Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2015, Cognitive Linguistics

Social media has emerged as an ideal medium for the creation of online spaces that promote discussion and the sharing of ideas between individuals. For cultural institutions, this medium can help bring together community members to further the aim of the institution: the education of community members and preservation of local history (Levin 2007; Rosenberg 2011; Karp 1992). However, restrictions on time, staff, and funding, as well as self-reported anxiety (KSHS 10/28; 11/18) around the use of social media lead to online spaces that are distant, awkward, or threatening, to which few or no community members will contribute. This paper examines issues of institutional face creation through a case study with the Kansas Historical Society. Utilizing Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's Politeness Theory (1987), as well as Paul Grice's Cooperative Principle (1989), I argue that individual anxieties bleed into online spaces and negatively affect the Society's ability to connect with community members in a meaningful way.

Committee: Todd Oakley (Advisor); William Deal (Committee Member); Mark Turner (Committee Member) Subjects: Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures

Politeness and facework are important aspects of communication that vary from culture to culture. They are influenced by factors such as the degree of social distance, the relative power of the participants, and the type of imposition or face-threatening act present in any given situation. Due to variation in the implementation of politeness and facework across cultures, locutions that may be interpreted as polite in one culture may be taken as rude in another, or they may simply fail to communicate the desired illocutionary force. This study investigates how differences in power, distance, and weight of imposition influence the choice of facework strategies across three participants groups: speakers of American English, Russian speakers residing in Russia, and Russian emigres in the U.S. It evaluates their use of politeness by having them envision 12 social situations and write an email, text message, or dialogue as if they were actual participants in the situations presented. These responses were evaluated and categorized for each cultural group using Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory. Then the data for the three cultural groups were compared against each other to determine similarities or differences in the use of politeness and, in particular, to evaluate how differential power, distance and weight of imposition affected each group's production of facework. The responses of the Russian-American participant group were also specially evaluated to assess whether there was any effect of L2 influence on their production of politeness and facework in their L1. The results of this study indicate that the use of positive politeness across the participant groups was relatively similar, while the use of negative politeness had more noticeable differences. In addition, the Russian-American groups did demonstrate clear L2 influence on their use of politeness and facework in the L1, but also diverged from both the American and Russian groups in some asp (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Collins (Advisor); Brian Joseph (Committee Member); Donald Winford (Committee Member) Subjects: Linguistics

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2014, Cognitive Linguistics

Traditional semantic and pragmatic accounts of hate speech do not account for the simultaneity of certain phrases being both complimentary and incredibly offensive. My account seeks to operationalize perlocutionary-based theories of hate speech in terms of cognitive linguistics, through mental spaces theory and common ground. My thesis concerns some curious cases which show how using intention alone as a basis for interpreting the semantics and pragmatics of speech fails to account for certain speech acts which are simultaneously complimentary and offensive. My analysis shall focus on the cognitive linguistic aspects of the construction "you're not like other"; where X is a sociological category (Black people, Women, Muslims, etc.). This analysis will show that previous methods of semantically and pragmatically analyzing hate speech are inadequate in capturing the full contextual features and mental states of the interlocutors, and that my interpretation is more representative of reality.

Committee: Todd Oakley Ph.D (Committee Chair); Vera Tobin Ph.D (Committee Member); Mark Turner Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Language; Linguistics; Sociolinguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures

It has been generally recognized in pragmatics that the speech act request, i.e., asking someone to do something, can be a face-threatening act (FTA); thus studies of requests have been traditionally associated with research on linguistic politeness, the mitigation of FTAs. Every culture has each own way of appropriately presenting the requests in different contexts; people from other cultures tend to perceive the social variables somewhat differently and interpret the behavior or utterances based on their own native language systems or culture conventions. As a result, misunderstandings are likely take place in cross-culture communication involving requests. This study endeavors to explore the similarities and differences in requests in academic settings in three different languages—English, Russian and Chinese. A written questionnaire was designed to elicit request locutions made by 25 students who were native speakers of each language; in order to ensure that the requests were sensitive to contexts, the questionnaire included 14 everyday situations in an academic setting. The questionnaire also included a rating scale for the native speakers of each language to assess the weight of each situation; this elicited evidence for the native perception of each requestive situation and allowed comparison of cultural differences in assessment. The dissertation compares and reveals the ways of making requests in the three languages in each requestive situation in terms not only of the strategies used in the core requests, but also of internal and external modifications within the request locutions. While the primary goal of the dissertation is a linguistic comparison and analysis, it is the author's belief that such research has the potential to enhance, to some extent, mutual understanding in people of different cultures. In particular, being aware of how a second language phrases requests differently from one's native language can greatly reduce the potential for misu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel E. Collins PhD (Committee Chair); Marjorie K. M. Chan PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Ludmila Isurin PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures

Research on how Russian aspect functions in the imperative has revealed contradictory opinions on the emotive nuances that the aspectual forms can express in different contexts. These contradictions, however, turn out to be illusory if we consider the various approaches from the point of view of Functional Grammar, i.e., as complimentary to each other. Context, and intonation in particular, are shown to be of critical importance in resolving these contradictions, especially if there is to be an adequate discussion of the nuances of politeness/impoliteness. However, my study shows that much of the previous research on the issue has continuously neglected contextual factors. The reason for this neglect is shown to be rooted in the fact that most studies of linguistic politeness, including those by Russian scholars, are based on traditional politeness theories, in which lay conceptualizations of politeness merge with scientific notions. Thus, politeness studies become imposition theories which are subjective, evaluative and prescriptive in nature. After critiquing the traditional models, I consider alternative approaches to linguistic politeness. The latter view politeness as practice, and focus on how evaluations of (im)politeness occur in real interaction. I adopt the position reflected in the alternative approaches. However, my study's narrow focus on imperative utterances dictates the following modification: I analyze examples embedded in movie contexts which prove to be the most reliable data source for obtaining actual hearers' evaluations. Further, I demonstrate how the alternative models of linguistic politeness can be combined with the insights into aspectual semantics provided by various Russian studies on how aspect functions in the imperative. Though the alternative approach suggested in this work remains relative, as it does not allow researchers to make any definitive claims about the role of the aspectual form itself in the polite/impolite interpretation (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Collins PhD (Advisor); Charles Gribble PhD (Committee Chair); Ludmila Isurin PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Language; Linguistics

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1999, East Asian Languages and Literatures

This thesis suggests improvements on instruction of negative questions. In a given context, the choice of expressions other than negative questions can result in cultural incoherence. Given that the goal of learners is to be able to interact effectively, instruction must facilitate the learning of negative questions. The learning process of cognitively mature learners of Japanese as a foreign language is conscious and affected by their first language. Since the amount of instruction time is limited, instructional materials should utilize their cognitive maturity. Both declarative knowledge of what negative questions are and procedural knowledge of how to use negative questions, are necessary. Therefore, instruction should not only provide information, but experience in practice. Although information enables learners to talk about negative questions, their knowledge of negative questions needs to be demonstrated in communication. First, this thesis investigates the important functions of negative questions, and then reviews instructional materials by investigating their efficacy in facilitating the development of declarative and procedural knowledge. It is found that the speaker's choice of negative questions over other expressions can be attributed to the speaker's anticipation of the addressee's agreement to his/her proposition, and the speakers' avoidance of imposition of proposition, and the speakers' avoidance of imposition of his/her proposition. Particulary, the latter is important given interaction in Japanese culture. For instance, when what the speaker's wants to convey in the utterance can threaten communication if expressed with declaratives or imperatives, negative questions should be utilized to maintain an appropriate distance with the addressee. Instructional materials do not necessarily provide sufficient information for the development of declarative knowledge, and mechanical practice is not always followed by contextualized practice. I suggest 1) r (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mari Noda (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, East Asian Languages and Literatures

The current study is concerned with the linguistic realizations of politeness strategies and how they are influenced by contextual factors in persuasive discourse in Chinese. The appropriateness of applying current politeness models to non-Western cultures, such as Chinese, has been questioned for decades with no solutions found. The concept of ‘total-context' is proposed to serve as a solution. Total-context refers to an integrated approach to the notion of context that incorporates the socio-cultural and situational factors as frames of reference (at the global level) for interpreting utterances, at the same time acknowledges the dynamic role of context as it is shaped by the on-going interaction (at the local level). An innovative data collection method, Natural Data Elicitation Technique, was introduced. Based on examples from the naturally-occurring speech data collected from salespersons in Taiwan, a qualitative analysis of the data was conducted to examine the linguistic devices that Chinese speakers utilize to accomplish multiple and competing communication tasks in persuasive discourse. The results of the analysis show that the salespersons employed a variety of politeness strategies in which negative politeness was used more frequently than the other two, namely, bald-on-record and positive politeness strategies. Using hedges, including lexical items, syntactic structures and particles, and showing deference are the most common negative politeness strategies. The major bald-on-record strategies include disagreement and giving advice. The acts of showing concern, making promises and guarantees, and in-group language use are the most frequent positive politeness strategies. The collectivist-oriented culture of the Chinese, which values positive face over negative face, was reflected in the salespersons' employment of positive politeness. Social factors such as gender, power, social status and age are found to influence the use of politeness strategies. The s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marjorie Chan (Advisor) Subjects: Language, Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Greek and Latin

The purpose of this paper will be to examine, in the text of Homer's Iliad, some of the pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors in the choice of form of address (epithet). Specifically I will look at these in light of the Parry-Lord theory of oral composition and its claims of ‘economy of form.' The results of this limited examination have important implications for the viability of such methods and for our understanding of oral, traditional literature. Milman Parry, as is well known, demonstrated that the choice of appellation for any character, between the given-name (e.g., 'Αγαμεμνων) and the patronymic (e.g., 'Ατρειδης) was a decision based on metrical considerations alone, and importantly, not on semantic ones. The two terms cannot simply be substituted for the other without changing the meter of the whole line. The choice between the two is, according to Parry, driven by metrical necessity alone and hence any possible distinction of meaning is automatically bleached. The two names mean the same thing (i.e., Agamemnon). In this study I will look specifically at the use types of address within the narrative frame of the Iliad, in light of two potentially contributing factors. From a sociolinguistic standpoint, I will show that the distribution of these forms of address across the whole set of speakers is constrained by the relative social standing of the speaker in respect to the addressee. I will then give evidence for how pragmatic factors as well condition the appearance of one form of address over another. The evidence in this paper, then, will show that both sociolinguistic factors such as degree of social distance and relative position within the social hierarchy combine with specific situationally defined pragmatic factors to place constraints on the appropriateness of competing forms of address, forms whose distribution was earlier ascribable to metrical constraints alone. In other words, forms of address are effected by important matters of social hierarc (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephen Tracy (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2013, East Asian Languages and Literatures

This project is a design plan for a review module of the politeness forms introduced in Japanese: The Spoken Language, Part 1 (“JSL 1,” henceforth), in their typical motivating contexts of use. Its primary target audience is students who have become familiar with the textbook and accompanying video series, but who are not yet comfortable or confident with choosing and using these indexes of politeness in performing the roles that come with Japanese settings. The review will distinguish the indexes of different kinds of politeness from one another, with a focus on the different contextual parameters that each typically points to. Although I have not prepared a digital version of the politeness review module yet, that would be a logical way to publish this learning module as an interactive tool in the future. In this way, the “dual coding” of associating the sounds with the visual representation (the words spoken with the drawings) would presumably help to strengthen the user's memory of the performances. Each politeness topic in the module is accompanied by comic-style illustrated panels. That is, each politeness topic is presented in interactional contexts, based on selected Core Conversations (“CCs,” henceforth) and Drills in JSL 1, and the interactions are illustrated with comic-style panels. Each of the contextualized situations is accompanied by an explicit specification of its five performance parameters , —specified (1) time, (2) place, (3) audience, (4) role(s) and (5) script. Specified time and place refer to the when and where of the performance; specified audience refers to the people who hear the performance, which minimally involves the speaker and usually an addressee; specified role is the role of the speaker as it is relevant to the performance; specified script is what the speaker says and can culturally be expected to have intended in the performance. The combination of all these parameters provides a frame for establishing (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Charles Quinn (Advisor); Etsuyo Yuasa (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Foreign Language; Linguistics; Multimedia Communications; Pedagogy