Linguistic Accommodation

Accommodation is the process whereby a listener makes adjustments in response to behavior of the speaker. In the area of linguistics we might broadly label as theoretical pragmatics, within which we include much of formal semantics and philosophy of language, accommodation is the mechanism whereby hearers modify their representation of the conversational background so as to match assumptions that the speaker has made. The most pervasive type of accommodation involves presupposition, when a speaker takes some type of information for granted. Accommodation of presuppositions occurs when the listener adjusts their knowledge state in order to match the information that a speaker has presupposed. For example, if a speaker says, “I have to go pick up my sister from the airport,” there is a presupposition triggered that the speaker has a sister. If the listener is not already aware of the existence of the sister, they must accommodate this information by adjusting their information state accordingly. Two dominant approaches to modeling presupposition behavior have emerged in the past few decades, resulting in two broad understandings of accommodation. For a class of dynamic semantic theories, accommodation is a process that involves satisfaction in local contexts. On the other hand, a wave of research on presupposition as anaphora relies on a notion of accommodation as the creation of antecedents to enable anaphoric resolution that would otherwise fail. Within both understandings of accommodation, the particular mechanisms can also vary. Some accounts weigh the plausibility of material to be accommodated, some accounts weigh the alternative contexts within which material might be accommodated, and some weigh the amount of descriptive content contributed by the presupposition. Besides accommodation in theoretical pragmatics, a broader notion of accommodation is prominent in sociolinguistics, as well as further afield from linguistics in social psychology and anthropology. This notion includes not only the beliefs of the interlocutors, but also many other aspects of speech style and communicative behavior more generally. This literature primarily draws from communication accommodation theory (CAT), according to which a speaker adjusts their communicative behavior based on that of their interlocuter. Commonly, this adjustment involves mirroring, but interlocutors may also adjust to make differences salient rather than emphasizing similarity. While theoretical pragmatic and sociolinguistic accommodation are distinct notions with independent intellectual histories, presupposition accommodation can be seen as a special case of sociolinguistic accommodation. Both involve a hearer’s adjustment in response to a speaker. However, the former is more restrictive, concerning only adjustment to increase similarity, and only adjustment of aspects of what Lewis termed the conversational scoreboard, within which he includes the beliefs of the speaker and hearer.

Conflict Mobilization in Russian Social Media Communities As an Actual Practice of Protest Communication: Collective and Personal Dimension

From the standpoint of communicative approach conflict mobilization is considered in the article as an actual practice of protest communication in modern Russia. The parameters of the collective-personal dimension of conflict mobilization in the most popular social networks among Russian users: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook are presented. Major forms of social group members online participation in protest actions, interaction means of conflict mobilization communities and the formation of Internet solidarity have been characterized with such criteria as publication volume and frequency. Selective factual and emotional-psychological argumentation with elements of defamation of opponents is concluded to prevail in the communicative behavior of the addresser. Frequent implementation of phatic strategy through consolidating appeals to community members with elements of idealization and glorification of protest actors is revealed. The addresser's self-presentation strategy is noted to be applied rather rarely; it is actualized mainly through their identification with the collective position of the group and the mass addressee. It has been established that the addressee is characterized by active self-presentation through the presentation of a subjective position opposed to a mutual opponent, is distinguished by an appeal to ethical and emotional argumentation, a variety of phatic tactics. The article reveals the relevant language means of implementing the identified strategies, shows the features of the text structure of mobilization posts.

Predicting Communicative Behavior of Higher Institutions Employees during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Conceptual Assessment

Over the last three decades, a series of research has revealed how strategic communication may have a profound effect on how members of society behave. More precisely, communication theories have documented the media's ability to determine the agenda in society. The situational theory of problem-solving is particularly interesting because it explains why and how individual members of society communicate during a problematic situation. This hypothesis has been evaluated in a variety of contexts to determine its efficacy. However, few studies have been conducted to examine the influence of communication from corporations or governments to community members. The character of persons, particularly employees' information seeking and sharing behavior, has been significantly overlooked in the context of COVID-19. The purpose of this study is to investigate theoretically how employees to process, seek, forward, filter, choose, and exchange information regarding COVID 19.

The environmental friendliness of teachers’ communicative behavior in the context of education digitalization

Introduction. The digitalization of the school educational environment predetermined new factors leading to special requirements for all subjects of the educational space. However, this situation did not create a new problem in the “teacher – students” system; it only strengthened the relevance of studying the interaction between teachers and students, taking into account new forms of interaction. The research purpose is to define the environmental friendliness of teachers’ communicative behavior as a condition determining: the achievement of respect for the student’s personality, the teacher’s self-respect, and the creation of a subject-joint and/or subject-generative types of interaction with students. Materials and methods. The study involved 72 teachers and 402 7th-11th grade students of the Moscow general education school. The teachers were offered three methods aimed at studying the characteristics of self-attitude, communicative qualities and the formation of their subjectivity. Students were offered two methods: “Personal resource for subjectivity formation” and “Laziness or reasons for unwillingness to learn”. Research results. The links between the characteristics of self-attitude and the emotional component of communicative characteristics were revealed through the use of the Spearman coefficient: acceptance of the student’s personality with “self-respect” – 0.399*; “self-belief” – 0.344**; “self-control” – 0.382**. The creation of trust relationships, respectively: 0.364**; 0.473**; 0.292**. All values are at * p <0.05; ** p <0.001. Also, connections with universal educational actions (UEAs) and communicative characteristics were identified: communicative UEAs and “the formation of belief in one’s own capabilities in a student” – -0.328; “the ability to refrain from pressure on the student’s personality” – -0.319. Regulatory UEAs were identified in a similar way – -0.412** and -0.304* at p <0.05. Using Fisher’s angular transformation, the authors revealed the links between self-belief and satisfaction with teachers’ attitude among 8th-9th grade students φ*=3.101; respectively, among 10th-11th grade students φ*=3.132 at p <0.01. Discussion and conclusion. The obtained results on the impact of characteristics of the teacher’s self-attitude on the emotional component of interaction with students prove the need to introduce psychological support for teachers’ activities into practice. The teacher’s professional activity as one of the key subjects in education yet remains without the necessary psychological support.

Dynamic characteristics of students’ communicative behavior in social networks

Dynamic characteristics of social networks users' behavior represent the toolkit for diagnosing the character and orientation of cyber communication. This study aims to analyze the communicative behavior of youth after transitioning directly from direct communication to communication via technology for the purpose of defining opportunities and determining manipulation potential on communicants. Sixty-two (62) active participants of social networks were selected to answer the questions of the questionnaire. Further, on the grounds of the provided statistics of their accounts, quantitative characteristics of dynamics of cyber communication of participants' communicative behavior were analyzed using descriptive statistics and r-criterion of Spearman rank correlation. From the results, decrease in the level of intellectual communication of the youth in cyberspace provides a high level of the youth manipulative availability in social networks. Hypotheses about measurability of dynamic characteristics of cyber communication, as well as the communication vector shift from small groups into big ones were confirmed. Keywords: dynamic characteristics of communication, cyber communication, social networks, meme, repost, post.

Dictionary Representation of Linguocultural Stereotypes: Communicative Behavior of Russians in Thematic Dictionary of Proverbs

The article deals with the problem of optimization of the dictionary description of the stereotypes of the Russian linguoculture, reflected by linguistic units, which is relevant for Russian cultural linguistics and lexicography. The possibilities of solving this problem are shown with a thematic vocabulary systematization of proverbs regulating the communicative behavior of Russians. A review of modern linguoculturological and linguoaxiological studies of paremias reflecting communicative behavior in their projection onto lexicographic practice is carried out. The development of the ideas of paremiographers of the 19th century in modern concepts of thematic dictionaries is shown, special attention is paid to the rubrication of sections and methods of commenting on proverbs of speech-behavioral topics. The author’s version of the classification of proverbial material reflecting the communicative behavior of Russians is given, the expediency of the dispersed arrangement of paremias in the headings representing speech genres and features of communication in certain socio-cultural spheres is substantiated. In accordance with this concept, the system of linguoaxiological parameterization of proverbs, developed by the authors earlier, has been modified. Samples of dictionary macrostates representing the axiologems of the speech-behavioral sphere are given; proverbial material of Internet communication that has not been reflected in dictionaries at the moment is used. The possibilities of using the proposed linguoaxiological parameterization of the material in the bilingual thematic dictionary of proverbs are shown.

Ethics and Values in the Digital Environment: by the Example of Parody Videos on TikTok

The ethics of the comic is a relatively new interdisciplinary field of knowledge that is gaining new relevance with the development of a variety of social media. The purpose of this article is to review the existing research and show by examples how ethics and values are closely related to the specific functions of social media, such as distributing parody content and commenting on it. The main focus of our study is a parody which can be defined as communicative behavior in the form of a text, movement, or even a song, imitating the characteristics or behavior of the object being ridiculed. Unlike a literal quotation, a parody reproduces the original in a distorted form for the purpose of mockery. Within this article modern ethical approaches to the evaluation of parody as well as the main functions of parody in the digital environment are considered. Based on the examples of parody videos on TikTok the particular ways of expressing social problems and cultural traumas by using the comic strategies are identified. Furthermore, the issues of algorithmic censorship concerning such videos as well as the problem of the moral autonomy of users are discussed.

A universal framework for vocal interaction

Vocal interaction is an important feature of social behavior across species, however the relation between vocal communication in humans and nonhumans remains unclear. To enable comparative investigations of this topic, we review the literature pertinent to interactive language use and identify the superset of cognitive operations involved in generating communicative behavior. We posit these functions to comprise three multistep pathways: (1) the Content Pathway, which selects the movements constituting a response, (2) the Timing Pathway, which temporally structures responses, and (3) the Affect Pathway, which modulates response parameters as a function of internal state. These processing streams form the basis of the Convergent Pathways for Interaction (CPI) Framework, which can be used to contextualize communicative behaviors across species by identifying specific behavioral and cognitive analogues.

NATIONAL FEATURES OF GENDER CHRONEMIC COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR IN DIFFERENT LINGUA-CULTURES

The article is devoted to the national peculiarities of gender-specific communicative behavior of the British, Uzbeks and Chinese. The author considers the correlation of gender national values of different linguistic cultures in their chronemic behavior with linear and cyclic time models. Gender features affect not only the perception of time by representatives of linguistic cultures, but also the language. It is due to such gender characteristics that the communication of people from different linguistic cultures is largely due to differences in their ideas about time. Representatives of linguistic cultures with a dominant masculine or feminine use of time in the process of communication experience displeasure and stress. Few people can adapt to the opposite use of time. To avoid such a conflict, the author suggests a position of understanding the difference and restructuring consciousness to a tolerant perception of a different approach to the organization of time. The author analyzes the issues of interpersonal relations, non-compliance with plans, schedules, agreements, which can be changed or revised at any time, depending on the circumstances and the significance of personal connections of communicants or vice versa. The author also identifies the properties by which it is possible to correlate to which type of cultures a communicant belongs: to a poly-chronic or mono-chronic culture.

HEALTHCARE PROVIDER PATIENT NONVERBAL COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOUR ON DIABETES MELLITUS MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN SELECTED HOSPITALS IN KENYA

Purpose: To examine the effect of healthcare provider patient communication nonverbal communicative behaviour on diabetes mellitus management practices in selected hospital in Kenya. Methodology: This was a causal comparative research design study with application of quantitative methodology. The study was carried out at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) and MP Shah Hospital. Systematic random sampling was used to sample patients. 400 participants were involved in the study and comprised 313 patients at KNH and 87 patients at MP Shah Hospital studied between the months of February 2019 and November 2019. The researcher administered questionnaire was used to collect data. The results were summarized using percentages and means or medians for categorical and continuous data respectively. Comparisons were done using chi square test of association of categorical variables and independent t-test for comparison of means. Linear regression and ANOVA were used to test for associations and hypothesis between healthcare provider patient nonverbal communicative behaviour (NVCB) and diabetes mellitus management practices (DMMPs). Findings: The rating of nonverbal communicative behavior was significantly higher at MP Shah Hospital than at KNH, p=0.010. Nonverbal communicative behavior had positive significant effect on diabetes mellitus management practices in Kenya [β=0.15, (95% CI 0.03, 0.27), p=0.016] with similar outcome at KNH [β=0.20, (95% CI 0.08, 0.33), p=0.002] and not at MP Shah Hospital [β=0.03, (95% CI 0.37, 0.42), p=0.899]. Thus, the null hypothesis was rejected in Kenya; the null hypothesis was rejected at KNH; the null hypothesis was not rejected at MP Shah Hospital. Therefore, there was significant effect of NVCB on DMMPs in Kenya, at KNH and not at MP Shah Hospital. Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: Nonverbal communicative behaviour was responsible for improved performance in diabetes mellitus management practices among patients in Kenya and at KNH. At MP Shah Hospital, NVCB was not responsible for improvement in the DMMPs. The findings reinforce uncertainty reduction and communication accommodation theories basis in the dyadic interaction between patients and healthcare providers. Therefore, NVCB needs to be well conceptualized and incorporated at the health ministry and medical training institutions to equip medical workers with the required communication skills.