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Internationally, most prestigious and influential academic journals are published in English, and therefore a mastery of the language is necessary to ensure engagement with the international scientific community. There is debate in the literature as to whether the dominance of English might lead to the marginalization of contributions from academics for whom English is a second language. The present study explores through interviews the insights of 11 humanities and social sciences academics working at two Japanese universities ranked in the top 50 globally. The findings indicate that most of the participants view English as the logical vehicle for reaching a wider audience for their research. Despite an acknowledgement that publishing in English presents problems from both linguistic and pragmatic perspectives, these academics do not, on the whole, believe that current standards need to be revisited. These issues are discussed in light of the changing realities of academic environments, and the need to ensure accessible pathways for those who can and should be contributing to knowledge construction in the global academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this position paper, we provide an overview of what we regard as the most important features of the relationship between the moral order and morality in the context of language conflict and aggression. While in previous pragmatic research the concepts of morality and moral order have been rarely brought together, we illustrate that they are inseparable, in particular in the context of conflict and aggression. We propose an analytic model – with replicability in mind – which captures the dynamic relationship between these phenomena: the model is centred on the idea that perceived (a) violations of the moral order, (b) breaches of moral norms, principles and ideologies, (c) conflict and (d) aggression constitute a cluster. The explanatory power of this dynamics resides in the fact that it can account for a variety of seemingly unrelated scenarios, such as conflicts triggered by the violation of interactional norms vs. rites of moral aggression. Along with detailing the model, we explore the relationship between various methodologies through which one can examine morality and the moral order in the context of language conflict and aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on interactional pragmatics and membership categorisation analysis, with a focus on (un)accomplished intersubjectivity, categories and social action, this paper explores some new aspects of multimodal joint fantasising in online interaction. The data for this study comes from the public Facebook event page regarding the 'ski field opening' in Brisbane, a sub-tropical city in Australia. The first part of the analysis examines how intersubjectivity is accomplished through joint fantasising co-constructed among the posters, serving entertainment purposes. Invoking their membership in the category 'fantasisers', this is done in two ways: (1) flat co-construction gradient; and (2) upgraded co-construction gradient. The second part focusses on the instances wherein intersubjectivity in relation to the fantasy world is unaccomplished. It is indexed through (1) metapragmatic labels of humour types; (2) treating the event as real; and (3) doubting the authenticity of the event and challenging the joint fantasising posts. As a result, additional categories emerge, thereby constructing category relations, namely, oppositional categories such as 'fantasisers'-'the gullible' and 'fantasisers'-'sceptics'. This in situ change, I argue, creates a shift in the pragmatic function of joint fantasising, moving from a category-implicative action (serving entertainment) to a category-relations-implicative action (serving jocular criticism). This paper adds to the research on joint fantasising, categorial work and social action, and broadly contributes to our understanding of how members of the society orient to contexts and categories in and through talk-in-interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the problem of (im)politeness in light of mismatches between what we/others say and what we/others mean in a multi-dialogic search for meaning where humans integrate all their competence-in-performance and co-construct situated relationships in a more or less sustainable way. We examine how these processes occur by analyzing (im)politeness mismatches in telecinematic satire using dialogic speech act typology and methods of the Mixed Game Model to describe and explain the communicative meta-meaning of (im)politeness. We demonstrate that in satire the dialogic semantics of (im)politeness is polyvalent, interactant-relative, temporally variable, scalar and self-reflexive because it is part of integrational language-in-use engagement with the world through which humans construct multiple relational domains and relationships in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swearing is a verbal act in which the main language structure is composed of multiple swear words. The reasons for studying swearing include the need to know what lexical items might be used for swearing. For this reason, it is critical to determine the pragmatic principles and cultural beliefs which underlie curse words. This paper constructs a thesaurus of the swearing vocabulary used in the late-Yuan and early-Ming dynasty novel, Shuǐhǔ zhuàn (水浒传). It analyzes the pragmatic principles and cultural beliefs surrounding swearing during those dynasties by means of exhaustive measurement, offering a better understanding of those pragmatics and beliefs and showing how Chinese people swore or used abusive language at that time. This paper indicates that those Yuan and Ming pragmatic principles and cultural beliefs also underlie the ways in which modern Chinese people swear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews research on teaching pragmatics – and more specifically speech acts – to young L2 learners from two perspectives: (1) studies investigating young L2 learners' pragmatic competence and (2) studies examining the potential of different materials with regard to pragmatics instruction. The review of L2 learners' speech act competence addresses cross-sectional and longitudinal developmental studies, as well as studies that examined the effects of specific instructional approaches, learning contexts or materials on young L2 learners' pragmatic competence. The review of studies examining materials addresses both studies focusing on designated L2 teaching materials produced for the explicit purpose of foreign language instruction of young learners, as well as studies examining speech acts included in children's books. The paper concludes with a discussion of issues relevant to young learners and the teaching and researching of L2 pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Awareness of cultural specificity in current classroom discourse is particularly important in an educational setting that has become largely multicultural due to globalization, migration and academic mobility. Drawing on the intercultural and cross-cultural pragmatics, and cultural studies, this paper explores the speech act of critical remark in Russian and Israeli classroom settings, focusing on students' view of its degree of conventionality and admissibility. Data were obtained from a student survey questionnaire (undertaken between 2017-2019). Highlighting similarities and differences, we argue that both Russian and Israeli classroom settings exhibit critical remark as not uncommon, though varying in acceptability. Findings show that critical acts need not be limited to the merely conflictual, but may even be perceived positively, and may moreover exert varying levels of illocutionary force and be interpreted differently by different cultural groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper introduces noun categorization devices in nDrapa. It argues that nDrapa usually requires both numeral classifiers and verbal action classifiers to express classificatory techniques. Morphologically, classifiers are fused with numerals; without the involvement of classifiers, numerals cannot be directly associated with nouns. Classifiers can derive from the pragmatic function, in which a considerable number of classifier-derived quantifiers and adverbs reveal the adverbial function with respect to the softening voice and politeness. Historically, the majority of classifiers can trace their etyma back to nouns. This paper's five sections explore the grammatical properties of classifiers in nDrapa. In Section 2 and Section 3, I provide background information on numerals and numeral classifiers, and describe the characteristics of verbal action classifiers in nDrapa. Section 4 explores expressions relevant to classifier-related grammatical categories. In Section 5, I summarize the pragmatic and functional properties of classifiers in nDrapa. In Section 6, I introduce the origin and development of classifiers in this language. To conclude this paper, I propose that the limited number of classifiers in nDrapa may exhibit an infant development of classificatory devices in this language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I attempt a bridge between linguistics, in particular text pragmatics, and school reading of literary texts. I propose a linguistic model of these peculiarities of the reading of literary texts, especially poetry, that have been called ‘aesthetic reading’, arguing that a linguistically founded basis is what is lacking for school engagement with (not only literary) texts. In the last years there has been extensive research on the linguisticsliterature interface; however, what is surprisingly still missing, is a consistent linguistic model of literary reading. In this paper, I propose such a model and show that ‘aesthetic reading’ involves a distinct reading strategy that can be captured in terms of text-world-models and the differentiation between coherence and text sense displaying. Consciously reading poetry amounts, linguistically seen, to a close reading (i) especially focusing marked expressions, i.e., deviations from phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and textpragmatic routines, (ii) maintaining of unsolved ambiguities and thus (iii) generating an array of ‘authorized inferences’ that can be productively used for a principled plurality of interpretations. I specify this proposal and illustrate it with two cases of marked pronominal reference, arguing that my proposal has some important implications that make it particularly suitable for school context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If first-order empathy is the ability of Self to take into account Other's point of view, then second-order empathy may be identified as the ability of Self to take into account Other's point of view as including a view of Self. Considering that a hearer may choose between a first-order empathic and a second-order empathic interpretation of speaker utterances, second-order empathy introduces a pervasive indeterminacy in speaker-hearer interactions. The paper introduces this ambiguity potential in terms of the semiotics of face mask wearing during the corona pandemic, and then extrapolates the ensuing pattern of interpretative options to representative speech acts. The interaction between degree of empathy on one hand, and on the other the convergence or divergence of speaker and hearer beliefs is shown to yield six basic interpretative configurations: assertion, mistake, agreement, disagreement, irony, deception. Recognizing this ambiguity potential of second-order empathy is relevant for linguistic intersubjectivity research and post-Gricean pragmatics, and for the psychological theory of mind paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this volume examine how Spanish speakers express attention to their interlocutors (or co-participants) verbally. It is now generally accepted that subjective expressions have interactional functions, encouraging the flow of discussion and creating cohesive discourse and that there are several ways of dealing with the intersubjective or dialogic nature of language: (i) studying heteroglossia or dialoguing voices in monologic texts, (ii) focusing on how in talk-in-interaction speakers refer to information held by the co-participant, (iii) examining intersubjective markers that encode the speaker's assumptions about the co-participant. Concepts such as politeness, argumentation structure, attenuation and hedging are being used to account for the interactional dynamics examined. Moreover, several papers analyze the difference between spoken and written registers and some offer new evidence for functional paths of linguistic change. In doing so, they enrich previous accounts of modality, discourse markers, person referencing, spatial deixis and connectives in Spanish and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the development of an aural multiple-choice discourse completion task (aural MC-DCT) for use with EFL learners for large-scale instructional needs assessment. The original version of the aural MC-DCT and an oral DCT were administered to 134 EFL learners from three universities in China. The aural MC-DCT was revised based on the results of the initial administration and completed by 251 EFL students and 89 native speakers of American English in a second administration. Both versions of the task used learner-generated options. The first version used digital files of learner production from an earlier oral DCT taken by ESL learners; the second version re-recorded the learner-produced options using native speakers of American English. The results from the second version show that the aural MC-DCT is a feasible format for exploring learner knowledge of conventional expressions by comparing learner selections to production on the oral DCT, which has been established as a reliable measure of L2 English conventional expressions. The aural MC-DCT provides teachers with a practical alternative to the transcription and analysis required by the oral DCT, allowing them to easily assess knowledge of target conventional expressions and preferred alternatives in order to facilitate decisions about instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Holy Scriptures can be considered a specific kind of normative texts, whose use to assess practical moral cases requires interpretation. In the field of ethics, this interpretative problem results in the necessity of bridging the gap between the normative source – moral precepts – and the specific cases. In the history of the Church, this problem was the core of the so-called casuistry, namely the decision-making practice consisting in applying the Commandments and other principles of the Holy Scriptures to specific cases or moral problems. By taking into account the sin of lying, this paper argues that casuistic texts reveal an extremely sophisticated interpretative method, grounded on "pragmatic" contextual and communicative considerations and argumentative structures that resemble the ones used in legal interpretation. These works show how the underspecified biblical text expressing an abstract norm was enriched pragmatically by completing it and modulating its meaning so that it could be used to draw a conclusion in a specific context on a specific case. The mutual interdependence between biblical interpretation, pragmatics, and argumentation sheds light on a much broader phenomenon, namely the pragmatic nature of argumentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to investigate the possibility of a cross-theoretical understanding of coercion, a "kind of contextual enrichment/adjustment" (Lauwers & Willems 2011: 1220), by combining insights from Construction Grammar and Relevance Theory. In Construction Grammar, coercion has mostly been discussed in terms of the semantics of the linguistic items that occur in the sentence and how these interact with each other. Relevance Theory, on the other hand, does not distinguish cases of coercion from other instances of lexical adjustment, and discusses them in terms of the pragmatic principles involved during utterance interpretation. In order to highlight the complementarity of the two perspectives, this paper particularly consists in pinning down their respective explanatory limits. It will be shown that coercion is better described in terms of a linguistically required pragmatic process. Therefore, it will be suggested that coercion might actually instantiate a particular type of saturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information related to the use of a new cross-language understanding of the use of "sort of " and will open up new areas for future research. Topics discussed include elevation of the current literature on cross-linguistic and intercultural pragmatics to a higher level, research paper "Sort of in Australian English: The elasticity of a pragmatic marker," by Jean Mulder and collegues and "On the functions of "sort of" in New Zealand TV programs," by Peyman G. P. Sabet.

This paper gives a corpus-based descriptive account of the phasal polarity system (still, already, not yet, and no longer) in the Arabic vernacular of Tunisia. The aim is to broaden the empirical foundations for cross-linguistic research in this domain, and to narrow the gap between typologically oriented and philological research on Arabic varieties. Like many languages (van Baar 1997: 118), Tunisian Arabic has autochthonous expressions for the three concepts still, not yet, and no longer. still is primarily expressed via a construction < 'has not ceased'. Despite its conceptual transparency, this appears to be a cross-linguistically uncommon source. not yet is expressed via the inner negation of still, and no longer via a construction < 'has not repeated'. For already, northern sedentary varieties have borrowed from French (replacing an older autochthonous expression), whereas southern Bedouin varieties have a "gap" in their system. The description further includes notes on the synchronic and diachronic variation of individual items, and functions of these outside the realm of phasal polarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of digital data in forensic contexts has been increasing continuously (e.g., Grant 2013; Layton, Watters & Dazeley 2010; Wright 2013), with individuals holding an average of 8.5 different social media accounts in 2018 (Statista 2021a). Even though numerous studies have investigated registers on social media platforms (e.g., Seargeant & Tagg 2014; Zappavigna 2013), it has rarely been attempted to describe individual styles of one and the same person on different platforms – a research gap this paper attempts to address with the help of an exploratory hypothesis-generating study. The data is drawn from Instagram and Twitter, and comprises 1,800 posts from three media representatives and/or writers that hold accounts with both platforms. The results of the analysis suggest that the use of some features (e.g., emoji, hashtags) is strongly influenced by the respective platforms, while other features (e.g., patterns of punctuation, use of types of speech acts) remain stable and thus offer promising avenues for authorship analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I first briefly define the notion of English as a lingua franca and then give an overview of research into the pragmatics of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Investigations into the phenomenon of ELF started during the last two decades of the previous century. ELF in oral interactions was characterized by interactants' joint, collaborative action making the discourse robust and 'normal' in the face of interactants' often non-normative use of the English language. Later research focused on how ELF interactants managed to accommodate to each other, how they negotiated meanings and co-constructed utterances often employing ELF-specific pragmatic markers. Researchers also investigated how ELF users turn to pragmatic transfer and code-switching whenever it is necessary to plug competence gaps arising in their use of English. Finally, I list several critical points of ELF research and make a few suggestions for the future of ELF research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section calls for papers dealing with new technologies and the pragmatics of cognition and distributed cognition.

In this paper the discourse of a specific type of meme in Spanish, the image macro, is analysed, together with several ways in which memes generate humorous effects. Two main areas are addressed: (a) how humour arises from the processing of the text in the meme (decoding of the text plus further inferential enrichment); and (b) how humour relies on specific combinations of the text and the image in the meme. The pragmatic framework used in the analysis will be relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995), which in previous research (especially Yus 2016) has proven to be a valid foundation for the analysis of humour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article describes the conceptualization of aesthetics in Spanish through the analysis of the two prototypical terms that describe positive and negative sensory appreciation, i.e., "bonito" (beautiful) and "feo" (ugly). Following a mixed-approach methodology combining Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Corpus Pragmatics, the article compares the use of these adjectives in spoken and written language, analyzes their realization in the corpora under analysis, provides the explications that support their polysemy, and describes their distribution in different contexts. The final part of the paper is devoted to the comparison of the use of these adjectives with their counterparts in English, as evidenced by another paper in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aside from metaphor being an important language device reflecting human cognition, it also provides a window into the understanding of culture (Kövecsec 2019). Language is a function of culture because it is a form of the verbal and nonverbal systems by which a group member can communicate with another member. Language connects people of the same cultural identity because it functions as a common bond between people who have the same linguistic heritage. As argued in Verhagen (2008), values of one's understanding of the world he lives in may in turn be influenced by the conceptual metaphors he unconsciously holds to visualize his world. Verhagen has provided a valuable standpoint, yet it is western-centered and European-oriented. Through metaphors identified in Chinese in proverbs, food, marriage, and time expressions, this paper intends to address the following questions: Does conceptual metaphors reflect any specific Chinese mode of thinking? Does such conceptualization give a taste of Chinese culture? What kind(s) of theoretical and pragmatic implications can be derived from our line of investigation? It is thus hoped that this paper may provide empirical evidence with reference to mappings between thought and language, which in turn, may serve as a way to explore culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case model of the syncretic case [xa] in the Gansu-Qinghai area came from non-Sinitic languages, while the phonetic form came from Sinitic languages ("Sinitic languages" are usually called "Chinese dialects" in the Chinese linguistic community). The paper shows that this marker [xa] may come from a topic marker and topic chain markers in Sinitic languages. The accusative/dative marker formation was motivated by pragmatic factors. This phenomenon is also found in other languages. The syncretic use of cases is commonplace in languages across the world, whereas the accusative/dative marker [xa] is one of the prominent features in Sinitic languages in the Gansu-Qinghai area. The accusative/dative case formation did not know an even speed in Sinitic languages. It seems that Wutun and Tangwang evolved rapidly while Linxia and Gangou changed with an intermediate rhythm. Qinghai languages are the closest to Tibetic languages, but paradoxically they seem to be more conservative and do not adopt dative markers in possessor and experiencer constructions which are seen overwhelmingly in Tibetic languages. However, other Sinitic languages have adopted this marking progressively and steadily. The language model of the syncretic marker [xa] is not from a single language. Amdo Tibetan as well as Mongolic languages have contributed to the case formation of [xa] in Sinitic languages. This paper proposes that an Intertwining Model helped the spread of case formation in this zone. Languages of one group or of one language family have influenced each other at different periods. The results of case formation we note today constitute a net-like relationships connected to various languages, but not a neat and linear path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a quantitative variationist analysis of the distribution of get- versus be-passives in spoken Tyneside English. Taking data from the Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English (1960s to 2010), the paper uses mixed-effects modelling to examine a wide range of possible constraints on the distribution of get versus be, some of which have been discussed at length in the literature on the get-passive (e.g. subject animacy, adversative semantics) and some of which have received less attention (e.g. grammatical person, tense, aspectuality). It demonstrates that the use of the get-passive is determined by a complex combination of semantic and syntactic factors (subject animacy, telicity, non-neutral semantics, tense and grammatical person). Moreover, it argues that, despite the dramatic rise in frequency of get-passives over time (with younger speakers using them even more frequently than be-passives), most of the constraints remain in place and the variant is pragmatically marked. This stands in sharp contrast to the findings of recent investigations into the grammaticalization of get-passives in standard British and American English, which found that increased frequency in those varieties was also accompanied by semantic bleaching and generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functional category of general extenders (e.g. and so on, or something, etcetera) has been mainly analysed in previous work with a focus on spoken language. The aim of this paper is to further explore its use in standard written language, through the analysis of a corpus of Italian texts. The paper shows that general extenders in written language display several specific features that need to be considered within a general account of the class: (i) from a quantitative point of view, their frequency of use is lower than that of their spoken counterparts; (ii) forms like the abbreviation ecc./etc. and the ellipsis <...> are exclusive of written language; (iii) they are often employed in lists that exemplify a co-occurring referring expression, thus reinforcing text cohesion without the proper online categorization that regularly takes place in spoken language; (iv) their frequency of use is higher in formal texts, whereas in spoken language it increases in interactive and informal discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet memes are meaningful objects of diverse shapes that spread across networks of mediated participation (term from Milner 2012: 10). The distribution and reception of memes bears aspects of communicative interaction, because memes establish usage conventions. This paper will be concerned with the pragmatics of Internet memes. Given that flexibility, novelty and originality are driving forces in meme culture, the question arises how traditional pragmatic notions like recipient design and common ground can be said to apply for the interaction with memes. Kecskes' (2008, 2010, 2012, 2014; Kecskes and Zhang 2009) distinction between core common ground and emergent common ground will be discussed and put to use for an explanation of the complex interactive dynamics of Internet communication. This modern form of communication oscillates between reference to shared cultural contents and the establishment and perpetuation of conventions on the one hand, and the pursuit of originality on the other hand. This paper will demonstrate how memes can vary with respect to the degree to which they require core common ground or the generation of emergent common ground for their proper usage. The scale presented as a result of the discussion represents a continuum of the prevalence of semantics versus pragmatics involved in the usage and interpretation of memes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues in favor of including cultural aspects in the description of communicative interaction. According to Eco (1976), a linguistic sign is a cultural unit. In order to use it properly, a speaker relies on communicative experience with this unit within a culture (Wittgenstein 1960; Feilke 1996, 1998; Everett 2012). We expand the notion of 'cultural unit' by including internet memes found in social media (Shifman 2013, 2014; Diedrichsen 2013a, 2013b, 2019a, 2019b). The term builds on Richard Dawkins' 1976 definition of a 'meme' as a unit that is the cultural equivalent of a biological gene. The paper proposes three knowledge sources for the production and comprehension of these units. The first is semiotic knowledge, the second is common ground knowledge (Clark 1996), and the third knowledge source involves culturally shared cognitive conceptualizations on which word meanings and other linguistic conventions are founded (Sharifian 2003, 2011, 2015, 2017). These three knowledge sources are established through daily interactions and learning processes within a culture (Kecskés and Zhang 2009). The paper characterizes the application of these three knowledge sources for a variety of sign uses. We will also show that a cultural view on pragmatics, as suggested by Sharifian (2017), serves to describe speech acts by identifying their culturally based source. The paper therefore demonstrates that the inclusion of cultural knowledge enables a perspective on communication that goes beyond the analysis of spoken and written words within communities of speakers, as it includes emerging means of communicative interaction in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes to harness the linguistic theory that looks at the construction of meaning in context – i.e., pragmatics – to investigate the contextual effects bearing on the interpretation of arguments in manipulative seduction contexts. Adopting a cognitively grounded relevance-theoretic approach, I will show that deceptive seduction is used primarily to strengthen the hearer's perception of the seducer, thereby strengthening the standpoints and arguments s/he puts forward. In that sense, it will be argued, seductive moves function like contextual constraints on the interpretative processes. Exploring further the cognitive grounding of human interpretative processes, I will claim that many seductive manipulations rely on the halo effect – the cognitive bias whereby a positive trait (e.g., attractiveness) tends to spill over other personality traits (e.g., competence) – to create a contextual environment that will boost argument evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I elaborate on the cognitive pragmatic approaches of commitment attribution. I argue that non-propositional meanings (Sperber and Wilson 2015) play a role in the reconstruction of arguments (see Oswald 2016) and I underline that this constitutes a further argument in favor of a cognitive approach to the study of commitment attribution. I focus on an authentic example of a straw man fallacy consisting in (a) an implicit misattribution of commitments to the speaker with the form "Excuse me for having done p" and (b) a refutation of the attributed position by means of non-propositional effects (in this case, the refutation is implicitly conveyed through an ironical utterance). I conclude that non-propositional effects can serve as a criterion to distinguish a mere false attribution of commitments from a full-fledged straw man fallacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue aims to explore the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of meaning in terms of their significance and relevance in the study of argumentation. Accordingly, the contributors to the project, who have all presented their work during the 2nd Argumentation and Language conference, which took place in Lugano in February 2018, have been specifically instructed to produce papers which explicitly tackle the importance of the study of meaning for that of argumentative practices. All papers therefore cover at least one aspect of this complex relationship between argumentation and meaning, which contributes to delivering a state-of-the-art panorama on the issue. Drawing from computational linguistics, semantics, pragmatics and discourse analysis, the contributions to this special issue will illuminate how the study of meaning in its different forms may provide valuable insights for the study of people's argumentative practices in different contexts, ranging from the political to the private sphere. This introductory discussion tackles specific aspects of the intricate relationship between pragmatic inference and argumentative inference – that is, between meaning and argumentation –, provides a brief survey of existing interfaces between the study of meaning and that of argumentation, and concludes with a presentation of the contributions to this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the influence of the educational level of speakers on speakers' preferences of the Turkish discourse markers (DMs) şey 'uh', yani 'I mean', and işte 'you know'. 56 participants from age groups 33–50 and over 50 participated in the study. Speech data from each participant in two speech corpora (planned vs. spontaneous) were gathered via face-to-face interviews. Although various trends have been observed in two speech conditions in terms of the educational level of the speakers in the current data, the frequency rates of these markers were mostly higher in the speech of (especially male) participants with a lower educational level, compared to those of participants with a higher educational level. Educational-level related differences were also observed in further analyses of the functions of the three DMs under focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the long-term diachronic development of the perfect and preterite tenses in German and provides a novel analysis by supplementing Reichenbach's (1947) classical theory of tense by the notion of underspecification. Based on a newly compiled parallel corpus spanning the entire documented history of German, we show that the development in question is cyclic: It starts out with only one tense form (preterite) compatible with both current relevance and narrative past readings in (early) Old High German and, via three intermediate stages, arrives at only one tense form again (perfect) compatible with the same readings in modern Upper German dialects. We propose that in order to capture all attested stages we must allow tenses to be unspecified for R (reference time), with R merely being inferred pragmatically. We then propose that the transitions between the different stages can be explained by the interplay between semantics and pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates formal language in persuasive discourse on the r/ChangeMyView subreddit. We collected a corpus of 100 million messages, split into subcorpora based on the user-awarded marker delta, which rewards changing an original poster's view. Assuming that formality/informality is potentially an important factor in the persuasiveness of a message, we examine the two subcorpora with respect to formality markers. The results indicate no systematic variation along the formality/informality continuum between persuasive and non-persuasive posts on r/ChangeMyView. The posters use personal pronouns, suasive verbs, emphatics, imperatives, elaborate connectors and WH-questions with similar frequency, and express themselves using vocabulary and syntax of similar complexity. Moreover, keyword lists and n-gram rankings indicate no register difference. A qualitative analysis of concordance lines for persuade and change PRONOUN view paints a picture of a community that values factual, evidence-based discourse and openness to logical persuasion, with a linguistic norm of relatively formal, sophisticated register. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the extent to which L1-Korean L2-English speakers' L1 influences the computation of conversational implicatures for the definite and demonstrative determiners the and that in English. Both the and that denote unique referents, but that carries implication of contrast (Roberts, 2002). Following Submaxim 2 of the Gricean Quantity Maxim, using that instead of unmarked the implicates that the referent is being implicitly contrasted with other members of the same noun. Korean has no equivalent for the and the demonstrative ku 'that' is situated on the semantic scale between the and that. This partial overlap could influence L1-Korean L2-English speakers' implicature computation even though ku also carries implication of contrast. Acceptability judgment data indicate that unlike native speakers, L2 speakers did not show sensitivity to infelicitous use of that, indicating difficulty computing implicatures. Results are discussed in terms of crosslinguistic influence at the semantics-pragmatics interface in L2 acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews current literature on contributions of the study abroad context to second language (L2) Chinese pragmatics and discusses the future prospects of this rapidly growing research area. By synthesizing sixteen empirical studies on pragmatic competence in L2 Chinese in the study-abroad context, this paper answers one question: What impacts L2 Chinese pragmatic competence in the study abroad (SA) context? The findings show that the SA effect on L2 Chinese pragmatic development is mediated by seven factors including general proficiency, pre-program pragmatic competence, language exposure, intercultural competence, learner agency, linguistic affordance, and learner language and cultural background. Based on the research synthesis, this paper suggests future research directions regarding target pragmatic features, measurements, pragmatic competence in writing, and learner factors mediating study-abroad effect from a dynamic-system perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main argument put forward in this paper is that traditional linguistic genre theories neglect the importance of media and their modal affordances in the formation of new genres. It argues that media cannot be viewed as (passive) configurations of technical, semiotic, and cultural features which are chosen by actors/ rhetors in order to serve their communicative needs, but rather as mediators whose modal affordances actively influence communicators' meaning making choices. In order to support this argument, it will be shown how forms of discourse representation gradually developed from a stylistic device in oral communication to a genre constitutive practice (e.g., in printed academic communication), and eventually became a genre of its own (as the practice of "sharing" content) in social media communication. In the analyses, the focus is on the interplay between modal affordances of the different media in which discourse representation formats are used, their formal properties, and pragmatic factors (like audience expectations in different communicative genres and situations). It is shown how innovative aspects of a medium influence formal features of discourse representation which in turn serve different communicative purposes in different genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dehumanisation is a central tool of propaganda, war and oppression, but could it also be an everyday phenomenon? This paper attempts to demonstrate that dehumanisation is not invariably deviant behaviour, but often grounded in normal cognition. Dehumanisation is often defined as to make less human (Encarta) or to deprive of human character (Oxford English Dictionary). Are these adequate definitions? Is there evidence of polysemy, and a more salient sense? How can we explain the meaning and enactment of this process? This paper investigates the linguistic and behavioural representation of dehumanisation, with reference to modern and historical events. This semantic analysis considers aspects of pragmatics, semiotics, cognition and metaphor. The framework used in this examination is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage method of Reductive Paraphrase (Wierzbicka & Goddard 2002; Wierzbicka 1972). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German first and second person singular pronouns ich and du allow for a referential use and an impersonal use. In their impersonal use, both pronouns behave like the impersonal pronoun man (Engl. one) in generic sentences. I argue that the aspect of impersonally used singular personal pronouns that distinguishes them (i) from each other, (ii) from impersonal pronouns, and (iii) from "ordinary" generic sentences is their pragmatic effects. The semantic contribution of the three pronouns and their containing utterances is discussed before a comparative analysis of the pragmatic effects of impersonally used ich and du and impersonal man is given. The analyses are illustrated with naturally occurring data from a self-compiled data collection. Turning to a more practical topic in the second part of the paper, I discuss a methodological issue regarding corpus-based analyses of low-frequency phenomena, such as impersonally used ich in the second part of this paper by reporting a small-scale corpus study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of the field of Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP) shows that the Discourse Completion Test (DCT)², also referred to as a 'discourse completion task' or a 'production questionnaire', has been the most frequently used instrument to evaluate second/foreign language learners' ability to perform speech acts in a target language, despite the harsh criticism leveled against its low construct validity and its failure to represent the features of authentic discourse. Interestingly, focusing on the statement of objectives of a number of ILP studies using DCTs, one can notice that such studies rarely refer to the DCT as a language test. In addition, an overview of the DCT design process as described in several ILP studies shows that ever since its adaptation for the study of pragmatic ability (Blum-Kulka, 1982), there has been a tendency to use or adapt one of the existing DCT versions used in previous studies based on the argument of comparability of results. While a number of ILP researchers tried to improve the design of the DCT by the inclusion of rejoinders or by enhancing the prompt material (e.g. Billmyer and Varghese, 2000), few attempts have been made to reconsider the DCT development process. McNamara and Roever (2006: 253) urge for the need for 'more research on testing of sociopragmatic knowledge and design of discourse completion tests for testing purposes.' The present paper starts with an overview of the literature about DCTs with special reference to the cognitive validity of the instrument and to previous studies dealing with DCT structure and content. Then, with reference to research in the fields of language testing and psychometrics, it shows that, whether used for research or instructional purposes, the DCT shares several qualities with language tests. As such, it is argued that the DCT should be treated as a language test and not as a questionnaire and should, thus, undergo a rigorous developmental process. Based on recent models of language test construction, the paper concludes with an overview of the stages of DCT development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new theoretical approach to the study of literary symbolism, using Relevance Theory, Lexical Pragmatics, and second-generation cognitive sciences. It argues that the meaning of a literary symbol consists of the tension between a "literal" meaning and an unparaphrasable abstract meaning. Furthermore, it maintains that the literary symbol requires a specific communicative context, called "symbolic reading". This theoretical framework is applied to the analysis of the works of Juan Eduardo Cirlot, with special attention to his permutation poetry. [Extracted from the article]

This paper details the use of parentheses as pragmatic strategies in Chinese network socialization. The data were collected from Weibo, Wechat, QQ and other online social platforms, and analyzed from the perspective of Cyberpragmatics. We consider the pragmatic features and functions of parentheses as an indivisible part of the whole unit in relation to emojis or graphicons. As pragmatic strategies, parentheses aid speakers in indirectly performing various pragmatic intentions, like adding supplementary information to the interaction, isolating different topics, and contrasting content between the text outside and within parentheses. Further pragmatic functions realized by parentheses include indirectly conveying intention, relieving communicative awkwardness and adjusting interlocutors expectations. We conclude that using parentheses as pragmatic strategies in network socialization is the result of the evolution of the Internet language, and varies from the use of other emojis, which directly convey intentions and meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the business ritual practice of apology in corporate crisis management. By comparing the frequencies and analysing apology strategies from fifty local and nonlocal Chinese companies' public letters of apology, we extend the politeness study of public apology to a broader hierarchy of a ritual frame and discuss the related formulaic patterns and strategies of apology. The results show that both groups share a high proportion of taking responsibility and explaining but differ significantly in their use of such strategies. We find that the business ritual practice of apology varies in accordance with the cultural identity of the corporation. Local Chinese companies tend to greatly rely on a ritual frame of involvement, whereas nonlocal companies take an interest in constructing a ritual frame of defence. The paper provides implications for the scholars of cross-cultural pragmatics and for business practitioners and future research directions for a ritual perspective when revisiting the practice of apology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the elements of political discourse where persuasion is present as communicative strategy. In particular, we focus on the analysis of intonation and affectivity in a two-candidate Spanish electoral debate (Hidalgo Downing and Nieto y Otero 2014; Ponsonnet 2014; Reber 2012).The methodology consisted in selecting the openings and closings of each turn, taking the act as analysis unit (Briz 2003); for the acoustic analysis we have examined three parameters – fundamental frequency, intensity and vowel durations –, and four strategies for the positive affective bonds: assertiveness, inclusion, specificity and naturalization, in order to pursue the initial hypothesis on whether it is possible to find relations between intonation and affectivity. The analysis shows that both candidates use affective bonds and intonation to enhance persuasion, although there are interesting differences between candidates and between openings and closings. While openings show greater number and variety of strategies, both verbal and intonational, closings show lower intonational contours and less variation, therefore openings showing higher use of positive persuasive strategies, whereas in closings, there are no strategies addressed to the hearer, the most frequent being assertiveness. As for intonational contours, there is a general lowering in all values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the seminal work on grammar and frames (e.g. Fillmore 1982), in addition to recent studies that apply a construction grammar approach to the description of genres (Antonopoulou & Nikiforidou 2011; Nikiforidou 2010b; Östman 2005) and spoken discourse (Fischer 2011; Fried & Östman 2005), this paper highlights the importance of extending the analytical boundary of grammar to include interactional frames, e.g. genres and social interactions. Using as an illustrative case the stand-alone noun-modifying construction in Japanese, a grammatical construction that is genre-sensitive, this paper suggests that grammatical constructions and interactional frames are in partnership in the construction of meaning. It is argued that this partnership is mediated by the proficient language users' knowledge, which is socially and culturally inculcated and fostered, and therefore it is important to keep the theoretical model flexible enough to acknowledge fluidity in grammatical understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the rare treatments of discourse markers in South Slavic languages (Mišković 2001, 2003; Fielder 2008; Dedaić and Mišković-Luković 2010; Premilovac 2010; Mišković-Luković and Dedaić 2012), the Serbian discourse marker znači, evolved from the lexical verb značiti ('to mean'), has so far gone unnoticed. Based on a corpus of approximately 6.5 hours of recorded semi-formal student-teacher conversations, the paper analyzes the pragmatic aspects of the discourse marker znači. The key questions that are addressed are: (a) what discursive environments znači occurs in; and more importantly, (b) what pragmatic effects the speakers intend to achieve by using this discourse marker. The pragmatics of znači is explored in order to establish whether in each individual case it is used (a) as a marker of various types of reformulation, such as expansion or compression, (b) as a means of concluding, or (c) whether it serves an interactional function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the French morphological prefixation pattern [non-N] (non-qualification 'non-qualification', non-Italien 'non-Italian', and non-ville 'non-city'). It discusses the form/meaning asymmetry displayed by this pattern and its compositionality. It is shown that the general pattern [non-N] actually corresponds to three distinct subconstructions, i.e. distinct form/meaning pairings. Although pragmatic factors may be seen as presenting a challenge to the compositionality of these constructions, it is argued that [non-N]s must be seen as compositional as long as compositionality is defined not only in terms of truth-conditional semantics, but also of pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores linguistic egocentrism in English through the lens of virtual performatives, i.e. self-referential stand-alone predications in the third person singular present tense through which users perform virtual action or emotion. The focus is on microblogging for apparently recreational purposes, where visibility, rather than reciprocity, must be a primary concern. Findings show that the common or garden virtual performative consistently relying on an externalized self occasionally turns into a variant where the self is subsequently reassumed, and then again possibly re-externalized within the same construction. The syntactic and discursive systematicity manifest in these constructions forbids treating them as erroneous. The paper discusses the benefits of this way of externalizing and optionally reassuming self, through fluctuation between third-person and first-person references, and touches upon metapragmatic awareness and logophoricity. In creating digital culture, virtual performatives point to users’ pragmatic adaptation of their public, social self to environments manifesting a high degree of context collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses problems with swearing on the internet. The opening section of the paper defines swearing (uttering offensive emotional speech) as a ubiquitous form of impolite human behavior. Swearing can occur wherever humans communicate with each other and that it appears in computer-mediated communication (CMC) is not surprising. The second section documents how swearwords appear in email, blogs, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube and in other practices and sites (trolling, 4chan). Swearword use is situated in the context of emerging research on impoliteness and moral order (politeness norms and standards that govern internet behavior). Online swearword use is a function of moral order, as well as users’ interpersonal characteristics such as age (younger more likely than older users), gender (men more likely than women), the time of day (later in the day and evening), and a website’s social composition (adversarial and male dominated more than homogeneous friendly sites). The paper concludes with suggestions for dealing with internet swearword use where regulation is desirable and feasible. Websites and communities should develop moral order norms that at a minimum restrict illegal forms of speech (e.g., credible threats of violence, workplace sexual harassment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definite and demonstrative determiners in English share the same central semantics of uniqueness (e.g., Hawkins, 1991; Ionin, Baek, Kim, Ko, & Wexler, 2012; Wolter, 2006), but the computation of the semantics is constrained by different discourse conditions and determined by pragmatic knowledge, which pertains to the interface between semantics and pragmatics. This paper investigates whether L2 learners may have persistent difficulty in acquiring properties involving the semantics-pragmatics interface, by exploring the acquisition of L2 English definite and demonstrative determiners by advanced and near-native L1 Chinese learners of English. It also examines whether acquisition results are influenced by the learners' L1 Chinese, which lacks an article system but allows demonstrative determiners. The results from a forced-choice written task show that advanced learners were unable to distinguish between the two determiners in different discourse conditions; near-native-level L1 Chinese learners displayed a native-like preference for the definite determiner, but not for the demonstrative determiner. It is argued that convergence at the semantics-pragmatics interface is not impossible for L2 learners, but (un)acquirability may be constrained by asymmetries in the L1–L2 realizations of semantics-pragmatics mappings. The findings raise interesting questions for future research into factors that can influence the acquisition of external interfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]