Exploring the dynamics of power and politeness, this study delves into how these elements manifest during disagreements in natural language interactions. It highlights the inherent conflict in disagreement and the ways politeness can mitigate tension, framing politeness as a form of relational work. By analyzing real-life communication, the research sheds light on the complex interplay between asserting power and maintaining civility in conversations.
This Element outlines current issues in the study of the pragmatics of fiction. It starts from the premise that fictional texts are complex and multi-layered communicative acts which deserve attention in pragmatic research in their own right, and it highlights the need to understand them and to explore pragmatic effects and pragmatic theorising.
Pragmatics of Fiction provides systematic orientation in the emerging field of studying pragmatics with/in fictional data. It provides an authoritative and accessible overview of this versatile new field in its methodological and theoretical richness. Giving center stage to fictional language allows scholars to review key concepts in sociolinguistics such as genre, style, voice, stance, dialogue, participation structure or features of orality and literariness. The contributors explore language as one of the creative tools to craft story worlds and characters by drawing on concepts such as regional, social and ethnic language variation, as well as multilingualism. Themes such as emotion, taboo language or impoliteness in fiction receive attention just as the challenges of translation and dubbing, the creation of past and future languages, the impact of fictional language on language change or the fuzzy boundaries of narratives. Each contribution, written by a leading specialist, gives a succinct, representative and up-to-date overview of research questions, theories, methods and recent developments in the field.
The volume includes theoretical overviews as well as empirical studies from experts in a range of disciplines within linguistics and communication studies and provides a multifaceted perspective on both theoretical and applied approaches to the role of language in relational work.