Pragmatics and Cognition

ISSN: 0929-0907

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  1.  1
    The functions of “I think” in TED Talks and their Turkish translations.Aytaç Çeltek - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (2):391-420.
    This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the pragmatic marker “I think” and its translation into Turkish, specifically focusing on its use in TED Talks. Using a corpus-based approach, the research investigates the various functions and Turkish equivalents of “I think”, revealing significant insights into its role as a commenting speech action. Grounded in speech act theory, particularly expositive illocutionary acts, the study emphasizes the illocutionary pluralism of “I think” in managing discourse, expressing speaker attitudes, and engaging interlocutors. The findings (...)
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  2.  2
    Introduction.Rita Finkbeiner & Robert Külpmann - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (2):287-293.
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  3.  1
    Cause and comment.Martin Konvička - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (2):318-338.
    In this paper, I investigate the functional dimension of non-finite causal constructions, exemplified using the English because X constructions. The analysis identifies two functions of these constructions: expressing causality and commenting. Primarily, non-finite causal constructions express cause or reason. Secondarily, however, speakers can also use these constructions to offer a comment about the expressed cause or reason. These two functions represent two poles on a functional continuum. While some non-finite causal constructions only express causal meaning and some serve predominantly as (...)
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  4.  3
    Is commenting an expositive illocutionary act?Marina Sbisà - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (2):294-317.
    The paper outlines an analysis of the act of commenting within the author’s Austin-inspired speech-act theoretical framework. The general lines of that framework are concisely expounded, and it is suggested that the act of commenting should be described as belonging to Austin’s Expositives. The preliminary problem whether the act of commenting is illocutionary at all (given the absence of a performative use of the verb “to comment”) is discussed, and it is argued that nothing stands in the way of analyzing (...)
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  5. Specified compliments in comments to politicians’ Facebook posts.Pnina Shukrun-Nagar & Zohar Livnat - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (2):339-366.
    This article discusses “specified compliments” consisting of a positive evaluation of an ability or achievement; a preposition; and an area of expertise or excellence, e.g. “experts in security”. An analysis of 74 examples in comments on politicians’ Facebook posts during 2020–2021 revealed that specified compliments convey a predominantly ironic meaning in order to criticize the complimentee. Three different categories of ironic specified compliments are identified: (1) compliments where the area of expertise is positive and are interpreted as ironical based on (...)
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  6.  2
    Sisterhood construction through commenting by Chinese women.Bin Wang - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (2):367-390.
    This paper takes the form of a case study which examines to what extent a comment can be analyzed as a type of speech action. This study analyzed 507 replies to a post on a popular Chinese social media application, Xiaohongshu, which concerns feminist issues. A speech act analysis of these replies offers new insights on comments as a type of speech act by showing their constructive functions across intra-utterance, inter-utterance, and extra-textual contexts. Comments can facilitate the securing of hearer’s (...)
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  7.  5
    Four-year-olds’ visuospatial cognitive abilities and their relation to observer‑viewpoint gestures across three communicative tasks.Ulrich J. Boden, Friederike Kern, Sofia Koutalidis, Olga Abramov, Anne Nemeth, Stefan Kopp & Katharina J. Rohlfing - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):49-96.
    The gesture-as-simulated-action framework explains the occurrence of iconic gestures. Accordingly, simulated visual imagery gives rise to observer-viewpoint, whereas simulated motor imagery gives rise to character-viewpoint gestures. Because little is known about whether this relationship is either the product of becoming a competent speaker in different communicative tasks or exists from an early age, we investigated 4-year-olds. In the first session, 55 children performed three different communicative tasks. In the second session, we administered a SON-R non-verbal intelligence test to assess children’s (...)
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  8.  13
    Pragmatics and cognition in Easy Language.Julia Fuchs - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):1-26.
    A core area of pragmatics is conversational implicatures, where speakers imply a meaning that is not part of what is literally said. Not all people have the ability to easily understand such common (implicit) forms of communication. For these people, Easy Language has been developed, i.e. a form of barrier-free communication with substantially simplified syntax and lexis. Moreover, Easy Language is based on the principle of maximum explicitness. However, the heterogeneous target groups and the different types of implicature have not (...)
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  9.  7
    The role of logical reasoning, belief-content and the type of inference in belief revision.Barış Özdemir & Begüm Özdemir - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):205-243.
    Prior research shows mixed findings regarding individuals’ belief-revision strategies. The current research is aimed to test (a) whether individuals’ reasoning across abstract vs real-world content shows similarity, and (b) whether individuals’ syllogistic reasoning predicts their belief-revision strategies. Experiment 1, testing 76 participants (50 females), provides evidence for the similarity in reasoning across abstract and real-world content (p.05). Individuals seem to revise the conditional statement in the AC and DA inferences, especially when the content poses a threat. In contrast, individuals prefer (...)
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  10.  11
    Demonstrative this/that and gestures.Shiwen Pan & Yunfeng Ge - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):125-155.
    This paper addresses the unresolved question of whether demonstrative this/that and their accompanying gestures serve the same function. By utilizing Langacker’s notion of Current Discourse Space (CDS) and integrating gesture studies and frame semantics, this research models the entire process of demonstrative use and points to the distinct roles that demonstratives and gestures play in each usage event. The findings reveal that their functions are indeed different: the gesture (gazing) initially singles out an entity as a target, followed by the (...)
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  11.  6
    Japanese unnun as a meta-discourse placeholder.Tohru Seraku - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):156-184.
    Previous studies have described a range of placeholder (PH) items. A PH fills in the grammatical slot of a target that a speaker is unable or unwilling to produce. This paper argues that Japanese unnun, an expression wholly underdescribed in the literature, serves as a PH and that it may also be used as a general extender (GE). Unlike previously known PHs, unnun is regarded as a ‘meta-discourse’ PH; it replaces a discourse segment, rather than a linguistic form. I develop (...)
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  12.  14
    Fallacies and biases.Ermioni Seremeta, Monique Flecken & Corina Andone - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):244-285.
    When processing political arguments, people are strongly affected by their prior ideological beliefs. Political cognition often relies on two types of ideological biases. Firstly, confirmation bias leads addressees of political communication to accept arguments that affirm their preferred ideological positions. Secondly, disconfirmation bias probes reasoners to reject arguments that provide attitudinally incongruent evidence. Here, we report the findings of an experiment aimed at investigating the role of biased reasoning on perceptions of argument soundness. We focused on the processing of the (...)
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  13.  5
    Definiteness matters as a discourse cue in L1 and L2 processing of relative clauses.Ehsan Solaimani & Hamideh Marefat - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):185-204.
    This study explores how syntactic and discourse-based parsing principles direct English relative clause attachment preferences. Forty-nine highly advanced L1-Persian L2-English and thirty-six English native speakers completed a self-paced reading task involving temporarily ambiguous relative clauses that were semantically associated with either the first or the second noun phrase (NP) in a complex NP (NP1–of–NP2) (The resident called the nurse NP1 of the patient NP2 who was injecting penicillin/coughing severely). We manipulated the definiteness of the antecedent (a/the nurse & a/the patient) (...)
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  14.  6
    Ironic criticisms and responses on Chinese social media.Xinyue Tian & Wei Ren - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):97-124.
    Ironic criticisms in online interactions are very common, but have rarely been examined. Following the concept of (non)propositional irony, this study investigates how online ironic criticisms are produced and responded to. The findings were derived from a mixed-methods analysis of 200 comments and 1,140 responses collected from Weibo. The analysis offers a computer-mediated taxonomy and identifies four subtypes of ironic criticisms, with different realisation forms in each subtype. Responses to negative evaluations are more common in online ironic interactions. Possible motivations (...)
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  15. When do people dislike self-enhancers?Valentin Weber & Hugo Mercier - 2024 - Pragmatics and Cognition 31 (1):27-48.
    Self-enhancing statements can provide useful information. Why do we resent those who make them? We suggest that the resentment comes from a broader claim of superiority that self-enhancing statements can imply. In three experiments, we compared one condition, designed such that the self-enhancing claim would be perceived as a claim of superiority, to three conditions providing different contextual reasons for why the self-enhancing claim might not be a claim of superiority. In those conditions the self-enhancing claim is either called for, (...)
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