Search

This paper investigates the use of ‘like’ as a discourse-pragmatic marker by recently-arrived Polish and Chinese migrants in Dublin, Ireland. The data comprises 14 hours of audio-recorded sociolinguistic interviews with 42 participants, including a control sample of six native Irish English speakers. The frequency of ‘like’ is investigated, along with its variable positioning within the clause, and its discourse-pragmatic function. In total 926 tokens are examined, and statistical tests, including fixed and mixed effects regression models, are used to determine the significance of the results. The results show that the frequency of ‘like’ among the non-native speakers reaches the levels of the native speakers after approximately three years of residence in Ireland. Proficiency in English is not found to be significant, suggesting that it is exposure to native speaker input that drives this acquisition. The results also show that ‘like’ in clause-final position, considered to be an emblematic feature of Irish English (and a ‘non-standard’ feature of world Englishes more generally), was employed significantly more often by the native Dubliners, with no effect in this instance for length of residence among the migrants. As regards the function of ‘like’, it was found to be used predominantly to illustrate, explain or introduce information. ‘Like’ in clause-final position was also found to be used as a mitigator or hedge, predominantly by the Irish, and particularly in short statements of personal opinion that could be perceived as face-threatening or opposing the interlocutor's views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the incorporation of discourse-pragmatic features from English into Serbian, proposing the term ‘pragmatic Anglicisms’ to denote a range of directly or indirectly borrowed forms from English with pragmatic functions. The article offers a descriptive and taxonomic framework for the study of pragmatic Anglicisms in Serbian and analyzes their formal and functional characteristics, as well as sociolinguistic, sociopragmatic and sociocultural aspects of their use, related to the users, registers, stylistic and communicative markedness, motivational factors, perception and evaluation by Serbian native speakers, post hoc effects, and cultural influences. Apart from the commonly identified classes, such as interjections and discourse markers, the article recognizes the use of (calqued) discourse formulas from English in situations where there are either existing Serbian ones or a discourse ‘gap’ (i.e. when both the previously non-existent communicative act and the formulaic expression are adopted from English). This subclass is particularly interesting since it is not only a novel linguistic element that is thus introduced, but a novel communication and cultural pattern from the Anglo-American globalizing culture that gets adopted through new discourse formulas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine micro- and macrolinguistic underpinnings of circumstantiality in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), we examined the elicited narrative output of 15 individuals with TLE and 14 controls. To replicate and extend Field and colleagues' (2000) work, participants were asked to produce five immediately consecutive elicitations of an eight-frame cartoon "Cowboy Story" (Joanette et al., 1986). Following transcription and coding, detailed multi-level discourse analysis demonstrated a typical pattern of compression in controls. The narratives produced by individuals with TLE were less fluent, cohesive, and coherent across trials: producing fewer novel units and more repetitive and extraneous content. Significant group by trial interactions in sample length, spontaneous duration, and statements, were not explained by seizure burden, age, or lexical retrieval deficits. These findings suggest that they do not benefit from repeated engagement with a narrative in the same manner as controls. Disturbed social cognition and pragmatics in TLE might underpin communication inefficiencies. • A multi-centre multi-level discourse analysis examined narrative discourse in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). • Individuals with TLE do not benefit from repeating a narrative in the same way that neurologically normal individuals do. • Individuals with TLE fail to compress discourse and instead introduce more repetitive and extraneous content. • Their narratives are less fluent, cohesive, and coherent than controls which reflects inefficient discourse processing. • Disturbed pragmatics in TLE might underpin communication inefficiencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]