Volume 9, Issue 4

This paper examines the overt and non-overt coding of discourse relations in the argumentative discourse genre of editorial based on a contrastive study of British English and German editorials. Particular attention is given to the linguistic coding of discourse relations positioned adjacently and non-adjacently, and to the question of granularity. The analysis of the German editorials is based on the syntactic unit of sentence, while their British counterpart is based on the syntactic unit of clause. In the data at hand, the two languages code the discourse relation of Contrast overtly in adjacent and non-adjacent positioning but employ different strategies as regards the overt coding of the coordinating discourse relation of Continuation and the subordinating discourse relations of Elaboration, Explanation, and Comment. The rate of overt marking for adjacently positioned coordinating relations is higher in the German data. In the British data, there is hardly any difference between the overt marking of adjacently positioned discourse relations holding between clauses and sentences. The overt marking of subordinating discourse relations is lower in the German data, and in the British data, there is a clear preference for coding adjacently positioned subordinating discourse relations in an overt manner on the level of clause.

In Hungarian, verbs of work can occur with implicit subjects not only because of the pro -drop property of Hungarian, but on the basis of the interaction between their lexical-semantic representation and contextual information as well. The present paper intends to examine thoroughly what kind of lexical-semantic representation can be assumed for Hungarian verbs of work and how lexical-semantic and contextual factors license the occurrence of verbs of work with implicit subjects in Hungarian. Bearing in mind these two goals the paper proposes two alternative explanations. According to the first explanation, the lexical-semantic representation of verbs of works puts a selection restriction on the type of the subject argument, which can license the subjectless use with a generic reading. The type of subject must be the particular person with the profession in question. Such kind of lexical-semantic representation can be interpreted in two ways: Either only the activities denoted by the verbs of work are in the focus of attention in a context, or their subjects as well. If only activities are in the focus of attention, the agents, syntactically realizable as subjects, should not be explicitly expressed. The subjects are available as background information provided by the selection restrictions. According to the second explanation, the implicit subjects are licensed by the interaction between the encyclopedic information stored under the conceptual addresses of verbs of work and the other lexemes in utterances. In this analysis, the information concerning the type of the subject arguments has not built in the lexical-semantic representations, instead it is stored under the verbs' conceptual address and becomes available in the course of interpretation. In both cases an interaction between the lexical-semantic representations and the context must be assumed.

This study investigates politeness in the Holy Quran from a socio-pragmatic perspective. Drawing on politeness theory, we examine the text-building mechanisms and functions of a large number of chapters and verses selected from the Holy Quran. Data is analyzed in terms of both Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness and Leech's maxims of politeness. These two theoretical frameworks have been, so far, attested against data collected from various sources, but no single study has yet used data from any of the Holy books. This paper addresses this issue in light of data drawn from the Holy Quran. The data were analyzed in two main parts: The first included the verses that are concerned with the God-man relationship and the second with the man-man (i.e., interpersonal) relationship. By analyzing the structural and functional features of the verses, the study found a range of various politeness strategies employed for conveying a huge number of divine ethical messages. The study concludes that such a variety of politeness strategies relates strongly to the type of information being conveyed to the addressees. From a theoretical perspective, this paper contributes to the discussions of God-man communication and man-man communication in relation to the negotiation of politeness meaning in the context of religion. The findings presented here bear on orientations toward the importance of studying politeness as a socio-pragmatic phenomenon in relation to religion and morality.

The present study focuses on the benefits that teaching the speech act of refusal from a discourse perspective can have on third language learners' pragmatic knowledge. Additionally, it also explores whether receptive and productive bilinguals resort to pragmalinguistic, sociopragmatic, and linguistic information in different ways during the planning and execution of refusals in English. Ninety-two students of English (52 receptive bilinguals and 40 productive bilinguals of Catalan and Spanish) participated in the study, which involved a one-group pre-test/post-test design and an instructional treatment. Retrospective verbal reports were used to examine the information attended to during the pre-test and post-test role-plays, that is to say, before and after receiving instruction on refusals. Research findings showed that both receptive and productive bilinguals increased their attention and pragmalinguistic awareness of refusals in English, but the latter seemed to display a higher degree of metapragmatic awareness. In addition, productive bilinguals showed higher communicative sensitivity, mainly in the form of concern for the interlocutor's feelings, and a conversational approach that can be defined as hearer-oriented. Findings of the study add new insights on how bilingualism may influence third language pragmatic learning in instructional settings.