The Principle of Indirect Means in language use and language structure

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt; Jirsa, Bill

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2005.03.010

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The American participants did not use any ‗overstatement' strategy and used the ‗understatement' and ‗metaphor' strategies very rarely to deal with this tabooed topic. The results related to death topic are similar to Frajzyngier and Jirsa (2006) who listed some English euphemistic expressions to refer to death like ‗He is not with us', ‗he passed away', or ‗he met his maker'. This result indicates that the American participants show a mixed feelings towards death, and this was evident through the high frequency of using synonyms (fear of death) and the high frequency of using taboo utterances (unfear of death).…”

Section: Deathsupporting

confidence: 75%

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An intercultural study of euphemistic strategies used in Saudi Arabic and American English

Al-Khasawneh

2018

Indonesian J. Appl. Linguist

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People often use euphemistic utterances or expressions to avoid offensive or tabooed topics, to make them more implicit and considerate. This paper explores the euphemistic strategies used in Saudi Arabic and American English. The sample of this study includes 145 college students (78 Saudis and 67 Americans). A questionnaire adopted from Rabab’ah and Al-Qarni (2012) was used to collect the data of the present study. The results revealed various strategies used by the participants, such as deletion, synonyms, metaphor, understatement, part-for-whole, overstatement, and jargons. The most frequent strategies used by the Saudis were ‘part-for-whole’, ‘understatement’, and ‘general- for-specific’. The American participants tended to use ‘taboo words’, ‘general-for-specific’ and ‘synonyms’ more frequently than the other strategies. The findings also showed that there is no relationship between strategy choice and gender. The findings suggest that Saudi Arabic seems to use euphemistic strategies more than the Americans. These results could be referred to cultural and religious beliefs and values. The study recommends raising the awareness of euphemism strategies for more active communication.

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Section: Deathsupporting

confidence: 75%

“…People tend to use alternative expressions to avoid being dull. Therefore, the use of those alternatives is the minimum requirement to save their face (Frajzyngier & Jirsa, 2006). The present study shows the existence of euphemism in the Saudi and the American answers.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An intercultural study of euphemistic strategies used in Saudi Arabic and American English

Al-Khasawneh

2018

Indonesian J. Appl. Linguist

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“…The distinction between directive and indirective acts also reflects the idea that the same act can be performed differently. For issues regarding variation and (in)direct acts, see Frajzyngier & Jirsa (2006) and Mauri & Sansó (2011).…”

Section: Functional Similarities Between Modal and Conditionalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bidirectional grammaticalization: Chinese modal and conditional

Kuo¹

2023

J. Ling.

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Using a constructional approach to morphosyntax, this study describes a triclausal construction (a type of anankastic conditional construction) and related constructions in the history of Chinese. It demonstrates that the triclausal construction constitutes a context of morphosyntactic vagueness where category boundaries between modals and conditional protasis connectives are underdetermined; consequently, bidirectional rather than unidirectional developments occur. Morphosyntactic vagueness is defined by properties shared between two morphosyntactic categories: distributional and functional similarities. Therefore, changes enabled by morphosyntactic vagueness are argued to be regular processes of change mediated by grammatical equivalence. If grammaticalization is defined as the development of morphosyntactic categories, but not in terms of non-equivalence such as unidirectionality or increased grammaticality, grammaticalization may be systematically bidirectional when enabled by morphosyntactic vagueness.

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“…Pragmatic motivations, including the principle of indirect means (Frajzyngier and Jirsa 2005), play an important role in the continuing re-grammaticalization of a large number of functions that have already been grammaticalized. An the third one is the initial state of the language at any given time.…”

Section: The Motivations For Grammaticalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In English the means of coding deontic modality include the auxiliaries 'must', 'need to', 'have to', 'ought to', 'should', 'shall', 'will', etc., whereas the past tense is coded by inflectional coding on the verb. For a full discussion seeFrajzyngier and Jirsa 2005. 4.3 The initial stateThe principle of functional transparency and the principle of indirect means are intimately connected with the initial state of the language. The initial state does not refer to a state in a protolanguage.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%