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This paper analyzes the discourse of 19 episodes from Seasons 1 and 2 of "Paranormal Survivor," a reality TV show about ghosts, haunted property, eeriness, fear, dread, and relief. Using various approaches to discourse analysis and multimodal discourse analysis we uncover the macro-, meso, and micro-level patterns of meaning creation in "Paranormal Survivor" that relate dually to the affective/psychological/sensory experiences of the protagonists as well as the cognitive puzzles, doubts, and (un)certainties underlying such paranormal phenomena. The macro-level analysis relates to the narrative structure of the program delivered through achronological multi-party perspectives, reflecting varying levels of emotional intensity/objectivity. The meso-level uncovers the various coherently related themes underlying the program. The micro-level examines the smaller bits of discourse that combine as they build the meso- (thematic) and macro- (structural) components of the larger spates of discourse through affect, emotion, believability, evidence, and empathy. This three-tiered analytic approach serves to systematically reveal the ways in which discursive mechanisms combine to enhance suspense, intensify horror, bolster both believability and relatability, and ultimately seek to establish and augment audience engagement. • Stance-taking is a discursively psycho-social cognitive and affective reaction to external stimuli. • Reality TV is both a reflection and magnification of everyday life. • Audience engagement in reality TV is a complex communicative process. • Suspense, curiosity, and surprise link both the affective and epistemic/cognitive domains of stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The present paper seeks to find a notionally neat category for the pragmatic idiom That's what she said. While this may seem like a trivial goal at first glance, this paper will systematically uncarve the internal and contextual complexities of this formula and the challenges entailed in this aim. While That's what she said merges features and functions that have been defined and labelled by scholars of Pragmatics, Cognition and Psychology as well as the highly interdisciplinary field of Humor Studies, these approaches have not been sufficiently aligned. The present discussion thus forms part of a larger-scale issue, i.e. that humor-related utterances on the one hand and aspects and frameworks of formulaic speech on the other hand have so far not explicitly been brought together. The present paper aspires to do exactly that, putting forth an extended formulaic continuum that does not only fit That's what she said in particular, but potentially other similar formulae that may not yet have been assigned their place on e.g. Kecskés's continuum in its present form and scope either (2000, 2003, 2010, 2013). The present paper therefore proposes the new notion of Isolated Formulaic Punchlines for such formulae, acknowledging their supposedly incoherent or isolated occurrence in the discourse, their formulaic makeup and their humorous potential. Highlights • This paper deals with the That's what she said , a pragmatic idiom which has so far hardly received any attention. • An extended formulaic continuum is proposed offering classificational space for That's what she said. • The notion Isolated Formulaic Punchline is introduced as an additional subcategory to pragmatic idioms. • This is done so to ultimately bridge the gap between the state-of-the-art formulaic framework by Kecskés on the one and the wide range of formulaic verbal humor strategies on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I respond to some provocative remarks by Zhang and Zhang (2017) and I argue that their claim that there is no compatibility between Default semantics and Relevance theory is exaggerated. In Capone (2011a,b) , I provided a synthetic approach which did not presuppose that we necessarily slavishly adhere to all details of Jaszczolt's or Relevance Theory. In that paper, I tried to make sense of the idea of modularity of mind. However, those ideas could also be integrated into a theory of neural networks. In this paper, I point out, however briefly, that it makes sense to connect the generalizations offered by Default Semantics with the role played by Broca’ s area in cognition (here I follow Pennisi and Falzone's (2016) ideas) (see also Capone, 2017 ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper discusses the current nexus between spatial cognition and critical discourse analysis (CDA), assessing its strengths, limitations, and prospects in the area of political/ideological discourse studies. In the first part, I review the models of spatial cognition that have made the most significant contribution to CDA. Discussing Deictic Space Theory and Text World Theory, among others, I argue that cognitive models reveal further theoretical potential which has not been exploited yet. Focusing on how representations and ideologically charged worldviews are established, they fail to provide a pragmatic explanation of how addressees are made to establish a worldview, in the service of speaker's goals. The second part of the paper outlines Proximization Theory, a discursive model of crisis and conflict construction in political discourse. I argue that, unlike the other models, it fully captures the complex ideological positioning in political discourse space and, crucially, the dynamics of conflict between the opposing ideologies of the space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do metaphors express a single and determinate proposition (or even a small set), or do they convey a loose impression? Even ordinary metaphors such as A: " Her new boyfriend is a mouse ". B: " Well, it's better to date a mouse than a rat ", are interspersed with images contingent on individual memories and associations (Wilson and Carston, 2019). Given the vagueness of what may be communicated by metaphors, my aim in this paper is firstly, to acknowledge the existence of images and emotions in their interpretation with evidence from L2. Secondly, to argue that non-propositional effects should be allowed a prominent role in the analysis of metaphors by according effects which ensue from the interplay between perception and cognition. • Language is not emotionally dry. • The maximum benefit from new information is not exclusively cognitive. • Episodes recalled are quick, impulsive, easy to re-experience, more rewarding. • Emotions and images may motivate non-demonstrative inference. • Emotions and images constitute interpretive routes in creative and common metaphors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, I investigate the impact that a change of background assumptions in the study of domain-specific communication like legal communication may have on the focus of such studies. Recent developments in linguistics, especially the inclusion of cognitive aspects like the necessary individuality of knowledge and the ongoing process of knowledge construction, challenge some of the traditional concepts in this field such as the concept of abstract sublanguages. These developments make it relevant to introduce approaches with a different focus as a supplement to the traditional approaches in order to achieve a fuller picture of domain-specific communication. By way of a specific example (a study of the concept Mord in Swiss criminal law), the empirical part of the paper shows which additional aspects of communication in the field of law become visible if we supplement the traditional approaches with approaches focusing on cognition and individual knowledge construction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In view of the undeniable fact that linguistic–cognitive approaches to pragmatics have focused only on selected elements of the holistic, interactional context in which language users are immersed in their (linguistic) social interactions, there has gradually emerged the necessity to remedy this situation by suggesting more comprehensive frameworks for analyzing language use in its context (such as non-Cartesian pragmatics). The main objective of the present paper is to integrate the study of cognition and emotion within the non-Cartesian paradigm of linguistic research. Such a project is an indispensable step towards the holistic investigation of interpersonal communication. Relational Pragmatics (a version of non-Cartesian pragmatics) is used as a framework for the integrative goal of this project. This paper offers a solution to some perennial controversies and debates in emotion research such as cognition vs. emotion, or rationality vs. emotion, and others. The most important ideas suggested in this article include the view of context as ‘relation’ rather than ‘knowledge’, ‘situation’, or ‘text’; affect is also investigated as ‘relation’ and at the pragmatic-semantic interface as ‘text’. Among a number of new concepts the most crucial are ‘pragmability’ and ‘affectability’, which underlie the language user''s capacity to participate in (verbal) social interaction as a cognizing being, or Ens Cognoscens (EC). Ens Cognoscens is represented by way of the cognitive–affective–conative system, which interacts with its (inherent and acquired) pragmability and affectability; moreover, the defocused EC is socially distributed and socially constructed to a considerable extent. Finally, the notion of ‘affectability’ is analyzed in terms of ‘affective reference’ and ‘affective relational system’. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper is concerned with the semantic difference between the do-form and the doing-form in perception verb complements. Until now this difference has been explained in terms of completion or incompletion of the event perceived. This explanation, however, raises some problems. Although it seems that it can explain the semantic difference in most cases, this theory cannot explain why one form is more natural than the other in actual discourse. In this paper, I will propose an alternative theory that uses the concept of ‘perception’ and ‘cognition’ to explain the semantic difference between the two complement types. It will also be shown that this new theory can provide a clear explanation of some examples that the conventional theory has difficulty in accounting for. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The context-sensitivity of many cognitive processes is usually seen as an objective property which we should try to account for and to simulate in computational models. This rests on a mistaken view of inquiry as guided by principles alone. In ethics, exclusive reliance on principles is all but abandoned: the ability to deal with particular cases depends on something more. The same goes for the belief fixation processes involved in communication and other cognitive tasks. The paper defends a mixed model of inquiry, which combines the traditional rationalist reliance on principles with a consideration for appropriateness in the case at hand. The key idea is that how one deals with context is a matter not of fact, but of judgment. The paper concludes with a characterization of some of the areas in which context is easily dealt with, and explains why areas in which it isn''t are not systematically shunned by people. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyzes how an instructor in a trumpet master class exploits multimodal viewpoints while addressing sound in verbal and/or visuospatial terms in order to conceptualize the interpretation of a piece of music. We show how musical meaning emerges as both an abstract and locally situated, embodied discursive activity, in which speech is connected with metaphorical hand gestures and the material world. Multimodality of musical meaning involves not only abstract gesture and speech about musical ideas, but also implies the concrete use of material objects and actions, such as the instrument, the (breathing) body of the trumpet player, as well as reference to the musical score. Viewpoint is a central issue in this conceptual process: both teacher and student constantly put themselves in the shoes of the performer, simultaneously abstracting over and embodying both their own and the other's body-in-music as they perform and both verbally and gesturally address past and future trumpet playing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Relevance theory has long been taken as a theory focusing on hearer's recognition of intention and her/his inference of speaker's implicatures based on explicatures. Recently, Kecskes (2010) takes a new Socio-cognitive Approach (SCA) to pragmatics based on his critique of relevance theory. In this paper, we argue that his critique is flawed on several points. First, the hearer-centered notion of relevance is not completely correct. Rather, relevance theory does not ignore speaker's role in the course of communication. We analyze the process of metaphor interpretation to show that relevance theory is a full-fledged theory taking into consideration the roles of both speaker and hearer in communication. Second, the motivation problem is not totally ignored by relevance theory, either. We argue that there have been three pressures to motivate metaphor interpretation as well as communication, namely, the pressure of being relevant, the pressure of embodiment and the pressure of context, which constitute the three primary motivations for metaphor interpretation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article examines ‘relating at work’. Recent theorising in pragmatics has drawn attention to the importance of analysing relations, and yet the pragmatic study of relations is now intertwined so closely with the concept of face (e.g. Arundale, 2010a; Holmes et al., 2011; Locher and Watts, 2005, 2008) that it might seem the two are synonymous. In this paper, I review this research from a multidisciplinary perspective and argue that relating should be studied in its own right, not always through the lens of face. I then report a study on ‘relating at work’ which had the following aims: (a) to investigate employees’ ‘grassroots’ perspectives on relating at work; (b) to explore ways in which their perspectives can be conceptualised, examining the applicability and relative usefulness of Relational Dialectic Theory and how this relates to face; and (c) to reflect on the relative importance of the cognitive in the pragmatic analysis of relations. I conclude by arguing that Relational Dialectic Theory and Face Theory offer valuable analytic perspectives that are complementary to each other, and calling for more research into the broader issue of relating at work. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates preschool children's errors in their use of definite vs. indefinite determiners to encode the newness of referents. It focuses on so-called “egocentric errors” (whereby a definite is used for a referent not previously introduced in the discourse) and explores possible cognitive sources for such errors. 45 children acquiring French as their first language (between the ages of 2;6.22 and 5;6.15) were made to perform two tests: a picture-based story-elicitation task and a Theory of Mind (ToM) test. The latter aimed to evaluate their ability to perceive differences between their own perspective and that of their addressee. No straightforward correlation was found between the rate of egocentric errors and performance on the ToM test, suggesting that egocentric errors cannot be due simply to children's inability to appreciate that their listener can have a different perspective to their own. It is suggested that ToM development could nonetheless be one among several factors conspiring (perhaps indirectly) to the production of egocentric errors. Other likely factors are (i) preschool children's tendency to monitor insufficiently the difference in perspective between themselves and their addressee – something which adults are also found to do, but to a much lesser extent – and (ii) their over-reliance on the visual context. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Sociolinguistic variables have social evaluations and are used at different rates by different speakers. Variants become indexical of social traits and social identities, and are taken as defining ‘sociolects’ associated with identifiable groups: e.g., ‘working class speech’, ‘African-American English’. But since every speech community has many sociolinguistic variables, do the multiple variables cohere in forming sociolects? Thus if each variable has a variant considered ‘working class’, do working class speakers use all such variants simultaneously? Lectal coherence would imply that variables are correlated; if they are not, the cognitive and social reality of the ‘sociolect’ is problematic. This paper investigates intercorrelations among two phonological and two syntactic sociolinguistic variables in 20 speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The results show considerable cross-variable correlation, but much of it may be explained by structural or grammatical coherence. There is some evidence of socially-motivated coherence, involving gender as well as status differentiation. Female speakers show stronger correlation among variables than males, while non-standard phonology seems to be indexical of male identity. The conclusion is that some sociolectal cohesion does exist, but it may be weaker and more multidimensional, than is commonly assumed. Future work on lects should problematize their coherence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The integration of three main dimensions of linguistic usage and variation – formal, social and conceptual – can be seen as a major ambition of the Cognitive Sociolinguistics enterprise. The paper illustrates this theoretical approach with a corpus-based study of near-synonymous causative constructions with doen and laten in the Belgian and Netherlandic varieties of Dutch. A series of quantitative analyses show a complex interplay of the dimensions at different levels of constructional schematicity. At the more schematic level, the results indicate that the effects of transitivity and coreferentiality on the probability of the two constructions are slightly different in the two varieties. However, incorporating the effected predicate slot fillers in a mixed-effect model reveals that these differences can be explained to a large extent by the country-specific lexical patterns. These findings suggest that the interplay of the lectal and conceptual factors in constructional variation should be studied at varying degrees of constructional schematicity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Situated at the nexus of variationist, interactional, and cognitive sociolinguistics, the present article discusses the phenomenon of ‘Speaker Design’, or the strategic use of linguistic varieties in interaction to achieve certain communicative effects (e.g. identity projections). Speaker Design is seen as essentially grounded in processes of conversational ‘contextualization’; these processes are outlined from an interactional and from a cognitive perspective in turn. Then, the phenomenon is illustrated in data from an Austrian TV show in which a speaker arguably performs a strategic shift from standard Austrian German into Bavarian-Austrian dialect to create a negative alignment with an opponent. Based on the claim that any such communicative effects of Speaker Design are contingent upon listeners’ inferencing of respective interpretations, which in turn requires a respective ‘perceptual competence’ (perceiving the contrastiveness of the linguistic cues at hand, associating different social meanings with them), the paper then presents two empirical tests (one speech perception elicitation test, one speaker evaluation experiment) to derive evidence for such perceptual competence in an Austrian TV audience regarding standard and dialect usage. It is argued that adducing such empirical evidence is ultimately a prerequisite for any claims regarding the interactional workings of Speaker Design. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper is a plea for sociolinguistics to integrate both theoretical and methodological developments from cognitive linguistics and, even more importantly, psycholinguistics. More specifically, I argue that theoretical advances involving exemplar-based models and new methodological tools from psycholinguistics (regressions, in particular mixed-effects models) and corpus linguistics (in particular, more bottom-up studies) would help further sociolinguistics to a considerable degree. To exemplify at least some ways what such developments would look like, I then discuss three small case studies of instances of constructional variation in usage/corpus data, which showcase how contextual as well as cognitive-/psycholinguistic language-internal and sociolinguistic language-external factors interact and can be explored. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the usage patterns of two passive constructions, the emerging zao construction and the conventional bei construction, in Chinese media language where the distributional ratio of the zao construction to the bei construction is conspicuously higher than in other genres. The difference is especially dramatic in Internet news headlines. To account for the uses, we adopt a corpus-driven constructionist approach, seeking to identify the semantics of the two constructions by means of collostructional analysis. Based on the corpus data, we argue that the two constructions differ primarily in the speaker/writer''s subjective experience of the event in which the patient is affected. Specifically, we invoke the psychological constructs of empathy and sympathy to account for the respective functions of the two passive constructions. The genre-specific usage patterns of the two constructions in the Internet news headlines are attributed to the pragmatic manipulation of semantics for the purpose of constructing stance and creating sensationalism. Cognitive psychological insights on human emotion, cognition and morality are discussed in support of embodied semantics and pragmatics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Speed lines, movement lines and emotion-enhancing flourishes (“pictorial runes”) may contribute, marginally or substantially, to the potential meanings to be inferred from a comic''s panel. It seems plausible that pictorial runes convey their meanings in patterned ways, but hitherto little systematic research appears to have been done to investigate them. The primary aim of this paper is to present the first version of a model to research pictorial runes by inventorying and categorizing all specimens occurring in a single Tintin album and to generalize tentatively about their meaning. In this manner, the model can be further tested, refined, elaborated, or refuted, in further research. Such research will aid both comics scholarship and cognition studies based on visual stimuli. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, I treat avoidance as a locally contingent practice that is collaboratively co-constructed by participants in real time as a topic of interaction during the course of naturally occurring institutional talk. In order to develop this post-cognitive account of how participants do, and justify doing, avoidance-as-behavior, I draw on ethnomethodological conversation analysis and discursive psychology to frame and explicate a number of emerging issues in the conversation analysis-for-second language acquisition literature. These issues include: (1) How can we respecify individual notions of cognition as socially situated activity? (2) How can we use longitudinal talk to show how participants demonstrably orient in speech event 2 (SE2) to a course of action that first occurred in speech event 1 (SE1)? And (3) how can we legitimately use exogenous (that is, talk-external) cultural artifacts (here, a Power Point presentation and a self-evaluation form) as resources for analyzing language learning behavior? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As taught us, from (1) and (2) we cannot infer (3):Why? In this paper I discuss and dismiss two possible answers. The first answer (section 1) rests on the view that in a sentence like (1)—a Giorgione-sentence—the name ‘Giorgione’ plays a dual role, i.e. it is both used and mentioned, and, since it is mentioned, it cannot be substituted salva veritate by the coreferential name ‘Barbarelli’. The second answer (section 2) dismisses the dual role of the name. It proposes the view that the name ‘Giorgione’ is picked out by the pronoun ‘so’ working like a demonstrative. In section 3 I present a plausible Perry-inspired account—i.e. I take on board Perry''s distinction between an utterance''s referential truth conditions and its reflexive truth conditions—which enables us to solve Frege-inspired puzzles concerning cognitive significance. Finally, in section 4, I discuss and defend the view that in a Giorgione-sentence ‘so’ works as an anaphoric pronoun coindexed with the name ‘Giorgione’. This anaphoric link and coindexation, though, appears at a reflexive level. This solution rests on the view that at the surface level the name is merely used while at the reflexive level, it is mentioned. 1 [1] The picture I propose is neutral vis-à-vis any particular theory of quotation. For my argument to work, it is sufficient that the NPs appear within quotation marks at the cognitive level. I also show how the account proposed elegantly deals with so-called simple sentences of the form “Clark Kent, unlike Superman, can’t fly”, “Superman is stronger/more successful/…than Clark Kent”. In these sentences, codesignative NPs do not seem to be substitutable salva veritate. As in Giorgione-sentences, it is shown that their apparent non-substitutability is best dealt with at the reflexive level. The picture I’ll end up proposing endorses the welcome consequence that in Giorgione-sentences, unlike in simple sentences, codesignative names cannot be replaced salva veritate. Yet in simple sentences the intuitions concerning their alleged non-substitutivity are dealt with at the reflexive level. Thus, these intuitions force us neither to invoke special modes of presentation entering the proposition expressed nor to enrich our ontology and claim that coreferential names can refer to different entities in various contexts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In Mandarin Chinese, a relative clause (RC) can either immediately precede the head NP, or may be separated from its head by a numeral-classifier sequence (NCL). This word order variation results in two types of indefinite nominal constructions: the OMN with the RC+NCL+NP order (e.g., [tā xiě Øde]RC [yī–běn]NCL shū, ‘a book (that) he wrote’) and the IMN with NCL+RC+NP order (e.g., [yī–běn]NCL [tā xiě Øde]RC shū, ‘a book (that) he wrote’). In this paper, we use a corpus-linguistic perspective to explore the conditioning factors that influence the variation of these two constructions in discourse. In particular, grammatical roles of relativized NPs; information status, animacy, and discourse salience of head NPs; grounding mechanisms; and discourse functions of relative clauses are analyzed. Examinations of the distribution and occurrence of these two constructions show that they are deployed in discourse to serve different discourse purposes. The OMN is mainly used in connection with abstract entities with low discourse salience, and serves the discourse function of identifying the new head NP. In contrast, the IMN is mainly used in conjunction with concrete (human and concrete object) entities with high discourse salience to serve the discourse function of characterization. It will be argued that the variation of these two constructions can be explained with regard to the cognitive and communicative principles of relevance (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) together with interactions between the discourse function of the NCL and the discourse functions of the RC. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper explores the phenomenon of metaphors that occur in close textual adjacency, i.e. as metaphor clusters, but do not share a similar cognitive basis. Clusters frequently mix ontologies and are thus devoid of coherence that can be explained as emerging from a single conceptual metaphor. Evidence to that effect comes from a British corpus (Sun and Guardian) of 675 newspaper commentaries covering the 2004/05 EU referenda (in all, 2574 metaphors). First, it turns out that journalists combine metaphors into complex, yet well-formed arguments on a regular basis, with 39% and 62% of all metaphors respectively occurring in clusters. Even more strikingly, the data reveals that ontologically mixed metaphors account for 76% of all clusters and that almost all of these are straightforwardly comprehensible. This challenges the view of mixed metaphor as awkward language usage. I argue that mixing works because metaphors are typically embedded in separate clauses situated at different temporal, causal, speaker, or belief-related conceptual planes. By consequence, no strong joint processing pressure arises that could result in a perceived clash of metaphorical imagery. Thus, felicitous mixing is a natural by-product of the shifting logic of clauses in complex argumentation. In addition, I present a qualitative typology of how clustering metaphors interact in argumentation. It calls into question the view that conceptual metaphors are the coherence-maintaining device par excellence. While conceptual metaphors may create “internal binding” in ontologically coherent clusters, complementary “external binding” models are needed to explain the mixed clusters (and ultimately for a full explanation of all kinds of metaphor-based argumentation). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper addresses the question why body-part terms are so often used to talk about other things than body parts. It is argued that the strategy of falling back on stable common ground to maximize the chances of successful communication is the driving force behind the selective advantage of body-part terms. The many different ways in which languages may implement this universal strategy suggest that, in order to properly understand the privileged role of the body in the evolution of linguistic signs, we have to look beyond the body to language in its socio-cultural context. A theory which acknowledges the interacting influences of stable common ground and diversified cultural practices on the evolution of linguistic signs will offer the most explanatory power for both universal patterns and language-specific variation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we examine the development of stance by comparing the use of certain distancing devices: impersonal pronouns, passive constructions, and attitudinal markers, especially modals, in the written narrative and expository texts of English speaking children, adolescents, and adults. The results suggest that even the youngest group use these markers differentially to distinguish the two text types. Thus, analyses center on the expository texts and the development of a more distanced, impersonal stance characteristic of this genre. For each of the target linguistic structures, we found developmental changes, both quantitative and qualitative. The results are discussed with reference to both cognitive and biological frameworks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, Sperber and Wilson''s Relevance theory is analyzed as to its explanation of how humorous interpretations are produced. The main foundation of this cognitive theory is the hypothesis that human beings rely on one single interpretive principle, which they invariably use in their attempt to select the interlocutors’ intended interpretation. This principle states that the first interpretation which provides an optimal balance of interest—cognitive effects–and mental effort, is the one that the speaker possibly intends to communicate, and hence it is the one selected, and interpretation stops at this point. As will be shown in the article, this theoretical claim is valid for any type of ostensive communication (in which communicators intend to make mutually manifest to the addressee some information), humorous utterances included. Besides, the steps involved in this interpretive procedure may be predicted to a greater or lesser extent, which provides communicators with the key to the necessary control over the eventual interpretation of their humorous discourse. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The starting point of this study is the adoption of the simple device of a tree structure as a working model for the analysis of pragmatic cohesion relations between successive actions of both discourse and non-verbal behavior. It is claimed that (i) cohesion relations, as represented by the nodes of such a P(ragmatic)-tree, are in the case of discourse classifiable into a limited number of recursively applicable types, and that (ii) this pragmatic structure, representing the intentionality of behavior, constitutes a level that underlies the more superficial syntactic and prosodic levels of discourse (‘pragmatics first’). The aims of this paper are: (1) to address a number of technical issues concerning the application of the tree device to spontaneous speech, concentrating on traditional preoccupations of the interpretative approach to discourse analysis, such as thematization, intonation and the scope of discourse markers and topics; (2) to investigate the implications of the ‘pragmatics first’ claim and of assuming a fundamental analogy between verbal and non-verbal actions for such theoretical issues as the relations between pragmatic structure and (semantic) content, and the dynamics of cognition in general and discourse in particular. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we attempt to develop the still programmatic but insightful proposal made by Thornburg and Panther (1997) and Panther and Thornburg (1998), according to which the identification of the intended meaning (or illocutionary force) of indirect requests (and by extension of indirect speech acts in general) is based on conceptual metonymies operating on the grounds of the different components of illocutionary scenarios. We build into Panther and Thornburg''s account other aspects of indirect directives which they have not considered yet. Thus we examine issues such as the semantic motivation of indirect directives, the prototypicality degrees of the constructions used to convey them, their instantiation potential, their image-schematic basis, and the cognitive motivation of some of their features in discourse. We argue that calculating the illocutionary force of an utterance is ultimately a matter of conceptual interaction between propositional, image-schematic, metonymic, and metaphorical idealized cognitive models or ICMs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]