Individual differences in indirect speech act processing found outside the language network

Face-to-face communication requires skills that go beyond core language abilities. In dialog, we routinely make inferences beyond the literal meaning of utterances and distinguish between different speech acts based on e.g. contextual cues. It is however not known whether such communicative skills potentially overlap with core language skills or other capacities, such as Theory of Mind (ToM). In this fMRI study we investigate these questions by capitalizing on individual variation in pragmatic skills in the general population. Based on behavioral data from 201 participants, we selected participants with higher vs lower pragmatic skills for the fMRI-study (N = 57). In the scanner, participants listened to dialogs including a direct or an indirect target utterance. The paradigm allowed participants at the whole group level to (passively) distinguish indirect from direct speech acts, as evidenced by a robust activity difference between these speech acts in an extended language network including ToM areas. Individual differences in pragmatic skills modulated activation in two additional regions outside the core language regions (one cluster in the left lateral parietal cortex and intraparietal sulcus and one in the precuneus). The behavioral results indicate segregation of pragmatic skill from core language and ToM. In conclusion, contextualized and multimodal communication requires a set of inter-related pragmatic processes that are neurocognitively segregated: (1) from core language and (2) partly from ToM.

Indirect Speech Act of Spongebob Squarepants the Movie

Direct and indirect speech acts are the two types of speech acts. This study aims to know how indirect speech acts are employed in the movie "SpongeBob SquarePants." It employs descriptive qualitative research to explain the main character's speech act types. There is currently a scarcity of studies examining speech act types in cartoon or animation films; yet, it is necessary. According to this study, the result of this article is: first, there are seventy-four discussions of indirect speech acts obtained from all characters in the movie SpongeBob SquarePants. Each dialogue in the film SpongeBob SquarePants can be deduced to reveal the meaning of indirect speech acts. Second, The reader can use the domain analysis indirect speech acts summary to help them understand each dialogue in this movie that has a different meaning. This stage permitted the main characters to say literal things to the listener. The main character did not make a difficult-to-understand statement to the listener. This research looks at Yule's theory's utterances of indirect speech activities. As a result, the outcome differed from the prior study, despite the same issue.

An Analysis of Speech Acts in Merry Riana : Mimpi Sejuta Dollar Movie

People rarely know the function of the language used in the film. This study analyzes speech acts in a dialogue film entitled Merry Riana: Dreams of a Million Dollars. This research is a qualitative descriptive study. Data were analyzed from the form of speech acts consisting of direct and indirect speech acts in the form of declarative, imperative, and interrogative. The type of speech act analysis uses Searle's theory of representative, directive, commissive, expressive, and declaration. The result of this research is that direct speech act in interrogative form is 43.63%. Direct speech acts in the declarative form are 95 (43.18%), direct speech acts in the imperative form are 24 (10.90%), indirect speech acts in the imperative form are 2 (0.9%), indirect speech acts in imperative form as much as 2 (0.9%). interrogative form is 2 (0.9%), and indirect speech act in declarative form is 1 (0.45%). Furthermore, 74 utterances are analyzed into five types of speech acts. The most dominant representative used 36 (48.6%). Then followed by directive 21 (28.3%), expressive 14 (18.9%), commissive 3 (4.0%), and declarative 0 (0.0%). This research implies that understanding speech acts plays an important role in communication.

Realization of the apology speech act: selection of speech tactics and the perlocutionary effect (based on the material of the Russian, English and French languages)

This article examines the realization of the apology speech act in the three linguistic cultures: Russian, English, and French. The goal of this work is to determine the similarities and differences in functionality of the verbal act of apology in the context of the indicated cultures. The subject of this research is the expression with illocutionary meaning of apology. The authors review the composition of speech repertoire, means of realization of such speech act (conventional language, conventional speech, and nonconventional means), selection of speech tactics in expressing apology in form of the indirect speech act. Special attention is turned to perlocutionary effect, i.e. verbal response of the interlocutor to the addressed apology, as well as to the speech tactics that are frequent in the instances of expressing apology. The novelty of this work consists in studying the apology speech act of within the framework of cross-cultural pragmatics, with the use of practical material from the three linguistic cultures. The preliminary survey conducted among native speakers allowed concluding that the majority of respondents of these linguistic cultures attribute the ability to apologize with the image of a polite person. This particularly this pertains to the English-speaking and French-speaking cultures. Meanwhile, the examination of the articles of explanatory dictionaries demonstrates that the perception of the ability to apologize as a mandatory component of the concept of politeness is rather inherent to the mentality of native speakers, that to academic science. The analysis of practical material clarifies the speech repertoire and the frequency of selecting separate linguistic (imperative, performative) or speech means (speech cliché) used in realization of the direct speech act, as well as determines the key speech tactics used for expressing apology in form of the indirect speech act. Examination of the interlocutor’s verbal response as a perlocutionary effect on the apology indicates that this speech situation suggests a predominantly positive response. The maximal similarity in expressing apology is observed in the composition of speech repertoire of the speakers belonging to three different linguistic cultures, while the difference manifests namely in the selection of speech tactics for expressing apology or responding to it in form of the indirect speech act.

Analytical Study of Remorse in Religious Texts in English and Arabic Languages

Remorse is a contrite emotion experienced by a person who regrets actions which are deemed to be hurtful, shameful, or violent. Presumably remorse in religion may be different from that of ordinary life. Furthermore, remorse linguistically manifests itself in different manners and behaviors (direct, indirect, declarative, and imperative). The permanent study confines itself within the religious texts in English and Arabic languages. The data chosen for this purpose are the Old testament of Bible as an English data and Al-Sahifa al Sajadia as an Arabic data. The study targets at showing how in religious text, the majority of remorse are realized in declarative rather than imperative or exclamation utterances though there is a chance for the last two options to occur. Furthermore, most Arabic religious remorse is identified in direct speech acts while English remorse is realized throughout indirect speech act. The study answers a set of empirical questions: 1-What makes remorse different from similar speech acts which seem outwardly the same but inwardly not, like; guilt, regret, repentance and other likes 2- What are the similarities and differences in both languages in question. An eclectic model is adopted for the analysis. The study illustrates that Remorse in religious language is not the same to that one of ordinary life since the former but not necessarily the latter targets repentance to be its own goal. Moreover there is a variation in the use of it in of both languages though there are some similarities. Arabic language proved to be profoundly richer than English. What distinguishes the former is the abundance of exclamation and imperative modes, the descriptive phrases, the direct speech acts besides the active voice and declarative mode which represent the similarities between the two languages.

The Language of Advertising: Graphic, Grammar and Pragmatic Aspects

This monograph deals with the problem of functioning peculiarities of graphic expressive means and grammar means in the language of modern Russian advertising. This research work treats the advertising discourse as a composite indirect speech act. Active use of adverbial modifiers of manner — deverbatives, elliptical and indefinite personal one-member sentences is characteristic of modern advertising texts. A most distinguishing feature of a modern advertising text is a mixture of Cyrillic and Latin fonts that contributes to the manifestation of an expressive potential of the application. The monograph is aimed at students of Philology, students major in Management and Marketing, masters, postgraduates, staff of higher educational establishments and all those who are interested in the Russian language.

More Than Words: Extra-Sylvian Neuroanatomic Networks Support Indirect Speech Act Comprehension and Discourse in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia

Indirect speech acts—responding “I forgot to wear my watch today” to someone who asked for the time—are ubiquitous in daily conversation, but are understudied in current neurobiological models of language. To comprehend an indirect speech act like this one, listeners must not only decode the lexical-semantic content of the utterance, but also make a pragmatic, bridging inference. This inference allows listeners to derive the speaker’s true, intended meaning—in the above dialog, for example, that the speaker cannot provide the time. In the present work, we address this major gap by asking non-aphasic patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD, n = 21) and brain-damaged controls with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n = 17) to judge simple question-answer dialogs of the form: “Do you want some cake for dessert?” “I’m on a very strict diet right now,” and relate the results to structural and diffusion MRI. Accuracy and reaction time results demonstrate that subjects with bvFTD, but not MCI, are selectively impaired in indirect relative to direct speech act comprehension, due in part to their social and executive limitations, and performance is related to caregivers’ judgment of communication efficacy. MRI imaging associates the observed impairment in bvFTD to cortical thinning not only in traditional language-associated regions, but also in fronto-parietal regions implicated in social and executive cerebral networks. Finally, diffusion tensor imaging analyses implicate white matter tracts in both dorsal and ventral projection streams, including superior longitudinal fasciculus, frontal aslant, and uncinate fasciculus. These results have strong implications for updated neurobiological models of language, and emphasize a core, language-mediated social disorder in patients with bvFTD.