Laura Alba-Juez | Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (original) (raw)

Papers by Laura Alba-Juez

Acta linguistica academica, Dec 11, 2023

The present study offers a speech-act analysis of the phatic interaction taking place within the ... more The present study offers a speech-act analysis of the phatic interaction taking place within the ritual frame of casual encounters in the elevator. The corpus consists of 70 encounters that took place in Madrid, Spain, between 2020 and 2023. The analysis draws from Edmondson & House's (1981) originally proposed interactional typology of speech acts, also found in House & Kádár (2021a, 2023) and Edmondson et al. (2022). The main findings show, among other things, that some acts that are not conceived as phatic in the typology can migrate into the phatic slots, and that the speech-act pattern of this type of encounters can be affected by sociopragmatic variables such as the relational history of the interactants, or the co-created humorous episodes in the encounters.

Pragmatics & beyond, Jan 16, 2014

Detaching oneself from authors, experiences and circumstances when writing a book review is alway... more Detaching oneself from authors, experiences and circumstances when writing a book review is always difficult, but on this occasion more than ever: GeOFF THOMPSOn passed away suddenly and too early last november, and those of us who had the privilege to share his knowledge and enjoy his company during the meetings of the eMO-FunDeTT project at the uneD 1 , will not forget his extraordinary human and professional qualities. Evaluation in Context, coedited with LAurA ALbA-Juez, the project's principal researcher, is part of his scholarly legacy. The volume is better appreciated as a sequel of Evaluation in Text (2000), an Applied Linguistics milestone put out jointly by editors SuSAn HunSTOn and GeOFF THOMPSOn, and mainly informed by three linguistics strands in the service of Discourse Analysis to study evaluative language: Corpus Linguistics, narratology and Systemic Functional Grammar. With the perspective of hindsight, an organic reading of the two books enables us to perceive their different foci and scopes, as well as the vertiginous enrichment of Discourse Analysis, over more than a decade, thanks to the convergence of multiple interdisciplinary approaches and theoretical frameworks. If Evaluation in Text defined evaluative functions on the ideational, interpersonal and textual planes 2 , detailed their major devices 3 , and dealt with their effect (i.e. persuasion) in a reduced spectrum of texts, Evaluation in Context revisits the notion of evaluation, contrasts it with those of 'stance', 'attitude' and 'appraisal', and looks closely into its many faces, phases, and outcomes, demarcating a myriad scenarios where it may occur and expanding the existing repertoires of research methods and evaluative devices. Who said second parts are no good? The editors have divided the nineteen-chapter collection into three distinctive sections: an explanatory introduction, a compilation of methodologies and approaches to evaluation, and a fresh catalogue of contexts where it takes place. In their introduction, entitled 'The many faces and phases of evaluation', THOMPSOn and ALbA-Juez diachronically track reSeñAS / bOOK reVIeWS

Pragmática, 2020, ISBN 978-84-460-4871-8, págs. 551-566, 2020

Russian Journal of Linguistics, 2018

Some people might wonder if emotion has anything at all to do with language, or think that emotio... more Some people might wonder if emotion has anything at all to do with language, or think that emotion cannot be a topic for serious scientific research. In fact, this has been a common belief for many years, even among linguists and other scholars. But fortunately, this was yesterday's news. Today's news is that emotion matters in every scientific field and in particular, in linguistics, because it is a key factor not only in understanding human nature, but also in the comprehension of human language and communication.

Acta Lingüística Academica, 2024

Emotion in Discourse, 2019

The present book was conceived, as its title indicates, as the grammar companion to the subject e... more The present book was conceived, as its title indicates, as the grammar companion to the subject entitled Lengua Inglesa I from the Licenciatura en Filología Inglesa at the UNED, Madrid (Spain), and at present is also used as a companion to the subject Inglés Instrumental I from the Degree in English studies at the same university. Every chapter is divided into two main parts; the first one covers the morphological aspects and the second one is devoted to the syntactic aspects having to do with the language used in the reading texts. Simple and accurate grammatical explanations accompanied by examples are given, taking also some discursive-pragmatic aspects into account, intended to help the student understand the grammar and the use of English in an everyday conversation context. Considering the target students are mainly Spanish speakers, the book has a clear contrastive approach as well.

The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics

In this chapter the expression of emotion in discourse (as defined in Alba-Juez & Mackenz... more In this chapter the expression of emotion in discourse (as defined in Alba-Juez & Mackenzie 2019) is treated from the perspective of intercultural pragmatics (as in Kecskes 2004, 2011, 2014 and forthcoming). Emotion is viewed as a pragmatic dynamical process that shows the interaction brain-bodies-world (e.g. Van Gelder 1998, Gibbs 2010) and for that reason many aspects of its manifestation in different discourse systems/cultures are explored, taking into account not only the well-known fact that different languages and cultures may display differences in the expression of emotion at all linguistic levels (e.g. at the lexical level, a given language/culture may have a term to express an emotion that has not been conceptualized in another language (i.e. hypocognition, Levy 1973), being this the cause of possible intercultural pragmalinguistic misunderstanding), but also the fact that different cultures may have different display rules (Ekman & Friesen 1975) and engage in different affective practices (Wetherell 2012), all of which may affect attempts of communication when using a lingua franca. I thus argue in favor of a more comprehensive, sociocognitive (e.g. Kecskes and Zhang 2009; Kecskes 2010) and sociopragmatic (Leech 1982, 2014) approach to the study of this kind of communication, within which the analysis of aspects of the communicative process such as relational work, (im)politeness, egocentrism, salience, expectations, emotional intelligence or emotional implicatures (Schwarz-Friesel 2010, 2015) are of paramount importance.

The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, 2021

Evaluation in media discourse: european perspectives, 2017, ISBN 978-3-0343-2014-6, págs. 81-119, 2017

In this presentation I elaborate on the findings of a previous comparative study on the variables... more In this presentation I elaborate on the findings of a previous comparative study on the variables of the evaluative functional relationship (Alba-Juez, forthcoming) as manifested in the headlines of on-line British newspapers (broadsheets vs. tabloids). In this previous study only a few significant differences were found between the expression of evaluation in broadsheets and tabloids, a fact that has triggered a further research question, which will guide the development of the present paper: Could it be that the main difference between the evaluative discourse of broadsheets and tabloids lay in the expression of the emotion attached to (but not so easily distinguished from) the evaluation? In order to answer this question, and taking into account that one characteristic usually attributed to tabloids in contrast with broadsheets is that they focus more on the emotional side of stories (e.g. Fowler 1991), I will take a theoretical standpoint to try to draw the delicate line between the phenomena of evaluation and emotion, and I will do so by presenting part of the work emanating from the EMO-FunDETT research project (FFI2013-47792-C2-1-P - http://www.uned.es/proyectofundett/). Based on Alba-Juez & Thompson’s (2014) definition of evaluation, I will discuss Thompson’s (2015) proposal regarding the common ground shared by the three main subsystems of Appraisal (Martin & White 2005) and both emotion talk and emotional talk (Bednarek 2008), trying to distinguish between those cases in which the emotion is enacted and those in which it is expressed, or, in Foolen’s (2012) terms, between the conceptualization and the expression of emotion in language. The corpus used consists of 200 articles taken from four different on-line British newspapers: two broadsheets, BBC Online and The Guardian, and two tabloids, The Mirror and The Daily Mail. The analysis will be multimodal, and will thus focus on the comparison of the evaluation/emotion found not only in the text of the headlines, but also in the images that accompany them in these two types of on-line press. The discussion will mainly be based on the observation that all newspaper articles (whether in tabloids or broadsheets) seem to contain a given evaluation and/or emotive tone that is generally condensed or made relevant in the headline space, where the main stance of the article is reflected, a stance that will most likely influence the reader’s decision to make the effort of reading the whole article, or on the contrary, to reject it in the first place. In conclusion, the research presented in this paper has both an empirical and a theoretical nature, for it will not only show the results of the analysis made regarding the evaluative/emotive differences between tabloids and broadsheets, but will also elucidate how the system of emotion interacts or intertwines with that of evaluation, going on to define the former as distinct from the latter, even though the boundaries between one and the other are blurred and have so far been very difficult to establish.

Interest in human emotion no longer equates to unscientific speculation. In 21st-century humanist... more Interest in human emotion no longer equates to unscientific speculation. In 21st-century humanistic studies, emotion looms larger than ever before. In linguistics and discourse analysis, understanding the workings of human emotion is basic for the comprehension of most of the choices that speakers make. In my talk I will draw on Kahneman’s (2011) findings on the distinction between System 1 and System 2, which respectively produce what he calls fast and slow thinking, so as to show how the intuitive and ‘emotional’ System 1 is the secret author of many of the judgments and choices interlocutors make in discourse. As some studies have revealed (e.g. Schwarz 2004, and Ecker et al. 2014), people tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory -and this is largely determined and influenced by typical System 1-phenomena such as priming, framing or the halo effect, among others. But System 2 is not devoid of emotion content: despite being ‘more rational’, it also participates in the management of emotions in discourse, for among other things, it monitors the appropriate deployment of politeness strategies (e.g.: It keeps you polite when you are angry). Considering all of the above, I will show how the emotive function of language is omnipresent in nearly all our discourse-pragmatic decisions, and how speakers/writers (un)consciously exploit the interplay between System 1 and System 2 to skillfully persuade and sometimes manipulate their audiences within different and various discourse systems such as those of fake news, narratives, or everyday conversation. In my analysis of the emotion found in these genres I will follow the procedure and characterization set forth in Alba-Juez (2018) and Alba-Juez & Mackenzie (2019).

Emotion permeates all genres, from everyday conversation to scientific articles (see Mackenzie &a... more Emotion permeates all genres, from everyday conversation to scientific articles (see Mackenzie & Alba-Juez 2019 for examples of recent work). Emotion is a prior condition for reasoning (Damasio 1999) but is also capable of distorting our thinking (Cockcroft et al. 2014: 85). Writers of ‘fake news’, whatever they are dealing with (from high politics to gossip about celebrities), exploit their readers’ emotions, often the basest ones, to achieve their ultimate aims. Popular science, as found in magazines like New Scientist, is a genre in which complex scientific questions and recent findings are made more accessible to a lay audience in a manner that is informative and entertaining. At a time when people are drawing both information and entertainment from online sources, the door is open for fabricators with malicious intentions to enter this genre, especially with regard to questions that spark off intense emotions, such as climate change or vaccination. The purpose of the present paper is to examine selected instances of fake popular-science articles from the fact-checking site www.snopes.com. While several linguistic aspects of the texts to be analysed are reminiscent of genuine, emotionally neutral scientific discourse, beneath the veneer of objectivity the authors are found to be manipulating the readers’ emotions by personalizing the debates, selecting words with strong emotional connotations, and abusing readers’ ignorance of scientific methodology, as well as resorting to various half-truths, exploiting the scalarity of lying (Meibauer 2018). Although appearing to inform, the articles are chiefly intended to foment emotions.

En esta charla se muestra que todo lo relacionado con el conocimiento pragmático en lingüística y... more En esta charla se muestra que todo lo relacionado con el conocimiento pragmático en lingüística y comunicación es, en mayor o menor medida, “emocionante”, ya que tiene que ver con la intención de hablantes y oyentes, y se aleja de los significados literales “fríos” y vacíos de contenido emocional. Asimismo, se hace hincapié en la importancia de la enseñanza de aspectos pragmáticos y del manejo de la función expresiva del lenguaje en la clase de lenguas.

In this paper we present the results of both a theoretical and empirical study on the evaluative ... more In this paper we present the results of both a theoretical and empirical study on the evaluative character of verbal irony. Our main research concern was to provide evidence as to whether all cases of verbal irony are ‘critical’ in nature or not, trying to corroborate the findings outlined in previous work (e.g. Alba-Juez [1996] 2001 and 2000) not only by means of theoretical reflection and analysis, but also by presenting the results of a survey whose questions were mainly oriented toward the identification of ironical situations by English native speakers. Our main hypothesis was that, contrary to what has been claimed (most recently by Garmendia 2010), irony is not always critical or judgmental: there are cases in which the ironist is not criticizing anybody or anything, a fact which does not diminish the ironic intention or interpretation in the least. This evidence has also lead us to the conclusion that the essence of irony does not reside in its evaluative nature, but in a more deeply-ingrained feature of the phenomenon that has to do mainly with a contradiction of expectations at different linguistic/discursive levels, a fact that is more in sync with Attardo’s (2000) view of irony as ‘relevant inappropriateness’. For our analysis of the evaluative content of ironic utterances we draw on the findings of studies such as Thompson & Hunston’s (2000), Martin & White’s (2005), Bednarek’s (2008) or Alba-Juez & Kaul de Marlangeon’s (2010), and we show how the element of criticism or praise within verbal irony is always in the realm of what Martin (2000) has called evoked appraisal, which is in relation to pragmatic, covert meaning. However, we argue that there is more to irony than just covert criticism or praise. Thus when it comes to evaluation, verbal irony may be negative (criticism), positive (banter or asteism) or neutral (where the speaker may show a given stance towards someone or something which is not necessarily polarized). And it is precisely the neutral cases that show that verbal irony may contain no implied criticism or praise of the hearer or of any other participant or situation, as can be observed in, for instance, Oscar Wilde’s famous ironic quote “Life is too important to be taken seriously”. If there is any kind of evaluation in these neutral cases, it is of an ‘objective’ (more overt) kind, that has very little to do with criticism or praise. The survey was designed so as to test the three main (evaluative) types of verbal irony in English, in terms of their recognition as such by native speakers of this language. The results show that the great majority of speakers recognized the neutral cases as ironical, which has therefore made us feel inclined to accept our hypothesis and to support our initial claim that the essence of verbal irony is not to be found in its possible implied criticism, but in a finer, more subtle aspect of the phenomenon which has to do with a clash or contradiction at different linguistic/discursive levels.

It is nowadays an acknowledged fact in the world of humanistic science that emotions are a key fa... more It is nowadays an acknowledged fact in the world of humanistic science that emotions are a key factor to the comprehension of human nature. In Linguistics, and especially within Cognitive Linguistics, the phenomenon of the conceptualization and expression of emotion is now considered a natural function of language, and has therefore taken on particular importance as a key feature to confront the postmodern dilemmas of the 21st century. In this particular presentation we shall focus on the discourse of computer-mediated communication related to workplace practices in a bilingual environment (English-Spanish), where the expression of emotion and stance not only plays a relevant role in everyday interaction, but also proves to be a key feature for success in any kind of negotiation, whether it be commercial, personal or social. The expression of emotion is herein seen as a pragmalinguistic phenomenon which shows the relationship brain-body-world within a dynamical system (Gibbs 2010, Alba-Juez & Alba-Juez 2012), and which also constitutes a reflection of the so-called ‘emotional intelligence’ (Goleman, e.g.: 1995, 1998, 2006). Thus our main hypothesis advocates for a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and an appropriate use of the linguistic expression of emotion. We draw on Dulek & Fielden’s (1990) distinction between sensitive and non-sensitive messages at the workplace, and propose a typology of emotions, using Ekman’s (2003) taxonomy as a starting point. Some differences between English and Spanish speakers regarding how they perceive or experience their own and others’ feelings at the workplace will be explored, by looking at certain constructions used in e-mails for the expression of emotions and stance. The results of this analysis will allow us to draw some conclusions as to the difference between successful and unsuccessful communication ‘at work’ in a bicultural environment, which intend to shed some light on, for instance, how the failure to express the right emotion appropriately might end up in an unsuccessful business transaction, the lack of corporate leadership, or even the total blockage of communication.

Synopsis Cette étude se concentre sur la manière dont les émotions et les prises de position des ... more Synopsis Cette étude se concentre sur la manière dont les émotions et les prises de position des lecteurs de fausses informations sont manipulées à l'aide de stratégies discursives qui expriment ou invoquent (souvent de manière négative) des émotions vis à vis de « l'autre ». Ces stratégies favorisent la construction d'une identité de groupe interne, en opposition avec celle du groupe externe souvent déshumanisée, et désignée comme « allogène » (Hegel 1807, 1967, Crang, 1998 ; Brons 2015). Je développe une analyse sociopragmatique qualitative de quelques exemples de fausses informations à travers lesquelles les émotions du lecteur sont manipulées, non seulement par l'utilisation de mensonges prototypiques, mais aussi et surtout par des stratégies de discours pragmatique qui déforment la réalité de manière subtile, tout en renforçant l'aversion envers le groupe externe. Les résultats illustrent cette stratégie très fréquente de l'altérité utilisée dans les fausses informations rejoint justement ce que Brons appelle « sophisticated othering » (altérité sophistiquée), une forme d'altérité particulièrement persuasif du fait de son caractère apparemment raisonnable.

In this talk I focus on the way in which the stance and emotions of the readers of fake news are ... more In this talk I focus on the way in which the stance and emotions of the readers of fake news are manipulated by means of discourse strategies which express and/or invoke negative emotions towards “the other”. These strategies (e.g. the skillful manipulation of the three main Appraisal subsystems, (Martin & White 2005), the use of hedges, the triggering of fallacious presuppositions and implicatures, or the display of misleading images) help in the construction of the in-group identity, in contrast with that of the out-group, which is often dehumanized and marked as ‘alien’ (Hegel 1807, 1967, Crang, 1998; Brons 2015). These feelings of superiority (of the in-group) and inferiority (of the out-group) are very frequently conveyed by means of inferences such as emotional implicatures (e-implicatures, Schwarz-Friesel 2010, 2015) which emphasize the distance between the self/in-group and ‘the other’. In order to show the above I will carry out a qualitative sociopragmatic analysis of some samples of fake news in which the readers’ emotions are manipulated not only by the use of prototypical lies (i.e. assertions whose content the speaker believes to be false, uttered with the intention to deceive the hearer), but also and mainly by means of complex discourse-pragmatic strategies which cannot be classified as total lies but which nevertheless distort reality in subtle ways, playing with the scalarity of lying (Meibauer 2018) and enhancing the idea of (negative) otherness. The results show that a very frequent otherness strategy used in fake news is what Brons (2015) calls ‘sophisticated othering’, a kind of othering that differs from ‘crude othering’ in that it is especially persuasive due to its apparent reasonableness and can therefore “be accepted without much critical reflection” (Brons, 2015: 71-72). This in turn leads us to some significant conclusions having to do with the concepts of bullshit (Frankfurt 2005) and post-truth (Harsin 2018): Readers often choose to accept a good story even if it is deceiving, provided that it touches their emotions and confirms their own convictions, because among other things, it helps them to construct their (personal, social, political, cultural, etc.) identity by distinguishing and distancing themselves from ‘the other’.

Acta linguistica academica, Dec 11, 2023

Pragmatics & beyond, Jan 16, 2014

Pragmática, 2020, ISBN 978-84-460-4871-8, págs. 551-566, 2020

Russian Journal of Linguistics, 2018

Acta Lingüística Academica, 2024

Emotion in Discourse, 2019

The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics

The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, 2021

Evaluation in media discourse: european perspectives, 2017, ISBN 978-3-0343-2014-6, págs. 81-119, 2017

Strands of Language, 2011

First unit of the book "Strands of Language, Part II B1", with texts, explanations and exercises.

Strands of Language Part I, B1, 2010

First chapter of the book Strands of Language, Part I, B1, with texts, explanations and exercises.

Perspectives on Discourse Analysis: Theory and Practice, 2009

This is the introductory chapter to the book, where the discipline of Discourse Analysis (DA) is ... more This is the introductory chapter to the book, where the discipline of Discourse Analysis (DA) is defined. The evolution from Text Linguistics to Discourse Analysis is traced, and some of the approaches to DA are presented. Finally, the discipline is explained by looking into what the practitioners of DA actually do.

Pragmatics: Cognition, Context and Culture, 2016

This is the introductory chapter to the book, where we describe the origins and scope of pragmati... more This is the introductory chapter to the book, where we describe the origins and scope of pragmatics and define concepts such as context, language underdeterminacy, conventionalization and grammaticalization. We also discuss the main approaches and central topics in pragmatics, as well as the relationship of pragmatics to cognition and culture.

International Conference on Language and Emotion (CFP)

Ibérica, 2019

Emotion is part and parcel of all kinds of human experience and as such plays an important role i... more Emotion is part and parcel of all kinds of human experience and as such plays an important role in all discourse types, including professional discourse. In the 21st century more than ever, the proper channeling and expression of our emotions at the workplace have come to be considered a sign of emotional intelligence, powerful leadership, and (harmless) persuasion skills. However, persuasion can also be used as a weapon to lie and manipulate people's emotions. Meibauer (2018) notes that lying and deception play an important role in business and trade, and this is obviously the case in the business of fake news. In this article we analyze the genre of fake news within professional journalistic discourse. We carry out a qualitative sociopragmatic analysis of samples of political and scientific fake news in English, and show how this kind of journalism aims at manipulating readers' emotions not only through the use of prototypical lies (i.e. assertions whose content the speaker believes to be false, uttered with the intention of deceiving the hearer), but mainly by means of complex discourse-pragmatic strategies such as the skillful manipulation of the three chief evaluative subsystems, ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION (Martin & White, 2005), the triggering of false inferences and the display of misleading images, thus playing with the scalarity of lying. This in turn leads us to some important conclusions showing that the fact that the linguistic expression of falsity can be scalar is intimately connected with the concepts of "bullshit" (Frankfurt, 2005) and "post-truth" (Keyes, 2004): a good story that somehow touches readers' emotions, even if it is deceiving, prevails over a true story, because the readers choose to accept as true what makes them "feel good".

Resumen: Emoción, mentiras y "bullshit" en el discurso periodístico: el caso de las noticias falsas/falseadas o "fake news". La emoción forma parte de todas las formas de la experiencia humana, y, como tal, juega un papel importante en todos los tipos de discurso, incluyendo el discurso profesional. En el siglo XXI más que en ninguna otra época, la canalización y expresión apropiadas de las emociones en entornos laborales se ha convertido en un signo de inteligencia emocional, gran liderazgo e (inocuas) habilidades de persuasión. A pesar de ello, la persuasión se puede usar también para manipular las emociones de las personas. Meibauer (2018) explica que la mentira y el engaño juegan un papel importante en los negocios y el comercio, lo cual es obviamente el caso del negocio de las noticias falsas (o mejor dicho, falseadas) o "fake news". En este artículo investigamos el género de las noticias falseadas a través del análisis cualitativo sociopragmático de ejemplos de este tipo de noticias en inglés, y mostramos cómo esta forma de periodismo apunta a la manipulación de las emociones de los lectores, no solamente mediante mentiras prototípicas (es decir, aseveraciones cuyo contenido el hablante cree falso, pero que son producidas con la intención de engañar al oyente), sino también y principalmente con estrategias pragmático-discursivas complejas, tales como la manipulación hábil de los tres subsistemas evaluativos principales, actitud, compromiso y graduacIón (Martin y White, 2005), la activación de inferencias falaces o el uso de imágenes engañosas, jugando así con la escalaridad de la mentira. Esto, a su vez, nos lleva a sacar conclusiones importantes que muestran que el hecho de que la expresión de lo falseado puede ser escalar tiene una conexión estrecha con los conceptos de "bullshit" (Frankfurt, 2005) y "posverdad" (Keyes, 2004): una buena historia que de alguna manera toque las emociones de los lectores, aun si es engañosa, prevalece sobre la historia verdadera porque los lectores eligen aceptar como verdadero aquello que apela a sus pasiones y, por tanto, los hace "sentir bien".

Emotion in Discourse, 2019

This chapter contextualizes the book Emotion in Discourse as a whole, surveying the study of emot... more This chapter contextualizes the book Emotion in Discourse as a whole, surveying the study of emotion in discourse and presenting our own view and definition of the phenomenon. We show how functional, cognitive and social linguistic approaches to discourse analysis, in what is labeled the ‘emotional turn’, have ceased to ignore the affective functions of language. This redirection of research has been partly inspired by Appraisal Theory’s interest in identifying the evaluative component of many forms of discourse. But across the social sciences, scholars are recognizing the essential role of emotional phenomena. This has spawned multiple interdisciplinary studies, which bring together students of the mind, social interaction and, crucially for this volume, language, and deliver a better understanding of the psychological, interactional and social processes triggered by emotions. The chapter ends with a brief summary of the remaining thirteen chapters, showing how they together rise to the challenge of identifying the role of emotion in discourse.

Emotion in Discourse, 2019

Interest in human emotion no longer equates to unscientific speculation. 21st-century humanities ... more Interest in human emotion no longer equates to unscientific speculation. 21st-century humanities scholars are paying serious attention to our capacity to express emotions and giving rigorous explanations of affect in language. We are unquestionably witnessing an ‘emotional turn’ not only in linguistics, but also in other fields of scientific research.

Emotion in Discourse follows from and reflects on this scholarly awakening to the world of emotion, and in particular, to its intricate relationship with human language. The book presents both the state of the art and the latest research in an effort to unravel the various workings of the expression of emotion in discourse. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, for emotion is a multifarious phenomenon whose functions in language are enlightened by such other disciplines as psychology, neurology, or communication studies. The volume shows not only how emotion manifests at different linguistic levels, but also how it relates to aspects like linguistic appraisal, emotional intelligence or humor, as well as covering its occurrence in various genres, including scientific discourse. As such, the book contributes to an emerging interdisciplinary field which could be labeled “emotionology”, transcending previous linguistic work and providing an updated characterization of how emotion functions in human discourse.

Paper presented at Fourth International Conference on Modality in English. Universidad complutens... more Paper presented at Fourth International Conference on Modality in English. Universidad complutense de Madrid

Paper delivered at XLVI Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística (Panel de la Asociación d... more Paper delivered at XLVI Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística (Panel de la Asociación de Lingüística del Discurso)

Interest in human emotion no longer equates to unscientific speculation. In 21st-century humanist... more Interest in human emotion no longer equates to unscientific speculation. In 21st-century humanistic studies, emotion looms larger than ever before. In linguistics and discourse analysis, understanding the workings of human emotion is basic for the comprehension of most of the choices that speakers make.
In my talk I will draw on Kahneman’s (2011) findings on the distinction between System 1 and System 2, which respectively produce what he calls fast and slow thinking, so as to show how the intuitive and ‘emotional’ System 1 is the secret author of many of the judgments and choices interlocutors make in discourse. As some studies have revealed (e.g. Schwarz 2004, and Ecker et al. 2014), people tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory -and this is largely determined and influenced by typical System 1-phenomena such as priming, framing or the halo effect, among others. But System 2 is not devoid of emotion content: despite being ‘more rational’, it also participates in the management of emotions in discourse, for among other things, it monitors the appropriate deployment of politeness strategies (e.g.: It keeps you polite when you are angry).
Considering all of the above, I will show how the emotive function of language is omnipresent in nearly all our discourse-pragmatic decisions, and how speakers/writers (un)consciously exploit the interplay between System 1 and System 2 to skillfully persuade and sometimes manipulate their audiences within different and various discourse systems such as those of fake news, narratives, or everyday conversation. In my analysis of the emotion found in these genres I will follow the procedure and characterization set forth in Alba-Juez (2018) and Alba-Juez & Mackenzie (2019).

In today’s business environments, effective communication ability is considered one of the top sk... more In today’s business environments, effective communication ability is considered one of the top skills when it comes to hiring professionals. If communication at the workplace is to be ethical and efficient, communicators should convey their thoughts, intentions and objectives clearly and accurately, but also taking into account their interlocutors’ feelings and emotions. Good, empathetic communicators have great potential to become leaders, and leaders in turn normally show high levels of so called emotional intelligence (e.g. Petrides et al. 2016, Mayer, Buck 2014, Scherer 2007, or Goleman 1995, 1998).
In this talk I will present the results of both a qualitative and quantitative study (Alba-Juez & Pérez-González, forthcoming) whose main aim was to explore the relationship between communicative-linguistic competence and emotional intelligence as manifested at the workplace, and at the same time show how this relation is made manifest through the discourse strategies used by professionals of five different engineering companies when exchanging e-mails at the workplace.
The corpus used for the analysis consists of 500 real e-mail messages, as well as 108 elicited messages by means of a survey conducted and distributed in the five companies. In my talk I will refer to Dulek and Fielding’s (1990) classification of business messages into sensitive and non-sensitive as a point of departure to show how ethical issues can be handled at the workplace by using the appropriate discourse strategies, among which politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson 1987) and the use of the linguistic systems of Appraisal (Martin & White 2005) are included.

It is nowadays an acknowledged fact in the world of humanistic science that emotions are a key fa... more It is nowadays an acknowledged fact in the world of humanistic science that emotions are a key factor to the comprehension of human nature. In Linguistics, and especially within Cognitive Linguistics, the phenomenon of the conceptualization and expression of emotion is now considered a natural function of language, and has therefore taken on particular importance as a key feature to confront the postmodern dilemmas of the 21st century.
The expression of emotion is herein seen as a pragmalinguistic phenomenon which shows the relationship brain-body-world within a dynamical system (Gibbs 2010, Alba-Juez & Alba-Juez 2012), and which also constitutes a reflection of the so-called ‘emotional intelligence’ (Goleman, e.g.: 1995, 2006). Therefore, and in line with the work of other linguists and scholars (e.g. Foolen 2012) it is a basic assumption of this work that language and cognition interact.
In this particular presentation I will focus on the discourse of computer-mediated communication related to workplace practices in the bilingual environment (English-Spanish) of a Spanish engineering company with offices both in Madrid and London. It is observed that the expression of emotion and stance in these electronic exchanges not only plays a relevant role in everyday interaction, but also appears to be a key feature for success in any kind of negotiation, whether it be commercial, personal or social.
Some differences between English and Spanish speakers regarding how they perceive or experience their own and others’ feelings at the workplace will be explored, by looking at some of the pragmatic mechanisms used for the expression of emotion, such as bridging inference, presupposition or reference, among others. This analysis will hopefully allow us to draw conclusions as to the difference between successful and unsuccessful communication ‘at work’ in a bicultural environment, which will show, for instance, how the failure to express the right emotion appropriately might end up in an unsuccessful business transaction, the lack of corporate leadership, or even the total blockage of communication.

Principales puntos: Estudio de la emoción desde una perspectiva lingüística (pragmático-discursiv... more Principales puntos:
Estudio de la emoción desde una perspectiva lingüística (pragmático-discursiva)

La conceptualización y expresión de las emociones como reflejo de un posicionamiento (stance) en el discurso

Relación con:
la función evaluativa del lenguaje.
La función persuasiva .

Emotion permeates all genres, from everyday conversation to scientific articles (see Mackenzie & ... more Emotion permeates all genres, from everyday conversation to scientific articles (see Mackenzie & Alba-Juez 2019 for examples of recent work). Emotion is a prior condition for reasoning (Damasio 1999) but is also capable of distorting our thinking (Cockcroft et al. 2014: 85). Writers of ‘fake news’, whatever they are dealing with (from high politics to gossip about celebrities), exploit their readers’ emotions, often the basest ones, to achieve their ultimate aims. Popular science, as found in magazines like New Scientist, is a genre in which complex scientific questions and recent findings are made more accessible to a lay audience in a manner that is informative and entertaining. At a time when people are drawing both information and entertainment from online sources, the door is open for fabricators with malicious intentions to enter this genre, especially with regard to questions that spark off intense emotions, such as climate change or vaccination. The purpose of the present paper is to examine selected instances of fake popular-science articles from the fact-checking site www.snopes.com. While several linguistic aspects of the texts to be analysed are reminiscent of genuine, emotionally neutral scientific discourse, beneath the veneer of objectivity the authors are found to be manipulating the readers’ emotions by personalizing the debates, selecting words with strong emotional connotations, and abusing readers’ ignorance of scientific methodology, as well as resorting to various half-truths, exploiting the scalarity of lying (Meibauer 2018). Although appearing to inform, the articles are chiefly intended to foment emotions.

En esta presentación toco los siguientes temas: El fenómeno del lenguaje y la comunicación humano... more En esta presentación toco los siguientes temas:
El fenómeno del lenguaje y la comunicación humanos en el marco de la Teoría de los Sistemas Dinámicos

Texto y contexto: Distintos tipos de contexto y su interrelación

Variables en la relación entre lenguaje, cognición, comunicación y cultura.

Pragmática y Análisis del Discurso como disciplinas lingüísticas y su doble aplicación a la enseñanza/aprendizaje de lenguas.

La expresión y conceptualización de las emociones como un rasgo clave del discurso: El contexto emocional y su importancia en la comunicación humana y en la enseñanza de lenguas . Proyecto de investigación EMO-FUNDETT

In this presentation I elaborate on the findings of a previous comparative study on the variables... more In this presentation I elaborate on the findings of a previous comparative study on the variables of the evaluative functional relationship (Alba-Juez, forthcoming) as manifested in the headlines of on-line British newspapers (broadsheets vs. tabloids). In this previous study only a few significant differences were found between the expression of evaluation in broadsheets and tabloids, a fact that has triggered a further research question, which will guide the development of the present paper: Could it be that the main difference between the evaluative discourse of broadsheets and tabloids lay in the expression of the emotion attached to (but not so easily distinguished from) the evaluation? In order to answer this question, and taking into account that one characteristic usually attributed to tabloids in contrast with broadsheets is that they focus more on the emotional side of stories (e.g. Fowler 1991), I will take a theoretical standpoint to try to draw the delicate line between the phenomena of evaluation and emotion, and I will do so by presenting part of the work emanating from the EMO-FunDETT research project (FFI2013-47792-C2-1-P - http://www.uned.es/proyectofundett/). Based on Alba-Juez & Thompson’s (2014) definition of evaluation, I will discuss Thompson’s (2015) proposal regarding the common ground shared by the three main subsystems of Appraisal (Martin & White 2005) and both emotion talk and emotional talk (Bednarek 2008), trying to distinguish between those cases in which the emotion is enacted and those in which it is expressed, or, in Foolen’s (2012) terms, between the conceptualization and the expression of emotion in language.
The corpus used consists of 200 articles taken from four different on-line British newspapers: two broadsheets, BBC Online and The Guardian, and two tabloids, The Mirror and The Daily Mail. The analysis will be multimodal, and will thus focus on the comparison of the evaluation/emotion found not only in the text of the headlines, but also in the images that accompany them in these two types of on-line press. The discussion will mainly be based on the observation that all newspaper articles (whether in tabloids or broadsheets) seem to contain a given evaluation and/or emotive tone that is generally condensed or made relevant in the headline space, where the main stance of the article is reflected, a stance that will most likely influence the reader’s decision to make the effort of reading the whole article, or on the contrary, to reject it in the first place.
In conclusion, the research presented in this paper has both an empirical and a theoretical nature, for it will not only show the results of the analysis made regarding the evaluative/emotive differences between tabloids and broadsheets, but will also elucidate how the system of emotion interacts or intertwines with that of evaluation, going on to define the former as distinct from the latter, even though the boundaries between one and the other are blurred and have so far been very difficult to establish.

It is nowadays an acknowledged fact in the world of humanistic science that emotions are a key fa... more It is nowadays an acknowledged fact in the world of humanistic science that emotions are a key factor to the comprehension of human nature. In Linguistics, and especially within Cognitive Linguistics, the phenomenon of the conceptualization and expression of emotion is now considered a natural function of language, and has therefore taken on particular importance as a key feature to confront the postmodern dilemmas of the 21st century.
In this particular presentation we shall focus on the discourse of computer-mediated communication related to workplace practices in a bilingual environment (English-Spanish), where the expression of emotion and stance not only plays a relevant role in everyday interaction, but also proves to be a key feature for success in any kind of negotiation, whether it be commercial, personal or social. The expression of emotion is herein seen as a pragmalinguistic phenomenon which shows the relationship brain-body-world within a dynamical system (Gibbs 2010, Alba-Juez & Alba-Juez 2012), and which also constitutes a reflection of the so-called ‘emotional intelligence’ (Goleman, e.g.: 1995, 1998, 2006). Thus our main hypothesis advocates for a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and an appropriate use of the linguistic expression of emotion.
We draw on Dulek & Fielden’s (1990) distinction between sensitive and non-sensitive messages at the workplace, and propose a typology of emotions, using Ekman’s (2003) taxonomy as a starting point. Some differences between English and Spanish speakers regarding how they perceive or experience their own and others’ feelings at the workplace will be explored, by looking at certain constructions used in e-mails for the expression of emotions and stance. The results of this analysis will allow us to draw some conclusions as to the difference between successful and unsuccessful communication ‘at work’ in a bicultural environment, which intend to shed some light on, for instance, how the failure to express the right emotion appropriately might end up in an unsuccessful business transaction, the lack of corporate leadership, or even the total blockage of communication.

In this paper we present the results of both a theoretical and empirical study on the evaluative ... more In this paper we present the results of both a theoretical and empirical study on the evaluative character of verbal irony. Our main research concern was to provide evidence as to whether all cases of verbal irony are ‘critical’ in nature or not, trying to corroborate the findings outlined in previous work (e.g. Alba-Juez [1996] 2001 and 2000) not only by means of theoretical reflection and analysis, but also by presenting the results of a survey whose questions were mainly oriented toward the identification of ironical situations by English native speakers. Our main hypothesis was that, contrary to what has been claimed (most recently by Garmendia 2010), irony is not always critical or judgmental: there are cases in which the ironist is not criticizing anybody or anything, a fact which does not diminish the ironic intention or interpretation in the least. This evidence has also lead us to the conclusion that the essence of irony does not reside in its evaluative nature, but in a more deeply-ingrained feature of the phenomenon that has to do mainly with a contradiction of expectations at different linguistic/discursive levels, a fact that is more in sync with Attardo’s (2000) view of irony as ‘relevant inappropriateness’.
For our analysis of the evaluative content of ironic utterances we draw on the findings of studies such as Thompson & Hunston’s (2000), Martin & White’s (2005), Bednarek’s (2008) or Alba-Juez & Kaul de Marlangeon’s (2010), and we show how the element of criticism or praise within verbal irony is always in the realm of what Martin (2000) has called evoked appraisal, which is in relation to pragmatic, covert meaning. However, we argue that there is more to irony than just covert criticism or praise. Thus when it comes to evaluation, verbal irony may be negative (criticism), positive (banter or asteism) or neutral (where the speaker may show a given stance towards someone or something which is not necessarily polarized). And it is precisely the neutral cases that show that verbal irony may contain no implied criticism or praise of the hearer or of any other participant or situation, as can be observed in, for instance, Oscar Wilde’s famous ironic quote “Life is too important to be taken seriously”. If there is any kind of evaluation in these neutral cases, it is of an ‘objective’ (more overt) kind, that has very little to do with criticism or praise.
The survey was designed so as to test the three main (evaluative) types of verbal irony in English, in terms of their recognition as such by native speakers of this language. The results show that the great majority of speakers recognized the neutral cases as ironical, which has therefore made us feel inclined to accept our hypothesis and to support our initial claim that the essence of verbal irony is not to be found in its possible implied criticism, but in a finer, more subtle aspect of the phenomenon which has to do with a clash or contradiction at different linguistic/discursive levels.

The study presented herein discusses some theoretical and methodological aspects concerning the a... more The study presented herein discusses some theoretical and methodological aspects concerning the analysis of the relationship between appraisal and emotion processes in language/ discourse. The analysis is supported by qualitative data taken from three different linguistic corpora, and it is mainly based on the functional linguistic perspective, taking as a point of departure both Appraisal Theory (Martin & White 2005) –considering that this is the most elaborate and best-known model of linguistic appraisal to date– and Thompson’s later (2015) review of the Appraisal model regarding the common ground shared by evaluation and emotion.
The main argument I defend is that even though the above-mentioned approaches have shed invaluable light into appraisal and emotion processes in language, they turn out to be insufficient to elucidate their intricate and complex relationship, as well as their similarities and differences. Therefore I propose a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of the phenomenon by drawing not only on the findings of these functional approaches, but also on those of linguistic pragmatics and psychological appraisal theories. In particular, I propose to tackle the analysis of emotion processes in language by incorporating pragmatic knowledge about phenomena such as emotional implicatures (Schwarz-Friesel, 2010), as well as methodological treatment and classification of emotions from the component approach (Ortony & Turner 1990), which is connected to the psychological concept of emotion systems (Panksepp 1982). I finally present the results of this interdisciplinary analysis by applying a modified version of the functional relationship I proposed for the analysis of linguistic evaluation in previous work (Alba-Juez 2016, 2017), which I argue can also be a good methodological tool for the analysis of emotion in language, and may clear the ground for future large-scale qualitative projects on the topic.

In this talk I focus on the way in which the stance and emotions of the readers of fake news are ... more In this talk I focus on the way in which the stance and emotions of the readers of fake news are manipulated by means of discourse strategies which express and/or invoke negative emotions towards “the other”. These strategies (e.g. the skillful manipulation of the three main Appraisal subsystems, (Martin & White 2005), the use of hedges, the triggering of fallacious presuppositions and implicatures, or the display of misleading images) help in the construction of the in-group identity, in contrast with that of the out-group, which is often dehumanized and marked as ‘alien’ (Hegel 1807, 1967, Crang, 1998; Brons 2015). These feelings of superiority (of the in-group) and inferiority (of the out-group) are very frequently conveyed by means of inferences such as emotional implicatures (e-implicatures, Schwarz-Friesel 2010, 2015) which emphasize the distance between the self/in-group and ‘the other’.
In order to show the above I will carry out a qualitative sociopragmatic analysis of some samples of fake news in which the readers’ emotions are manipulated not only by the use of prototypical lies (i.e. assertions whose content the speaker believes to be false, uttered with the intention to deceive the hearer), but also and mainly by means of complex discourse-pragmatic strategies which cannot be classified as total lies but which nevertheless distort reality in subtle ways, playing with the scalarity of lying (Meibauer 2018) and enhancing the idea of (negative) otherness. The results show that a very frequent otherness strategy used in fake news is what Brons (2015) calls ‘sophisticated othering’, a kind of othering that differs from ‘crude othering’ in that it is especially persuasive due to its apparent reasonableness and can therefore “be accepted without much critical reflection” (Brons, 2015: 71-72). This in turn leads us to some significant conclusions having to do with the concepts of bullshit (Frankfurt 2005) and post-truth (Harsin 2018): Readers often choose to accept a good story even if it is deceiving, provided that it touches their emotions and confirms their own convictions, because among other things, it helps them to construct their (personal, social, political, cultural, etc.) identity by distinguishing and distancing themselves from ‘the other’.