The Semantic-Discursive Status of comme je l’ai dit ‘as I said’

The current paper examines the function of a specific construction comme je l’ai dit and its role in a particular type of oral discourse. The phrase occurs with high frequency in an established discursive genre, namely, debates in the European Parliament (EP). It is presented as a parenthetic construction, including elements with an anaphoric function, and endowed with a specific discursive aim. In order to better understand the raison d’être of this syntactically autonomous form in the specialized corpus, a mixed semantic-discursive approach is adopted. The aim of the study is to highlight the main properties of the construction bearing a particular functionality and to specify its status in discourse from the perspective of the active interlocutor.Given its rather simple morphological paradigm, its rather stereotypical enlargements, and its easy mobility, comme je l’ai dit reveals certain specificities of the referential process. The reference of the anadeictic type causes a sort of “duplication” of the object of discourse and also its reconfiguration. The return to the already said, with the aim of re-modeling it, is in fact accompanied by a re-saying, a repetition of the locutor’s own speech.The interrupting, the going back, the reworking and advancing, involved in the use of the analysed construction, seem to have several implications. The presence of comme je l’ai dit is justified by the speaker’s intention to construct relevant discourse that takes into account intralocutive and interlocutive dialogism. The interruption followed by a relaunch is a signal that redirects the attention of the interlocutor, while the repetition, which is a reminder of the already said, preserves the continuity of the discourse.The two processes set up by comme je l’ai dit, anaphoric reference and repetition, have the function of ensuring the coherence and the continuity of ongoing discourse through the tradeoff between saying, repeating and discursive memory. The importance of adjustments between speaker and interlocutor is the basis of the chosen discursive strategy. The functional perspective brings out the interpersonal aspect of the referential procedure.

Happiness around the world: A combined etic-emic approach across 63 countries

What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or “WEIRD” measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or “independent”), high-arousal emotion. However, research from Eastern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an interpersonal aspect emphasizing harmony and connectedness to others. Following a combined emic-etic approach (Cheung, van de Vijver & Leong, 2011), we assessed the cross-cultural applicability of a measure of independent happiness developed in the US (Subjective Happiness Scale; Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999) and a measure of interdependent happiness developed in Japan (Interdependent Happiness Scale; Hitokoto & Uchida, 2015), with data from 63 countries representing 7 sociocultural regions. Results indicate that the schema of independent happiness was more coherent in more WEIRD countries. In contrast, the coherence of interdependent happiness was unrelated to a country’s “WEIRD-ness.” Reliabilities of both happiness measures were lowest in African and Middle Eastern countries, suggesting these two conceptualizations of happiness may not be globally comprehensive. Overall, while the two measures had many similar correlates and properties, the self-focused concept of independent happiness is “WEIRD-er” than interdependent happiness, suggesting cross-cultural researchers should attend to both conceptualizations.

Sports as a Stepping‑Stone for Entrepreneurship: Examining Sports University Students

Sports and entrepreneurship have several common attributes. Therefore, when focusing on entrepreneurship among university students, sports students deserve special attention. The main aim of our exploratory study was to examine personality traits, enterprising tendencies and entrepreneurial propensity of sports students. Our study was based on data gathered through own data collection using a survey instrument comprising of established measures of enterprising tendencies and interpersonal aspect of personality, and items capturing individual’s entrepreneurial propensity and other personal and environmental attributes. We have collected 254 responses from 130 sports and 124 pedagogy students, who served as a comparison group. Our findings show that sports students exhibit higher enterprising tendency, significant differences in four out of eight examined general personality traits, and higher entrepreneurial propensity compared to their pedagogy counterparts. In search of potential origins of these differences and high embeddedness of entrepreneurship among sports students, we explored selected individual attributes as well as environmental factors related to respondents’ personal and university settings. Based on our findings, we develop implications for entrepreneurship encouragement and utilization of enterprising potential in sports student population.

“Is it the case that … ?”: Building toward findings of fact in Japanese criminal trials

This article explores the adversarial nature of Japanese criminal court proceedings by analyzing functions of the questions with X to iu koto ga arimasu ka? (‘Is it the case that X took place?’), based on courtroom discourse data and trial manuals for legal professionals. To discuss the roles of lawyers’ questions with the projection with the frame “Is it the case that … ?” in witness examination, the projection’s ideational, textual and interpersonal functions are analyzed drawing on Halliday’s systemic functional approach to discourse. By analyzing sequential roles of the projection, the article highlights the ways in which it serves as a story-construction device, as well as a signpost marker towards exposing inconsistency in witness’s testimony. The analysis also reveals that the dual ideational meanings of the projection – one everyday and the other technical – may leave lay participants unaware of its legal purposes, thus creating a potentially problematic lay-professional communication gap. The discussion of the interpersonal aspect suggests the projection’s role to neutralize coercive force of leading questions as well as to index an identity of legal authority. The paper concludes that while projection “Is it the case … ?” seems to symbolize the adversarial nature of Japanese criminal trials, its neutralizing effect and arbitrariness in use also imply the pseudo-adversarial and hybrid orientation.

To be continued: meaning-making in serialized manga as functional-multimodal narrative

This paper discusses meaning-making in serialized adventure manga (Japanese comics) by examining its metafunctional organization. Manga, whose components cover a multimodal cline from graphics to verbals, is seen as a multimodal narrative whose features are mapped onto the different metafunctions: time – experiential, with diegetic time lapse defining the start point to construe experience; cause-effect – logical, with relative positioning of components reflecting logical relations diegetically; space – compositional, with diegetic and extradiegetic spaces contributing to the coherence and cohesion of the story. The overarching interpersonal aspect of manga makes it a medium of exchange between the author and the reader and encourages the reader to actively decode idiosyncratic meanings.

Representation of the Interpersonal Aspect “a Reviewer – a Reader” in the German Critical Text

The paper is devoted to the representation of the interpersonal aspect “a reviewer – a reader” in the German critical text. Theoretical aspects of this issue are highlightened. In the course of analysis the position of activisation of readers’ attention and readers’ cooperation is studied. The main attention is paid to the means of expressing relationships “a reviewer – a reader”, where cognitive and linguopragmatic approaches to the interpretation of the text are used as the main criteria.

Managing the Interpersonal Aspect of Performance Management

It is safe to assume that an accurate performance appraisal (PA) is an important prerequisite to an effective performance management (PM) system, because with accurate PA information, management, teams, and employees can engage in the process of identifying and developing a wide range of job-relevant knowledge or skills to improve job performance. However, researchers and practitioners alike must continue to push for PA to be something other an administrative ritual; the ideal goal for PA is for it to contribute to a reliable process that can offer practical help to organizational operations, including PM. As Pulakos, Mueller Hanson, Arad, and Moye (2015) have pointed out, supervisors are concerned about demotivating or disengaging employees by providing PA ratings that are too much lower than the highest rating or ranking that is available, so having ratings that are clustered at the high end of the rating scale is quite common across organizations (Bretz, Milkovich, & Read, 1992).