Volume 11, Issue 1

In this paper, I focus on insinuation as a communicative strategy whereby a speaker intends to make an addressee believe p, but does not want to be held accountable for communicating p. In its micro- or macro-textual format, and in its various degrees of nastiness, insinuation, I claim, is a complex process that presupposes the mind's capability to simultaneously activate and run multiple parallel mental spaces, associated to different intentions. Through the analysis of some examples, indirectness, manipulation, and deception will be shown to be involved in the process to varying degrees. In the final section of the paper I discuss how a Relevance-theoretic framework is able to accommodate the cognitive aspects of insinuation highlighted in the text.

This paper presents a detailed, analytical review of two prominent accounts of off-record indirect speech – Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory (1978/1987) and Pinker and colleagues' Strategic Speaker approach (Pinker 2007; Pinker et al. 2008; Lee and Pinker 2010). We begin by outlining both accounts, aiming to disentangle the theories by exploring the key theoretical features of each account, highlighting the similarities and differences between them, and reflecting on the scope and limitations of each. We continue by examining two additional motivations for off-record speech – immediacy and intimacy – with the goal of presenting a more comprehensive view of the phenomenon of off-record indirectness. We conclude the paper with theoretical questions that have arisen from our discussion to date and suggestions for empirical research on the topic.

Based on authentic homileic conversations between Brazilians and Germans in which critical incidents occur, I will set out the complexity of factors interplaying in the course of multi-personal interaction. The chosen situations are taken from a videotaped session of a two-hour discussion between four Brazilian and four German students at the University of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. After the video shoot, retrospective interviews were held with each participant in order to comprehend his/her extra-communicative, (self-)reflexive standpoint with respect to their actions. The following analysis brought out a subtle interplay between verbal, nonverbal, and paraverbal contextualization cues in (im)politeness strategies and forms of rapport management, as well as metacommunicative strategies for the management of the gaps between one's “own” and “other culture” experience. It will be shown that the immediate context, as well as the participants' theories on communication and the other culture, have to be considered to understand that so-called “misunderstandings” may in fact often be ascribed to (un)intended face-threatening acts aiming at questioning or negotiating cultural values.

Listenership (consisting of backchannel feedback) and its effect on intercultural communication were investigated in 30 dyadic conversations in English between Japanese and American participants. The findings of this study demonstrate several differences in how members of each culture used backchannels in terms of frequency, variability, placement, and function. This study also found evidence supporting the hypothesis that backchannel conventions that are not shared between cultures contribute to negative perceptions across cultures. Thus, the findings of this study support the conclusion that listenership warrants more attention in EFL classes in Japan. Further, toward creating a pedagogical framework, this study also provides EFL professionals with a comprehensive account of the listenership of Japanese EFL speakers. Finally, this study also offers potential insights into the linguistic variation of native English speakers. That is, the negative perceptions that the American native English speakers reported of their Japanese EFL speaking interlocutors' listener responses in this study were not as pronounced as those reported by the British native English speakers in a previous study conducted by the same researcher.

While the dynamics of dialectal codeswitching in the Arabic-speaking context has been the center of much discussion and research, only a few studies have examined the role of socio-pragmatic factors in the code choices of Arabic speakers in everyday interactions. Using Bourdieu's (1977) social capital theory as a general framework, this study examines the role of pragmatic and capital-related factors in codeswitching in an understudied Arabic-speaking group, namely Al-`Keidaat Bedouins in Syria. Audio-recorded data was collected from two Bedouin wedding parties and 37 interactions involving Bedouins in the workplace. The data analysis indicates that Bedouin speakers use their multi-dialectal package mainly to manage their self-representation in relation to other speakers, enhance their ability to access different forms of social capital, and maximize their benefit from social interactions with different speakers. Based on the findings, I argue that the speakers' use of their linguistic repertoires is more socio-pragmatically driven than based on the often-invoked prestige of specific language varieties. Finally, while it uses Bourdieu's social capital theory as a general framework, the study seeks to expand this theory by reconceptualizing power as a multi-dimensional top-down, bottom-up process of defining social structures and relationships.