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Abstract: This rhetorical study investigated the employment of interpersonal metadiscourse in applied linguistics articles written in English by Anglo-American and Iranian academic writers. To this end, a representative sample of 60 conclusion sections written by the two groups of writers was selected as the corpus. The two groups of writers were compared in terms of their use of “hedges”, “emphatics”, and “attitude markers” in the extracts. The interpersonal categories were also broken down into subtypes depending on the linguistic items used, and analyzed for distribution in the conclusion sections. The functional–contextual analysis shows similarities and differences in the rhetorical behaviour of these authors in their use of interpersonal metadiscourse. There was a remarkable tendency by both writer groups towards hedging their propositions. Pronounced differences were mainly in the higher use of emphatics and attitude markers by Anglo-American authors. High certainty avoidance and abstinence from attitudinal language was noticeable amongst Iranian experts. The differences are attributed to the degree of rhetorical sensitivity to and awareness of audience, purpose, cultural leanings, and the proclivities of the disciplinary genre. The implications of this study can be helpful in academic writing, EFL writing instruction, and genre analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demonstrative forms in Cebuano are highly versatile and, as often seen crosslinguistically, can serve discourse deictic, discourse marking, and placeholding functions. Some of the demonstratives have also developed into speaker stance markers. Using data from spontaneous conversations, this paper examines how Cebuano demonstratives, especially the form kanάng , have extended their use from the referential domain to the non-referential (in particular, pragmatic) domain. The demonstrative form kanάng , spoken with a tone of uncertainty, is often used as a repair marker and filler, as a topic marker and mental staging device for upcoming information, as well as a hedge when a speaker is dealing with sensitive or awkward topics. This study also compares kanάng with other stance markers, in particular negation markers and interjectory particles that are likewise recruited in clause-initial position to mark varying stance intensities, with results indicating that kanάng expresses the mildest stance, hence its frequent use as a politeness marking device. • Demonstrative forms in Cebuano are highly versatile. • Cebuano kanang is used as a hedge for dealing with sensitive or awkward topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we look at the role that macrostructures in discourse have to play in the study of swearing. While studied in isolation, such macrostructures have not yet been studied comprehensively and the range of macrostructures studied has been small. By contrast, work on microstructures is much better developed. In response to this, using spoken corpus data from the BNC2014, we take two approaches to studying discourse in this paper. In the first approach, we explore spoken data which has been annotated with a functional discourse coding scheme that shows, across the corpus, the distribution of a set of macrostructures, discourse units, that generally characterise conversation. Our goal is to see how swearing distributes according to discourse unit function and to account for any observations made. Following from that, we explore a single macrostructure of discourse - narrative, including its sub-elements - to see whether swearing interacts with this macrostructure and its component parts. We conclude by arguing that discourse is an important dimension along which the use of swearing may vary, that such variation is likely to relate to emotion, and that the different perspectives on macrostructure taken in the paper are complementary. • The need for swearing research to shift to consider macrostructure as well as microstructure. • Functional views of discourse and swearing. • Discourse unit and narrative annotation of conversational data. • Nesting of macrostructures in discourse. • Swearing, emotion and macrostructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Placed at the intersection of semantics and pragmatics, the concept of semantic prosody has been associated with various notions including evaluative meaning, attitudinal meaning and connotations, and there is no agreement among researchers as to its definition and operationalization. In this critical-reflection theoretical paper, we provide an overview of collocational and discoursal approaches to semantic prosody, which we treat as distinct and, at the same time, complementary. Furthermore, we suggest that the semantic prosody can be conceptualised as an interaction between a source and a target term, where the target term has a descriptive semantic content, and it receives its evaluative meaning from the source term, which can be either only evaluative (thin) or both evaluative and descriptive (thick). Next, we propose that the source of semantic prosody can be accounted for in terms of value judgments. In particular, a value judgment that a speaker ascribes to the factual content of a term is always relative to a certain kind of standard. Thus, our proposal supports the view that the speaker's stance, manifested in value judgments that they ascribe to terms, can be considered as a source of semantic prosody. • We propose a new theoretical reading of semantic prosody grounded in the philosophy of language. • We argue that semantic prosody arises as a result of interaction between thin and thick terms. • We argue that the semantics of expressions that have semantic prosody can be understood in terms of value judgments. • We argue that value judgements ascribed by speakers to expressions are relative to a culturally-marked kind of standard. • Our proposal supports both the collocational and discoursal views of semantic prosody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the information structural properties of so-called premise (also factual) conditionals, conditional sentences whose antecedent repeats previously evoked content. We argue that, semantically, premise conditionals are hypothetical conditionals, with two pragmatic properties: their antecedent is echoic and thematic. We show that some of the differences identified in the literature between hypothetical and premise conditionals follow from the informational status of the antecedent. While the antecedent of a premise conditional is thematic, the antecedent of a hypothetical conditional can also be rhematic. Rhematic conditionals happen to be compatible with all the characteristics that stand out as incompatible with premise conditionals. Additionally, we argue that echoicity is a definitional property of the premise reading of indicative conditionals. • Premise (also called factual) conditionals are not a syntactic/semantic object on their own. • They are just a possible interpretation of an indicative conditional given the right discourse conditions. • We define them as thematic and echoic; the antecedent need not be Common Ground. • Thematicity explains previously observed characteristics of premise conditionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a theory of interpreting argument types as an integral part of a systematic and comprehensive 'hermeneutics of persuasive discourse'. It first explains how such a hermeneutics can be developed based on pragmatic insights about the use of language for persuasive purposes expressed in the philosophy of argument. Then, after having provided an overview of the main hermeneutical stages involved in interpreting persuasive discourse, the paper focuses on the stage of argument type identification. It formulates a 'hermeneutics of argument type' in terms of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA), an argument categorization framework systematizing existing accounts of arguments in the broad sense of the term (topoi , loci , argument schemes, fallacies, means of persuasion). For each of the three parameters within this framework, 'argument form', 'argument substance', and 'argument lever', the paper describes how to determine their value by analyzing several examples of natural arguments. • Offers detailed pragmatic insights about the use of language for argumentative or persuasive purposes. • Provides a general overview of the hermeneutical stages involved in interpreting argumentative or persuasive discourse. • Contains an explanation of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA) and its application to analyzing argumentation in the wild. • Provides clear guidelines for annotating corpora of argumentative or persuasive discourse. • Can be used to design empirical cognitive psychological research into how people process persuasive messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we show how topoi warrant inferences for interpreting and producing dialogue contributions, particularly in the case of enthymemes where the conclusion does not logically follow from the premises. We situate our theory of topoi in the context of pragmatic theory by relating it to other theories of inference and coherence. Through detailed analysis of a single dialogue, we show how dialogue participants can incrementally entertain and resolve mismatching interpretations of an enthymematic utterance. We discuss how the notions of topoi and enthymemes can add to a generalisable model of coherence in dialogue. • We argue that topoi are relevant to the production and interpretation of utterances in interaction. • Whether or not arguments in discourse are seen as valid depends on the topoi one is willing to accept. • Misunderstandings in dialogue may be related to a mismatch of topoi between speakers. • We present a model of how agents can entertain and resolve mismatching utterance interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of experts in implementing Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives at the national level and explores the performative politics and power dynamics involved. Original research conducted in Malaysia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, where REDD+ efforts were underway, provides the empirical basis for the study. The findings reveal tensions between the official win-win narrative of REDD+ and the reflective perspectives of experts based on their empirical knowledge and unique positionalities. These tensions raise questions about the underlying norms and values associated with REDD+. However, the pursuit of professional development within the international development and conservation sector, reliant on donor funding, impedes constructive reflection. The alignment of experts with donor visions for career advancement contributes to this obstacle. Therefore, the paper argues for creating space for a more reflexive approach among scholars and practitioners to foster comprehensive reflection and a fundamental rethink of the future of REDD+. • Examination of REDD+ experts' discourses at the national level reveals another operational challenge for REDD+. • Empirical observations and past experiences of REDD+ experts raise doubts about the core norms and values of REDD+. • The lack of emphasis on this empirical knowledge in international policy processes hinders REDD+'s progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conjectural questions are questions that do not expect an answer, but only express the speaker's curiosity about the issue. This paper proposes an analysis of conjectural wh -questions in Cuzco Quechua and argues that the conjectural = chá makes the same kind of contribution in interrogatives as it does in declaratives. First, it adds the condition that the evidence holder's (the speaker in declaratives, the addressee in interrogatives) reasoning bears on the issue under discussion. Second, while canonical assertions and questions expect that the addressee will commit to either the proposition expressed by a declarative or to one of the possible answers denoted by an interrogative, their conjectural counterparts do not have this expectation. The proposed analysis of the conjectural is couched within an extended version of the commitment-based discourse framework of Farkas and Bruce (2010). It differs from previous analyses of conjectural questions in analyzing the conjectural condition as a speaker commitment about the current context rather than a constraint on possible responses by the addressee. • The Cuzco Quechua conjectural encodes that the evidence holder is able support the at-issue proposition by reasoning. • The evidence holder is the speaker in declaratives and the addressee in interrogatives. • Interrogatives with the conjectural are interpreted as conjectural questions, they do not expect an answer. • These claims and observations can be captured in Farkas and Bruce's (2010) discourse framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies are expected to contribute significantly to climate abatement, but the technologies have not been widely adopted and remain relatively unfamiliar to the public. Public opinions and attitudes can contribute significantly to the deployment of technologies and can be studied through discourses. Discourses can reveal underlying attitudes from widespread narratives. This paper investigates the attitude atmosphere around CCUS technologies through Finnish media discourses, building on 51 articles from 13 different national newspapers or news media sites. The findings of this research confirm that CCUS technologies are fairly unfamiliar to the public but indicate positive attitudes particularly towards carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies. However, information provision to the public does not necessarily translate towards increasingly positive attitudes. Communication should be genuine and focused on interaction instead of persuading the public of the benefits of the technologies. Methodologically, this paper points out that media discourses can provide possibilities to assess attitude atmospheres around unfamiliar technologies, such as CCUS. • Public opinions can have significant impact on the deployment of technologies. • Exploring attitude atmosphere around CCUS technologies. • Media discourses can unveil the opinions of the public. • Information provision should be genuine and participatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse parsing for multiparty dialogue aims to detect the discourse structure and relations in a dialogue to obtain a discourse dependency graph. Existing models for this task have proven the effect of speaker information. However, no model explicitly learns representations of the speaker for parsing the discourse structure of dialogues. In this paper, to further exploit the effect of speaker information, we propose a novel model HG-MDP , which uses a heterogeneous graph neural network to encode dialogue graphs and we use an iterative update for the aggregation of speaker nodes and utterance nodes. Finally, we adopt updated utterance nodes to predict discourse dependency links and relations using the biaffine module. To validate our HG-MDP model, we perform experiments on the two existing benchmarks STAC and Molweni corpus. The results prove the effectiveness of the speaker modeling module on two datasets and we achieve the state-of-the-art on the Molweni dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over the semantics of demonstratives is in a stalemate between those positions attributing some referential significance to a speaker's referential intentions and those not doing so. The latter approach is supported by cases driving the non-intentional intuition in which the speakers mistakenly point at objects other than the ones they intend to refer to. The intentionalists, such as Martin Montminy, reply that once we think of potential extensions of such cases in which the speaker explains to the hearer what her referential intention was, it is the intentionalist intuition that prevails. In this paper, I develop a semantics for demonstratives whose task is to accommodate both of these seemingly contradictory intuitions within the general non-intentionalist framework. The proposed idea is that the reference of a use of a demonstrative can change over time, as the discourse develops. This idea is handled formally by the addition of a parameter of the index of evaluation that represents the referentially relevant aspects of the state of the discourse. Also, I provide reasons for preferring my view over two rival positions: one by Palle Leth, and one that I adjust to the demands of the semantics of demonstratives from the theory that Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies offer for epistemic modals, and from Laura Delgado's polyreferentialism for proper names. • The reference of uses of demonstratives might change as the discourse develops. • There is a way to incorporate intentionalist and conventionalist intuitions about demonstrative reference into one view. • A view able to do so is preferable over the no-reference and polyreferentialist views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of studies describe the many different functions of polyfunctional discourse markers like well in different contexts and from different theoretical perspectives. In the current paper, we propose to systematize the many different uses identified based on their position with respect to the discourse units they are associated with. Not only can previous findings on well be integrated into a single coherent representation of its uses and functions, but the positions with respect to the discourse units can also be associated with specific functions, thus shedding light on how the polyfunctionality of well is brought about. • This paper explains and relates the polyfunctionality of the English DM well. • Functions are correlated with their position in different discourse units. • Previous findings on well, integrated into a single representation of positions∗DUs. • Discourse positions correlate with pragmatic functions: modal, textual, interactive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the analysis of topic shifters from a contrastive perspective, using a pragmatic approach based on conversational logic, theories of relevance and coherence/cohesion studies. Discourse markers and topic shifters in French have been widely investigated, and provided a description of the core values and a typology of uses; a comparative perspective is expected to highlight new semantic values, a better understanding of their pragmatic role and even to establish new typologies. As far as Romanian is concerned, the research on topic shifters is still incipient, and the parallel corpora used so far have provided only a small number of equivalents (de asemenea, de altfel, de altminteri, ȋn plus, pe de altă parte). Moreover, the study of the Romanian correspondents of French topic shifters has shown that the same marker often combines two functions, depending on the discursive strategies developed and on the context, which makes its semantic interpretation even more difficult. A systematic investigation aiming at an exhaustive inventory of these markers is therefore motivated, requiring a thorough analysis of different types of corpora (written and oral), involving various discourse types. In order to identify a wider range of topic shifters in Romanian, besides bilingual corpora provided by the Linguee and Reverso online dictionaries, I consulted a number of modern and contemporary translations from French into Romanian, seeking to assign each unit a specific value or sub-type of topic shifting, such as sharing the same argumentative orientation or the introduction of a new perspective on the topic in question, etc. • The paper identifies a series of linguistic forms (originally manner adverbs or space adverbs) that can function as topic shifters in contemporary Romanian. • The analysis of the Romanian equivalents of the two French Topic shifters (par ailleurs and d'ailleurs) shows an important difference in the way the two languages encode topic shifting. • While d'ailleurs is mostly translated in Romanian as de altfel "moreover", which has the same argumentative function, par ailleurs is translated by a wider range of markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the environment of open science, the transformation of scientific exchange and research paradigms urgently needs diversified and open scientific evaluation. This study aims to advance the construction of academic journals, reform the quantitative evaluation mechanism, and provide references for promoting the international discourse power of Chinese academic journals. It also aims to enrich and improve the indicator system and evaluation theory of the discourse power of academic journals with Chinese characteristics. Firstly, this paper analyzes the fundamental concerns of the discourse power evaluation of academic journals, drawing on the theory of evaluation science, discourse power theory, and communication theory. According to the characteristics and connotation of the evaluation indicators, the definition and formation process of academic journals' discourse power, this paper constructed. the evaluation indicator system. Secondly, this paper obtained 163,628 international citations and 211,150 domestic citations, and 111,496 altmetrics indicators data for 29,203 published papers from 238 Chinese English-language journals. Meanwhile, 12 scientometrics indicators and 14 altmetrics indicators are selected. Thirdly, descriptive statistical analysis and an overview indexed by international databases are carried out at the macro level. Then, correlation analysis, factor analysis, entropy weight method and TOPSIS method are adopted to evaluate and analyze the discourse influence and discourse leading in Chinese English-language journals by integrating scientometrics and altmetrics indicators. Finally, Two-dimensional and four quadrant method is used to evaluate academic journals' discourse power. At the same time, this paper compares and verifies the reliability of the evaluation results. The findings demonstrate that the research on the academic journals' discourse power evaluation based on the theory, method and application logic is practical, comprehensive and reliable. This paper also puts forward the countermeasures to enhance the discourse power of Chinese academic journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the presence of personification in the speech of participants in two academic seminars that were carried out in an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) course at a Swedish university with a multicultural group of students (17 people from 15 different countries) that focused on business and marketing topics. We analyse if the purposeful humanization of companies is present in university discourse interaction by examining these EMI participants' personification of companies and brands in the two selected seminars. Our data were analysed from a principally qualitative perspective in a small-scale case study that shows the multiple ways personification permeates EMI students' language to treat companies as human-like entities, both for specific brands as well as for the concept of businesses in general. This was especially noteworthy in verbs of cognition in discussions on businesses and marketing. The presence of personification in the figurative uses of EMI students points to some of the pragmatic success of these EMI students in referencing well-established marketing strategies that attribute human-like characteristics and relationships to businesses and brands. It also reflects a natural tendency to employ personification and see a person behind a corporate entity. Unlike other figurative uses that have shown to be challenging for L2 speakers, these EMI students use personification in business English, a frequent device in their discourse community, naturally and appropriately, showing how they are part of that specific discourse community. • EMI participants' discourse reveals a good deal of personification, in particular through verbs representing cognition. • Multinational companies and culture are pertinent to the metaphorical domain underlying these personifications, corporations are people. • Successful use of figurative language in their discourse community shows EMI learners as competent members of the discipline. • Personification may be a more basic mental mechanism than metaphor or metonymy with a role in 'disciplinary enculturation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a conceptual distinction between epistemic modality and discourse strategy, and aims to disentangle both notions by showing how they relate to each other on the basis of corpus data. The meanings of six Galician epistemic adverbs are studied using samples taken from an electronic corpus. 1800 observations were coded for the relevant meaning categories, including epistemic modality, mitigation, strengthening and other strategic and non-strategic uses, such as tendency and dynamic modality. The results reveal a relation between the epistemic value encoded by an adverb and the discourse strategic goals it serves: possibility adverbs feature several strategic uses, but only in a small portion of their occurrences; probability adverbs are almost purely epistemic; and certainty adverbs take on strategic functions most often. Thus, the study shows the viability and descriptive adequacy of distinguishing between modal and strategic uses of epistemic expressions. • Epistemic modality and discourse strategy are conceptually different categories. • Corpus data shows how epistemic modality and discourse strategy are related. • Discourse strategy depends on the epistemic value encoded by adverbs. • Uncertainty adverbs are primarily epistemic. • Certainty adverbs are used strategically most often. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main distinctive features of social interaction in our species is that we use language to coordinate our future activities, and in many cases far ahead. Non-human primates don't do this, as a consequence of which their interactions remain comparatively simple and short-range. This paper offers the first in-depth discussion of this key distinctive feature of human communication. It is argued that its evolution was conditional on two developments: an increase of responsiveness during the communicative exchange and the emergence of normative behaviours in the follow-up. Responsiveness was required to coordinate future interactions, but wasn't enough for coordinating interactions beyond the immediate future, which required normativity, to boot. • Normativity is essential for discourse and cooperation. • First study of normativity in evolutionary pragmatics. • Future coordination is a key explanandum for evolutionary pragmatics. • A detailed account of the early stages of human communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural forest regrowth on abandoned land represents a major land use change in some regions of Europe. This is driven by various factors related to land abandonment, particularly changing socioeconomic conditions for agriculture and rural depopulation. Little research exists about how the issue is addressed at the policy level. This paper looks into the policymaking related to natural forest regrowth in France and Spain, two countries where land abandonment and natural forest regrowth occur at significant scales. We conduct a policy discourse analysis building upon 27 interviews carried out between 2018 and 2020 with policy actors from various fields that connect with these topics. We find four competing storylines in both countries: extensive agriculture, forestry, landscape conservation, and wilderness. These storylines differ regarding the framing of natural forest regrowth as a problem or an opportunity, and the preferred policy solutions. While storylines rooted in extensive agriculture, landscape conservation and forestry tend to problematize the phenomenon, a wilderness storyline voices an opportunity perspective. In France, a few actors voice elements of an insignificance storyline. Given its spatial importance, natural forest regrowth will likely become more important for future policymaking in the EU. Engaging in further research across disciplines and policy fields is necessary to study the phenomenon and its possible management and governance options. • Policy actors narrate natural forest regrowth on abandoned land through storylines. • Interview results distinguish four storylines on natural forest regrowth. • Three storylines tend to highlight the threat of natural forest regrowth. • Natural forest regrowth has not yet received much political attention. • Shifts towards a rewilding perspective may strengthen an opportunity framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores sellers' addressing behaviours in Chinese e-commerce live streaming discourse by focusing on the impact of gender. Data were drawn from a self-built corpus comprising 120 h of transcribed texts from live streaming on Taobao. By conducting a corpus-based analysis, we compared males' and females' keywords for addressing customers and their performative functions of suggestive selling. The findings show that: (1) both males and females use a small percentage of kinship terms; (2) males' ratio of address pronouns to nouns greatly surpasses females', but their frequency of ' nín ' (deferential you) is much lower than females'; (3) females are more likely to consistently use nouns with the meaning of baby, whereas males prefer utilising diverse friendship terms; and (4) females frequently use a pattern of 'thank/greet + baby' to conduct ritual interactions more often than males. We argue that both males' and females' addressing behaviours function to promote successful selling; however, gender distinctions do exist in terms of their lexical choices and pragmatic uses of addressing words. The current study contributes to both pragmatics and the sociolinguistic study of gender and language. • Provides research data on Chinese addressing behaviors in e-commerce live streaming context. • Explores how sellers manage rapport via address pronouns and nouns for suggestive selling. • Focuses on gender's impact on addressing forms by conducting a corpus-based analysis. • Finds both similarities and differences in males' and females' use of addressing forms. • Contributes to both pragmatics and the sociolinguistic study of gender and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the functions of negated indicative present forms of the verb vedere 'to see' that refer to the speaker and are followed by an indirect wh-interrogative subordinate clause. The investigation of an Italian written corpus of newspaper articles, reviews and forum posts shows that this construction set forms a discourse routine with a recurrent pragmatic function. It expresses a disagreeing action of rebuttal that includes the reformulation and critical assessment of an interlocutor's preceding utterance and projects arguments sustaining the speaker's standpoint. The routine is highly specialized: its functions are limited to those mentioned, whereas it does not express bare denial, counterarguments, or agreeing actions. The corpus analysis also shows that this specialization is a characteristic of the combination of the examined negated verb forms with indirect wh-interrogative clauses, whereas combinations with other complement types either do not occur at all in the corpus (indirect polar questions and complement clauses introduced by che) or have a broader range of diverse discourse functions (nominal complements with propositional meaning). The routine's lexical and grammatical components (inferential lexical meaning, deixis, negation and its scope, the presupposing properties of indirect wh-interrogatives, mood) all contribute to realize its discourse function. • Negated vedere + indirect wh-interrogative has evidential meaning and marks a disagreeing action. • The construction tends to express a rebuttal justified by explicit arguments given in the co-text. • Its function depends on lexical meaning, deixis, negation, presupposition, and mood. • The indirect wh-interrogative establishes a discourse relation with a preceding statement. • The combination of evidential verbs with negation raises specific problems of scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English vague language (VL), as in general noun phrases, general extenders and general verbs, is central to casual conversation. It can have discourse functions and create an informality and solidarity. The rationale for the study described here was a gap in the literature vis-à-vis language learner metapragmatic awareness of VL in their L1. It was hypothesised that attitudes towards VL vary from language to language. This paper describes a comparative questionnaire study of German, Spanish and Mandarin speakers' attitudes to VL in their languages. Subjects were invited to translate English VL to their languages and to think of other vague forms: German speakers volunteered 'Dingsbums' and 'und so'; Spanish speakers suggested 'cómo se llame' and 'o algo así; Mandarin speakers noted 'na ge dong xi'. Subjects were also asked to describe social variables, domains and functions associated with their VL: German speakers saw VL as creating closeness but many felt that it made addressors sound unreliable and mildly impolite; Spanish speakers mostly saw VL as a way of showing a relaxed, close, comfortable, friendly, but a few saw it as an sign of laziness and impoliteness; Mandarin speakers responded that VL was a marker of friendly informality and solidarity but they mostly associated it with indifference, laziness, impatience, irritation, anger, disappointment, contempt and dishonesty. The paper concludes with suggestions of ways to incorporate tasks on VL into English language teaching classrooms, and to raise language teachers' awareness of English L2 users' beliefs and intercultural differences in terms of VL. • Vague language forms, functions and variation. • Close with family and friends. • Indifference, impoliteness with strangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Proximity to extreme weather event plays role in type of policy response. • Little connection between city media engagement and its influence on policy response. • Boston and New York City overlapped in communicating current and projected climate risk. • Boston displayed proactive climate policy responses while New York City pursued reactive climate policies. The potential for extreme weather events to open windows for public policy changes or transitions has been studied from various theoretical and analytical perspectives. Following extreme weather events, the media (including popular press and journalism) contributes to critical moments, where a potential window opens to transform public understandings of issues and challenges in established extreme event discourses. This paper examines government engagement with the media to better understand conditions of the post-event policy window from the perspective of critical discourse moments. More specifically, the paper uses keyword analysis and critical discourse analysis to examine discursive constructions of the post-event policy window following Hurricane Sandy by two city governments– Boston and New York. We contrast the language of city government engagement with media about post-disaster policy responses and compare this with the language of proposed city policies on climate risk adaptation and mitigation strategies. The outcomes of this analysis illustrate differences between government engagement with media in the post-disaster window and their eventual climate policy responses. The results raise questions regarding the influence of the media on post-disaster policy responses and focus attention on the proximity of an extreme weather event as potentially affecting the type of policy response (either proactive or reactive) by a governing body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the salience of discourse referents from both a hearer and a speaker perspective in the context of negative quantifying expressions (e.g. not all, few) in Swedish. In three sentence completion studies we investigated what discourse referent is most salient from each of these perspectives and how salience is affected by the syntactic form/semantic type (entity vs. proposition) of the sentence topic in the continuation. We also investigated what morphosyntactic forms are used to refer back to referents of different information structural status. The studies were specifically set up to allow us to distinguish between the two perspectives on salience, unlike previous studies on English, which have only taken hearer-salience into account. The emerging picture of what discourse referent is most salient for negative quantifying expressions is therefore more complex than what previous studies have shown. • The semantic type of the Sentence Topic affects what discourse entity is most speaker-salient. • Negative quantifiers differ in what discourse salience patterns they give rise to. • The syntactic environment of an anaphoric element affects its resolution in quantified contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with the urgency of climate change, Climate Engineering has been framed as a fast and feasible technological solution. At the same time, however, critique against it is getting increasingly louder. This paper articulates a critical analysis of Climate Engineering technologies from a point of view situated within the degrowth discourse. In the first part two approaches discussed within the degrowth debate are presented: the concept of viability based on a biophysical perspective and the concept of conviviality based on a socio-cultural approach. In a second step formalized arguments from the point of view of applied ethics are articulated and applied to three Climate Engineering Technologies: Sulfate Aerosol Injection, Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage, and Afforestation. In a third step, an extended version of the trade-off argument about mitigation versus Climate Engineering solution is discussed from a degrowth perspective: accordingly, within the current dominant growth paradigm, climate engineering technologies might lead to reduced mitigation efforts. The paper follows the argumentative turn in applied ethics and displays a formalization of arguments that can help clarify decision-making and identify the different dimensions at stake. The paper articulates arguments against the deployment of CE technologies and advances a new version of the trade-off-argument based on a degrowth perspective. From the point of view of a degrowth-based critique of technology, the only type of Climate Engineering Technology ethically acceptable would be afforestation under specific conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French right and far-right have promoted a dehumanized vision of the migrants through their discourse in the last ten years. In this paper, we argue that this is the outcome of a diachronic linguistic process involving migration-related lexicon. A remarkable frequency increase enabled the progressive semantic bleaching of its [+human] trait and finally its functional recategorization as a simple trigger of a non-referential category where migrants and terrorism, but also the European Union and globalization, conflate to generically designate the "other". Combining corpus methods and critical discourse analysis through the quantitative, semantic, and distributional analysis of migration-related lexicon in a corpus of 5689 tweets by Marine Le Pen and other right-wing French politicians, we show the association between migration and several unrelated topics through pragmatic implicature at various stages. We find a robust tendency of migration-related lexicon to occur in lists and parallelisms, whose sematic-pragmatic function is specifically to implicate a relation between the members of a category construed in context. We claim that these structures are the main culprit for the emergence, the spread, and the entrenchment of manipulative categories in public discourse and for their expansion in ad hoc fashion, following the right's political agenda. • The French right used for years implicit strategies to spark hate towards migrants. • A relation between migration, terrorism, EU, globalization, finance was implicated. • Lists containing migr-lexicon are used to construct the category of the "enemy". • Migrants are now represented as dehumanized, while immigration as anthropomorphic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction and contextualization of meaning in conversation is accomplished through various multi-modal resources. This paper focuses on the quoting gesture (QG) as an embodied resource mobilized for the modification of formulations in Israeli Hebrew conversational media talk. Drawing on interactional approaches to language and embodied action, we show that the QG is deployed (i) to demarcate an affiliated formulation as emanating from another speaker while (ii) indexing the current producer's distancing from particular aspects of meaning associated with the formulation. This generic function is particularized in different contextual environments in which the QG, in concert with verbal, vocal, and additional embodied resources, instantiates different forms and degrees of dissonance with respect to a selected formulation. The analysis proceeds from the more common situation in which the QG is synchronically-aligned with its affiliated formulation to pre-positioned and post-positioned instances of the QG, which serve to project a reserved endorsement of a formulation and repair participants' alignment toward a previously produced formulation. The modification proposed by the QG orients both to the actional-rhetorical exigencies of the moment and to more enduring aspects of participants' positioning vis-a-vis co-participants and audiences. Thus, the QG provides a method to calibrate and accommodate different attitudes towards a formulation and to overtly display participants' accountability for their verbal selections. • The QG demarcates a formulation as double-voiced while indexing distancing from it. • The import of the QG is particularized in different contextual environments. • Commonly, the QG is synchronically-aligned with its affiliated formulation. • The QG can be pre-positioned and post-positioned relative to its formulation. • The QG overtly displays participants' accountability for their verbal selections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic and policy domains are increasingly constructing 'migration as adaptation' as a policy ideal against alarmist, security-oriented approaches to the climate-migration nexus. However, our knowledge of how development actors in national contexts view and use migration as adaptation in practice remains limited. Based on 90 interviews with development stakeholders, this paper demonstrates the limited reach of the migration as adaptation policy ideal in Senegal's development sector. It is considered too vague a concept to operationalise and is in tension with the wider discursive context on migration and development, marked by sedentary bias which requires 'addressing the root causes of migration', including environmental change, to 'fix populations in place'. A dominant discourse accommodates sedentary bias. It allows for a narrow application of migration as adaptation through 'return migration' and 'diaspora mobilisation' projects. These target only existing migrants, avoiding new mobility solutions. A minority counter-discourse rejects sedentary bias, emphasising freedom of movement. • We investigated uptake and use of migration as adaptation discourses in Senegal. • Interest in migration as climate adaptation strategy is growing but superficial. • Sedentary bias in Senegalese development sector: migration seen as failure to adapt. • Dominant discourse opposes new migrations but turns to diaspora for adaptation goals. • Minority discourse emphasises freedom of movement, but not climate justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public affairs and lobbying is a high status and strategically vital public relations specialism. It is a field of PR practice that generates high levels of both scholarly and public concern in regard to its perceived role in supporting corporate power and the associated impact on the functional legitimacy of democratic institutions. For this paper a content analysis was conducted of academic journals (between 2000 and 2013) to provide insights into how public affairs and lobbying have been theorised and researched within public relations scholarship and to ascertain to what degree wider public concerns have been addressed. Findings include an empirical confirmation of the low level of research activity on public affairs; that stakeholder and rhetorical theories have been the most widely used theories, but are far from constituting dominant paradigms; that scholarship has privileged functional objectives over civic concerns; and that published work originates almost entirely from institutions in Europe and the US with the Global South invisible. The paper also discusses future directions for research in public affairs and advocates the placing of discourse into definitions of public affairs, and that academic public relations should assert responsibility for this field, but in a manner that more equitably balances organisational and societal concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates denial, a rapport-challenging speech act. It discusses the performance of denial in the review response genre – managerial responses addressing negative online comments made by dissatisfied customers. In this study, the speech act of denial is taken to be instantiated as Deny Problem, one of the moves constituting the review response genre. The moves were identified by qualitatively analysing a total of 2,577 managerial responses produced by hotels of different star-ratings (2-star to 5-star) with the aid of the software Nvivo 12. The Deny Problem move and its proximal discourse environment were analysed further to address three main broad areas of interest: the forms of denial, the functions performed by denial, the targets of denial, and the work, if any, done by the hotel management to mitigate the potential damage to rapport resulting from the performance of the rapport-challenging act. Our analysis suggests that denial, be they used alone or in series, can target the asserted information, the customer's rationality, the hotel's responsibility, and the seriousness of the problem. While discursive effort is usually made to repair the damaged rapport with the customers, rather unexpectedly, instances of further rapport challenge are found in the proximity of the denial. • Denial is a rapport-challenging speech act. • Denial is instantiated as the Deny Problem move in seven different forms in the review response genre. • Targets of denial include the problem complained about, reviewers, and hotel's responsibility. • Denial can occur alone or in series, causing various degree of damage to rapport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper focuses on the changes undergone by news discourse towards its current multisemiotic, digital nature. It is divided into three main sections; in the first one I will focus on how multimodal/multisemiotic developments have been gradually entrenched in news reporting, from 17th-century woodblock engravings in the early news texts to contemporary convergent journalism, with special reference to the increasing interconnection between verbal output and visuals. Secondly, I will illustrate the shift in topics and methodologies undergone by studies on news discourse particularly over the last few years, with attention to (a) news dissemination and consumer perception (b) the new language(s) of news. Finally, I will present and discuss a pilot case study of multimodality in news reporting, focussing on the coverage by The New York Times of the birth and development of the European Union between 1946 and 2009. The study will attempt to bring to the fore the role played by the dynamic interrelationship between image and verbal text in conveying the news stories and, possibly, the underlying perspective of the newspaper itself when informing readers on the steps leading to the shaping of the EU. • News dissemination has been shaped by historical technological innovations. • Multimodal journalism is rooted in the interplay between verbals and visuals. • Studies on news discourse and transmission have shifted in topics and methodologies. • Co-occurring features in the news output trigger semiotic and pragmatic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammar is often considered as an established convention used by all speakers of a language, while variability should be expected if using language is regarded as meaningful sociocultural as well as cognitive behavior. This paper considers the flexible and fluid nature of grammar and the language user's knowledge of grammatical variability by examining natural discourse data of one Japanese speaker/writer in four different communicative contexts and examples of expository writing. The study finds that the pairing of meaning/function with a form has a crucial role in determining the use of a (non-) conventional construction in context, as maintained in Construction Grammar. The conventionality and variability (in time and space) of grammar can be elucidated by postulating a constellation of multiple layers of socioculturally mediated meanings/functions of a form, a "construction-based semiotic constellation (CBSC)." Some meanings/functions may acquire exclusive association with a context and become conventionalized or even normative through sociocultural beliefs and endorsement, while others remain malleable. An ideal model of grammar should reflect the flexibility and conventionality of language use and the user's knowledge. In that spirit, this analysis offers a socioculturally informed illustration of conventionalization and flexibility in grammar. • Grammar of a language is not a rigid set of conventions but malleable depending on the communicative context. • Language users' grammatical knowledge is flexible and fluid based on their experiences. • The conventionality and variability of grammar can be elucidated by postulating a construction-based semiotic constellation. • An ideal model of grammar should reflect the flexibility and conventionality of language use and the user's knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the actions and practices for connected discourse in English conversation. Three university students met weekly for 94 weeks to practice speaking and were video recorded. Each participant made a 10 min presentation about a topic of interest and then the three participants had a conversation. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA), we examined how participants moved from an orientation to one type of speech exchange system (the monologic presentation) to another (the 'conversation') and specifically, the actions and practices for getting the conversation started. We show how an orientation to an interview type of speech exchange system changes to something more conversation-like over the course of the 94 weeks and how changes in particular actions are concomitant with changes in turn allocation, turn construction, and turn taking practices. The findings provide further evidence for the co-constructed nature of language. Implications for understanding change or learning as a group enterprise are also considered. • Linguistic practices of initiating conversations change over time. • Making connected discourse involves a range of actions and practices. • Evidence suggests that changing language proficiency is best conceptualized as a group process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars from several research traditions have explored the ways in which speakers sometimes employ larger coherent discourse units within a conversational interaction. For most scholars, conversation is normally structured as local sequences of turns; larger discourse units are atypical, used for special culturally-recognized speech genres embedded in the regular flow of conversation. However, Bakhtin (1979/1986) suggests a different possibility: that conversational talk is normally organized in terms of larger discourse units representing different speech genres. The present paper -- at the intersection of the sub-disciplines of conversation analysis, discourse pragmatics, corpus linguistics, and register analysis -- reports on a major corpus-based investigation that empirically explores this theoretical possibility raised by Bakhtin. Based on analysis of 2.3 million words of conversational interactions, taken from the British National Corpus 2014, we show that 1) most conversational talk consists of sequences of coherent discourse units that have identifiable communicative goals, and that 2) such discourse units can be categorized into conversational discourse types that have distinct communicative purposes but do not usually conform to a conventional genre structure. That is, while conversational discourse units rarely realize conventional genre structures like personal narratives or jokes, they can be categorized into discourse types that serve distinctive combinations of communicative purposes. Based on our corpus analysis, we identify and describe 16 conversational discourse types associated with combinations of 9 general communicative purposes. Not surprisingly, discourse types focused on the expression of personal stance, feelings, and evaluations are especially common in conversation. However, the study reveals a second pattern that is more surprising: that discourse types focused on conveying information are as common in conversation as personal stance discourse types. • Provides a comprehensive description of language use in a corpus of conversations. • Shows most conversational talk consists of sequences of coherent discourse units. • Describes the communicative purposes of discourse units in conversation. • Presents a taxonomy of conversational discourse types. • Shows most discourse units represent discourse types rather than speech genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of evidential adjectives in terms of their distribution and evidential values in three opinion genres (i.e. editorials, opinion columns and comment articles) in English and Spanish journalistic discourse, based on an ad hoc English-Spanish comparable corpus of newspaper opinion texts. The study focuses on two patterns with an evaluative and persuasive function, both of which conceal the role of the writer as conceptualizer (Marín-Arrese, 2013): 'It + copular verb + ADJ + that/wh-/if/to-infinitive clause' (Hunston and Sinclair, 2000) and 'X + copular verb + ADJ' (Gruber, 1993). Corpus examples were analyzed according to (1) Tense, Aspect and Mood (TAM) values of copular verbs; (2) degree modification of evidential adjectives; (3) semantic preference and prosody; and (4) type of evidential justification. Results reveal similarities across languages and genres, with evidential adjectives occurring mainly in present tense indicative clauses where the adjective is not modified and has negative semantic preference and prosody. However, the analysis also unveils distinctive genre-related features in the distribution of evidential adjectives, with editorials showing the highest ratio here. Findings also suggest genre preferences and language-specific differences regarding the type of evidential justification employed (i.e. conceptual-based, perceptual-based or report-based inferences). • Impersonal evidential constructions role as epistemic legitimizing strategies. • Evidentials contribute to the persuasive use of language in opinion discourse. • Genre and language-specific differences in the type and distribution of evidentials. • Editorials show the highest ratio of evidential adjectives in English and Spanish. • Conceptual-based inferences preferred in newspaper opinion discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the functions of the utterance-final particle -ketun in Modern Spoken Korean. In it, I analyze naturally occurring spontaneous conversational data to provide a unified account of utterance-final -ketun 's several apparently disparate functions, arguing that its basic function is to manage the flow of information in discourse. Specifically, I claim that -ketun presents a pragmatic assertion that, in the speaker's view, should be or should have been a pragmatic presupposition, as if it were a pragmatic presupposition. The data analyzed in this study suggest that -ketun is a useful device by which speakers can ease the disorderly flow of information in spontaneous conversations, in particular to repair or avoid potential hitches in the order of presentation. This basic information-management function can be extended to highlight or manage mismatches between the speaker's and the hearer's states of knowledge, as part of either politeness strategies or impoliteness strategies. Collectively, the usages of -ketun discussed in this paper suggest that it is a highly intersubjective marker, in that it reflects the speaker's attention to the hearer's state of knowledge and changes in that state of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an investigation of instances of lexical replacement repair, in which a speaker replaces one lexical choice with another, sampled from Dutch spontaneous interaction. The study is driven by the question as to what motivates a speaker to produce a particular instance of self-repair with or without ‘prosodic marking’ — with or without notable prosodic prominence — and the notion that a close consideration of the discourse context in which the repair is embedded, and its function in that context, is paramount in addressing this question. The study explores the empirical grounds for two proposals regarding the function of prosodic marking: one in which marking is a response to the speaker's embarrassment or unease at the error or infelicity, and one in which marking is done for the listener's benefit, to highlight particularly important information. This paper describes three discourse contexts in which prosodic marking is notably common, and argues that both proposals find some support in these contexts. The analysis suggests that speakers’ decisions for or against prosodic marking are based at least on considerations of epistemic authority, precision and exaggeration, and discourse coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the connection between Spanish concessive future and evidentiality. More specifically, it is argued that concessive future does not merely represent a contextual variant of conjectural future ( Escandell, 2010 ) but a new use ( Squartini, 2012 ) which is restricted by the activated status of the proposition ( Dryer, 1996 ). Unlike conjectural future, concessive future does not have an inferential purpose; instead, it plays a role within the (counter) argumentation process. It actually develops a déréalisant function ( Ducrot, 1995 ). Therefore, although conjectural use and concessive use share the deictic value of future, they are the projection of this value over different levels of meaning. More generally, this paper shows that future in Spanish may intersect with several semantic and discourse categories, including – but not limited to – evidentiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicitly, Arabic literatures address the notions of ‘Umran’ and urban design. In Egypt, there are two terms used to describe the art of cities. This paper aims to disengage and delineate the terminologies in the field of building human settlements. The research starts with a thoroughly inductive analysis of the concept of urban design theories and discourse. The exploratory-descriptive approach follows some development projects that use urban design for several types of settlements neither a city nor town. Finally, the paper proves that ‘Umran Design’ is not opposite to ‘urban design’. This gets a recommendation to make urban design works in cities/town as well as provides experts who are aware of the national context with opportunities to follow the design process other types of human settlements. The disengagement can give a room in applicable research projects for the Arabic expression to work on communities hold a variety of types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mandarin invitational and offering exchanges, refusals can be either genuine or ostensible. This study explores the pragmalinguistic features that distinguish ostensible refusals from genuine refusals as well as the sociopragmatic constraints for ostensible refusals. Production data were elicited by a 12-scenario roleplay task from 22 native speakers and five native-speaker interlocutors. The resulting 264 conversations represent four discourse patterns identified in the literature (single-cycle acceptance, refusal-before-acceptance, single-cycle refusal, multi-cycle refusal) and are analyzed with reference to the orientation, position, justification, and modification of the initial refusals. Results show that in the particular domain of communication examined (everyday hospitality situations involving a professor or a friend), genuine refusals are often delayed, mitigated, and speaker-oriented with justification referring to specific extrinsic forces. In contrast, ostensible refusals are often immediately projected, unmitigated, and brief; they can be hearer-oriented addressing the initiator's return-for-favor intention or acknowledging the cost of the invitation or offer, or speaker-oriented with justification referring to personal feeling or unspecific reasons. The paper has also found that type of the initiating speech act, motivation for the initiating speech act, and power relation between interlocutors interact to constrain the use of ostensible refusals. • Ostensible refusals in Mandarin are immediate, unmitigated, and brief. • Ostensible refusals are often hearer-oriented. • Ostensible refusals can be speaker-oriented, referring to unspecific reasons. • Genuine refusals in Mandarin are delayed, mitigated, and elaborated. • Genuine refusals are speaker-oriented, referring to specific extrinsic forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to clarify some of the theoretical orientations underlying the linguistic studies on topics of discourse and digressive markers. The notion of discourse topic (DT) introduced by van Dijk in the 1970s has no place in the models developed since the 1980s by Hobbs, Mann and Thompson, Asher and Lascarides and others. These models do without DT, for the reason that the rhetorical relations they advocate were sufficient to explain common sense intuitions on (dis)continuity and (in)coherence of discourse, although, at the same time, van Kuppevelt advocates model based solely on DT relations. With the development of systematic annotations of corpora, studies on discourse markers have increased, including markers of topic shifts. The last part of the paper deals with d'ailleurs and par ailleurs French adverbials, which are commonly used as a marker of digression. The analysis of these two DMs show that they are polyfunctional and involve both rhetorical relationships (addition, justification) that make the link with the previous utterances, and framing relationships indexing the incoming discourse (announcing of a topic shift, or a return to a previous DT). • The article aims clarifying some theoretical orientations of linguistic studies on Discourse Topics and digressive markers. • It argues that topic orientations markers (Fraser) open topic frames that can include under their scope discourse units following the one in which they appear. • The relationships they established are computed after the unit in which they figure had been rhetorically linked to one or more previous statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper focuses on a side phenomenon of fake news and misinformation, i.e. fake-quotes and the strategy of fake-quoting. • The proposed definition of fake-quoting will take pragmatic approaches to plagiarizing and lying into account. • A framework of fake-quoting will be introduced, acknowledging both the fake-quote creators and fake-quote disseminators. • The framework is applied to tweets posted associated with what has been called the 'dumb Republicans meme'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an idea analysis of AI in the policy documents and reports of the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Economic Forum. The three organisations expect AI to contribute to sustainability and a prosperous future with better data analysis, greater amounts of quantitative knowledge, and by making economic and social activities less wasteful and more energy efficient. Several challenges are also named: ethics, human rights, cybersecurity, access to reliable data, transparency, and the digital gap. The solutions presented are multi-stakeholder collaboration, cohesive but flexible governance frameworks, but also taking the lead to push for ethical and value-based AI and making sure AI is sustainable. Ideas about AI appear to stem from discourses of ecological modernisation and green governmentality. This framing turns political and structural challenges into technical issues to be solved with more data, greater collaboration, and technical progress. The similarities in ideas between the EU, the UN, and the World Economic Forum also suggest that ideas about AI and sustainable development have reached discourse institutionalisation. Ideas about AI are therefore likely to reinforce already existing institutional and discursive settings. • The EU, the UN, and the World Economic Forum see AI as a tool for sustainability and an object of governance. • Ideas about AI and sustainability correlates to ecological modernisation and green governmentality discourses. • Strong focus is put on data accessibility and analytics compared to other sustainability challenges brought by AI. • These include material extraction, relation to other knowledge systems and political and personal transformation. • Ideas about AI are likely to strengthen already existing institutional settings and sustainability discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission is pursuing a circular bioeconomy to tackle pressing sustainability challenges, such as climate change and fossil dependency. Previous bioeconomy policy studies demonstrated the existence of competing bioeconomy discourses in the European Union. However, it remains nebulous how such discursive conflicts emerge and change, particularly in online settings. In this paper, we provide a more in-depth analysis of how argumentative changes of actors alter the network of online dynamic discourse coalitions. We base our findings on interviews and a qualitative discourse network analysis of 9983 tweets about European Union bioeconomy policies from the period 2008 – 2021. Our results indicate that initially, expert debates centred around storylines on bioeconomy advantages. After the 2012 Bioeconomy Strategy, the debate diversified with the entry of new actors and storylines. Two discourse coalitions, 'Green future' and 'Planetary boundaries', emerged around conflicting storyline clusters. In the aftermath of the 2018 Bioeconomy Strategy update, the debate simplified into core argumentations of few, highly conflicting storylines, leading to a polarization of the two discourse coalitions. Storyline hijacking further added to polarization and conflict. Understanding the evolution of online dynamic discourse coalitions provides new opportunities for practitioners to open up discourses towards storylines from other parts of the discourse network. This can help to prevent locking-in the limited range of solutions in congruence with the dominant 'Green future' discourse. [Display omitted] • The future of the bioeconomy in the EU is discussed controversially on X/Twitter. • Storyline diversification and simplification dynamics led to polarization. • The EU Commission is almost exclusively part of one side of the discourse network. • EU bioeconomy debates head towards a problematic discursive lock-in. • To open up the debate, include ideas of other parts of the discourse network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on a language broker – a younger family member who performs lay interpreting for other family members. This paper examines three real-life interactions between a broker who relays speech from English-speakers to Macedonian-speaking family members. Adopting Goffman's notions of ‘footing’ and ‘participant roles’ that a speaker can assume, this paper examines how a broker engages with the conversational moves of others for him to assume the role of not only animator and author , but also principal . Transcribed speech shows evidence of features that are characteristic of interpreter speech: ‘relayed inter-lingual transfer’ and ‘recipient design’. At the same time, inter-lingual transfer is punctuated cyclically by responses and prompts from others to engage with the broker as a speaker in his own right. This paper shows a broker's positioning to the role of principal and how this is negotiated and re-negotiated in changes of footing in which the broker can assume this role and then relinquish it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Climate geoengineering’ is becoming an increasingly prominent focus for global discussion and action. Yet, in academic, policy and wider political discourse, the frequent shorthand term ‘geoengineering’ is routinely used in very broad, ambiguous and multivalent ways. This study aims to contribute to understandings of these divergent current framings of ‘geoengineering’ and their implications. It asks not only about disparate understandings of geoengineering itself, but also what these reveal about deeper political dynamics around climate change, science and technology. To this end, the paper applies Q methodology to analyse geoengineering as a subjective discursive construct, the bounds of which are continually negotiated and contested. Thirty-five participants from a variety of political and institutional backgrounds in the UK, US, Canada and Japan undertook a ‘Q sort’ of 48 statements about geoengineering between December 2012 and February 2013. Four distinctive framings emerged from this analysis, labelled: ‘At the very least we need more research’; ‘We are the planetary maintenance engineers’; ‘Geoengineering is a political project’; and ‘Let's focus on Carbon.’ Results indicate a strong polarity around divergently construed pros and cons of geoengineering as a whole – underscoring the political salience of this term. But additional axes of difference suggest a more nuanced picture than straightforward pro/anti-positioning. The ambiguity of the term is argued to offer interpretive flexibility for articulating diverse interests within and across contending framings. The paper questions whether increasing terminological precision will necessarily facilitate greater clarity in resulting multivalent governance discussions and public engagement. It argues that the merits of any given form of precision and their policy implications will depend on particular framings. Much ambiguity in this area may thus be irreducible, with the challenges lying perhaps less in the ordering of discourse and more in reconciling the wider material political pluralities that this suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The opportunities and limitations of electrically driven mobility are currently widely discussed in public debates on vehicles and future transport. E-mobility has by and large been communicated in the context of sustainable mobility and its central idea is an urban e-car. Questioning the hype for this technology, this paper presents the development of the hegemonic discourse of e-mobility focusing on the actors involved. The study is based on a media analysis of selected German print media. The various phases of the e-mobility discourse were reconstructed by the detailed study of thematic focuses brought about by various actors such as politicians, electric supply companies and traditional automotive industry, and by the temporal distribution of the articles dealing with e-mobility. In addition the actor configuration is clarified by reference to the statements of the actors in the articles. The phases in the e-mobility discourse can be explained by a certain constellation of actors and how they manage to enforce their claims and interests. While the government plays a prominent role in the current development of the e-mobility discourse, the change of the automobile industry''s common position towards the electric vehicle and the rising interests of the power supply industry also play an important role. Finally, the paper reveals the internal and external driving forces of the e-mobility discourse and evaluates whether it is promoted in a sustainable way. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Environmental assessment (EA) aims to enhance environmental awareness and to ensure that environmental values are fully considered in decision-making. In the EA arena, different discourses exist on what EA should aim for and how it functions. We hypothesise that these discourses influence its application in practice as well as its effectiveness in terms of achieving the above goals. For instance, actors who consider EA as a hindrance to fast implementation of their projects will probably apply it as a mandatory checklist, whereas actors who believe that EA can help to develop more environmentally sound decisions will use EIA as a tool to design their initiatives. In this paper we explore discourses on EA in The Netherlands and elaborate on their implications for EA effectiveness. Based on an innovative research design comprising an online survey with 443 respondents and 20 supplementary semi-structured interviews we conclude that the dominant discourse is that EA is mainly a legal requirement; EAs are conducted because they have to be conducted, not because actors choose to do so. EA effectiveness however seems reasonably high, as a majority of respondents perceive that it enhances environmental awareness and contributes to environmental protection. However, the ‘legal requirement’ discourse also results in decision-makers seldom going beyond what is prescribed by EA and environmental law. Despite its mandatory character, the predominant attitude towards EA is quite positive. For most respondents, EA is instrumental in providing transparency of decision-making and in minimising the legal risks of not complying with environmental laws. Differences in discourses seldom reflect extreme opposites. The ‘common ground’ regarding EA provides a good basis for working with EA in terms of meeting legal requirements but at the same time does not stimulate creativity in decision-making or optimisation of environmental values. In countries characterised by less consensual political cultures we may expect more extreme discourses on EA, the consequences of which are reflected upon in this paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In several sign languages, it is observed that sometimes a nominal expression appears twice within the same sentence, once in its regular syntactic position and once sentence-finally as a pronominal pointing sign. This paper investigates how these sentence-final pronouns are used in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), which is the natural sign language used by the Deaf community in Hong Kong. Previous studies of sentence-final pronouns in sign languages put forward three major accounts: these pronouns serve as focus/emphasis markers, agreement markers, and right dislocations. On the basis of elicited and spontaneous discourse data collected from deaf native signers, this paper argues that sentence-final pronouns in HKSL are right dislocated ‘aboutness’ topics. Given that pronouns in HKSL, as in other sign languages, are directed towards the locations associated with the intended referents, sentence-final pronouns can help secure the attention of the addressee towards the topics in discourse by upholding their visual prominence via spatial indexing. This strategy is most commonly used in conversational interactions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]