Explicitness and ellipsis as features of conversational style in British English and Ecuadorian Spanish

In this article I examine differences in conversational style between British English and Ecuadorian Spanish which can be the source of communication conflict among speakers of these two languages in telephone conversations, and, presumably in other types of interaction. I look at the language of mediated and non-mediated telephone conversations and examine one feature that interacts with indirectness, i.e., the degree of explicitness participants employ to realize similar acts or moves in the two languages. In non-mediated telephone interactions both British English and Ecuadorian Spanish speakers appear to display a preference for the use of explicitness in formulating various telephone management moves. On the other hand, in mediated interactions, while the British appear to favour explicitness, Ecuadorians in the present study, make use of elliptical forms. The latter, however, tend to be accompanied by deference markers. Differences in the use of explicit and elliptical utterances are interpreted as reflecting that, in certain types of interactions, Ecuadorians favour a style that can be characterized as fast and deferential, but possibly rather abrupt to the English, whereas the latter appear to favour a less hurried style which emphasizes the expression of consideration rather than deference

Relevance theory and language change

This paper considers how ideas developed within relevance theory can be applied in accounting for language change. It briefly surveys previous relevance-theoretic work on language change and suggests that studies of procedural meaning, lexical pragmatics and metarepresentation can each play an important role in accounting for semantic change. It identifies a number of areas for further research which could help to develop understanding of both relevance theory and language change and suggests that one important line of further research would be to explore connections between work in relevance theory and approaches which adopt terms and ideas from the theory without adopting the relevance-theoretic framework overall

Handling translations of data for qualitative research

Qualitative research conducted in a non-English speaking setting requires the researchers to prepare and present translations of data, and then to report on the project in English to reach a global audience. This paper considers the process and ethical considerations involved in such an invisible methodological phase. This includes activities undertaken before data analysis and at the point of data presentation in order to convey participants’ original meanings and fulfil translation ethics. It focuses on educational research using the constructivist-interpretive paradigm on the grounds that its knowledge construction process involves different parties and demands both researchers and the researched to co-construct knowledge. Therefore, researchers in this paradigm might encounter dilemmas around translating data generated from interviews with non-English speaking participants. This paper offers strategies to address translation dilemmas for bilingual researchers based on the existing literature and own experience

Aiming for Cognitive Equivalence – Mental Models as a Tertium Comparationis for Translation and Empirical Semantics

This paper introduces my concept of cognitive equivalence (cf. Mandelblit, 1997), an attempt to reconcile elements of Nida’s dynamic equivalence with recent innovations in cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, and building on the current focus on translators’ mental processes in translation studies (see e.g. Göpferich et al., 2009, Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 2010; Halverson, 2014). My approach shares its general impetus with Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk’s concept of re-conceptualization, but is independently derived from findings in cognitive linguistics and simulation theory (see e.g. Langacker, 2008; Feldman, 2006; Barsalou, 1999; Zwaan, 2004). Against this background, I propose a model of translation processing focused on the internal simulation of reader reception and the calibration of these simulations to achieve similarity between ST and TT impact. The concept of cognitive equivalence is exemplarily tested by exploring a conceptual / lexical field (MALE BALDNESS) through the way that English, German and Japanese lexical items in this field are linked to matching visual-conceptual representations by native speaker informants. The visual data gathered via this empirical method can be used to effectively triangulate the linguistic items involved, enabling an extra-linguistic comparison across languages. Results show that there is a reassuring level of interinformant agreement within languages, but that the conceptual domain for BALDNESS is linguistically structured in systematically different ways across languages. The findings are interpreted as strengthening the call for a cognition-focused, embodied approach to translation

Modelling emotional valence and arousal of non-linguistic utterances for sound design support

Non-Linguistic Utterances (NLUs), produced for popular media, computers, robots, and public spaces, can quickly and wordlessly convey emotional characteristics of a message. They have been studied in terms of their ability to convey affect in robot communication. The objective of this research is to develop a model that correctly infers the emotional Valence and Arousal of an NLU. On a Likert scale, 17 subjects evaluated the relative Valence and Arousal of 560 sounds collected from popular movies, TV shows, and video games, including NLUs and other character utterances. Three audio feature sets were used to extract features including spectral energy, spectral spread, zero-crossing rate (ZCR), Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs), and audio chroma, as well as pitch, jitter, formant, shimmer, loudness, and Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio, among others. After feature reduction by Factor Analysis, the best-performing models inferred average Valence with a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.107 and Arousal with MAE of 0.097 on audio samples removed from the training stages. These results suggest the model infers Valence and Arousal of most NLUs to less than the difference between successive rating points on the 7-point Likert scale (0.14). This inference system is applicable to the development of novel NLUs to augment robot-human communication or to the design of sounds for other systems, machines, and settings

From code-switching to a mixed code: the role of parenthetical verbs in the emerging Polish-Russian mixed code in Lithuania

This paper investigates the role of parenthetical verbs in the emerging Polish-Russian mixed code in Lithuania. Parenthetical verbs share many similarities with discourse markers, since both are regarded as having little or no meaning and occurring outside the syntax of the utterance. The data analysis, based on recordings of spontaneous conversations in the Polish community in Lithuania, aims to test two hypotheses with regard to Russian parenthetical verbs in order to establish whether they should be treated as lexical elements that have been “fused” into the Polish-Russian mixed code, or as instances of ad-hoc switches triggered by identifiable factors. The data reveals that both options are permitted, which in turn suggests that fusion around parenthetical verbs has been “synchronically licensed” (Matras 2000: 525), in the sense that speakers have abolished the requirement to maintain a consistent separation between the Polish and Russian systems. However, the wholesale replacement of one system by another has not taken place

Word searches: on the use of verbal and non-verbal resources during classroom talk

Word finding difficulties in children are typically characterised by search behaviours such as silence, circumlocution, repetition and empty words. Yet, how children’s word searches are constructed (including gesture, gaze and prosody) and the actions accomplished during interaction have not yet been researched. In this study, eightyear- old Ciara is interacting with her teacher in the classroom. 37 segments containing word searches were analysed according to the procedures used by conversation analysts. Ciara’s interactional resources include co-ordinated deployment of syntax, pitch height and downward gaze during solitary searching that assist the enterprise of self-repair. Gaze shift towards the teacher signals a transition relevance place, thus constituting a direct invitation for her to participate in the search. Ciara’s interactional resources include semantic category labelling, phonological self-cuing and pronominal substitution that supply valuable linguistic information to the teacher and trigger production of the searched-for item. Recommendations for language teaching and therapy are presented

Jackson's Parrot: Samuel Beckett, Aphasic Speech Automatisms, and Psychosomatic Language

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s10912-015-9375-zThis article explores the relationship between automatic and involuntary language in the work of Samuel Beckett and late nineteenth-century neurological conceptions of language that emerged from aphasiology. Using the work of John Hughlings Jackson alongside contemporary neuroscientific research, we explore the significance of the lexical and affective symmetries between Beckett’s compulsive and profoundly embodied language and aphasic speech automatisms. The interdisciplinary work in this article explores the paradox of how and why Beckett was able to search out a longed-for language of feeling that might disarticulate the classical bond between the language, intention, rationality and the human, in forms of expression that seem automatic and 'readymade'

Dysfluencies as intra-utterance dialogue moves

Ginzburg J, Fernández R, Schlangen D. Dysfluencies as intra-utterance dialogue moves. Semantics and Pragmatics. 2014;7