Misunderstanding is often approached as a breakdown to be repaired. This paper argues instead that misunderstanding can arise as a structural outcome of ordinary communication, rooted in a familiar asymmetry: speakers routinely leave relevant information implicit, while hearers must infer and stabilise meaning beyond what is said. For convenience, I refer to this asymmetry as “speaker laziness” and “hearer freedom.” These labels are intended as heuristic, mnemonic descriptors to foreground role-asymmetric constraints; they do not attribute blame or prescribe how interlocutors ought to behave.Building on Gricean and neo-Gricean accounts of pragmatic economy, the paper revisits how communicative efficiency is achieved under systematic underspecification. While these frameworks successfully explain how meanings are inferred beyond what is explicitly said, they leave under-specified utterances with room for multiple admissible enrichments. I propose that speaker “laziness”—understood not as deficiency but as a rational tendency toward minimal specification—interacts with hearers' interpretive latitude, making misunderstanding a structurally licensed possibility rather than a mere communicative error.The paper develops a descriptive model in which meaning emerges from the balance between economy-driven production and inference-driven interpretation. On this view, misunderstanding is not accidental but follows from the same mechanisms that enable flexible and efficient communication. By reframing misunderstanding as an inherent consequence of pragmatic underspecification, the analysis contributes to debates on communicative efficiency, interpretive variability, and the limits of Gricean economy in everyday interaction.
The present investigation sheds light on the role of music as part of the instrumentalities of social interaction. It uses conversation analysis and video recordings of a Mexican rock band's rehearsals to examine how musical turn-constructional units or “musical phrases” are used to accomplish two interactional tasks: (1) referential identification (of songs and parts), and (2) demonstration of musical form. The study shows that musical phrases are systematically produced according to the interactional needs of the moment. When used for referential identification, they display an orientation to minimisation, becoming shorter as recognition is established over time. When used for demonstration, they become more elaborated and detailed, functioning as resources for repair and specification. In both cases, musical phrases are embedded within the syntactic and sequential structure of talk, serving as crucial resources for achieving intersubjectivity and maintaining the progressivity of collaborative music-making.
Linguistic racism operates as symbolic violence, dehumanizing racialized groups and reproducing racial hierarchies through everyday language. Drawing on fourteen years of Twitter (now X) data, this study examines the prevalence, temporal dynamics, discursive contexts, and contestation of anti–East Asian racial slurs. Combining raciolinguistics with Triangulated Race Theory, we treat linguistic racism as a relational process co-constructing race, language, and social position in digital publics. We distinguish three slur mechanisms: raciolinguistic mockery that polices linguistic legitimacy, embodied slurs that degrade through corporeal and sexualized othering, and status-based epithets that reproduce labor hierarchy within racial capitalism. Status-based slurs dominate by volume, while raciolinguistic terms attract disproportionate engagement. Production varies by gender and race, and although counterspeech is rare, solidarity-oriented responses circulate widely.
This study explores the connection between Jamaican language prosody and reggae rhythm as a fundamental building block of Jamaican national identity. The background is the current movement to award national hero status to creative figures Louise Bennett Coverly and Bob Marley, whose work in the national language and music represents the Jamaican "nation" as distinct from the official "state". Using acoustic analysis of two-syllable Jamaican words and Bob Marley's "One Drop," the research identifies a shared structural feature called prosodic delay. In the Jamaican language, high pitch is frequently delayed to the second syllable, a pattern often described as "topsy-turvy" by speakers of Standard English. Similarly, the "one drop" reggae rhythm de-emphasizes the first beat of a measure, shifting prominence to later beats through a complex system of simultaneous quick and slow counting. The authors argue that this musical rhythm represents the transfer of the linguistic pattern of prosodic delay into music, creating a distinct acoustic signature for the reggae genre. Historically, this shared rhythm has served as a powerful tool for symbolic resistance against cultural and linguistic assimilation into Anglo-North American norms. By embracing these "deviant" prosodic features, both in speech and in music, the Jamaican nation asserts its cultural distinctiveness from the neo-colonial Jamaican state and the former colonial power. Ultimately, this linguistic and musical nexus allows the Jamaican people to define their identity through the defiant declaration: "They are not us". (c) 2026 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Quantum science and technology is an emerging field of research expected to have a transformative impact on society. Its inherent complexity and counterintuitive nature, however, may pose a barrier to communication with general audiences. Metaphors can play an important role in bridging the gap between abstract quantum concepts and public engagement. Yet, no research to date has systematically examined which metaphors are used in communication about quantum directed at non-experts. In this study, we address this gap by performing a content analysis of 816 Dutch newspaper articles published between January 2010 and March 2024. We first identify which quantum mechanical concepts and technologies are described metaphorically, and which source domains are used. We then examine how elements of the source domains are used to explain key features of the target domains in question, with particular attention to the most frequently metaphorized concepts. The results show 331 metaphors and reveal systematic patterns in the relationships between target domains and the source domains used to describe them. For example, some concepts are consistently framed through objects and materials, others through familiar physical phenomena, and others through references to existing technologies. Specific elements of the source domains are used to foreground particular features, such as particle movements or functional processes. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of how quantum science and technology is represented in public discourse, and highlights both the diversity and systematic use of metaphorical language in newspaper coverage.
While pilots and Air Traffic Control (ATC) are trained to use standardized 'scripted' talk in routine aviation communication to maximize safety, accuracy, and efficiency, participants at times depart from these expectations. One relatively common non-standard action is the use of 'and-prefaces' to initiate turns at talk. We use conversation analysis to investigate and-prefaces in a collection of audio recordings of ATC/pilot radio transmissions. We show and-prefaces can be used to problematize the relationship of the turn to prior talk. And-prefaces were used to initiate action (e.g., first turn in an exchange or a presequence-initiating summons) and were responsive to action (such as repair, task or next step completion, or a connection to a previous action rather than to an immediately prior turn). We discuss implications of these findings for how standard and non-standard aviation communication practices can best maximize efficiency and safety. (c) 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Time plays a central role in evolutionary theory. In this paper, we examine the language Darwin used to describe time in his work On the Origin of Species. We present the results of a computationally assisted lexical-semantic analysis of word frequencies, variations, and contextual meanings of time-related lexical items across the six editions of the Origin. Focusing on terms such as cycle, circle, chain, scale, line, tree (of life), progress, succession, and time, we analyse how Darwin represents temporality through recurrent patterns of usage. Our findings show that Darwin describes species as forming "chains of affinities" connected through "blood relationships," which unfold as "successive" "lines of descent." These expressions indicate a view of evolutionary change as a continuous process articulated through lineages of descent. Our analysis shows that, within this set of terms, tree of life plays only a minor, locally concentrated lexical role in the Origin. Darwin's representation of evolutionary time is primarily structured through the vocabulary of succession, line, and chain, rather than through arboreal concepts or imagery. This lexical pattern suggests that, at the level of textual articulation, key aspects of evolutionary temporality are predominantly expressed through geological successions and genealogical lineages that would later be found in tree-based models in evolutionary biology. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This paper examines politeness devices in German call-centre sales talk. We annotated 68 authentic service-to-sales calls with ISO 24617-2 plus a 13-category modifier typology. Sales approaches favour suggestions over direct requests; 802 modifiers occur, mostly internal (58%). A crowd-sourced study (n = 95) rated adapted utterances on politeness, clarity, purchase intent. Results show trade-offs: downtoners raise perceived politeness but reduce clarity/persuasiveness; temporal framing increases purchase intent but lowers politeness; intensifiers and pronoun shifts show no reliable effects. External support moves, often dismissed as verbosity, function as explanations in this domain. We propose a hybrid account: Brown & Levinson's power-distance-imposition remain useful heuristics; ISO-based interactional modelling better explains persuasive success, informing training for agents and conversational AI. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
New sociolinguistics is characterized by a liquidation of 'languages'. Over the last two decades, socially interested critical scholars of language have reworked handed-down notions of individuate - 'bounded', 'discrete', 'named', 'countable'- languages. A 'language' in new sociolinguistics is now commonly viewed as a second-order (language ideological) construct, rather than a first-order (self-contained) entity. In this article, we explore the intellectual roots and latter-day uptake of this critical idea, tracing it to the work of Roy Harris and its reception in sociolinguistics. We discuss the indirect uptake and hidden influence of Harris' critique of linguistics, focusing on Makoni and Pennycook's engagement with Harris, its impact on new sociolinguistics, and the relatively overt (bibliometric) absence of Harris in sociolinguistic and applied linguistic debates. We also expound Harris' views on the relationship between linguistic ontology and the politics of language. In sum, this article contributes to a historicization and meta-theorization of new sociolinguistics, offering a reflexive point of view on one of its foundational ontological claims. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
A growing body of research in language, discourse, and social sciences shows that criminal records, like other institutional documents, are rooted in bureaucratic routines, reflecting the perspectives of record makers rather than objective, all-encompassing facts. During criminal proceedings, various law functionaries collect information to match real-life events with legal definitions & horbar;a process known as "institutional categorization." This paper takes a historical view of categorization, examining four Flemish infanticide cases (1840-1890). We combine institutional discourse analysis with sociolegal approaches to study how these cases were constructed in writing, revealing the role of legal provisions and socio-cultural paradigms. We demonstrate that institutional categorization is not exclusive to modern bureaucracy, but a systematic practice leaving identifiable traces in the past. (c) 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Dementia care communication frequently encounters refusals, particularly in home-based settings where institutional authority must be negotiated. Departing from clinical models that treat resistance as a symptom, this study approaches refusals as socially situated interactional events. Drawing on a corpus of naturally occurring interactions between a professional caregiver and an older woman in Taiwan, the analysis employs Conversation Analysis to examine how refusal management is accomplished as a sequential practice. The caregiver maintains task progressivity through deferrals, downgraded directive renewals, and trajectory modifications, while silence operates as interactional non-uptake occasioning reformulations or activity shifts. Confucian-based expectations of filial respect and face maintenance are further indexed to pursue cooperation while preserving the recipient's dignity, extending person-centred care theory in this Taiwan-based context. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
In this article, we investigate the role of the Kinyabwisha language in the family language policies (FLPs) of six refugee families from DR Congo resettled in Norway. In these families, parents list Kinyabwisha as part of their otherwise varied linguistic repertoires and say they usually use it with one another. However, our ethnographic fieldwork within the larger KongNor project has revealed that the parents are reluctant to transmit Kinyabwisha to their children because of its indexicalities in the conflict zone of North Kivu. Based on this case of FLPs, we show how long-term ethnographic research can provide insights into the ways in which refugee parents' painful experiences from the past unfold in their current family language policies. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This article employs a multi-scalar approach to examine silence in the linguistic landscape of London Chinatown during Covid-19. Defining silence paradigmatically across time and space, it analyses the relative absence of pandemic signage in Chinatown as three types of silence: 1. indirect reference to Covid-19; 2. lack of relational messaging; 3. reframing spatial void online. We suggest that the silences observed on the episodic timescale (evenement) of the pandemic can be read as a discursive move to distance Chinatown from the historical discourses of racism and exclusion on the longue duree (historical timescale) and a corporate strategy to rebrand Chinatown on the intermediate timescale of commodification. Thus, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of silence as an agentive semiotic resource. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This study employed a content analysis approach to investigate how visual framing, achieved through camera perspective, setting, and color, interacts with accompanying headlines and captions to shape public perceptions of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Using 20 images depicting drone strike explosions, our analysis uncovered two opposing patterns. The representations of the Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia tended to downplay the intensity of violence and its aftermath, depicted through camera perspective and reinforced by the absence of casualties in the accompanying text. Conversely, the same camera perspective was used to intensify depictions of Russia's drone strikes on Ukraine, with accompanying texts frequently noting casualties. The intensity of the strikes was reinforced textually in the images of Russia's strikes, tending to represent Russia as aggressor, Ukraine as victim. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
This study examines the emergent crisis lexicon among Gaza's civilian population during the Gaza war. The research objective is to analyze how language actively reorders a shattered social reality. Using a qualitative thematic design, the data corpus comprises interviews with 15 displaced residents. The study's novelty lies in analyzing in-situ linguistic adaptation rather than post-facto narratives. Core findings demonstrate this lexicon operates as a pragmatic survival tool. It establishes a grammar of scarcity, an informal economic vernacular, a spatial map of threat, and articulates social fragmentation. Scientifically, these results advance speech act theory by applying it to active emergencies. Practically, the study equips humanitarian agencies with direct insights into civilian communication during complete societal collapse. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
This article examines how public messages about artificial intelligence (AI) are shaped through multimodal communication in TED Talks. Focusing on two 2023 talks on AI risks by Sasha Luccioni and Gary Marcus, the study explores how the speakers use language, visuals, and bodily performance to build credibility and engage with global audiences. Using Multimodal Discourse Analysis, we identify key "rich points", moments where gesture, imagery, voice, and narrative work together to frame AI as both a technological and a social risk. The comparative analysis reveals that the two speakers rely on different persuasive strategies: Luccioni uses an inclusive and emotionally engaging style to encourage identification and empathy, whereas Marcus adopts a more authoritative stance that emphasises expertise and institutional responsibility. The findings demonstrate how ethos and pathos are not fixed rhetorical tools but are constructed through interaction and multimodal resources in digitally mediated spaces. By conceptualising TED Talks as spaces where technical knowledge is turned into more accessible language, this study advances research on persuasion, how expertise is built, and how multimodal communication shapes public understanding of emerging technologies. (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
This study examines cases in which the pair of instructive and instructed actions is instantiated in synchrony rather than in sequence. By analyzing videorecorded instructional interactions, this study demonstrates that the production of instructive and instructed actions may be synchronized such that both actions are mutually constitutive in participants' mutual monitoring of their actions. In this mutual monitoring, the participants demonstrably orient to the correct implementation of instructed action. This study specifies the conditions for the synchronized production of instructive and instructed actions: (1) when the instruction concerns demonstrative, depictive, or descriptive details on how to complete certain tasks, and (2) when participants' bodies are arranged such that one another's actions are perceptually accessible and the compliance is immediately implementable. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
This study investigates the Indonesian discourse marker ba(h), a prominent yet understudied linguistic element in Tarakan, North Kalimantan. Despite its widespread use, little is known about its pragmatic functions and role in interaction, particularly in stancetaking and common ground management. The article frames ba(h) as an epistemic marker, highlighting its role in signaling the speaker's direct source of knowledge in the described actions, thus enhancing stance display in conversation. The analysis draws on a 263 min documentary corpus of informal verbal interactions, examined within their broad interactional context, including speakers' cultural backgrounds. Thirty-four instances of ba(h) were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Ba(h) is identified as having the prototypical meaning of marking direct source of knowledge. This core function dialogically enables speakers to (1) denote the speaker's figurative location in speech; (2) indicate visual source of information; (3) express shared cultural knowledge; (4) navigating common ground and reintroduce stances evoked in previous turns. The study situates ba(h) within the framework of pragmatics, advancing the understanding of interactional particles and their roles in epistemic marking and stance-taking, while contributing to a broader understanding of epistemic marking and knowledge asymmetry across languages. Additionally, it offers valuable data for future comparative studies of different Indonesian and Malay varieties, fostering further exploration in diverse linguistic ecologies and contexts. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
This study examines how people perceive language tactics in Chinese diplomatic discourse and their impact on China's global image. A quantitative survey collected responses from 368 participants with expertise in international relations; media, political policy, and linguistics were collected and assessed on five tactics: cooperative language, historical references, strategic ambiguity, inclusive pronouns, and multilateralism. The data were analyzed using descriptive, correlation, and multivariate linear regression. The results show that all tactics affect Chinese diplomatic image, with collaborative language and diversity being particularly strong predictors. A small Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) press-conference transcript text analysis is also performed to clarify the opinions. Importantly, public perceptions are the main source. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
