In this paper we describe and apply a method probing into linguistic (in)directness in complaint tweets. The sample analyzed consists of French-language Twitter complaint interactions, half of which ...are between the SNCF (the French National Railway company) and its customers and half between the SNCB (the Belgian National Railway company) and its customers. The aim of this paper is two-fold: first, we present and test a methodology that measures the explicitness (or linguistic (in)directness) of complaints, which, we argue, in line with Decock and Depraetere (2018), must be differentiated from perceived (im)politeness or perceived face-threat. Linguistic (in)directness is analyzed in the complete complaint situation, that is, in the first tweet as well as in the ensuing interaction. Secondly, as the sample shows differences in the realization of complaints in two linguistically close communities, we put forward some hypotheses concerning the relative impact of cultural differences and the companies’ response strategy.
•We analyze complaint components and how they are linguistically realized.•We differentiate complaint (in)directness and perceived (im)politeness.•Twitter complaints vary in their degree of linguistic (in)directness.•We explore the impact of response strategy on Twitter complaint interaction.•Twitter complaint realizations in French are different in Belgium and France.
Using a 20-hour contrastive corpus documenting political debates (public debates as well as debates on TV) and work meetings, the paper examines the functions and distributions of a specific French ...evidential: tu dis/vous dites P you say P (n = 108). Reported speech markers have been studied extensively across various languages and communicative contexts. However, the situation where speakers report their addressee's speech remains relatively unexplored. Although the verb dire say is semantically neutral in terms of polarity (i.e. it does not express either agreement or disagreement with the reported content P), analysis of the corpus shows that expectations related to discourse genres play a crucial role in terms of pragmatic enrichment: depending on the genre and role of the speaker, tu dis/vous dites P you say P frequently works as a stance-taking marker that is either oriented towards agreement or disagreement regarding P. In work meetings, besides the neutral tokens used for intersubjective objectives (e.g. repair sequences), tokens are massively oriented towards agreement. In political debates, and especially TV debates, the marker is either used by the moderator to frame the disagreement, or by debaters to disagree with each other.
•Semantically, tu dis/vous dites P you say P is neutral regarding P.•Quantitative and qualitative analysis is performed on a 20h contrastive corpus.•Three speech genres are contrasted: public debates, TV debates, work meetings.•Analysis shows that the marker is context-sensitive regarding the stance towards P.•Orientation towards agreement and disagreement depends on genre norms.
In 2015 and 2016, European newspapers covered the Syrian migration into Europe in great detail, describing the path followed by millions of refugees as European authorities put up both physical and ...metaphorical obstacles to stop their advance. Water metaphors, a common resource in immigration discourse, were extensively used in the media during this period. Apparently neutral, expressions like the flow of refugees or a new wave of immigrants seemed to be devoid of ideological bias, and so an objective, factual way to present the news about it. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the contexts in which water metaphors were used in two ideologically opposed Spanish newspapers in this period. Results show that their descriptive function was surpassed by the evaluative one, as revealed by the high frequency of force dynamic schemas underlying the flow metaphor, the most frequent one in the sample. Negatively charged, the frequent use of flow to refer to Syrian refugees could have affected public opinion on the event. Also, a contrastive analysis suggests that there are subtle differences between the right and the left wing when using these metaphors, but they are not as significant as expected, since both newspapers tend to avoid overt negativity in their discourse on Syrian migration. Considering the relatively small size of the sample, further work needs to be done to confirm these results in the Spanish press and also to extend the analysis to other European media.
Involving first language (L1) in second language learning (L2) is considered as an effective method to be practiced. This research focuses on a contrastive study between Arabic and Indonesian. It ...aims to investigate similarities and differences of the two languages, especially about their interrogative sentence forms. It is descriptive qualitative research which applies two methods; observation and introspection method. Then, Contrastive Analysis (CA) is used to analyze the data. The result shows that similarity concept between Arabic and Indonesian is many shown on matā, ayna, limādzā, and hal. Meanwhile, differences between both of them are shown on mā, man, ayy, and kayfa. As a result, it may occur errors in the use of question, errors in translating interrogative sentence, and errors in understanding question.
The effect of first language transfer on second language acquisition and learning has been a major theoretical concept in second language research and pedagogy since the 1950s. In order to give a ...historical perspective, the authors offer a brief presentation of some of the major topics from the broad spectrum of issues that have been examined by the applied linguistics research community during the past six decades and some significant developments in neuroimaging and cognitive science that have allowed researchers to investigate the role that first language plays in transfer to second language during neural activity and cognitive processing. The paper concludes with some pedagogical implications for second language instructors.
•We manipulated the level of processing of colored digits in a backward masking task.•Subjective visibility of stimuli was measured on a trial-by-trial basis.•ERP results suggest temporal unfolding ...of ERP markers of conscious processing.•Early component (VAN) reflects the initial perceptual experience.•Late component (LP) represents conscious experience of non-perceptual information.
We aimed to distinguish electrophysiological signatures of visual awareness from other task-related processes through manipulating the level of processing of visual stimuli. During an event-related EEG experiment, 36 subjects performed either color (low-level condition) or magnitude (high-level condition) evaluations of masked digits. Participants also assessed subjective visibility of each stimulus using the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS). Mean amplitude of the components of interest was analyzed (VAN − 140–240 ms; LP − 380–480 ms) with weighted regression mixed model. In the VAN component time window the mean amplitude correlated with PAS rating in both conditions. Mean amplitude in the LP time window correlated with PAS ratings in the high-level condition, but not in the low-level condition. Our results support the temporal unfolding of ERP makers of conscious processing, with an early component reflecting the initial perceptual experience and a late component being a correlate of the conscious experience of non-perceptual information.
PDF
