A comparative study of adult Cantonese L1 and L2 requests in discourse-completion tests and emails
Language Centre, Hong Kong Baptist University
Dr. Cynthia Lee

This paper reports on a comparative study of adult Hong Kong Cantonese L1 (Cantonese) and L2 (English) requests in an academic context, based on 203 discourse-completion tests and 333 emails, focusing on strategies and corresponding linguistic devices from which structure, organization and language are revealed. Three significant observations are made. Firstly, the Cantonese subjects’ L1 and L2 DCT and email requests are mostly indirect, characterized with the query preparatory in the interrogative form, followed by the direct mood derivable. Secondly, they were able to use the unique linguistic expressions of the language and strategies to ask appropriately, in accordance with the social hierarchical situations, and to meet the requirements of the data collection tools --- DCTs and emails. Thirdly, both L1 and L2 requestive emails were structurally, syntactically and lexically more complex than DCT requests, and demonstrated more elaborated discourse consisting of two strategies and requestive hints, a greater number and variety of mitigation methods, adverbs and adjectives to reduce imposition as well as sentence structures for the query preparatory. The requestive discourses of both sources represent not only the sum of the subjects’ language learning experiences but also their vigilance in using language for different purposes. They were cautious in the experimental setting but exploratory in real-life communication. The study has provided a better understanding of Cantonese speakers’ unique L1 and L2 requests in terms of structure, organization and language use in both settings, as well as their pragmatic competence.

On epistemic modality
Kansai Gaidai University, Japan   Harumi Sawada

This paper aims to consider modality, especially the propositional content condition of epistemic modality in English and Japanese.  I assume, based on Palmer (19902, 20012), that modality can be classified into four major types, and epistemic modality, which expresses the speaker’s judgment about the factual status of the proposition, is one of them.  For example, the modal must expresses epistemic modality in (1):
    (1) He looks tired.  He must be working too much these days.
        (epistemic)
Notice that in (1), the speaker is inferring about the cause of the event based on its result: the cause is that he is working too much and the result is that he looks tired (Sawada 1993, 2006). Furthermore, it is important that in (1), the propositional content of epistemic modal must is the present state of affairs, and it is real. 
I will introduce three parameters to analyze the propositional content of epistemic modality.  The first is causality, the second is reality, and the third is temporality.  I will also argue that context is deeply involved with modality.

Pragmatics in second language learning: Current developments
University of Hawai’i at Manoa   Gabriele Kaspe

Pragmatics made its entrance to second language research thirty years ago, mainly under the influence of curricular interests in teaching and testing language for communication and sociolinguistic concerns with intercultural discourse. A few notable precursors in the 1980s aside, studies of how L2 pragmatics is learned first started to slowly gain momentum in the 1990s (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Kasper & Rose, 2002; Kasper & Schmidt, 1996). In the same period, metatheoretical debates from across the social sciences made their way into SLA, where they introduced new ontological and epistemological perspectives to the discipline (Zuengler & Miller, 2006). Several of these perspectives have influenced research on L2 pragmatic development as well.
 The most prevalent theoretical and methodological orientations in developmental L2 pragmatics come from cognitive and cultural-historical psychology (socio-cultural theory, SCT), linguistic anthropology (language socialization), and sociology (conversation analysis). Although cognitive psychology and SCT share their interest in the development of mind and language, their ontological outlook contrasts markedly and aligns SCT more with language socialization and conversation analysis. Cognitive-psychological theories conceptualize second language learning as the operation of internal cognitive processes, located in the individual learner’s mind, and operating on externally available data as well as internal knowledge stores to establish new L2 knowledge. To the extent that social context is accorded a role in L2 acquisition, it is typically conceptualized as a constellation of learner-external factors that may influence learner-internal learning processes and outcomes. In contrast to theories that share the view of SLA as individual cognition, SCT, language socialization, and conversation analysis propose (or are compatible with) L2 learning as a socially constituted - not merely socially influenced - inter-individual process, situated in and intertwined with social activities. 
 Recent comprehensive reviews of L2 pragmatic learning (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Kasper & Roever, 2005; Kasper & Rose, 2002) have covered such topics as the relationship between L2 grammar and pragmatics (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Niezgoda & Röver, 2001; Schauer, 2006), developmental trajectories (Achiba, 2003; Barron, 2003), social-affective factors (Takahashi, 2005), and the influence of the learning environment, including pragmatic learning during study abroad (Barron, 2003; DuFon & Churchill, 2006), in institutional settings outside of classrooms (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 2005) and under formal instruction (Alcón & Martínez Flor, 2005; Jeon & Kaya, 2006; Rose, 2005; Rose & Kasper, 2001). With the exception of two influential studies by Schmidt (1983; Schmidt & Frota, 1986), the earlier research in particular was largely descriptive rather than theory-guided, charting the development of a pragmatic object longitudinally or inferring developmental paths from cross-sectional data (Kasper & Rose, 2002). While the learning object was often explicitly conceptualized according to speech act theory (predominantly Searle, 1969, 1976) or politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), the learning process remained untheorized for the most part, or theoretical explanations of the research findings were offered post-hoc rather than motivating or guiding the study from the outset. In my talk, I will discuss research on developmental interlanguage pragmatics conducted explicitly under one (or more) of the theoretical perspectives introduced earlier: theories of cognitive processing, sociocultural theory, language socialization, and conversation analysis.

Iconicity across Texts: An investigation of the semiotic structure of gender metaphors
Konan Women's University  Reiko Hayashi

The analogous relations between form and meaning and the creation of metaphors using this aspect of meaning-making has become a major topic of study in the field of critical discourse analysis.  Moreover, the responsibility of an agent’s biased analogy for producing discrimination and exclusion has been critically pointed out by researchers (e.g., Chilton 1996, 2004; Semino and Masci 1996; Santa Ana 1999; Refaie 2001; Hayashi 2005, forthcoming; Wee 2004, 2005).  In this paper, in accordance with these studies, I aim to extend the scope of analysis to the dimension of the structure pertaining to the creation of the abovementioned analogy.  Further, I would like to explore the manner in which the analogy is constructed across texts in creating the binarism of gender in Japan.  Although this dimension has been previously investigated, discourse studies have not yet discussed the assumption that it is the semiotic structure in relation to the analogy rather than the agent that compels people to reproduce stereotypical forms. As Hill (2004) points out, there exists a semiotic system that people repeatedly recruit from and fit into.  The iconic sets of a stereotype are created between one sentence or text and the others by means of a variety of signs based on this system.  For example, the following sentence contains semantic and syntactic associations among the color “pink,” the noun “baby,” and the adjective “sweet.”  The kind of linking exemplified below is not merely formulated for this particular magazine; it is just one analog of other examples that can be found in numerous women’s magazines and advertisements. 
    Bebii pinku o kikase te, suyiito na kikonashi ni
    (baby pink  -o take effect -te sweet -na  dress -ni)
    (Highlight baby in pink and dress sweetly)  (cited from Hayashi, forthcoming)
Approximately thirty years ago, Goffman (1979) had already discovered this primordial nature of analogs while creating an icon pertaining to the depiction of women’s gender in natural signs.  However, the sign features associated with gender became increasingly multimodal, and they were inextricably structured along with other sensory and linguistic signs, including English loan words.  In this paper, I would like to extend my previous research to include this dimension of analogy and investigate how the semiotic system of signs interacts with social features such as gender. 
The theory regarding this aspect of language has developed an interdisciplinary approach that integrates semiotics and critical language study into a unified social semiotic discourse analysis (Hodge and Kress 1988, 1996; Scollon and Scollon 2003). This approach treats signs as social and thus ideological artifacts, since it is based on the premise that sign systems are the product of social semiotics.  The theory also assumes that the message of signs, which seems relevant to Goffman’s (1959) notion of what is “given off,” is constructed with respect to two directions—one being the direction of semiotic process, from which the meaning of signs is socially constructed and exchanged, while text is materialized as a product of part of the discourse, and the other being that of the mimetic process, from which the semiotic (social) meaning is connected in a larger context (Hodge and Kress 1988: 5–6).  These assumptions regarding signs embrace the significant implication that signs are placed in the immediate texts as discourse practices and that they also trace some kind of structured principle relating to a remote society and culture. 
This paper incorporates the insights resulting from the above social constructionism and develops a framework for approaching the semiotic structure that is under investigation.  The proposed framework, therefore, does not employ structure-based semiotic analysis as an initial step, the tradition of which can be traced back to the notion of iconicity proposed in the work of C. S. Peirce.  Within this framework, I seek to investigate the mechanism of meaning-making and show how such icons function in magazines and advertisements when sign features such as colors and words are connected to human senses such as the auditory and visual senses, taste, and smell in order to construct gender stereotypes.  I would like to specifically focus on the phenomena of the iconicity of the images, diagrams, and metaphors related to gender and investigate the manner in which gender is accessed, associated and linked with other signs, arranged in texts, and articulated for commercial purposes.  Following this, I aim to reveal the mediation of gender between the conceptual “resemblance” and the operation of “association.”  Further, I will confirm that the materialized sign features in the texts and this mediation contain a structure that endows sign-makers with the ability to reproduce and recontextualize gender stereotypes.  In conclusion, I would like to argue that creating the iconicity associated with gender in the texts under investigation is largely due to the structure of commercialism, although its agents are equally culpable.  Based on these abovementioned analytical steps, I wish to propose a semiotic discourse approach that emphasizes the study of structure, which is inextricably veiled but persistently reproduced, particularly that of the sign construction system that is used for creating gender difference.

Metaphor: A deflationary account

Institut Jean Nicod  Dan Sperber

Metaphors are simply a range of cases at one end of a continuum that includes literal, loose and hyperbolic interpretations. Metaphorical interpretations are arrived at in exactly the same way as these other interpretations. There is no mechanism specific to metaphor, no interesting generalization that applies only to them. In other terms, linguistic metaphors are not a natural kind, and “metaphor” is not a theoretically important notion in the study of verbal communication. I argue for this deflationary thesis by outlining the general mechanism that governs the interpretation of all utterances.

On face and politeness: A new model based on duality, reflexivity and interdependence
Takuo Hayashi

Since the advent of now classical works of Lakoff (1973, 1975), Brown and Levinson (1987[1978], hereafter abbreviated as B&L), and Leech (1983), linguistic politeness has become one of the major areas of pragmatics. What their theories have in common is to conceive politeness as strategic conflict avoidance device (Kasper,1990), seeking the explanation via Cooperative Principle or the violation of its maxims (Fraser, 1990). This strategic view, however, was later contested by researchers studying politeness in non-Western cultural contexts, especially with respect to the claim by B&L (Hill et al., 1986, Matsumoto, 1988, Ide,1989, Gu, 1990). These critics argue that B&L's notion, which is characterized by territorial concerns for autonomy and privacy, is a direct reflection of the high value placed on individualism of Western culture and does not apply to normative aspects of politeness that are more prominent in some of the non-western cultures. More recently, similar criticisms were also expressed by Western scholars with regard to the possibility of cultural bias (Arundale,1997, 1999, Hayashi, forthcoming) and the fundamental aspect of politeness (Watts,1989, 2003). The need to elaborate the concept of face was actually pointed out by B&L themselves, who states that their model may collapse two kinds of politeness (for status-based face and personal side of face) in an ethnocentric way (B&L,1987:13-14). In this paper, I will propose a new model of politeness which comprehensively incorporate both personal and normative aspects of face and face work. .
 The argument unfolds along the three related but different key notions of duality, reflexivity and interdependence. First, I point to a fundamental assumption that human existence is not only a biological individual but a “person” who interacts with others in a society (Radcliffe-Brown, 1940; O’Driscoll, 1996). A person in society can be construed as an individual in a group with a distinct mind, body and emotion, and at the same time, as an individual in a group with roles and relationships associated to the group. I propose that the notion of face can be described as a psychological construct about a person, who is bound to these dual traits of human being.
An important proposition I will make next is that the psychological construct of face can be analyzed from a set of two important perspectives, or in term of two psychological domains, at a higher level. They are what I call “Cognitive Face” and “Affective Face”, to which B&L’s first definition of face as “claim” and the second as “want” may be associated. Cognitive face can be further divided into two types of face, which I label as “Private Face” and “Social Face”. Briefly stated, Private Face is a person’s cognitive construct concerning private matters while Social Face is a person’s cognitive construct concerning social matters. The affective domain of face is a desire for the cognitive domain of face which a person is anxious for others to be respected. It is a desire about what a person wants to “defend” against and “protect” for others (Goffman1967:14)), be it matters of personal pride or social fame. There are also two sides to the desire, which are derived from the dual traits of human being and satisfied by such acts that Durkheim (1915) called “positive rite” and “negative rite” or that Goffman (1967) called “presentational rituals” and “avoidance rituals”. Here, using the same labels of B&L but in a different sense, I refer to them as “Positive Face” and “Negative Face”. The compound notion of face is a combination of the cognitive and affective domains of face with a perceptually hierarchical structure, which can be expressed as [Affective Face [Cognitive Face]], where the former has a superordinate relation to the latter.
The proposed notion of face has another important character, which presupposes the notion of duality mentioned above. I contend, following Arundale(1997) that face is a reflexive construct about a person whose contents emerge or are (re)constructed through association with other persons in a social group. This is also consonant with Goffman’s notion (1967:5) that “The term face may be defined as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact.” Face conceived in this perspective may be represented as [my perceiving of [your perceiving of [my person]]] for self, and [my perceiving of [your perceiving of [your person]]] for others. Face is thus perceived reflexively with each individual continually orienting to others of his own person or of the others’ person, though the construct is ultimately of subjective or interpretive in nature.
Based on the concept of face discussed above, politeness is conceived as strategic (or “ritualistic”) actions encompassing deference (cf. Pizziconi, 2003), which are oriented towards the compound notion of face with the cognitive and affective domains. I postulate two such strategies, “Positive Politeness” and “Negative Politeness”, which are directed to the superordinate affective domain of face. They are “face-management actions” involving face aggravation, maintenance, and enhancement, that are directed not only to the face of others, but also to the face of one's own (Arundale, 1997:3). They are different from B&L’s in that I distinguish “strategies” from “modes” and postulate only whereas there are five in mixture of both in B&L. Also, the notion of politeness is distinct from theirs in a more fundamental way. I assume that politeness is a projection of actions with interdependent nature, to which the duality and reflexivity are closely related. I owe this assumption to the observation of Goffman (1967:14), who argues that “a defensive orientation toward saving his own face and a protective orientation toward saving the other’s face is simultaneous”, and more directly to his statement (Goffman 1967:78) that “demeanor involves attributes derived from interpretations others make of the way in which the individual handles himself during social intercourse.” I propose that politeness is a ritualistic projection of face-management actions directed essentially for the realization of own face, which may also be called demeanor, rather than for the realization of others’ face, the perspective which is contrastively (and rather radically) different from most of other works including B&L’s.
Lastly, the proposed model of politeness is then applied to Japanese deferential expressions or keigo by referring to the claims in the past studies. I will demonstrate that a careful examination on its nature and functions in these studies provide us with evidence to support the new model, and further that they can, in turn, provide us with resourceful insights to construct it.

The impacts of discourse pragmatics and lexical semantics on grammar: Evidence from English and Chinese corpora
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures University of California, Los Angeles
Hongyin TAO

Grammarians have long sought to understand the underlying factors influencing the syntactic behaviors of linguistic elements. For example, why existential verbs and verbs of possession tend to go together (e.g. ‘you’ in Chinese and ‘have’ in English), why motion verbs tend to develop into grammatical aspect markers (e.g. the change of ‘be going to’ into a future marker in English and ‘qu’ into a clause linking device in Chinese), and so forth. Many linguists have identified semantic factors as primary determinants of syntax. The most explicit accounts of this type can be found in such theories as Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin 1993) as well as the work on event structure and argument projection (Levin and Rappaport 2004, 2005). In this paper I show that even though the role that semantic plays in grammar is considerable, the relation between semantics and syntax is a complex one, and as such a deterministic approach is far from adequate. In order to achieve a comprehensive account of the organization of linguistic structure, discourse pragmatics, i.e. language use, must be recognized as critical.
This paper discusses as illustrations a number of examples from both English and Chinese. Our evidence comes from both spoken and written corpora of the two languages. The first example concerns the uses of ‘remember’ and ‘forget’ in English. I show that even though this pair of verbs have been argued to be similar in take complements, they have very different syntactic and grammaticalization patterns; that is, while the former is developing into a discourse marker in spoken English for epistemicity and metalinguistic regulation, the latter is limited in these uses. The Chinese example concerns a group of verbs of appearing (‘chuxian’, ‘chansheng’, ‘fasheng’). I show that while these verbs share similarities in lexical semantics, they differ in semantic prosody as well as syntax. Thus evidence from both English and Chinese paints a complex picture insofar as the role of lexical semantics in grammar is concerned. In the end I suggest that a usage-based model, where discourse pragmatics assumes a prominent role and semantics a secondary role, should be recognized as more advantageous in explaining language structure.

The influence of confucianism and buddhism on business in China: A pragmatic approach
Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Aveiro, 3810-193, Portugal
Tian bo Li, Gillian Owen Moreira

This paper addresses the influence of Confucianism and Buddhism on Business in China from a perspective of intercultural pragmatics. Considering the relationship between Confucianism, Buddhism and business from a pragmatic angle in the context of economic and cultural globalization, it presents some modern Chinese business people who behave in accordance with Confucianism, pray to Bodhisattva for safety and wealth, and donate to the temple; analyzing the reasons for these phenomena. It exemplifies cooperative principle (co-operation) and politeness as key concepts of cross-cultural pragmatics in doing business,   considering the role of harmony emphasized by Confucianism and Buddhism. On the one hand, it emphasizes co-operation, politeness and harmony in Chinese business community; on the other hand, it explores the relationship between religions and the development of economy and culture.
The influence of Confucianism and Buddhism on business is analyzed through my practicing experience in Chinese community in Portugal. The real language used in business by Chinese people will strengthen the relationships between religions and economics.
Finally it draws conclusions about the contributions of Confucianism and Buddhism to the language of business in China.

Notes on the indeterminacy of scalar implicatures
南京大学  蔡一鸣 (Cai Yiming)

Scalar implicatures, such as “often +> not always”, are widely recognized as typical generalized implicatures that can derive interpretations automatically without referring to particular contexts. However, in real life, such an automatic pattern is too ideal and oversimplified; in fact, many factors may contribute to the deviation of scalar implicatures. This paper manages to penetrate into the indeterminacies of scalar implicatures by answering the following questions: First, does a sentence containing a scalar word have to generate scalar implicatures? Second, are the scalar implicature generated invariably unidirectional and upper-bounding? Third, if the meaning of a scalar word is itself indeterminate, how can its scalar implicature be appropriately drawn? Finally, from a broader angle, are scalar implicatures purely generalized conversational implicatures? Does there really exist a clear cut between generalized and particularized conversational implicatures? By discussing all the indeterminacies, this paper is expected to arouse people’s attention on the complexities of utterances in real life.

A case study: Effects of explicit and implicit instruction on pragmatic acquisition
南京解放军国际关系学院  陈  超 (Chen Chao)

This paper reports a case study investigating different effects of explicit and implicit instruction on Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic acquisition. Specifically, the effects of the two different types of instruction in English compliments and compliment responses are examined to determine which type of instruction is more effective in the teaching of pragmatic routines. The findings of this study suggested that in the teaching of pragmatic routines the explicit instruction had an obvious edge over implicit instruction. Accordingly, EFL teachers should not only present ample naturally occurring utterances containing target features, but provide explicit explanation of formulas, contextual factors, pragmatic function, appropriateness and common pragmatic failures regarding the target features. It was also recommended that Chinese College English Test incorporate exercises aimed at the assessment of the Chinese EFL learners’ pragmatic competence so that they would find it a must to pay more attention to the appropriate use of language.

A study of compliment behavior by Chinese EFL teachers
陈成辉 (Chen Chenghui)

Compliment is a positively affective speech act. It can be referred to as ‘a complex sociolingistic skill,’ which serves to save people’s faces, to increase or consolidate the solidarity between the speaker and the addressee and create or maintain rapport (Janet Holmes, 1988). In 1981 Joan Manes and Nessa Wolfson pioneered the study on compliment by examining the speech of middle-class native speakers in USA. They found that compliments in American English showed a striking regularity not only in their syntactic patterns but also in their semantic composition. Mark L. Knapp, Robert Hopper, Robert A. Bell, Robert K. Herbert, Janet Holmes and Donna M. Johnson continued the study from different angles or in different cultural backgrounds. Most of the scholars, however, studied it in isolation, except Johnson, who looked into the specific context of peer-review texts and considered it as discourse framing strategies on the discourse level. This paper aims to study the Chinese teacher’s complimenting behavior to reveal its structure, function and effect.

Politeness strategies and their gender difference in face-saving acts
解放军理工大学理学院研究生外语教研室 陈东东 (Chen Dongdong)

Politeness, as a universal social phenomenon, is not only a means of conveying information, but also an important way to establish and maintain social relationships with others in communication. Viewed as one of the major social constraints on human interaction, politeness has been an interesting topic to researchers in pragmatics. From Grice and Leech, to Brown and Levinson, systematic studies have been done on this topic, investigating various politeness strategies available for performance of a certain type of linguistic action in the speech communication. All the politeness strategies show that people’s face needs to be protected in the course of speech communication. In the field of pragmatics, face is something that is emotionally invested and that can be lost, maintained or enhanced.
This thesis mainly attempts to explore the possible linguistic realization of face-saving acts and compare the differences in the application of politeness strategies between male and female speakers. To pave the way for this objective, the author first makes a general review of conversational maxims. This is followed by description of face theory and politeness strategies to include the definition of face, classification of face and the factors of face-threatening acts. Then a comprehensive illustration of the face-saving acts is presented with examples to show the characteristics of these acts. Next the author tries to analyze the face-saving acts in specific dialogues of a movie script, giving a tentative quantitative analysis, and exploring the differences between male and female speakers’ use of these face-saving acts. Through quantitative analysis, the author tries to find out different types of face-saving acts in the film and the differences between male and female in this respect, hoping that such a systematic study of face-saving acts will contribute to successful communication and provide a new perspective for discourse analysis.

The interpretation of speech acts in the process of discourse interaction
大连理工大学外国语学院 陈海庆 (Chen Haiqing)

Discourse interaction is an essential notion in discourse analysis since it deals with the relationship and communicative process of the language producer and the language receiver. It is generally considered that discourse possesses not merely the property of structure, but the properties of meaning and actions, which are both context sensitive and communicative (Schiffrin, 1987). These properties can be realized in the interaction between the producer (or text) and the receiver. Therefore, discourse interaction can be treated as a set of speech acts and construed mainly from the perspective of perlocutions of discourse.
   According to Austin’s (1962) and Searle’s (1969, 1974, 1975, 1983) doctrines, locutions and illocutions are such acts performed by the language producer (speaker or writer), while the perlocutions are performed on the receivers (hearer or reader), which are carried out as a consequence of the locutionary and illocutionary acts such as effects on action, belief and thought of the receiver (Coulthard, 1977). So the perlocutionary act depends not only on speaker, i.e. speaker’s intention, but also the hearer, i.e. the hearer’s uptake. The interaction between the producer’s intention and the receiver’s uptake can be regarded as one of important purposes in discourse analysis.
In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the paper deals with the following sections: (I) Reinterpreting Searle’s view on intentions in actual interactive sequence, moves and exchanges. (II) Mental interaction between the effects of literary works and reader’s acceptance and reaction. (III) Literary communication as a “two-way relationship” between artistic and aesthetic poles. (IV) Advertising discourse and its persuasive style and effects.

Application of memetics to college English writing
温州大学外国语学院  陈琳霞 (Chen Lingxia)

Meme is a notion invented by Richard Dawkins, an eminent Oxford zoologist, in his best-selling book “The Selfish Gene”. Memetics is a new theory for interpreting evolution of socially transmitted cultural traits. The meme as a unit of cultural information is of great importance in the development of human languages. Its replication and transmission provide a quick and an effective way to enrich human languages. Memetics reveals the law of language development and provides a new perspective on language research，communication and culture. Meme propagates through imitation. According to Gabriel Tarde, forefathers of Memetics, the origination of an invention involves the recombination of existing imitations. Imitation is an important cognitive of human being. Many scholars both at home and abroad, studying foreign language teaching, find out the importance of imitation in language learning. This paper introduces memetics into the teaching of College English writing and expounds that imitation as an approach to teaching of College English writing is very effective and thinks Memetics can be seen as a new method to solve some problems in the teaching of College English writing. It puts forwards two ways to improve College English writing: memetic genetype and memetic phenotype. The former refers to the same core content being inherited in various forms, while the latter refers to the identical set pattern being followed by different contents. It also illustrates with examples how to teach College English writing by using these two ways.

Acquiring pragmatics competence from EFL textbooks
上海体育学院英语专业教研室   陈  珊 (Chen Shan)

The textbook plays an important role in English Language Teaching (ELT), particularly in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom where it provides the primary (perhaps only) form of linguistic input (Kim & Hall, 2002). Research into the adequacy of textbooks to teach communicative practices that are reflective of authentic conversation has found that ELT textbooks rarely include adequate or comprehensible explanations of how conversation works in English (Berry, 2000; Burns, 1998; Cane, 1998; Grant & Starks, 2001).
Previous ELT textbook research has focused on the authenticity of language samples included in textbooks as well as explanations of appropriate usage, typically using speech acts as units of analysis. Despite a decade of complaints of the inadequacy of textbooks' language (Bardovi-Harlig, Hartford, Mahan-Taylor, Morgan & Reynolds, 1991; Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Cane, 1998; Grant & Starks, 2001; Wong, 2001), little seems to have changed in the authenticity of language samples. Bardovi-Harlig points out that "it is important to recognize, that, in general, textbooks cannot be counted on as a reliable source of pragmatic input for classroom language learners" (2001, p. 25). Criticism deals primarily with the omission or disregard for authentic language samples in language textbooks, and researchers argue that language samples in textbooks need to more closely approximate results found in studies of conversation analysis. Oftentimes, pragmatic rules governing native speakers' speech act performance are not intuitive, and therefore require analysis of naturally occurring language samples, just as presentation of grammatical forms necessitates analysis of authentic language (Biber & Reppen, 2002; Garcia, 2004).
Explicit discussion of conversational norms and practices is another element missing from ELT texts, which often fail to adequately portray communicative practices or ideological constructs in the target language appropriately (Berry, 2000; Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Burns, 1998; Cane, 1998; Grant & Starks, 2001; Gray, 2002). Particularly in EFL contexts, the only opportunity students have to learn targetlike conversational norms comes from either authentic language models or comprehensible metalinguistic descriptions that represent actual ways of speaking. Students are frequently not given the tools in textbooks to recognize and analyze language in a variety of contexts, and therefore, not equipped to be polite or rude intentionally (Grant & Starks, 2001).
Most criticism of ELT texts has continued to focus on the role of the teacher in the classroom and articles include specific teaching ideas to supplement textbooks, such as collecting and analyzing authentic language samples (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 1991; Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Cane, 1998; Grant & Starks, 2001; Wong, 2001). The general sentiment is that most textbooks are inadequate, but an effective teacher can overcome the shortcomings of a text. Textbook authors and classroom teachers need to make corresponding changes in approaches to L2 teaching, since the limitations imposed by the textbook and the classroom on pragmatically appropriate input hinder the learner from becoming truly proficient in communicating in the target language (Koike, 1989, p. 287).
Despite its shortcomings, the textbook is considered to be the most important tool used in the classroom (Altbach, 1991). Connections between the textbooks and language use, curriculum and lesson planning in the classroom need to be established for a more complete description of the use of ELT textbooks. Drawing on previous studies of pragmatics in textbooks, the current study was undertaken to see what kinds of pragmatically relevant input and explicit metapragmatic information was provided in ELT textbooks of China. Detailed analysis focused specifically on the use of metalanguage, explicit treatment of speech acts, and metapragmatic information, including discussion(s) of register, illocutionary force, politeness, appropriacy and usage.

A Pragma-cognitive approach to “metonymic” reference
南京大学   陈新仁 (Chen Xinren)

Metonymy has traditionally been considered a rhetorical device. With the rise of cognitive semantics, there has arisen the challenge to the rhetorical view of the linguistic phenomenon, arguing that it involves the same kind of inference as found in the comprehension of daily uses of language. This paper, while endorsing the cognitive-semantic analysis of the inferential processes and mechanisms underlying metonymy, denies the total rejection of its rhetorical motivation and effects and intends to modify the traditional conception of metonymy as a figure of speech that seems oversimplified and explanatorily inadequate. To these ends, the paper contends that metonymic usage be examined within the overall framework of reference and analyzed in the light of cognitive pragmatics. A cognitive view of rhetoric will be introduced to discuss the use of metonymy in various dynamic contexts so as to reveal its varied motivations and principles of comprehension. It is hoped that this research will be capable of showing that cognitive semantics and pragmatics are basically complementary to each other and that other traditional rhetorical devices can also be thus studied.

A pragmatics analysis of the emotional support intention of Chinese children's code-switch
广西师范大学外国语学院  陈耀恒 (Chen Yaoheng)

Recent researches on code-switch  as a welcomed communicative strategy, have mainly focused on the over pragmtic sides, such as task-orientation,information intetion, content fuction, poltical implication, ethnic, wareness,status,  power and identity speaker's creation of identity etc.    In fact, emotion is the tie of a society. It's an important part of the society.  Otherwise, we don't need to speak so much. Emotional support in CS is an easily overlapped area. People do CS for such practical pragmatics effects in the ongoing communication. Here we will analyse the the emotional support intention of Chinese children' s Code-switch. We collected two CS samples between Chinese dialects and Standard Chinese. One in the hospital setting, the other is at home. The speakers are both four years old.It's a a dynamic view of CS subtle feeling in communication. Language has another vital function of grooming, just like birds groom for emotional exchanges.expressing comfort and support and so forth. Emotional support is the outcome of interpersonal relationship, related to sympathy and caring or concerns. In this grooming side, we will investigate into the aspects like relationship-orientation, comunication intention.It is the interpersonal or social role fuction to establish social relationship sicerity and humorous effects, or send an obvious sign of joking. Socialized motivation make children try to avoid face losing by CS.emtional fuction: both cognitive: understanding the listeners and emotional: to acqiure social identity. It can be regard as a matter of "face". Speakers consciously or unconsciously moderate the speech act by CS. Some researchers conclude that"conversnts have a sophisticated knowledge of both languages. They are also aware of community norms. They switch code to show their familarity of solidarity." However, we will come to a totally diferent findings, in our analysis, children do not meet the above mentioned social and pragmatics competences of CS. They might be unconsciously. From our analysis, in their assessment of probility and predictability they switch for expressing feeling, attitude and mood, humorous effects, joking ,or to make a favorable communication atmaspere. These can all be listed under emotional support.

A Speech Act Analysis of Teachers’ Questioning in EFL Class
华中科技大学外国语学院  陈玉红 (Chen Yuhong)  柯细香 (Ke Xixiang)

Teacher’s questioning, a common and effective teaching method that stimulates the learners’ active participation and comprehension, motivates thinking and practicing, is actually one form of teacher talk. It is quite different from our routine questions. Rather it is used as a speech act aiming at achieving specific pragmatic purposes. In this paper, an attempt has been made to analyze teacher’s questioning via questionnaire and interview from the pragmatic perspective, namely to use the Speech Act theory and Cooperation Principle. It aims at helping teachers and students to make good use of questions in order to achieve communicative purposes.

Philosophy and Grice’s Works: Exploring philosophical grounds of Grice’s theories
西南大学外国语学院  陈治安 (Chen Zhi’an) 马军军 (Ma Junjun)

Grice, brought up in a family full of religious controversy and debate, and educated in a tutorial tradition, kept the enthusiasm for debating, questioning, and challenging through his life. His tutor W. F. R. Hardie convicted Grice that philosophical questions are best settled by reason or argument (Chapman, 2005).
Grice’s well-known works Studies in the Way of Words (1989, based on the 1967 William James Lectures), The Conception of Value (1991, based on the 1983 Carus Lectures) and Aspects of Reason (2001, based on the 1979 John Locke Lectures) reflect the influence that family and school education exerted on him and the philosophical grounds for his theories. And this paper intends to explore the philosophical grounds from the following three aspects.
1 The philosophical grounds of Grice Meaning theory
Before WWII, philosopher A. J. Ayer introduced logical positivism into Oxford. After the war, in the influence of Ryle, Frege, Russel, Moore, Wittgenstein, Austin, etc., Oxford became a world-center of philosophy. Grice’s view of ordinary language and his philosophical methodology developed. More profoundly affected by the G. F. Stout”s Voluntary Action, and Peirce’s theory of signs, Grice publicized his first influential paper “Meaning” in 1957, proposing the term “Intention”.
Grice’s general refining of meaning and other philosophical problems such as perception, gradually developed into his theory of conversation. During the process, Chomsky’s formalism gave insight to Grice. In 1967, Grice moved to Berkeley. Under the influence of Chomsky and Quine, Grice desired to find out more about logic and linguistics, and the semantics-syntax interaction. Moreover, he revisited the topic of intention, directly leading to Grice “rationality”.
2 The philosophical grounds of Grice, , ’s “Value”
Kant’s moral objectivism, P. Foot and J. L. Mackie’s moral subjectivism, and Aristotle’s happiness lead to Grice’s medial view of value, that is, value is the measure of rationality, the value of practical reasoning depends on the t, , ruth/false of f, acts, while that of alethic reasoning depends on the goodness.
3 The philosophical grounds of Grice’s “Rationality”
Grice’s rationality can be dated back to his William James lectures, that is, conversation is rational human beings’ activity (Grice, 1989: 26). Under the influence of Kant and Aristotle’s rationalism, Grice proposes the practical and alethic reasoning. Then Grice proposes “constructivism” as his methodology of philosophical psychology (Chen Zhi’an & Ma Junjun, 2006).
To sum up, investigating the philosophical grounds of Grice’s theories provides us not only with a unified framework for Grice’s meaning, value and rationality but also the way of studying how the philosopher in a philosophical manner explores language and solves problems of thinking and reality.   

An adaptation-relevance study on humorous communication
哈尔滨工业大学、广东外语外贸大学 程  杰 (Cheng Jie)

Humor is pervasive in our daily communication. Various findings in the different fields, ranging from applied linguistics to psychology, anthropology, sociology, and many other fields, have provided fruitful perspectives for the comprehension of humorous communication. Based on these existing research findings, this paper attempts to explore how the Adaptation-relevance Model (Ran Yongping, 2004) can contribute to a better understanding of humorous utterances. It will be argued that this model helps us understand more clearly the dynamic processes of producing and interpreting the humorous utterances from the cognitive-pragmatic perspective. It also helps us to understand why people bother to produce the humorous utterances and manage to comprehend them. By virtue of the in-depth analysis of the samples of humorous communication, this study tries to show that humorous communication is an adaptation-relevance process with some underlying causes and strategies. The findings may serve as a guidance to improve individuals’ humorous communicative abilities, and shed light on the teaching and learning processes of foreign languages.

On the feasibility of system model and its semantic inference process
程琪龙 (Cheng Qilong)

Linguistic study aims at accounting for natural language. To do so linguistics attempts to construct a theoretical model under the guidance of the theory proposed. Models vary and can be classified into two groups: (1) a model consisting of set of principles (or rules), or (2) a model as an organization of related units possible for linguistic process. Problems of semantic-pragmatic interface can be approached within the two models. The first type of model is highly general, formally economical, easy to use and popular among many researchers. However, the model is poor in adaptability. Pragmatic principles, for instance, have to be further explicated while used in real instances of utterance. Applicability of the pragmatic principles has to be tested by human researchers. But no homunculus exists in the linguistic system and its related cognitive systems. Once the linguistic system is constructed, it is capable of automatically processing linguistic information as constructed.
 My recent research area is clause. I insist that a complete account for clauses has to include contextual information. Along this line of research, Cheng (2006) attempts to build dynamic conceptual frames of scenes to account for semantic-syntactic relations and semantic inference.

Hedges and their functions in academic spoken language
安徽科技学院外国语学院 邓兆红 (Deng Zhaohong)

Hedges are a common device in daily discourse. Previous research into hedging expressions has concentrated on academic written texts and casual speech events; little attention has been paid to how they function in formal academic spoken discourse. But hedging devices also abound in formal academic spoken language, as a way that addressers seek to modify the assertions that they make, toning down uncertain or potentially risky claims, emphasizing what they believe to be correct, and conveying appropriately collegial attitudes to addressees. This paper argues that the narrow perspective of treating hedges only as a way to reduce the force of an utterance and show the speaker’s uncertainty is not enough. The concept should be defined from a wider perspective: hedges refer to the expressions which can show how certain or how confident you are about what you are saying，including both the expressions weakening the truth value of the proposition and the expressions strengthening the force of the proposition. Based on the corpus of Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English, the present paper investigated the use of typical lexical hedges in academic context in a descriptive way, analyzing their pragmatic functions by the theories of the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle. Seen from the Cooperative Principle, hedges in academic spoken English are found to be an efficient means to help interlocutors to adjust their ways of expressing their ideas to 1) abide by the maxim of Quality; or 2) observe or violate the maxim of Quantity; or 3) violate the maxim of Manner. All these three means will implicate what the speaker does not say directly. Seen from the Politeness Principle, strengthening hedges can be used as a positive politeness strategy to save the speaker’s face and weakening hedges can be used to save the hearer’s face. Sometimes the combination of strengthening and weakening hedges is used to solve the tension between the need to protect both the speaker’s and the hearer’s face. This study leads to the conclusion that hedges can indicate the epistemic status of the speaker concerning the degree of the truthfulness of a proposition. In addition to the epistemic significance, hedges perform critical interpersonal and social roles which help create and confirm suitable atmosphere for communication. They can be used not only as a strategy of tentativeness or low commitment, but also as a strategy to emphasize certainty and worthiness of accepting what is said. Hedges are not only negative indicators of imprecision and fuzziness. They are efficient means by which speakers represent their understanding of the objective outside world and comment on their understanding. They are a significant resource rather than an irritating problem. They lend the addresser an easier access to communication and guide the hearer towards the best interpretation of the utterance. They help the speaker create an effective atmosphere for efficient communication of the information and attitude.

Third language learners’ pragmatic awareness and production: An empirical study of English pragmatic competence of Uigur university students
西南大学外国语学院 丁泓棣(Ding Hongdi)  阿斯罕( Asihan)  刘承宇(Liu Chengyu)

Pragmatic awareness and production have long been among the heated topics in pragmatics, cross-cultural communication and second language acquisition. They are usually approached cross-sectionally from various speech acts. For example, Olshtain & Blum-Kulka (1985）investigates L2 learners’ pragmatic awareness by assessing their evaluation of politeness in requests. Blum-Kulka et al (1989) and Eisenstein & Bodman (1993）investigate pragmatic production by comparing L2 learners’ command of requests and compliments with that of native speakers. Trosborg (1995) focus on interlanguage requests, complaints and apologies. Longitudinal researches (e.g. Schmidt (1983; Ellis, 1992）are also conducted to study L2 learners’ pragmatic competence. In China, He Ziran and his associates (e.g. He Ziran & Yan Zhuang 1986; He Ziran 1997）pioneer in examining the pragmatic competence of Chinese learners of English.
Third Language Acquisition (TLA) is a new sub-discipline of second language acquisition (SLA). Over the past two decades, much research has been done early trilingualism, the influence of bilingualism on TLA and cross-linguistic influence therein (e.g. Hoffman 1985, Thomas 1988, Grosjean 1992, Hufeisen 2000, Cenoz et al, 2001). Recently, Jordà (2005) investigates L3 pragmatic competence with an attempt to provide a bridge between interlanguage pragmatics and TLA after studying L3 learners’ pragmatic awareness and production. One of her hypothesis is that bilingual learners of English as L3 perform better in pragmatic awareness and production than monolingual learners.
This paper examines the pragmatic awareness and production of Chinese learners of English as L3 to test the validity of Jordà’s afore-mentioned hypothesis in a cross-cultural context and accordingly put forward some pedagogical suggestions for third language education for bilingual students of minority ethnic groups in China. An empirical study was conducted, in which 18 first-year students from Southwest University were selected as the subjects. Among them, 9 are of the Uigur nationality, who speak both Uigur as L1 and Chinese as L2; the other 9 in the control group are of 7 other minority nationalities, whose L1 is mandarin Chinese due to their education background. All the subjects have been learning English either as L3 or L2 for over 6.5 years. The experiment consists of 2 questionnaires. Questionnaire 1 was designed to select suitable subjects. Questionnaire 2, by combining the Discourse Evaluation Test (DET) and the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), is designed to study the subjects’ pragmatic awareness and production respectively. Based on Trosborg (1995) and Blum-Kulka et al (1989), 9 situations were designed in terms of social dominance and social distance. The participants were asked to judge whether the given English utterance is appropriate or not in each situation. They were then asked to provide the reasons (either in their mother tongue or in mandarin Chinese) to justify their answer, and some other appropriate expression (in English) for the situation. Considering the complexity of the answers, Questionnaire 2 was carried out through face-to-face interviews.
The data thus collected were statistically analyzed by SPSS program. The results showed that bilingual learners of English do have a better performance than their monolingual counterparts in pragmatic awareness and production. Bilingual learners not only provided more correct evaluations of the situations; they also gave more appropriate reasons and alternative expressions than monolingual learners. Non-parametric test discerned that the three most important differences were statistically significant (P=0.O47<0.05, P=0.004<0.01, P=0.007<0.01).
Bilingual learners also outperformed monolinguals in pragmatic production. They employed more apology expressions and strategies. Non-parametric test discerned that bilingual learners’ global use of apology strategies showed statistically significant difference（P=0.008<0.01）from monolingual learners.
As a whole, this experiment supports Jordà’s (2005) hypothesis, i.e. Uigur bilingual learners of English perform better than monolinguals in L3 pragmatic awareness and production.
For further research, the authors suggest that, firstly, experiments of larger scale should be conducted in bilingual ethnic regions, among English learners of varied proficiency to illuminate the influence of bilingualism (or multilingualism) and language proficiency on TLA. Secondly, both cross-sectional and longitudinal methodology should be adopted to test Jordà’s (2005) other 3 hypotheses concerning pragmatic awareness and production in TLA. Thirdly, further research should be done to explore the role of language distance (or psychotypology) in L3 pragmatic development.

The either/or position and the lexis-based view of language operation
南京大学 丁言仁 （Ding Yanren）

It has been widely accepted that language users operate on a rule-based analytic mode and an exemplar-based formulaic mode. Researchers, however, are not clear as to how these two modes interact in the course of language use. This presentation questions an either/or position that holds the two systems to be “incompatible.” It argues that the two complement each other in achieving effective communication. Evidence for the argument comes from the variant use of formulaic sequences and from empirical research on Chinese students’ command of regular and irregular past tense forms. The presentation proposes a lexis-based operation model. That is, the use of lexical units embodies both the analytic and formulaic modes.

Exploring implicature from cultural aspect
北京建筑工程学院文法学院 杜  苗 (Du Miao)

When people communicated with others, everyone wants to know the real intension of the others. However, sometimes they cannot understand the exact meaning beyond surface meaning. That is the implicature of utterances. So an implicature refers to an additional conveyed meaning. Generally, it can be classified into conversational implicature and conventional implicature.
 Concerning implicature Grice and Sperber, Wilson have already made deeply study. They analyze how to get correct implicature by using their theories. Grice argues that if people don’t observe the cooperate principle, thus implicature will be produced. He thinks utterances don’t mean the literal meaning, so the listener should multiprocess the utterance. Namely, the listener first gets the literal meaning of the utterance, then he infers the implied meaning. While Sperber and Wilson from their relevance theory think the listener can obtain implicature form explicature. The listener can obtain the premise of the utterance then infer the implicature.
 Although they explain the occurring of the implicature and the inference of it, there are still some weakness to need further discuss in their theories. For Grice didn’t pay attention to context and contextual supposition of utterance, thus, make utterance separates from both the speaker and the listener’s common attitudes, beliefs and values that are reflected in the way people of different culture use language----cultural factors. Sperber and Wilson neglect the effect of the social features to their relevance theory. They explain the implicature without concerning the features of cultural environment. Consequently, Grice and Sperber, Wilson are not able to explain some implicatures or infer the correctness of some implicatures. Here, I also want to mention that the implicature is conveyed not only by utterance, but also by some other ways. For implicature is closely connected with language and thought, which shows the cultural characteristics.
 Implicature widely appears in people’s daily conversation. It is not very difficult to infer in common occasions among the people who have the same background or cultural similarity, but sometimes it is quite difficult to infer especially for international communications. The reason is that language is the principal means whereby we conduct our social lives.
 When it is used in contexts of communication, it is bound up with culture in multiple and complex way, for language expresses cultural reality. Language embodies cultural reality, language mirror cultural reality.
In conclusion, culture factors cannot be excluded in communication. They have great effect on the understanding of utterance. Our ability to arrive automatically at interpretations of the unwritten and the unsaid must be based on pre-existing knowledge structure. These structures function like some familiar patterns from previous experience that we use to interpret new experience or consider the other’s experience. The most general term for a pattern of this type is a schema. A schema is a pre-existing knowledge structure in memory. Once connecting it with culture it becomes culture schema, when we communicate with those people who have different cultures, it becomes critical to recognize the implicature of utterance. So getting more culture knowledge about the other part in the communication people can go on conversation more smoothly and effectively.

The role of pragmatic teaching and attitude in interlanguage pragmatic development
莱阳农学院外国语学院 杜  敏(Du Min)

The role of instruction in interlanguage pragmatic development has received more attention recently. Most of the studies concerned find out that pragmatic knowledge can be taught in classroom and the teaching can facilitate pragmatic development to some extent. In some of the studies, attitude and motivation are also been mentioned as factors that influence the pragmatic development.
 To improve the non-English majors’ pragmatic competence, we decided to make a two-month trial teaching about pragmatics among five intact classes. We have revised the syllabus by adding pragmatic knowledge, including both socialpragmatic and pragmalinguistic knowledge, and the corresponding practice are also arranged, including role play, multiple choice and discourse completion, which are also the ways we adopt to examine the students’ pragmatic competence.
The questionnaire about the students’ attitude toward pragmatic study has also been designed in order to better understand pragmatic development from the perspective of the students.
During the two-month trial teaching, both the teaching effects and the students’ attitude toward pragmatic study will be investigated. The results are expected to shed light on the way to further improve non-English majors’ pragmatic competence in the long run.

An inquiry into the origin of the presumptive meaning “at least” of numerals --- reflections and criticisms on Levinson’s presumptive meaning
华东师范大学对外汉语学院 杜世洪 (Du Shihong)

Levinson has gone out of his way to make an exhaustive investigation into Grice’s conversational implicature. He arrives at three heuristics of communication that are believed to be complementing to Grice’s cooperative principles. Centering on his three heuristics, Levinson has pushed further the discussion upon the origin of presumptive meaning by keeping focus on the study of numerals. After a survey and review of Levinson’s theory, we have found that Levinson’s claim about the origin of the presumptive meaning “at least” of numerals cannot be philosophically justified in communication. The presumptive meaning “at least” is redundant in ordinary language use; thus it must be done away with in the use of numerals.

The effects of explicit and implicit instruction on appropriateness of English refusal strategies in Chinese EFL context
贵州大学外国语学院 段玲琍 (Duan Lingli)

The present study aims at investigating the effects of instruction on appropriateness of American English refusal strategies in Chinese EFL context. The two different teaching methods----explicit and implicit approaches are under the concept of focus-on-forms (FonFs) and focus-on-form (FonF) with noticing hypothesis as their theoretical framework.
This is a quasi-experiment study with both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The participants in the study will be three intact groups with 30-33 for each. They are pre-intermediate university students in China. The teaching targets are four types of refusal, i.e. refusal to invitation, suggestions, offers and requests, and three statuses (high, equal and low) in a familiar relationship. The teaching methods will be explicit and implicit methods. The teaching time will last four weeks with 2 hours per week. Pretest, posttest and delayed posttest will be used to get the scores and the instruments for the test will be written DCT, role play and interview. One- way ANOVA and t-test will be used for analyzing quantitative data. Transcription verbatim and categorizing the data from role play and interview will be the methods for qualitative data. All the procedures will be tested in the pilot before the main study.

Some trends of modern American English in everyday communication: A descriptive pragmatic view
中南大学外国语学院 范献龙 (Fan Xianlong)

Language use is the focus of pragmatic studies and everyday American English is the kernel part of the language for social interaction. This study attempts to take a descriptive pragmatic view to investigate the characteristics of the current American English in daily communication.
For the above purpose, a questionnaire was conducted both on the spot and by email, first among native speaking Americans and then among Chinese learners of English, which is comprised of questions asking about choices of different linguistic forms according to different speech acts. In addition, email interviews were held with some of the people to further discuss the questions concerning the use of certain expressions in certain situations. Based on the data collected from the survey participated in by the native speaking Americans and feedback obtained in the email interviews, this paper, taking the descriptive pragmatic approach, sums up some current trends of American English in everyday communication. Such trends are categorized as follows:  greater variety of expressions, more simplicity and informality, greater sensitivity to political correctness and deviations from traditional grammatical norms. Specific examples are given to demonstrate the above-mentioned aspects.
From the author’s observation and viewpoint, the paper further explores some major factors contributing to the tendencies, which derive from the characteristics of  the society of the United States (liberal and tolerant), the people (striving for diversity and showing respect fort individuality), people’s life style (quick-paced) and influence of media. With a comparison of the differences in the choices of expressions for different speech acts between native speakers and Chinese learners, the paper comes to its final part --- the discussion of the implications of the findings in the study for TEFL in China.

An account of the translation of formal non-equivalence in legal documents in the frame of pragmatic theory
上海政法学院外语系 范湘萍 (Fan Xiangping)

This article is a tentative discussion of the application of pragmatic theory: Relevance Theory to legal translation practice. According to traditional translation theory, translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message (Nida). As a result, translation has long been regarded as a means to transport message or meaning by switching language code (Sarcevic), the communicative basis of which, from the aspect of presupposition and identification, actually has the same theoretical foundation of the communicative code model. That is, the sender of information shall firstly encode the informative intention, then send it to the receiver by speaking or writing; the receiver shall revert the original intention of the sender by decoding and the communicative destination is achieved. Such a communicative process requests that the sender and receiver of information must have the same language code and cognitive context, which obviously is an innate shortcoming, and ignores the function of dynamic inference in communication.
Following Sperber & Wilson’s (1986) Relevance Theory, we hold that the process of translation is a double ostensive-inferential communication process which essentially involves the author, the translator and the translation reader. An author or communicator can not only expresses his communicative intention directly, but also conveys his intention indirectly and expect the audience or hearer to infer his communicative intention in the light of document context, mutual context, social context as well as the verbal stimuli. Therefore, the literal meaning usually is different from the actual communicative intention. Nevertheless, the differences of cognitive context between the author of legal documents and the translation reader definitely lead to the failure of transportation of message or meaning if the translator ignores the importance of pragmatic equivalence and the connotative and indirect character of language communication. Thereupon, a legal document translator’s role has changed form a pure translator into a rewriter and co-drafter of legal documents.
In this article, drawing upon some formal non-equivalence facts in Chinese and English legal documents, we propose solving the lexical, cultural and pragmatic issues in practical legal translation in accordance with pragmatic theory. Based upon these analyses, we attempt to confirm the translator’s accurate assessment and understanding of the target readership’s cognitive and cultural environments and the differences between the source and the target languages usually decides the specific translation strategy.

Compliments and responses in English and Chinese: A cross-cultural perspective
青岛科技大学外国语学院 方  洁 (Fang jie)

From the perspective of social—cultural pragmatics and contrastive pragmatics, this paper deals with the similarities and differences in the speech act realizations of complimenting and responding between Westerners and Easterners. A fair amount of research in recent years (Pomerants 1978; Manes and Wolfson 1981; Holmes 1986,1988) has focused on the subject of complements or complement-responses, including some carried out by Chinese scholars (Zuo Huanqi,1988; Chen chen, year unknown). But there is little systematic and contrastive reserch on how complimenting and responding work under the framework of pragmatic theories in English and Chinese linguistic and social-cultural contexts. The pragmatic theories adopted for the; present research are Grice’s CP, Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory, Leech’s PP and Qian Guanlian’s Politeness Principle.
   The author adpopts a multiple-source data-collecting approcah, which includes discourse completion test (DCT) and ethnographic approcah, the latter includes discussion with informants, observation and data-collecting from spoken textbooks. The nature and domain of the paper require both quantitative statistics and theoretic analysis in the research. The findings of the contrastive study is that both English and Chinese compliments and their responses tend to be hightly formulaic in the speech act realization, however, there are many differences as well as simailarities in their linguistic forms (lexical items and syntactic patterns) and functional representation (content of topics and politeness strategies chosen).
The elementary research on complimenting strategies and responding strategies even more clearly demonstrates the differences and similarities in Chinese and English. These differences are related to and simultaneously reflect the different characters, social values and cultural assumptions of the two cultures.
The empirical findings of the study point to some inadequacies of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) and Gu’s (1990) models of politeness, while Leech’s (1983) Politeness Principle is shown to be a more adequate modle for the analysis of complimenting and responding strategies.
This paper suffers from a limitation in that data collecting from spontaneous speech in English setting is a difficult, if not impossible, task, for a non-native speaker of English residing in China. The data collected by elicitation are necessarily somewhat different from those collected from actual communication. Hence the conclusions reached so far in this paper are still preliminary. Hopefully, a future large-scale investigation will be carried out in an effort to gain more insights into the speech act fo complimenting and responding in English and Chinese, and further, to probe into the underlying ideologies which breed the cultural assumptions.

Another perspective on Chinglish in verbal communications---- From Verschueren’s theory of linguistic adaptation
南京邮电大学外语系  方宗祥 (Fang zongxiang)

For various reasons, English speakers, while doing verbal communications, cannot avoid the sort of expressions which go against the so-called “authentic English”. This phenomenon of linguistic “deviance” has roughly been called “Chinglish”, and has long been “condemned” by English teachers at various levers and “derided” by their peers, so that the English communicators, for fear of making such mistakes, would rather keep silent than utter what they call “Chinglish”, as a result, “dumb English” is overflowing among the great masses of English learners.
With the popularization of English learning, the study of “Chinglish” as a phenomenon in inter-language communications has increasingly attracting concerns from linguistic researchers as well as linguistic teachers including the present author. Though it has been a controversial matter with more deride and less applause, the present author has always been on the side of the “applause”, without a sound theoretical support, however, his viewpoint is not deep-rooted. To the relief and excitement of the author, Verschueren’s Theory of Linguistic Adaptation comes to the point in serving his goal.
In accordance with Verschueren’s Theory of Linguistic Adaptation, the process of language use is the process of continual choice of language by the language users in light of communicative contexts. The three characteristics of language, that is, variability, negotiability and adaptability, especially the third, enable the language users to fulfill the choice. And Verschueren holds that in the process of communication, the two sides concerned are confronted with all sorts of adaptation, among which is the linguistic adaptation including the adaptation of sound, vocabulary and structure, etc. Based on this theory, the so called “Chinglish” occurred at whatever levels of sound, vocabulary and structure in verbal communications is nothing to be feared, because the characteristic of language “adaptability” will sweeps away the obstacles brought by the “deviant” expressions in actual verbal communications.     

Intentionality and coherence in discourse
江西财经大学外国语学院 冯德兵 (Feng Debing)

Intentionality plays a primary role in interpreting discourse structures. Explicitness of the expression of intentions is closely related to the use of cohesive devices，while implicitness of intention help reveal its coherence. Therefore, a complete analysis of discourse rests in a comprehensive examination in the aspects of the speaker’s intentions besides grammatical and semantic interpretations. Through a pragmatic analysis of seemingly incoherent discourses including conversations and written texts, we point out that the communicative intention of a discourse is the prerequisite of its coherence.

Cognition principle and practicing effect on conversational rule disobedience----Taking the conversation materials from ‘Fortress besieged’ as an individual case
江苏省扬州教育学院 高德芳 ( Gao Defang)

Grace thinks that in various languages communication activities, in order to approach a particular objective there exists a certain kind of tacit understanding between speaker and listener that is to follow the principle abided by both parties:  conversational cooperative principle by which a smooth communication can be carried out. However, in a real communication process, this principle to some extent is always violated under some factors and from which the conversational implication emerges. Because the speaker helped by common sense or common knowledge, through the unique cognizability of the mankind is able to reason linguistically from the conversation implication and finally get to understand. So, even though it is often violated, it can also be regarded as higher leveled abidance and obedience.  in this article, based on the conversation from the novel of ‘ Fortress besieged ’ by Qian Zhongshu as language materials it analyses in depth and probes into the practicing effect on conversational rule disobedience of the cognition principle , the emergence of communicator’s conversational implication in language communication activities.

The dynamic study of implicature in cross-cultural communication
苏州大学  高明强 (Gao Mingqiang)

Conversational implicature, as an important topic in pragmatics, has been approached mainly with English language as information carrier. Many studies ignore the impact of dynamic context on the process of cross-cultural interaction in which such dynamic variables as mental schema integration, social knowledge adjustment may contribute throughout the process of cross-cultural interaction. This thesis tries to construct a dynamic social-cognitive framework for the explanation of conversational implicature.

A Study on the adverse effect of lack-of-metapragmatic-information recitation on pragmatic fossilization
中国矿业大学外文学院 高  翔 (Gao Xiang) 刘韶方 (Liu Shaofang)

This study investigated the state-of-art and causes of Chinese EFL English majors’ pragmatic fossilization. As no study on fossilization of one certain speech act had yet been carried out to Chinese learners, request speech act, analyzed extensively by Kasper, Blum-Kulka, and Rose etc., was used as the research target. Discourse completion test (DCT) was used, with some adaptation, to collect data from both native speakers and Chinese English majors. The extended DCT requires students to write down as more appropriate responses as possible, then, mark out the most appropriate one to the given situation. In order to gain additional insight about the causes of pragmatic fossilization, all the students were required to complete a learning background questionnaire. It was found out that among the 62 sophomores (14 male, 48 female), 14 of them were instructed on how to make request by their middle school teachers and 32 of them read the summary on it and 16 students even recited the request expressions, which meant over half of the subjects were familiar with request formulae. But in one of the given situations, where a student (the speaker) was addressing to the head of Book Management Office, all four native speakers, who completed the same DCT, used the mitigated strategy, while only 14.5% of those English majors did the same. It suggested that their selection of appropriate strategy was systematically different from that of the native speakers, i.e., the pragmatic fossilization on request does exist. It is strongly recommended that the summaries on request and other speech acts in textbooks should be reconsidered, and be supplied with underlying metapragmatic information. Next, sufficient guidance on diverting learners’ attention to the relation between various forms and the corresponding situational meanings is very necessary in facilitating acquisition.

Interpreting conversational implicatures in English by Chinese-speaking learners
国防科技大学人文与社科学院外语系 龚双萍 (Gong Shuangping)

The object of the present study is “conversational implicature”, a term that was invented by Grice’s (1975) seminal work and has since attracted a lot of attention in the study of pragmatics. The present study investigates, form the social and cognitive processing perspective, the interpretation of conversational implicatures in English by Chinese-speaking learners of English. It aims to answer two key research questions: (1) Do Chinese interpret English conversational implicatures in the same way Americans do? (2) Is there a hierarchy of difficulty for Chinese learners of English in interpreting English conversational implicatures?

An investigation of the pragmatic competence of non-English major graduate students
西华师范大学外国语学院 辜同清 (Gu tongqing)

The present study aims to investigate the non-English major graduates’ pragmatic ability to perform the three speech acts of requests, refusals and apologies. Participants: 100 non-English major graduates (Grade 2006) in China-West Normal University in Sichuan. They have passed the CET-6 and have a relatively high English language proficiency. Materials and procedures: Each of the participants took two tests: the written discourse completion test (WDCT) and multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT). The responses were scored on a 5-point Likert scale. Results showed that the majority of graduate students lack the ability to assess the relative power, social distance and degree of imposition as a result of their inadequate pragmatic knowledge and insensitivity to the pragmatic differences between English and Chinese. Consequently, this article aims to detect possible problems and propose remedial solutions.

The significance of pragmatics in developing quality of English professionals
海南师范大学外语系 关世民(Guan shiming)

In our country, the special professionals of the English linguistics research and the language use are undergraduate English majors, who are the main source of the foreign language professionals for the needs of society, and also the vital new force in the different posts of the foreign languages involved in society politics, economy, culture, science and technology, and the undergraduate English majors’ proficiency of intercourse and the capability of communication will directly affect the quality of the foreign affairs. Pragmatics possesses such effective and irreplaceable function that any other English professional courses can not match for. Therefore, Pragmatics is not only the indispensable course that builds up the complete undergraduate English majors’ curricula, but also the “last piece of the bucket woodboard” which can guarantee the developing goal and improve the teaching quality of the English majors. Opening Pragmatics in the phase of undergraduate English professional education has much significance of curriculum construction in boosting the teaching quality of English majors, otherwise the born imperfect teaching quality and developing goal will spoil our English professional education. Undoubtedly our English majors will not go far in the linguistic study and research without the knowledge of Pragmatics! So opening Pragmatics in the phase of undergraduate English professional education is urgently needed in the strategy of our country joining in the powerful nations of the world as well as in the requests of improving the English majors’ teaching proficiency and enhancing the goal of cultivating the high quality English professionals.  

A pragmatic study on excuses
北京航空航天大学外语系 郭刚毅 (Guo Gangyi)

This paper utilises the Speech Act theory and the Politeness Principle to investigate the nature of an excuse, the kinds of excuses that are used most frequently, and the factors that affect the force of an excuse. Excuses are a kind of speech act, which can be categorized into straight excuses---excuses which involve a true reason, and pretexts---excuses that involve a lie. A straight excuse and a pretext may involve just a direct speech act, or both a direct and an indirect speech act. An excuse is most frequently embedded in such specific speech acts as refusals, requests, and shifts of responsibilities etc, though many others are not to be discussed in this paper. With a refusal the speaker has actually threatened the hearer’s positive face. Therefore, a straight excuse or a pretext is often adopted by the speaker so as to minimise the possible threats he poses to the hearer and save the hearer’s face as much as possible. A request is a kind of FTA on the hearer: it threatens the hearer’s negative face. Sometimes a direct request would be too abrupt considering the object’s degree of acceptability. Under these circumstances, then, some indirect approaches may be utilised so as to mitigate the effects of FTA on the hearer. The implicature involved in the excuse for responsibility shifting is usually something like “it’s not my fault or responsibility”. It is a kind of speech act that threatens both the speaker or excuse producer and the listener or receiver’s face: The negative face of the former and the positive face of the latter are threatened. Under common circumstances, one makes his excuse as credible as possible instead of the reverse. Consequently the question arises as which excuse is more forceful (i.e. with a higher degree of credibility) and which is less (i.e. with a lower degree of credibility). The force of an excuse is mainly affected by the following factors: (1) accessory sign clusters (ASCs); (2) the degree of originality and novelty of the context the speaker develops; (3) how well the speaker elicits the listener’s sympathy with him/her, and (4) how well the speaker approbates his/her listener.

Pragmatic studies on “爱V 不V”
南京师范大学国际文化教育学院 郭圣林 (Guo Shenglin)

“爱V 不V” can be divided into two subcategories represented by “爱理不理”and“爱来不来”.They have distinct differences on textual function, textual cohesion, textual dependence. When face threatened ,the speaker can express his dissatisfaction with the hearer by using “爱V 不V” to classify the hearer into stranger to make their close relation estranged.

A Pragmatic study of identity in the context of English corner
南京大学 郭亚东 （Guo Yadong）

Identity is essential for every individual. In communication, speakers consciously or subconsciously preserve or scarify identity to achieve communicative purposes. This phenomenon can be observed in many contexts. The present study is set in the context of English corner which provides our English learners with a stage to practice oral English and a channel to communicate with native speakers face-to-face. Based on observation and recorded data, the author aims to explore the construction and realization of the identities of both native speakers and Chinese English learners and tentatively tries to examine and explain the communication process from the perspective of linguistic adaptation. Hopefully, the study can serve as a suggestive attempt for related research in future. 

On discourse markers and their applications
中国石油大学（华东）外国语学院 郭月琴 (Guo Yueqin)

A discourse marker (DM) is a pragmatic device peculiar to oral communication act. The research on it can help us to reveal the people's cognitive psychology trace concealed in the brain "black box", explain more scientifically the discourse production and interpretation, and use language to communicate more successfully. The study of discourse markers used in oral communication is mainly based on the Adaptation-Relevance theory. And the subjects in the research are 29 English majors of the first year from China University of Petroleum and 29 English majors of the second year from Beijing Foreign Studies University as L2 learners in the study. They were respectively regarded as Group 1 and Group 2 of L2 learners with relatively low and high levels of English proficiency. Sophomores were chosen in contrast with freshmen because their ability in spoken English was developed to some extent after one-year study in the university. Sophomores from a famous language university and freshmen from an engineering science university could roughly represent English majors at two different levels of English proficiency. In addition, classroom recording, oral tests and interviews after the tests are employed as instruments.
The study of discourse markers yielded the following major findings. Some ESL/EFL learners may unintentionally come across as abrupt or brusque in social interactions in English because of a lack of expertise with linguistic devices such as discourse markers. A delay marked by silence would be socially and linguistically awkward, so it is often filled in with a discourse marker such as well, uh, oh, or ah. In addition, it has also been found that in spoken English, task types, which mainly refer to different discourse modes, almost have no influence on the frequency of using discourse markers, and argumentative texts with higher difficulty level have the richest discourse markers among all types of texts. In a discourse with a higher difficulty level, speakers might employ more types of discourse markers in order to give support to their points. The frequency of discourse markers increased, more or less, with the improvement of L2 learners' English proficiency. These discourse markers can also deflect other potentially face-threatening acts, such as topic shifts (well, oh), which could disrupt the flow of the discourse. They could be used as realization markers or for topic shifts (oh), or they could be used for situations in which interlocutors compete in turn-taking (well).
Based on the study, we may find some useful pedagogical implications and methods for the instruction of spoken English. For example, in spoken language, it is necessary for L2 learners to employ a variety of discourse markers in order to illustrate their opinions clearly and adequately, especially in a task with a relatively high difficulty level. Therefore, English teachers, especially spoken English teachers, should lead students' attention to using different types of discourse markers in spoken language, Besides, in the process of teaching, our language teachers, especially spoken English teachers, should attach much attention to L2 learners' competence of appropriately using that language. Instructors can tell students that such discourse markers are helpful or necessary whenever someone says something different from your preferences or expectations. Thus, common conversational ploys or strategies optimized by the use of discourse markers involve such functions as pausing, making or refusing a request, shifting topics, expressing a sudden realization, deflecting a compliment, requesting clarification, making repairs, or resuming previous ones. Such discourse markers not only mitigate our suffering from unexpected or uncomfortable acts, but also improve discourse coherence and flow by enabling a transition to occur.

Pragmatic markers in English public speeches under relevance-adaptation model
上海外国语大学 韩东红 (Han Donghong)

So far many studies on pragmatic markers have been carried out for various purposes with different methods both at home and abroad. However，most of them are about pragmatic markers from adjacent utterances or longer dialogues under the framework of relevance theory or adaptation theory, etc. Few reports on pragmatic markers from monologues like public speeches have been published. This paper is a study of pragmatic markers under relevance-adaptation model, a framework combining all the merits of relevance theory and adaptation theory. Well-known English public speeches are chosen as the data source of the paper because each famous speech means a successful communication between the speaker and his/her audience, and our aim is to find what features pragmatic markers in English public speeches have and whether they can play some important roles in helping the speaker achieve his/her communicative purposes successfully.
In this study, firstly, theoretical framework of relevance-adaptation model is elaborated. Secondly, an investigation into pragmatic markers in 20 well-known English public speeches chosen at random is made. Meanwhile, different groups of pragmatic markers are compared in diagrams. Based on the analysis of the statistical data, some features of pragmatic markers are found. For example, most pragmatic markers in English public speeches are so-called discourse markers, and the highest frequency is on the markers like “and”, “but”, “so”, etc. Then, several typical markers from the speeches are analyzed under relevance-adaptation model to illustrate their pragmatic functions in the communication between the speaker and the audience. The result is that pragmatic markers play a very important role both in constructing the discourse and helping the speaker communicating with the audience successfully. Besides, according to the result, some instructions to foreign language learning and teaching are given. Finally, suggestions for future research are made in view of some limitations of the present study.

Pragmatic markers and utterance interpretation
上海理工大学外语学院 韩戈玲 (Han Geling)

It is widely observed that pragmatic markers are functionally motivated in interaction. Since there is often a divergence between what is said and what is meant, between the meaning of the linguistic expressions a speaker uses and what he intends to communicate with these expressions, pra, gm, atic markers usually function as clues to interpreting the intended message, bridging the gap between linguistic forms and their pragmatic functions in interpersonal communication.
Successful communication presupposes accomplishment of the inten, ded effect of the speaker’s verbal action on the hearer, and it depends on the successful interpretation of the speaker’s intention. Since meaning interpretation is crucial for successful communication, meaning inference is simply unavoidable in verbal communication. Understanding an utterance involves arriving at a confirmed conclusion about what the speaker means. As observed, utterance interpretation is a very rapid or spontaneous process in daily face-to-face interaction. In this process, pragmatic markers contribute to meaning interpretation on part of both the speaker and hearer. This paper aims to account for the fact that the hearer reaches the intended interpretation of an utterance quickly and with relative certainty despite indefinitely many possible interpretations.
Recent accounts of utterance interpretation attach importance to the role of deductive reasoning on the part of the hearer. Relevance theorists believe that utterance interpretation is constrained and guided by the communicative Principle of Relevance, which licenses the hearer to seek for an interpretation interacting with his cognitive system and justifying his efforts in information processing. Sperber and Wilson claim that the relevance of utterance depends on the contextual effect, which can be achieved in three ways: yielding a contextual implication, strengthening an existing assumption, or contradicting and leading to the elimination of an existing assumption. Some researchers assume that relevance theory can explain how certain linguistic items contribute to disclosing the speaker’s intention and guiding the hearer’s computational process. For instance, Blakemore suggests that not only the meanings of pragmatic markers “are linked to cognitive effects, but more particularly, that they directly encode the type of cognitive effect intended”
However, it is assumed that meaning construction is a joint venture by participants in communication. What a speaker means is not fully controlled by the linguistic expressions he uses but partially determined by the hearer’s interpretation of the utterance meaning. Therefore, the dynamic collaboration between the speaker and the hearer plays a vital part in utterance interpretation, which characteristically involves cooperative efforts between interlocutors. Each party in interaction is expected to be able to identify the conversational interests of the other and to continue the interchange until the intended message is appropriately interpreted. Investigations and laboratory experiments show that the hearer indeed decodes what the speaker pragmatically means but not what he literally says when interpreting the speaker’s intended message. This paper suggests that different kinds of pragmatic markers influence interlocutors’ decoding of what is pragmatically implied in the context, which is distinct from what is actually said. It is assumed that pragmatic markers contribute to the presentation and representation of communicative message, and to both explicating communicative intentions and inferencing implicatures of utterances.

The incident that happened on Sep.11,2001,when a group of terrorists surprisingly attacked America,has greatly influenced America’s domestic and foreign policy.It had augmented the Republican and President Bush’s administration and sparked Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.Every Sep.11,Bush would deliver a speech to remember the Incident and justify his actions.As the American government being trapped in Iraq and casualties increasing,strong resentment is being on the rise at home,which severely affects Republican and Bush’s ruling.2006 happened to be the mid-term election and the Republican is realizing its adverse situation.So Bush has to elaborately design his speech on Sep.11,2006.The paper explores the wording,sentences and rhetoric in his speech and pragmatically analyses it.