#pragmatics — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #pragmatics, aggregated by home.social.
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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
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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
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📢 Call for Panel Contributions @ #IPrA2027 #IPC20
Positioning in Mediated Political Talk
ℹ️ 20th International Pragmatics Conference (IPC20) of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
📍 University of Helsinki
📆 27 June to 2 July 2027
📜 https://www.ids-mannheim.de/fileadmin/lexik/WMG/CfP_IPrA_2027_Positioning_in_mediated_talk_-1.pdf#DiscourseAnalysis #CA #pragmatics #linguistics #positioning #indexicality #mediality #IPrA #IPrA27
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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!
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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!
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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.
#philosophy #books #reading #writing #author #nonfiction #academic #language #communication #efficiency #semantics #pragmatics #meaning #society #critique #complexity #power #blog #poscast
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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.
#philosophy #books #reading #writing #author #nonfiction #academic #language #communication #efficiency #semantics #pragmatics #meaning #society #critique #complexity #power #blog #poscast
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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.
#blogging #etymology #language #linguistics #popCulture #pragmatics #profanity #slang #strongLanguage #swearing #usage #words -
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.
#blogging #etymology #language #linguistics #popCulture #pragmatics #profanity #slang #strongLanguage #swearing #usage #words -
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
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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
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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! 👍
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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! 👍
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#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!
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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!
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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
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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
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🦜 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
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🦜 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
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I can only conclude that the cookies contain meat. #pragmatics #linguistics #implicatures
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I can only conclude that the cookies contain meat. #pragmatics #linguistics #implicatures
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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.)
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Sales guy was upspeaking and that was annoying as hell to me.
hrmm https://www.shortform.com/blog/voice-and-tone/
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Sales guy was upspeaking and that was annoying as hell to me.
hrmm https://www.shortform.com/blog/voice-and-tone/
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CW: eye contact
Etymology Nerd shares a study about eye contact in conversation. Don't listen to people who tell you to always stare at the listener. In fact, people look away when beginning to speak and look toward the listener when ending their turn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqM1fgYu6uQ -
CW: eye contact
Etymology Nerd shares a study about eye contact in conversation. Don't listen to people who tell you to always stare at the listener. In fact, people look away when beginning to speak and look toward the listener when ending their turn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqM1fgYu6uQ -
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.
#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)
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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)
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Happy to be part of this edited volume on #evolutionary #pragmatics - another great collaboration with @symbolicstorage
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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! 📺🙃
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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! 📺🙃
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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/
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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/
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Toinen kokonaan uusi SEP-entry on Mooren ja Palazzolon Animal Communication, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/animal-communication/
#sep #new #animalCommunication #animals #language #communication #eläimet #kieli #filosofia #philosophy #viestinta #semantics #syntax #pragmatics #signals
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“Go, A Reasonable Good Language”, ‘kokada’ (https://kokada.capivaras.dev/blog/go-a-reasonable-good-language/).
Via Lobsters: https://lobste.rs/s/z0vpdn/go_reasonable_good_language
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It's *weird*, and basically externalises one person's (typically the most powerful) social preferences into absolute rules.
Which is shitty and gross in other parts of language (see #dialects), so why don't we account for it here? I posit that it is impossible for someone to be truely rude unless they intend too or are totally, deliberately ignoring language #pragmatics.
It's effectively one person going
> You broke the imaginary, uncommunicated laws I made up and vary at will regarding how you must talk to my divine self. You go to Feelings Gaol now
Which seems... absurd?
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Constraints and Indications • 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/07/04/constraints-and-indications-2-a/Coping with collaboration, communication, context, integration, interoperability, perspective, purpose, and the reality of the information dimension demands a transition from conceptual environments bounded by dyadic relations to those informed by triadic relations, especially the variety of triadic sign relations employed by pragmatic semiotics.
Along the lines of my first post on this topic I am presently concerned with the logical and mathematical requirements of dealing with constraints but when it comes to the constraints involved in communicating across cultural and disciplinary barriers I could recommend a paper Susan Awbrey and I wrote for a conference devoted to those very issues.
Conference Presentation —
Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (1999), “Organizations of Learning or Learning Organizations : The Challenge of Creating Integrative Universities for the Next Century”, Second International Conference of the Journal ‘Organization’, Re‑Organizing Knowledge, Trans‑Forming Institutions : Knowing, Knowledge, and the University in the 21st Century, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
• https://cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htmPublished Paper —
Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (2001), “Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities”, Organization : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and Society 8(2), Sage Publications, London, UK, 269–284.
• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1350508401082013
• https://www.academia.edu/1266492/Conceptual_Barriers_to_Creating_Integrative_Universities#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Indication #Inference #Information #Inquiry
#Ashby #Cybernetics #Constraint #Control #Regulation #RequisiteVariety
#AdaptiveSystems #IntelligentSystems #InquiryDrivenSystems #Pragmatics -
The Guardian did a write-up on #sarcasm detection research in our Speech Tech Lab at the University of Groningen. @universityofgroningen
Read all about it!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/16/researchers-build-ai-driven-sarcasm-detector#SpeechTechnology #AutomaticSpeechRecognition #sarcasm #pragmatics
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#gpt4o I watched the new OpenAI demo and the combination of real-time text, vision and audio streams and it feels like a renewed, more in-depth discussion around #pragmatics and “situationally embedded meaning“ is needed
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Are people intuitive Bayesians?
Much more so when *experiencing* than when merely *reading* #statistics.
So can poor wording explain part of that difference?
Yes! Sirota et al. found that people were 10x more likely to give the Bayesian answer to textbook probability problems if the standard wording was improved to cue relevant calculations: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105722
#Logic #Linguistics #Pragmatics #Psychology #Math #edu #teaching #STEM #CriticalThinking #IntelligenceAnalysis #DecisionScience