The pragmatic potential of interjections in speech

Рассматриваются вопросы, отражающие механизмы реализации иллокутивной функции междометий, связанной с коммуникативным воздействием на адресата речи. Цель заключается в определении коммуникативного статуса междометий во французском языке и выявлении особенностей их функционирования в речи. Материалом послужили французские эмоциональные междометия в художественных произведениях французских авторов. Представленный фактический материал соотносится с теоретическими аспектами исследования и служит базой для обоснования выводов: одно и то же местоимение может выражать самые разные оттенки эмоциональных и ментальных состояний говорящего в зависимости от контекста и своего звукового оформления. Методика исследования основывается на контекстуальном анализе и методе визуализации просодических средств. Результаты исследования имеют теоретическое значение, заключающееся в выявлении прагматического потенциала междометий в речи персонажей французской художественной прозы. Полученные данные могут найти применение в процессе преподавания французского языка в курсах интерпретации художественного текста и грамматики. This work discusses the issues reflecting the mechanisms for implementing the illocutionary function of interjections related to the communicative impact on the recipient of speech. The aim is to determine the communicative status of interjections in French and to identify their functioning in speech. The material was the French emotional interjections in the artistic works of French authors. The actual material presented correlates with the theoretical aspects of the study and serves as a basis for substantiating the conclusions: the same pronoun can express a variety of shades of the emotional and mental states of the speaker, depending on the context and its sound design. The research methodology is based on contextual analysis and the method of visualization of prosodical means. The results of the study have a theoretical significance, which is to identify the pragmatic potential of interjections in the speech of the characters of French fiction. The findings can be used in the process of teaching French in courses for interpreting literary text and grammar.

ARCHITECTONICS OF TRADITIONAL AND DISTANT EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

The concept of “architectonics of the educational process” should be one of the key concepts when the traditional and distant educational processes are compared. This is the main systemic view of the educational process to be discussed in this article. The research shows that the differences between the traditional educational process and the distance one can be analyzed, in particular, from the standpoint of such a phenomenon as a “didactic communicative impact” of the teacher on the trainees.

Problems of Perception of Linguistic Landscape

The article describes the problems of perception of linguistic landscape. The concept of linguistic landscape is clarified, its components are described, and the communicative impact of the urban environment on a person is evaluated. The author identifies the communicative factors and linguocultural elements of the linguistic landscape. The communicative elements of the urban environment are analyzed on the example of Kaliningrad region photo materials collected in the framework of the scientific project "Linguistic landscape as a mechanism of state policy: socio-cultural and communicative aspects".

Exploring metaphor’s effects in reasoning on vaccination

The paper investigates the impact of the use of metaphors in reasoning tasks concerning vaccination, especially for defeasible reasoning cases. We assumed that both metaphor and defeasible reasoning can be relevant to let people understand vaccination as an important collective health phenomenon, by anticipating possible defeating conditions. We hypothesized that extended metaphor could improve both the argumentative and the communicative effects of the message. We designed an empirical study to test our main hypotheses: participants were presented with a text about vaccination, described in either literal or metaphorical terms, based on uncertain vs. safe reasoning scenarios. The results of the study confirmed that defeasible reasoning is relevant for the communicative impact of a text and that an extended metaphor enhances the overall communicative effects of the message, in terms of understandability, persuasion, perceived safety and feeling of control over the health situation, collective trust in expertise and uptake of experts’ advice. However, the results show that this effect is significantly nuanced by the type of defeasible reasoning, especially in the case of participant’s trust in expertise and commitment to experts’ advice.

The Form and Communicative Impact of Shona Postproverbials

This article explores the syntax-semantics nexus of Shona postproverbials in the contemporary Zimbabwean society. In terms of syntax, Shona postproverbials are aligned to the following types of sentences found in the Shona language; substantival, verbal, and a combination of both. Like traditional proverbs, there is no postproverbial that takes the form of the ideophonic sentence. The communicative power of postproverbials is an inherent, inbuilt, and internal property stemming from their syntactic and lexical properties. The postproverbial forms, studied in this article, exhibit innovation and ingenuity of the users. The communicative force of the postproverbials arises from the correspondence and cross-correspondence of the structures and grammatical items that constitute them. Congruence and contrast of the lexical items found in the postproverbials also contribute to meanings. The study established that, just like the traditional proverbs, postproverbials are pithy and terse philosophical statements that resonate with a people’s collective experience. In most cases, the postproverbials provide a conduit for people to comment on issues regarded as politically ‘taboo’ and sensitive in a society where the state does not tolerate open criticism.

Lexical and stylistic means of the texts of election debates as one of the ways of communicative impact upon electorate

This article is dedicated to the description of results acquired in the course of conducting lexical-semantic analysis of the texts of televised election debates. Speech of the candidates of the head of the Fifth Republic in the course of election campaigns of 2012 and 2017 served as the material for this study. The goal lies in examination of the ways of influencing the potential voters using the linguistic means. The authors carried out e lexical-semantic-stylistic analysis of research material, as well as explored substantive structure of the selected texts. The article also analyzes content of the speech of televised election debates, presented by the combination of the conveyed explicit and implicit information. The work also includes a summary table that demonstrates nuclear lexemes of the juxtaposed semantic complexes of texts. The results obtained in the course of lexical-semantic-stylistic analysis confirm the authors’ assumption that the texts of televised election debates contain semantic dichotomies that are one of the ways of influencing the electorate.

Drivers of Disrupted Communication

This chapter opens part 3, within which the focus is a new understanding of why communication is challenging in the dementia context and how improvements could be made to practice. The Communicative Impact model is used to shed light on how the various ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ causes of dementia interact with the generation of messages, and why failing to achieve the intended change in one’s world negatively affects one’s confidence and self-esteem. Attention is paid to the high risk of a mismatch of contextual information between people living with a dementia and their interlocutors (communication partners). The many ways in which either party can attempt to fix communication problems is then considered, noting that such solutions can create additional problems, one of which is awkward pragmatic gaps, where the speaker is not sure why an issue has arisen and, thus, how to respond. Finally, brief consideration is given to similarities between communicating with people living with a dementia and people using a second language in which they are not fully proficient.

Communication Processes

This chapter begins part 2 of the book, in which a new model of communication is developed. The chapter asks how impact is achieved through communication and proposes that the core driver of communication with others is the desire to enlist their cooperation in making beneficial change to our experiential world. The Communicative Impact model has three components: Context, Resources, and Processing, with Context, including shared knowledge, playing the central role in enabling speakers to pitch their communication appropriately for the intended effect. The role of the hearer is also considered, and discussion commences on why hearers tolerate being used by speakers in this way.