‘Politeness Markers’ Revisited - A Contrastive Pragmatic Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dániel Z. Kádár ◽  
Juliane House

AbstractThis paper revisits the concept of ‘politeness marker’, by proposing the bottom-up and corpus-based model of ‘ritual frame indicating expressions’ (RFIEs). Our central argument is that, in certain linguacultures, the relationship between ‘politeness markers’ and politeness itself is significantly stronger than in others. Therefore, any theory which argues that there is a definite relationship between form and politeness - or totally rejects this relationship - is potentially problematic if it does not take a contrastive pragmatic perspective, simply because this relationship is subject to significant linguacultural variation. The contrastive pragmatic study of RFIEs also helps us to determine the relationship between forms and speech acts and, indirectly, politeness. As a case study, we examine in this paper one-word and more complex expressions which are commonly associated with the speech acts of request and apology, drawn from the typologically distant Chinese and English linguacultures.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Imogen Stockwell

<p>Following the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes, earthquake strengthening is one of the biggest issues facing heritage buildings in New Zealand. This process is mainly affecting commercial and public buildings; residential buildings are generally exempt from earthquake-prone building policies. However, some homeowners are choosing to do what is often perceived to be an expensive and time-consuming process. This research explores whether there is a heritage relationship between the homeowner and their house that motivates conservation work, such as earthquake strengthening. The central question for this research is: “What makes a heritage house a home? Is “home” a motivation for owners to earthquake strengthen their building? a case study of Dunedin”.  The relationship between homeowners and the heritage of their homes and domestic conservations practices has been underexamined in heritage studies in New Zealand. The current dissertation addresses this problem and contributes to the literature of Museum and Heritage Studies. The theoretical framework employed in this research draws on the field of Critical Heritage Studies in order to explore the relationship between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up heritage’, the notion of ‘peoples-based’ heritage, the value of intangible heritage and a cycle of care. This research utilised qualitative research methods, involving the interviewing three heritage homeowners and two heritage professionals. These provided detailed findings about homeowners’ perceptions of their houses and the interaction between heritage practitioners and homeowners. The southern city of Dunedin was the case study which framed this research, because it has a rich collection of heritage buildings and a council which has been proactive in encouraging earthquake strengthening.  It was found that the heritage homeowner’s relationship with their home played a role in conservation how decisions are undertaken and that there is a lack of outreach from heritage authorities to heritage homeowners. This research provides information about the nature of the interaction between top-down and bottom-up heritage, and how this relationship can lead to positive heritage outcomes. Recommendations include developing open channels of communication between officials and homeowners, increased acknowledgement of the homeowner’s role in the conservation practice, and the establishment of a concept of Domestic Heritage to assist within the development of a cycle of care by heritage homeowners.</p>


Author(s):  
Peter Futo

This is an interesting and coherent book which offers a specific interpretation of Brexit by examining the political discourse and investigating its linguistic and rhetoric context. The author applies the method of critical discourse analysis, which links the micro analysis of speech acts (speeches, public statements, political adverts, and interviews) with a macro approach that critically assesses the relationship between speech acts and the historical and socio-economic profile of Britain. The Brexit debate is used as a case study to demonstrate that power is embodied in discourse and knowledge, and that sophisticated verbal constructs are capable of manipulating a range of dispositions, emotions, and identities to the extreme.


Author(s):  
Juliane House ◽  
Dániel Kádár ◽  
Victor Leontyev

The present paper is based on an interview, conducted by Victor V. Leontyev with Juliane House and Dániel Z. Kádár. It provides an overview of a new theory in pragmatics, namely, Ritual Frame Indicating Expressions (RFIEs). This theory provides a bottom-up and corpus-based approach to the study of various pragmatically important expressions through which the participants of an interaction indicate their awareness of the Ritual Frame underlying the interaction. 'Ritual Frame' encompasses a cluster of standard situations in which the rights and obligations of the participants are clearly defined. The corpus-based RFIE approach complements sociopragmatic approaches to various expression types, including so-called 'politeness markers', honorifics, forms of address and so on, and it also helps us to systematically capture the relationship between expressions and speech acts. In studying RFIEs, the analyst focuses on the ways in which RFIEs spread across various standard situations. The study of this issue also allows the researcher to contrastively examine the use of RFIEs across linguacultures. Such contrastive research helps us to unearth major linguacultural differences. For example, the research of J. House and D.Z. Kádár has revealed that while in East Asian linguacultures such as Chinese RFIEs tend to be strongly associated with a particular speech act, this relationship is casual in Western linguacultures.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Imogen Stockwell

<p>Following the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes, earthquake strengthening is one of the biggest issues facing heritage buildings in New Zealand. This process is mainly affecting commercial and public buildings; residential buildings are generally exempt from earthquake-prone building policies. However, some homeowners are choosing to do what is often perceived to be an expensive and time-consuming process. This research explores whether there is a heritage relationship between the homeowner and their house that motivates conservation work, such as earthquake strengthening. The central question for this research is: “What makes a heritage house a home? Is “home” a motivation for owners to earthquake strengthen their building? a case study of Dunedin”.  The relationship between homeowners and the heritage of their homes and domestic conservations practices has been underexamined in heritage studies in New Zealand. The current dissertation addresses this problem and contributes to the literature of Museum and Heritage Studies. The theoretical framework employed in this research draws on the field of Critical Heritage Studies in order to explore the relationship between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up heritage’, the notion of ‘peoples-based’ heritage, the value of intangible heritage and a cycle of care. This research utilised qualitative research methods, involving the interviewing three heritage homeowners and two heritage professionals. These provided detailed findings about homeowners’ perceptions of their houses and the interaction between heritage practitioners and homeowners. The southern city of Dunedin was the case study which framed this research, because it has a rich collection of heritage buildings and a council which has been proactive in encouraging earthquake strengthening.  It was found that the heritage homeowner’s relationship with their home played a role in conservation how decisions are undertaken and that there is a lack of outreach from heritage authorities to heritage homeowners. This research provides information about the nature of the interaction between top-down and bottom-up heritage, and how this relationship can lead to positive heritage outcomes. Recommendations include developing open channels of communication between officials and homeowners, increased acknowledgement of the homeowner’s role in the conservation practice, and the establishment of a concept of Domestic Heritage to assist within the development of a cycle of care by heritage homeowners.</p>


Meridians ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-201
Author(s):  
Alyssa Garcia

Abstract In 1961, several mass organizations in Cuba collaborated as Fidel Castro launched a national campaign against prostitution. By 1965, only four years later, the Revolution proclaimed “the elimination of prostitution” in Cuba. This article examines the Cuban Revolution’s national campaign to end prostitution as a case study to investigate how gender and patriarchy affect the ways social change is operationalized. Interested in the relationship between social and cultural change, following the tradition of feminist historians, this article utilizes the oral histories of two Cuban federada women involved in the State’s campaign to consider how the Revolution’s macro program was implemented and carried out at micro level. The narratives of these local agents in the everyday spaces of the campaign provide a bottom-up lens which can be juxtaposed with the Revolution’s proclaimed “success.” These testimonios detail how gender and patriarchy played out on the ground, limiting the campaign’s efforts toward social change, therefore demonstrating the tensions and contradictions of how social change is exercised within human agency and constraint.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 131-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sevda Clark

This article offers an analysis of the child’s right to be heard under Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its application in Norway, through a case study of bullying. The methodology combines a “top-down” legal interpretation of Article 12 in addition to an analysis of Section 9a of the <em>Education Act</em>, juxtaposed with bottom-up approaches. First, a legal analysis of Article 12 and the General Comments of the Convention on the Rights of the Child Committee is provided, with a view to demonstrating the strength of the connection between agency and voice. Looking from the bottom up, therefore, the article then pursues the voices of the bullied children themselves. It places its ear to the ground, so to speak, through an examination of complaints submitted by children to the Ombudsman for Children, in order to “hear” the voices of children subjected to bullying at school, before they are formulated in legal terms before judicial bodies. Finally, I offer a close reading of the report on Section 9a commissioned by the Norwegian Government, published in a 2015 Report (the “Djupedal Report”) in tandem with the leading Supreme Court 2012 decision on bullying, so as to critically examine the fulfilment of Article 12 in Norway. In the final analysis, I argue that in Norwegian bullying cases, though the child has the legal right to be heard, there is no voice, due to the limitations of legal agency for children pursuant to Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.


Author(s):  
Kristina Dietz

The article explores the political effects of popular consultations as a means of direct democracy in struggles over mining. Building on concepts from participatory and materialist democracy theory, it shows the transformative potentials of processes of direct democracy towards democratization and emancipation under, and beyond, capitalist and liberal democratic conditions. Empirically the analysis is based on a case study on the protests against the La Colosa gold mining project in Colombia. The analysis reveals that although processes of direct democracy in conflicts over mining cannot transform existing class inequalities and social power relations fundamentally, they can nevertheless alter elements thereof. These are for example the relationship between local and national governments, changes of the political agenda of mining and the opening of new spaces for political participation, where previously there were none. It is here where it’s emancipatory potential can be found.


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