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The intricacies of the relationships between Roman aristocrats in the age of Cicero has been one of the most popular topics of discussion in modern scholarship. Cicero's letters have drawn considerable attention as an invaluable source for the study of amicitiae in the late Roman republic. Nevertheless, the methods that Cicero and his contemporaries used to reconcile with their former enemies is an area that remains rather unexplored. This paper aims to shed light on the significance of letter writing as a medium for the reconciliation between Romans with an active public life and to underscore the role that mediators played in the conciliatory efforts that both parties made to restore their relationship chiefly in the public eye. The investigation focuses on Cicero's well-attested reconciliation with Appius Claudius Pulcher. It argues that, while it was not the first instance in which Pompey instigated a reconciliation between two of his allies, its uniqueness lies in the ingenious and complex use of letter writing to effect and maintain their renewed relationship as well as in the combination of frankness and tactful manoeuvring in Cicero's letters to him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of bathutēs ("verbal self-restraint" or "forbearance") in Cicero's handling of personal disputes and grievances. In a letter to Atticus (Att. 5.10.3), Cicero suggests that such restraint can help to ease the minor tensions that often arise in a provincial governor's day-to-day business. Linguistic caution can also defuse disputes between acquaintances and family members, as evident in Cicero's dealings with Hortensius Hortalus (Att. 4.6.3) and estranged nephew Quintus (Att. 13.42). In both cases Cicero overlooks valid grievances in order to facilitate reconciliation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialogic interaction plays important generic, poetic, and structural roles within hexametric Latin satire. One aspect of this interaction which has received little prior exegesis is the presence, or lack, of politeness. By adapting and applying existing models which study this sociolinguistic phenomenon, we can perceive not only patterned use of politeness across the genre, but further intertextuality between Latin satire and Roman comedy. Interactions in the works of Horace and Juvenal are illustrative of both shared 'politeness-motifs', as well as divergent stylistic adaptations which suit each poet's literary agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an act of self-disclosure, the speech act of self-praise may be perceived as problematic or inappropriate due to societal expectations, such as politeness preferences. Despite recent growing interest in self-praise, it remains relatively under-researched, particularly in naturally occurring conversation in languages other than English. An examination of 53 hours of Japanese conversation (both telephone and face-to-face) reveals that despite Japanese societal norms against self-praise, speakers do praise themselves, and that this behavior occurs in interactions within both close relationships (i.e., among friends and family members) and distant ones (i.e., in first meetings). However, its relative infrequency indicates that self-praise is a marked social behavior in Japanese conversation. The data also demonstrate some distinctive patterns in the ways in which self-praise is delivered and received depending on the type of conversation. Interactional patterns that emerge in the data illustrate the integral role that coparticipants (i.e., the recipients of speakers' self-praise) play in making this risky social act possible and appropriate in conversation. • Self-praise is more marked in conversation than in online discourse. • Self-praise is delivered and received differently depending on conversation type. • Participants work together to minimize the illocutionary effects of self-praise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of China's evolving rural tourism policies on the advancement of rural tourism within the nation. The analysis spans the period from 2006 to 2022 and encompasses several crucial aspects: The entities accountable for policy formulation, frequently utilized keywords, and the establishment of an analytical framework termed "policy instrument-policy target". The findings revealed that China's rural tourism policies derive influence from a multitude of departments, highlighting a polycentric approach. Leading contributors include the State Council, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, as well as other policy-formulating bodies, which have gradually attained heightened levels of coordination. Furthermore, the prevalent keywords prevalent in China's rural tourism policies have undergone evolution, initially focusing on rural infrastructure development, rural services, leisure, and rural culture. Notably, incentive-based strategies and capacity-building tools hold significant importance among the frequently employed approaches. The deployed policy instruments have highlighted adaptability, effectively catering to the diverse stages of rural tourism development. Aligned with China's quintet of targets for rural revitalization, the primary objective in advancing rural tourism remains the cultivation of thriving businesses and overall prosperity. It is found that aspects such as social etiquette, effective governance, and civility have progressively gained prominence in the evolutionary trajectory of rural tourism offering valuable insights into the development of rural tourism in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing data from the recordings of natural conversations and meta-pragmatic comments, and combining the neo-Brown and Levinson approach and the relational work framework, this paper explored how Saudi female friends manage friendly informal settings and hospitality despite culture-specific politeness expectations. The analysis focused on just one of the discursive strategies in which the direction of displaying hospitality is turned around, i.e. displayed by the guests rather than the host(ess). This strategy constituted a noticeable behaviour among the 13 close friends observed in this study. Cooperative conjoint hospitality was particularly useful for maintaining and enhancing rapport, in-group membership, and solidarity among the friends and minimising hospitality obligations of the hostess. The analysis demonstrated how such behaviour was consistent with the politeness norms negotiated in the close friends' community of practice (CofP) but differed from the politeness norms in the wider culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking Miyagawa’s (2022. Syntax in the treetops. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) discussion as a point of departure, I examine the properties of the formal politeness markers in Japanese and Korean, namely, -mas/-des and -(su)pni. Besides being markers of formal politeness (or allocutive agreement), these elements are parallel in that they are all limited to Emonds’ (1970. Root and structure-preserving transformations. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT) root contexts and are able to license special interrogative particles, which according to Miyagawa (2022. Syntax in the treetops. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) is a consequence of their head-to-head φ-feature movement. In addition to the systematic similarities, there is an important difference concerning their base-generation in TP-internal and TP-external positions, which I suggest reflects a general pattern of grammaticalization in these languages. In addition to providing support for Miyagawa’s analysis, the discussion in this paper also shows that aspects of the behavior of Japanese and Korean, such as the formal politeness markers -mas/-des and -(su)pni, can generally be better understood when they are analyzed side-by-side rather than in isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provoking questions about morality and civility, survival narratives which feature young adults often offer new visions of social organisation by positing extreme scenarios of isolation and breakdown. In Showtime’s Yellowjackets, the survivor-protagonists are framed as monstrous, but also as disruptive “others” with the potential to unravel regulatory systems. By resisting gendered mythologies, the survivor-protagonists are associated with varying expressions of autonomy and agency, and an amplified sense of difference and abjection. In considering the subversive potential of an all-female Lord of the Flies, this paper explores how the central characters of Yellowjackets gain power by accessing and enacting forms of “otherness” in violent and radical ways. It argues that by rejecting the norms used to relegate women to the margins, the Yellowjackets profoundly unsettle, even corrupt, traditional conceptions of femininity and idealised visions of girlhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of honorification for inanimate subjects in Korean, a linguistic phenomenon that, although traditionally ungrammatical, has been increasingly used in recent years. Despite negative perceptions and deliberate national campaigns to discourage it, its continued use requires a systematic investigation. Thus, to explore its social and linguistic functions, we conducted a questionnaire and a self-paced reading experiment. The questionnaire results suggest that native Korean speakers are well aware of the grammatical irregularity of such expressions. Nonetheless, these expressions are rated more positively only in the presence of an honorifiable addressee, indicating speakers' sensitivity to the social nuances of inanimate honorification within interpersonal relations. The self-paced reading experiment further suggests that this sensitivity is particularly pronounced during real-time language processing, as no processing difficulty was observed for sentences with inanimate honorification when the addressee was honorifiable. The findings indicate that the contemporary use of inanimate honorification in Korean likely serves as a politeness strategy, where speakers intentionally deviate from grammatical norms to convey respect and garner positive evaluation from their interlocutors. • We examined the perception and processing of inanimate honorification in Korean. • Inanimate honorification was rated to be highly unnatural in a questionnaire study. • Yet, the ratings significantly improved when the addressee was honorifiable. • The effect of honorifiable addressee was stronger during online sentence processing. • A politeness strategy could lead to intentional violation of grammaticality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the changes to the intellectual classification of fencing. The authors of fencing treatises attempted to shift the perception of fencing from its long held violent connotations and towards a more elevated and legitimate practice. This change was prompted by multiple factors, key amongst them were the proliferation of print, the rise of the duel, and courtesy books, such as Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. These factors allowed fencing to be reconceived with new methods and to reach a wider audience. However, to appeal to a larger and increasingly educated audience, early modern fencing treatises adopted new pedagogical tools and made efforts to legitimise fencing, elevating their new methods above fencing’s violent nature. To achieve this elevation, authors of fencing treatises attempted to raise fencing’s intellectual standing through the application of the trivium and later geometry and humanistic learning, in order to reposition fencing as a practice worthy of gentlemanly study. In this paper, I outline the process of this change and argue that, despite concerted effort to intellectualise fencing, as a means to obtain legitimacy, attempts were never wholly successful, due to an inability to completely separate conceptions of violence from the new science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on silencing and online incivility literature, this study examined how people evaluate and respond to impolite and intolerant online opinions in different discussion contexts. Based on a between-subject online survey experiment in the U.S. (N = 959), we found that people perceived impoliteness and intolerance as uncivil, leading to intentions to silence others. The results also revealed that intolerance resulted in higher perceived incivility and silencing intentions compared to impoliteness. Furthermore, the direct effects of impoliteness and intolerance on perceived incivility and their indirect effects on silencing intentions through perceived incivility were stronger in agreeing discussions than in disagreeing ones. However, social endorsement cues did not moderate the mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous studies on ostensible speech acts mainly concern ostensible invitations, ostensible refusals or ostensible compliments, few have touched upon ostensible criticisms. To fill the knowledge gap, this study collected online data through Baidu search engine to examine criticisables and functions of ostensible criticisms in Chinese contexts, and discusses the underlying sociocultural factors. The findings reveal that (1) the criticisables are "good shortcomings" that can range from addressee's being overworking to absentee's being too showy. (2) such ostensible criticisms can function to express implicit flattery, construct positive image or convey humblebrag; and (3) factors such as conflicting communicative needs, belief in Confucian doctrines of " lǐmào " (politeness) and " héxié " (harmony), and face sensitivities may underlie the performance of ostensible criticisms in Chinese context. • Criticisms can become ostensible in Chinese context. • "Good shortcomings" constitute criticisables of ostensible criticisms. • The performing of ostensible criticisms can fulfill specific functions. • Chinese people's use of ostensible criticisms stems from various factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the speech act of criticizing in online comments on the COVID-19 lockdown breaches in Jordan in 2020. Drawing on speech act theory and the face-saving perspective of politeness, the study investigates the strategies used to criticize these breaches. The analysis of 356 online comments revealed that Jordanians used ten strategies to criticize these lockdown breaches: Insulting, Appealing to the divine, Intertextuality, Rhetorical questions, Stylized threats, Framing criticism as request, Framing criticism as advice-giving, Framing criticism as warning, Invoking legal authority, and Invoking religious 'haram'. These criticisms were driven by safeguarding the collective interests of community members rather than merely expressing personal condemnation of the breaches. The breaches were constructed in these criticisms as communally reproachable, legally answerable, and religiously proscribed. Given their public nature, these criticisms appear to be motivated not by politeness but by expressing strong emotions, showing in-group solidarity, and aligning with other community members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws upon structuration theory to analyze male organizational members' responses to workplace sexual harassment. In this language production experiment, 462 men with an average of 15.56 years of full-time work experience read a sexual harassment scenario in which they were the target of sexual harassment from a boss, a coworker, or a supervisee, and then formed a response to that individual about the behavior. A variety of response themes emerged in the data. Male supervisors' responses to supervisee harassers most frequently involved directives to stop now, and in the future. Directives to stop were also the most frequently used response strategy by male coworkers, but with the addition of profanity in many of the responses. Male supervisees most frequently responded to harassment from a boss with reference to the inappropriateness of the behavior for a boss and/or workplace; these responses were often qualified with politeness, apologetic preludes, and questions. All response themes and nuances thereof are explored in detail. The data support structuration theory's assertion (Giddens, 1979; 1981; 1984) that the rules and resources that exist in organizations both enable and constrain the ways in which men respond to workplace sexual harassment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines leave-takings and farewells as linguistic routines in Akan. It emerged from my previous works on ethnopragmatics of Akan linguistic routines, namely apology, requests, greetings, thanking, advice, compliments, etc. This paper adopted Weigand's (2010) Mixed Game Model, which deals with dialogic action games. It employs qualitative approaches including interviews, observation, and the recording of natural ethnographic events in the Akan society. These include closings and farewells at funerals, durbars, visits, travelling, arbitrations, folksongs, etc. The paper discusses the ethnosemantics of the leave-takings and farewell expressions. The findings of this paper will contribute to the use of dialogic action games in discussing other linguistic routines. This study will help further research in leave-taking and farewell in other Ghanaian languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of disaffiliative reactions, specifically disagreement, in teacher-student interactions. Disagreement is often seen as confrontational and disruptive, but this research investigates whether it is a dispreferred act in these interactions. By analyzing teacher-student interactions and considering students' final achievement scores, the study explores how teachers respond to students' arguments. The paper specifically examines the context in which teachers contradict students' arguments when requesting a reconsideration of their scores. While destructive responses are typically considered face-threatening, the findings suggest that they are the preferred linguistic behavior for teachers in these situations. This is because a constructive or affiliative reaction may potentially undermine the teachers' fair assessment policy and authoritative power. The study also reveals that the severity of disagreements varies based on the tone of the students' justifications. When students include compliments in their justifications, teachers tend to respond with mitigated disagreement, whereas openly critical justifications are more likely to elicit aggravated disagreement from teachers. The study illustrates that different cultures may have varying norms and expectations regarding disagreement and confrontational behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research hypothesises that speech acts can serve as a fundamental device of (im)politeness, potentially outweighing the significant contribution of honorifics, including speech levels. Specifically, it argues that agreeing with interlocutors and paying them compliments are closely related to the realisation and perception of politeness in Korean speech. Although the literature notes the deep engagement of speech acts in Korean (im)politeness, scholars have primarily focused on ‘polite refusal’ or ‘polite request’ as speech acts that explicitly threaten the hearer’s ‘face’ (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987). However, other speech acts, such as agreement, disagreement, complimenting and criticism, can also significantly affectﾠthe perception of (im)politeness across the spectrum of linguistic behaviours. Through a survey asking native Korean speakers to assess the degree of (im)politeness perceived from different utterances, the current study explores how several factors, including addressee, modality, speech level and speech acts, are complicatedly but distinctly involved in Korean speakers’ perceptions of (im)politeness. While the results confirm the impact of honorifics and ‘negative face’ on the speakers’ assessment of (im)politeness, they also indicate that positive politeness together with negative politeness needs to be more actively included in the discussion regarding how (im)politeness is perceived in actual speech practices. This comprehensive approach aims to capture the full spectrum of linguistic behaviours observed in actual speech practices, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of (im)politeness in Korean speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smooth and effective interactions between customers and customer-contact employees are important for building seamless service delivery. The present study examined the influence of customer courtesy on customer-contact employees' prosocial service behavior. Additionally, the mediating role of organization-based self-esteem and the moderating role of focus of attention at work are investigated. Data were collected from 401 customer-contact employees from the South Korean hospitality industry. The results demonstrated that customer courtesy positively influenced prosocial service behavior, and organization-based self-esteem mediated this relationship. Furthermore, employees' focus of attention at work moderated the relationship between customer courtesy and organization-based self-esteem, such that the relationship was stronger for employees with a high focus of attention. Similarly, the focus of attention also moderated the relationship between organization-based self-esteem and prosocial service behavior. The findings have important theoretical and practical implications by demonstrating the role of external resources to promote prosocial service behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines ambulant vendors' labour on a Buenos Aires trainline. It explores how vendors employ a range of verbal and embodied resources to navigate the challenges of sustaining attention from commuters and manage the progressivity of their sales pitch as they achieve individual service encounters and deal with physical obstructions intrinsic to the local ecology of the train and the contingencies of earning a livelihood on the move. An interactional pragmatics analysis of vendors' working practices as video-recorded by them coupled with ethnographic observations, reveals the complex interplay of verbal and embodied cues, spatial arrangements, and temporal constraints in relation to the progressivity of their sales pitch. The findings challenge long-held negative views of vendors' presence in public space by highlighting the methodical approach, dexterity, and civility of their working practices, and how their labour fills a gap in the market. The article provides new insights into the dynamics of urban labour in public spaces and the intrinsicality of multimodality to manoeuvre round the unequal conditions these workers inhabit. [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]

This study investigates the speech act of refusals in the context of English as a lingua franca (ELF), with a focus on the strategies, internal modifications, and preference organization of refusals. Fifteen Chinese speakers of English and 15 Indonesian English speakers engaged in dyadic role-plays involving requests and refusals. Results show that when rejecting requests proposed by the Indonesian participants, Chinese English speakers heavily used indirect refusal strategies, such as explanations, alternatives, and apologies. These refusals often included internal modifications, particularly linguistic downgraders, to mitigate the force of their refusals. Sequentially, Chinese English speakers commonly organized their refusals as dispreferred, deferring the refusals via a cluster of interactional devices, including inter-turn gaps, turn-initial delays, anticipatory accounts, and pro forma agreements. The findings suggest that ELF refusals and ELF interactions are not necessarily direct with minimal mitigation as claimed in previous research (e.g., House, 2008; Murray, 2012), and ELF speakers, at least for Chinese English speakers, do linguistically and interactionally engage with interpersonal work despite the generally preferred communicative style of transparency and directness in ELF interactions. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications on ELF pragmatics instruction are also discussed. • Refusals by Chinese English speakers in ELF interactions are usually indirect with internal modifications. • Refusals by Chinese English speakers in ELF interactions are structured as dispreferred with deferred refusal head acts. • ELF refusals and ELF interactions are not necessarily direct and less mitigated. • ELF speakers do engage in interpersonal management work via linguistic and interactional meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, we investigate evidence of diachronic variation in patterns of Discernment Politeness in letters written in the ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom (c. 2300–2200 bce) and Late Ramesside period (c. 1099–1069 bce). We present examples of requests, information acts and honorifics used in these letters, predominantly those letters sent by subordinates to their superiors, to explore how this relationship dynamic is linguistically indexed. Our evidence shows that throughout the Old and New Kingdoms, communicative acts were regulated by behavioural norms dependent on power structures rather than individual volition, with Power being the most dominant social variable. Finally, we argue that Discernment is a key approach for exploring politeness in texts from ancient Egypt, supporting current research on the topic, and that the approach used here for the ancient Egyptian material has wider applicability for diachronic linguistic analyses of remote civilisations which are highly hierarchical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the long-term diachronic development of the speech act of expressing gratitude in the history of English in Britain. The speech act underwent a considerable transformation from a religious-devotional practice and an expressive act with a high illocutionary weight addressed to a fellow human being towards a predominantly phatic routine in everyday conversation. Based on empirical data it is suggested that this development is characterised by the interplay of four processes: recontextualisation, functional expansion, attenuation/reduction of illocutionary force, and routinisation. Since, as will be shown, these changes run parallel to major changes in the organisation of society in the social history of Britain, they appear to be part of more general socio-cultural transformational processes that affected behavioural conventions, including politeness conventions and communicative routines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a large number of studies have focused on various aspects of politeness, very little is known about how politeness intention is activated cognitively during verbal communication. The present study aims to explore the cognitive mechanism of politeness intention processing, and how it is related to pragmatic failure during cross-cultural communication. Using 30 Chinese EFL university students who were instructed to finish a probe word judgment task with 96 virtual scenarios, the results indicate that within both mono- and cross-cultural contexts, the response time in the experimental scenarios was significantly slower than that of the filler scenarios. This suggests that politeness intention was activated while understanding the surface meaning of the conversation; however, the EFL learners could not completely avoid the negative transfer of their native politeness conventions when they were comprehending the conversational intention of the target language. Furthermore, no significant differences in response time were found between the groups with high and low English pragmatic competence, illustrating that transferring the pragmatic rules and principles into cross-cultural communication skills was more cognitively demanding. Overall, this study adds to the literature on politeness research and provides some implications for foreign language pragmatic instructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines two Greek target versions (1952, 2004) of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (1611) in order to examine how politeness orientations and awareness of power distance change to shape the relational dynamics between characters. In the two target versions male characters vary intra-culturally and interculturally, while themes such as female submissiveness and gender relations show intra-cultural variation. Analysis of naturalistic translation data shows variation in the way certain characters are reshaped in the two versions, which is confirmed by experimental data elicited by a questionnaire. The significance of the research lies in that pragmatics may provide a basis for the study of intra-cultural variation in characters' identities in a play, and in that translation is a rich resource for tracing pragmatic variation in the manifestation of pragmatic phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is fairly little research on using translation to advance pragmatic competence in learners of English and highlight how translation can advance cross-cultural pragmatic awareness in EFL. The study attempts to explore how audio-visual translation (AVT) can introduce cross-cultural pragmatics to Greek learners of English. The data derive from the animated film Inside Out (Pixar 2015). The study takes dubbed dialogues to be a target-oriented data set, with the subtitles as an intermediate, constrained type of transfer where pragmatic shifts may be least visible or not at all. The research uses (a) the positive/negative politeness distinction as manifested through interpersonal proximity/distance (Brown and Levinson 1978; Sifianou 1992; Yule 1996; Horn and Ward 2006), and (b) the un/certainty avoidance communication style (Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov 2010). The aim is to familiarize learners with the significance of cross-cultural pragmatic awareness and its use in EFL teaching and learning. Analysis of the data is followed by a questionnaire addressing bilingual participants who confirmed the findings of the study. Results show types of pragmatic variation across English and Greek: for instance, the subtitles showed less signs of positive politeness strategies and more uncertainty features, while dubbing manifested more positive politeness strategies and stronger uncertainty avoidance, i.e., in alignment with features of the target language. Findings allow learners to look beyond grammaticality, at the level of pragmatic preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines transfer strategies in identity construction instances, in Greek and Russian audio-visual translation (AVT) modalities (subtitling and dubbing), of the English animated film for children, The Rise of the Guardians (2012). It explores whether and how translator awareness of target cultural background may affect the strategies used in the transfer. Results suggest that the level of un/familiarity of a target culture with a source-text (ST) cultural item affects the translation strategies across English-Russian and English-Greek differently, on the basis of preferred politeness orientations (negative and positive, respectively) prevailing in the target environments. Testimonies of film viewers and questionnaire respondents who are unfamiliar with the cultural items confirm aspects of the analysis. The significance of the research lies in that it provides further insight into the way Greek and Russian AVT practices handle and transform English audio-visual unfamiliar entities, which may advance understanding of cross-cultural processes in AVT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study elucidates how speakers of different cultures, namely, Saudi Arabia and United States employ the speech act of requesting, drawing upon various politeness features. It conducted a qualitative analysis to offer explanations for different strategies of requests used by both groups and how they employ politeness features. The present study also conducted small statistics (frequencies and percentages) to explore the most and least common strategies that were used by participants in this study. The sample of this study included 20 Saudis and 20 Americans who were students at Southern Illinois University. The findings revealed that while Saudi participants used more direct strategies than their American counterparts, these direct strategies were characterized as positive politeness. That is, Saudi participants relied on directness feature to minimize the social distance with the addressee. However, American students were more formal than their Saudi counterparts, suggesting that they were less direct when they made requests. But this type of directness is negative as it doesn’t aim at removing social borders between interlocutors. This study indicates that Saudis tend to be more informal (and hence less indirect) than Americans when they make requests. The present study demonstrates that culture is a key social factor to determine how this speech act is employed by speakers of different cultures. It can thus be argued that directness has social implications as it plays an important role in eliminating social borders and minimizing social distance between the interlocutors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examined 150 emails sent by Saudi female English as a foreign language (EFL) undergraduate students to their instructor. Greetings (opening moves) and farewells (closing moves) were investigated, exploring how social and interactional factors affected the politeness strategies and language formality employed. The study analyzed the types of opening and closing moves and the students’ ability to use formal forms, considering the formality of the context and their awareness of social distance. Most of the emails did not include opening and closing moves, suggesting a low awareness of politeness strategies. Opening moves were used more frequently than closing moves and when greetings were used in the opening moves, formal greetings were more frequent than less formal ones. Moreover, the use of greetings was affected by the students’ first language. The paper concludes with recommendations to enhance EFL students’ knowledge of politeness strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the evolution of television news in India, specifically focusing on the rise of TV news debates and the increasing levels of incivility and impoliteness in these debates. It traces the origins of television news in India and highlights the shift from government-controlled news to private news channels. The article also examines the role of profit-driven objectives in shaping the content of TV news debates and the impact of sensationalism on public discourse. It discusses the underrepresentation of women in these debates and the influence of guest selection on the tone and substance of discussions. The article concludes by emphasizing the negative consequences of incivility on public trust and democratic discourse. [Extracted from the article]

Even though peer review is a central aspect of scientific communication, research shows that the process reveals a power imbalance. The position of the reviewer allows them to be harsh and intentionally offensive without being held accountable. It casts doubt on the integrity of the peer-review process and transforms it into an unpleasant and traumatic experience for authors. Accordingly, more effort should be given to provide critical and constructive feedback. Hence, it is necessary to remedy the growing rudeness and lack of professionalism in the review system, by analyzing the tone of review comments and creating a classification on the level of politeness in a review comment. To this end, we develop the first annotated PolitePEER dataset encompassing five levels of politeness: (1) highly impolite, (2) impolite, (3) neutral, (4) polite, and (5) highly polite. The review sentences accrued from multiple venues, viz., ICLR, NeurIPS, Publons and ShitMyReviewersSay. We have formulated our annotation guidelines and conducted a thorough analysis of the PolitePEER dataset, ensuring the dataset quality with an inter-annotation agreement of 93%. Additionally, we have benchmarked PolitePEER for multiclass classification and provided an extensive analysis of the proposed baseline. As a result, the proposed PolitePEER can aid in developing a politeness indicator to notify the reviewer and the editors to amend and formalize the review accordingly. Our dataset and codes are available at https://github.com/PrabhatkrBharti/PolitePEER.git for the community to explore further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated politeness types constructed between doctors and patients during medical consultations in private hospitals in Akure, Nigeria. While the earlier studies on doctor-patient interactions in the Nigerian context employed Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory and Leech’s politeness maxims, this study adopted Akio Yabuuchi’s hierarchy politeness. Yabuchi’s model of hierarchy politeness was employed as a framework to identify the types of politeness. It investigates how politeness type influences linguistic choices and hierarchical behavior in doctor-patient interactions. The politeness types constructed are institutional politeness, symmetrical politeness, and quasi-institutional politeness. Common strategies used by doctors and patients to negotiate hierarchy within the politeness’ constructions include veneration and comprehension strategies. Asymmetry is customary between doctors and patients in Nigerian private hospitals; although patients pay for the consultations, doctors seem to act as the superior participant by constructing desired politeness type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first stage in grammaticalization is often an enrichment of pragmatic meaning. If a new form is more 'extravagant' or 'expressive', it may have a competitive advantage. The grammaticalizing form described here is a primitive 'do'-support construction used to make questions, in an Italian dialect spoken in an isolated sub-Alpine valley. Living speakers describe why and when they would use 'do'-support over the simpler, main-verb alternative. Logical meanings, which include an answer presupposition and perfective viewpoint on the event, suggest that the 'do'-support form is a syntactically embedded, and pragmatically indirect question (Swinburne, 2021). The expressive meanings described here are: 1) those demonstrating prior thought (conventional presuppositions due to the syntactic structure); 2) subjective meanings expressing emotion and engaging the interlocutor (conventional implicatures of 'do'); and 3) meanings exploiting indirectness for reasons of politeness (conversational implicatures). With 'do'-support, the speaker is being polite and making an educated guess of the likely answer, while leaving open the possibility of being wrong. In the small, tight-knit, isolated communities of Val Camonica, politeness to neighbours is essential for long-term community cohesion. The politeness meaning has likely driven the grammaticalization. • A pragmatically enriched primitive 'do'-support exists in an Italian dialect. • Semantic-pragmatic traits indicate an embedded and indirect question. • Subjective meanings are conventional implicatures of 'do'. • As an indirect question 'do'-support is more polite. • Expressive, 'extravagant' meanings have led to grammaticalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether and in what situation the smiling face emoji will influence the interpretation of an utterance in a virtual context. The researchers drew examples from daily WeChat communication and posted them to participants in the experiment. Experimental studies found that the smiling face emoji decreases the politeness of an utterance but does not mitigate the illocutionary force of an impolite utterance. Further studies demonstrate that the interpretation is related to two features of WeChat: the interactant's identity (age) and the situation of communication. For one thing, utterances with smiling face emoji may be interpreted as disrespectful by younger Chinese rather than the older. For another, the smiling face emoji is always interpreted as impolite when the utterances are related to the interactants' feelings. We also infer from the findings that older people might respect the feelings of the addresser more than younger people in WeChat communication. This paper will help avoid miscommunication and contribute to understanding the socio-cultural features of interpersonal interaction in a virtual context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the field of political discourse, euphemistic expressions arise as a linguistic strategy. They are utilized by politicians to cleverly navigate the challenges of achieving their intended goals, such as promoting themselves or criticizing others. The present study delves into the neglected dimensions of euphemisms used by President Biden when he speaks about the local and global affairs. To do so, six carefully selected extracts from Biden’s speeches are examined drawing upon Burridge’s classification of linguistic features and functions of euphemistic expressions, van Dijk’s ideological square, Brown and Levinson’s negative politeness strategies, Grice’s conversational maxims, and French and Raven’s bases of power. The study unfolds significant emphasis on the positive ideological shifts under the current American leadership, contrasting them with the negative underpinnings of others. Accordingly, the function to talk up and inflate serves euphemistic expressions to function as a vehicle for projecting positive representations. Moreover, it is found that to reveal and inspire function is utilized for revealing truths and inspiring profound shifts in perception. Power bases lend legitimacy and authorize Biden to employ such linguistic choices, further amplifying the impact of his intended message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of politeness is closely connected with communication control as one of its important mechanisms, which, however, has not been thoroughly researched in academic literature. In the present paper, we view this mechanism through the prism of communication monitoring, defined as a social negotiation instrument aimed at the speaker's self-control and regulation of other people's verbal and nonverbal behaviour. The study employs a complex of qualitative methods including observation, definition analysis, discourse analysis and introspection. Drawing upon the data of over 1500 communicative situations in English and Russian, we distinguish the prognostic, diagnostic, regulative, corrective, and reflexive functions of monitoring, as well as the function of conflict resolution. The connection between monitoring and politeness is determined by the existence of social constraints and the necessity to observe established rules and norms. The presence of multiple communication variables makes it possible to distinguish different types of monitoring: (i) horizontal vs. vertical monitoring; (ii) self-monitoring vs. monitoring of others; (iii) verbal vs. nonverbal monitoring; (iv) oral vs. written monitoring; (v) explicit vs. implicit monitoring; (vi) pre-monitoring vs. concurrent monitoring vs. post-monitoring; (vii) direct vs. mediated monitoring; and (viii) overt vs. covert monitoring. (Im)politeness is manifested in all the types through the choice of words and communication strategies, observance or violation of conversational rules, and different forms of nonverbal behaviour. These findings can lead to their practical application and help to enhance the effectiveness and quality of human interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British culture is said to be characterised by off-record or negative politeness and norms giving prominence to social distance. However, this assumes that politeness works in the same way across all British speakers and contexts. Work constituting variational pragmatics – a field at the interface of pragmatics and dialectology – has shown this to be an over-simplification. Using data from the Spoken British National Corpus 2014, this paper explores politeness variation across gender, age, region, population density, social class, highest educational qualification, and setting. We selected 50 key British conventionalised politeness formulae, each allotted to one of three different types of politeness (tentativeness, deference or solidarity), and differing levels of formality. Instances of these 50 formulae were retrieved from a subset based on setting (private; public; institutional), and then manually screened to remove non-genuine cases of politeness (e.g., sarcasm). We applied a mixed-effects multinominal logistic regression model to analyse the effect of each social variable on the use of politeness formulae. Clear differences across politeness types and levels of formality emerged, particularly with regard to differences between genders, population density (i.e., metropolitan vs. urban), and setting. We offer a series of explanations for each finding. • Demonstrated a corpus-based method for tracking politeness across social variables. • Men use more politeness formulae than women, largely due to vocative mate. • Rural speakers use more politeness formulae than those in large metropolitan areas. • Politeness usage increases in private compared to public/institutional settings. • Women's politeness usage decreases in the institutional setting specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Versailles literature, a newly immerged genre on Chinese social media, is aptly defined as "humblebragging": bloggers showing off different aspects of themselves in a humble way. Previous research on the genre have focused on the "humble" part of the genre, arguing that the different strategies bloggers use to appear humble are for the purpose of appearing to be modest, a key value in Chinese politeness. But do the bloggers achieve that end, i.e., does humblebragging improve the self-image of the humblebraggers? In this paper, we report on an empirical study on this question and find that Versailles literature posters do not improve their self-image via humblebragging. In fact, evidence suggests that their image is damaged. Instead of appearing to be humble, these posters are perceived as showing and hypocritic. Our study therefore contributes to several strands of pragmatics: politeness evaluation, Chinese politeness, and internet pragmatics. • Versailles Literature (VL), defined as humblebragging, is a new genre in Chinese social media. • The literature on VL has focused on the humble, arguing that appearing humble helps enhance the image of VL posters. • This study reveals that VL damages the image of its posters, not enhancing it. • This study contributes to politeness evaluation, politeness research, and internet pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that attentiveness (kikubari) is a significant aspect of politeness in Japanese. The aim of this paper is to expand on earlier research on attentiveness by using Twitter data and examine how Japanese lay people understand and/or evaluate attentiveness and how attentiveness manifests politeness. The data for this study were 600 Japanese tweets which contain attentiveness. They were coded based on analysis of the content and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that Japanese lay people evaluate attentiveness positively and that they think attentiveness is important in most cases. These results reflect a commonly held belief in Japanese culture, namely that attentiveness is a virtue. In some posts, the demonstrators of attentiveness appeared to infer the needs of the potential recipients and made pre-emptive offers, as they had known the situations of the potential recipients. Attentiveness in such posts coincides with the definition of attentiveness in previous research. In some other posts, attentiveness is used in the sense of consideration, which was included in the conceptualisation of politeness in Japanese. These results confirmed earlier findings and further our understanding of them through concrete examples from Twitter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to explore the realisation and motives of off-record indirectness as a common mode of conversation in naturally occurring social interactions in Jordanian Arabic. It is found that off-record indirectness mirrors speaker's considerateness of the face wants of the speech act recipient, communicating face-threatening acts indirectly. The need to be polite justifies conversation partners' deliberate flouting of Grice's maxims and using conversational implicatures. Indirect means of communication and the employment of abbreviated conversations are also used for humour and as a preferred style and solidarity marker among family members, intimates and closely related people. It is also found that there are instances of off-record indirectness that might be perceived as impolite. In support of other scholars' arguments, the study stresses that instances of off-record indirectness which might be perceived as impolite in terms of first-order politeness are doing interactional facework in terms of second-order politeness. Indirectness, then, may always be face work but is not always politeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit the popular assumption that politeness in languages such as Japanese and Korean with a complex honorific system is crucially different from politeness in languages with no comparably rich honorific repertoires, such as Chinese. We propose a bottom–up, contrastive and corpus-based model through which we challenge this binary view. This model combines interaction ritual and speech acts. As a case study, we compare a set of expressions representing lexico-grammatical honorifics in Japanese and Chinese, i.e., in a so-called "honorific-rich" and a "non-honorific-rich" language. Our results show that the group of honorifics studied work in an essentially comparable fashion, hence disproving the above-outlined binary view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the influences of prosody on (im)politeness perception in intercultural communication. Based on empirical data collected in perceptual experiments, the paper compares the perception of the (im)politeness prosodic properties of L1 German speakers and L2 German speakers of Chinese origin. It was found that the two subject groups show clear distinctions in their (im)politeness perceptions and that prosodic features exert different impacts on (im)politeness perception: L2 German speakers of Chinese origin perceive lower acoustic intensity, more pauses, and lower muscle tension as indicators of higher level of politeness, whereas the opposite holds true for L1 German speakers. In addition, the former demonstrate higher sensitivity to speech rate and modal particle stress than the latter. The study's findings indicate that (im)politeness and prosody perception are influenced by people's first language and home-grown culture, and a prosodic mitigation strategy may not be fully applicable in intercultural communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores (im)politeness conceptualizations and evaluations and the moral foundations of lay notions of (im)politeness in Syrian Arabic. The data were collected using an online questionnaire which was administered to 88 native speaking participants. The results show that participants consider politeness and impoliteness as polar opposites; both are viewed as (in)consideration for others, chiefly conveyed through (dis)respect, and upholding/violating appropriate behaviors, respectively. Moreover, the results show that notions of hierarchical respect, face, equity rights, reciprocity, and attending to others' needs are central in motivating participants' views of (im)politeness. These notions are rooted in the moral foundations of authority/respect, fairness/reciprocity, and harm/care. Additionally, interesting findings emerge in that politeness in Syrian Arabic appears to be more of a relational phenomenon, based on morality, which is in line with contemporary views on politeness, than a rational and strategic behavior, as theorized in classical approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on how to improve the merge control prior to lane reduction points due to either accidents or constructions. A Cooperative longitudinal Control for Merging maneuvers (CCM) strategy based on Automated Vehicles (AV) is proposed considering cooperation among vehicles, courtesy, and the coexistence of AV and Human-Driven Vehicles (HDV). CCM introduces a modified/generalized Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) for vehicle longitudinal control prior to lane reduction points. It also takes courtesy into account to ensure that AV behave responsibly and ethically. CCM is evaluated using microscopic traffic simulation and compared with no control and CACC merge strategies. The results show that CCM consistently generates the lowest delays and highest throughputs approaching the theoretical capacity. Its safety benefits are also found to be significant based on vehicle trajectories and density maps. CCM mainly requires vehicles to have automated longitudinal (such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)) and lane-changing control, which are already commercially available on some vehicles. Also, it does not need 100% AV penetration, presenting itself as a promising solution for improving traffic operations in lane reduction transition areas such as highway work zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews extant work-life literature to identify person-centered variables reflective of the agentic approach in crafting a balance between work and personal life. 49 articles are selected following the systematic literature review paradigm. Qualitative analysis of the studies elicited individual strategies, competencies, resources, and other attributes employed in managing work and life. These are clustered into 9 higher-order themes, each discussed in detail. Each of these trainable attributes opens avenues for further theoretical development and empirical investigation by scholars. We call for operationalization of the framework for effective implementation at work and implore exploring ramifications of civility on work-life outcomes. This individual-focused branch of work-life interface research holds immense potential for theoretical development and managerial implications in devising employee-centered initiatives. We explicitly invite a scholarly debate for moving beyond 'balance' and embracing 'fulfillment' as a concept and other propositions to develop theoretical research on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how expressed gratitude and apologies functioned as politeness strategies among 499 Japanese workers. In this online experimental research with 4 message conditions (control, gratitude, apologies, both) and 2 status conditions (lower/same), participants read a message from a hypothetical coworker and reported perceptions of face threats in the message, the coworker's warmth, and their willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. Results indicated that expressed gratitude and apologies reduced face threats compared to no expressions. Further, path analysis showed that expressed gratitude indirectly affected perceptions of warmth through reduced face threats. Additionally, status differences influenced participants' prosocial behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]