Puzzles for pragmatics and rhetoric and advent of pragma-rhetoric

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-271
Author(s):  
Guojin Hou
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Academic Tasks ◽  
The Past ◽  
Boundary Issues

Abstract No other interdisciplinary issue has inspired a greater debate than the pragmatics-rhetoric border. This paper explores the pragmatics-rhetoric boundary issues and the possibility of marrying pragmatics to rhetoric for pragma-rhetoric. It first addresses the twenty ‘puzzles’ or predicaments the past studies of pragmatics and rhetoric have met with. It is held that similarities between the two disciplines make ‘pragma-rhetoric’ possible and their differences serve as the conditions for their inter-complementarity. Then we discuss some misunderstandings about pragma-rhetoric integration. Due to the alikeness of speech acts, pragmatic acts and rhetoric acts, we forward ‘pragma-rhetorical act’ (PRA) for an umbrella term in the emerging ‘pragma-rhetoric’. Finally we formulate the academic tasks and features of the interdiscipline, with a ‘standard paradigm’ and two ‘sub-paradigms’ of pragma-rhetorical research.

The development of comprehension in interlanguage pragmatics

2002 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Misty Cook ◽  
Anthony J. Liddicoat
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Interlanguage Pragmatics ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
Request Strategies ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Pragmatic Performance

Abstract In the past, research in interlanguage pragmatics has primarily explained the differences between native speakers’ (NS) and non-native speakers’ (NNS) pragmatic performance based on cross-cultural and linguistic differences. Very few researchers have considered learners’ pragmatic performance based on second language comprehension. In this study, we will examine learners’ pragmatic performance using request strategies. The results of this study reveal that there is a proficiency effect for interpreting request speech acts at different levels of directness. We propose that learners’ processing strategies and capacities are important factors to consider when examining learners’ pragmatic performance.

Challenging Women's Agency and Activism in Early Modernity

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Older Adulthood ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Women’S Agency

Examining women’s agency in the past has taken on new urgency in the current moment of resurgent patriarchy, Women’s Marches, and the global #MeToo movement. The essays in this collection consider women’s agency in the Renaissance and early modern period, an era that also saw both increasing patriarchal constraints and new forms of women’s actions and activism. They address a capacious set of questions about how women, from their teenage years through older adulthood, asserted agency through social practices, speech acts, legal disputes, writing, viewing and exchanging images, travel, and community building. Despite family and social pressures, the actions of girls and women could shape their lives and challenge male-dominated institutions. This volume includes thirteen essays by scholars from various disciplines, which analyze people, texts, objects, and images from many different parts of Europe, as well as things and people that crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific.

‘It's Different Now’: A Narrative Analysis of Recent Irish Migrants Making Sense of Migration and Comparing Themselves with Previous Waves of Migrants

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Young Professionals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
Irish Migrants

The key aim of this paper is to consider how young professionals, who left Ireland since the economic recession, define their migration project – not just individually but also as a shared experience across their generation. Using narrative analysis and the concept of ‘speech acts’, I explore how these young people working in England talk about and make sense of recent Irish migration. In particular, the paper explores the extent to which the participants construct a sense of ‘cohorts’ to articulate their shared experiences and expectations as a ‘group’, ‘wave’ or ‘generation’ of recent migrants and, in so doing, contrast themselves with previous waves of migrants from Ireland. I highlight their emphasis on ‘choice’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘mobility’ in contrast to their image of the older Irish migrants as ‘forced’, disadvantaged and ‘stuck’. I suggest that this is not just an over-simplification of the past, but more importantly represents a device for making sense of the present. The paper also adopts a reflexive approach and situates myself as a researcher and an Irish migrant in the research process. In this way, I consider how my questions and comments may have influenced how narratives were constructed and shared as well as how I may have approached the analysis of the data through a specific socio-temporal mind set.

scholarly journals SPEECH ACT STRATEGY UTTERED BY EMMA WATSON AND MALALA YOUSAFZAI AS THE INSTRUMENT OF EMPOWERMENT

Lire Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-68
Author(s):  
Ika Setyowati Sutedjo
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women's Voice ◽  
Directive Speech Acts ◽  
Directive Speech

Women’s voice has been heard by the society for the past few years. There are a lot of movements created by women to support each other, for example, Women’s March, Time’s Up, #MeToo, and HeForShe. This movement will lead to more recognition of women in various expertise. Consequently, those amazing women are able to meet in one situation. The certain situation leads women to do a conversation. The conversation between women also includes different kinds of speech acts. This study aims to find the speech act uttered by Emma Watson and Malala Yousafzai as the instrument of empowerment. The result of the study shows that Emma Watson and Malala Yousafzai are mostly using directive speech acts in their speeches. The purpose of the directive speech act is to make people do something. Emma and Malala use directive speech act to empower people to accomplish something. The use of the directive speech act also related to the third-wave feminism movement. This movement establishes women to be bold, empowered, and brave. So, the third wave of feminism also influences Emma and Malala as bold and empowered women. They empower other people to do something through their speech act because they are empowered, women.

scholarly journals The Mental Scenarios and Internet Genre Etiquette of Different Cultures (Based on Online Greetings in Four Languages)

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (27) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Eleonora Lassan
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
National Character ◽  
Internet Site ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Wide Circle ◽  
Birthday Celebration ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Good Attitude

This article analyses online greetings in the Russian, Polish, Lithuanian and German languages. The author treats greetings as a speech act which helps the addresser to remind the addressee of his/her good attitude towards him/her on the basis of a particular occasion—the addressee’s birthday. The author analyses this speech act in relation to the specific communicative and mental scenarios of the culture to which the speaker belongs. The entirety of standard speech acts and the combination of intentions of the speakers form a genre. The genre of modern online greetings seems contiguous to folklore genres, because most of the texts do not have authors. Moreover, these texts move from one Internet site to another, resulting in a wide circle of “implementers”—users.The author distinguishes some typical characteristics of online greetings among the four cultures. An emphasis on the figure of the speaker and an incantatory character are typical of Russian greeting texts. Happiness, health and eternal youth are the key objects of these Russian texts. Russian greetings are related to the future. German greetings are mainly related to the birthday celebration itself. Greetings are often related to a review of life: on this occasion the addressee is encouraged to reflect on whether s/he has lived the past year appropriately. The word courage (Mut) is constantly repeated in German greetings, whereas this word is absent from the Russian greetings. The figure of the speaker is marginally expressed in Polish greetings. The sweetness of life is present in Polish greetings, whereas it is observed neither in German nor in Russian texts. May all your dreams come true is a cliché element of Polish greeting texts. Lithuanian greetings distinguish themselves by their melancholic tone.The author relates the detected specific features of online greetings to the ideas of philosophers and historians on the unique means of expressing one’s national character.

scholarly journals The Oxford Handbook of Assertion

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
And Linguistics

Assertions belong to the family of speech acts that make claims regarding how things are. They include statements, avowals, reports, expressed judgments, and testimonies—acts which are relevant across a host of issues not only in philosophy of language and linguistics but also in subdisciplines such as epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Over the past two decades, the amount of scholarship investigating the speech act of assertion has increased dramatically, and the scope of such research has also grown. The Oxford Handbook of Assertion explores various dimensions of the act of assertion: its nature; its place in a theory of speech acts, and in semantics and meta-semantics; its role in epistemology; and the various social, political, and ethical dimensions of the act. Essays from leading theorists situate assertion in relation to other types of speech acts, exploring the connection between assertions and other phenomena of interest not only to philosophers but also to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, lawyers, computer scientists, and theorists from communication studies.

Magic and Byzantine Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 84-98
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Tuerk-Stonberg
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Linguistic Structures ◽  
Early Byzantine

The term magic has been long understood as problematic. Studies of Byzantine magic have rapidly developed over the past several decades, and have come to suggest various ways of understanding the term. Two Early Byzantine amulets, serving as case studies, display conventional linguistic structures, including persuasive analogy, speech-acts, and show-acts. These linguistic structures and ways of organizing information operate equally in religious, medical, and philosophical examples. Accordingly, art and texts of ritual power exemplify intersecting communities of thought and are useful for interpreting various types of social practices. Magic studies are interdisciplinary, and as such they open new directions for the history of Byzantine art, Byzantine religion, Byzantine mentalities, Byzantine women, Byzantine Jews, and even a history of the Byzantine “individual.”

scholarly journals Lithuanian and English request strategies and politeness

2009 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Inga Hilbig
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Group ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Indirect Requests ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Request Strategies ◽  
University Undergraduates ◽  
Significant Attention

  Requests are among the most studied speech acts in the area of interactional pragmatics and linguistic politeness. Empirical studies have proliferated over the past decades; however, although requests in many Western languages, including English, have received significant attention, this paper is the very first attempt to explore request strategies in Lithuanian. The research is based on an assumption about three main universal directness levels in requests as well as on a distinction between positive (closeness, solidarity) and negative (distance, deference) politeness systems. The data has been collected by means of the Discourse Completion Test, which is an open-ended questionnaire with socially divergent situations to prompt requests. It was filled in by 100 Lithuanian university undergraduates and 100 English university undergraduates. The findings demonstrate that while both groups mostly opted for conventionally indirect requests (e.g. indirect questions about the hearer's ability or willingness to fulfil a request), the Lithuanian responses spread much wider along the directness-indirectness continuum, the respondents employing notably more direct (e.g. imperatives, explicit performatives) as well as a slightly larger number of non-conventionally indirect strategies (hints). Indirect structures do not necessarily convey politeness, just as blunt requests per se are not impolite. No linguistic group of people can be legitimately considered more or less polite than the other, but rather polite in their own socio-culturally acceptable way. Conventionally indirect requests are commonly associated with the negative positive politeness system, whereas direct requests with the positive politeness orientation. The results of the present investigation reveal that Lithuanians are more inclined towards positive politeness, but this is still to be confirmed by further research.

scholarly journals Speaking about Reality: Verbatim techniques in contemporary Finnish documentary theatre

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Laura Gröndahl
Keyword(s):  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Documentary Theatre ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Dramatic Performance

During the past years, different modes of documentary theatre have gained popularity. A distinctive feature there is the use of verbatim texts, borrowed directly from authentic documents like recorded interviews or minutes, including sometimes even coincidental stuttering of the original speaker. In this article I analyse the verbatim-technique as part of the post-dramatic performance strategies. It makes it possible to focus on the materiality of language as a texture as well as an instrument for meaning making and communicating contents. It also gives a more active role to the audience. When texts are explicitly framed as authentic, and reiterated with exaggerated precision, the attention is drawn to the performative repetition of the speech acts. Thus, the verbatim performances do not so much refer to reality “as it is”, but rather stage acts of making claims about something we call reality. Borrowing Carol Martin, the contemporary generation of documentary theatre makers aspire to make relevant claims about social reality even if they use postmodern strategies and admit that truth and reality are not within their reach. I will discuss different strategies of using the verbatim techniques in documentary performances. I theorize the subject using well-known international examples, move on to a short overview of recent documentary theatre in Finland, and examine closer four cases: Parliament III in Ryhmäteatteri in 2015, Towards Work at Kouvolan Teatteri in 2014, Ruusula Street 10 at Q-teatteri in 2014, and My Palestine at Teatteri Takomo in 2015.

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