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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]

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]

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]

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 paper examines notices with a directive function that have been translated from Greek into English in the public spaces of Thessaloniki. In particular, it explores the ways in which Greek politeness is expressed and how this politeness is rendered in the English translation of the original Greek texts. The paper uses photographic data collected in 2020. Using Brown and Levinson's (1987) concept of face, the methodology used is a combination of the qualitative ethnographic approach employed in contemporary linguistic landscape research and Bourdieu's habitus approach used in the sociology of translation. The analysis shows that the translations examined often retain aspects of Greek politeness strategies, affecting the message of the English target text to varying degrees. [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]

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]

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]

Fake news about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can discourage people from taking preventive measures (masks, social distancing), thereby increasing infections and deaths; thus, this study tests whether attributes of users or COVID-19 tweets can distinguish tweets of true news versus fake news. We analyzed 4,165 spell-checked English tweets with a link to 1 of 20 matched COVID-19 news stories (10 true and 10 fake), across the world during 1 year, via computational linguistics and advanced statistics. Tweets with common words, negative emotional valence, higher arousal, greater dominance, first person singular pronouns, third person pronouns or by users with more followers were more likely to be true news tweets. By contrast, tweets with second person pronouns, bald starts, or hedges were more likely to be fake news tweets. Accuracy (F1 score) was 95%. While some tweet attributes for detecting fake news might be universal (pronouns, politeness, followers), others might be topic specific (common words, emotions, hedges). [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]

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 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.

The article examines the influence of Plato’s Republic on Dostoevsky’s late novels. The role of the dialogue in the ideological discourse of Europe and Russia in the mid-nineteenth century is noted, and references to the work in Dostoevsky’s f ive major novels and draft notes are traced, indicating the writer’s acquaintance with it. The main part of the article draws parallels between the socio-philosophical presentation of the concept of justice in the dialogue The Republic and Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Thus, at the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates’ opponent Frasimachus puts forward the thesis of the harm and uselessness of justice for ordinary citizens, and in the process of substantiating it almost completely anticipates the main provisions of Raskolnikov’s theory. Socrates, in turn, refutes Frasimachus with arguments like those addressed to Raskolnikov. The common vector of Dostoevsky’s and Plato’s interpretation of the theme of justice is revealed. However, there is also an important difference: for Dostoevsky, there is a higher, divine standard of justice by which social justice is also understood. Dostoevsky’s characters seem to be constantly arguing with God, who admits actual injustice and can draw different conclusions from this situation, including fighting with God. For Plato, justice is the harmony of good human will that everyone should strive for in the real world, building a good society with their own hands: it is perfectly intellectually comprehensible and reasonable.

The article introduces into scientific circulation and analyses information about the traditions of respecting the older generation in the Turkmen rural community. In large Turkmen villages, the most respected person of the older generation was the main adviser and mentor to all its residents. When making important decisions, he always consulted with other elders of the settlement. For this purpose, the oldest person convened a council. The elder’s opinion was of much significance; the villagers relied on his wisdom, life experience and honesty. The elders did not receive or expect any remuneration, since service to society was considered a sacred duty. All important issues, from naming a newborn to the burial of the deceased, were brought to the attention of representatives of the older generation. People listened to what the elders had to say and acted upon their instructions. As a result of the centuries-old development in the Turkmen rural community, the rules of the people’s council, the principles of managing Turkmen society, based on the knowledge and wisdom of the older generation, were developed.

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]

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]

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]

Drawing on a Symbolic Interactionist perspective and the Grounded Theory methodology, this study aimed to explore self-denigration from the perspective of Iranian applied linguists highlighting the significance of self-denigration as an in-group relational ritual in Iranian doctoral defense sessions. The data were obtained from rigorous coding of the transcripts of two focus groups and a questionnaire built on the findings of the focus group discussions. The findings indicated significant gender differences in terms of the participants' attitudes toward the functions and meanings of self-denigration. Academic experience was also found to be an important factor in how the participants perceived self-denigration. Through a meticulous analysis of self-denigration in doctoral defense sessions, the present study sheds light on the norms and conventions of the academic discourse of defense sessions, thereby justifying the rights and obligations of the defense session participants. [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]

Public and academic debate suggest a perception that institutions such as the police may be reluctant to apologise or ineffective when they do. This article takes the unusual step of considering the apology culture of the institution potentially offering apology as a crucial step in identifying possible barriers to change in institutional practice. I have analysed explicit apology language in letters written by Scottish police to individuals as a final stage in responding to their complaints about the police. Rather than police reluctance to apologise, I found the police potentially overusing apology language, in the sense that explicit apology language was consistently used where evidence both had and had not been found that the police were at fault. The grammatical construction of the explicit apology language differed between these two contexts. I conclude that police politeness culture includes an empirical norm to use explicit apology language in response to public complaints regardless of the outcome of that complaint, as part of their identity as a public service institution. Tension between this empirical norm and another aspect of police identity, as a law enforcement institution, is managed by a systematic grammatical distinction in apology language patterning with the complaint outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreement, while generally seen as an act threatening interlocutors' face, is indispensable in particular contexts. Based on an in-depth linguistic and paralinguistic analysis of 12 cases of disagreement from a Chinese venture capital reality TV show We Are the Hero, we found that in this special context disagreement was a 'dispreferred' moment, but also an informative, educational, and amusing occurrence with multiple functions. While disagreements were frequently initiated (particularly by the investors), they were mostly indirect, carefully mitigated by participants with linguistic devices such as explanations, private verbs, questions, humor, as well as paralinguistic devices such as friendly facial expressions and movements. Furthermore, disagreements, especially aggravated ones, were often interactively mitigated by both on-stage participants (particularly the host) and the post-production team in an interestingly cooperative way. The interactive process of mitigating disagreements not only saved the interlocutors' face, but also contributed to the multiple purposes of the show. Our findings suggest that politeness, as an invisible hand behind communicative acts, is still present despite the 'conflict' that characterizes this form of TV show. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teknonyms represent a special category of the addressing system of the Arabic language and most of its dialects. The present study analyzes Syrian Arabic teknonyms that have not been tackled before to highlight how often, in what situational contexts they are used and their pragmatic characteristics. The data were elicited from open-ended questionnaires supplemented by interviews with 74 representatives of the Syrian lingua-culture of both genders and subjected to a socio-pragmatic and lingua-cultural analysis. The findings show that teknonyms are an inherent feature of the modern Syrian culture and a significant identity characteristic of its representatives used as a marker of politeness. The results indicate that teknonyms pragmatically afford speakers the opportunity to simultaneously achieve closeness and respect. • Teknonymy is the practice of addressing a parent by the name of his/her children. • The choice of a teknonym complies with the norms of sociolinguistics. • Teknonyms are sensitive to the interlocutor's age and gender. • Teknonyms can serve as markers of distance as well as intimacy/solidarity. • Teknonyms can be used for both negative and positive politeness strategies. [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]

Copyright of University of Sharjah Journal of Sharia & Islamic Studies (JSIS) is the property of University of Sharjah - Scientific Publishing Unit and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Sexual assault victims often experience various degrees of re-victimization if they go through the process of reporting or seeking support for the crime. This autoethnographic essay explores, from the perspective of a gender scholar and gender rights activist, how the power of socialization impacted her rape-reporting process, despite having worked in and researched power-based personal violence her entire career. Drawing from scholarly studies of gender norms, politeness, emotion work, and rape support, this piece unpacks the twenty-four hours following a sexual assault to highlight the gendered perspective that caused one victim to let her rapist walk free. Looking at the power of socialization, readers are shown how, despite the education and experience of the victim and her support network, she also struggled to navigate the barriers that prevent all victims from feeling safe and heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This study investigated WhatsApp messages exchanged between two generations of Iranian students and their respective lecturers in light of politeness, age, and the speech act of request. We utilised two sets of data: messages sent by current young students to two young lecturers, and those sent by former middle-aged students to two senior lecturers. Altogether, 100 WhatsApp messages were analysed (50 from each data set) focusing on salutations, body, and closing parts. The findings revealed that politeness is expressed differently across the two age groups: the younger students' messages featured short and informal expressions and frequent use of emojis while the older group utilised elaborate messages to express politeness through the frequent use of honorifics and other politeness markers. Moreover, the younger group used WhatsApp messages towards their academic goals, such as requesting the postponement of an exam, whereas the older group messages aimed at re-establishing solidarity with their lecturers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractComputer-supported collaborative argumentation is an online activity that can engage students in deep discussion and analysis of complex problems. Given the potentially confrontational nature of argumentation, using polite language becomes a strategic approach to prevent breakdowns in group communication and nurture productive dialogues. This study aims to understand how politeness and argumentation moves influence subsequent conversation dynamics in online debates. Student postings in threaded discussions (from 20 online debates containing 2,008 messages posted by students across five semesters of a graduate-level course on distance education) were coded and scored on politeness and impoliteness using natural language processing software. The scored postings were examined to determine how impoliteness and politeness impact students’ proclivity to engage in and produce more sustained argumentative exchanges to evaluate presented claims thoroughly. The findings show that impoliteness steadily increased by up to 84% as contentious discussion threads reached 7 levels deep, and impoliteness was significantly higher in frequency in postings presenting challenges. Correspondingly, the use of politeness increased steadily by up to 139% as discussion threads reached 6 levels deep, with the frequency of politeness nearly equal across postings presenting challenges, explanations, and evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite robots being applied in various situations of modern society, some people avoid them or do not feel comfortable interacting with them. Designs that allow robots to interact appropriately with people will make a positive impression on them resulting in a better evaluation of robots, which will solve this problem. To establish such a design, this study conducted two scenario-based experiments focusing on the politeness of the robot's conversation and behavior, and examined the impressions caused when the robot succeeds or slightly fails at a task. These two experiments revealed that regardless of whether the partner is a robot or a human, politeness not only affected the impression of interaction but also the expectations for better task results on the next occasion. Although the effect of politeness on preference toward robot agents was smaller than those toward human agents when agents failed a task, people were more likely to interact with polite robots and human agents again because they thought that they would not fail the next time. This study revealed that politeness motivates people to interact with robots repeatedly even if they make minor mistakes, suggesting that the politeness design is important for encouraging human-robot interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to explore the linguistic journey of polite communication in the last two centuries. For this purpose, the article scrutinises German and Romanian professional correspondence and identifies the transformations letter writing has undergone by defining the most relevant patterns of politeness: semantic typology, idiosyncratic language, epistemic and deontic modalities. We conclude that polite interactions unfold in a multitude of eloquent and expressive formulations in earlier letters, whereas modern writings orientate themselves towards the mundane, seek simplicity and are stripped off from ornaments and redundant formulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of Indonesia's cultural heritages, regional languages, including Javanese, need to be preserved. The cultural richness of Javanese includes the politeness and manners values, as reflected in the socalled unggah-ungguh (speech levels). While it is taught as a course in the country's 12-year mandatory education, the teaching and learning process still follows the traditional, less appealing model. This research aims to create a Javanese speech levels learning model based on joyful learning. The model was both innovative and entertaining. The research used R&D ADDIE design with the following steps: analysis, designing, development, implementation, and evaluation. The model was developed based on two philosophies: progressivism and analytic philosophy. Syntagmatic, social system, support system, reaction principle, instructional impact, and accompaniment impact served as the model's components. Orientation, presentation of material, explanation of how to play, playing vocabulary, playing sentences, dialogue, assessment, and reflection comprised the syntagmatic model. The principles of joyful learning and the norms of honing, loving, and nurturing are included in the model social system. The model reaction principle included the teacher serving as a facilitator, planner, and assessor. Tools, media, and learning resources are all part of the model support system. Some of the instructional effects were increased Javanese vocabulary, fun learning activities, and some impacts of model accompaniment, including increased emotional sharpness, imagination, and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pragmatics, study of how context influences interpretation of meaning, "on record" and "off record" strategies play crucial roles in communication. These strategies are part of the politeness theory developed by Penelope Brown and Levinson. This study uses Brown & Levinson's Politeness Theory to study politeness tactics used in familial interactions in Sialkot, Pakistan. Thus, surveying 40 families from urban and rural areas, the research uses a mixed-methods approach to examine the effects of gender, socioeconomic status & cultural norms. The results show complex communication dynamics where politeness techniques are shaped by societal and gendered factors. Rural families take a diversified approach, whereas urban families tend to communicate on-record. The study revealed that effective communication involves a balance between on record and off record strategies, depending on context, the relationship amid speaker and listener, and potential facethreatening nature of communication. The study provides significant and leading outcomes about pragmatics and further highlights the significance of realizing cultural subtleties in familial interaction & proposes directions for future studies that will use multimodal analytic approaches & examine regional variances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cultures are mainly divided into collectivistic and individualistic, members tend to emphasize, through communication, either their position as part of their group or their independence from the group. This emphasis is manifested in using the pragmatic concepts of positive politeness and negative politeness. The present study looks into the reflection of these two cultures in Rockstar's renowned video game, Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). It aims at identifying the two cultures as present in the game and showing their significance to its narrative. It fills the gap in the studies of language used within video games as well as its cultural reflections. The study addresses the following question: What are the positive and negative politeness strategies used in Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), and what are the implications of using these strategies in its narrative? By adopting Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory, the researcher analyzed the positive and negative politeness used in the scripted dialogue of the in-game cutscenes through the mixed methods approach. The researcher hypothesized that the protagonist shows adherence to a collectivistic culture using positive politeness, and he begins transitioning towards an individualistic culture using negative politeness. The results showed that 75% of the protagonist's interactions contained positive politeness while only 25% contained negative politeness. This transition explains the protagonist's loss of trust and loyalty to his group as he begins to witness the futility of maintaining such loyalty. It also supports the overall narrative of the game as well as its cultural foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]