#pragmatics — Public Fediverse posts

Call for contributions for a panel on “Pragmatic Acts of Neo-Imperialism. Reference, Presupposition, Indexicality during the 20th International Pragmatics Conference (#IPC20), which takes place on 27 June to 2 July 2027 at the University of Helsinki.

For more information see: https://discourseanalysis.net/en/call-abstracts-pragmatic-acts-neo-imperialism-reference-presupposition-indexicality-ipra-2027 #NeoImperialism #Pragmatics #DiscourseAnalysis

Call for contributions for a panel on “Positioning in Mediated Political Talk” during the 20th International Pragmatics Conference (#IPC20), which takes place on 27 June to 2 July 2027 at the University of Helsinki.

For more information see: https://discourseanalysis.net/en/cfp-ipra-2027-positioning-mediated-political-talk #Pragmatics #Positioning #PoliticalDiscourse

New article: Where is Meaning? (Part One)

A few years back, while waiting on the kettle to boil, I was staring at a can of Diet Coke. I was a bit zoned out and a question popped into my head. The Diet Coke logo clearly "meant" something to me, but where was that meaning? This moment started me down a multi-year rabbit hole into meaning that I'm writing up as a series of articles.

https://jameshorsley.me/articles/where-is-meaning-part-one

#meaning #semantics #pragmatics #ai #philosophy #linguistics #semiotics

New Instance #Introduction: I’m a #Linguistics professor in #Texas. Originally from #Chicago. Lived in Birmingham, UK & Hefei (Anhui province) #China. I do research in English lexical semantics, #pragmatics, health communication, and discourse markers, using corpus methods. Currently learning #Arabic on #DuoLingo. I edit #Wikipedia. I love contemporary fiction, science fiction, and #poetry. And #travel—as the budget allows. Welcoming any survivors from my academic Twitter network. Great meeting you all!

I've shared the opening chapters of A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis on PhilPapers.

📕👉 https://philpapers.org/rec/WILALI-3

I examine the structural limits of human language as a medium for conveying meaning. This counters the widespread assumption that clearer definitions.

👉 https://philosophics.blog/2026/05/25/a-language-insufficiency-hypothesis-on-philpapers/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social

#philosophy #books #reading #writing #author #nonfiction #academic #language #communication #efficiency #semantics #pragmatics #meaning #society #critique #complexity #power #blog #poscast

What kind of profanity is this?

Regular readers will be familiar with Strong Language, a group blog about swearing that I co-founded with James Harbeck in 2014. If you’re interested in swearing as a linguistic or cultural phenomenon, I recommend bookmarking or subscribing to it.

New posts by our excellent contributors are less frequent now, but that makes it easier to catch up if you haven’t visited before or feel like browsing the archives. The blog has over 400 posts: fascinating and colourful explorations of profanity for readers not averse to such material.

I also contribute to Strong Language now and then, and this post on Sentence first introduces the last few that I wrote. What follows below is not very sweary – there’s one reference to a strong swear – but if this type of language freaks you out like it does Ned Flanders, or just plain doesn’t interest you, you may prefer to bail out here.

From “Be-bop-a-Lisa” in Simpsons Comics no. 6 (1994). Script & pencils: Bill Morrison; Inks: Tim Bavington; Colours: Cindy Vance. Editor: Steve Vance

I’m interested in how people refer to swearing: as bad language, explicit language, dirty language, adult language, and so on. The adjectives form an intriguing set. ‘Strong bad mature filthy language’ examines the patterns that emerge and explains why I proposed Strong Language as the name for the blog.

The title of the present post, you may have twigged, alludes to Amy Winehouse and her song ‘Me & Mr Jones’, which contains a line I borrowed more directly for ‘What kind of “fuckery” is this?’. The post delves into that word’s meanings and use, originally literal but now usually (and variously) figurative.

Also in a pop-cultural vein, John Boorman’s 1987 drama film Hope and Glory has a scene that depicts swearing as a rite of passage for a group of boys in London during World War II. My short post puts the scene in context and discusses its effects.

Most recently, I wrote about a remarkably successful euphemism in ‘Another freaking f-word’. This use of freaking first appeared in 1928, as far as we know, so its centenary is just around the corner. In the post I look at why and where it has become so freaking popular.

I discuss A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis, Chapter 1: A Genealogy of Insufficiency – From Ancient Greece through the 20th Century.

👉 https://youtu.be/A-yoDtJ_ICE

#philosophy #language #video #youtube #genealogy #hypothesis #foucault #semantics #pragmatics #communication #power #ideology #structure #plato #aristotle #Wittgenstein #shadows #augustine #Locke #Liebnitz #Nietzsche #Gödel #Saussure #barthes #shannon #cognition #cognitivescience #rationality

Book recommendation! 📖

Earlier this year, Vassiliki Geka published an excellent book on Imperative-Based Dialogic Constructions and Discourse Units: https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027244918

Later this year, Journal of Pragmatics published my review of the book, which you can access freely for 50 days (now 49 days!) via this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1mDE41L-nhbDYW

I'm very passionate about #ConstructionGrammar taking #dialogicity seriously and this book does exactly that! 👍

#AcademicPublishing #Linguistics #Pragmatics #Philosophy

#toReadList ; Just finished reading this beautiful interdisciplinary paper about relevance in #pragmatics and #affectivescience: "Relevance and emotion" by Wharton et al., 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.06.001

I am delighted that our edited volume "Second Language #Pragmatics and Young Language Learners - #EFL #Primary #School Contexts in #Europe" is now available https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/second-language-pragmatics-and-young-language-learners/?SF1=work_id&ST1=CVIEW-67d2c2f691716. We are very gratetful to our contributors who accompanied us on this journey!

I wrote a little about Agatha Christie – as a verb
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2025/10/11/to-agatha-christie-v-tr/

#language #AlienEarth #AgathaChristie #slang #writing #blog #verbs #verbing #LanguageChange #pragmatics

🦜 Gossip, redefined: Research shows the surprising power of positive talk in teams

https://phys.org/news/2025-06-gossip-redefined-power-positive-teams.html

#work #teamwork #pragmatics #communication #psychology #socialpsychology #gossip

I can only conclude that the cookies contain meat. #pragmatics #linguistics #implicatures

Hey, French speakers, if I said "j'ai une collection de cheval" or "j'ai plusieurs cheval" does that sound acceptable to you?

(I am not interested in whether you were taught in school if it was correct or not. I want to know if YOU think it sounds fine or if you would immediately be like "hein?" if you *heard* someone say that.)

https://xkcd.com/2390/

#French #pragmatics

Sales guy was upspeaking and that was annoying as hell to me.

hrmm https://www.shortform.com/blog/voice-and-tone/

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=28086

#Linguistics #Pragmatics #Propaganda

Your personality changes when you speak another language, but that’s not always a bad thing / The Conversation

Un bell'aticolo sul Principio di Relatività Linguistica, formulato da Whorf negli anni '30.

Languages don’t just allow us to communicate – they also shape our perception of what surrounds us, and ourselves.

https://theconversation.com/your-personality-changes-when-you-speak-another-language-but-thats-not-always-a-bad-thing-245079

#Whorf #Sapir
#languages #linguistics #sociolinguistics #pragmatics #languageLearning

New Paper!

Those of you interested in #psychology of #language, espeically #pragmatics, might be interested in our paper showing that "some" can be made to mean "one", or even "zero", in context -- with cool real-time mousetracking analyses, thanks to Wei Li's hard work (also with Hannah Rohde)

https://doi.org/10.5070/G6011.19407

Happy to be part of this edited volume on #evolutionary #pragmatics - another great collaboration with @symbolicstorage

Did you miss our recent #DiSCourseSeminar with @nicolabrocca from @fachdidaktik on #LLMs and #Pragmatics: Insights from #Linguistics and #LanguageEducation? Watch it now on OLAT (video): https://lms.uibk.ac.at/auth/RepositoryEntry/4849139825/CourseNode/110919116153415 or on Youtube (slides and audio only): https://youtu.be/yiUfexWOfuw?si=_I6m1DDL2GWXcSet! 📺🙃

#AI #ChatGPT #PoliticalDiSCourse

Join us on Friday, 12:00 (CET) for another #DiscourseSeminar!

Topic: #LLMs and #Pragmatics: Insights from #Linguistics and #LanguageEducation
Speaker: @nicolabrocca (@fachdidaktik)
Location: Onsite at DiSC or online on Big Blue Button.

More info: https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/disc/events/discourse-brocca/