Elda Weizman | Bar-Ilan University (original) (raw)
Papers by Elda Weizman
Contrastive pragmatics, Oct 5, 2022
This paper sets up to show how irony and reservations are explicitated in online media discourse,... more This paper sets up to show how irony and reservations are explicitated in online media discourse, comparing their realizations in French and Hebrew online op-eds in leading journals. A corpus-based qualitative and quantitative analysis relies on two sets of big corpora for each language. The pragmatic analysis distinguishes between explicitating self-and other's presumed ironic intents, the target of irony, its locus and overall speaker's meanings. The findings indicate that the French data-set uses the verb ironiser, which has no comparable equivalent in Hebrew. More puzzling are the similarities between the two data-sets: both in French and in Hebrew journalists choose to explicitate irony and reservations, and they do so using similar discursive patterns. Conflicting forces are at play: interpretation paths are opened by irony, and are then narrowed down by the journalist's interpretations. The results are interpreted in terms of informativeness, accountability and commitment to speaker's meaning.
Target-international Journal of Translation Studies, Dec 31, 2000
Pragmatics & beyond, Dec 15, 2019
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Aug 15, 2015
Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, 2001
... big trouble. In other words, the ironic utterance challenges the competence of Avneri in his ... more ... big trouble. In other words, the ironic utterance challenges the competence of Avneri in his role as journalist and Chair of the Amitay organization, by implicitly criticizing his decision to file an unjustified complaint. 5 Third, and ...
Pragmatics & beyond, 2015
John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks, 2007
Pragmatics & Cognition, Dec 31, 2001
Page 1. Positioning in Media Dialogue Page 2. Dialogue Studies (DS) Dialogue Studies takes the no... more Page 1. Positioning in Media Dialogue Page 2. Dialogue Studies (DS) Dialogue Studies takes the notion of dialogicity as central; it encompasses every type of language use, workaday, institutional and literary. By covering the ...
Frontiers in Communication, Jan 4, 2023
I analyze Israel president Rivlin's speech delivered against the background of ongoing COVID-heal... more I analyze Israel president Rivlin's speech delivered against the background of ongoing COVID-health threats and a severe political crisis, and its follow-ups in online news articles and in ordinary readers' comments on news sites and on Facebook. I examine the recontextualization practices used in this three-part discourse event, shedding light on their diversity and focusing on the degree of directness they manifest. Recontextualization is conceptualized as the strategic molding of situations and prior texts and their integration into another discourse through discursive practices. The analysis shows that the president recontextualizes the complex political and social crisis through the lens of the COVID-pandemic. He frames the pandemic in terms of its morbid, mythic, and moral dimensions, as well as its influence on various aspects of civil and political disorder. This connection is drawn through the juxtaposition of propositions and the shifts between the deliberative and the epidictic keyings, alluding to Jewish tradition, prayers, and blessings. Through the use of the inclusive "we," he self-positions as a leader on a par with ordinary people, whereas through direct demands formulated in the plural without personal naming he addresses his ratified addressees, the MPs and the ministers, and thus self-positions as an authority demanding accountability from the current leadership. The news articles in leading online media are short and partial, recontextualizing the speech and the situation through their titles, the selection of the extracts they chose to present and the very few evaluations they make. They mostly take up the president's moral framing and some of his explicit demands for political accountability. The commenters mostly follow up on the moral framing and the mythic dimensions proposed by the president but o er a di erent perspective on these issues. They shift the responsibility for "losing the compass" from the collective "we" advocated by the president to the politicians including the president, and they ironically echo the epidictic keying in order to challenge and even ridicule it. They further add another dimension to the speech event, by framing the president's speech as politically biased. The discursive patterns used all along this thread of discourses by all its participants range in degree of directness and recontextualize the object of talk, perspectives, keying and positionings.
Contrastive pragmatics, Oct 5, 2022
This paper sets up to show how irony and reservations are explicitated in online media discourse,... more This paper sets up to show how irony and reservations are explicitated in online media discourse, comparing their realizations in French and Hebrew online op-eds in leading journals. A corpus-based qualitative and quantitative analysis relies on two sets of big corpora for each language. The pragmatic analysis distinguishes between explicitating self-and other's presumed ironic intents, the target of irony, its locus and overall speaker's meanings. The findings indicate that the French data-set uses the verb ironiser, which has no comparable equivalent in Hebrew. More puzzling are the similarities between the two data-sets: both in French and in Hebrew journalists choose to explicitate irony and reservations, and they do so using similar discursive patterns. Conflicting forces are at play: interpretation paths are opened by irony, and are then narrowed down by the journalist's interpretations. The results are interpreted in terms of informativeness, accountability and commitment to speaker's meaning.
Target-international Journal of Translation Studies, Dec 31, 2000
Pragmatics & beyond, Dec 15, 2019
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Aug 15, 2015
Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, 2001
... big trouble. In other words, the ironic utterance challenges the competence of Avneri in his ... more ... big trouble. In other words, the ironic utterance challenges the competence of Avneri in his role as journalist and Chair of the Amitay organization, by implicitly criticizing his decision to file an unjustified complaint. 5 Third, and ...
Pragmatics & beyond, 2015
John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks, 2007
Pragmatics & Cognition, Dec 31, 2001
Page 1. Positioning in Media Dialogue Page 2. Dialogue Studies (DS) Dialogue Studies takes the no... more Page 1. Positioning in Media Dialogue Page 2. Dialogue Studies (DS) Dialogue Studies takes the notion of dialogicity as central; it encompasses every type of language use, workaday, institutional and literary. By covering the ...
Frontiers in Communication, Jan 4, 2023
I analyze Israel president Rivlin's speech delivered against the background of ongoing COVID-heal... more I analyze Israel president Rivlin's speech delivered against the background of ongoing COVID-health threats and a severe political crisis, and its follow-ups in online news articles and in ordinary readers' comments on news sites and on Facebook. I examine the recontextualization practices used in this three-part discourse event, shedding light on their diversity and focusing on the degree of directness they manifest. Recontextualization is conceptualized as the strategic molding of situations and prior texts and their integration into another discourse through discursive practices. The analysis shows that the president recontextualizes the complex political and social crisis through the lens of the COVID-pandemic. He frames the pandemic in terms of its morbid, mythic, and moral dimensions, as well as its influence on various aspects of civil and political disorder. This connection is drawn through the juxtaposition of propositions and the shifts between the deliberative and the epidictic keyings, alluding to Jewish tradition, prayers, and blessings. Through the use of the inclusive "we," he self-positions as a leader on a par with ordinary people, whereas through direct demands formulated in the plural without personal naming he addresses his ratified addressees, the MPs and the ministers, and thus self-positions as an authority demanding accountability from the current leadership. The news articles in leading online media are short and partial, recontextualizing the speech and the situation through their titles, the selection of the extracts they chose to present and the very few evaluations they make. They mostly take up the president's moral framing and some of his explicit demands for political accountability. The commenters mostly follow up on the moral framing and the mythic dimensions proposed by the president but o er a di erent perspective on these issues. They shift the responsibility for "losing the compass" from the collective "we" advocated by the president to the politicians including the president, and they ironically echo the epidictic keying in order to challenge and even ridicule it. They further add another dimension to the speech event, by framing the president's speech as politically biased. The discursive patterns used all along this thread of discourses by all its participants range in degree of directness and recontextualize the object of talk, perspectives, keying and positionings.
The analysis presented in this book aims to explore discursive positioning, focusing on news inte... more The analysis presented in this book aims to explore discursive positioning, focusing on news interviews. In this genre of dialogic interaction, characterized by a tension between pre-conceived division of roles and meaningful deviations from it, participants constantly position themselves explicitly and implicitly, and by so doing reciprocally position their interlocutors and their audiences. A complex system of interactional and social roles and identities is established through discursive practices, and is being dynamically modified through negotiations. Thus, positioning, conceived of as a dynamic alternative to the notion of role (Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré & Van Langenhove, 1999), encompasses such basic notions as interactional construction of meanings, interlocutors’ individual intentions and shared collective goals, and dynamic negotiations of meanings and intentions.
The conceptual analysis is based on an empirical study of a closed corpus of 24-hours news interviews broadcast on Israeli television, as well as on an open corpus of recent interviews and comments made by media figures and politicians. Based on an integrated pragmatic approach, it focuses on potential interpretations of discursive patterns, explores interlocutors’ responses to them, and interprets them in terms of reciprocal positioning and the negotiations of roles and identities.