Idioms, proverbs and body part expressions on Yiedie “wellbeing” in Akan
Kofi Agyekum | University of Ghana
This paper investigates the interaction between language, culture, body and emotions. It is an aspect of cognitive semantics that discusses the Akan somatic nature of their body and therefore have existing lexical items, idioms and proverbs to comment on “wellbeing”. It is based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Ethnopragmatics by Goddard (2006). A great parts of Akan expressions for “wellbeing” are tapped from body parts through their physical, cognitive, and emotional representations. The nature of the derived semantic patterns and how the Akans consider these somatic expressions, idioms and proverbs as important aspects of their language and culture are discussed. This paper argues that “wellbeing” as an emotion is transitional like a pendulum; one can be enjoying aspects of “wellbeing” for a moment and be in “distress” and “depression” a moment later.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, ethnopragmatics, emotions, wellbeing, proverbs, Akan
Disagreement strategies and institutional face attack in Chinese mainstream media editorial comments on WeiboJie Xia 夏桔 | Jiangsu University of Science and TechnologyThis paper explores how readers of Chinese mainstream media editorials use disagreement strategies to attack the institutional face of the mainstream media organizations on Weibo. By quantitative and qualitative analysis, the disagreement strategies in Weibo comments were elaborated based on the logos-oriented and ethos-oriented distinction. It was found that logos-oriented disagreements were employed to criticize the content of the editorial, ethos-oriented ad-hominem disagreements were employed to attack the trustworthiness and impartiality of the mainstream media organizations, and ethos-oriented ad-personam disagreements were pure insults to express their negative emotions to the mainstream media organizations. The findings suggested that the online commenting space of Chinese mainstream media editorials is a public sphere of combined deliberation and liberal individualism. This study adds to existing literature the disagreement strategies used in online comments while shedding light on the role of online comments in the public sphere building in the Chinese social media context.Keywords: logos-ethos, online comments, disagreement strategies, institutional face attack, mainstream media editorial, Chinese mainstream media, Weibo One issue, two genresA comparison of interactional metadiscourse in the newsYun Han Chen | National Taiwan Ocean UniversityJu Chuan Huang | National Taiwan Ocean UniversityThis study compares the use of interactional metadiscourse in a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, and a British news magazine, The Economist, in reporting on the Brexit referendum. We adopted Hyland’s (2005a: 48–54) framework to analyze hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagements, and self-mentions. One hundred news articles were randomly selected from online archives from February to June in 2016, during which time the debatable issue was discussed ardently. Quantitative and qualitative results of this study revealed both similarities and differences between the newspaper and the news magazine in the use of interactional metadiscourse. For example, quantitatively, the frequencies of boosters in both genres were similar; however, the newspaper used much more engagement markers and self-mentions whereas the magazine used more hedges and attitude markers. Qualitatively, while most self-mentions were the same in both genres, a unique choice of self-mentions was found in the news magazine.Keywords: Brexit referendum, newspapers, news magazines, discourse analysis, metadiscourse, interactional metadiscourseSemiotic manipulation strategies employed in Iranian printed advertisementsKhadijeh Mohamadi | Razi UniversityHiwa Weisi | Razi UniversityCommercial advertisements are considered informative discourse, whereas the manipulative effects of their verbal and visual strategies have been ignored. According to van Dijk (2006), manipulation in mass media is performed by drawing the audience’s attention to information A rather than to B, by providing irrelevant or incomplete information, and by playing emotional games. 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We adhere to the theoretical framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis and analyze 156 articles that are sourced from Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily from January 22, 2020 to February 13, 2020. Besides demonstrating the specific entailments of these metaphors and metonymies, we also involve scenarios such as the ‘Heroic Fight’ scenario and the ‘Harmonious Family’ scenario. Those framing devices function to evoke patriotism and reinforce national identity by activating collective, historical, and cultural memories and evaluating in-group members positively.Keywords: Critical Metaphor Analysis, COVID-19 pandemic, metonymy, Chinese national news media
“Jerry was a terrific host!” “You were a brilliant guest!”Reciprocal compliments on AirbnbIrene Cenni | Ghent UniversityCamilla Vásquez | University of South FloridaExpanding the research investigating compliments in CMC genres, this study explores reciprocal compliments from consumers and service-providers on Airbnb, a major tourism platform. Specifically, the study examines distribution of compliments in both guest reviews of Online Experiences (a virtual tourism service) and hosts’ responses to those reviews, focusing on compliment topics, their syntactic realizations, and their associated intensification strategies. Despite some similarities with prior research on CMC compliments with respect to the overall frequency and general expression of compliments, we also identified several differences related to compliment reciprocity as well as a greater tendency toward more formal language use in this professional digital context. These differences are likely related to the different relationships among participants, as well as different user goals when communicating on commercially-oriented sites versus social networking sites, demonstrating the need to expand the scope of CMC compliment research to include a broader range of platforms.Keywords: compliments, reciprocal compliments, online compliments, computer-mediated discourse, online reviews, Airbnb Online Experiences, face-work Would you like a bag for that?Environmental awareness and changing practices for closing buying and selling encounters in retail shoppingElisabeth Dalby Kristiansen | University of Southern DenmarkGitte Rasmussen | University of Southern DenmarkThis article presents a study of participants’ practices for closing buying-selling encounters in retail shops. The study shows how the handing over of a shopping bag with the items purchased serves as a resource for organizing the closing of the encounter. Further, taking its point of departure in the growing societal awareness of the environmental impact of plastic waste, the study investigates how customers’ increasing avoidance of single-use shopping bags contributes to changing their practices for closing a buying-selling encounter, as the bags no longer provide a resource around which the closing can be organized.The article uses ethnomethodological conversation analytic (EMCA) methods to describe how customers and sales assistants create and maintain the local order of the shop and how they, through their multimodal and embodied contributions, bring societal discourses into the buying-selling encounter.The data consists of 22 shopping sequences, recorded in Danish shops in 2018.Keywords: shopping practices, service encounters, closing an interaction, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, plastic shopping bags, pollution 批评话语分析相关著作推荐