In this study, using descriptive sketches as a prompt, 95 female Japanese university students engaged in Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) to produce projected opening sequences for mobile phone conversations with family members and close friends. The DCT data suggest that the on-screen mutual recognition features afforded by mobile phones prior to the receiver answering reduces the relevance of conventional greetings and identification. As a result, callers tend to introduce the topic immediately following the summons-answer sequence, while answerers often use leading inquiries (e.g., nani? "what?" or dooshita no? "what's up?") to prompt topic initiation. The DCT projections indicate that mutual awareness shifts the interactional work of opening a call away from formal identification procedures toward displays of relational familiarity.
The present study investigates the underexplored topic of public political resignation speeches in contemporary Arabic discourse. The study takes as a case the resignation speech of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab, which he delivered in the aftermath of the catastrophic Beirut port explosion in August 2020. Adopting positioning theory, the analysis showed that this resignation speech was predicated on four storylines: saving the country, attacking and 'othering' political opponents, appealing to the people, and victimhood positioning. The political landscape played a crucial role in these positioning acts as the resignation speech was delivered in a context of intergroup conflict fueled by inherently deep-seated sectarian tensions and frictions. The speech strategically deployed distancing third-person forms to signal absence of any possibility of dialogue between Lebanese political actors. The resignation speech was both a performative act and a political platform for fostering antagonism toward political opponents.
