With the development of the world of economy, economic reports in journals, magazines or news websites have become an essential part of daily life. Economic news demonstrates rigid and abstract concepts and meanings. It is a truism that clarity is as important as accuracy. However, writers of such news should not stick only to formal language. Their words would sound boring. To keep the audience interested, figurative language is manipulated. One rhetorical device frequently used in this genre is metaphor. It sheds some colorings on the rigid language of finance and economics. Thus, it deserves an investigatory research work. This paper sets itself the task of exploring one particular kind of metaphor, i.e. ontological metaphor. It aims at pragmatically exploring its kinds that can be possibly utilized in economic news reports. This involves specifying the most prevalent kind of ontological metaphor. It is hypothesized that in such a kind of news, ontological metaphorical uses show different manifestations like metonymy, personification or hyperbole. However, it is assumed that metonymy is the most prevailing one. The data chosen for the analysis are randomly taken from different economic websites and are analyzed by means of a model developed by this study. The analysis is quantitatively supported by a statistical analysis conducted via the percentage equation. The most significant findings of the analyses vindicate the two hypotheses set above. This paper is hoped to be valuable to pragmaticians and economic news writers or journalists who should be aware of such rhetorical devices to make use of them.
With the development of the world of economy, economic reports in journals, magazines or news websites have become an essential part of daily life. Economic news demonstrates rigid and abstract concepts and meanings. It is a truism that clarity is as important as accuracy. However, writers of such news should not stick only to formal language. Their words would sound boring. To keep the audience interested, figurative language is manipulated. One rhetorical device frequently used in this genre is metaphor. It sheds some colorings on the rigid language of finance and economics. Thus, it deserves an investigatory research work. This paper sets itself the task of exploring one particular kind of metaphor, i.e. ontological metaphor. It aims at pragmatically exploring its kinds that can be possibly utilized in economic news reports. This involves specifying the most prevalent kind of ontological metaphor. It is hypothesized that in such a kind of news, ontological metaphorical uses show different manifestations like metonymy, personification or hyperbole. However, it is assumed that metonymy is the most prevailing one. The data chosen for the analysis are randomly taken from different economic websites and are analyzed by means of a model developed by this study. The analysis is quantitatively supported by a statistical analysis conducted via the percentage equation. The most significant findings of the analyses vindicate the two hypotheses set above. This paper is hoped to be valuable to pragmaticians and economic news writers or journalists who should be aware of such rhetorical devices to make use of them. IntroductionEconomy is closely related to human beings, their lives and their societies. As one crucial aspect in people's lives and daily transactions, care in economic news is highly valued and coped with. News of businesses, markets, stocks, investments and the like, which are all covered under the broad macro term of economic news here, is of interest to different kinds of people. It is argued that this genre exhibits metaphoric uses of language to soften its abstractness (White, 2003: 133). Metaphor as a rhetorical figure of speech is used to express one thing in terms of another. Different views and theories have dealt with metaphor. This paper, however, approaches metaphor pragmatically utilizing Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) conceptual theory of metaphor with its structural, orientational and ontological types. It is claimed that cognition and language are never separated as the way we think is metaphorical in nature. This paper focuses on ontological metaphors and seek answers for the following two questions: What are the possible types of ontological metaphor which characterize economic news reports? What is the most dominant type in the context under study? In association with these aims, it is hypothesized that ontological metaphor pragmatically manifests itself in different guises such as metonymy, personification, and hyperbole. Nevertheless, it is expected that the most frequently appealed ...
Aggression is a negative form of an anti-social behavior. It is produced because of a particular reason, desire, want, need, or due to the psychological state of the aggressor. It injures others physically or psychologically. Aggressive behaviors in human interactions cause discomfort and disharmony among interlocutors. The paper aims to identify how aggressive language manifests itself in the data under scrutiny in terms of the pragmatic paradigm. Two British literary works are the data; namely, Look Back in Anger by John Osborne (1956), and The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter (1957). This paper endeavors to answer the question of how aggressive language is represented in literature pragmatically? It is hoped to be significant to linguistic and psychological studies in that it clarifies how aggression is displayed in human communications linguistically. Qualitative and quantitative analyses are conducted to verify the findings. It ends with some concluding remarks, the most important of which are: insulting, belittling, ridiculing and threatening are prevalent speech acts; simile, hyperbole, metaphor and repetition appear due to Grice’s maxims breaching while the use of taboo words, calling names, or abusive words are the impoliteness strategies that are distinguished in the data.
Aspects like power, dominance or ideology affect our choice of words in addition to other contextual factors (such as settings, participants and so on). The power we enjoy as social actors or the ideology we adhere to concerning any issue in life may play a crucial role in our language production or interpretation. Issuing a certain speech act rather than another or producing one impolite form rather than a polite one owning to such aspects falls within the realm of critical pragmatics. It is one analytical methodology where critical issues are examined in terms of the pragmatic phenomena to explore how the latter aid in the manifestation of the former. It attempts to answer this question: what are the most common pragmatic phenomena that reveal how racists or sexists pass on their critical ideologies? It aims to develop an analytical model for critical pragmatics and identify the common pragmatic themes utilized. The study is qualitative. It confines itself to the political discourse in the American context. The analysis of the data proves the workability of the model that has been developed by the study. It also shows that various pragmatic phenomena can be utilized to unravel critical issues.
Parents are supposed to be responsible for the education of their children. However, other sources of information participate in this challenging mission. Technological advancements, media, friends, and schoolmates have a significant effect on how our sons think or behave. Hence, it becomes crucial for parents to consider how to approach or deal with them. The way parents give instructions to sons concerning their daily routines of educational, moral, and health care practices is of great importance. This paper aims to find out how educated Iraqi parents give instructions to their sons. The study identifies the pragma-stylistic devices that characterize Iraqi parental instructions. It attempts to specify which speech act is most dominant in parental instructions and if politeness strategies are adhered to or not. Twenty Iraqi parents who have a degree in the English language participated in this research work. A questionnaire of ten different scenarios concerning some basic daily instructions that are often likely to be given to sons or daughters who are between the age of 12 to 16 is delivered to those parents. The responses to this questionnaire are scrutinized in terms of the pragma-stylistic perspective following Black (2006) by activating three pragmatic theories, namely; Searle’s (1969) theory of speech acts, Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness as well as Culpeper’s (1996) theory of impoliteness. It is found that educated Iraqi parents prefer the indirect way of giving instructions to their teens concerning the daily practices regardless of the importance of these instructions in life. Analysis reveals that most Iraqi parents use the speech act of advising when giving daily instructions to their teens. Direct instructions are rare. If found, they are softened with polite expressions.
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