed to examine their role through a qualitative analysis. To fill this gap, the current study attempts to provide a qualitative analysis of the role of markers in L2 listening comprehension. More specifically, the analysis focuses on how L2 learners misunderstood the text when the markers were absent in the academic monologue. The results show that the lack of markers seems to contribute significantly to L2 learners’ misinterpretation of the text. The current findings extend previous research documenting the facilitating role of the markers in listening comprehension. That is, in communication, speakers and listeners share the expectation that listeners are aided in their interpretation of the message by speakers’ use of contextualization markers. Listeners expect to be guided in their understanding of message via markers that overtly highlight the relative importance of ideas, and signal cohesive links between ideas. When these markers are missing, listeners experience difficulty understanding the message, and communication problems ensue. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study focuses on both the realisation and politeness perception of requests made by Turkish monolingual speakers and Turkish–German bilingual returnees. It investigates the possibility that the Turkish–German bilingual returnees’ pragmatic performance may have been affected by pragmatic transfer from German. As an initial step, a discourse completion test (DCT) was administered to Turkish monolinguals and Turkish–German bilingual returnees, in order to elicit requests in 10 different situations. Second, a politeness rating questionnaire was used to measure the perceived politeness of requests in Turkish in order to investigate the relationship between indirectness and politeness. The results of the questionnaire showed that indirectness and politeness are related, but not linearly linked concepts. In regard to indirectness, a cross-cultural comparison revealed that Turkish monolingual speakers seemed to prefer more direct strategies when compared to German speakers. Although the overall results of the DCT did not confirm pragmatic transfer, in some strategies the bilinguals preferred indirectness more than Turkish monolinguals did − a finding which is consistent with the hypothesis that they experienced some influence from German. Furthermore, this study explores the nature of requests beyond the limits of traditional speech act theory. Adopting a broader perspective when analyzing the DCT data (i.e., moving beyond the Blum-Kulka et al. [1989] framework), my study shows that informants employ strategies other than those reported in most studies using DCTs: deliberate choices of opting out, providing alternative solutions, and attempts at negotiation. A re-analysis of the DCT data revealed that in some situations, the Turkish monolinguals tended to be more reluctant to make a request, whereas the Turkish–German bilinguals opted out less frequently, but preferred indirect strategies. Thus, further investigation needs to cover not only the ‘said’, but also the ‘unsaid’ responses of the requestees, in order to shed more light on the issue of indirectness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this article, my aim is to study how objects of discourse are co-constructed in the political broadcast interview from two perspectives: the dialogical that is how the other-orientation emerges in the interview, and the sociopragmatic. Objects of discourse emerge in discursive practices in a sociocultural context. They are taken up and transformed in different social contexts. In this article, they consist of issues or topics in political, social or media life which are constantly reproduced in different media texts. In the interview, the objects of discourse are recontextualized by the interviewer and it is the politician who is invited to state an opinion, offer an evaluation, give a piece of information, etc. regarding them. Their construction is regulated by the different goals of the speakers in this genre in mediating political or social information to the public. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this reply I attempt to show that the analysis proposed by Ono [Ono, Haruhiko, 2005. On the use of the Speaker (narrator)''s mental attitude to determine the selection of the Japanese complementizer no or koto: a reply to Suzuki Journal of Pragmatics] is inadequate in accounting for complementizer selections in Japanese and that the account presented in [Suzuki, Satoko, 2000. Japanese complementizers: interaction between basic characteristics and contextual factors. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 585–621] is sufficient. Ono''s notions of subjective narration, psychological concern, and mental activity are not clearly defined. Further, his proposal, which associates the complementizer koto with the speaker/narrator''s psychological concern and no with the lack thereof, does not correctly predict actual complementizer choices. Numerous examples are cited which contradict his claim. For example, no is found in contexts in which the speaker/narrator''s psychological concern is clearly involved. In the latter half of the paper the findings in [Suzuki, Satoko, 2000. Japanese complementizers: interaction between basic characteristics and contextual factors. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 585–621] are summarized and defended. Complementizer selection in Japanese is a dynamic and complex process in which multiple factors may come into play. Relevant contextual factors are diverse since contexts are diverse. Even though the account proposed in [Suzuki, Satoko, 2000. Japanese complementizers: interaction between basic characteristics and contextual factors. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 585–621] is sometimes complicated, and perhaps not elegant, it more realistically reflects how a complementizer is chosen in Japanese. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In the present paper we analyze how speakers introduce new characters in narratives. We argue that, before what is ordinarily thought of as the introductory referring expression, speakers have used a variety of strategies to set the stage mentally for the character. We think in terms of discourse units, reference episodes, rather than structural units for studying reference. We take as our starting point the interactive strategies used in dialogues, and we look at monologues in terms of how speakers contextualize them [cf. Linell, Per, 1998. Approaching Dialogue: Talk, Interaction and Contexts in Dialogic Perspectives (IMPACT Studies in Language and Society). Benjamins, Amsterdam]. We build on work in several areas, especially the analysis of information flow [Chafe, Wallace, 1994. Discourse, Consciousness and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Consciousness Experience in Speaking and Writing. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago]. We found that speakers often treated referents as given or accessible on their first mention. However, speakers had previously used one or more pre-introductions either to activate the referent from common ground, to create a character placeholder, or to signal that a new character was forthcoming. In addition, speakers may provide cues as to whether the referent will be difficult to access. Monologue speakers varied in how they apparently construed the audience, and their reference strategies followed from their construal. We argue that the speaker''s ability to prepare the audience incrementally is a further example of intersubjectivity and an important part of communicative competence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study examines how reference to spatial boundaries can make speakers of English represent or understand a motion event as temporally bounded. Spatial boundaries can be implied by (a) the path expressed by a directional item, (b) the so-called “landmark” [Langacker, Ronald W., 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. I: Theoretical Perspectives. Stanford University Press, Stanford.] serving as ‘support’ for the path, and (c) the moving entity. Importantly, one and the same entity in the real world can also be conceptualized as either primarily delimited (bounded) or extended (nonbounded). After setting the stage with an example (Section 1) and dealing with some important terminological preliminaries (Section 2), we take a closer look at the concept of boundaries (Section 3). We then set up a four-way classification of directional prepositions in English (Section 4), based on whether they refer to a path that is extended and, if so, on whether that path is specified or not for having or lacking an end-boundary. In the subsequent Sections 5–7, we zoom in on the aspectual role played by adverbial particles, on the possible influence of the object NP of directional prepositions, and briefly on the role played by the NP referring to the moving entity. The most important findings of this study are summarized in Section 8. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates how speech and iconic gestures are patterned temporally in conveying information in Chinese conversation with reference to temporal phases, pauses, fluency of speech, and stroke synchrony. The results reveal different timing relations. First, in the onset phase, speakers overwhelmingly start to gesture during fluent speech rather than during a pause. When speakers encounter verbalizing difficulty, onsets tend not to occur in silence, yet they mostly come before the affiliated words. In the stroke phase, however, speakers are not inclined to produce strokes before affiliated speech units. A substantial portion is produced simultaneously with related words without onsets, suggesting that the verbalizing obstacle is not always resolved by manual movement. On the other hand, just like the onsets, strokes mainly take place where speech is fluent. Finally, the strokes are equally likely to synchronize with, be prior to, or follow speech, be the related words carry new or old information. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The subject of this paper is the hearer''s1[1] In this paper, hearer refers to hearer(s)/reader(s) and speaker refers to speaker(s)/writer(s). application to discourse of frames – mental knowledge structures that capture the typical features of a situation – in order to secure coherence. Having established a working definition of frame, the paper will focus on the relation between text, context, world-knowledge and coherence. Different types of frames (linguistic as well as non-linguistic) and their coherence-inducing functions are discussed with reference to authentic examples. It is shown that the hearer''s (re-)constructed coherence of texts is the result of a complex interplay of linguistic (con)text and non-linguistic (frame) knowledge. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Rational Choice (RC) models of code-switching argue that bilingual speakers make rational choices according to the rights and obligations they perceive in a given situation. Some situations are marked and some unmarked. Speakers choose their languages to index their rational decisions, as well as their attitudes and identities. The Conversation Analysis (CA) approach to code-switching agrees with the RC model that bilingual speakers are rational individuals. But instead of being oriented to rights and obligations, or attitudes and identities, bilingual speakers are first and foremost assumed to be oriented to conversational structures aiming primarily at achieving coherence in the interactional task at hand. Their language choice and code-switching is therefore ‘programmatically relevant’ to the talk-in-interaction. The CA approach therefore begins where the RC model stops and seeks evidence from talk-in-interaction rather than from external knowledge of community structure and relations. Examples of conversational code-switching by Chinese–English bilinguals will be cited to support the arguments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Several recent studies have led to a re-examination of the semantic values of demonstratives in many languages where the traditional (distal vs. proximal) interpretation had been considered as accurate, even if it did not account for all attested uses. This is particularly true for the oldest period of French (ninth century–end twelfth century).In Old French, demonstratives are organized around the opposition between two paradigms, CIST and CIL. These were not distinguished from one another by their grammatical category, as in Modern French, since both forms could function as either pronoun or determiner. Rather, they were differentiated in terms of their meaning.Several attempts have been made to account for the difference between the CIST and CIL series. We show that none of the previous hypotheses has been totally satisfactory. Our own interpretation is based neither on a spatio-temporal conception of deictics (the traditional interpretation), but on the pragmatic analysis of the use of demonstratives in the texts of this earlier period of French (ninth century–twelfth century), in terms of ‘speaker’s sphere’. We will argue that this approach alone can account for those uses in Old French which have posed a problem until now. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The present study aims to examine Korean EFL learners’ ability to achieve discourse cohesion in English through appropriate selection of referential forms and utilization of referential strategies; in particular, it looks into the language-specific aspects of the referential system in their L1, and how these may be evident in their L2 performance. Using “frog story” picturebook prompts, The analyses examine oral narratives produced by Korean adult EFL learners (N=12) in L1 (Korean) and L2 (English) and adult American native English speakers (N=12). Quantitative analysis of the narratives shows that the specifically Korean linguistic strategies of heavily relying on nominals are evident in the Korean EFL learners’ English narrative discourse; thus, the resulting stories are relatively less coherent and cohesive than the native English speakers’. However, it is also observed that the Koreans’ English stories tend to diverge from their Korean counterparts in the direction of the target language norms. In addition, both the Korean EFL learners’ English narratives and the English native speakers’ stories showed referent effects which were not present in the Korean stories; this is supposed to be due to the Korean referential system, which prefers explicit reference even when characters have already been introduced and remain in the central plot. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we investigate how speakers jointly construct talk around route directions using a map task. A corpus of eight task-based interactions from the Map Task section of the Australian National Database of Spoken Language—ANDOSL [Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing 94, Adelaide 1 (1994) 97] form the corpus for this study. Basing our analysis on Taylor and Tversky’s [J. Mem. Lang. 31 (1992a) 261; Mem. Cogn. 20 (1992b) 483; J. Mem. Lang. 35 (1996) 371] route and survey perspective-taking strategies in route descriptions and Levelt’s [Speech, Place and Action: Studies of Language in Context, John Wiley, Chichester, pp. 251–268] study of speakers’ linearisation strategies two issues form the nucleus of the study. The first is to describe the interactions as the collaborative constructions of both the instruction-giver and the instruction-follower. Here we use Conversation Analysis to examine the sequential distribution of route and survey strategies. We find that the route perspective, which is associated with the activity of route-giving, is distributed overwhelmingly in base and post-expansion sequences, while the survey perspective, which is associated with suspension of the activity, is distributed in insertion and pre-sequences. The second and related issue is to try and account for the shifts in perspective, which like Taylor and Tversky [J. Mem. Lang. 35 (1996) 371], we find is a common strategy used by the speakers in our corpus. Here an attempt is made to account for these shifts at pragmatic levels. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The purpose of this investigation is to identify and describe sociopragmatic features of American KFL learners in the Korean communicative act of request. For this study, 50 female KFL learners were asked to respond in Korean to 12 different situations in which they carry out the speech act of request. Their Korean performances were compared to those of 50 female Korean native speakers in order to identify deviations and problems which the American KFL learners were confronted with when trying to acquire this particular communicative function. Fifty female American English native speakers also participated in order to provide baseline intra-cultural data as a possible source of the learners’ deviant realization behaviors from target norms. The data, collected from a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), were analyzed descriptively in terms of sociopragmatic aspects. In the analysis, 17 semantic formulae for request supportive move (RSM) in Korean were developed, and five semantic formulae for request head act (RHA) in Korean were established. On the whole, the request supportive move formulae usage patterns of the respective groups support a stereotypical description of Koreans as being more hierarchical, collectivistic, roundabout, and formalistic in comparison to Americans. In addition, the semantic formulae usage patterns of the KFL learners were consistent with those of the American English native speakers, indicative of an L1 transfer effect. Moreover, the request behaviors of the KFL learners were more verbose and varied in forms than those of the Korean native speakers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines how speakers’ conversational goals of concealment which guide the speakers’ use of reference in conversation, affect the way speakers negotiate and repair the identity of a human referent in conversation. In conversations where the speakers design their utterances so as to conceal matters from overhearers, the speakers prefer reference forms that the addressees can recognize easily but that cannot be recognized by overhearers, such as ‘private keys.’ This referencing strategy (which is often successful) consists in speakers and addressees using their communal and personal common ground to identify referents in the data. There are instances, however, where the speakers’ referencing strategy is not consistent with their conversational goals of concealment, and the reference forms fail to be recognized by the addressees or to evoke the intended connections. Once a reference form has failed to trigger mutual understanding between the speakers and their addressees, the repair mechanisms and strategies used to resolve this lack of understanding are in line with the speakers’ conversational goals of concealment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]