Volume 4, Issue 2 -

Editorial Note

From Wodehouse to the White House : A Corpus-Assisted Study of Play, Fantasy and Dramatic Incongruity in Comic Writing and Laughter-Talk In this paper I consider two discourse types, one written and literary, the other spoken and semi-conversational, in an attempt to discover if there are any similarities in the ways in which humour is generated in such apparently diverse forms of communication. The first part of the paper is concerned with the explicitly comic prose of P. G. Wodehouse, whilst in the second part of the paper, we investigate the laughter-talk, defined as the talk preceding and provoking, intentionally or otherwise, an episode of laughter, occurring during press briefings held at the White House during the Clinton era and the subsequent Bush administration. Both studies, by employing corpus analysis techniques together with detailed discourse reading, integrate quantitative and qualitative approaches to the respective data sets.

Dubbing Dark Humour: A Case Study in Audiovisual Translation In an attempt to analyze the ways in which dark humour travels cross-culturally in audiovisual translation, the present study takes into consideration the processes involved in dubbing humour from English into Italian as observed in the English- and Italian-language versions of ten British and American dark comedies from the 1940s to the 2000s. In order to identify some of the main mechanisms of the dark humour genre, the humorous content of the films was analyzed in terms of the elements on which specific scenes are based, mainly the non-verbal and verbal components. In the cases in which verbal elements were involved, i.e. the examples of verbally expressed humour, the analysis was concerned with the translation strategies adopted and with possible effects of alteration of the dark humour content as a result of translation.

No Aggression, Only Teasing: The Pragmatics of Teasing and Banter A bone of contention among researchers is whether the primary function of humour is the expression of aggression against the hearer or the promotion of solidarity between the interlocutors. It is commonly averred that teasing boasts a dichotomous nature, i.e. malignant and benevolent. The former coincides with the potential for criticising, mocking and ostracising the interlocutor, whereas the latter accounts for playfulness and bonding capacity. The overriding goal of the paper is to expound the rapport-building function, which is here postulated to be inherent to teasing. First and foremost, I will determine the scope of interest differentiating between putdown humour and teases , which may assume the form of retorts and develop into multi-turn teases, i.e. banter. Subtypes of teasing will be discussed with a view to proving that it is inherently devoid of genuine aggressiveness. The underlying premise is that teases, even if ostensibly aggressive, i.e. face-threatening, are geared towards solidarity, in conformity with the framework of politeness, including mock impoliteness , holding between intimates. Also, teases fulfil a few subordinate functions such as defunctionalisation or mitigation of face-threatening messages they may carry.

Legitimisation and Proximisation Values in the Discourse of Historic Change This methodological-critical paper belongs to the field of pragmaticcognitive discourse analysis. It develops Cap's STA model of legitimisation (2005, 2006, 2008) and investigates various mechanisms legitimising the speaker's actions (or actions for which he bears responsibility) in political discourse of historic change. Proximisation as the salient feature of the model adds significantly to effectiveness of the speaker's continual attempt to convince the addressee of the rightness of political steps taken. It is a powerful and coercive tool "alerting the addressee [to] the proximity or imminence of phenomena which can be a ‘threat’ to the addressee" located in the deictic centre of a given event (Cap 2006:4) or a chain of events. The STA model accounts for the application of a three-dimensional pattern of the phenomenon in question, i.e. spatial, temporal, and axiological proximisation. However, the division does not exhaust the notion's potential, since properties of the dimensions mentioned enable us to classify them according to an extended taxonomic system in which they possess positive, negative, and neutral values (cf. Wieczorek 2008). Thus, the aim of this paper is to (a) analyse the interplay between a number of legitimisation strategies, (b) present the positive/negative/neutral classification of proximisation, and (c) comment on the nature of the interaction between and potency of the three dimensions and values. These can coexist within the body of one text, as well as within the body of one paragraph and their complementary character strengthens the overall goal of legitimisation providing various stimuli for the addressee to accept the speaker's stance, his decisions and actions, to comply with them, and to undertake actions intended by the speaker.

Beyond Reference and Designation: On Interactive Implications of the Pronoun I in English Using English-language material the paper aims to elaborate a theoretical model for the study of personal pronouns which could account for those uses of pronouns that go beyond their typical deictic (or referential) function of indicating speech-event participants. The proposed analysis focuses on the following two usage types of the pronoun I : (1) I say, there are lots of places to see there ; (2) I tell you, John is the one to rely on. It is argued that despite idiomatic boundedness of the pronoun I in the expressions I say and I tell you the pronoun does contribute to the pragmatic effects of the utterances in (1) and (2), namely, the effects of attention seeking and persuasion respectively. It is assumed that these effects could be attributed to interactive implications of the pronoun I that typically emerge in situations of dialogic discourse. To account for interactive orientedness of the first-person pronoun the paper puts forward two interrelated hypotheses. First, it is supposed that the first-person pronoun functions as a sign which is indexed to four regular contexts: referential context, perceptual context, the context of the speaker's subjective experiences, the context of interaction. Second, it is hypothesized that interactive implications of the pronoun I are introduced into oral discourse due to the interplay of two or more of the postulated contexts. Both hypotheses are further substantiated with reference to examples of oral discourse drawn from English-language fiction.

Between Multiculturalism and Nationalism - A Discursive Construction of Britishness in the Spectator in the Wake of the London Bombings In his interdisciplinary work Ideology (1998), Teun A. van Dijk proposes to study ideology as a cognitive, social and linguistic enterprise. Such an integrative approach is assumed to model interfaces between social structure and cognition through discourse. The notion of ideology it presupposes may be described as shared social representations (group self-schemata), which become a group's defining attributes, and govern its ideological expression in discourse. It seems that this approach can be productively applied to a study of ideological relations in the discourses of multicultural societies, such as Britain. In the wake of the London bombings in July 2005, the British rightwing quality weekly the Spectator published a series of articles raising alarming questions about the misguided ideological priorities of modern Britain, and envisioning a deepening crisis of national identity. According to the magazine, the heritage and values of mainstream British society are being endangered by the political promotion of multiculturalism. This in turn has instigated terrorist threats from Islamic extremists, who have been nurtured by the British welfare state and emboldened by its permissive policies. Thus the increasing ideological split between the militancy of the non-integrated Muslim minority in Britain and the decadence of national culture has become the subject of a number of articles. As a result, one of the pervasive discursive mechanisms emerging in the publication has been an ideological confrontation between "us" and "them" The aim of the present study is to survey the pragmatic and rhetorical devices used to construct the image of British society tied in a discursive struggle to define its modern identity-oscillating between the ideals of multiculturalism and the ideology of nationalism. The material for the study is taken from over fifteen articles that come from three subsequent issues of the Spectator published on 16, 23, and 30 July 2005. The methodological framework of the study draws on the research procedures of Critical Discourse Analysis accommodated to the analysis of ideological discourse in the press.

Symbolic Annihilation or Alternative Femininity? The (Linguistic) Portrayal of Women in Selected Polish Advertisements The year 1989 marks the beginning of sweeping political, economic and social changes in Poland. Since that time an expansion of women into top professional positions can be observed. Data from the last national census (2002) clearly indicate that women in Poland are better educated than their male counterparts, increasingly careeroriented as well as aggressively pursuing managerial occupations. A modern woman is, by popular belief, no longer obliged to conform to the so-called dominant (Coates 1997) or emphasized (Connell 1987) [i.e. hegemonic] form of femininity. There appears to be greater social latitude for her professional development. The paper explores whether print advertisements (playing a crucial role in the construction of social identities) of certain products incorporate new powerful discourse of femininity. The three advertised products and services (cars, telephones, and banking) selected for the analysis have been commonly associated in Poland with the dominant form of masculinity. Consequently, it is interesting to examine whether women function there, and if so, how. The analyzed advertisements have been collected over the period of one year from three magazines addressed to the emerging Polish middle class. Drawing on Goffman's concepts of function ranking and ritualization of subordination as well as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I will attempt to determine whether the selected print advertisements reflect the new femininity in Poland.