The Limits of Meaning

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Traditional Conception ◽  
Traditional Account ◽  
Special Circumstances ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between theories of linguistic meaning and theories of language use. This problem—widely known as that of the “semantics–pragmatics interface”—is the focus of intense contemporary investigation. At issue is whether the traditional conception of the relationship between meaning and use can survive. According to that conception, the semantic content of a sentence in context is always a proposition, which, special circumstances aside, is both asserted by utterances of the sentence in the context, and itself the source of whatever subsidiary assertions may result. Problems are posed for this conception, based on a wide variety of expressions, constructions, and uses of sentences. Solutions are sought by comparing semantic analyses defending the traditional account with those challenging it. The chapter defends an emerging conception of the relationship between meaning and use, according to which the meaning of a sentence is a set of constraints on what normal uses of it assert, or express.

Die Macht der Bilder und Bilder der Macht: die sprachliche Konstruktion von Nationalismus und Konservatismus in der strategischen politischen Kommunikation von Vox España

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 538-566
Author(s):  
Sandra Issel-Dombert
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
The Media ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractFrom a theoretical and empirical linguistic point of view, this paper emphasizes the importance of the relationship between populism and the media. The aim of this article is to explore the language use of the Spanish right wing populism party Vox on the basis of its multimodal postings on the social network Instagram. For the analysis of their Instagram account, a suitable multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) provides a variety of methods and allows a theoretical integration into constructivism. A hashtag-analysis reveals that Vox’s ideology consists of a nativist and ethnocentric nationalism on the one hand and conservatism on the other. With a topos analysis, the linguistic realisations of these core elements are illustrated with two case studies.

scholarly journals Sprachnormbezogene Akkommodation in der Hochschullehre

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-62
Author(s):  
Philip C. Vergeiner
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
Standard Variety ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Rule Analysis ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper examines the relationship between accommodation processes and social norms in varietal choice within tertiary education in Austria. The investigation consists of (a) a content analysis of metalinguistic statements in semi-structured interviews and (b) a variable rule analysis of actual language variation in university lectures.The findings show that there are norms prescribing that listeners must have at least be able to comprehend a particular variety, whereas accommodation to actual language use does not appear to be required to the same extent. However, the norms depend strongly on group membership: while there is a norm prescribing the use of the standard variety in the presence of speakers of German as a foreign language, there is no such norm for Austrians vis-à-vis people from Germany, although speakers from both groups may lack the ability to understand the respective nonstandard varieties. This difference can be explained by the sociocultural context and differing language attitudes.

scholarly journals Inclusion, Contrast and Polysemy in Dictionaries: The Relationship between Theory, Language Use and Lexicographic Practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-340
Author(s):  
Anu Koskela
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
National Corpus

This paper explores the lexicographic representation of a type of polysemy that arises when the meaning of one lexical item can either include or contrast with the meaning of another, as in the case of dog/bitch, shoe/boot, finger/thumb and animal/bird. A survey of how such pairs are represented in monolingual English dictionaries showed that dictionaries mostly represent as explicitly polysemous those lexical items whose broader and narrower readings are more distinctive and clearly separable in definitional terms. They commonly only represented the broader readings for terms that are in fact frequently used in the narrower reading, as shown by data from the British National Corpus.  

scholarly journals Illness perception and high readmission health outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 205510291984450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda T Sawyer ◽  
Stephanie L Harris ◽  
Harold G Koenig
Keyword(s):  
Health Outcomes ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Hospital Readmissions ◽  
Illness Perception ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
Multifaceted Approach ◽  
The Relationship

This review identified associations between illness perception and health outcomes of patients with a medical diagnosis included in the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. Inclusion criteria were English language, use of quantitative methodology, health outcomes specified, and identifiable effect size and statistical significance of the relationship. Most of the 31 studies in this review showed that favorable illness perception has been associated with better health outcomes, while unfavorable illness perception has been associated with worse outcomes. A multifaceted approach might include behavioral, clinical, educational, and psychosocial components to improve one’s illness perception through educative, cognitive-behavioral, or psychodynamic counseling.

Uzbek re-modeled

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-333
Author(s):  
Lydia Catedral
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Planning ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Semantic Classes ◽  
Unique Approach ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This study investigates the relationship between Russian language use and language planning in the context of newly independent, post-soviet Uzbekistan (1991–1992). It is guided by the question: In what ways does the use of Russian loanwords in Uzbek language newspapers accomplish language planning in newly independent Uzbekistan? The main finding from this analysis is that post-independence use of Russian loanwords from particular semantic classes in particular contexts reinforce overtly stated ideologies about Russian and construct difference between soviet Uzbekistan and independent Uzbekistan. These findings demonstrate the need to reexamine the role of Russian language in post-soviet contexts, and they contribute a unique approach to analyzing links between lexical items and ideology in language planning.

scholarly journals OS SENTIDOS ENTRE O VERBAL E O NÃO VERBAL

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilderlândio Assis de Andrade Nascimento ◽  
Pedro Farias Francelino
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Compositional Structure ◽  
Magazine Covers ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Dialogic Theory ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Speech Content ◽  
Magazine Cover

Este trabalho objetiva analisar a inter-relação entre elementos verbais e não verbais na construção de sentidos do enunciado capa de revista, evidenciando aspectos sócio-político-ideológicos que instauram o conteúdo do discurso e que se materializam em palavras, cores, imagens, gestos, traços. Para isso, analisa-se o enunciado da capa da revista Veja de 27 de novembro de 2013, que discorre sobre a prisão dos condenados no processo do Mensalão. Mobilizam-se, para essa investigação, os pressupostos teórico-metodológicos do Círculo de Bakhtin e os estudos realizados no âmbito da Análise/Teoria Dialógica do Discurso. A análise mostra que os sentidos do enunciado capa de revista são construídos a partir da relação de interdependência e de complementaridade entre a linguagem verbal e não verbal. O enunciado capa de revista é palco do encontro entre vozes em que o estilo, a construção composicional, o conteúdo semântico-objetal desse enunciado é construído a partir do encontro entre discursos. Abstract: This work aims to analyze the interrelationship between verbal and non-verbal elements at magazine covers, evidencing socio-political-ideological aspects that stablish the speech content that materialize in words, colors, images, gestures, traces. For this, we analyze the utterance from Veja, magazine cover from November 27, 2013, which discusses the imprisonment of convicted in the Mensalão process. We mobilize to this research the theoretical and methodological assumptions from Bakhtin Circle and studies under Analysis/Dialogic Theory of Speech. The analysis shows that the meanings of the utterance are constructed from the relationship of interdependence and complementarity between the verbal and nonverbal. Thus, Magazine cover utterance is like a stage in which, voices, style, compositional structure and objectal-semantic content is built from the meeting between speeches.

scholarly journals Finding One’s Place in a Host Space: A Small-Scale Study of Cultural Integration and Language Maintenance Among Croatian Immigrants in Canada

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-76
Author(s):  
Sanja Škifić ◽  
Antonia Strika
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cognitive Perspectives ◽  
Insight Into

This paper focuses on sociocultural and language-related issues among Croatian immigrants in Canada. It presents the results of thestudy conducted from November 2018 to February 2019 among Croatian immigrants of different generations in Ontario and British Columbia. Questions included in the questionnaire refer to different aspects of participants’ identity and their (families’) immigration, as well as issues related to their attitudes towards the homeland and engagement in Croatian associations in Canada. Participants were asked to provide feedback on their language acquisition, competence and use, as well as evaluations of the importance of the Croatian language for their identity. The questionnaire also contained questions related to participants’ language use from emotional and cognitive perspectives. Conclusions drawn on the basis of the collected data provide an insight into Croatian immigrants’ language use, the extent of cultural integration and language maintenance, and their attitudes towards the relationship between identity and language.

scholarly journals The Sea and the Kingfisher of Bui Ngoc Tan: on the perspective of sociocriticism

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. First
Author(s):  
Nguyen Thi Thao Ngan
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Working Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Special Circumstances ◽  
The Relationship

“The Sea and the Kingfisher” (French: La Mer et le martin-pêcheur) is a special novel written by Bui Ngoc Tan. This work is not only the pride of contemporary Vietnamese literature in general and Hai Phong literature in particular when it won the Henri Queffenlec Award in France in 2012; but also the stamp of the author's journey "resurrection of the dead", after more than 5 years of imprisonment and 20 years of torture of reading and writing. Because of his special circumstances, social change is always reflected in Bui Ngoc Tan’s work. “The Sea and the Kingfisher” is the same as a little cosmos, a panoramic discourse reflecting all of the love and sorrow of a generation having to face so many incidents and ideological conflicts. Above all of the limited literature, “The Sea and the Kingfisher” is a worthy writing. This is seen as a realistic novel, straight and steady, which exposes a world that is still deep in darkness, beneath the golden and glamorous slogan. There are honest people buried deep in the bottom, crumpled and writhed, silently alive, and silently dead. "Belles-lettres" of Bui Ngoc Tan, is a chord of many "words" that were invoked from thousands and thousands of lives of anonymity in the same era. It is both pristine, bitter, and a sigh of pain, laden with deep thoughts. It's also the crystallization of the love of life and faith, thus the aspiration of social transformation. Using the sociocriticism, the writer focuses on researching the relationship between life and the working life of Bui Ngoc Tan through his works. And then, we will reach a deeper understanding of the value of Bui Ngoc Tan's literary heritage, the morality or the self-consciousness of the writer's social role, and the aspirations to improve society by literature that he cherished all life.

Linguistic Integration and Immigrant Health: The Longitudinal Effects of Interethnic Social Capital

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mesay A. Tegegne
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Health Status ◽  
Immigrant Health ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Linguistic Integration ◽  
The Relationship

The literature on immigrant health has by and large focused on the relationship between acculturation (often measured by a shift in language use) and health outcomes, paying less attention to network processes and the implications of interethnic integration for long-term health. This study frames English-language use among immigrants in the United States as a reflection of bridging social capital that is indicative of social network diversity. Using longitudinal data on self-rated health and the incidence of chronic conditions from the New Immigrant Survey (2003, 2007), I examine the contemporaneous and longitudinal associations between interethnic social capital and health. The results show evidence for a positive long-term effect of linguistic integration on health status, but no cross-sectional associations were observed. Overall, these results highlight the possible role of network processes in linking English-language use with immigrant health and the time-dependent nature of the relationship between linguistic integration and health status.

An investigation into the relationship of foreign language learning motivation and sign language use among Deaf and hard of hearing Hungarians

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edit H. Kontra ◽  
Kata Csizér
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Hard Of Hearing ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Learning Motivation ◽  
Language Learning Motivation ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The aim of this study is to point out the relationship between foreign language learning motivation and sign language use among hearing impaired Hungarians. In the article we concentrate on two main issues: first, to what extent hearing impaired people are motivated to learn foreign languages in a European context; second, to what extent sign language use in the classroom as well as outside school shapes their level of motivation. The participants in our research were 331 Deaf and hard of hearing people from all over Hungary. The instrument of data collection was a standardized questionnaire. Our results support the notion that sign language use helps foreign language learning. Based on the findings, we can conclude that there is indeed no justification for further neglecting the needs of Deaf and hard of hearing people as foreign language learners and that their claim for equal opportunities in language learning is substantiated.

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