Richard W. Janney | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (original) (raw)
Papers by Richard W. Janney
… and pragmatics: facts, approaches, theoretical …, 2009
... This is because in Aboriginal culture, information ● * This paper is adapted from a plenary t... more ... This is because in Aboriginal culture, information ● * This paper is adapted from a plenary talk held at the 1st International Pragmatics Conference in the Institute of Advanced Studies in English, University of Pune, December 2006, and a paper presented at the Symposium on ...
… and pragmatics: facts, approaches, theoretical …, 2009
... This is because in Aboriginal culture, information ● * This paper is adapted from a plenary t... more ... This is because in Aboriginal culture, information ● * This paper is adapted from a plenary talk held at the 1st International Pragmatics Conference in the Institute of Advanced Studies in English, University of Pune, December 2006, and a paper presented at the Symposium on ...
Fuel and Energy Abstracts, 2011
This article introduces what I will call 'cinematic discourse' as a potential candidate for pragm... more This article introduces what I will call 'cinematic discourse' as a potential candidate for pragmatic analysis. Cinematic discourse, as defined here, is not language use in film (dramatic dialogue, fictional conversation, scripted interaction) but the audiovisual discourse of film narration itself: the discourse of mise-en-scène, cinematography, montage, and sound design used by filmmakers in narrating cinematic stories. Cinematic discourse is filmmakers' main expressive vehicle and primary form of communication with, and influence over, film viewers. The article describes how staging, camera work, editing, and other conventional cinematic depictive practices are used to capture attention, shape perspectives, guide perceptions, and steer viewers' inferences about the unfolding narrative. The first half of the article describes different modes of cinematic depiction and their metapragmatic functions; the second discusses issues of cinematic focalization and attention, film co-text as context, cinematic pragmatic acts, audiovisual inferences, film deixis, and camera discourse roles. The goal of the article is to broadly outline some features of cinematic discourse that warrant attention in media pragmatics and to point out challenges that would have to be met in the future in developing pragmatic approaches to investigating these.
More than three decades ago, the film semiotician Christian Metz remarked that "film is hard to e... more More than three decades ago, the film semiotician Christian Metz remarked that "film is hard to explain because it is easy to understand" (1974: 69). In saying this, he was alluding to the mysterious, almost mindless way film images seem to communicate as compared with sentences of written language. This can be illustrated by comparing below.
Language & Communication, 2002
Cotext is the most immediate manifestation of context in discourse. It is a natural consequence o... more Cotext is the most immediate manifestation of context in discourse. It is a natural consequence of the linearity of language and the sequentiality of talk. Interpretations of utterances in discourse depend on information provided by earlier utterances in the sequence and constitute information necessary for interpreting later utterances in it. This paper focuses on influences of cotext on interpretations of vague language in court testimony during the O.J. Simpson civil murder trial in Los Angeles in 1996—or, more properly, on language interpreted as vague by the plaintiffs' attorney during the trial. Answers interpreted as vague or nonresponsive in the courtroom are often no more unclear, in isolation, than the questions they are intended to answer. That they are interpreted as vague in spite of this is partly attributable, I suggest, to the self-contextualizing effects of cotext.
Journal of Pragmatics, 1994
The task of developing a unified pragmatics of emotive communication poses many interesting chall... more The task of developing a unified pragmatics of emotive communication poses many interesting challenges for future research. This paper outlines some areas in which more work could be done to help coordinate present linguistic research. After briefly reviewing some pioneering historical work on language and affect, the paper discusses the following concepts, all of which seem to be in need of further clarification: 'emotive meaning', 'involvement', 'emotive markedness', 'degree of emotive divergence', 'objects of emotive choice', 'loci of emotive choice', and 'outer vs. inner deixis'. Competing categories of emotive devices in current studies of language and affect are reviewed, and a simplified framework is proposed, consisting of: (1) evaluation devices, (2) proximity devices, (3) specificity devices, (4) evidentiality devices, (5)volitionality devices, and (6) quantity devices. It is argued that only with consensual categories and objects of analysis can investigators start focusing on, and comparing findings about, emotive linguistic phenomena from a unified point of view. Finally, some distinctions between potential perspectives, units, and loci of emotive analysis are proposed, and the paper concludes with a call for increased discussion of how research on language and affect might be better coordinated in the future.
Journal of Pragmatics, 1994
Journal of Pragmatics, 1991
The signaling of logical relations between, and emotive reactions to. subjects in face-to-face sp... more The signaling of logical relations between, and emotive reactions to. subjects in face-to-face speech are complexly interrelated processes, making it sometimes difficult to fully distinguish i&r people say from hog' they say it. Emotive communication, an aspect of the latter (style, rhetoric, speech strategy), may be viewed, following . as the culturally Iearned, cognitively mediated use of nonpropositional signals to express feelings, manage impressions, and reach goals in speech. The paper introduces some pragmatically relevant American English verbal, vocal, and kinesic emotive contrasts, e.g., shifts of verbal explicitness, verbal value-ladenness. verbal intensity, vocal emphasis, intonation, gaze, facial expression, body posture and so on. and discusses their functions in speech as signals of (un)assertiveness, (non)alliliation, and (un)involvement. Methodological and theoretical questions raised by the nondiscrete. gradient. 'more/less' nature of emotive contrasts are discussed, and some conventional cross-modal emotive strategies in American English are explained. The paper is at once an introduction to basic problems in the study of emotive communication, and an invitation to a synthesis of cognitive and emotive standpoints in pragmatic research on face-to-face speech.
The computer can be regarded as a type of prosthesis: a device that extends the range of action o... more The computer can be regarded as a type of prosthesis: a device that extends the range of action of the human mind or can partly replace certain functions of an impaired human nervous system. Like other prostheses, however, computers are never fully equivalent replacements for human functions. It is argued that present computers extend our cognitive `reach', at the cost of partly paralyzing our emotional `grasp' of things. They promote contact without a sense of touch. The problem suggested, lies at the human computer interface: in the user's need to communicate with the computer in order to use it, and in certain pragmatic deficits of computers that make natural communication with them impossible. As a partner, the computer tends to resemble a schizophrenic suffering from severe `intrapsychic ataxia'-the psychiatric term for a radical separation of cognition from emotion. Its flame of reference, like that of the schizophrenic, is detached, rigid, and self reflexive. Interacting in accordance with the requirements of its programs, the computer, like the schizophrenic, forces us to empathize one sidedly with it and communicate with it on its own terms. And the suspicion arises that the better we can do this, the more like it we become
Iral-international Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 1980
Multilingua-journal of Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 1993
Iral-international Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 1985
Abstract 1. Discusses politeness in speech in the context of foreign language instruction, descri... more Abstract 1. Discusses politeness in speech in the context of foreign language instruction, describing a linguistic approach to studying or teaching politeness based in the domain of emotive communication and the concept of interpersonal supportiveness. Traditional ...
Journal of Pragmatics, 1999
This paper suggests that, in looking toward a future pragmatics, we would be wise to consider the... more This paper suggests that, in looking toward a future pragmatics, we would be wise to consider the implications of current work on metaphor and iconicity, and start paying more attention to questions related to how paradigmatic stylistic and rhetorical choices function as figurative gestures in speech and writing. We need pragmatically feasible approaches to studying the stylistic and rhetorical forms and functions of language, the paper argues, because it is largely through these that speakers create frames of reference. The underlying point is that a linguistic reference always appears in a frame that influences how it is perceived and interpreted in a context. This framing effect is a natural function of style. In any context, it is invariably some unique how
that particularizes a generic what into an individually meaningful pragmatic performance. Pragmatic accounts of linguistic events remain emotively and motivationally opaque if the frame of reference provided by gestural uses of language is not included in the analysis. For this reason, it is argued, pragmatics can no more do without systematic approaches to style than it can do without systematic approaches to propositional content and context.
… and pragmatics: facts, approaches, theoretical …, 2009
... This is because in Aboriginal culture, information ● * This paper is adapted from a plenary t... more ... This is because in Aboriginal culture, information ● * This paper is adapted from a plenary talk held at the 1st International Pragmatics Conference in the Institute of Advanced Studies in English, University of Pune, December 2006, and a paper presented at the Symposium on ...
… and pragmatics: facts, approaches, theoretical …, 2009
... This is because in Aboriginal culture, information ● * This paper is adapted from a plenary t... more ... This is because in Aboriginal culture, information ● * This paper is adapted from a plenary talk held at the 1st International Pragmatics Conference in the Institute of Advanced Studies in English, University of Pune, December 2006, and a paper presented at the Symposium on ...
Fuel and Energy Abstracts, 2011
This article introduces what I will call 'cinematic discourse' as a potential candidate for pragm... more This article introduces what I will call 'cinematic discourse' as a potential candidate for pragmatic analysis. Cinematic discourse, as defined here, is not language use in film (dramatic dialogue, fictional conversation, scripted interaction) but the audiovisual discourse of film narration itself: the discourse of mise-en-scène, cinematography, montage, and sound design used by filmmakers in narrating cinematic stories. Cinematic discourse is filmmakers' main expressive vehicle and primary form of communication with, and influence over, film viewers. The article describes how staging, camera work, editing, and other conventional cinematic depictive practices are used to capture attention, shape perspectives, guide perceptions, and steer viewers' inferences about the unfolding narrative. The first half of the article describes different modes of cinematic depiction and their metapragmatic functions; the second discusses issues of cinematic focalization and attention, film co-text as context, cinematic pragmatic acts, audiovisual inferences, film deixis, and camera discourse roles. The goal of the article is to broadly outline some features of cinematic discourse that warrant attention in media pragmatics and to point out challenges that would have to be met in the future in developing pragmatic approaches to investigating these.
More than three decades ago, the film semiotician Christian Metz remarked that "film is hard to e... more More than three decades ago, the film semiotician Christian Metz remarked that "film is hard to explain because it is easy to understand" (1974: 69). In saying this, he was alluding to the mysterious, almost mindless way film images seem to communicate as compared with sentences of written language. This can be illustrated by comparing below.
Language & Communication, 2002
Cotext is the most immediate manifestation of context in discourse. It is a natural consequence o... more Cotext is the most immediate manifestation of context in discourse. It is a natural consequence of the linearity of language and the sequentiality of talk. Interpretations of utterances in discourse depend on information provided by earlier utterances in the sequence and constitute information necessary for interpreting later utterances in it. This paper focuses on influences of cotext on interpretations of vague language in court testimony during the O.J. Simpson civil murder trial in Los Angeles in 1996—or, more properly, on language interpreted as vague by the plaintiffs' attorney during the trial. Answers interpreted as vague or nonresponsive in the courtroom are often no more unclear, in isolation, than the questions they are intended to answer. That they are interpreted as vague in spite of this is partly attributable, I suggest, to the self-contextualizing effects of cotext.
Journal of Pragmatics, 1994
The task of developing a unified pragmatics of emotive communication poses many interesting chall... more The task of developing a unified pragmatics of emotive communication poses many interesting challenges for future research. This paper outlines some areas in which more work could be done to help coordinate present linguistic research. After briefly reviewing some pioneering historical work on language and affect, the paper discusses the following concepts, all of which seem to be in need of further clarification: 'emotive meaning', 'involvement', 'emotive markedness', 'degree of emotive divergence', 'objects of emotive choice', 'loci of emotive choice', and 'outer vs. inner deixis'. Competing categories of emotive devices in current studies of language and affect are reviewed, and a simplified framework is proposed, consisting of: (1) evaluation devices, (2) proximity devices, (3) specificity devices, (4) evidentiality devices, (5)volitionality devices, and (6) quantity devices. It is argued that only with consensual categories and objects of analysis can investigators start focusing on, and comparing findings about, emotive linguistic phenomena from a unified point of view. Finally, some distinctions between potential perspectives, units, and loci of emotive analysis are proposed, and the paper concludes with a call for increased discussion of how research on language and affect might be better coordinated in the future.
Journal of Pragmatics, 1994
Journal of Pragmatics, 1991
The signaling of logical relations between, and emotive reactions to. subjects in face-to-face sp... more The signaling of logical relations between, and emotive reactions to. subjects in face-to-face speech are complexly interrelated processes, making it sometimes difficult to fully distinguish i&r people say from hog' they say it. Emotive communication, an aspect of the latter (style, rhetoric, speech strategy), may be viewed, following . as the culturally Iearned, cognitively mediated use of nonpropositional signals to express feelings, manage impressions, and reach goals in speech. The paper introduces some pragmatically relevant American English verbal, vocal, and kinesic emotive contrasts, e.g., shifts of verbal explicitness, verbal value-ladenness. verbal intensity, vocal emphasis, intonation, gaze, facial expression, body posture and so on. and discusses their functions in speech as signals of (un)assertiveness, (non)alliliation, and (un)involvement. Methodological and theoretical questions raised by the nondiscrete. gradient. 'more/less' nature of emotive contrasts are discussed, and some conventional cross-modal emotive strategies in American English are explained. The paper is at once an introduction to basic problems in the study of emotive communication, and an invitation to a synthesis of cognitive and emotive standpoints in pragmatic research on face-to-face speech.
The computer can be regarded as a type of prosthesis: a device that extends the range of action o... more The computer can be regarded as a type of prosthesis: a device that extends the range of action of the human mind or can partly replace certain functions of an impaired human nervous system. Like other prostheses, however, computers are never fully equivalent replacements for human functions. It is argued that present computers extend our cognitive `reach', at the cost of partly paralyzing our emotional `grasp' of things. They promote contact without a sense of touch. The problem suggested, lies at the human computer interface: in the user's need to communicate with the computer in order to use it, and in certain pragmatic deficits of computers that make natural communication with them impossible. As a partner, the computer tends to resemble a schizophrenic suffering from severe `intrapsychic ataxia'-the psychiatric term for a radical separation of cognition from emotion. Its flame of reference, like that of the schizophrenic, is detached, rigid, and self reflexive. Interacting in accordance with the requirements of its programs, the computer, like the schizophrenic, forces us to empathize one sidedly with it and communicate with it on its own terms. And the suspicion arises that the better we can do this, the more like it we become
Iral-international Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 1980
Multilingua-journal of Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 1993
Iral-international Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 1985
Abstract 1. Discusses politeness in speech in the context of foreign language instruction, descri... more Abstract 1. Discusses politeness in speech in the context of foreign language instruction, describing a linguistic approach to studying or teaching politeness based in the domain of emotive communication and the concept of interpersonal supportiveness. Traditional ...
Journal of Pragmatics, 1999
This paper suggests that, in looking toward a future pragmatics, we would be wise to consider the... more This paper suggests that, in looking toward a future pragmatics, we would be wise to consider the implications of current work on metaphor and iconicity, and start paying more attention to questions related to how paradigmatic stylistic and rhetorical choices function as figurative gestures in speech and writing. We need pragmatically feasible approaches to studying the stylistic and rhetorical forms and functions of language, the paper argues, because it is largely through these that speakers create frames of reference. The underlying point is that a linguistic reference always appears in a frame that influences how it is perceived and interpreted in a context. This framing effect is a natural function of style. In any context, it is invariably some unique how
that particularizes a generic what into an individually meaningful pragmatic performance. Pragmatic accounts of linguistic events remain emotively and motivationally opaque if the frame of reference provided by gestural uses of language is not included in the analysis. For this reason, it is argued, pragmatics can no more do without systematic approaches to style than it can do without systematic approaches to propositional content and context.