This thesis offers an analysis of the Arabic Commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms (9th-15th centuries AD) on three levels, (i) translation, (ii) individual styles and (iii) genre. It particularly examines meta-discursive features such as cohesion, subjectivity, hedges, the addressing of readership, and the formulation of truth statements. The analysis of these features reveals rhetorical conventions in the corpus that indicate a discursive unity of the genre of the medieval medical commentary. Yet, this study also shows considerable stylistic variation between the individual commentators which, besides its intrinsic value, is crucial for the identification of these authors’ texts. Moreover, this research examines how the rhetorical features of the later commentaries have developed after the fashion of Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq’s 9th-century translation of Galen’s 2nd-century Greek commentary. This study highlights significant differences between Ḥunayn’s rhetorical strategies and those in the later Arabic commentaries. Thus, this work demonstrates discontinuities between Greek and Arabic medical discourses, despite the huge influence of Ḥunayn’s translation. This thesis uses an innovative quantitative methodology combining both close reading and distant reading techniques to study Ḥunayn’s translation technique, and compare Ḥunayn’s style with that of the later commentators. Furthermore, this study advances the understanding of the ways of writing in scientific medieval Arabic. Finally, the separate studies in this thesis contribute knowledge regarding grammatical phenomena such as modals, conjunctions, and conditionals in Classical Arabic.

<p>This thesis deals with interactional patterns in verbal disputes as portrayed in the written dialogue of Swedish drama over three centuries. The overarching aim is to contribute to research into conflict talk in Swedish dialogue, but also to contribute to historical pragmatics and linguistic stylistics.</p><p>The teoretical and methodological framework combines elements from conversation analysis and theories of communicative events (activity types). A corpus of 30 drama texts, written during the 18^th century, the late 19^th century, and the late 20^th century, was examined for examples of conflict events that are lexically marked as such in the texts (by words such as <i>argument</i>, <i>dispute</i>, <i>quarrel</i> etc.). </p><p>A total of 47 conflict events were identified in 21 of the 30 drama texts. The construction of the beginning of the three most significant types of conflict sequences found within 45 of the 47 events, totalling 111 sequences, is analysed in detail. The three sequence types concern differences in opinion (disagreement sequences), accusations (complaint sequences) and directives (rejection sequences).</p><p>One result of the study is that complaint sequences are shown to be by far the most common conflict pattern in the data. Another result is that few differences are found regarding the construction of the sequences over three centuries. For the most part, it is the same sort of moves that are frequent no matter which period the data stem from. One conclusion is therefore that the conflict patterns in drama dialogue appear to be relatively stable over time.</p><p>The study also deals with the dramatic functions of the conflict patterns (the events, sequence types or moves). Two functions are discussed, namely plot development and characterisation. While all conflict can further the process of characterisation, for example by showing the negotiation of differences in power between the characters, less than half of the events further the plot by having an effect on the disputants or other characters in the drama.</p>

This thesis deals with interactional patterns in verbal disputes as portrayed in the written dialogue of Swedish drama over three centuries. The overarching aim is to contribute to research into conflict talk in Swedish dialogue, but also to contribute to historical pragmatics and linguistic stylistics. The teoretical and methodological framework combines elements from conversation analysis and theories of communicative events (activity types). A corpus of 30 drama texts, written during the 18th century, the late 19th century, and the late 20th century, was examined for examples of conflict events that are lexically marked as such in the texts (by words such as argument, dispute, quarrel etc.). A total of 47 conflict events were identified in 21 of the 30 drama texts. The construction of the beginning of the three most significant types of conflict sequences found within 45 of the 47 events, totalling 111 sequences, is analysed in detail. The three sequence types concern differences in opinion (disagreement sequences), accusations (complaint sequences) and directives (rejection sequences). One result of the study is that complaint sequences are shown to be by far the most common conflict pattern in the data. Another result is that few differences are found regarding the construction of the sequences over three centuries. For the most part, it is the same sort of moves that are frequent no matter which period the data stem from. One conclusion is therefore that the conflict patterns in drama dialogue appear to be relatively stable over time. The study also deals with the dramatic functions of the conflict patterns (the events, sequence types or moves). Two functions are discussed, namely plot development and characterisation. While all conflict can further the process of characterisation, for example by showing the negotiation of differences in power between the characters, less than half of the events further the plot by having an effect on the disputants or other characters in the drama.

This thesis investigates verbal insults recorded in judicial protocols in the Swedish university townUppsaladuring the 1630s. The aim of the study is to analyze insults as linguistic formulations and social acts in Early Modern Swedish society. The methodology of the study is guided by speech act theory and ethnography of communication in order to examine the lexical realizations of insults and verbal action in different speech communities. From a total of 652 protocols in two series of records from the city court and the university council inUppsalain the 1630s, sections of text were excerpted that registered insults. The material under investigation comprises 179 cases that contained 276 insults. The descriptive meta-linguistic expressions for insults are rich as well as varied, and the performed insults are reported with or without invectives and as direct or indirect speech. Clear patterns emerged in the investigation by performing various semantic-, pragmatic-, and discourse-level analyses of the judicial records. Insults among city people were commonly interpreted as truth-conditional representative speech acts and thereby were viewed as false accusations of various kinds. In the academic world, however, the truth value of the insult was of minor importance. The speech act was regarded mainly as an expressive utterance of anger and frustration. Through a comparison of the city and university judicial records, it is shown that the patterns of insults reveal a general semantic process in which primarily concrete, objective meanings come to fulfill increasingly interpersonal and pragmatic speech functions.

This study aims to analyze explicit politeness markers such as please and thank you in children’s movies using The Movie Corpus. Differences in use over time as well as between children’s movies and other genres of film are investigated, by extracting a variety of frequencies from the corpus for further analysis. The results show that politeness markers are, and have tended to be, more common in children’s movies than in other genres of film. However, the results also suggest that politeness markers are decreasing in frequency in both children’s movies and in other genres of film, but that the decreases are not consistent throughout all the decades analyzed. The study suggests that we seem to be moving towards a less polite society, or one where implicit politeness markers are preferred over explicit ones. In conclusion, it is suggested that further studies are needed to determine which results of this study that are exclusive to children’s movies rather than suggesting trends in film overall.

In dem seit Herbst 2012 vorliegenden Band, der von der Mainzer Italianistin und Franko-Romanistin Barbara Wehr und einem Mitarbeiter (Frédéric Nicolosi) herausgegeben wurde, sind 14 Beiträge versammelt, die zwei hauptsächliche Forschungsinteressen bedienen: Einerseits wird in allen Aufsätzen ganz allgemein erprobt, wie sich die pragmatisch orientierte und die strukturell bestimmte historische Syntaxanalyse gegenseitig befruchten können, um genaue Beschreibungen formaler Eigenschaften mit differenzierten funktionalen Erörterungen zu verbinden; andererseits liegt das Gros der Artikel des Bandes in der Linie der Erforschung eines ganz bestimmten Teilthemas, nämlich von Strukturen, die in den älteren Sprachstufen des Romanischen Topic und Fokus markierten, vor allem Spaltsätze und Verlagerungen von Wortgruppen mit oder ohne pronominale Spur.