Pragmatics

Elicited and spontaneous communicative functions and stability of conversational measures with children who have pragmatic language impairments

by Julian Lloyd

Co-authored with Adams. Published in 'International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders', 2005

Background: The preliminary phase of a project aimed at establishing appropriate outcome measures for intervention... more Background: The preliminary phase of a project aimed at establishing appropriate outcome measures for intervention with children who have pragmatic language impairments (PLI) is reported. Assessment methods for children with PLI are considered in the context of developing outcome measures for intervention studies. Communicative function assessments in elicitation and conversational contexts are compared. The stability of measures derived from conversational profiling is also considered. Aims: To investigate the utility of an elicited communicative function assessment in discriminating the pragmatic characteristics of children with PLI and to compare this method to conversational profiling. An additional aim was to estimate the degree of variation on conversational indices derived from interactions with children with PLI. Methods & Procedures: Fifteen children with PLI (mean age 9;5 years) and an age-matched control group were assessed on two occasions on a new communicative function elicitation task and on a conversation task. A checklist of communicative functions was employed in analysing the elicitation and the conversation tasks. An analysis of conversation was carried out to derive conversational indices such as verbosity and meshing. Outcomes & Results: The elicitation task failed to discriminate between the PLI and control groups and showed a strong ceiling effect. Significant between-group differences were found for both communicative function in conversation measures and on conversational indices. The variation in conversation indices is relatively small compared with the baseline measures. Conclusions: A more representative picture of communicative function ability arises from unstructured tasks rather than from structured elicitation tasks for the age group of children with PLI. The elicitation procedure outlined in this paper might be better suited to a younger age group. Differences between communicative function performance on elicitation and conversation situations suggest a strong effect of context on the pragmatic performance of children with PLI. The conversational indices reported show sufficient stability to be employed in an outcome measure provided the minor variations indicated are factored into estimates of change.

Reference recalibration repairs: Adjusting precision for the task at hand

by Galina Bolden

Lerner, G., Bolden, G., Hepburn, A., and Mandelbaum, J. (2012). Reference recalibration repairs: Adjusting precision for the task at hand. Special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(2) (Eds. Celia Kitzinger & Gene Lerner), 191-212.

Pursuing a response by repairing an indexical reference

by Galina Bolden

Bolden, G., Mandelbaum J., and Wilkinson, S. (2012). Pursuing a response by repairing an indexical reference. Special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(2) (Eds. Celia Kitzinger & Gene Lerner), 137-155.

Grammatical flexibility as a resource in explicating referents

by Galina Bolden

Bolden, G. and Guimaraes, E. (2012). Grammatical flexibility as a resource in explicating referents. Special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(2) (Eds. Celia Kitzinger & Gene Lerner), 156-174.

LE INTERFERENZE DELL'INGLESE NELLA LINGUA ITALIANA TRA 'PROTEZIONISMO' E 'DESCRITTIVISMO' LINGUISTICO: IL CASO DEL LESSICO DELLA CRISI

by Antonio Taglialatela

di prossima pubblicazione sul semestrale "Linguæ &", 02/2011, Milano: LED online. ISSN 1724-8698

The issue of the interference of English on modern Italian has always been of interest to several researchers in... more The issue of the interference of English on modern Italian has always been of interest to several researchers in Italy. This paper outlines how this interference has affected the Italian language over the last two decades. To this purpose, we have deemed interesting to quote and contrast the views of two eminent Italian scholars involved in the long-lasting debate between linguistic ‘protectionism’ and ‘descriptivism’ – i.e. Arrigo Castellani and Tullio De Mauro.
We have taken into account the most widespread English loanwords of the economic crisis found in the three major Italian newspapers from the 1st September 2011 to the 1st March 2012 and we have then verified if to date they are present in three well-known Italian monolingual dictionaries.
As a result, most of these loanwords have been shown to be adequately integrated into the Italian language in both written and oral texts.
It would be advisable to take this work into due consideration in the light of the international perspective on which global communication pivots today.
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La questione dell'interferenza dell'inglese sull'italiano contemporaneo è sempre stata oggetto di grande interesse da parte dei ricercatori. Partendo da tale premessa, questo lavoro vuole espremere alcune importanti considerazioni su come negli anni questa interferenza abbia influenzato, e continui ad influenzare, la lingua italiana. Abbiamo ritenuto interessante da un lato citare e confrontare le posizioni di due illustri studiosi, quali Arrigo Castellani e Tullio De Mauro, nell'ambito dell'aspro confronto tra protezionismo e descrittivismo linguistico - anche prendendo in esame alcuni degli anglismi più diffusi nell'italiano contemporaneo nell'ambito dell'attuale crisi economico-finanziaria -, dall'altro abbiamo verificato la lemmatizzazione degli stessi in tre noti vocabolari monolingui italiani.
Sulla base delle analisi effettuate questi anglismi risultano oggi ben integrati tanto nell'italiano scritto che in quello parlato.
Questo lavoro può essere inserito nel quadro del rapporto italiano-inglese alla luce della prospettiva internazionale intorno cui la comunicazione si muove oggigiorno.

Rethinking Ethics of Science and Technology with Pragmatism

by Wanderley Dias da Silva

General theories of explanation: buyer beware

by Kareem Khalifa

MODALITÉ ÉPISTÉMIQUE, ÉVIDENTIALITÉ ET DÉPENDANCE CONTEXTUELLE

by Louis de Saussure

Langue française 173, 131-143

Epistemic modality, Evidentiality and Context Dependency Epistemic modality, Evidentiality and Context Dependency

Suppression of the Nazi Past, Coded Languages, and Discourses of Silence

by Ruth Wodak

Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo & Vsevolod Kapatsinski. 2012. The apprehensive: Fear as endophoric evidence and its pragmatics in English, Mandarin, and Russian. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(4), 346-73.

by Vsevolod Kapatsinski

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree? : Kazakh-Speaking University Studetnts' Language Ideologies Concerning "Community"

by Erik Aasland

Paper presented at the UCLA Conference on Language and Identity in Central Asia, May 4, 2012.

The question for my project is: In an environment of mandatory proverb instruction for youth, what do youth express as... more The question for my project is: In an environment of mandatory proverb instruction for youth, what do youth express as significant by means of these same proverbs? I will explore how Kazakh-speaking college students use Kazakh proverbs to narrativize “community”. I will do this be evaluating their knowledge and use of Kazakh proverbs addressing such issues as nationalism/patriotism, unity, family, and ethnic identity.

Argumentation across L1 and L2 Writing: Exploring Cultural Influences and Transfer issues

by Hacer Hande Uysal

Published in Vial Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics (2012)

Verbal irony: Differences in usage across written genres

by Christian Burgers

Co-authored with Margot van Mulken and Peter Jan Schellens
In press with Journal of Language and Social Psychology

According to Gibbs and Colston, one of the biggest challenges for irony research is the uncovering of the various ways... more According to Gibbs and Colston, one of the biggest challenges for irony research is the uncovering of the various ways in which irony is used in discourse. This article takes up a genre-based approach to deal with this research challenge. In a content
analysis of ironic utterances from six written genres (commercial and noncommercial advertisements, columns, cartoons, letters to the editor, book and film reviews), ironic utterances are compared on the usage of irony factors and irony markers. Results indicate that every genre in the corpus differs from the general distribution for at least one irony factor and one category of irony markers. Taken together, the clustering of irony factors and markers in specific genres is a first step toward identifying the various ways in which verbal irony is used differently across various genres.

El discurso irónico en Camino de Perfección de Teresa de Jesús (CE)

by María José Pérez González

publicado en las Actas del III Congreso Internacional Teresiano- Avila 2011

Van niet willen en van niet kunnen, en ook van moeten, mogen en zullen

by Bert Cappelle

To appear in the popularizing journal "Over Taal"

Interpretation of Psychological Concepts in Wittgenstein

by Antonio Bova

Argumentation among family members in Italy and Switzerland: A cross-cultural perspective

by Antonio Bova

“I Want to Talk but It Is Not Possible!” Dinnertime Argumentation in Swiss and Italian Families

by Antonio Bova

Functions of “Why” Questions Asked by Children in Family Conversations

by Antonio Bova

Communicative functions of Why-questions in parent-child interaction at home

by Antonio Bova

Bova, A. (2012). Communicative functions of Why-questions in parent-child interaction at home. Proceedings of the 15th European Conference of Developmental Psychology (pp. 301-306). Bologna: Medimond.