The meaning of the particle lah in Singapore English

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Besemeres ◽  
Anna Wierzbicka

In this paper we try to crack one of the hardest and most intriguing chestnuts in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics and to identify the meaning of the celebrated Singaporean particle lah — the hallmark of Singapore English. In pursuing this goal, we investigate the use of lah and seek to identify its meaning by trying to find a paraphrase in ordinary language which would be substitutable for lah in any context. In doing so, we try to enter the speakers’ minds, and as John Locke (1959 [1691]:99) urged in his pioneering work on particles, “observe nicely” the speakers’ “postures of the mind in discoursing”. At the same time, we offer a general model for the investigation of discourse markers and show how the methodology based on the “NSM” semantic theory allows the analyst to link pragmatics, via semantics, with the study of cognition.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-296
Author(s):  
Diana Bravo

ResumenEn este trabajo se aborda la problemática de la universalidad de los actos de habla (Searle, ([1969]1980. Actos de habla. Madrid: Cátedra Visor.) y de su relación con las amenazas a la imagen social (cf. Placencia y Bravo, 2002. Actos de habla y cortesía en español. London: LINCOM; ; Bravo y Briz, 2004. Pragmática sociocultural: estudios del discurso de cortesía en español. Barcelona: Ariel). Dentro de los estudios de orientación pragmática de mayor difusión entre los académicos, encontramos dos posiciones, por un lado la de autores como Leech (([1983] 1988). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.) y Brown y Levinson ([1978] 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), que asumen que determinados actos de habla serían inherentemente amenazantes para la mantención de la imagen social (face); por otro, la de Thomas ((1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4 (2), pp. 91–112.), Wierzbicka ((1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics. The Semantics of Human Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.) y Blum-Kulka, S. y Olshtain, E. ((1984). Request and apologies: a cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, (5), pp. 196–213.), entre otros, para quienes la percepción de los mismos actos en distintas culturas estaría influida por factores socioculturales, de manera que los actos de habla no serían per se amenazantes, sino que esta condición dependería de su interpretación en contexto. Creemos que los actos se describen de modo distinto dependiendo de cuál sea el contexto del usuario ideal, término que refiere al uso habitual de la lengua en su contexto situacional y sociocultural. Por ello sostenemos que no basta con interpretar los actos con la sola ayuda de la bibliografía y de las propias intuiciones, sino que es necesario consultar al usuario de la lengua. En este artículo nos enfocaremos en justificar una metodología de recogida de datos socio-pragmáticos que establece relaciones directas entre los actos y los hábitos sociales de sus usuarios. Nos basaremos en un método de consulta usado por varios autores, el cuestionario de hábitos sociales (cf. Hernández Flores, (2002). La cortesía en la conversación española de familiares y amigos. La búsqueda de equilibrio entre la imagen del hablante y la imagen del destinatario. Tesis doctoral. Aalborg: Aalborg Universitet. Recuperado de http://edice.asice.se/?page_id=305, y Bernal y Hernández Flores, (2016). Variación socio-pragmática en la enseñanza del español: aplicación didáctica de un cuestionario de hábitos sociales. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 3 (2), pp. 114–126.).


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
John O'Connor

The art of psychotherapy has been defined as the capacity of the psychotherapist’s mind to receive the psyche of the patient, particularly its unconscious contents. This deceptively simple definition implies the enormously complex art of receiving the most disturbed, dissociated, maddening, often young and primitive, frightening, and fragmented aspects of the patient’s multiple ages and selves, in the hope perhaps that we might make available to our own mind, to the patient’s mind, and within the therapeutic relationship, whatever it is that we discover together, perhaps with the possibility that this may allow that these dissociated, fragmented, lost, and potentially transformative aspects of self might become more accessible to both therapist and patient. The complexity of this process is further intensified when cultural difference is an important aspect of therapeutic engagement. This paper will explore this rich and complex art. It will include exploration of psychoanalytic, relational, and transpersonal psychotherapeutic perspectives as they inform the potentials and mysteries of this deeply receptive process. The paper will consider the potential this receiving of the other might have for the growth of both the therapist and patient within the life span of clinical engagement and will include consideration of implications for cross cultural clinical work. Clinical vignettes illustrating and informing the ideas explored in this paper will be woven throughout the paper. Whakarāpopotonga Kua tautuhia te toi whakaora hinengaro ko te kaha o te hinengaro o te kaiwhakaora hinengaro ki te pupuri i te hinengaro o te tūroro, mātuatua nei ko ngā matū maurimoe. E tohu ana te tautuhinga ngāwari nei i te kaha uaua o te mahi pupuri i ngā maramara tirohanga, ngā tau, ngā whaiaro tini o ngā tūroro arā noa atu te wairangi, te noho wehe, te kārangirangi, he taiohi, he māori, whakawehiwehi, i runga i te wawata tērā pea ka tuwhera ki ō tātau ake hinengaro, ko tō te tūroro ki waenga hoki i te whakapiringa haumanu. E kene pea mā te mea ka kitea, e tuku ēnei tirohanga pūreirei, kongakonga, ngaro, ā, ngā tirohanga hurihanga whaiaro e whakamāmā ake ki te kaiwhakaora me te tūroro. Ka kaha ake te auatanga o tēnei hātepe i te mea ko te rerekētanga o te ahurea te wāhanga nui o te mahi haumanu. Ka wheraina e tēnei tuhinga te tirohanga toitaurea mōmona nei. Ka whakaurua te wherawherahanga o te wetewetenga hinengaro, te tātanga, me ngā tirohanga whakaoranga hinengaro wairua i te mea ko ēnei ngā kaiwhakamōhio i ngā pirikoko o tēnei hātepe toropupū tino hōhonu. Ka whakaarohia e te pepa nei te ēkene pea o te whakaurunga mai o tētahi kē atu mō te whakatipuranga o te kaihaumanu me te tūroro i roto i te wā huitahi ai. Ka whakaarohia ake anō hoki ngā hīkaro mō te mahi haumanu ahurea whakawhiti. Ka rarangahia ngā kōrero haumanu e whakaahua e whakaatu ana i ngā whakaaro tūhuraina i roto i tēnei tuhinga.


Author(s):  
G. A. Zolotkov

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind (that is, logical positivism and philosophy of ordinary language) were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the consequent evolution of philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s.


Author(s):  
Istvan Kecskes

This chapter discusses the differences between cross-cultural and intercultural pragmatics. While cross-cultural pragmatics compares different cultures, based on the investigation of certain aspects of language use, such as speech acts, behaviour patterns, and language behaviour, intercultural pragmatics focuses on intercultural interactions and investigates the nature of the communicative process among people from different cultures, speaking different first languages. Cross-cultural pragmatics analyses the differences and similarities in the language behaviour of people representing different languages and cultures. Intercultural pragmatics, however—a relatively new discipline—is interested in what happens when representatives of different first languages and cultures communicate using a common language.


Unfelt ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 24-68
Author(s):  
James Noggle

This chapter examines how the late seventeenth-century British philosophy of sensation, feeling, and selfhood responded to the challenges of mechanism with the idiom of the insensible. It shows how this idiom carries forward from John Locke and Robert Boyle to philosophers of the mid-eighteenth century, the age of sensibility, who use it to address a variety of problems. The consistent, Lockean element in these usages by David Hartley, Étienne Bonnet de Condillac and David Hume, Eliza Haywood and Adam Smith, is that they do not refer to mental contents. One does not hear of “insensible perceptions.” There are no “unconscious thoughts” or “unfelt sensations” in the British tradition surveyed here. Writers in this tradition rather describe insensible powers that affect the mind without themselves being mental. They are nonconscious, not unconscious. This is an implication carried by the idiom into articulations of quite a wide variety of other ideas. All of them indicate the persistent usefulness in philosophies of feeling of a stylistic gesture toward something beyond the reach of both feeling and philosophy.


Author(s):  
Clara Bauler

Linguistically diverse learners tend to first relate the pragmatic ability they already possess in their first or more dominant language (L1) to act in the L2; as a result, miscommunication and misunderstandings are frequent and common. Teachers can help learners develop awareness about L2 pragmatic norms by making visible how speech acts are performed in the L2 community of speakers while providing opportunities to engage in role-playing or real interactions involving the accomplishment of selected speech acts. This chapter offers an overview of the importance of context in cross-cultural interactions, a brief survey of the theories of speech acts, and concrete pedagogical ideas for teachers to develop linguistically diverse learners' pragmatic awareness and ability while celebrating and promoting linguistic and cultural diversity.


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