Using the software program LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count), this study used political statements classified as truths and lies by website Politifact.com and examined lexical differences between statement type (lie or truth) and the setting (interactive or scripted) in which the statement was given. In interactive settings (where…

The present study sets out to investigate the structures and functions of vague expressions in Persian. The data under scrutiny include a 15-hour corpus of informal conversations. The corpus reveals some unique vague expressions including "rhyming words," "replacing expressions," and "the affective completer."…

The tracking of entities in discourse is known to be a bimodal phenomenon. Speakers achieve cohesion in speech by alternating between full lexical forms, pronouns, and zero anaphora as they track referents. They also track referents in co-speech gestures. In this study, we explored how viewpoint is deployed in reference tracking, focusing on…

This study aims to establish whether connectives can create referential expectations in discourse, and, if so, what these expectations are based on: connective semantics or frequency distributions in language use. This was tested by comparing the processing of the connectives "and" and "but" in Dutch and Russian by means of an…

Sarcasm production and comprehension have been traditionally described in terms of pragmatic factors. Lexical cues have received less attention, but they may be important potential indicators. A major obstacle to examining such features is determining sarcastic intent. One solution is to analyze statements explicitly marked as being sarcastic.…

In the context of texts that depicted either a minimally confrontational conversation (study 1) or a more confrontational argument (study 2) with a close friend, the use of ironic criticism was rated as being more humorous, polite, and positive, yet also as more sarcastic and mocking than direct criticism. Although our results were consistent with…

The study used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count and Coh-Metrix software to examine linguistic differences with deception in an ultimatum game. In the game, the Allocator was given an amount of money to divide with the Receiver. The Receiver did not know the precise amount the Allocator had to divide, and the Allocator could use deception.…

When making requests, speakers need to select from a range of alternative forms available to them. In a corpus of naturally occurring Italian interaction, the two most common formats chosen are imperatives and interrogative constructions that include a turn-initial dative pronoun "mi" "to/for me", which is referred to as the "Mi X"? format in this…

This article investigates the contextual components utilized to convey sarcastic verbal irony, testing whether theoretical components deemed as necessary for creating a sense of irony are, in fact, necessary. A novel task was employed: Given a set of statements that out of context were not rated as sarcastic, participants were instructed to either…

As part of a growing body of conversation analytic research on epistemics in social interaction, this study explores various uses of the Japanese sentence-final particle "kke", which conveys the speaker's claim that she or he has some degree of uncertainty in recalling something from the past. The study aims to demonstrate how "mental" concepts…

This article concerns the use of independent "jos" "if"-clauses as directives (requests, proposals, and suggestions) in Finnish everyday conversation. It shows that clause types which are traditionally considered subordinate can be used without any main clauses and, thus, do not project further talk to follow in the same turn. Other participants…

Theories of pronoun resolution often assume that pronouns' referents reside in the immediate discourse context. However, language users regularly produce and comprehend "unheralded pronouns" that violate that assumption. This article provides a taxonomy of unheralded pronouns that makes reference to speakers' and addressees' common ground. Data…

There is general agreement that discourse markers help dialogue partners to highlight or locate available goal- or coherence-related information. There is, however, less agreement with regard to how the nature of the relation between the marked stretch of discourse and the rest of the dialogue should be defined. Recent work (Louwerse & Mitchell,…

Tennis scores represent a natural language domain that offers the unique opportunity to study the effects of discourse constraints on prosody with strict control over syntactic and lexical variation. This study analyzed a set of tennis scores, such as "30-15," from live recordings of several Wimbledon and Davis Cup matches. The objective was to…

This study examined Korean English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' ability to establish textual cohesion in English through appropriate selection of reference forms and reference management strategies in their written narrative discourse. It employed both quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore how the language-specific reference…