Cross-cultural analysis of interpersonal metadiscourse markers in persuasive local newspaper articles

Author(s): Maryam Farnia,Nahid Mohammadi / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

This paper aims to explore the role interpersonal metadiscourse markers play in the construction and achievement of persuasion in local British and Iranian newspapers. To this end, a corpus of 120 persuasive opinion articles published in two local Iranian newspapers, namely Isfahan Ziba and Isfahan (Emrooz) Today, and two local British newspapers, namely Liverpool Echo and Chronicle Live, from July 2015 to June 2016, were randomly selected and analyzed based on Dafouz-Milne’s (2008) taxonomy of interpersonal metadiscourse markers. The overal findings disclose that interpersonal metadiscourse is present in the two corpora; however, there are variations in the distribution and frequency of interpersonal markers.

Acknowledgment patterns in English and Lithuanian research writing

Author(s): Jolanta Šinkūnienė,Gabrielė Dudzinskaitė / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The paper focuses on the features of acknowledgments in scientific texts written by British and Lithuanian authors in the Humanities. The data comes from a self-compiled corpus of acknowledgments in scientific books written by British and Lithuanian researchers in their native languages, and from doctoral dissertations written by Lithuanian doctoral students in Lithuanian. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis suggest that the British scholars place more importance on acknowledgments as they single out their thanks as separate sections, make them longer and express gratitude for a larger number of individuals and institutions than the Lithuanian scholars. Generally the same moves and steps are employed in the three data sets, but the distribution of some moves and steps is different.

Review

Author(s): Irena Hůlková / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The present review deals with the following publication: Aijmer, K., Rühlemann, C. (eds) (2015) Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 461 pp.

Humour and belonging:

Author(s): Reza Arab,Jessica Milner Davis / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Serving as introduction to this Special Issue, this article presents a thematic review of topics involved in studies on humour and belonging. It briefly elaborates on the intricacies of concepts such as humour, sense of humour and belonging and their relationships. It then provides a selective review of some major relevant studies. Finally, the themes and contents of the Special Issue are introduced.

Laughter, bonding and biological evolution

Author(s): Cliff Goddard,David Lambert / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This paper combines perspectives from evolutionary biology and linguistics to discuss the earlyevolution of laughter and the possible role of laughter-like vocalisation as a bonding mechanismin hominins and early human species. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, we hereemphasise several things: the role of exaptation, the typically very slow pace of evolutionarychange, and the danger of projecting backwards from the current utilities of laughter to inferits earlier function, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years ago. From the perspectiveof linguistics, we examine both the semantics of the word ‘laugh’ and the vocal mechanics ofhuman laughter production, arguing that greater terminological care is needed in talking aboutthe precursors of laughter in the ancient evolutionary past. Finally, we turn to hypotheses abouthow laughter-like vocalisations may have arisen, long before articulate language as we know ittoday. We focus in particular on Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis that laughter-like vocalisation,which stimulated endorphin production, might have functioned as a bonding mechanism (a kindof “vocal grooming”) among hominins and early human species.The paper contributes to the special issue theme (Humour and Belonging) by casting a longlook backwards in time to laughter-like vocalisation as a distant evolutionary precursor ofhumour, and to bonding as an evolutionary precursor to cognitively and socially modern formsof “belonging”. At the same time, it cautions against casual theorising about the evolutionaryorigins of laughter.

The role of laughter in establishing solidarity and status

Author(s): Angus McLachlan / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Drawing on a range of American, Australian, British and Scandinavian research into laughter,the current paper will use the form of pragmatic analysis typically found in qualitative researchand apply it to data produced by the quantitative methodology common in the author’s owndiscipline of psychology. Laughter will be examined as an indexical that serves both a discoursedeictic function, designating the utterance in which it occurs as non-serious, and a social deicticfunction, marking the laughing person’s preference for social proximity with fellowinterlocutors. The paper will then analyse examples and data pertaining to three types oflaughter bout derived from taking laughter as an indexical. First, solitary listener laughter willbe argued to signify a deferential acknowledgement of continued solidarity with the speaker.Second, solitary speaker laughter will be suggested to mark a simple preference for solidarity.Third, joint laughter will be accepted as a signifier of actual solidarity that may also be used tomark status depending on which party typically initiates the joint laughter. Joint laughter thusacts in a manner closely analogous to the exchange of another set of indexicals, the T and Vversions of second person pronouns in European languages. Finally, the paper will concludeby examining the problematic case of laughing at another interlocutor, before brieflyconsidering the implications of this pragmatic perspective for traditional accounts of laughteras well as for future research.

The idea of national humour and Americanisation in Australia and Britain

Author(s): Mark John Rolfe / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

The widespread notion of a unique national humour involves an impulse to apply thecommonplace assumptions of national identity that demand uniqueness of identity, history,language and culture for a political society. What is deemed true and distinctive of the nationmust be also be true and distinctive of its national humour, goes the thinking.However, such cultural exclusivity has not been reconciled with cultural exchangesbetween nations. Paradoxically, conceptions of national humour have been formulated indynamic tension with such exchanges during the various phases of globalization that havetaken place since the 19th century. The Americanisation of humour, in particular, has been animportant component of such transmissions and resulted from the commercial popular culturedominated by America since the nineteenth century. Australia is a prime example examinedhere along with examples from Britain. To complicate matters of transmission,Americanisation sometimes arrived in Australia via Britain as well as directly from Americaitself.Australians and Britons periodically reacted against American culture, includinghumour, as a threat to national identity. But this was part of a dynamic tension played outbetween modern and traditional, imported and local in their selections and adaptations ofhumour imports from America.There is a huge and historic complexity of cultural anxiety and cultural transfer lyingbehind the apparent cultural comforts of belonging to a nation-state. Moreover, humour hasplayed its part in the continual discursive recreation of the nation in the form of constantsearches for the unique national humour of a people.

On the “Dark Side”:

Author(s): Kerry Mullan / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This study examines the use of online humour in a subversive local community Facebook group set up in 2017 by disgruntled members banned from a similar group “in opposition to [the original group’s] arbitrarily-applied rules, [its] enforced happiness, and [its] suppression of any post that isn't about giving away lemons or asking to borrow small appliances”. The dissatisfaction with the guidelines and the administration of the original Facebook group provides rich material for humorous posts in the new group, many with varying degrees of aggression directed at the founder and certain members of the “Dark Side”, as the original group is frequently referred to. This article will demonstrate how the use of humour in this new rival Facebook group is used for the purposes of inclusion and exclusion, and how it contributes to a sense of belonging in this online community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) created by a small group of selfdeclared dissidents. It will be shown how the humour shapes the identity of the group through the members’ shared ideologies and beliefs (Tanskanen 2018), and how the humorous messages intended to denigrate and belittle the “Dark Side” reinforce unity among the group members, since the feeling of superiority over those being ridiculed coexists with a feeling of belonging (Billig 2005). Fifteen single comments or multi-post threads were chosen for analysis. These appeared during the first twenty months of this rival group’s existence, and included primarily affiliative and/or aggressive humour (Meyer 2015) directed at the original group. The analysis was carried out using elements of computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2004), and an insider participant-observer online ethnographic approach. The examples chosen illustrate how the humour is used to unite the members of this subversive group by dividing them from the original one, to create the joking culture (Fine and de Soucey 2005) of the new group, and in so doing, creates and sustains the members’ shared identity as irreverent breakaway troublemakers.

“It only hurts when I laugh”:

Author(s): Barbara Plester,Tim Bentley,Emily Brewer / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Our study examines the impacts on workers when organisational humour is repeated,sustained, dominating, and potentially harmful, and thus can be considered to be bullying. Inan ethnographic study of an idiosyncratic New Zealand IT company, we observed humour thatwas sexualised, dominating, and perpetrated by the most powerful organizational members.We argue that the compelling need for belonging in this extreme organizational cultureinfluenced workers to accept bullying humour as just a joke and therefore acceptable andharmless even when it contravened societal workplace norms. Our contribution is inidentifying and extending the significant theoretical relationship between workplace humourand bullying that, to date, is not well-explored in organizational research.

Book review

Author(s): Sara Martínez Cardama,Fátima García López / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

140 пословици и поговорки от Голо Бърдо, Албания (по материали от с. Требища)

Author(s): Gergana Coneva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 8/2014

Родствена структура и роднинска терминология (с. Требища, обл. Голо Бърдо, Албания

Author(s): Gergana Coneva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 8/2014

Humour in conversation among bilinguals:

Author(s): Marianthi Georgalidou,Vasilia Kourtis-Kazoullis,Hasan Kaili / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

In this study, we analyse conversations recorded during ethnographic research in two bilingualcommunities on the island of Rhodes, Greece. We examine: (a) the bilingual in Greek andTurkish Muslim community of Rhodes (Georgalidou et al. 2010, 2013) and (b) the Greek-American/Canadian community of repatriated emigrant families of Rhodian origin (Kourtis-Kazoullis 2016). In particular, combining interactional and conversation analytic frameworks(Auer 1995; Gafaranga 2007), we examine contemporary approaches to bi-/multilingualismfocusing on the pragmatics of humour in conversations among bilinguals. We scrutinise aspectsof the overall and sequential organisation of talk as well as instances of humour produced byspeakers of different ethnic origin, generation, and social groups. We focus on the constructionof “otherness,” which reflects the dynamic interplay between the micro-level of conversationalpractices and the macro-level of discourse involving contrasting categorisations and identitiespertaining to differently orientated ethnic and social groups. Based on the analysis, we willshow a) how humorous targeting orients in-groups versus out-groups, and b) mediates thedynamic process of constructing the identity of speakers who, being members of minoritylinguistic communities, represent “otherness.”

Covidly humorous memes:

Author(s): Mohamed Mifdal / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

The analysis of memes posted on Moroccan Facebook pages during the first wave of Covid-19pandemic shows that the use of humour by Moroccans is not only motivated by achieving mirthbut it also vehicles critical views about issues of common concern debated in the digital publicsphere. Some of these memes were used to cope with fear and uncertainty. However, most memesharboured mixed feelings about the situation and were used for social control and theexpression of conflict and resistance, addressing issues of behaviour, governance andcommunication. This article uses a social semiotic approach to analyse the collected memes(460 from personal and communal pages) as a multimodal discourse in terms of context, culture,and media affordances. This article contends that the study of these memes can be a key tounderstanding how Moroccans used humour to cope with danger and radical uncertainty, buildidentification and strengthen social cohesion. It also highlights the polyvocality of humour intimes of the pandemic and the gradual shift from inclusive, conformist and sympathetic humourto disparaging, exclusive and challenging humour as the pandemic lingered, consensus beganto crack, social control was challenged and injunctive norms were replaced by survival values.The results show how these memes are indicative of the way humour changes mechanisms andfunctions in terms of contingent motivations.

Travel-related humour and COVID-19:

Author(s): Anja Pabel,Maja Turnšek / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

This study aims to provide an overview of humorous travel-related memes shared during theCOVID-19 pandemic. A total of 80 Internet memes were content analysed for emergentthemes. The findings reveal three major themes: playful aggression, making fun of one’slonging for travel, and making fun of new travel realities. The identified themes were linked tothe existing literature to better understand the memes being studied. The analysis of memesprovides a methodologically agile way to study conditions that may otherwise be overlooked,e.g., peoples’ travel-related desires and concerns while in lockdown.

Book review

Author(s): Răzvan Săftoiu / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

Начини за назоваване на явлението говорене на сън в Родопските говори

Author(s): Kiril Parvanov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 12/2016

The article is dedicated on the words expressing the phenomena speaking during the dream in232 villages in the Rhodopian Dialects. The collected linguistic material is taken from thequestionnaire for the Rhodopian Dialect Atlas and the Archive for Bulgarian DialectDictionary. The article presents the words (борав’а, бълнувам, блазнем, сборувам, бърборя)and the idioms with the verbs (приказвам, гълча, лафа) expressing speaking during thedream – their origin and their distribution. It also analyzes the other meanings of the wordsexpressing speaking during the dream in the Bulgarian dialects in Bulgaria, Macedonia,Turkey, Greece, Serbia.

Реликти в българските диалекти от междуезиковите контакти на Балканския полуостров (с оглед на превода им на чужд език)

Author(s): Slavka Keremidchieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 12/2016

Some of the difficulties, that the translator of the ancient Bulgarian literature faces, where in the texts he finds already outdated terminological (production, socially-political, religious, etc.) lexis, had been analyzed. Part of this lexis is a relict prove of the time when the argotic dialects on the Balkan peninsula had been in their bloom and when the Balkan nations had accomplished intensive material, cultural and spiritual exchange, that brought to the interaction and the mutual penetration of their languages at different linguistic levels.

Особености на публицистичния стил на изданията на българските езикови общности в чужбина (в съпоставка с пресата в България)

Author(s): Slavka Keremidchieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 12/2016

The development is useful with its conclusions for defining the degree of the ethnolinguistic vitality of the Bulgarian linguistic community in Austria as a part of Bulgarianlinguistic communities in the European diaspore. The purpose of this research is not only theregistration of the numbers of regularly published editions around the world, mainly inAustria, but it is also a trial to analyze the most important specifications of their publicisticstyle in comparison with the language and style of the periodicals published in Bulgaria.

Book review

Author(s): Alberto Dionigi / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2022