Context

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Fetzer
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Psychological Construct ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
External Constraint ◽  
Performance Context ◽  
Communicative Act

The concept of context has undergone some fundamental rethinking in the scientific community, where it is no longer seen as an analytic prime. Rather than being looked upon as an external constraint on linguistic performance, context is analysed as a product of language use, as interactionally construed, co-constructed, and negotiated, and as imported and invoked. Context is also considered as a psychological construct, and as a set of antecedent premises, which are required for a communicative act to be felicitous. Context is further conceptualized along the distinction between context as type and context as token, differentiating between more generalized and more particularized variants, and context is conceived of as dynamic and relational, more or less (un)bounded, subjective and individual, and social and institutional.

Communicating Attitudes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Stokke
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Communicative Act ◽  
Conscious Intention

This chapter extends the analysis of insincere language use from the last chapter to non-declarative utterances, including imperative, interrogative, and exclamative utterances. It argues that such utterances communicate information about the speaker’s attitudes. The chapter offers an account of insincerity in the non-declarative realm that is shallow. On this view, a non-declarative utterance is insincere when it is made without a conscious intention to avoid communicating information not matching the speaker’s conscious attitudes. A notion of a communicative act is defined, and the chapter argues that only such acts can be evaluated as insincere or not. A framework for understanding the semantics and pragmatics of non-declarative clause types is sketched and the chapter shows how it explains why non-declaratives cannot be used to lie.

A Dynamical, Self-Organized View of the Context for Linguistic Performance

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-86
Author(s):  
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Temporal Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Organizational View

Most everyone agrees that context is critical to the pragmatic interpretation of speakers’ utterances. But the enduring debate within cognitive science concerns when context has its influence in shaping people’s interpretations of what speakers imply by what they say. Some scholars maintain that context is only referred to after some initial linguistic analysis of an utterance has been performed, with other scholars arguing that context is present at all stages of immediate linguistic processing. Empirical research on this debate is, in my view, hopelessly deadlocked. My goal in this article is to advance a framework for thinking about the context for linguistic performance that conceives of human cognition and language use in terms of dynamical, self-organized processes. A self-organizational view of the context for linguistic performance demands that we acknowledge the multiple, interacting constraints which create, or soft-assemble, any specific moment of pragmatic experience. Pragmatic action and understanding is not producing or recovering a “meaning” but a continuously unfolding temporal process of the person adapting and orienting to the world. I discuss the implications of this view for the study of pragmatic meaning in discourse.

Bleeping Deluxe

queerqueen ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 117-145
Author(s):  
Claire Maree
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Night ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Media Censorship

Chapter 5 examines the visual and sonic mapping of excess onto the queerqueen figure through layering of censorship tropes such as redaction characters (fuseji) and pixelization onto audiovisual media. Censorship tropes index complex histories of the use of language and images in the public sphere. Manipulation of censorship tropes exposes discourses of discrimination that shape language use in the media. This chapter analyzes the use of censorship beeps in the late-night television show Matsuko no heya (Matsuko’s Room; Fuji Television Network) hosted by Matsuko Deluxe, a contemporary queerqueen superstar who gained mainstream popularity in the early 2000s. The show pivots on staged (im)politeness and a pretense of low-cost production and minimal editorial effects. In Matsuko no Heya, self-censorship edited into the footage (re)creates Matsuko’s image as a sharp-tongued, honest-speaking, entertaining personality. It simultaneously (re)creates Matsuko’s linguistic performance of gender and sexuality as that which already exceeds the limits of respectability.

scholarly journals Self-Assessment of Vocabulary and Relevant Language Skills for Evaluation Purposes

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Violeta Janulevičienė ◽  
Galina Kavaliauskienė
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
English For Specific Purposes ◽  
Tertiary Level ◽  
Retention Data ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Vocabulary Retention ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
Practical Implications

Learner self-assessment of linguistic performance has been lately used due to its potential to activate the process of learning. Self-assessment raises learner awareness of language use and leads to developing learner responsibility and autonomy. However, usefulness of self-assessment for evaluation purposes has been scarcely researched. This paper examines some aspects of learners’ self-assessment for evaluation purposes at tertiary level. Research focuses on self-assessment of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) vocabulary and some language skills relevant for vocabulary retention. Data on learner self-assessment are compared to actual results in tests. The analysis provided points to importance of self-evaluation in language acquisition and suggests practical implications of self-assessment for evaluation.

scholarly journals Blogs as interwoven polylogues

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Bondi
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Knowledge Dissemination ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
The Media

Abstract This paper looks at blogs as dialogic action games characterized by specific communicative purposes and corresponding language use, as described in the MGM. The assumption is that web-mediated communication is particularly apt to developing simultaneous conversations within and without the scientific community. Using a small-scale study of blog threads originated by well-known economists who write for the academia as well as for the media, I look at how they establish dialogicity and intertextuality in the post and at how they develop interwoven polylogues in comments, thus engaging participants in parallel conversations, some of which are more clearly oriented to sharing views, while others aim at knowledge dissemination and others still at knowledge construction proper.

The Production of Gesture and Speech by People With Aphasia: Influence of Communicative Constraints

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (12) ◽  
pp. 4417-4432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carola de Beer ◽  
Jan P. de Ruiter ◽  
Martina Hielscher-Fastabend ◽  
Katharina Hogrefe
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Communicative Abilities ◽  
Gesture Production ◽  
And Task ◽  
Group Effects

Purpose People with aphasia (PWA) use different kinds of gesture spontaneously when they communicate. Although there is evidence that the nature of the communicative task influences the linguistic performance of PWA, so far little is known about the influence of the communicative task on the production of gestures by PWA. We aimed to investigate the influence of varying communicative constraints on the production of gesture and spoken expression by PWA in comparison to persons without language impairment. Method Twenty-six PWA with varying aphasia severities and 26 control participants (CP) without language impairment participated in the study. Spoken expression and gesture production were investigated in 2 different tasks: (a) spontaneous conversation about topics of daily living and (b) a cartoon narration task, that is, retellings of short cartoon clips. The frequencies of words and gestures as well as of different gesture types produced by the participants were analyzed and tested for potential effects of group and task. Results Main results for task effects revealed that PWA and CP used more iconic gestures and pantomimes in the cartoon narration task than in spontaneous conversation. Metaphoric gestures, deictic gestures, number gestures, and emblems were more frequently used in spontaneous conversation than in cartoon narrations by both participant groups. Group effects show that, in both tasks, PWA's gesture-to-word ratios were higher than those for the CP. Furthermore, PWA produced more interactive gestures than the CP in both tasks, as well as more number gestures and pantomimes in spontaneous conversation. Conclusions The current results suggest that PWA use gestures to compensate for their verbal limitations under varying communicative constraints. The properties of the communicative task influence the use of different gesture types in people with and without aphasia. Thus, the influence of communicative constraints needs to be considered when assessing PWA's multimodal communicative abilities.

A Longitudinal Posthumous Study of Letter Writing in a Late Elderly Case

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-33
Author(s):  
Angel Ball ◽  
Jean Neils-Strunjas ◽  
Kate Krival
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Elderly Woman ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Errors Analysis ◽  
Normal Status

This study is a posthumous longitudinal study of consecutive letters written by an elderly woman from age 89 to 93. Findings reveal a consistent linguistic performance during the first 3 years, supporting “normal” status for late elderly writing. She produced clearly written cursive form, intact semantic content, and minimal spelling and stroke errors. A decline in writing was observed in the last 6–9 months of the study and an analysis revealed production of clausal fragmentation, decreasing semantic clarity, and a higher frequency of spelling, semantic, and stroke errors. Analysis of writing samples can be a valuable tool in documenting a change in cognitive status differentiated from normal late aging.

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