This paper presents a meta-analysis of apology realisation in Chinese. Drawing on the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realisation Patterns (CCSARP) framework, we synthesise 38 quantitative studies published between 1990 and 2024 to examine how social distance, power relations, and offence severity influence apology strategy choice. We also assess the effects of study characteristics, such as participants’ age and gender and data collection methods, on apology performance. The findings reveal that the effects of these factors are complex and nuanced, highlighting how face work in Chinese is negotiated across different social contexts. The results further suggest that research design features may affect reported outcomes and thus underscores the need for more transparent and replicable reporting practices in empirical pragmatics. Moreover, this study further identified the limits of current apology frameworks and calls for a more integrated model capable of capturing the complexity of apologies in social interaction and enabling robust contrastive analyses across linguacultures. Grounded in pragmatics, this meta-analysis establishes an empirical baseline for apology realisation in Chinese and demonstrates its relevance for broader communication research as apology studies increasingly extend into the public sphere.
Abstract This article proposes a new theoretical framework for narrative ecology , drawing from ecolinguistics, econarrative, and previous uses of the term in the literature. Unlike some formulations which treat ecology metaphorically, the framework treats narratives as a literal part of information flows that are intrinsic to ecosystems. If the howls of monkeys communicating information about predators are ecologically significant in the information flows of ecosystems, then so too are narratives that influence how humans conceptualise the world and treat it. The article attempts a consilience between narrative theory and ecological science, resulting in a transdisciplinary approach to the ecosystems that life depends on. The aim is not only to study these ecosystems, but also to intervene in the narrative ecology in order to protect them and help them regenerate. The theoretical framework has implications for how area and place are conceptualised. While area is usually considered to be a space defined by a boundary, place is an area that is experienced by humans and given meaning. Within the narrative ecology proposed in this article, a place can be seen as the material area plus the local and global flows of narratives which give it meaning. The conclusion describes a hypothetical ecologist who discovers that the ecosystem of a river has been disturbed by eutrophication. The ecologist traces back the cause firstly to a sewage treatment works and then to the metanarratives of privatisation that led to vast numbers of sewage spills in the United Kingdom. Finally, the hypothetical ecologist looks for inspirational narratives that can represent rivers in ways that promote their legal protection.
This article puts forward a new term and concept for ecolinguistic analysis of environmental discourse: rose-tinting. The term comes from the expression “viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses”, which means perceiving situations in an overly optimistic or idealised way. In the context of environmental discourse, it refers to strategies such as exaggerating the benefits of technological “solutions”, downplaying the scale of ecological issues, and giving minimal attention to the suffering and harm caused by ecological destruction. In general, it pays attention to environmental concerns and offers incremental improvements but fails to promote the level of systemic change necessary to address the scale of the problems. The article investigates the concept of rose-tinting through analysis of the emerging discourse of the European bioeconomy, examining four official policy documents from the European Commission as well as two alternative documents which express a very different vision. The conclusion argues that the environmental consideration within European bioeconomy and other policy discourses is welcome and necessary for sustainability, but rose-tinting can mean that it is not sufficient. When it comes to the future of life on Earth, it is essential that environmental discourse is “sufficient”.
This article employs systemic functional linguistics to conduct a comparative analysis of the linguistic features of two pioneering French academic periodicals: the Journal des Sçavans (first published in 1665) and its principal rival, the Journal de Trévoux (first published in 1701). Both journals were mainly devoted to book reviews. Religion is the most frequently treated subject in both periodicals, though this is much more the case in the Journal de Trévoux than in the Journal des Sçavans. An analysis of the process types of finite verbs, categories of themes, and the process types of nominalized processes in selected items dealing with religious questions shows that the Journal de Trévoux favours actions and events and the people involved, while the Journal des Sçavans prefers argumentation and communication. The Journal des Sçavans thus adopts a more intellectual stance than its younger rival. Moreover, these differences become increasingly pronounced over the period 1701 to 1711.
This study adopts a system perspective to explore how inventory, process, and constraint function to shape the complexity of syllable onsets in Southern Min. Only 15 onsets are phonemic, but they present several typologically uncommon features and are rich in allophonic variations. About 57 variants are identified that are triggered by only three distinct features from subsequent segments, and involve processes of dentalization, palatalization, labialization, lenition, lamination, glottalization, nasalization, and prenasalization. The usage frequency of onsets and their combinability with other syllable components are severely constrained, leading to more than 71% of theoretically possible syllables failing to be attested. The nasality feature from nuclei, labial feature within syllables, complexity of final types, diachronic requirements for assigning tones with respect to syllable onsets and codas, and the nature of onsets can all evoke constraints. This exploration has significant implications for our knowledge of segmental phonetics, segmental phonology, and segmental phonotactics in this language. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the understanding of the importance of inventory, process, and constraint in the phonological research of specific languages, and shed light on adopting the perspective of system to investigate other phonological categories and stretch our cognition of natural languages.
Corpus-assisted ecolinguistics is an emerging area of linguistic enquiry that integrates the methodological repertoire of corpus-assisted discourse studies with the theoretical framework of ecolinguistics to study language and its impacts on the life-sustaining relationships among humans, other species, and the natural environment. It enables researchers to identify linguistic features and patterns that perpetuate particular forms of discourse and to uncover the underlying ecological worldviews, perceptions, and beliefs embedded within them through the systematic examination of large computerized textual datasets. Drawing on an in-depth interview with Robert Poole, this article aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to corpus-assisted ecolinguistics. It begins with a brief overview of recent developments in ecolinguistics and then examines the historical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of corpus-assisted ecolinguistics. The article concludes by discussing future directions for corpus-assisted ecolinguistics and recommending relevant resources for further research and practice.
This paper focuses on vocalisations in the microlanguage of a man with a severe intellectual disability named Bodhi, who is functionally nonverbal. To make meaning, Bodhi deploys a variety of modes of expression, including non-speech vocalisations. These have received little attention, other than looking at his use of intonation. In this paper we begin to explore how his vocalisations contribute to meaning and how we might map the meaning making variations occurring in his vocalisations. We build on Dreyfus’ model of nonverbal communication and Ariztimuño’s system of vocal features to show the contributions of sound to Bodhi’s microlanguage. Dreyfus’ model focuses on Bodhi’s self-initiated system of exchanges, which privileges the interpersonal as the key driver of his communication. The main vocal qualities Bodhi uses to make his meanings relate to pitch height, loudness, tempo and tension. The paper will explore how the tendencies of association between these vocal qualities and meanings can provide further tools of interpretation for his communication partners. As such, this paper will set the foundations to enhance the understanding of Bodhi’s spoken communication and potentially act as an example of how to explore the spoken communication of others who rely on nonverbal communication and thus, hopefully, improve the quality of their interactions.
This paper critically examines the importation of concepts and tools from the field of music theory into interdisciplinary research that investigates music and meaning. Within the field of music theory, one type of music theory – Western classical music theory – holds institutional dominance to the extent that the term “music theory” has become synonymous with this specific type of theory, even though it has been demonstrated to be highly incompatible with non-Western musical practices as well as many genres of popular music. This paper examines the biases and blind spots of Western classical music theory that carry over into research in music semiotics and related interdisciplinary fields such as music psychology, critically reflecting on the limitations these biases and blind spots impose on investigations into music and meaning. An eclectic range of alternative discourses on musical knowledge (e.g. from theoretical texts on non-Western and non-classical musical practices) are also explored and insights from these alternative music theories are collated in order to synthesise practical considerations that allow for broader (and less ethnocentric) perspectives to be applied in future research on music and meaning, with a particular emphasis on considerations for multimodal semiotic studies of music in contemporary global media practices.
This paper draws on principles of sound semiotics and parameters of voice quality to examine the vocal sounds of an Australian Rules footballer who ‘calls for the ball’ from their teammates in the ‘live’ action of a sporting contest. The paper will begin by locating this study in the emerging field of sports linguistics, including recent research which shows how language-in-action in sport ‘breaks down’ typical clause, grammatical and phonological structures to foreground the meaning making of voice quality. Having introduced the data set (ten instances of ‘calling for the ball’, by the same player, from the same game) the paper draws on perceptual analyses (supported by acoustic analysis) to characterise the player’s voice according to its most salient voice quality parameters: loudness, speed and tension. The paper then turns to the data set itself to further identify two distinct voice quality patterns, coined as experiential gestures: ‘grabbing’ and ‘tapping’. The paper concludes by flagging several areas of future research that emerged from the study, including the role of on-field sporting action vis-à-vis voice quality; the co-articulation of lexis and voice quality; and the materiality of voice quality and its intersubjective function.
The present study explores precautioning purpose constructions in a sample of 71 languages. Languages may use non-specialized clause-linking devices to express precautioning purpose relations, e.g. positive purpose clauses with simply a negative marker being added to the basic proposition (e.g. I said it so that the child would not touch it). Moreover, languages may display a specialized clause-linking device (e.g. she helped the child lest he be sick). Here it is shown that when precautioning purpose clauses are encoded with a specialized clause-linking device, they will tend to appear with no TAM or with actualized tense–aspect–mood (TAM) markers (e.g. past tense). This stems from the fact that there is no need to have other morphosyntactic material aiding in the meaning of the construction. The specialized clause-linking device is the main feature that helps to evoke the precautioning purpose semantics of the construction. On the other hand, when precautioning purpose clauses are formed with a non-specialized clause-linking device, they will tend to occur with non-actualized TAM markers (e.g. irrealis). In this scenario, a non-actualized TAM marker and a non-specialized clause-linking device work in concert in the expression of the adverbial relation holding between clauses.
Previous research on syntactic complexity is primarily focused on the synchronic distribution of clausal and phrasal features and the diachronic shift from clausal elaboration to phrasal compression. However, the interrelationship between clause complexity and phrase complexity remains unexplored. This study investigated syntactic complexity at different linguistic levels across three disciplinary groups (Social Sciences, Humanities and Natural Sciences) using a corpus of research article abstracts. Sentence complexity was measured by the number of clauses per sentence, clause complexity by the number of clausal constituents per clause, and nominal group (NG) complexity by the number of words per NG. The results show that: (1) sentences are the least complex in Natural Science (NS) texts; (2) clauses are also the least complex in NS, despite having the highest average number of clausal constituents; (3) NGs are the most complex in NS texts. Furthermore, the study found that NG complexity could be more accurately measured by the number of premodifiers of the head noun (HN) of the NG. These findings have important implications for instructing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in discipline-specific academic writing.
This paper argues for a multimodal ‘phonology’, a ‘phonology’ which returns to the original meaning of the word ‘phone’ as referring to ‘voice’ as well as ‘sound’ in general, and which can be applied to speech, music, as well as other sounds. Three areas are discussed. The first is rhythm. Systemic functional linguistics has reduced the role of rhythm to the ‘foot’, but others see rhythm as also playing a significant role at higher ranks and as the fundamental organising principle of all time-based multimodal texts. The second is voice quality or, more generally, sound quality, as a key resource for expressing identity as well as fleeting states and emotions. Based as it is on qualities common to all sounds, this too applies to all sound-based semiotic modes. The third is the meaning-making potential of pitch contours, which, the paper argues, primarily contribute to the communication of emotion – again in speech, music, as well as other sounds.
This paper draws on an emerging perspective in Systemic Functional Semiotics on the role of contextual resources in organising language and semiosis. Here we look specifically to resources of mode as they resonate with resources for textual meaning-making in language. Therein we foreground a particular contextual system called juncture. This system concerns the potential to mean through demarcating information into coherent chunks of information. To explore the role of sound in demarcation, we focus especially on resources which we call punctuatives, described in this paper as relatively short, sharp, transient sounds which fall outside standard phonemic models of English. We include both non-pulmonic vocal sounds such as clicks and percussives, embodied beat gestures contacting various kinds of surface, and slightly less transitory sounds such as whistles. These resources reflect the diversity of contexts explored, which include storytelling, classroom discourse and sports coaching. Although the precise sonic resources vary between these contexts, we are able to show that the way the resources are used is relatively stable. Punctuatives are frequently found to co-occur with other semiotic resources which function to organise and chunk segments of spoken text.
Emotion in spoken communication is conveyed through a combination of verbal, vocal and facial resources among others. This paper adopts a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective to explore the sounding potential of English to realise affectual meanings in storytelling performances. It presents a novel exploratory system network of non-segmental vocal qualities considered meaningful for the description of the phonological realisation of affectual meanings. This system of vocal qualities models semogenic vocal options using the tone unit as its root entry condition to show how the features selected by storytellers work together as contrastive bundles for the expression of affectual meanings in a corpus of eight storytelling performances of Cinderella. The results show the association between emotional meanings identified discourse semantically in terms of categories of affect and the phonological choices from the vocal qualities system interpreted as affectual vocal profiles. This paper also explores the need to include phonological descriptions in research dealing with emotion in spoken communication in inter-stratal relations between attitudinally uncharged lexicogrammatical choices and affectual vocal qualities in the Reaction phases of the storytelling performances. The paper finishes by proposing a provisional system network for inscription and invocation resources for affect in spoken language.
This paper presents a metalanguage for teachers to teach about the functions of music and sound effects in fictional media and how it contributes to the understanding of film plot. This is part of a larger study from a Systemic Functional Semiotics (SFS) perspective examining the potential of sound in constructing key literary elements such as character, plot, setting and broader literary and cinematic effects. The metalanguage is developed by conceptualising three metafunctions of cinematic sounds (i.e. ideational, interpersonal, and textual) based on the analysis of the film data selected for this study. This paper starts with inventorising observable sounds we can hear in the films, followed by a description of sound qualities as the “signifier” and their meaning potential as the “signified”. It provides evidence that in terms of plot construction, cinematic sounds can represent a narrative story arc, realise events and properties of events. The metalanguage as well as the modelling of the metafunctions of film sound in the current study also provides multimodality researchers with a tool to analyse multimodal texts where sound is a key component such as films, video clips, video games, and other forms of multimodal digital texts.
The impersonation of a character’s voice is a canonical resource in comedic parody, allowing comedians to impersonate characters and establish a plurality of perspectives with varying degrees of alignment to the audience’s collective values. Although phenomena such as mimicry and ventriloquism are often mentioned anecdotally, this area remains underexplored within phonology, despite being occasionally addressed in studies of impersonation from other disciplines. This study presents a social semiotic analysis of how features of a comedian’s vocal sound semiotics including phonology and voice quality intersect with impersonation and humour in a stand-up comedy text. Employing a systemic functional linguistics-based paralanguage framework, we characterize impersonation as a mechanism realized by the convergence of particular features across semiotic modes, with phonology playing a central role renovated Tenor model is then applied to describe how meanings realized by the comedian are negotiated with the audience to create humour. The findings indicate that vocal sound semiotics plays a crucial role in nuancing the negotiation of meanings with stand-up comedy audiences, affording the comedian a rich resource for creating humour. Specifically, the comedian alternates between a “harsher” voice quality, associated with an impersonated persona, for building humorous tension, and a “warmer” voice quality associated with a more “authentic” authorial persona so as to diffuse this tension; they thus calibrate tension to remain humorous and sustain solidarity and rapport with the audience.
This study investigates the diachronic semantic evolution of the Chinese character jie (解) guided by dynamic categorization theory. It aims to trace the pathway from a concrete action verb to a modal auxiliary and to identify the cognitive mechanisms that drive each stage. Methodologically, this research adopts a diachronic and qualitative analysis using three tagged sub-corpora of the Academia Sinica Ancient Chinese Corpus. The findings reveal that jie follows three stages of dynamic categorization: (1) it underwent conservative gradual change within its category, driven by the base/profile mechanism; (2) it extended across similar or adjacent categories via metaphor and metonymy, shifting from physical actions to abstract concepts; (3) it experienced decategorization driven by metaphor and metonymy, grammaticalizing into an auxiliary verb expressing ability, possibility, and inevitability. The study concludes that dynamic categorization theory provides a robust framework for explaining the full semantic trajectory of jie , demonstrating its explanatory power beyond classical and prototype theories. This study not only illuminates the dynamic nature of Chinese lexical semantics but also offers theoretical insights for future research on semantic evolution.
As global populations age, designing healthcare interventions that effectively address the unique needs of elderly patients is increasingly crucial. Personas, fictional yet empirically grounded user archetypes, have emerged as a tool to bridge the gap between clinical objectives and patient experiences. These personas encapsulate diverse attributes, behaviors, and motivations within specific user groups, enabling healthcare providers to tailor interventions to better meet the needs of elderly populations. Despite growing interest in their use, no comprehensive review has yet examined the application and effectiveness of personas specifically within elderly-targeted healthcare interventions. This narrative review synthesizes current research on persona-based healthcare design, with a focus on interventions for elderly patients. Studies from key databases were analyzed to explore how personas are created, applied, and evaluated for their impact on patient outcomes. A significant finding of the review is the lack of standardized and validated frameworks for persona development, which complicates their practical application across diverse healthcare settings. While personas are effective in designing empathetic, user-centered interventions, the absence of consistent protocols hinders their broader adoption. This review proposes a framework to guide policymakers in developing scientifically grounded, validated guidelines for persona creation, ultimately enhancing healthcare outcomes for elderly patients.
