Aug 2026· INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE HUMANITY & MANAGEMENT RESEARCH· 0 citations
Abstract
The Japanese adverb chotto is commonly introduced as a scalar expression meaning ‘a little’, ‘slightly’, or ‘for a short while’. In actual use, however, it also performs a range of pragmatic functions. Speakers may use it to attract attention, maintain a conversational turn, reduce the directness of a request, signal hesitation, or introduce a negative response without stating it explicitly. This study provides a descriptive account of these uses based on 515 tokens collected from selected Japanese literary works and recorded media materials. Each token was assigned one primary function on the basis of its immediate linguistic and situational context. For the purposes of analysis, the identified functions were consolidated into three broad domains: lexical scalar content, discourse management, and speech-act or interpersonal regulation. Lexical scalar uses account for 109 tokens (21.2%), discourse-management uses for 83 (16.1%), and speech-act or interpersonal uses for 323 (62.7%). The results show that, within the present dataset, chotto occurs more frequently as a resource for organizing interaction and adjusting communicative actions than as an expression of objectively limited quantity, degree, or duration. The study does not claim that the dataset represents Japanese usage as a whole. Rather, it offers a systematic description of the principal functions observed in the selected materials and clarifies why chotto cannot be adequately explained through a single dictionary equivalent.
This study investigates the contribution of lexical and grammatical modality devices towards conveying intentionality in media discourse through a comparative analysis of feature journalism articles from The Times of India (TOI) and The Los Angeles Times (The LA Times). Mixed-methods corpus-assisted discourse analysis was employed on 20 climate feature articles. There were 85 lexical modal markers and 81 grammatical markers identified in the dataset. Findings show that TOI employs more epistemic modals such as “may” and “could” (over 50% of its modal verbs) and passive voice (15 times), indicative of a conservative, fact-reporting tone. The LA Times, on the other hand, uses more deontic modals (must, should) and evaluative adverbs (nine compared to three for TOI), and recurring conditional clauses (14 times), connoting urgency and commanding force. These patterns demonstrate how modality is not only a semantic category but also a rhetorical tool that resonates with journalistic intentionality, building persuasion, hedging, and depersonalization.
S. Rajeswari· Studies in Linguistics, Cult...· 0 citations
This article uses frame semantics, the concept of a communicative frame, us-age-based construction grammar theory, and a corpus-based quantitative methodology to examine the characteristics of constructions in Polish that contain adverbial complements (ACs), the noun rzecz ‘thing’, and the quasi-participle ujmując ‘expressing/putting’. The author analyzes examples of this construction found in the National Corpus of Polish (NKJP) to understand its structural, semantic, distributional, and discourse-related features. In addition, the study identifies ACs that are strongly and weakly associated with this construction, and those that are more or less dependent on it. The research shows that this construction is often combined with various categories of ACs, each corresponding to distinct semantic and communicative frames. Furthermore, it has been observed that this construction is motivated by a specific conceptual metaphor, appears in different language registers, takes various forms, and serves multiple functions in discourse.
This pilot study examines how the English adverb actually is rendered in Slovak translation, drawing on a corpus of literary texts and their translations. As a multifunctional item, actually performs a range of syntactic and pragmatic functions in context, most notably those of emphasizer and disjunct. The analysis draws on three Slovak translations of works by the same English-speaking author. Although each translator worked on a different set of books, the corpus still makes it possible to compare translation strategies within a relatively consistent authorial style and to observe how individual translators deal with the same multifunctional source item. The study combines qualitative functional analysis with quantitative observations in order to identify recurrent Slovak renderings of actually, including lexical substitution, structural reformulation, attenuation, and omission. The findings suggest that translation difficulty arises not from the lack of Slovak expressive resources, but from differences between English and Slovak in the grammatical encoding of discourse-related meaning. In particular, functions expressed in English through sentence adverbials do not always correspond to a single formal category in Slovak, which increases the likelihood of functional shift or translation loss. The study contributes to translation studies and contrastive linguistics by showing how the pragmatic contribution of a frequent multifunctional item may be preserved, reinterpreted, weakened, or omitted in translation, and how these outcomes vary across translators.
Zuzana Knižková· Studies About Languages· 0 citations
The given article dwells on the discursive functions of lexical repetition
in Tajik and English from a comparative perspective. The relevance of this study stems
from the need to identify universal and specific mechanisms of text organization across
languages. The aim of the study is to analyze the role of lexical repetition as a means of
cohesion, expressivity, and pragmatic impact in discourse. The study utilizes methods of
comparative-contrastive, functional-stylistic, and discourse analysis. The study’s material includes literary and journalistic texts in Tajik and English.
The results of the study demonstrate that lexical repetition performs a number of
universal functions, including ensuring text coherence, highlighting key meanings, and
enhancing expressiveness. At the same time, nationally specific features are identified: in Tajik, repetition is often emotionally expressive, whereas in English, it is more structured and subject to rhetorical norms.
Abstract This paper investigates the pragmatic functions of the discourse marker ‘fine’ in American TV series. Based on a corpus of 20 selected dialogues from the COCA television genre, the study employed an integrated theoretical framework including Gricean Pragmatics, Speech Act Theory, and Politeness Theory to analyze each instance of ‘fine’. The initially identified pragmatic functions were first subjected to a validation process by an expert panel of eight Native American English speakers. Subsequently, their acceptability was empirically evaluated through a survey administered to 30 non-native English speakers for comparative insights. The analysis uncovered twenty distinct pragmatic functions, including direct speech acts like Acceptance of Apology and Polite Refusal, and indirect, context-dependent functions such as Dismissive Undertone, Sarcasm, Understatement, and Implicit Threat or Warning. This study demonstrates the multifaceted nature of ‘fine’ and its significant, carefully employed role in shaping communication within the context of contemporary American television. The findings have important implications for how we communicate across cultures and teach languages, especially when it comes to helping non-native speakers grasp the subtle meanings of American English in media.
Assel Zibin, E. Salim, Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh· Lodz Papers in Pragmatics· 0 citations
The agentive passive involves agent demotion; consequently, its use is closely linked to information structure in
fixed word-order languages, but its function in flexible word-order languages is less clear. The present corpus-based study
examines the use of the agentive passive with the
-n/-t
participle in Slovenian, a flexible word-order language,
focusing on how the register and the semantic and pragmatic factors influence its use. Two reference corpora of contemporary
Slovenian were used in the analysis: GOS, comprising spoken discourse, and KRES, comprising mainly written discourse. The results
show that the passive with
s strani
is used more frequently than the traditional passive with
od
. A cross-register comparison reveals considerable differences in the use of the agentive passive with
s strani
and
od
. The findings also reveal that the agentive passive is often used to reduce
the responsibility of the agent to avoid assigning blame or to create the impression of objectivity.