Pragmatics and Conversation

A mitigating or veiling expression for something whose direct name is felt to be harsh, embarrassing or undesirable.

The adjustment of speech or interpretation to align with an interlocutor or to incorporate a new presupposition.

Group- or milieu-specific vocabulary that marks social belonging and may exclude outsiders.

A subtle change in stance, expectation or relationship without replacing the proposition itself.

Information, assumptions, and commitments treated as mutually available within an interaction.

A guiding principle from which conversation participants derive expectations regarding informative, truthful, relevant, and clear contributions.

An interactive process for addressing problems with speaking, listening, or comprehension.

A shift of the deictic centre into another place, time or person.

Reference whose interpretation depends on speaker, place, time, or discourse position.

Deictic reference to parts, transitions or locations within the unfolding discourse.

A deliberately disparaging, harsh or offensive designation of a subject or person.

The momentary orientation and role position from which a speaker produces or frames an utterance.

Meaning conveyed by an utterance without being explicitly stated.

The system of mostly implicit rules, roles, and expectations that organises encounters among co-present participants.

The property of communicative acts whereby their performance cannot be made completely undone.

The opportune moment and fitting measure of an utterance, discerned from situation, audience, place, and possibility for action.

A Japanese expression denoting the desire to have something in one’s mouth or to eat, where physical hunger is not the primary motivator.

A social process in which persons or actions are assigned to a category through repeated attribution.

The cognitive or computational processing of linguistic signals in recognising, analysing, understanding, or producing language.

A divergence between the meaning intended or suggested by an utterance and the interpretation actually reached.

The use and organisation of language in vocal, time-bound, and often interactive performance.

Offenes, risikobehaftetes Wahrsprechen gegenüber einem mächtigeren Gegenüber.

The actual effect a statement has on the feelings, thoughts, or actions of others.

Communication whose primary function is to establish or maintain social contact.

Audience-oriented, comprehensible standard language with reduced complexity, without the fixed rule system of Easy Language.

Background information treated as already given by an utterance.

An immediate, often pointed response to a preceding utterance or challenge.

Frageform, die keine gewöhnliche Informationsantwort erwartet, sondern eine Aussage, Haltung oder Aufforderung vollzieht.

A sharp, often ironic utterance that mocks or wounds its target.

A meaningful absence of speech whose force emerges from timing, expectation, and relation.

An action performed in speaking, such as promising, requesting, naming, warning, or declaring.

Coordination of speaker changes in interaction.

A deliberately restrained formulation that presents a larger reality as smaller.

The susceptibility of persons or groups to harm through linguistic exposure, devaluation, dependence, or unequal agency.

The design of language and media so that as many people as possible can perceive and use them.

Two conversational contributions that are functionally related to one another, the first of which makes a suitable second contribution expected.

Institutionally shaped language used to regulate, document, and conduct administrative procedures.

A bodily and socially effective movement of feeling that colours perception and expression.

A group-specific language formed against a dominant linguistic order, protecting belonging and renaming reality.

An utterance intended to move addressees towards an attitude or action.

The adaptation of speech to a particular audience’s knowledge, identity, expectations, or relation to the speaker.

Use of we by a single writer to mark authorial role, community or argumentative distance.

A strategy of not directly using a form, topic, conflict, or designation.

A brief listener signal such as ‘mm-hm’, ‘right’, or a nod that displays attention without taking the main turn.

An institutionally condensed style using standardised, nominal, and procedure-oriented forms.

A roundabout expression for something that could be named more simply or directly.

Use of elements from more than one language within an utterance or closely connected stretch of talk.

Switching between languages or varieties within the same discourse.