Pragmatics and the social life of the English definite article

Acton, Eric K.

doi:10.1353/lan.2019.0010

Cited by 78 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…In section 5, he narrates an encounter with nonmigrants in a way that opposes all nonmigrant and diasporic Portuguese as two types or wholes (Gal and Irvine 2019). Rather than say uns/alguns/ some Portuguese people, he says, “I saw the Portuguese people” (third person definite plural), referring to and lumping together all (nonmigrant) Portuguese (see Acton 2019 for a similar strategy in American English). What follows is the maximally reportable action: a stylized quotation of what nonmigrant types tell one another about emigrants, performed for the benefit of overhearing diasporans, at the expense of nonmigrants.…”

Section: Jonathan Da Silva’s Vlog Postmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiaddressivity and Collective Addressivity in Vlog‐based Interactions between Diasporic and Nonmigrant Portuguese

Koven

Marques

2021

J Linguistic Anthropol

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We use the notion of addressivity to analyze interactions between diasporic Portuguese in France and nonmigrant Portuguese in Portugal, in a vlog by Jonathan Da Silva. Through sets of interlocutor‐oriented strategies, participants address one another not only as specific individuals but also as collective social types, as if addressing all diasporic and nonmigrant Portuguese. We thus consider how participants use collective addressivity to hail one another as essentialized tokens of social types in a fantasy of telecommunication (Nozawa 2016). These materials reveal not only the construction of ethnonationally Portuguese identified “we’s,” but also of the collectivized “you’s” such “we’s” address, in a genre of online interaction.

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Section: Jonathan Da Silva’s Vlog Postmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiaddressivity and Collective Addressivity in Vlog‐based Interactions between Diasporic and Nonmigrant Portuguese

Koven

Marques

2021

J Linguistic Anthropol

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“…By the same token, Acton (2014, 2019) observes that using the determiner the with a plural NP (e.g., ‘the Americans’) tends to depict that referent of the NP as a monolith separate from the speaker, all the while conveying a social meaning of ‘self‐distancing” from the subject matter that fails to arise with a bare plural alone (e.g., ‘Americans’). Once again, he derives this effect from a semantic difference between the two variants: the ‐plurals, but not bare plurals, pick out well‐defined collections of object‐level individuals as a unit; for this reason, together with the fact that they are more formally complex than bare plurals (see also Section 4.1.1), the‐ plurals foreground the boundary around that collective in a way that bare plurals do not, leading to the observed social effects.…”

Section: How Semantic and Social Meanings Inform One Anothermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Acton (2019) argues that a similar type of markedness is crucial to highlight the monolithizing effect of definite determiners with plural NPs. Because in the case of plural NPs the same content could have been conveyed with a simpler bare plural (e.g., ‘Americans’), the determiner calls the listener's attention to the fact that a more complex construction than the default is being used, contributing to a boost of the social effects engendered by the semantics of the form.…”

Section: How Semantic and Social Meanings Inform One Anothermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social meaning in semantics and pragmatics

Beltrama

2020

Language and Linguist. Compass

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The term social meaning identifies the constellation of traits that linguistic forms convey about the social identity of their users—for example, their demographics, personality and ideological orientation. A central topic of research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, this category of meaning has traditionally escaped the scope of semantics and pragmatics; only in recent years have scholars begun to combine formal, experimental and computational methods to incorporate the investigation of this type of content into the study of meaning in linguistics. This article reviews recent work within this area, focusing on two domain of investigation: endeavors aimed at investigating how semantic and social meanings mutually inform one another; and endeavors directed at capturing both the communication and inference of social meanings with the tools of formal semantics and pragmatics.

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“…These are what Silverstein (1976) calls referential and presupposing indexes. When indexicals point beyond the immediate context, they require—and invoke—personal, communal (Clark 2006) and ideological (Acton 2019) common ground. The demonstrative in an utterance like there goes that Donald Trump!…”

Section: The Semiotics Of Variationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affect and iconicity in phonological variation

D’Onofrio¹,

Eckert

2020

Lang. Soc.

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The study of iconic properties of language has been marginalized in linguistics, with the assumption that iconicity, linked with expressivity, is external to the grammar. Yet iconicity plays an essential role in sociolinguistic variation. At a basic level, repetition and phonetic intensification can intensify the indexicality of variables. Iconicity plays a further role in variation in the form of sound symbolism, linking properties of sounds with attributes or objects. Production studies have shown some phonological variables exhibiting sound symbolism, particularly in the expression of affect. In some cases, the observation of sound symbolism has been largely interpretive. But in others, stylistic variability as a function of speaker affect has provided empirical evidence of iconicity. This article examines the role of iconicity and performativity in transcending the limits of reference, reviews iconicity in production studies, and provides experimental evidence that sound symbolism influences how listeners attribute affect to linguistic variation. (Variation, iconicity, affect)

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Pragmatics and the social life of the English definite article

Cited by 78 publications

References 38 publications

Multiaddressivity and Collective Addressivity in Vlog‐based Interactions between Diasporic and Nonmigrant Portuguese

Multiaddressivity and Collective Addressivity in Vlog‐based Interactions between Diasporic and Nonmigrant Portuguese

Social meaning in semantics and pragmatics

Affect and iconicity in phonological variation

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