Language use and the social affordances of marriage

2021 ◽  
pp. 255-270
Author(s):  
Nikki DiGregorio
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bergs

Abstract This paper focuses on the micro-analysis of historical data, which allows us to investigate language use across the lifetime of individual speakers. Certain concepts, such as social network analysis or communities of practice, put individual speakers and their social embeddedness and dynamicity at the center of attention. This means that intra-speaker variation can be described and analyzed in quite some detail in certain historical data sets. The paper presents some exemplary empirical analyses of the diachronic linguistic behavior of individual speakers/writers in fifteenth to seventeenth century England. It discusses the social factors that influence this behavior, with an emphasis on the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities when investigating intra-speaker variation and change.


Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fan Min

Abstract As the representative of Chinese classical works, the Analects represents a source of difficulty in both understanding and interpretation of Confucian philosophy. Confucian philosophy as a philosophy of creativity and otherness is closely related with the social and cultural values in society. Therefore, the study of Confucian philosophy in the Analects cannot be separated from the descriptive study of the effects of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, contexts, language use, and the effects of language use on society. This article attempts to explore how the meaning of Confucian philosophy in the Analects is interpreted and accepted by Western readers through complex social semiotic interactions. The article focuses on the interpretation of Confucian philosophy as a reflection of cultural assumptions, values and prohibitions, and the manipulation of the social semiotic resources in the process of understanding, translation, and acceptance of Confucian philosophy in the Analects through a discussion of its original text, different versions and the reasons behind the social semiotic activities. The article concludes with a consideration of significant social semiotic interactions that influence the translator’s interpretation and reader’s acceptance of Confucian philosophy so as to facilitate intercultural understanding.


2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 538-566
Author(s):  
Sandra Issel-Dombert

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Abigail S. Walsh

Television is a strong educational and socializing agent for children. Watching television can teach children appropriate language and vocabulary to use, as well as the social norms about gender behaviors or activities. Previous research on gender representations in children’s television has been limited to studying male and female characters because children’s programming has historically presented audiences with cisgender characters (e.g., boy and girls). Recently, television shows aimed at children have provided audiences with nonbinary and gender-diverse characters. This study is the first exploratory content analysis, to my knowledge, to examine the portrayal and representation of nonbinary and gender-diverse characters in children’s television. The current study examined the gender-neutral pronoun and gendered language use toward nonbinary and gender-diverse characters, as well as the portrayal of these characters as leaders, and with special skills in Adventure Time and Steven Universe. Overall, nonbinary and gender-diverse characters were portrayed as strong, positive, characters, and were represented similarly to their cisgender counterparts. This represents a promising shift toward more inclusive and equitable television representation, which may lead to the acceptance and appropriate use of gender-neutral pronouns toward peers by cisgender children, and the feeling of visibility and validation by nonbinary children. Future research should examine the impacts of these characters on viewers. RELEVANCE STATEMENT: As children’s television becomes more diverse it has the potential to positively impact the lives of cisgender (e.g., boys and girls) and nonbinary children. Because television has the potential to influence young children, gender-diverse representations in children’s television may lead to children developing more accepting attitudes and behaviors toward nonbinary peers.


2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-192
Author(s):  
Rita Akele Twumasi

Death is part of human existence. When a person hears the news of someone’s death, it is very common for that person to express their feelings about it. This feeling is in the form of condolences which express the speaker’s sorrow, and condolences fall into the category of speech act. Semantically, condolences have a social meaning which refers to language use. Identities are created in relationships with others, and condolences are major platforms for the construction of identities, in that, existing relationships are, clearly, manifested in the messages that sympathizers expressed. Using a qualitative approach, the study analyzed twenty condolence messages which were purposely sampled from condolence messages posted in the portals of International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), when one of its members passed away. The analysis of the data revealed two main identity types enacted for the deceased: role identity and Social Identity. The major Role identity enacted, metaphorically, was Father while the least role was Achiever. Second, identity as an International Figure was dominant with the Social roles, but Good Personality was used less frequently. The present study adds to studies in identity construction, in general, and studies in condolence messages, in specific.


1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (01) ◽  
pp. 10-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Edelman

The most incisive twentieth century students of language converge from different premises on the conclusion that language is the key creator of the social worlds people experience, and they agree as well that language cannot usefully be understood as a tool for describing an objective reality. For the later Wittgenstein there are no essences, only language games. Chomsky analyzes the sense in which grammar is generative. For Derrida all language is performative, a form of action that undermines its own presuppositions. Foucault sees language as antedating and constructing subjectivity. The “linguistic turn” in twentieth century philosophy, social psychology, and literary theory entails an intellectual ferment that raises fundamental questions about a great deal of mainstream political science, and especially about its logical positivist premises.While the writers just mentioned analyze various senses in which language use is an aspect of creativity, those who focus upon specifically political language are chiefly concerned with its capacity to reflect ideology, mystify, and distort. The more perspicacious of them deny that an undistorting language is possible in a social world marked by inequalities in resources and status, though the notion of an undistorted language can be useful as an evocation of an ideal benchmark. The emphasis upon political language as distorting or mystifying is a key theme in Lasswell and Orwell, as it is in Habermas, Osgood, Ellul, Vygotsky, Enzensberger, Bennett, and Shapiro.


2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-130
Author(s):  
Joan Kelly Hall

Traditionally, the study of the social dimensions of interpersonal communication has been separated from the study of the cognitive dimensions. Recent research efforts from both social and cognitive psychology, however, have made apparent the value of integrating both approaches for increasing our understanding of language use. The volume by Fussell and Kreuz is an excellent illustration of these efforts.


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