The present research is centered on Miguel de Unamuno's Songbook which is studied through the prism of the theory of dialogism elaborated by Mikhail Bakhtin. This study overcomes the limitation of Bakhtin's theory which extends solely to narrative genres, and argues that dialogism can also be applied to poetry. In this thesis I seek to rectify the critical oversight of this significant and original work of Unamuno and show that Songbook has panoply of innovative techniques aimed at creating the multiple poetic voices and dialogical interaction. Strong links are established between Bakhtin's theory, Unamuno's aesthetics and the postmodernist episteme of "the death of the author" which heralds the new era of fiction writing. I give a detailed analysis of Songbook's poetry based on Bakhtin's theory and incorporate the pragmalinguistic view of poetic discourse as a communicative act that involves a constant interaction between the addresser and the addressees. I find different types of dialogical expression in accordance with the number and the nature of different addressees at which the poet aims his discourse. This study shows that poetic tools forged by Unamuno are born of the need to express a conflictive inner world that is opposed to any type of dogmatism and monologism. Through the detailed analysis of the poetic discourse of Songbook it is demonstrated that Unamuno's innovations and experimentalism confer him a position of the precursor of postmodernism.

The diploma thesis entitled 'Pragmalinguistic Analysis of Commercial Communication of the Brand Activia by Danone' aims to provide a comprehensive treatise of the above mentioned brand from the point of view of pragmatic and linguistic theories, based on a selected sample of advertising from 2010 - 2014. The introductory theoretical part defines the functions of advertising and their idiosyncratic communication and place them within the wider context of marketing. Subsequently, the position of the product within the segment offered by Danone is described and comparison of the respective marketing strategies for each product is made. The methodological section of the thesis introduces pragmatic linguistics as the central tool used in the ensuing analysis. Here the terms related to the process of communication are emphasised, same as the relationships between the creator of a text, its recipient and the text itself. The last, analytical part deals with selected samples of commercial communication using the aforementioned methods. A sample of Activia Danone communication is then used to analyse the usage of individual linguistic and stylistic means, as well as advertising types with emphasis on their goals as a form of communication.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study focuses on the requestive behaviour, including perceptions of politeness and directness, of Omani second language (L2) English students at Nizwa University in Oman as revealed by their written responses to real life scenarios. The study is an attempt to improve linguistic understanding of pragmatic differences, with reference to the similarities and differences between Omani L2 English students and L1 English speakers’ communicative proficiency, in order to contribute to improved language teaching curricula. The research design consisted of an initial series of two questionnaires which required that the participants rate given responses based on their perceptions of ‘politeness’ and ‘indirectness’; a third discourse completion test (DCT) that required participants to respond in writing in the form of a request to five real life scenarios; and a fourth questionnaire that required teachers to judge the written responses of the DCT according to five criteria. Additionally, the Omani-speaking teachers of L2 English were interviewed and asked questions relating to their responses from a sociopragmatic/ cultural perspective. The Omani teachers’ responses were then used to assist in the analysis of the written response data. The four instruments above thus used both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The results of the data analysis showed that (1) the query preparatory is considered by both groups to be the most polite request strategy and is used to mitigate imposition; (2) Omani L2 English students consider the words should and must to be most impolite in contrast with the L1 English speakers who consider the mood derivable to be the most impolite request strategy; (3) mild hints are considered far more polite by L1 English speakers than by Omani L2 English students; (4) politeness is influenced by differences in perceptions of social variables such as social distance, social power and degree of imposition; (5) direct strategies are not considered impolite and are used six times more frequently by Omani L2 English students than by L1 English speakers in low-imposition contextual situations; and (6) positive transfer and conventionalisation of the time intensifier has been produced and the strategy is used more than twice as much by the Omani L2 English students than by the L1 English speakers. In contrast, the L1 English speakers use the preparator 11 times more frequently than the Omani L2 English students who predominantly have no pragmalinguistic knowledge of this tactic. The study highlights the need for pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic training of students in the classroom and for pragmatics to be included in the material and curriculum design of English language learning programmes. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie fokus op hoe versoeke, insluitend die persepsies van beleefdheid en direktheid, van tweede taal (T2) Omani studente aan die Universiteit van Nizwa in Oman geformuleer word soos geopenbaar deur hulle skriftelike reaksies op realistiese lewenscenarios tydens vraagstelling. Die studie is ‘n poging om taalkundige begrip van pragmatiese verskille te verbeter, met verwysing na die ooreenkomste en verskille tussen Omani T2 Engelssprekendes en L1 Engelssprekendes se kommunikatiewe vaardighede, ten einde by te dra tot die verbetering van taalonderrig leerplanne. Die navorsing het bestaan uit ‘n aanvanklike reeks van twee vraelyste wat vereis dat deelnemers antwoorde gee op grond van hulle persepsies van beleefdheid en indirektheid; ‘n derde diskoers voltooiings toets (DVT) wat vereis dat deelnemers skriftelik reageer op versoeke in vyf realistiese lewenscenarios; en ‘n vierde vraelys wat vereis dat onderwysers die skriftelike reaksies op die DVT in vyf areas beoordeel. Daarbenewens is die T2 Omani onderwysers ondervra met betrekking tot hulle antwoorde vanuit ‘n sosio-pragmatiese perspektief. Die Omani onderwysers se antwoorde is vervolgens gebruik om die ontleding van die skriftelike response te doen. Die bogenoemde vier instrumente gebruik dus beide kwalitatiewe en kwantitatiewe navorsingsmetodes. Die resultate van die data-analise toon dat (1) die “query preparatory” deur beide groepe as die mees beleefde vraag-strategie beskou word en gebruik word om taakoplegging te versag; (2) T2 sprekers beskou die woorde moet en behoort meestal as onbeskof, in teenstelling met die T1 Engelssprekendes, wat die “mood derivable” as die mees onbeskofte vraag-strategie ervaar; (3) die “mild hint” word as baie meer beleefd deur L1 Engelssprekendes as deur T2-sprekers ervaar; (4) beleefdheid word beinvloed deur verskille in persepsies van sosiale faktore soos sosiale afstand en –druk, en die graad van oplegging; (5) direktheid word nie as onbeskof gesien nie, en kom ses keer meer voor by T2 sprekers in laer taalvaardigheid situasies; en (6) positiewe oordrag en vaslegging van tyd as ‘n drukkrag het voorgekom, en die taktiek word meer as twee keer soveel deur die T2 sprekers as deur die T1 Engelssprekendes gebruik. In teenstelling gebruik die T1 Engelssprekendes die “preparatory” 11 keer meer as die T2 sprekers, wat meestal geen pragma-linguistiese kennis van hierdie tegniek het nie. Die studie beklemtoon die noodsaaklikheid van pragma-linguistiese en sosio-linguistiese opleiding in die klaskamer, en dat pragmatika in materiaal en kurrikulumontwerp vir Engelse taalleer programme ingesluit word.

The thesis investigates one aspect of intracultural communication among the Czech Deaf community. Namely, it surveys those themes which are considered to be taboo among Czech Deaf signers and in which ways they are discussed. This topic is explored from the pragmalinguistic perspective. The meanings of terms such as "taboo" and "euphemism" are explained on the basis of theories of politeness. Thereafter, the topics that are regarded to be taboo in the Czech (hearing) culture are presented, as the source of euphemisms in some foreign sign languages. On the basis of such knowledge, the methodology for a pilot investigation into the tabulation of how communication within the Czech Deaf community was created. Based on semi-structured interviews with five Deaf informants it is examined whether the topics of death, serious diseases, human anatomy and physiology, sexual behavior, social inequality in regards to economic status, as well as socially unacceptable behavior such as drunkenness, lying, stealing and cheating are felt to be taboo during communication among the Czech Deaf community. It was proved that the community tabooed many of these topics in a similar way as the hearing Czech. If the Deaf users of Czech Sign Language need or want to talk about them, they often use such lexemes that could be,...

This diploma thesis deals with the spread of manipulative, propagandistic and fake news in the Internet online environment. The spread of disinformation also occurred during the Czech presidential election, which took place in January 2018. This disinformation was spread mainly by the so-called alternative media, which are often associated with the spread of Russian propaganda. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the disinformation and its dissemination, the means used and forms of disinformation in the specified time period from November 2017 to March 2018 on selected news portals through qualitative textual analysis. In the theoretical part of this thesis, we present a comprehensive and detailed theoretical overview of disinformation and propaganda, its goals, aspects of dissemination, the resulting effect and possible ways how to defend against them. Similarly, we mention the individual steps of pragmalinguistics, which is theoretical basis for our research. In the empirical part of the work, we analyze the media content of five selected news sites, which we structurally divide according to individual media. At the end of our thesis we found out that there was a demonstrable spread of misleading,

This research involves three separate studies with the goal of investigating learner increases in the pragmatic awareness when exposed to various degrees of sustained, explicit instruction. Operationalized as a composite construct in the theory of communicative competence, pragmatic awareness includes knowledge of pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic features, with sequential action events representing the former and relationship status categories the latter. Research questions for each study focus on gains learners revealed on a video-based pragmatic awareness assessment instrument delivered in pretest-posttest format. Data collection occurred from fall semester 2013 to spring semester 2015 in one single-sex junior/senior high school and two co-educational universities, one with a first-year focus group and the other with a second-year group, with participates across the contexts enrolled in 1 of 12 intact classes ranging in size from 23 to 33. At each site, data collection included response behaviors for comparison counterfactual groups. Data for the primary analyses of each study were subjected to a one-way ANCOVA. Results revealed a significant difference between the treatment group performances compared to a counterfactual group from each institution: Study 1, F(1,152) = 5.86, p = 0.02; Study 2, F(34, 115.28) = 5.71, p = 0.02; and Study 3, F(3, 77.30) = 8.04, p < 0.00. Relationship strength between the factor levels and the dependent variable, as measured in partial eta squared, accounted for 4%, 14%, and 16% of the variance, respectively. In Study 3 a Bayesian confirmatory analysis revealed that the least explicit treatment, one involving only a focus on pragmalinguistic input, showed the greatest gains. Implications for the three studies are: (a) pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic categories reveal difficulty hierarchies, with particular sequential action events and relationship status categories consistently more challenging than others; (b) learners display differential awareness of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic sub-constructs, with the former registered as more difficult; and (c) explicit instruction on a limited number of pragmalinguistic categories might result in spillover learning effects to other, untaught categories. / Applied Linguistics

In the center of interest of this dissertation called The Pragmalinguistic analysis of Czech and French commentary lies in the qualitative methodological approach to a specific media communication form - a printed commentary. The dissertation has several objectives: firstly, it describes the methodological tools used in the francophone analysis of discourse which are consequently used to construct the author's own system as a basis for the analysis. The author has chosen the tools which create language subjectivity and manifestation of the author in the text which are in francophone areas traditionally called as a complex of "énonciation": discourse/history (É. Benveniste), "théorie des blocs sémantiques", polyphony and intertextuality, metaphors, modalisators, deictics, connectors. In the second part of the dissertation, the author uses the theoretical basis built in the first part and applies it to create her own analysis, comparison and final evaluation of two journalistic texts - one from Le Monde and the other one from Hospodářské noviny. The detailed analysis of the texts brings very interesting findings about the different character and construction of the Czech and French commentaries and at the same time, about the different coverage of Czech and French presidency of the Council of the European...

Submitted by Aelson Maciera (aelsoncm@terra.com.br) on 2017-04-26T19:51:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissNMA.pdf: 39682521 bytes, checksum: 232e6ea0cb601b07a4f025f8efa4e8b2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-05-02T18:42:03Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissNMA.pdf: 39682521 bytes, checksum: 232e6ea0cb601b07a4f025f8efa4e8b2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-05-02T18:42:11Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissNMA.pdf: 39682521 bytes, checksum: 232e6ea0cb601b07a4f025f8efa4e8b2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-05-02T18:49:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissNMA.pdf: 39682521 bytes, checksum: 232e6ea0cb601b07a4f025f8efa4e8b2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-08-23 / The aim of this work is to verify if and to what extent the pragmatic aspects of grammar (pragmalinguistics) are covered in some units of an English Language Teaching textbook used in Brazil. We also aim to delineate the role of grammar in this material and, based on the analyzed units, present reflections on the possibilities of contributing to the teaching-learning of pragmalinguistics. We consider the proposal of the material as we verify the activities according to theories that approach grammar as a skill (BATSTONE, 1994 and LARSEN-FREEMAN, 2003), pragmatics (KASPER and ROSE, 2001) and principled materials development (TOMLINSON, 2010, HARWOOD, 2010). It is observed that the present textbook does not approach pragmalinguistics. Instead, it focuses on grammar as product. Due to this factor, learners are not presented with opportunities to reflect upon language usage. / O objetivo deste trabalho é verificar se, e em caso afirmativo como, os aspectos pragmáticos da gramática (pragmalinguística) são contemplados em um livro didático de inglês como LE comercializado internacionalmente e utilizado no Brasil. Objetivamos também retratar o papel designado à gramática neste material e apresentar reflexões sobre possibilidades de contribuir com o ensino-aprendizagem de pragmalinguística, a partir das unidades analisadas. Analisamos a proposta apresentada pelo livro estudando as atividades propostas à luz das teorias que postulam o ensino de gramática como habilidade (BATSTONE, 1994, LARSENFREEMAN, 2003), a pragmática (KASPER e ROSE, 2001) e o desenvolvimento de materiais didáticos baseados em princípios (TOMLINSON, 2010, HARWOOD, 2010). Observamos que o material didático analisado não apresenta o ensino da dimensão pragmalinguística, focando o ensino da dimensão da forma e não possibilitando que os aprendizes, apenas com o suporte do material didático, sejam incentivados a refletir acerca do funcionamento da língua.

The extent to which Swedish learners of English master the formulaic language of greetings and their responses has not been well researched over the years. This study aims to fill the gap by examining how 66 Swedish senior high school students respond to two question-based English greetings: the formal “How are you?” and the informal “What’s up?”. To enable a comparison with greeting responses produced in the native language, another 28 students were greeted in Swedish, with the corresponding phrases “Hur står det till?” and “Läget?”. In addition, 217 students were asked via a questionnaire about their opinions on the most appropriate greeting responses, as well as what greeting phrase they would prefer to use if they were the ones who greeted first. The results indicate that Swedish students have no problem with understanding the formulaic nature of greetings; thus, the high frequency of “pragmatic failure” which has been seen among Polish students greeted with “How are you?” was not found in this study. However, the Swedish students responded somewhat differently than what has been observed in earlier research on native English-speakers, and the answers often came after a moment of hesitation. Swedish students failed to produce responses to the English greetings (especially to “What’s up?”) in an automatic, native-like way. Moreover, the students claimed in their answers to the questionnaire that an appropriate response to “How are you?” and “What’s up?” should include a “thanks” or a “thank you”, but this politeness marker was absent in almost all the cases in the field study.

"September 2008". / Thesis (DAppLing)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Dept. of Linguistics, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 189-196. / The purpose of this research was to analyse the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development of language groups at different proficiency levels and investigate the relationship between interlanguage pragmatics and grammatical competence. For this study, 36 native Spanish speaking EFL learners at different proficiency levels were asked to respond in English to 24 different situations which called for the speech acts of request and apology. Their English performances were compared to those of 12 American English native speakers in order to provide base-line cultural data. Thirty six Mexican Spanish native speakers also participated as a control group in order to analyse the role of the mother tongue in the performances of the EFL learners. The data, collected using a carton oral production task (COPT), were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results showed three important findings that illuminate the relationship between pragmatic development and grammatical competence and lent support to Kasper and Rose's (2003) claim of a universal pragmatic principle. The first finding suggested that basic adult learners possess a previous pragmatic knowledge in their L1 that allows them to focus on the intended meaning and, in most cases, and to assemble (from the linguistic structures available to them) an utterance that conveys a pragmatic intention and satisfies the communicative demands of a social situation. The second finding revealed that there are two essential conditions to communicate a linguistic action: the knowledge of the relevant linguistic rules and the knowledge of how to use them appropriately and effectively in a specific context. Without an elementary knowledge of the linguistic rules, it is impossible to select the forms to realize a speech act in a target-like manner. The findings further suggested that advanced learners possess the grammatical knowledge to produce an illocutionary act, but they need to learn the specific L2 pragmatic conventions that enable them to know when to use these grammatical forms and under what circumstances. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xi, 238 p. ill