Humans are adaptive beings. Gradually, we have produced the fundamental capacities for our cooperation, recognition of intentions, and interaction which led to the development of language and culture. The present collective volume builds on an orientation to pragmatics as the sustained and principled human adaptability in interaction, form, and meaning. Working on different strands of such a socially oriented pragmatics, the authors gathered in this volume study the adaptability of language as shaped by the conditions of society, culture, and cognition. Grouped in four sections, the book’s chapters explore the embedding of adaptability in language ideology, text, communicative practice, and learning. Adopting these various perspectives, the authors gauge how language users navigate the different layers of societal, cognitive, and communicative constraints, while adapting their communicative practices, language ideologies, and technologies of interaction to their everyday living conditions.
Author(s): N. Daniel Silva, Jacob L. Mey
Series: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 364
The Pragmatics of Adaptability
Editorial page
Title page
Copyright page
Table of contents
Introduction: The ability to form and transform in pragmatics
1. Adaptability and pragmatics
2. Adaptability and biology
3. Chapters on the pragmatics of adaptability
References
Section I. Adapting truth, speech acts, and ideologies
Chapter 1. Adaptability and truth
1. Introduction: Adaptability and scientific truth
1.1 ‘Let the facts speak’
1.2 A papal pragmatics
1.3 Cognitive aspects and Piaget’s work
2. Truth and activity: Vico’s take
3. Adapting in context
3.1 ‘Fishy’ laws
3.2 The limits of truth
3.3 Time and space
3.4 The case of Alzheimer’s Disease
4. Adaptability and truth
5. Truth and ecology: Will the twain ever meet?
References
Chapter 2. How do we adapt ourselves in performing an illocutionary act?
1. Introduction
2. The speaker/the addresser, the hearer/the addressee and the circumstances of the speech situation/the context
3. Different linguistic/societal conventions of performing illocutionary acts
4. Illocutionary acts in discourse
5. Conclusion
References
Chapter 3. Adapting to changing concepts of time: From life to fiction
1. Introduction
2. Theories about time
2.1 Time in the natural sciences
2.2 A social theory of time
3. Adaptability and the temporal nature of experience
3.1 Culture and concepts of time
3.2 Time in language
4. Time and the introduction of new technology
5. Multitasking – moving towards simultaneous time and P-time?
6. Simultaneous consciousness and time: The science fiction short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang (2002)
6.1 The conception of time in “Story of Your Life”
7. Conclusion
References
Chapter 4. The reality of technological worldviews: Time and space frames of reference in the world of self-driving cars
1. Introduction
2. Discursive epistemes
3. The self-fulfilling prophecy of some discourse worlds over others
4. The spatial ground for sense making in thought, language, discourse and society
4.1 Spatial cognition and the analogy between natural world perception and abstract world construction
5. A model for STA text-world analysis: Politics and technology
6. Rebooting the automobile
7. A technological perspective on the self-driving car
8. Conclusion
References
Section II. Adapting text and textuality
Chapter 5. Ad-appting children’s stories
1. Introduction
2. Enchantment
3. Instruction
4. The Cat in the Hat
5. The adaptation
Sound
Voice
Music
Camera movement
Reading the story
Interactivity
6. Conclusion
References
Chapter 6. Self-containment and contamination: Two competing circuits of adaptability
1. Introduction
2. The self-contained Olympic model in Rio de Janeiro
3. A contaminated response to monolithic models
4. By way of engaging with the projected network
5. The monolith is ‘out of joint’
References
Chapter 7. Quotation, meta-data and transparency of sources in mediated political discourse
1. Introduction
2. Quotation: Theory and practice
2.1 Linguistic formatting
2.2 Functions
3. Quotation and metadata in mediated political discourse
3.1 Quotations and metadata in political interviews
3.2 Quotations and metadata in Prime Minister’s Questions
3.3 Quotations in political speeches
4. Conclusion
References
Appendix
Chapter 8. The adaptability of becoming: Karina Buhr’s becoming-junglehood
1. Introduction
2. Connection, dissemination and intervention
3. Art and reproducibility
4. Language and iterability
5. Subjectivation and assemblage
6. Adaptability of a becoming
6.1 The ‘Junglehood’ inscription
6.2 ‘Junglehood’ and Facebook
6.3 “We are not naked. We are just not wearing a shirt”
7. Conclusions
References
Section III. Adaptive communities of practice
Chapter 9. Face, conflict, and adaptability in mediated intercultural invitations: Young adults navigate complexities of ethnicity, gender, nationality and age
1. Introduction
2. Invitations: Face orientation and negotiation
3. The data
Case 1. Rebecca. Using preliminaries: Texting to generate a Skype conversation
Case 2. Winnie: An invitation via email
Case 3. Lara: Direct FTA with no face protection except for the medium
Case 4. Claire: Indirectness and side sequences to protect face among siblings
4. Further discussion
5. Chronotopes – intensifying tension?
6. Conclusion
References
Chapter 10. Discussing breast cancer in cyber spaces: A pragmatic study
1. Introduction
2. Discourses from the cyber spaces
2.1 Narratives of illness
2.2 Agency in discourse
3. Dimensions of adaptability: Vitória and the cyberspaces
3.1 Dimensions of time and place (Mey 2015a)
3.2 Dimensions of persons and objects (Mey 2015a)
4. Cyberethnography
5. Using social media to express oneself in cyberspace
5.1 If I’m going to die, I’m not going out without a battle
5.2 I’m going through a basic transformation
5.3 Cancer patients have the right to be in priority lines
6. Concluding remarks
References
Chapter 11. Expressing opinions and emotions while travelling on-line: A corpus-pragmatic approach
1. Introduction
2. Computer Mediated Communication and discussion fora
3. The features of online travel communities
4. Data and methods
4.1 Some examples with different adjectives
5. Results
5.1 Analysis of positive adjectives in the corpora
5.2 Analysis of the expression of reference and emotions in the corpora
6. Conclusions
Funding
References
Chapter 12. How LINE users struggle to come to terms with the adaptability-adaptivity dilemma
1. Introduction
2. Getting acquainted with LINE
2.1 LINE and instant messaging
2.2 Key features and functionality
3. Adaptation and its wider social implications
3.1 Benefits from LINE
3.2 Adaptivity taking its toll
3.3 Reacting to the challenges of adaptivity
4. Summary and conclusion
Acknowledgment
References
Appendix
Section IV. Adapting learning and teaching
Chapter 13. Apprenticeship in microbiology: Embodied adaptation to experimental and technological aspects of learning
1. Introduction
2. New trends in science education
3. Apprenticeship in microbiology
4. Adaptability to a scientific workplace
4.1 A new social environment
4.2 New terminology and scientific language
4.3 Adaptation to the objects, tools, and instruments of the scientific profession
4.4 Embodied adaptation
4.5 Embodiment in scientific practice
5. Manual sensitivity
5.1 The art of plating and spreading
5.2 Spreading
5.3 Leia using the turntable to spread
5.4 Representational gestures
5.5 Gestures indicating invisible processes
5.6 NanoDrop
6. Conclusion
6.1 Adaptation to scientific practice
6.2 Integration of body and tools
References
Chapter 14. Technological context: A new pragmatic product created by mobile devices
1. Introduction
2. Background
3. Methodology
4. Survey overview
5. Analyzing students’ WhatsApp chats
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
References
Appendices
Chapter 15. Language policy and language teaching: Conditions of adaptability
1. Introduction
2. Joining theory and practice towards adaptability
3. The English classroom – struggle and adaptation
4. Conclusions
References
Index
