Taboo terms offer a playground for linguistic creativity in language after language, and sign languages form no exception. The present paper offers the first investigation of taboo terms in sign languages from a cognitive linguistic perspective. We analyze the linguistic mechanisms that introduce offense, focusing on the combined effects of cognitive metonymy and iconicity. Using the Think Aloud Protocol, we elicited offensive or crass signs and dysphemisms from nine signers. We find that German Sign Language uses a variety of linguistic (...) means to introduce and enhance offense, many of which rely on iconic properties of the taboo sign. In conjunction with cross-linguistically common metonymic word-formation strategies, the degree of visual explicitness of a sign increases its potential to offend. Semantically similar taboo signs based on the same metonymic anchor but differing in their degree of iconicity also differ in offensiveness. This allows for creating dysphemisms and euphemisms via phonological changes to a sign. We further show that embodiment creates modality-enhanced ‘vicarious embarrassment’ in the viewer that results in the respective signs being judged obscene or offensive. Further, lexical blending and non-manual enhancement play a role in the creation of dysphemisms in DGS. Lastly, we propose that iconicity as a cognitive structuring principle of linguistic expressions constrains the possible semantic extensions of iconic taboo terms. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years or so, theoretical work in such fields as legal semiotics and law and literature has argued that the legal process is profoundly rhetorical. At the same time, a number of communication-based disciplines such as semiotics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology have provided, particularly in interdisciplinary combination with law, a wealth of empirical evidence on, and insight into, the micro-contexts of language and communication in the legal process. However, while these invaluable nitty-gritty analyses provide empirical support for (...) a rhetorical thesis, work in these areas has tended to ignore rhetoric as an explanatory principle. This article introduces an overarching rhetorical framework for the discursive construction and management of cases in contemporary Anglo-American legal processes. Taking ‘forensic’ as relating to the conduct of cases and ‘discourse’ as semiosis-in-practice, I argue that the practices within which forensic discourse is embedded are not, as the received legal view would have it, aimed at revealing an impartial truth but are deeply rhetorical practices aimed at persuading decision-makers to provide a remedy for a claimed wrong. By looking across forensic texts and contexts, I identify common elements of forensic discourse that can be found both in classical forensic orations and throughout the modern legal process and consider how these intersect with critical forces of agency and structure and the particularities of semiosis in situated context. An awareness of commonalities across forensic discourse can help sharpen our focus on the critical causes and consequences of individual and structural difference and point to consequential suggestions for reform. (shrink)

This article analyzes doctor–patient communication at admission interviews in an outpatient mental health care service at a public hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. These interviews are the first contact between professionals and patients, and they result in the admission or rejection of the latter into the medical institution. In particular, we observe how context, understood as a sociocognitive and scalar concept, is reshaped with gaze direction and agenda-setting through interaction, resulting in three hierarchical spaces which can be represented as degrees (...) in a scale: the public, the private, and the intimate level. This description will allow us to understand a series of communicative difficulties that may result from scale maladjustments, in which professionals interact with patients at different levels and therefore cannot give adequate feedback to satisfy mental health care needs. (shrink)

Resumen Este trabajo tiene dos objetivos. Desde el punto de vista conceptual, nos proponemos contribuir al conocimiento del concepto de voz y su construcción conversacional a partir de la (des)afiliación y el (des)alineamiento en el proceso de validación o rechazo de la voz de los participantes. Desde el punto de vista práctico, esperamos contribuir al desarrollo de los métodos de la investigación participativa, entendidos en ciencias sociales como una metodología de investigación y aprendizaje colectivo, a partir del análisis crítico de (...) un caso. Para ello, adoptamos sobre el análisis de la interacción verbal un punto de vista discursivo que nos permite definir el concepto de voz como un conjunto de regularidades semióticas que indexicalizan una trayectoria biográfica a través de los discursos sociales que la componen. De este modo, la voz individual es producto de la trayectoria social -y discursiva- del hablante, la cual, al recibir validación o rechazo de los demás participantes, se pone a prueba en cada interacción. En ese sentido, proponemos que la (des)afiliación y el (des)alineamiento conversacionales permiten validar o rechazar las dimensiones de voz propuestas por el hablante. Exploraremos esta hipótesis en un corpus de reuniones de un proyecto de investigación participativa desarrollado en Buenos Aires, Argentina, con la participación de investigadoras e investigadores académicos y dirigentes sindicales, deteniéndonos especialmente en el caso de una de las participantes, que abandonó el proyecto al poco tiempo de comenzar. (shrink)

These comments focus on issues of genre in transcription formats. Bucholtz's paper takes conversation to be the a priori organizational genre of everyday talk, following a long line of interactional and conversational studies. Narrative, however, could as well be seen as an a priori genre for the organization of interaction, and many instances of talk would reflect polygeneric blending. This form of blending should be reflected in transcription practices, so that we can do justice to variation in talk by means (...) of variation in transcription procedures. (shrink)

Experimental design is one aspect of a scientific method. A well-designed, properly conducted experiment aims to control variables in order to isolate and manipulate causal effects and thereby maximize internal validity, support causal inferences, and guarantee reliable results. Traditionally employed in the natural sciences, experimental design has become an important part of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Experimental methods are also endorsed as the most reliable guides to policy effectiveness. Through a discussion of some of the central concepts (...) associated with experimental design, including controlled variation and randomization, this chapter will provide a summary of key ethical issues that tend to arise in experimental contexts. In addition, by exploring assumptions about the nature of causation and by analyzing features of causal relationships, systems, and inferences in social contexts, this chapter will summarize the ways in which experimental design can undermine the integrity of not only social and behavioral research but policies implemented on the basis of such research. (shrink)

This thesis arises out of a critique of the way language is decontextualized and presented from a reductively linguistic viewpoint in foreign language instruction. In particular, it focuses on the weaknesses of the broad approach known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and highlights the disparity between its theoretical assumptions and practical applications. With this in mind, the thesis identifies and explores three foundational premises that should be considered as part of an attempt to design a theoretically coherent framework for foreign (...) language instruction. By applying three sets of principles based on these premises, the thesis goes on to outline such a framework. After providing a background to the study, the first consideration is the nature of cultural and communicative performance. The study turns to sociological concepts regarding cultural organization and production, in order to better conceptualize how 'culture' can be understood in the context of foreign language learning. The second part of this area focuses on meaning and communication in order to undermine current treatments of 'language' in foreign language pedagogy. The second area of interest is that of learning and thus considers a number of theories of how people learn. The focus here is on learning-in-general rather than learning languages specifically. What emerges from this are a number of principles that should be borne in mind when creating conditions favorable to language learning. Finally, one largely overlooked area in foreign language learning and applied linguistics more broadly, is how the field of foreign language pedagogy constructs and legitimizes its practices, as well as suppresses its foundational theoretical assumptions in its activities (including research, methodology and teaching). A chapter is therefore devoted to this issue, and a set of principles is formulated in order to ensure that the design of any instructional framework is honest and ethical. Thus furnished with the triangulation of principles, an attempt is made to outline how a learner-focused, ethical pedagogical framework that stresses culture might look. This thesis is theoretical in nature and relies on arguments and positions from diverse and less commonly considered academic fields in foreign language instruction. Its main theoretical inspiration comes from concepts and claims generally considered 'poststructural' or 'postmodern'. However, there is no exclusive devotion to any particular author or theory. It is hoped that this thesis can make a genuine, if not controversial, contribution to the field of foreign language teaching by initiating a dialogue concerning the (lack of) philosophical and epistemological reflexivity in the field. (shrink)

Japanese media coverage since March 11th 2011 suggests that people from Fukushima Prefecture have faced discrimination based on people's fears of radiation, despite the fact that they pose no genuine threat. This discrimination is compared to that faced by survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Survivors from Hiroshima express hopes that people from Tohoku will not face the same fear and discrimination they did. 2011年3月以降に伝達されたメディアでは、福島県の人々が放射能に対する人々の恐怖から、実際にはその恐れが確認されていないにもかかわらず、差別を受けていることが分かる。この差別は、第二次世界大戦中に広 島に落とされた原子爆弾の生存者に対するものと類似する。広島の生存者は、東北の人々が同じような差別を受けてほしくないと希望している。.