Jesús Romero-Trillo

Pragmatics and corpus linguistics : a mutualistic entente

The recent history of linguistics has witnessed the development of some disciplines that were conceived apart but benefited from common intuitions. One example of this phenomenon is the relationship established throughout time between pragmatics and corpus linguistics. Although their arrival heralded the application of two paradigms based on distant theoretical principles, they always showed an interest in their mutual advances and their practical reconciliation gave birth to an intellectual synergy that proved very fruitful. The present volume is an homage to the symbiosis of pragmatics and corpus linguistics and gathers the works of some of the scholars that have striven to create the liaison between them for a better understanding of language.

Adaptive Context: The Fourth Element of Meaning

The present article explores the notion of communication from the point of view of the traditions that have considered context as the essential element for the optimal understanding of a message. The article describes the historical evolution of context with special emphasis on the discussion between context-free and context-bound descriptions of interaction, and chooses the Dynamic Model of Meaning as the unifier of these diverging traditions through theoretical synergy. Our approach describes a further step in the understanding of context by incorporating a fourth element in context, i.e., Adaptive Context, that we deem essential to understand cognitive dynamism. In this article we describe the role of Adaptive Management and show how this fourth element of context is basic to describe cognition in communication and to create social rapport.

Research Trends in Intercultural Pragmatics

This volume looks at current issues in Intercultural Pragmatics from an applied perspective. The content is organized in three sections that encompass the primary applications of intercultural exchanges: the linguistic and cognitive domain, the social and cultural domain, and the discourse and stylistics domain. The chapters analyze real language situations in English, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Filipino or Polish.

Prosodic modeling and position analysis of pragmatic markers in English conversation

Abstract The objective of this article is to investigate the use of three of the most frequent pragmatic markers in English conversation in the London-Lund Corpus, i.e. “well”, “you know” and “I mean”. Specifically, the aim is to study the characteristics of the prosodic patterns and the Tone Unit position in the realization of pragmatic functions by the markers. The article combines the thorough analysis of the corpus data with the description of the function of these elements in the realization of Adaptive Context within the Dynamic Model of Meaning approach to pragmatics and communication.

Prosody and Feedback in Native and Non-native Speakers of English

The present chapter investigates the relationship between prosody and pragmatics from a theoretical and practical perspective. For Romero-Trillo (Pragmatic Markers. In: Encyclopaedia of applied linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, in press a), pragmatics is the linguistic discipline that studies meaning in context from a dynamic perspective, an approach based on the ‘triangulation model’, which unites the users, their (non)linguistic expressions and their deeds. Pragmatic Markers are, in this model, the elements that fulfil the essential function of feedback in communication to verify the correct reception of a message; they are the ‘go-ahead signals’ in any interaction. Our study compares the realization of native and non-native prosodic performance of feedback elements in a spoken corpus, and their differences on the basis of statistical analyses. From a pedagogical perspective, the study of the acoustic features of Pragmatic Markers that realize feedback in conversation is essential to understand how these elements function as ‘punting poles’ that sail through the flow of conversation, and how foreign speakers of English need to master the prosody of these elements in order to be pragmatically correct.

The representation of liminality conflicts in the media

Abstract In the course of history, language and power have had an inextricable relationship that has enabled the ideological domination of some people/s over others. In fact, the main problem for the citizens is to understand the origins and reasons of a conflict and to discriminate between factual information and their beliefs. The present article will look at liminality and conflict from a linguistic perspective by analyzing the function of language and power in the escalation of the conflict between India and Pakistan in December 2008. The study will carry out an analysis of the language of newspapers during the days of the pre-conflict stage (27–31 December) between these countries. The article will analyze the information that appeared on the front pages of four of the most popular English newspapers in India and Pakistan (on-line edition). The aim of this analysis is to assess the role of the written media in the construction of the cognitive scenario of the conflict, and its function in the creation of an ideological basis to justify the ignition of a conflict.

The Corpus of Language and Nature (CLAN Project)®: A Tool for the Study of the Relationship Between Cognition and Emotions in Language

This chapter makes a description of the theoretical tenets of the structure and compilation of the Corpus of Language and Nature. The chapter describes the foundations of the analysis of natural landscapes from an ecological perspective and makes the link with the theory of the cognitive appraisal of natural landscapes developed by Romero-Trillo and Espigares (Pragmatics & Cognition 20: 168–185). The chapter presents the design of the corpus compilation step by step as a way to illustrate how to use modern technological and computer resources for linguistic analysis and data archiving. The most important feature of this corpus is that its main aim is not only to compile a massive amount of spoken data representing the speech of informants belonging to different regional and first language variables, but also to carry out a scientific experiment in which certain variables are considered for future linguistic and statistical correlations in order to ascertain the relationship between language, emotion and nature. The objective of the chapter is also to illustrate the process of design and collection for readers intending to start a corpus with a sound experimental design.

The Ethnopragmatic Representation of Positive and Negative Emotions in Irish Immigrants’ Letters

This chapter explores the ethnopragmatic conceptualization of happiness and sadness in the language of the Irish citizens who immigrated to North America between 1811 and 1880, on the basis of a corpus of Irish emigrants’ personal correspondence. In particular, this study proposes a Natural Semantic Metalanguage examination of the emotional load of the positive adjectives happy and glad, and their negative counterparts, unhappy and sad, in order to elucidate Irish emigrants’ psychological states of mind and emotional responses to transatlantic migrations and life abroad.

New Empirical and Theoretical Paradigms in Corpus Pragmatics, An Introduction

The second volume of the Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics series, New Empirical and Theoretical Paradigms in Corpus Pragmatics, investigates the positive feedback between empirical and theoretical approaches to linguistics. The aim of the chapters in the volume is to propose new research paradigms to current studies in corpus linguistics and pragmatics.

THE CONSTRUCTION AND DISARTICULATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES THROUGH LANGUAGE VIS-À-VIS THE SCOTTISH REFERENDUM OF INDEPENDENCE

Abstract This article examines the discursive construction of Scottish and British- English national identities in the printed press within the context of the planned Scottish independence referendum. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and informed by sociological and anthropological research, the study uses a Corpus Linguistics approach to analyse newspaper texts from the Scottish and British printed media to define the strategies used in the construction and disarticulation of these identities and the ideologies behind them. The results of the analysis will show that the Scottish broadsheets use a staunchly Scottish rhetoric with frequent examples of nation flagging, showing the palpable struggle for power and a certain sense of inferiority. Inadvertently or otherwise, these newspapers engender a sense of separateness by employing techniques of positive in-group identification. The Scottish editions of UK broadsheets, on the contrary, hold a more Anglocentric perspective and their treatment of the referendum is more political than ideological, frequently attributing negative evaluations to the independence issue and engaging in the practice of “tartanisation”. To conclude, the UK broadsheets tend to provide a more balanced and objective point of view, thus being at the political centre of the social debate enacted by the referendum and the subsequent possible independence of Scotland.