Texts in Process

2023-05-10T15:41:24+00:00

Facework and social effects of (im)politeness. A current state of research

2023-05-10T15:38:54+00:00

In its 20-year-long existence, the EDICE Program (Discourse Studies of (Im)politeness in Spanish) has developed the concepts of the theoretical and methodological approach of Sociocultural Pragmatics. In the present study, a selection of the analytical categories classified as facework is revisited.
One of the scientific purposes of the EDICE Program is to analyze texts by focusing on the interpersonal relationship created by the participants during their communicative exchange in a given speech event. I call this approach Social Discourse Analysis. The crucial goal is to focus on the process of theme management and on the social effects that this process produces in the state of the interactants’ relationships.
Ultimately, (im)polite behavior constitutes evidence of the current social patterns in a society or a social group, i.e., it is per se a subject of interest in social and pragmatic research. For this reason, it constitutes the main object of investigation in Sociocultural Pragmatics studies.

Victoria's political speech: mitigation and intensification in the intercultural political field

2023-05-10T15:38:54+00:00

During the training of the future foreign language teacher and interpreter, it is paramount to know the use of the discursive specificities of the target language in order to understand its effects on intercultural communicative processes. The present research offers the preliminary results of the cross-cultural comparative discursive analysis between the victory speeches issued by the then elected candidates to the presidencies of Mexico and France, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018) and Emmanuel Macron (2017), respectively. The use of discursive strategies of attenuation and intensification in the political discourse of victory were taken into account for this study; mainly those linked to the work of convincing created from the construction of each of the speeches, as well as their impact on the public. The political discourse of victory is considered as an object of study due to its emotional background, considering the context and the popularity of the candidates at the moment of the emission of each of the speeches. As part of the hypothesis of this research, it is considered that the interpretation of the speech in the mother tongue and target language will depend on the linguistic sensitivity and metalinguistic competences possessed by the teacher and the trainee interpreter.

Self-image in intercultural politics: contrasting analysis of the discourses of Marine Le Pen and Margarita Zavala

2023-05-10T15:38:55+00:00

This article addresses the study of a contrastive analysis of two interviews: one by Marine Le Pen and another by Margarita Zavala, former candidates to the presidencies of France and Mexico, being the center of the study the manifestations of self-image in their discourses. The aim is to explain how the discursive and social specificities of a language condition the use of self-image to communicate a message. It was decided to classify in three categories the self-image used in discourses, according to the theories of Kaul (2008) and Brenes (2014): enhancement, disqualification of the opposite political option and strategic use of the role played. It was concluded that self-image did have an impact beyond the discourse of the former candidates, since their popularity was affected by the excessive use of this image activity. The contrastive study revealed that both the French of France and the Spanish of Mexico have discursive specificities directly linked with the culture and social conventions of each language, which are decisive for the correct interpretation of what is communicated in each of the political discourses chosen for this inquiry.

Pragmatic competence from a contrastive perspective: the case of 'lo siento' and other expressions of apology in Spanish

2023-05-11T09:40:33+00:00

This paper follows the line of research of the preliminary study conducted by Chodorowska-Pilch (2019) on the overgeneralization of the expression lo siento in the apologies of English-speaking students due to the transference of sorry from English. The principal objective of the present study is to consider the influence of linguistic competence when it comes to choosing between different apology expressions in Spanish. The apologies produced by native speakers in the Spanish series “Vivir sin permission” (‘Unauthorized Living’) are used as a database and point of reference. In order to test whether students learning Spanish select apologies that correspond to or are close to native speakers’ use, a survey was developed with fragments uttered by the protagonists of the series. The final objective is to demonstrate that competence in sociocultural pragmatics affects the use of apology expressions by students learning Spanish and to provide possible recommendations for teachers interested in improving the performance of English-speaking students in the production of apologies.

The use of external modifiers as facework in requests and complaints in e-mail communication: the case of Spanish FL learners in Sweden

2023-05-10T15:38:56+00:00

The present study investigates the use of external modifiers in requests and complaints as a strategy of facework (Goffman, 1967) in academic email communication, in the asymmetric relationship (student-faculty staff). The aim of this study is to understand communicative behaviors that could affect senders and recipients’ social face in academic e-mail communication. A total of 474 emails were elicited electronically and written by university students in Spain and first year Spanish FL learners in Sweden. The corpus shows differences in students’ communicative behaviors related to facework in situations of requests and complaints. This corpus was contrasted with data collected from: 1) an evaluation of pragmatic appropriateness in the Spanish FL texts, conducted by 6 external raters, 2) a retrospective questionnaire for Spanish FL learners, and 3) a questionnaire of pragmatic habits for the native speakers’ students in Spain. The findings indicate pragmatic variation between the groups in their communicative behavior regarding their use of external modifiers, as well as discrepancies in their perceptions of facework.

The power of the 'image': audio description as a key tool in the facework activities of blind people

2023-05-10T15:38:56+00:00

This paper explores the possibilities offered by audio description (AD) as a key element of facework in people who are blind or visually impaired, starting from the notion of participatory observation in art (Kleege, 2018; Krantz, 2013; O’Brien Hoyt, 2013). The hypothesis to be tested is that implementing AD in art museums as a collective art experience (and not as a mere service) where the blind person is not only the recipient of “missing” content, but becomes an active participant in the interpretation of the artwork in question enhances his or her autonomy and affiliation face by fostering both individual and group empowerment and self-esteem. To test this hypothesis, the Montclair Art Museum is developing an initiative to bring art to blind people through a dialogue between sighted and non-sighted patrons. The results show that the positive social effect on the participants’ face resulting from using an interactive AD contributes to a real inclusion of blind people in the visual arts.

Texts in Process

Table of Contents

Facework and social effects of (im)politeness. A current state of research

Victoria's political speech: mitigation and intensification in the intercultural political field

Self-image in intercultural politics: contrasting analysis of the discourses of Marine Le Pen and Margarita Zavala

Pragmatic competence from a contrastive perspective: the case of 'lo siento' and other expressions of apology in Spanish

The use of external modifiers as facework in requests and complaints in e-mail communication: the case of Spanish FL learners in Sweden

The power of the 'image': audio description as a key tool in the facework activities of blind people