INVESTIGATING THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT IN THE ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF OGUNDIMU’S A SILLY SEASON

This paper investigates the importance of context in the analysis and interpretation of Ogundimu’sA Silly Season. It aims to describe, analyse and interpret linguistic context, situational context, and cultural context of the production of speech events in A Silly Season. Basing on a descriptive survey method relevant passages that require the clarification of contexts for their full understanding have been selected. It has been contended that the description of the linguistic context of the highlighted lexical items has helped determine who the speakers and hearers are in terms of the roles they have played either individually or collectively. In the same way, the description of the situational context clarifies the circumstances in which the speech events take root and even helps disambiguate ambiguous sentences. The description of the cultural context of words and expressions used has helped contend that the author values Yoruba culture and tradition.

Wutreden und andere invektive Gattungen zwischen Rekonstruktion und Aneignung

This paper deals with ‘Wutreden’ (rants) as an invective genre in digital media. It is argued that the generic aspects of rants are not due to the formal and functional features of the speech events alone, but should be described as the result of the practices of doing genre. Digital media with its affordances to recontextualization and serialization allow to reframe disparate speech events as instances of one generic scheme. As a result, the emerging concept of rants as a genre enables the production of new instances. In order to grasp this genre in the making, a discursive concept of genre is needed, which then can also be applied to other invective genres such as shitstorms and hate facts.

Analisi cognitiva degli eventi di parola sul coronavirus SARS-COV 2 e sul morbo COVID-19

The purpose of this paper is to perform a brief cognitive analysis of speech events containing information about the coronavirus SARS-COV 2 and the disease its causes, COVID-19. As the author acknowledges primacy of cognitive linguistics research tools towards explanation of how language is used and how the extralinguistic reality is perceived, the object of research comprises M Johnson and G. Lakoff’s conceptual metaphors, which are to be extracted among seven chosen articles derived from the digital version of the Italian journal La Stampa. The results of such performed research should deliver a list of structural, ontological and orientative metaphors, which, in this context, are not just pure eristic speech figures but mental constructs which indicate people’s way of reasoning and of conceptualizing the surrounding extralinguistic world, in this case the pandemic situation affecting us all.

Managing information, interaction and team building in nurse shift-change handovers

Whilst there is a wealth of literature on medical handovers, discourse analytic work based on recorded interactional data on these pivotal speech events in health care is less prevalent. This case study of a shift-change nursing handover at a UK hospital Medical Assessment Unit (MAU) takes a microanalytical perspective on nurses’ talk and interaction, which enables us to examine its structural and functional complexity at utterance level. Our methodological approach comprises observations, one semi-structured interview with senior nursing staff (and many informal conversations with various staff), and in total twelve audio-recordings of interactions during, and around, the twice-daily shift-change handovers. By adopting ‘a multiple goals in discourse’ perspective and the framework of activity analysis, we demonstrate the nurses’ interactional management of multiple discourse and activity roles and pursuance of goals that transcend the medically and institutionally crucial transmission of information. This shows the nurses’ orientation to the handover task as not only a structured institutionally regulated event, but also one that tolerates more spontaneous activities that can potentially contribute to team cohesion and staff well-being.

Rethinking Maltese English as a continuum of sociolinguistic continua through evaluations of written and oral prompts

Scientific literature has tackled Maltese English (MaltE) mainly in the framework of World Englishes in order to focus on its features compared to other varieties of English around the world. In this paper we shed more light on MaltE by proposing a sociolinguistic perspective, oriented towards its social stratification, and by referring to it through degrees of linguistic competence in English. We therefore propose two continua of variation: MaltE as an L2 continuum and as a situational one. Within this framework, we identify two groups defined as Mainly Maltese Speakers (MMS) and Mainly English Speakers (MES). We suggest that MaltE can be interpreted both as an L2, and as a variety used according to speech events, domain, participants, in-groupness etc. To investigate this we carried out a perceptual experiment involving two groups of university students, specialising in Maltese and English respectively. We discuss the results based on ratings and evaluations of authentic MaltE written and spoken prompts.

Brain Networks Detectable by fMRI during On-Line Self Report of Hallucinations in Schizophrenia

An analysis of an internationally shared functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data involving healthy participants and schizophrenia patients extracted brain networks involved in listening to radio speech and capture hallucination experiences. A multidimensional analysis technique demonstrated that for radio-speech sound files, a brain network matching known auditory perception networks emerged, and importantly, displayed speech-duration-dependent hemodynamic responses (HDRs), confirming fMRI detection of these speech events. In the hallucination-capture data, although a sensorimotor (response) network emerged, it did not show hallucination-duration-dependent HDRs. We conclude that although fMRI retrieved the brain network involved in generating the motor responses indicating the start and end of an experienced hallucination, the hallucination event itself was not detected. Previous reports on brain networks detected by fMRI during hallucination capture is reviewed in this context.

Media events, speech events and propagandistic techniques of legitimation: a multimodal analysis of the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ public addresses on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

The increased information need after the outburst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to the enhanced role of public addresses and press conferences that can broadcast important information simultaneously to a large number of people through a number of different media outlets (TV, radio, internet). Thus, government leaders worldwide have opted for the frequent broadcast of public addresses, reviving the rationale of media events as a way to disseminate their messages concerning the pandemic as widely as possible. The current paper focuses on the Greek case, scrutinizing the public addresses of the Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis in terms of both structural and content characteristics. Through the use of multimodal analysis, we figure out the visual and linguistic characteristics in K. Mitsotakis public addresses. At the same time, we setup a research framework for the qualitative and quantitative examination of similar public addresses in various countries, by combining the theories of media events, propaganda, and linguistic techniques of political legitimization. Our main findings suggest that K. Mitsotakis in his public addresses has made use of direct visual and verbal connections to aspects of “Greekness” in a nation-centric rationale. He relies predominantly on the evocation of positive sentiments and rationalization (as a means of legitimization), in order to achieve political benefits by incorporating the management of the pandemic into the Greek government’s nationalist agenda.

LINGUISTIC CORRELATION OF PRIMARY TEXT AND ITS VERBAL REPRODUCTION IN THE INTERROGATION PROTOCOL

Problem statement. The article deals with the problem of modern linguo-expert activity related to the use of interrogation protocols as a material carrier of negative-evaluative information about a person. The variability of expert views regarding the possibility of analyzing someone else’s speech in the interrogation protocol more and more often entails the lack of expert assessment of the materi-als of the preliminary investigation in criminal cases. The purpose of the study is to establish the nature of the relationship and the degree of approxi-mation of the primary and secondary texts, where the primary text is recorded on the phonogram, the secondary one is reproduced in the interrogation protocol from the words of the interrogated. The research methodology consists of theoretical approaches to the comparative analysis of the prototypical utterance and its secondary form. The material of the research is video and audio recordings of speech events of insult, as well as interrogation protocols, the descriptive part of which contains information about the recorded conflict speech. Research results. The study showed the maximum degree of formal-semantic affinity of the texts serving as the basis and their verbal reproductions, reflected in the interrogation protocols. The inter-rogation protocol also reproduces important paralinguistic characteristics of the voice of the person to whom the invective evaluative statements belong. Conclusions. The results obtained in the course of the study can be used in developing guidelines for experts involved in the analysis of speech material extracted from the interrogation protocol, as well as other indirect sources of information about expert objects. The proposed system of under-standing broadens understanding of secondary texts as objects of research within the framework of forensic linguistic expertise.

Patterns and perspectives shape perceptions: Epistemological and methodological reflections on the study of small-scale multilingualism

Aims and objectives: This paper captures social dimensions of language in highly diverse small-scale multilingual contexts that appear to pose challenges for (socio)linguistic description and documentation. I focus on the seeming contradiction of monolingual imaginations of places with heterogeneous and multilingual inhabitants, on great fluidity and variability of language use and the concomitant limits of reification-based identification of codes, and on personalised repertoires shaped by individual trajectories and relational, rather than categorical, stances. Approach: I propose patterns and perspectives as two interrelated dimensions to guide research in configurations of this kind, illustrating epistemological and methodological points through data from multilingual settings in Casamance, Senegal. Data and analysis: I focus on data collected in the village of Agnack Grand and its surroundings, but also include data from across the Lower Casamance and adjacent regions of Guinea-Bissau, discussing patterns of multilingual organisation and extracts from conversation and how their speech forms are categorised. Findings: The paper brings sociohistorical dimensions of small-scale multilingualism to the fore and identifies their lasting influences on spatial representations of language regimes. Linguistic spaces influence perspectives on speech events taking place in them and circumscribe speech participants’ and observers’ choices in describing repertoires, producing and analysing speech forms. Beyond the selection of language modes, perspective also determines how speech forms are categorised. I demonstrate that the patterns speakers and observers have experienced and the perspectives they assume are decisive in shaping their perception. Originality: My central observation is that there is no objective, neutral viewpoint on (multilingual) speech, but that positionality frames it at all levels. I develop new epistemologies for studying these dimensions. Significance: Putting the categorisation processes employed by speakers and observers and their underlying motivations centre stage and integrating sociolinguistic and anthropological linguistic methods and historical knowledge into linguistic description and documentation constitutes an innovative research programme.

Politeness Strategy Used By Clothes Vendors At Tradional Market Pasar Bojong

The aim of this research was to know the politeness strategy used by clothes vendor at traditional market Pasar Bojong. The method of this research is descriptive qualitative approach. This researcher conducted on April 2021. In collecting the data, the researcher used observation and interview. The researcher recorded 5 speech events and utterances of 5 different respondents as the populations and samples of this research. Interview used to support the data. The result of this research shows that language used by most of clothes vendors was Sudanese, and they tend to use negative politeness than positive politeness of Sudanese language.