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Ventriloquizing, where a speaker adopts another's voice or identity to communicate one's own thoughts, is a form of indirectness that remains understudied, particularly in Chinese medical interactions. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of indirectness by examining instances of ventriloquizing employed by medical professionals (MPs) in China. Our analysis reveals that MPs utilize ventriloquizing by attributing speech to themselves, their interlocutors or third parties (such as patients or their family members), or sometimes unspecified individuals. Through this strategic linguistic technique, MPs mitigate complaints, advocate medical suggestions, and informs patients and families of potential risks, all while delicately navigating various interactional concerns such as doctor-patient rapport and issues of medical liability. This paper argues that MPs' employment of ventriloquizing serves to decenter themselves, enhance message authority, and maintain relational harmony, thereby achieving both relational and transactional goals in medical interactions. This practice reflects Confucianism-based medical ethics in the Chinese medical context. • Ventriloquizing is a form of indirectness in medical encounters. • Medical professionals employ ventriloquizing in interactional sequences. • Ventriloquizing helps to soften complaint tones, distance patients from undesirable options, and preempt future disputes. • Ventriloquizing facilitates achieving relational and transactional goals indirectly. • Ventriloquizing enables subtle and strategic interaction to maintain a harmonious doctor-patient relationship. [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]

Abstract Background Network meta-analyses can be valuable for decision-makers in guiding clinical practice. However, for network meta-analysis results to be reliable, the assumptions of both transitivity and coherence must be met, and the methodology should adhere to current best practices. We aimed to assess whether network meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing interventions for proximal humerus fractures provide reliable estimates of intervention effects. Methods We searched PubMed, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library, and Web of Science for network meta-analyses comparing interventions for proximal humerus fractures. We critically assessed the methodology regarding the development of a protocol, search strategy, trial inclusion, outcome extraction, and the methods used to conduct the network meta-analyses. We assessed the transitivity and coherence of the network graphs for the Constant score (CS), Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder, and Hand score (DASH), and additional surgery. Transitivity was assessed by comparing probable effect modifiers (age, gender, fracture morphology, and comorbidities) across intervention comparisons. Coherence was assessed using Separating Indirect from Direct Evidence (SIDE) (Separating Indirect from Direct Evidence) and the design-by-treatment interaction test. We used CINeMA (Confidence in Network Meta-analyses) to assess the confidence in the results. Results None of the three included network meta-analyses had a publicly available protocol or data-analysis plan, and they all had methodological flaws that could threaten the validity of their results. Although we did not detect incoherence for most comparisons, the transitivity assumption was violated for CS, DASH, and additional surgery in all three network meta-analyses. Additionally, the confidence in the results was ‘very low’ primarily due to within-study bias, reporting bias, intransitivity, imprecision, and heterogeneity. Conclusions Current network meta-analyses of RCTs comparing interventions for proximal humerus fractures do not provide reliable estimates of intervention effects. We advise caution in using these network meta-analyses to guide clinical practice. To improve the utility of network meta-analyses to guide clinical practice, journal editors should require that network meta-analyses are done according to a predefined analysis plan in a publicly available protocol and that both coherence and transitivity have been adequately assessed and reported.

Copyright of Études de Stylistique Anglaise is the property of Societe de Stylistique Anglaise 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.)

Evidentiality is a linguistic category that comprises forms and meanings related to the source of information in utterances, the use of which may impact judgments about the degree of certainty expressed by a speaker. The main dichotomy is first-hand (direct) vs. second-hand (indirect) evidence. This distinction is grammaticalised in Japanese only, though certain related meanings can be expressed in English lexically or constructionally. The relevant forms in both languages also function as indirectness-for-politeness markers. We used a judgments elicitation task and found that statements with Japanese evidentials (both first- and second-hand) and with English markers of uncertainty lead to judgments of lower certainty than the statements without the evidential forms and meanings for the majority, but not for all speakers. In addition, monolingual and bilingual usage in both languages has parallels such that these two typologically distinct languages appear closer and certainty judgments by their speakers similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Copyright of Chinese as a Second Language Research is the property of De Gruyter 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.)

Copyright of Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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.)

In highland Madagascar, people often let social relations drift into a 'dormant' state. Within this state, people refrain not only from interaction, but also from further defining the nature of social relations. This 'dormant' state, which may last for a considerable time, reflects cultural norms of social interaction and, as this article argues, needs to be considered when aiming for a better grasp of the mechanisms upon which social relatedness in highland Madagascar is based. So far, social organisation in highland Madagascar has generally been described as highly pragmatic, situational and generally 'fluid' in nature. By ethnographically exploring the social dynamics of music bands in Antananarivo, I will show how it is due to a widespread reluctance to deal with conflict directly that social relations drift into a rather vaguely defined mode referred to by Malagasy musicians as 'on standby'. The article aims to contribute a processual perspective to the situational structure of relatedness and, in doing so, provides an explanation for the more general atmosphere of mistrust which has recently been considered to characterise social relations in Madagascar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the impact of requestee's gender on the choice of request strategies by female speakers of Saudi Colloquial Arabic. A Discourse Completion Test consisting of twelve situations was used to collect data from two groups of participants. The first group consisted of 40 Saudi females directing their requests to female requestees. The second group consisted of 40 Saudi females directing their requests to male requestees. The collected data from the two groups were compared and analyzed using Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper's (1989) coding scheme of request head act strategies. Findings suggest that Saudi females varied their request strategies based on the gender of requestee. While they tended to use more direct request strategies with females, they tended to use more indirect request strategies with males. A remarkable finding revealed by this study relates to situations in which the rate of imposition is high. While Saudi females tended to use more indirect request strategies with females in these situations, most of them refused to make a request to males regardless of the power and social distance between interlocuters. This study's findings, however, have to be understood in terms of the specific nature of the cultural norms of Saudi society. Since Saudi Arabia is a gender-segregated society, it is expected that females would keep distance from males who are not firstdegree relatives. This would normally entail the use of higher level of indirectness and avoidance of requesting weighty personal favors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the influence of social context on illocutionary metonymy in directives evoked by various elements of request scenarios. As the human language activity reflects the physical and social worlds of the intersubjective context (cf. Verschueren 1999), the recognized and construed social relations have an impact not only on addressive forms, but also on the appearance of other elements such as indirectness and its scalarity. Indirect directives are based on illocutionary metonymic scenarios (Panther and Thornburg 1998) and by evoking a part of the scenario referring to the core action they give access to the illocutionary scenario domain. The scalar nature of indirectness (Panther and Thornburg 1998, see also Panther and Thornburg 1999, 2007 and Thornburg and Panther 1997), depends on the number of evoked elements and their conceptual distance from the core of the request. It can be based on conventional grammatical structures (e.g. auxiliary verbs) or giving hints by only introducing the action scenario. As Veres-Guśpiel (2013) has shown the chosen type of indirectness is influenced by social context and the weight of a directive (for the latter, see also Csató and Pléh 1988, Pléh 2012). The main question of the presented research regards types of illocutionary metonymy, that can be experienced in various social contexts and what their frequency of use is.

The aim of this study is to investigate the types of the request strategy used by Industrial Engineering students as EFL learners. Using qualitative data, this study discusses the use of request strategy in case-based teaching of foreign languages. The participants of the study are 37 Industrial engineering students who learnt English in the second semester. The testing instruments used were discourse completion task. For this aim, a discourse completion test was used to generate data related to the request strategies by each group. Selection of request situation in discourse completion test was based on three social factors of relative social distance, power, and rank of imposition. The participants� responses were analyzed according to the classifications of request strategy by Blum-Kulka & Olshtain. The case study findings indicate that 57% of Industrial Engineering students� responses mostly use conventional indirect strategies, 29.2 % responses are direct strategies, and 13 % responses belong to non-conventional indirect strategies. 49.7 % responses belong to query preparatory.� 17.8 %� responses� are identified as explicit performatives, 10.3 %� responses categorized as want statements, 9.2 % responses classified as strong hints, 6.5 % responses grouped as mild hints, 4.9 % responses recognized as suggestive formulas, and 1.6 % responses indicated as mood derivable. The indirectness is greatly influenced by students� cultural background, which belong to high-context culture. People in high context culture refer to the value cultures placing on indirect communication. A message is understood with a great deal of gesture, facial expressions, tone of voice, eye contact, body language, posture, and other ways people can communicate without using language. The findings of this study may set pedagogical implications for teachers, and learners of EFL therefore conducting a further field investigation is recommended to have in depth exploration�� about request strategies made by EFL Learners.

Abstract Background Systematic reviews are a key input to health and social welfare decisions. Studies included in systematic reviews often vary with respect to contextual factors that may impact on how transferable review findings are to the review context. However, many review authors do not consider the transferability of review findings until the end of the review process, for example when assessing confidence in the evidence using GRADE or GRADE-CERQual. This paper describes the TRANSFER Approach, a novel approach for supporting collaboration between review authors and stakeholders from the beginning of the review process to systematically and transparently consider factors that may influence the transferability of systematic review findings. Methods We developed the TRANSFER Approach in three stages: (1) discussions with stakeholders to identify current practices and needs regarding the use of methods to consider transferability, (2) systematic search for and mapping of 25 existing checklists related to transferability, and (3) using the results of stage two to develop a structured conversation format which was applied in three systematic review processes. Results None of the identified existing checklists related to transferability provided detailed guidance for review authors on how to assess transferability in systematic reviews, in collaboration with decision makers. The content analysis uncovered seven categories of factors to consider when discussing transferability. We used these to develop a structured conversation guide for discussing potential transferability factors with stakeholders at the beginning of the review process. In response to feedback and trial and error, the TRANSFER Approach has developed, expanding beyond the initial conversation guide, and is now made up of seven stages which are described in this article. Conclusions The TRANSFER Approach supports review authors in collaborating with decision makers to ensure an informed consideration, from the beginning of the review process, of the transferability of the review findings to the review context. Further testing of TRANSFER is needed.

In this contribution we review Directness and Indirectness Across Cultures by Karen Grainger and Sara Mills. We believe that this publication will help resolve many theoretical questions and doubts regarding intercultural communication, which is a sensitive matter within the field of extramural Dutch studies. What most NT2 or NVT teachers will probably have to deal with sooner or later is a discussion about Dutch directness. It seems that it has become a notorious stereotype which the students often bring to class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of College of Education / Wasit is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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.)

In this paper, I explore the communicative act of advice giving in Cameroon French. The data consists of examples produced by a group of Cameroonian French-speaking University students. Focusing on pragmatic and linguistic choices made by the respondents when giving advice to friends and professors, the analysis reveals that they give advice in a direct and an indirect manner, using many different strategies, which also vary according to the degree of familiarity and to the distance from the hearer. The findings also indicate that the respondents mostly prefer complex utterances, which appear to be determined by the need to repeat or ground one’s advice in order to protect the addressee’s face and the relationship between the two persons. I also discuss the use of supportive acts and address terms as mitigating strategies. The study contributes to the empirical research on pragmatic aspects of Cameroon French.

Abstract Background Systematic reviews of research evidence have become an expected basis for decisions about practice guidelines and policy decisions in the health and welfare sectors. Review authors define inclusion criteria to help them determine which studies to search for and include in their reviews. However, these studies may still vary in the extent to which they reflect the context of interest in the review question. While most review authors would agree that systematic reviews should be relevant and useful for decision makers, there appears to be few well known, if any, established methods for supporting review authors to assess the transferability of review findings to the context of interest in the review. With this systematic mapping and content analysis, we aim to identify whether there exists checklists to support review authors in considering transferability early in the systematic review process. The secondary aim was to develop a comprehensive list of factors that influence transferability as discussed in existing checklists. Methods We conducted a systematic mapping of checklists and performed a content analysis of the checklist criteria included in the identified checklists. In June 2016, we conducted a systematic search of eight databases to identify checklists to assess transferability of findings from primary or secondary research, without limitations related to publication type, status, language, or date. We also conducted a gray literature search and searched the EQUATOR repository of checklists for any relevant document. We used search terms such as modified versions of the terms “transferability,” “applicability,” “generalizability,” etc. and “checklist,” “guideline,” “tool,” “criteria,” etc. We did not include papers that discussed transferability at a theoretical level or checklists to assess the transferability of guidelines to local contexts. Results Our search resulted in 11,752 titles which were screened independently by two review authors. The 101 articles which were considered potentially relevant were subsequently read by two authors, independently in full text and assessed for inclusion. We identified 31 relevant checklists. Six of these examined transferability of economic evaluations, and 25 examined transferability of primary or secondary research findings in health (n = 23) or social welfare (n = 2). The content analysis is based on the 25 health and social welfare checklists. We identified seven themes under which we grouped categories of checklist criteria: population, intervention, implementation context (immediate), comparison intervention, outcomes, environmental context, and researcher conduct. Conclusions We identified a variety of checklists intended to support end users (researchers, review authors, practitioners, etc.) to assess transferability or related concepts. While four of these checklists are intended for use in systematic reviews of effectiveness, we found no checklists for qualitative evidence syntheses or for the field of social welfare practice or policy. Furthermore, none of the identified checklists for review authors included guidance to on how to assess transferability, or present assessments in a systematic review. The results of the content analysis can serve as the basis for developing a comprehensive list of factors to be used in an approach to support review authors in systematically and transparently considering transferability from the beginning of the review process.

This article presents an invitation to explore the benefits of adopting an ethnographic approach to (im)politeness research rather than an introduction to, or overview of, a well-established method in anthropology. It unfolds in four parts. In the first, I discuss some of the different ways in which (im)politeness scholars have grappled to reconcile lay and analyst understandings of (im)politeness with varying degrees of success. In the second, I offer the background of two examples which were gathered as part of ethnographic fieldwork in a contemporary migratory context. The examples deal with two classic topics in (im)politeness research: greetings and indirectness. The analysis demonstrates how insights from ethnography can enrich (im)politeness analysis by helping us to close the gap between lay and theoretical understandings of the practice. In the final section, I address the importance of delimiting the value of (im)politeness practices in the social reality of the speakers under study and invite colleagues to reflect on the societal impact of the discipline, including the expansion of the discipline beyond its middle-class milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nasleđe is the property of University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Philology & Arts 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.)

The national specificity of the Russian indirect communication is analyzed according to Anna Wierzbicka’s linguocultural model in which the specific characteristics of language and speech are interpreted through cultural scenarios. Wierzbicka’s model was partially modified for the purposes of this study. Firstly, we suggest to use the opposition of personality ~ impersonality. Secondly, unlike A.Wierzbicka, we consider it appropriate to use the concept of indirect communication, defining it as a communicative-interpretive phenomenon (through additional interpretative efforts of the addressee of speech). Indirectness itself is defined as one of the types of indirect communication: the planned indirect communication. We analyze in detail the reasons for it to be a part of Russian communicative style (primarily indirect directive speech acts and manipulation), associating these reasons with the cultural scenarios and the opposition of personality ~ impersonality. From this point of view, a number of actual processes in modern Russian speech are discussed, such as planned indirect communication and its: a different understanding of indirect communication as a means of increasing the politeness of statements by different generations, as well as the undesirability of excessive politeness in some situations and appeal to indirect communication in order to avoid it.

This article explores how three Black women use the culturally grounded semantic and rhetorical strategies of their discursive practices as modes of symbolic action to negotiate alternative relationships and realities in response to white supremacist patriarchy. Placing intersectional feminist perspectives in conversation with the literature on African American Women's Language (AAWL), this research applies critical discourse analysis to cases of signifying and resignification (semantic reclamation). The interactions are taken from contemporary US politics: Maxine Waters' assertion 'Reclaiming my time', Therese Okoumou's literal retooling of 'We go high' and Samirah Raheem's reclamation of 'slut'. Together they highlight three iterations of Black womanhood, intersectional feminist linguistic resistance and gendered, racialised defiance to engage with the inclusive scope of feminism. The application of interdisciplinary insights to the analysis of AAWL herein demonstrates the broader social significance and productive political power of language for intersectional women, people of colour and gender minoritised communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pagu is an endangered Non-Austronesian language spoken in North Halmahera, Indonesia. This research is an endeavor to save the language specifically through documenting and studying its proverbs in order to reveal the linguistic patterns and meanings of these proverbs. A mixed qualitative and quantitative method is applied to see their structure and characteristics (Angouri, 2010; Rasinger, 2010). It presents a number of stylistic and structural features of Pagu proverbs based on the preliminary research of 2012-2014 (D. Perangin-Angin, 2013) and recent online communication with one of the Pagu community leaders. The findings show that, first, metaphor and simile are the most common features in Pagu proverbs that function to express politeness through indirectness (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Thomas, 2014). Second, structurally it was found out that Pagu proverbs do not follow the typical Europeans structure such as relationships between elements (Dundes, 1975), number of clause, types of sentences (Mac Coinnigh, 2015), and types of figurative languages (e.g. Eaglestone, 2000). But rather, Pagu proverbs vary in different structures that intend to express the Pagu culture and thought namely indirect politeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study combines Brown and Levinson's (1987) work on politeness techniques and Tannen's (1981, 1993) work on indirectness and power-solidarity dynamics to extend research on workplace discourse. I examine how two female Russian-speaking chairs (one of Russian and another of Kazakh origin) differently perform face-threatening acts (FTAs) of criticisms and directives during teacher meetings at a community college in Kazakhstan. Specifically, the Russian chair employs fewer politeness techniques (e. g., hedging with "please"), issuing criticisms and orders with no mitigation, thereby foregrounding the power asymmetry within the group. The lack of mitigation surfaces through explicit usage of pronouns ("I" vs. "you"); action verbs inflected for the 2nd person plural and imperative mood; words with a negative and moral connotation; and phonological modifications for emphasis. Differently, the Kazakh chair utilizes a larger number of politeness techniques, including hedging (e. g., "please", "unfortunately"), impersonalizing negative actions (through indefinite pronouns and agentless verbs), and manipulating of tense and space. Thus, she performs indirect FTAs that highlight the solidarity aspect of group relations. I relate these findings to studies of management leadership in post-Soviet states that have revealed the tendency of Kazakh managers to use a nurturing leadership style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociocultural Pragmatics / Pragmática Sociocultural is the property of De Gruyter 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 article reports a study of simulated interactions between emergency medical teams, as they are used in education for specialist trainee doctors. We focus on a key area of communicative competence that trainees are assessed on: the performance of leadership skills. Using videos of simulated trauma cases recorded within a training department of a large teaching hospital in the UK, we analyse how trainee doctors delegate tasks to their teams, matching up their linguistic performance, in particular their use of requests, to how they are assessed in the simulation overall. This allows us to establish the types of linguistic leadership performance that are evaluated positively in this setting and therefore are attributed to success. Through fine-grained, qualitative analysis, we examine the interrelationship between 'efficiency', evidenced by the subsequent successful completion of an action by the team, and the use of indirect and mitigated requests, finding that a high number of indirect forms are successfully used to make requests of others in this time-pressured setting. We discuss the theoretical implications of our observations, revisiting claims about linguistic behaviour in urgent contexts, and also consider the practical implications of the study, including professional practice and training. • Collaborative leadership practices are evaluated well in emergency medicine training. • High-performing trainees are observed to use more indirect and mitigated requests. • Despite using longer requesting forms, high performers achieve tasks more quickly. • Indirectness and mitigation are not incompatible with efficiency and clarity. • The communicative practices associated with "success" are context-specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Systematic reviews are a key input to health and social welfare decisions. Studies included in systematic reviews often vary with respect to contextual factors that may impact on how transferable review findings are to the review context. However, many review authors do not consider the transferability of review findings until the end of the review process, for example when assessing confidence in the evidence using GRADE or GRADE-CERQual. This paper describes the TRANSFER Approach, a novel approach for supporting collaboration between review authors and stakeholders from the beginning of the review process to systematically and transparently consider factors that may influence the transferability of systematic review findings.Methods: We developed the TRANSFER Approach in three stages: (1) discussions with stakeholders to identify current practices and needs regarding the use of methods to consider transferability, (2) systematic search for and mapping of 25 existing checklists related to transferability, and (3) using the results of stage two to develop a structured conversation format which was applied in three systematic review processes.Results: None of the identified existing checklists related to transferability provided detailed guidance for review authors on how to assess transferability in systematic reviews, in collaboration with decision makers. The content analysis uncovered seven categories of factors to consider when discussing transferability. We used these to develop a structured conversation guide for discussing potential transferability factors with stakeholders at the beginning of the review process. In response to feedback and trial and error, the TRANSFER Approach has developed, expanding beyond the initial conversation guide, and is now made up of seven stages which are described in this article.Conclusions: The TRANSFER Approach supports review authors in collaborating with decision makers to ensure an informed consideration, from the beginning of the review process, of the transferability of the review findings to the review context. Further testing of TRANSFER is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the UK House of Commons is a ritual event, governed by a cluster of conventions. Members of Parliament (MPs) must address their remarks to the Prime Minister (PM) through the medium of the Speaker of the House, who is responsible for maintaining order during debates, and determining which MP may speak next. Due to the sacred role of the Speaker and the prevalence of conventionalised conflict avoidance between the PM and those who ask challenging questions, PMQs resembles archaic tribal councils, in which rights and obligations prevail. Yet, the importance of conventionalised indirectness and the sacred role of the Speaker do not correlate with a lack of face-threats and challenges. PMQs represents an aggressive ritual setting in which the ritual roles and rules only offer a façade to package aggression, and indeed may operate as interactional resources whereby participants can even increase the efficiency of their verbal attacks. Thus, PMQs embodies a scene that ritual experts define as 'anti-structural' in character: in this setting, the normative expectation in daily life to avoid conflict is temporarily suspended, to such an extent that conflict has become the ritual norm and is regarded as quintessential to this parliamentary institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global acceptance of emoticons has acknowledged the development of digital symbols in a communication setting when language alone can become a barrier in expressing certain intentions and feelings. This paper discusses how emoticons help indicate the illocutionary forces in texts and serve as part of various conversation strategies in the online communication environment. To achieve the research objective, a documentation of naturally occurring conversations on Facebook was made over a 12-month period to compile daily updates and conversations posted by youngsters in Malaysia. 120 online users were identified using a purposive sampling technique. A corpus of 324 362 words was established and processed. This whole set of naturally occurring conversation was then analysed based on Searle's (1976) five categorisations of illocutionary acts using Content Analysis and Wordsmith Tools 5.0. The findings demonstrate some emoticons that accentuated illocutionary forces of speech acts in the online communication environment. Discussion of the findings also explores the purposes and functions of emoticons in Malaysian digital communication platform and the way users of a multicultural society employ emotion-symbols to achieve social cohesion and embrace cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should a Catholic hospital abort a life-threatening pregnancy or let a pregnant woman die? Should a religious employer allow his employees access to contraceptives or break with healthcare legislation? People and organizations of faith often face moral decisions that have significant consequences. Research in psychology found that religion is typically associated with deontological judgment. Yet deontology consists of many principles, which may, at times, conflict. In three studies, we design a conflict between moral principles and find that the relationship between moral judgment and religiosity is more nuanced than currently assumed. Studies 1 and 2 show that, while religious U.S. Christians and Israeli Jews are more likely to form deontological judgments, they divide between the deontological principles of inaction and indirectness. Using textual analysis, we reveal that specific beliefs regarding divine responsibility and human responsibility distinguish inaction from indirectness deontologists. Study 3 exploits natural differences in religious saliency across days of the week to provide causal evidence that religion raises deontological tendencies on Sundays and selectively increases the appeal of inaction deontology for those who believe in an interventionist and responsible God.

Japanese communication style is often described as characterized by indirectness and vagueness. How much truth is there in this cliché? In trying answering this question, I will first review some of the major theoretical ethnographic studies on Japanese language and culture that intended to explain from different angles the recurrent use of indirectness and vagueness in the Japanese discourse system. In this connection, I will point out that it is often difficult to determine to what extent many scholars’ accounts can be viewed as non-stereotypical and bias-free, and from which viewpoint their descriptions is to be considered unnatural or fragmentary. I will then analyze the Japanese communication style, focusing on a sort of ambiguity that indeed appears to characterize the way many Japanese communicate verbally. My analysis will be based on authentic segments extracted from email messages written by native speakers of Japanese at a workplace.

Surrogate endpoints are biomarkers or intermediate outcomes that are used as substitutes for clinical outcomes of interest, often to expedite research or decision-making. In contrast, patient-important (or patient-centered) outcomes are health outcomes that are of direct relevance and importance to patients themselves; clinical trials may have measured the impact of the intervention on other endpoints related to, but different from, those of primary importance to patients. This article aims to elaborate on the use and understanding of surrogate endpoints. There should be a well-understood and scientifically grounded relationship between the surrogate (replacement) and the patient-important (target) endpoint it is intended to represent. It should be biologically plausible that changes in the surrogate will consistently and predictably reflect changes in the patient-important endpoint. The surrogate endpoint should show a threshold effect, meaning that a specific change (or state) in the surrogate with an intervention (relative to the comparator) is associated with a predictable (change in the) patient-important outcome. This helps establish a meaningful cutoff or target for the treatment effect on the surrogate endpoint. While surrogate endpoints offer advantages in certain situations, it is important to remember that their use requires careful validation to ensure they reliably predict the true clinical outcome. The validity of "surrogate endpoints" should be supported by robust scientific evidence and rigorous evaluation before these can be considered and labeled as surrogate endpoints., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This study explored the effects of the interlocutors' power/social status on the mode of directness and the use of the politeness marker please in the production of requests by advanced L1 Hebrew and L1 Arabic speakers of English. Data were collected by using a Discourse Completion Task. The results showed that the use of direct requests decreased and the use of indirect requests increased in both groups of speakers as the status of the addressee went from lower to higher than the speaker. However, the pattern of influence of the status factor differed between groups in the case of please. Specifically, L1 Arabic speakers exhibited the greatest use of please in FL English when the addressee was either lower or higher in status than the speaker, whereas the L1 Hebrew speakers only exhibited a preference for the use of please when the addressee was lower in status than the speaker. These findings are discussed in terms of the relative influence of the native language and culture, knowledge of the target English language, and in the case of L1 Arabic speakers, the influence of Hebrew as well. • In advanced Hebrew and Arabic speakers of English, status impacted the directness of requests similarly, unlike the use of please. • In both groups, conventional indirect requests increased as the status of the addressee increased vis a vis the speaker. • Direct requests increased as the status of the addressee decreased vis a vis the speaker. • L1 Arabic speakers exhibited the greatest use of please when the addressee was lower or higher in status than the speaker. • L1 Hebrew speakers preferred please only when the addressee was lower in status than the speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, pragmatic theory and practice have largely drawn on theories and models based on observations of communicative practices in the West and tacitly treated as culturally neutral, while patterns of language use in non-Western communities have been used as testing grounds for Western usage rules and their assumed motivations. We see this practice as contrary to calls for cognitive justice and as hampering progress toward the development of inclusive and truly universally valid theories of pragmatics. We illustrate these points by discussing four themes which have been tested in non-Western languages: speech acts, conversational implicatures, (im)politeness, and Conversation Analysis. We then move on to the domain of research ethics and find that, here too, practices tend to reflect Western values, prioritizing Western notions of ethics and what is important to people and ultimately falling short of serving the needs both of the communities where the data are collected, and of the researchers themselves. We conclude with recommending three steps we can all take to make pragmatics a more inclusive discipline, respecting and reflecting patterns of language-in-use irrespective of where they are located geographically. • Pragmatic theory and practice to date overwhelmingly rely on observations of communicative practices in the West. • Patterns of language use in non-Western communities serve primarily as testing grounds for these theories. • Western-inspired theoretical frameworks are not culturally neutral but situated in Western modes of thinking. • Ethics practices in pragmatics also reflect Western perspectives and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study aimed to determine the frequency of occurrence of a set of indirectness features in argumentative essays. A taxonomy of indirectness features developed by Hinkel (1997) was employed to classify the features under scrutiny into rhetorical, lexical/referential, and syntactic. The study followed a statistical descriptive design to describe a sample of 30 essays. The essays were written by a group of English as a Foreign Language students in a composition course at the western branch of the University of Costa Rica. The frequency of occurrence of indirectness features was calculated per 100 words with an average number of words in the essays of 798. Additionally, the percentage of each feature compared to total indirectness in the essays and the standard deviations of the frequencies were calculated for the analysis. The results revealed that the four indirectness features representing potential recurrent patterns were subordination, vague determiners, delayed claims, and unneces- sary adjectivals. Due to the rhetorical or lexical nature of the features, the researchers recommend that instructors pay increased attention to vocabulary acquisition and to the organization of ideas when raising awareness of differences in communication style. El objetivo del estudio consistió en determinar la frecuencia con que ocurre un conjunto de características de expresión indirecta en ensayos argumentativos. Se empleó una taxonomía de características de expresión indirecta desarrollada por Hinkel (1997) para clasi car las características estudiadas como retóricas, léxicas/referenciales y sintácticas. El estudio siguió un diseño estadístico descriptivo de una muestra de 30 ensayos escritos por un grupo de estudiantes de Inglés como Lengua Extranjera en un curso de composición en la Sede de Occidente de la Universidad de Costa Rica. La frecuencia de las características de expresión indirecta se calculó por cada 100 palabras, con un promedio de 798 por ensayo. Además, para el análisis se calculó el porcentaje de cada característica con respecto al total de expresión indirecta en los ensayos, así como la desviación estándar de las frecuencias. Los resultados revelaron que las cuatro características de expresión indirecta que representan patrones recurrentes potenciales son: la subordinación, los determinantes ambiguos, las a rmaciones con sujetos en posición débil y las cláusulas adjetivales innecesarias. Debido a la naturaleza retórica o léxica de dichas características, los investigadores recomiendan que los docentes presten mayor atención a la adquisición de vocabulario y a la organización de ideas al crear conciencia de las diferencias en estilos de comunicación.

Communication varies in indirectness, influencing the effectiveness of the message as well as interpersonal dynamics. However, this issue was not studied empirically in the feedback literature. Integrating communication indirectness and message framing theories, we propose that whether success and failure feedback are framed as a negation (non-losses, non-gains) or affirmation (gains, losses) affects perceived indirectness. Three studies (N = 589) consistently showed that both feedback receivers (Studies 1 and 3) and feedback providers (Study 2) viewed feedback in negation (vs. affirmative) frames as more indirect and communicating the feedback signal (positive, negative) less strongly. Feedback providers utilized more negation frames when attempting to be indirect and delivering failure feedback (Study 2). Further, through influencing perceived positivity in feedback, indirectness has downstream effects on feedback providers' use of frames (Study 2) and feedback receivers' reactions (Study 3). This work contributes to our understanding of communication indirectness and its potential implications for feedback effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data drawn from audio recordings of a 9th grade female English teacher in Southern California and her interactions with students in her classroom, I examined how she represents the thinking and voices of her students as her students during confrontation and conflict. Analysis demonstrates how the projected ventriloquation of her students’ thinking and voices becomes a resource for indirectness in interaction, and a means to manage the gendered contradictions of teaching - the simultaneous expectations that female teachers provide authoritative criticism of student work while also being emotionally supportive - in the back-and-forth of classroom talk. In this analysis, I contribute to an understanding of intertextuality and reported speech in teacher talk, including the relevance of emotional labour, and demonstrate how a teacher uses the linguistic resources of the ‘managed heart’ to mediate conflict and criticism in whole-class interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on a formal gathering between two Christian organizations with different viewpoints on gender and sexuality, I show how speakers from both groups share narratives in which they enact and disalign from Christian figures of personhood engaged in overt exclusion of LGB + people. Because of their use of religious language these narratives operate at multiple scales, with differing levels of indirectness and various implications for religious identity and institutional values. Additionally, I argue that disalignment can generate moral norms for conduct and that the moral norms generated in this context allow for personal, but not systemic, opposition to LGB + exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]