Studies in Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis

Doctors’ Orders vs. Politicians’ Bafflegab: Analysis of Iranian President’s and Deputy Health Minister’s Speeches on the Coronavirus Pandemic

2022-11-19T14:45:13+00:00

This study adopted a critical discourse analysis approach to analyze the potential ideological differences between the Iranian President and Deputy Health Minister (DHM) in the representation of issues related to the Coronavirus Pandemic. The analysis was based on the meeting of the national task force against Coronavirus chaired by President Rouhani, held in 2020, and DHM’s five press conferences and interviews during the same period. By integrating insights from van Dijk’s model (2005), the findings revealed that the President’s speech on the Coronavirus Pandemic was highly ideological. However, the DHM had a tendency to use more objective and neutral words in the descriptions of the COVID-19 and express his views in a transparent way. The findings of this study are significant in raising the public’s awareness of the manipulative function of the language used by politicians to express political ideologies, even on a public health issue such as the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Request Modifications as Produced by Moroccan EFL Learners and American Native Speakers of English

2022-09-26T18:28:21+00:00

This cross-cultural comparative study aimed to investigate the production of request modifications by American native speakers of English (ANSE) and Moroccan EFL learners (MEFLLs). With this aim in mind, the researcher employed two research instruments, namely a discourse completion test and a semi-structured interview. The former was the main research instrument, whereas the letter was mainly employed to explore the motives behind the participants’ use of certain modification strategies. Furthermore, sixty seven informants participated in the current study. Thirty MEFLLs and thirty ANSE responded to the ten given situations, while four MEFLLs and three ANSE were interviewed. This study adopted Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) coding scheme. The findings revealed that ANSE preferred syntactic downgraders, whereas MEFLLs selected lexical/phrasal downgraders. With regards to external modifiers, the two groups significantly differed in their use of mitigating supportive moves. That is, MEFLLs preferred combination and preparators, while ANSE favoured combination and grounders. The two groups used few aggravating supportive moves, and they did not display any significant differences in their use of external modifiers. However, they were used by ANSE more than MEFLLs. This paper ends with some suggestions to textbook designers and EFL teachers.

Prospective Media Translators in Audio-Visual Training: Towards a Critical Discourse Analysis of Gender-Bias in Subtitling

2022-12-27T01:46:05+00:00

This article dwells on the significance of translation training in gender-related issues. It focuses on raising the question of gender bias in audio-visual translation (AVT). The latter is posited to maintain the same patriarchal visions found in language use as in culture. To this end, the classroom is viewed as the perfect space where prospective translators are engaged in questioning how gender is part and parcel of the source texts as multi-dimensional and ‘polisemiotic’ in nature, and how lexical and semantic choices are significantly powerful to reveal underlying ideologies, subjectivities, attitudes and mind-sets. This research is corpus-based. It was carried out with my under-graduate students studying the module of ‘Translation 2.’ Multi-modal text samples containing problematic gender issues were purposefully selected to bring forth the reactions that I sought to make. By adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) with its three dimensional framework: the descriptive, interpretive and explanatory, in a pedagogically collaborative learning environment, the subtitled texts with the classroom activities and the group discussions were meant to measure how training in AVT translation can practically sensitize future translators to the salience of gender-bias in mainstream media hence triggering in them the need for change. Through all the covered phases of the classroom training, gender is duly addressed to have an all-encompassing approach to subtitling in English, French and Arabic. The main goal is to gauge the consistency of a male-dominated discourse that permeates all media channels. It is geared towards helping trainees as individuals, rather than professionals, to overcome the challenges posed by all the patriarchal ideologies from one language to another.

The effect of closeness on Japanese L2 English learners’ use of emoji

2022-12-16T23:19:29+00:00

This study investigates the use of emoji by Japanese learners of English in discussion forums. Specifically, the discussion forums refer to online conversations on the LINE smartphone application. The investigations answer the research question: “What is the effect of closeness on learners’ rate of emoji use in online discussion?”. The aims of the study are pursued by gauging learners’ perceived closeness with each other via a questionnaire with five levels of closeness from one to five; the rating of one is the closest and the rating of five is the most distant. Following this, five weeks of online discussions from the LINE discussion forums are investigated, analyzing a total of 123 messages, which contain a total of 10,081 words and 578 emoji. The participants are 25 second-year students who are enrolled at a middle-ranking Japanese university. They are from two classes, consisting of 21 females and four males in total. The investigations find a higher rate of emoji being employed in relationships identified as more distant. The study concludes that L2 English learners may also employ more emoji in distant relationships, where interactants may be attempting to reduce the social distance between each other.

The Pragmatics of Phatic Utterances and Pleasantries in Nigerian Students Unionism

2023-01-02T19:22:57+00:00

The apex body of students in any tertiary institution in Nigeria is student union which is led by students and for the students. Over the years, a unique pattern of greeting has evolved in Students Unionism. Student leaders tend to exhibit various phatic communions to develop and maintain social relationship. Extant studies on student union in the Nigerian context have largely addressed the phenomenon from the sociological and political perspectives with little attention paid to it from a linguistic perspective. This study, therefore, investigates the pragmatic functions of phatic utterances and pleasantries among student leaders in selected Nigerian tertiary institutions. Data was gathered from six tertiary institutions in the south-western part of Nigeria through observation and interview methods. Using Mey’s Pragmatic Act theory as the analytical tool, it was revealed that seven major functions are achieved with the phatic communion in Students Unionism. These include disclosure of political position, prayer invocation, placement by hierarchical status, assertion of loyalty and support, incitation of special recognition, issuance of warning and unveiling personality traits of student leaders. These are achieved through the deployment of pragmatic tools such as used are speech acts, physical acts and prosody in the activity part and in the textual part, reference (REF), inference (INF), metaphor (MPH) and Shared Social/Situation Knowledge (SSK) are deployed. These phatic communions are intentionally and uniquely used in the domain of Students Unionism to communicate a lot of messages in the achievement of their desired goal