Contrastive Pragmatics: A Cross-Disciplinary Journal

159-193

Authors: Bertus van Rooy and Haidee Kotze

This article investigates modal auxiliaries in original and translated Afrikaans and South African English parliamentary discourse in the period 1925–1985. Against the background of the sociolinguistic history of language contact in the bilingual South African parliament (1910–1994), it analyses (a) the contrastive differences in the use of modal auxiliaries in South African English and Afrikaans, (b) potential cross-linguistic influence in the use of modals between the two languages, and (c) the way in which contrastive differences and cross-linguistic influence are reflected in translations. In both languages, modal auxiliaries are more common in parliamentary discourse than in general usage. There is little evidence of overall convergence; there are, however, cross-linguistic similarities in specific pragmatic uses of modals in parliament. Translations show a large degree of shining-through from the source text, alongside adjustment to target norms; the tension between these two forces is variable, and influenced by social factors.

222-251

Authors: Marta Vacas Matos and Andrew D. Cohen

This study had as its goal to investigate how nonnative speakers (NNSs) of Spanish were able to perform pragmatics which in various ways resembled that of native speakers (NSs). The study focused on three advanced NNSs of Spanish who had contributed data six years earlier to a corpus of NS and NNS speech acts of complimenting, apologizing and refusing. The purpose was to do a contrastive analysis comparing the pragmatic performance of NNSs and NSs in order to capture both similarities and areas where highly competent NNSs displayed knowledge gaps, however subtle. The subjects responded to a language background questionnaire regarding their learning of Spanish and also completed a learning style preference survey. They were then asked to revisit their earlier performance in pragmatics from the corpus data and to describe the strategies that they used to produce their highly-rated performance in Spanish pragmatics at that time. The findings revealed ways in which the three subjects differentially imitated NS behavior, and provided insights as to how they arrived at native-like behavior in their facial expressions, use of clicks, physical contact practices, colloquial language, and cursing. The subjects’ reported learning style preferences appeared to be generally consistent with the strategies that they reported using for dealing with the pragmatic features of interest, such as the way that they dealt with cursing.

278-312

Authors: Montserrat Mir and Patxi Laskurain-Ibarluzea

The goal of this paper is to establish a cross-linguistic comparison between Peninsular Spanish and American English verbal humour as displayed in televised humorous monologues in late-night talk shows. While humour research is abundant across different languages, only a small number of studies investigating cross-cultural differences in verbal humour exist. An analysis of verbal humour in monologues from four current late-night TV talk shows in Spain and the United States revealed similar use of linguistic resources such as analogies, colloquialisms, cultural references to deliver humour but with different degrees of preference. Additionally, English monologues were mostly on political satire, while Spanish humour referenced a wider variety of topics including taboo-like themes and language such as sex, drugs, or religion. Spanish monologues were also more conversational and informal in their delivery.

3-30

Authors: Shigeko Okamoto

The repertoire of linguistic expressions that index sociopragmatic meanings differs considerably from language to language. This difference becomes particularly notice- able when one language is translated into another. As an example, this study exam- ines dialogs in the Japanese translations of two English crime novels to see how the translator deals with normatively gendered morphological forms in Japanese for which no corresponding forms exist in English. The analysis shows that although the same imperative, declarative, and interrogative forms are used for female and male characters in the English originals, in the translations, gendered forms are used not simply based on the gender of the characters but on the interaction of gender with other social variables, in particular class and age. The results and their theoretical implications are discussed, employing the notions of indirect indexing, double-voiced discourse, and cultural filter.

59-88

Authors: Rosina Márquez Reiter, Marina Noelia Cantarutti

This paper examines the interactional functions of the Spanish conversational par- ticle vale in the self-recorded service encounter interactions of a bidialectal restaurant server in an Ecuadorian restaurant in Madrid whose clientele are, by and large, of Ecuadorian descent. The article details the sequential contexts in which vale is found as well as the grammatical and prosodic design of the turns where it is deployed, and contrasts its use with slots in the same dataset where alternatives were deployed instead. It also compares the findings with resonant descriptions from prior interactional studies of its English counterpart: okay, given the similarities in the interactional functions observed for vale. Vale was identified as a standalone particle in third position during the ordering activity bearing rising or falling intonation to register the (in)completeness of the order and contingencies around it, and also as a turn-final agreement-eliciting tag with rising-falling intonation appended to announcements of imminent service to welcome clients or serve the dishes.

112-143

Authors: Hanna Bruns, Svenja Kranich

Address terms are closely related to the conceptualisation of hierarchical relations in a speech community, so, since – at least in Western societies – tendencies towards a flattening of hierarchies have been noted (cf. Mair, 2006), we expect changes in this domain. Some evidence has been produced for German, American and British English, but empirical insights on address choice in Indian English are lacking to date. As it tends to be a conservative variety (cf. e.g. Collins, 2012), we might expect resistance to change. The study makes a novel use of discourse completion tasks to investigate ongoing change using an ‘apparent-time’ approach. Our findings support the view of Indian English as conservative and of American English as changing most clearly towards informalisation, visible in the increasing use of informal attention getters (hey!). However, evidence of recent change is otherwise not as pronounced as expected and actually absent regarding pronoun choice in German.